Bulletin: Theatre and Cinema

Books

• Michal Pick Hamou, Wounded Homeland: Evolving Representations of Trauma in Israel Cinema (in Hebrew)
• Tom Lewy, The German Jews and the Hebrew Theatre (in Hebrew)
• Shelly Zer-Zion, Dorit Yerushalmi, Gad Kaynar-Kissinger, eds. Habima. New Studies of the National Theatre (in Hebrew)
  

Articles

• Orit Kamir, Zionist and Palestinian Honor and Universal Dignity in Israeli Cinema
• Anat Zanger, City and Memory: Jerusalem in Israeli Cinema

Events

Asher Tlalim, “A History of Israeli Cinema: From National to Personal Films”; SOAS, March 20, 2017

 

Thesis: Omary, Israeli Character Depictions in Hollywood Films

Omary, Hanan H. Israeli Character Depictions in Hollywood Films (1948-2008), BA thesis. The American University in Cairo, 2016.

 

URL: http://dar.aucegypt.edu/bitstream/handle/10526/4789/Thesis Draft-Israeli Characters in Hollywood Films-14-TOTAL.pdf (PDF)

 

Abstract

This research examines depictions of Israeli characters in Hollywood films over a span of 60 years starting with Israel’s early years of statehood until present day. The films selected for this research are Exodus (1960) for early statehood and Munich (2005) and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008) for present day depictions. People have always been fascinated by Hollywood films since the inception of filmmaking. Movie-going audiences have flocked to movie theaters to watch the latest productions and see their stars in action. Therefore, it is important to understand what these characters represent and the messages they communicate to the audience. This research applies discourse analysis as its methodology, and framing and film theory as its theoretical framework. The research shows that the three main Israeli characters in these three Hollywood films are depicted as being consistent with American society values and ideologies.

 

 

 

Thesis: Gilichinskaya, IDF Soldiers in Recent Israeli and Palestinian Cinema

Gilichinskaya, Yulia. All Sides of a Soldier: Representation of IDF Soldiers in Recent Israeli and Palestinian Cinema, MFA Thesis. State University of New York at Buffalo, 2016.

 

URL: http://gradworks.umi.com/10/01/10013504.html

 

Abstract

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) is a powerful military structure that defines social and cultural discourse in addition to existing as a military body in Israel and occupied Palestinian territories. Cinematic representations of IDF soldiers in recent Israeli and Palestinian cinema are emblematic of the social and cultural processes accompanying the development of the conflict. Responding to the events following the Second Intifada, Israeli and Palestinian films began to represent IDF soldiers in new ways. Soldiers depicted as victims, as members of marginalized groups, or in the background of the narrative appear in recent Israeli films. Palestinian cinema after 2000 offers representations of the IDF as the military machine and on the periphery of the plot.

 

 

 

New Article: Chyutin, Female Modesty in Judaic-Themed Israeli Cinema

Chyutin, Dan. “‘The King’s Daughter is All Glorious Within’: Female Modesty in Judaic-Themed Israeli Cinema.” Journal of Jewish Identities 9.1 (2016): 39-58.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/614551

 

Extract

In the latter months of 2011, the issue of female marginalization within Judaism became the focus of a heated debate in Israeli public discourse. During this period, the national press reported on a variety of incidents involving Judaic exclusionary practices: for example, male Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers purposely leaving an official ceremony because it involved a female singing performance; ultra-Orthodox men spitting on a thirteen-year-old girl who was dressed ‘indecently’; and women being harassed on buses for not observing gender separation by moving to the back. These and other similar occurrences were denounced by secular politicians and media, and even prominent figures within the observant community spoke against the spread of segregation. Concurrently, Israeli citizens took to the streets on more than one occasion in support of the victims of Judaic discrimination. The social uproar around these events signals a growing awareness within Israeli society of the patriarchal facets of Judaic practice and their control and oppression of women. This understanding recognizes that the Bible, as a text written by and for men, situates women as the quintessential Other, and thus acts as the condition for an institutional marginalization of womanhood that covers all spheres of Jewish religious life. With reference to this state of affairs, the Judaic demand for sexually-based tzniut (modesty), visible in the aforementioned incidents, has become particularly important for Israeli feminist critique. As Shira Wolosky explains, Judaism’s modesty discourse has defined the danger of women as “that of ‘ervah, a nakedness that contains an erotic element and requires covering.” In protection of a supposed male vulnerability, the Judaic world sought to contain this danger by imposing detailed disciplines [on] women, regulating their seating in the synagogue, eating at feasts, and positioning in recreational and education settings, alongside myriad and multiplying regulations of dress, hair covering, greetings, deportment and, in the ultra-Orthodox world, also work spaces and public travel. These measures, which may be collected under the general heading of mechitzah (separation), engender Foucauldian ‘analytic spaces’ that ‘provide fixed positions’ and establish operational links as means of social regulation. As such, they become obvious targets for the feminist appreciation of female subjectivity under Judaism. Cognizant of the oppressive implications of the mechitzah, religious feminist discourse does not call for its abolishment but rather attempts to reinterpret it; for example, by looking at modesty-regulated spaces as offering opportunities for women to express and strengthen a self-conscious identity, or by expanding the purview of modesty to all members of the community so as to help them ‘view themselves [not] according to the images of each other that have been generated through generations of cagey anxiety and misguided notions, but in the far more forgiving gaze of the divine.’ In contrast, Israeli secular feminist discourse, as reflected through the 2011 public debate on female marginalization, has been largely uninterested in such reasoning. Instead, it has defined feminism and Judaism as fundamentally incompatible, and therefore offered the breaking of mechitzah as the only proper solution for the religious woman’s plight. This position did not emerge ex nihilo. Rather, we find it mirrored in the proliferation of contemporary Israeli films that aim, so it seems, to stage scenes where religious Jewish (or ‘Judaic’) women transgress modesty norms in sexual and romantic contexts. As a genre, these filmic texts imagine observant women to be not only the principal victims of Israeli-Judaic reality, but also its primary challengers. Their challenge is seen as originating from a desire for sexual exploration, a desire that is deemed natural and thus inherently in conflict with Judaism’s artificial laws of sexual management. Accordingly, these works place their characters on a collision course with Judaism’s power structures, a process that ultimately necessitates they abandon their religiosity or live in painful tension with it. The goal of the following pages is to evaluate this corpus of media texts as manifesting the current Israeli secular critique of Judaic androcentrism.

