Motherhood under Zionism
This paper attempts to portray Israeli Motherhood as reflected in Israeli fiction of the 1990s, especially in the novels of David Grossman and Orly Castel-Bloom. Formed under conditions of permanent military and existential tensions. Israeli Jewish Mothers, and the cultural institution of Motherhood...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
The National Association of Professors of Hebrew
2003
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| In: |
Hebrew studies
Year: 2003, Volume: 44, Issue: 1, Pages: 139-156 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This paper attempts to portray Israeli Motherhood as reflected in Israeli fiction of the 1990s, especially in the novels of David Grossman and Orly Castel-Bloom. Formed under conditions of permanent military and existential tensions. Israeli Jewish Mothers, and the cultural institution of Motherhood, tend to paradoxically combine two contradictory aspects: on the one hand, the Mother is the familiar, well known Jewish Mother, nurturing, caring, self-effacing and adoring; on the other hand, Israeli Jewish Mothers are harnessed to the national effort. Like so many other mothers in nations undergoing birth throes, they heroically raise their adored sons to be sacrificed to the needs of the nation. The paper demonstrates the results of the paradoxical demands imposed on Israeli Jewish Mothers in mother-son relationships, and argues that it takes a woman writer to fully uncover, from the mother's perspective, the cruel implications of these demands and relations. Both Grossman and Castel-Bloom present Motherhood, an institution ostensibly belonging to the "private" sphere of life, as dictated by and constructed in the "public" domain., The insoluble paradox created by the conflicting cultural demands facing Jewish Zionist Mothers is reflected clearly in recent fiction, whether written by men or women. It seems, however, that women are more keenly aware of the crazed consequences of these conflicting cultural demands. It takes a female writer to portray the dreadful relationships between Politics and Motherhood, between the social expectations from a mother and the madness it takes to raise sons in our part of the world. |
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| ISSN: | 2158-1681 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Hebrew studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/hbr.2003.0008 |