 

 

 

ToC: Jewish Film & New Media 4.1 (2016; special issue on genres)

Jewish Film & New Media

Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2016

Table of Contents

SPECIAL ISSUE: GENRES IN JEWISH AND ISRAELI CINEMA

Guest Editors: Yaron Peleg and Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan

 

Introduction to the Special Issue

Genres in Jewish and Israeli Cinema

pp. 1-2

Yaron Peleg, Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan

Articles

A Body in Every Cellar: The “New Violence” Movement in Israeli Cinema

pp. 4-24

Neta Alexander

Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat: Holocaust Memory, Film Noir, and the Pain of Others

pp. 25-42

Yael Munk

The “New Psyche”: A Model of Different Femininity in Film: Viviane Amsalem, Heroine of the Trilogy by Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz

pp. 43-67

Macabit Abramson

Frum with Benefits: Israeli Television, Globalization, and Srugim’s American Appeal

pp. 68-89

Shayna Weiss

Adapting Masculinities: Israeli and American Genres Redefining Mizrahi Masculinity in the TV Series Haborer

pp. 90-108

Ronen Gil

DIY: How to (Not So) Safely Dismantle the Bomb of On-Screen Jewish-Israeli Identity: The Synergies with Art and Television in the Representation of Jewish-Israeli Identity and What Can Be Learned from Them

pp. 109-138

Lee Weinberg

Thesis: Chyutin, Judaism, Contemporary Israeli Film, and the Cinematic Experience

Chyutin, Dan. A Hidden Light: Judaism, Contemporary Israeli Film, and the Cinematic Experience, PhD dissertation. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2015.
 
URL: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/26366/
 
Abstract

Throughout its brief history, Israeli cinema largely ignored Jewish religious identity, aligning itself with Zionism’s rejection of Judaism as a marker of diasporic existence. Yet over the past two decades, as traditional Zionism slowly declined, and religion’s presence became more pronounced in the public sphere, Israeli filmmakers began to treat Judaism as a legitimate cinematic concern. The result has been a growth in the number of Israeli films dealing with the realities of devoutly religious Jews, amounting to a veritable “Judaic turn” in Israel’s cinematic landscape. As of now, this “turn” has received meager attention within Israeli film scholarship. The following, then, addresses this scholarly lack by offering an extensive investigation of contemporary Judaic-themed Israeli cinema.

This intervention pursues two interconnected lines of inquiry. The first seeks to analyze the corpus in question for what it says on the Judaic dimension of present-day Israeli society. In this context, this study argues that while a dialectic of secular vs. religious serves as the overall framework in which these films operate, it is habitually countermanded by gestures that bring these binary categories together into mutual recognition. Accordingly, what one finds in such filmic representations is a profound sense of ambivalence, which is indicative of a general equivocation within Israeli public discourse surrounding the rise in Israeli Judaism’s stature and its effects on a national ethos once so committed to secularism.

The second inquiry follows the lead of Judaic-themed Israeli cinema’s interest in Jewish mysticism, and extends it to a film-theoretical consideration of how Jewish mystical thought may help illuminate particular constituents of the cinematic experience. Here emphasis is placed on two related mystical elements to which certain Israeli films appeal—an enlightened vision that unravels form and a state of unity that ensues. The dissertation argues that these elements not only appear in the Israeli filmic context, but are also present in broader cinematic engagements, even when those are not necessarily organized through the theosophic coordinates of mysticism. Furthermore, it suggests that this cycle’s evocation of such elements is aimed to help its national audience transcend the ambivalences of Israel’s “Judaic imagination.”

 

 

 

New Article: Peri-Bader, Everyday Experience in Israeli Cinema

Peri-Bader, Aya. “Everyday Experience in Israeli Cinema: The Port and the City’s Margins.” Emotion, Space and Society 18 (2016): 17-26.

ְְ 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2016.01.003

 

Abstract

Representation of the port in Israeli cinema reveals a dialectic relationship to the concept of boundary and the possibilities that this suggests. A port is a physical place with a symbolic dimension, since it is an urban edge with various roles connected to both its environment and its users. The way it is presented leads to conclusions regarding its perceived urban atmosphere and related environmental affordances. Its inaccessibility to a look, a touch or movement indicates its limitations in realizing ambitions to escape a confining space, emerge from a crisis, or even just offer hope. An analysis of Israeli films shows that the port, as an urban edge, with historical, cultural and political contexts, is disconnected from the Israeli city fabric, and appears as a detached cinematic image in the way it is used and perceived. In this study I argue that when the protagonists arrive at the edge of the city in Israeli films, their actions have common features. In this cinematic universe the port serves as a site symbolizing rejection and denial of both sea and land, and concentration on daily life, the personal and the individual, thus producing unusual and sometimes unique human activity. Assuming that there are no innocent representations, and each one is therefore ideological (Comolli and Narboni, 1969), I trace the way urban portrayals of the physical environment are used as TEL Amediating images leading to the inner world of the characters and common, inter-subjective expectations and preferences. The research method is interdisciplinary and deals with an examination of the cinematic medium (structure, theme, characters and expression) from the spatial and architectural perspective (such as usage, form, geometry, materials, and borders).

 

 

 

New Article: Kohn, Refugee Camp Narratives

Kohn, Ayelet. “Refugee Camp Narratives: The Role of ‘Eye-Witness Testimony’ in Journalists’ Travel Accounts.” Current Sociology 64.1 (2016): 83-100.

ְְ 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011392115587748

 

Extract

This article examines three narrative formats which Israeli journalists use to describe their tours in Palestinian refugee camps. The article aims to suggest possibilities for reporting patterns, carefully framing a sense of urgency, which attempt to form a right measure of proximity and distance from the sufferers which might motivate audiences into action. The discussion focuses on three narratives, one literary and the other an article which was published in a popular Israeli journal, both unique in their deliberate emphasis on writing style and their reflection of the ongoing tension between the reporters’ professional, creative and national identities. The third format is a testimony, given by the narrator in Ari Folman’s animated film Waltz with Bashir (2008). The film ends with a few minutes of documented events, filmed at Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon in 1982. While all three narratives use direct showing, personal testimonies and a variety of written, illustrated and photographed portraits, the written narratives focus on the reporters’ central role and on the Israeli readers, while Waltz with Bashir challenges the possible feeling of guilt on the Israeli side and invokes the viewer’s human empathy through a direct encounter with personal comments and shocking images.

 

 

 

Report: National Library of Israel, 2015 activities

Click here for Hebrew version:

• David Grossman entrusts personal archive to National Library
• Prof. Jonathan Sarna, Scholar-in-Residence
• Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: The Battle of the Book
• Piyut and Prayer Series (watch on YouTube)
• Documentary Film Festival
• Professional Training Courses for European Librarians and Archivists
• Summer Program for Children from East Jerusalem
• Launch of Young Curators Program Pilot
• Digitization of 670 pages from 56 Israeli journals (see database here)
• Archives of Jewish journalism online (click here for the archives)
• Collection of Israeli archives (see AZ website)
• Historic maps of Jerusalem on Wikipedia (see here)

New Article: Ofengenden, Therapy and Satire in Contemporary Israeli Film and Literature

Ofengenden, Ari. “National Identity in Global Times: Therapy and Satire in Contemporary Israeli Film and Literature.” The Comparatist 39 (2015): 294-312.

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1103877

 

Extract

To conclude let us step back and look at the effects of all of these transformation narratives together. These and other novels and films engage in a sustained reusing of the past and successfully transform the way people articulate their identity. They do this with an empathic retelling of the national story like Oz, with the German or Arab Israeli other as in the film Walk on Water and Arab Labor, or with a crazed narrator like Kaniuk’s and Castel-Bloom’s. Therapeutic interventions end with a working through of displacement and immigration, a heightened awareness of the effects of the Holocaust, and a new appreciation of the creative potential of Jewish identity and culture. Self-critical satire breaks open a monolithic national identity, exposing its constructed nature and calls for creative transformations. We can now ask why these two narratives are so central to the way literature and film re-imagine national identity in contemporary times. I think that the answer lies most prominently in globalization. International flows of culture, goods, and people help strengthen civil society in its critique and parody of state violence and state agents. Somewhat paradoxically, globalization also leads to a demand for specifically national narratives in the international market. In a recent talk, Salman Rushdie pointed out that contemporary writers are increasingly asked to mediate the story of a nation for an international audience. Indeed that is what his own Midnight’s Children did for India, what J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace did for South Africa, Toni Morrison’s novels for the U.S., and Oz and Grossman for Israel. Thus we get narratives that are called to represent the nation on an international market but heal, critique, or poke fun at it at the same time. The system in which Hebrew literature finds itself has radically changed. Previously this system or field was constructed as a national field; now the field is constituted as semi-global. Some actors achieve international success while others remain domestic. Some mediate and explain the national story on the global stage while others parody the nation in order to change it.

Israeli national-cultural discourse is not a sole expression of some underlying economic forces that determine its content. However, its expression is a result of creative adaptation to economical and political pressures and opportunities that have become more and more global. Mainstream literature and culture has responded by articulating narratives that simultaneously reflect feelings of lack of political agency and an empathic apologetic self-representation for the global other. Minor literature in Israel saw an opportunity in the weakening of the state to articulate a critique in the form of parody that attempts to reconfigure national identity.

 

 

 

New Article: Johnston, Aliyah le-Berlin

Johnston, Zachary. “Aliyah Le Berlin: A Documentary about the Next Chapter of Jewish Life in Berlin.” In Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany (ed. Olaf Glöckner and Haim Fireberg; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015): 152-62.

 

 

Abstract

The American movie director and producer Zachary Johnston shares with us his insights on the emergence of a diaspora of Israeli youth in Berlin. In many ways – second only to Fania Oz-Salzberger – he is one of the pioneers in identifying the phenomenon that he follows in his documentary, and he had done it well before it became a hot issue in the Israeli media in 2014. Johnston challenges the common Israeli set of values about migration. “One cannot use the term ‘aliyah‘ out-of-context without eliciting a knee-jerk response due to its value-loaded nature of the word, which is tied to the ‘ascent’ of Jews to Israel.” He adds: “Perhaps, this new age of Israeli and Jewish exploration in Germany has a higher purpose that has yet to be ascertained, that down the road the concept of aliyah will receive a something deeper, stronger, and broader meaning for the nation of Israel and its citizens.”

 

 

Film Festival: Other Israel, (JCC Manhattan, Nov 5-12, 2015)

 

Founded in 2007, The Other Israel Film Festival uses film to foster social awareness and cultural understanding. The Festival presents dramatic and documentary films, as well as engaging panels about history, culture, and identity on the topic of minority populations in Israel with a focus on Arab citizens of Israel/Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up twenty percent of Israel’s population. Our goal is to promote awareness and appreciation of the diversity of the state of Israel, provide a dynamic and inclusive forum for exploration of, and dialogue about populations in margins of Israeli society, and encourage cinematic expression and creativity dealing with these themes. Our programming is guided by our mission to showcase quality cinema that brings to the big screen the human stories and daily lives of Arab Citizens and other minorities groups in Israel, often overlooked by mainstream Israeli society and culture.

07:00 PM – Opening Night Gala: Censored Voices

Join us in celebration of the 9th Annual Other Israel Film Festival, featuring the East Coast premiere of Censored Voices, followed by a Q&A with director Mor Loushy and an exclusive reception with filmmakers & special guests.Censored Voices

Dir. Mor Loushy
2015 | 84 min | Documentary
NY Premiere

One week after the 1967 Six Day War, a group of young Israeli soldiers, led by renowned Israeli author Amos Oz, recorded intimate conversations with their comrades returning from the battlefield. In these recordings, soldiers wrestled with the systemic evacuation of Palestinians, the dehumanizing nature of war, and the echoes of the Holocaust, taking an honest look at the moment Israel turned occupier. These recordings, censored by the Israeli army until now, are played back to the soldiers 50 years later, bringing past abruptly into present and revealing the soldiers’ stunning confessions for the first time.

http://otherisrael.org/

Events: SOAS Centre for Jewish Studies Evening Lecture Series, Term 1, 2015

SOAS Centre for Jewish Studies Evening Lecture Series, Term 1, 2015

Please find below the programme for the SOAS Centre for Jewish Studies Evening Lecture Series, Term 1, 2015, which will run on the following Wednesdays:

November 11, 17:30-19:00 

Dr. Ronald Ranta (Kingston University)

Book Launch: “Political Decision Making and Non-Decisions: The Case of Israel and the Occupied Territories.”
Venue: Brunei Gallery, Room b104, SOAS, University of London Russell Square WC1H 0XG

November 18, 17:30-19:00

Dr. Johannes Becke (Hochschule für Jüdische Studien)
Lecture: “Israel Studies in the Arab World.”
Venue: Brunei Gallery, Room b104, SOAS, University of London Russell Square WC1H 0XG

November 25, 17:00-19:00  

Movie Screening “Seret Aravit – Arab Film” (2015, 60min)
Followed by Q&A with Director, Eyal Sagui Bizawe
Co-organised with SOAS London Middle East Institute 
Venue: Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS, University of London Russell Square WC1H 0XG

December 9, 17:30-19:00  
Movie Screening “Women in Sink” (2015, 38min)
Followed by Discussion with Director, Iris Zaki
Venue: Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS, University of London Russell Square WC1H 0XG

Please see our website for further details about these and other events.

All are warmly welcomed and entrance is free of charge.

Convenor: Dr. Yonatan Sagiv (js108@soas.ac.uk)

New Article: Alush-Levron, Ethnic Melancholy in Israeli Cinema

Alush-Levron, Merav. “The Politics of Ethnic Melancholy in Israeli Cinema.” Social Identities 21.2 (2015): 169-83.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2015.1041015

Abstract

This paper deals with the way migrants’ children process the trans-generational trauma of immigration and examines its impact on the formation of their self-identity. It explores the manifestation of this trauma as present in two highly-notable works by Mizrahi cinematographers. The memory unfolding in these films is a penetrating audio-visual testimony to the immigration trauma with the mark it has left on the psyches and identities of migrants’ children. It argues that the split identity that is a product of both Israeli assimilationist and Mizrahi resistance inhabits the continuum between mourning and melancholy, grief and grievance. Along this continuum, immigrant subjects engage in intergenerational negotiations between mourning and melancholy, while their ethnic melancholy emerges as an alternative mental state to the Eurocentric hegemony.

New Book: Hochberg, Visual Occupations

 

Hochberg, Gil Z. Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone, Perverse Modernities. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2015.

 

 

In Visual Occupations Gil Z. Hochberg shows how the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is driven by the unequal access to visual rights, or the right to control what can be seen, how, and from which position. Israel maintains this unequal balance by erasing the history and denying the existence of Palestinians, and by carefully concealing its own militarization. Israeli surveillance of Palestinians, combined with the militarized gaze of Israeli soldiers at places like roadside checkpoints, also serve as tools of dominance. Hochberg analyzes various works by Palestinian and Israeli artists, among them Elia Suleiman, Rula Halawani, Sharif Waked, Ari Folman, and Larry Abramson, whose films, art, and photography challenge the inequity of visual rights by altering, queering, and manipulating dominant modes of representing the conflict. These artists’ creation of new ways of seeing—such as the refusal of Palestinian filmmakers and photographers to show Palestinian suffering or the Israeli artists’ exposure of state manipulated Israeli blindness —offers a crucial gateway, Hochberg suggests, for overcoming and undoing Israel’s militarized dominance and political oppression of Palestinians.

Gil Z. Hochberg is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at UCLA. She is the author of In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs and the Limits of Separatist Imagination.

 

Table of Contents

 

Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction. Visual Politics at a Conflict Zone  1

Part I. Concealment  

1. Visible Invisibility: On Ruins, Erasure, and Haunting  37

2. From Invisible Spectators to the Spectacle of Terror: Chronicles of a Contested Citizenship  57

Part II. Surveillance  

3. The (Soldier’s) Gaze and the (Palestinian) Body: Power, Fantasy, and Desire in the Militarized Contact Zone  79

4. Visual Rights and the Prospect of Exchange: The Photographic Event Placed under Duress  97

Part III. Witnessing

5. “Nothing to Look At”; or, “For Whom Are You Shooting?”: The Imperative to Witness and the Menace of the Global Gaze  115

6. Shooting War: On Witnessing One’s Failure to See (on Time)  139

 

Closing Words  163

Notes  167

Bibliography  187

Index  207

ToC: Israel Studies Review 30.1 (2015)

 

 

Israel Studies Review, Volume 30, Issue 1, Table of Contents:

Editors’ Note

Editors’ Note
pp. v-vii(3)

Articles

Mapai’s Bolshevist Image: A Critical Analysis
pp. 1-19(19)
Bareli, Avi

Political Indoctrination of Soldiers in the IDF, 1948–1949
pp. 20-41(22)
Hazkani, Shay

 

Outsmarting the Nation, Together: Subversive Virtual Fraternity in the Israeli Men’s Magazine Blazer
pp. 42-65(24)
Fraiberg, Steven; Kaplan, Danny

 

Men and Boys: Representations of Israeli Combat Soldiers in the Media
pp. 66-85(20)
Israeli, Zipi; Rosman-Stollman, Elisheva

 

The Kibbutz between the Past and the Present
pp. 86-100(15)
Gertz, Nurith

 

Kibbutz Landscape and Architecture as Represented in Film and Television: Kibbutz Yakum as a Case Study
pp. 101-129(29)
Har-Gil, Amir; Gitler, Inbal Ben-Asher

Review Essay

Right of Center: Rearranging the Israeli Political Map
pp. 130-143(14)
Peleg, Samuel

Book Reviews

Book Reviews
pp. 144-163(20)

 

Reviews: Shemer, Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema

Shemer, Yaron. Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema in Israel. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2013.

 

 

Reviews

• Belinfante, Randall C. “Review.” Jewish Book Council, n.d.
• Sokoloff, Naomi. “Cinema Studies/Jewish Studies, 2011-2013.” AJS Review 38.1 (2014): 153-4.
• Bashkin, Orit. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.2 (2015): 395-7.

 

 

 

Conference Program: NAPH 2015 (June 22 – 24, University of Memphis)

The preliminary program for the upcoming NAPH 2015 Conference at the University of Memphis is now complete and has been posted on its website. Click here for full program (PDF).

• Registration is now open for non-presenters. To register, please go to the above link and click on the “Conference Registration” feature. Banquet tickets can also be pre-purchased there.
• For information regarding the conference venue as well as conference accommodations, please visit: https://naphhebrew.org/conference/naph-conference-2015. Navigate to “Travel and Accommodations Info” feature for Travel and Accommodations information.
• Non-presenting members who are interested in chairing one of the conference sessions should complete the short webform at https://naphhebrew.org/conference-chairs.
• For those who wish to purchase additional kosher meals (other than the Banquet), they may be pre-purchased and delivered to the Holiday Inn every day during the conference. The meals will be double wrapped in a to-go box and delivered to the Holiday Inn. (They cannot be delivered to the Fogelman Convention Center as they will charge a costly delivery fee per order.) Double wrapped plastic cutlery will be also be provided.

 

Panels on Israeli Literature and Culture

 

Day 1 (June 22, Monday)

Session 1: 9:00-10:45

1.1 Literature: Literature and Politics

Batya Shimony, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

כבר לא קזבלן – ייצוגי החייל המזרחי בספרות העברית

Rima Shikhmanter, Tel Aviv University

הפנייה ימינה: הימין הפוליטי ברומן ההיסטורי הישראלי לילדים ולנוער

Tzipora Kedar, Zefat Academic College

“מרובעים” של דה-האן: פוליטיקאי מול משורר?

 

1.3 Pedagogy: Teaching the Hebrew Textual Tradition across Cultures

Organizer: Or Rogovin, Bucknell University

Or Rogovin, Bucknell University

The Hebrew Bible in Israeli and American Culture

Naomi Sokoloff, University of Washington

“Modern Poetry, Traditional Prayers: Teaching Jewish and Islamic

Traditions”

Edna Lauden, Tel Aviv University

“Take your son, your only son, whom you love…”: One story, Two

narratives.

 

Session 2 11:15-1:00

2.1 Literature: Female Master Poets: Yocheved Bat Miriam and Dalia Hertz

Organizer: Ruth Kartun-Blum, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Ruth Kartun-Blum, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

בת-מרים: משוררת למשוררים

Uzi Shavit, Tel Aviv University

עמי והם: התגובה השירית של שלונסקי ובת-מרים למלחמת העולם השנייה

והשואה בזמן אמת

Anat Weisman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

דליה הרץ – משוררת לעצמה?

 

2.2 Literature: Studies in Modern Jewish Thought and Classical Hebrew

Fiction

Yoav Ronel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

מלאך ההיסטוריה של ברדיצ’בסקי: תשוקה וכתיבה ברומן “מרים”

Laura Wiseman, York University

התרוצצות בין הקדרות: המתח בין הצמחונות לבין התשוקה לבשר ברומן

שירה מאת ש”י עגנון

Mark Kaplowitz, University of Memphis

Hermann Cohen, The Last Maskil

 

2.4 Pedagogy: On Teaching Hebrew in Israel and Around the World

Nataliia Bakulina, National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine,

Institute of Pedagogy, Kiev, Ukraine

הערכת הישגים לימודיים בעברית כשפה נוספת בבתי ספר יסודיים באוקרינה

Paul Overland & Jennifer Noonan, Ashland Theological Seminary; Liberty University Baptist Theological Seminary

Assets of Communicative Language Teaching for an Oral-Based Culture: a Field Report

Rachel Rosner, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; The David Yellin Academic College of Education

בחינת מונחים ועניינים בתכניות להוראת כתיבה במוסדות החינוך בישראל בראי תאוריות פילוסופיות

 

Session 3 2:30-4:15

3.1 Literature: The Displaced, the Detached, and the Hebrew Canon

Aviv Ben-Or, Brandeis University

The Arab-Jew as Displaced Intellectual in Shimon Ballas’ Fiction

Nancy Berg, Washington University in St. Louis

The Canon, the Academy, and shelilat hagolah

Ronit Gez, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

הגרסה הנשית לנארטיב התלוש בטרילוגיה – ‘בחינות’, ‘שוקולד’, ‘קיצו של זיו סנדר’ מאת דבורה בארון

 

Session 4 4:30-6:15

4.1 Literature: New Views of Time in Hebrew Literature

Organizer: Roy Greenwald, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Roy Greenwald, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

קול בלי בעלים: על משחק המבוכים בשירתה של יונה וולך

Hanna Soker-Schwager, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

“הכול כאן מולחם וחותך”– הצזורה בשירת חדווה הרכבי

Vered Shemtov & Elena Gomel, Stanford University; Tel Aviv University

Limbotopia: Being Stuck in the Continuous Present in Hebrew Literature

 

4.2 Literature: Hebrew Drama: Theory and Practice

Olga Levitan, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

זיכרון כמופע: שולחן על פי אידה פינק – יצירתה של נעמי יואלי

Israel Hameiri, University of Haifa; Oranim College

העיבוד הדרמתי, תיאוריה ופרקטיקה: ‘אכזר מכל המלך’ ו’בגדי המלך’ מאת נסים אלוני

 

Day 2 (June 23, Tuesday)

Session 5: 8:30-10:15

5.1 Literature: Studies in Works by Leah Goldberg, Avot Yeshuron, Erez Biton, and Haviva Pedaya

Sara Meyer, Haifa University

יסודות ארספואטיים בספרי הילדים של לאה גולדברג

Chaya Shacham, Haifa University

“זְמַנִי חָרוּט בְשִירַי”: גלגולם של חומרי מציאות מן היומן אל השיר ביצירת לאה גולדברג

Lilach Lachman, Haifa University

‘Revealment’ and Blindness in Hebrew Poetry: Avot Yeshurun, Erez Biton and Haviva Pedaya

 

5.2 Language: Language, Stylistics, Translation, and Rhetoric

Aharon Gaimani, Bar-Ilan University

לשון וסגנון באיגרות בשורת הפטירה כמנהג תימן

Mohammed Alghbban, King Saud University

Literary Translation Activity between Hebrew and Arabic

Adel Shakour, Al-Qasemi Academy

מאפיינים רטוריים בשיח הפוליטי של מנהיגים ערבים במדינת ישראל

 

Session 6 10:45-12:30

6.1 Literature: Archeology of a Future: Treasures from Hebrew Literary

Archives

Chair and respondent: Giddon Ticotsky, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Raquel Stepak, Tel Aviv University

שירי יהודה עמיחי מתקופת הצבא הבריטי בהקשר לכלל יצירתו הספרותית

Maayan Gelbard-Aziza, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

הדרך שלא נבחרה: מה מספרים המחזות הגנוזים של תרצה אתר?

 

6.2 Literature: Politics and Ethics

Amit Assis, McGill University

ס. יזהר: פואטיקה, פוליטיקה ושמירת הטבע

Renana Keydar, Stanford University

מיתוס הרב קוליות – על המתח שבין סיפור סיפורים ועשיית צדק במשפט אייכמן

Ari Ofengenden, Brandeis University

Globalization and Biodisaster in Contemporary Literature 2000-2015

 

6.3 Pedagogy: Language and Thought, Language and Culture

Esther Raizen, University of Texas at Austin

מקומן של מיומנויות חשיבה מסדר גבוה בכיתות הלשון

Arielle Friedman, Oranim Academic College of Education

כלי לניתוח סמיוטי של השפה הקולנועית: ניתוח הסרט הישראלי “שש פעמים” במסגרת חינוכית

Miri Talmon, Tel Aviv University

“Films from Here”: Discourses of Locality in Modern Israeli Culture

 

Session 7: 2:00-4:00

7.1 Literature: Home and Homelessness in Modern Hebrew Literature

Iris Milner, Tel Aviv University

קריאת התיגר על הבית ב”והיה העקוב למישור” לעגנון

Hannah Naveh, Tel Aviv University

ביתה של עקרת הבית: נשים בבית בסיפורי “משפחה” של דבורה בארון

Michael Gluzman, Tel Aviv University

חוסר-בית, נדודים, בריחה: גנסין בארץ ישראל

Uri Cohen, Tel Aviv University

ביותו של הכוח הזר: שכול וכישלון ומגילת אסתר כמודל מגדרי פוליטי

 

7.2 Literature: Hebrew Press and Hebrew Culture

Orly Tsarfaty, Academic College of Emek Yezreel

המאבק על הזיכרון: השיח על השואה בעיתון החרדי “משפחה” – כמרחב לכינון זהות תרבותית נבדלת

Michal Meishar, Bar-Ilan University

כתב העת ‘גזית’ כמעצב תרבות

Moshe Pelli, University of Central Florida

דרכי עריכה וסגנון של יהושע השל שור – החלוץ

Gideon Kouts, University of Paris – 8

מלחמה ושלום בעיתון “הלבנון”

 

8.1 Literature: Studies in Modern Hebrew Fiction: Nathan Shaham, Tsruya

Shalev, and A.B. Yehoshua

Ayala Amir, Bar-Ilan University, The Open University of Israel

הפרטים כפי שנצטלמו אז: מרחב, מראות וזיכרון ב”שבעה מהם” וב”הם יגיעו מחר” מאת נתן שחם

Yigal Schwartz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

סיפור ההתקבלות ואמנות הסיפור של צרויה שלו

Gilead Morahg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

הגרושה המשחררת: ישן וחדש ב’’ניצבת’’ של א’’ב יהושע

 

8.2 Language: Early Modern Hebrew

Eran Buchaltzev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

נברא במילים – ועד הלשון העברית ככוהני השפה הלאומית

Doly Levi, Levinsky College of Education

עיון לשוני סגנוני בפיליטון “בטלנות” של אלחנן לייב לוינסקי

Keren Mock, Ecole Normale Supérieure/ Sorbonne Paris Cité

הערך המילוני “מצפון”: מקורותיו בספרייתו של אליעזר בן-יהודה

8.3 Pedagogy: Israel in Short Films: Integrating Film into the Hebrew

Language Classroom

Isaac Zablocki, Director of the Israel Film Center at JCC Manhattan

This session will feature three Award Winning Short films and conversations coming out of Israel’s blossoming film industry followed by a demonstration of how films can be best integrated into the classroom.

 

Day 3 (June 24, Wednesday)

Session 9: 8:30-10:30

9.1 Literature: Studies in Current Hebrew Fiction; Part I: Leah Aini’s Works

Irit Ronen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

הפואטיקה של לאה איני: שבירת הז’אנר

Ofra Matzov-Cohen, Ariel University

מעשה הנתינה ל’אחר’ ומשמעויותיו על פי הרומן ורד הלבנון מאת לאה איני

Talila Kosh-Zohar, Kibbuzim College of Education, Technology and Arts

חריגות והתנגדות: ייצוגי גוף בנובלה “בת המקום” של לאה איני

 

Session 10: 10:45-12:30

10.1 Literature: Studies in Current Hebrew Fiction; Part II Shimon Adaf and Merav Nakar-Sadi’s Works

Rina Baroukh, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

“החיתוך של האור מבעד רצף הזמן”: על האור ביצירתו בפרוזה של שמעון אדף

Hadas Shabat Nadir, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

חידת האחים המתים וגילויה של תורת סוד גנוזה ממרוקו בטרילוגיה “ורד יהודה” לשמעון אדף

Nurit Buchweitz, Beit-Berl University

NIMBY, or Multicultural Inclusion in Merav Nakar-Sadi’s Oxana

 

10.2 Language: Proper Names, Language in Advertising

Shlomit Landman, Achva Academic College

שמות פרטיים דו-מיניים עבור יילודים במגזר היהודי במדינת ישראל

Bat-Zion Yemini, Levinsky College and Talpiot College

השמות הפרטיים המקראיים והמודרניים– בבואה של מערכות שונות של זמן-אספקט-מודוס

Irit Zeevi, Oranim Academic College of Education and Emek Yezreel Academic College & Lee Cahaner, Oranim Academic College

שפת הפרסומת החרדית לנדל”ן כמייצגת את תפיסת המקום

 

Session 11: 2:00-3:45

11.1 Literature: Jewish Traditions and Modern Hebrew Literature

Zafrira Lidovsky Cohen, Stern College of Yeshiva University

“צדיק ורע לו”: מוטיב הצדיק בשירת אביגדור המאירי ואברהם שלונסקי

Moshe Yitzhaki, Oranim Academic College of Education

התקדשות ורליגיוזיות בחיי היום-יום: הצעה לקרוא ביצירות י.ח. ברנר כממשיך ומחדש מסורת מדרשי חז”ל

Moria Dayan-Codish, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

האסתטיקה החז”לית ביצירתו של שלום יעקב אברמוביץ

11.2 Language: Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Creativity, Morphology (Word Formation)

Esther Bahat, Tel Aviv University

“כשהתותחים רועמים – המוזות שותקות”. האומנם? יצירתיות בעיתונות הישראלית בתקופת מבצע “צוק איתן”

Marc Bernstein, Michigan State University

“Give Me Your Identity!”: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Arab Labor

Nimrod Shatil, Zefat Academic College

מקומו של המשקל במוח של דובר העברית בן-ימינו

 

Lecture: Alexandrowicz, 47 Years of Documentation (Taub NYU, April 8 2015)

 

4/8/2015 @ 5pm

19 University Place, Room 102

 Ra’anan Alexandrowicz presents 47 Years of Documentation

The documentation of the city of Hebron over the past five decades serves as a case study for examining broader questions regarding documentation, history, and politics. From the newsreels of the late 1960s, through TV coverage from the 1970s and 1980s, all the way to ubiquitous YouTube clips in the last decade, the process sheds light on the dramatic changes that have occurred in Hebron, and mainly on the transformations that have taken place in the act of documentation during that period of time.

Over the last two decades, Ra’anan Alexandrowicz has examined the social and political reality in Israel and in Palestine through a series of acclaimed cinematic works, including Martin (1999), The Inner Tour (2001), James’s Journey to Jerusalem (2003), and The Law in These Parts (2011), which won Best International Documentary at Sundance, a Peabody award, as well as best documentary at Jerusalem Film Festival and several other prizes.

RSVP here.

New Article: Kokin, The Theological Sub-Text of Walk on Water

Kokin, Daniel Stein. “Between Eyal and Axel, Yahweh and Christ: The Theological Sub-Text of Walk on Water (2004).” Prooftexts 33.3 (2013): 365-280.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/prooftexts/v033/33.3.kokin.html

 

Abstract

The stereotypical character of Walk on Water (Israel, 2004) has represented a severe obstacle for many viewers, who have been quick to denounce it as both trite and superficial. This article argues instead that the film’s clearly intentional and self-conscious recycling of numerous clichés concerning Germans and Israelis alike points to its deeper meaning and purpose. In particular, it shows that these clichés constitute the essential infrastructure with which the film engages and attempts to resolve the problematic German–Israeli, and by extension Christian–Jewish, relationship in the aftermath of the Holocaust. It further suggests that the film offers its own “final solution” to this vexed relationship—a “messianic” deliverance from the respective traumas of each party—in the form of an allegorical synthesis of Jewish and Christian theology, directly reflected in the contrasts and evolving relationship between its two primary characters. Itself highly stereotypical, the theology upon which the film draws facilitates its critique of German and especially Israeli attitudes toward power and violence.