In this section, I will briefly compare responses to and attitudes about Israel as represented in the two texts, particularly those having to do with the idealism of the kibbutzes and Zionism of the 1960s on the one hand, and the militaristic nationalism that
41 In their critical considerations of Un été à Jérusalem, Nathan P. Devir, Nancy Arenberg, and Laurel Plapp characterize Boukhobza’s narrator’s allusions to this pre-independent Tunisia as nostalgic and full of longing. I am not sure that I fully agree, in large part due to the narrator’s criticism and rejection of the traditional Tunisian Mizrahi values, mores, and structures that her family members enact, which is framed in the novel in part as a difference between generations. At the same time, these allusions certainly do serve as points of sharp contrast with the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of which the narrator is critical and sees Israel as responsible. Through this lens, reading that contrast as nostalgia does make some sense.
has characterized Israel since the 1980s (or even the Six-Day War of 1967) on the other hand. This is important within the scope of this chapter for several reasons. First, by briefly dipping into this aspect of Cohen’s and Boukhobza’s work, we can see that indeed, and for quite obvious reasons given the historical backdrop of their generation compared to earlier ones, these are the only authors within the genealogy I propose who bring Israel explicitly into the text. Simultaneously, these are also the only two authors who have explicitly self-identified as feminists and participated in the political
manifestations of feminism. The intersection of their politicized feminism and their evolving political views on Israel is pivotal in conceptualizing écriture juive féminine as it manifests in the work of this generation of writers. Furthermore, exploring
representations of Israel in these texts helps elucidate the complicated relationship
between the legacies of French colonialism in North Africa, its reverberations in the form of Israeli colonialism vis-à-vis Palestine, the Franco-Israeli connection, and the politics that underpin either the mobilization or avoidance of memory of the Holocaust. Lastly, studying Israel here serves to illustrate the heterogeneity of Jews, which is one of the overarching objectives of this project. This heterogeneity illustrated through the lens of Israel is made visible in part by Jews’ differing responses to Zionism and the State, in part by the varying range of religious practice and secularism, and in part by the different receptions each group of Jewish exiles and refugees were met with upon arrival in Israel. The field of research devoted to Israel is vast, multidisciplinary, and continuously growing. My goal is not so much to explain and consider every aspect of the complicated relationships, challenging dynamics, and contentious debates that Israel elicits, but rather to demonstrate how representations of Israel and articulations of the narrators’ attitudes towards it ultimately underscore the gendered (feminist) critiques they make of Sephardic
and Mizrahi patriarchal social mores, as well as of the patriarchal, colonial violence that the Israeli State itself does to men and women alike, Jewish and Palestinian.42
At the same time that Cohen and (especially) Boukhobza do employ gendered, feminist critiques in their work of the traditional Sephardic and Mizrahi patriarchies in which they were raised, we have already seen that their work also features an ambivalent oscillation between rejection of and nostalgia for those very “roots.” For Boukhobza especially, her choice of setting her novel in Jerusalem during the summer of 1983 and the First Lebanon War demonstrates the conflict and irresolution that Israel provokes in the narrator, which stems in part from her unresolved and contradictory feelings towards her Tunisian Jewish heritage. Due to the centrality of Israel and Jerusalem in
Boukhobza’s novel, this section draws more heavily on passages from Un été à Jérusalem than it does from Géographie des origines, in which Israel only appears
sporadically and functions more as a counterpoint to the (post)colonial dynamics between France and Algeria.
Although Israel is omnipresent in Boukhobza’s novel, I will start with a passage from Géographie des origines, in which the narrator describes the one and only time she returned to independent Algeria after her family’s departure. What interests me in this passage is the historical backdrop of the Six-Day War, which coincides with the
Sephardic narrator’s return to what has become a completely disorienting and unfamiliar place. She thus experiences the unfolding of that war in newly independent Algeria:
La musique militaire diffusée dans les rues d’Alger durant la guerre des Six-Jours, ajoutée à une crainte sans nom, allait creuser un vrai fossé. J’ai compris que ma place n’était plus en Algérie, que leur indépendance ne me concernait pas. Il
42 There are different senses of “patriarchal” used in this sentence; first there is the very literal sense: traditional Sephardic and Mizrahi culture is patriarchal in that men are considered the authority within families, and men are also able to participate in religious community as rabbis,etc. Then there is the more ideological sense thataligns with the logic of colonialism, which is predicated upon hierarchical notions of superiority and inferiority, domination and subjugation.
fallait choisir son camp. Cette musique suscitait chez moi des prières nocturnes, clandestines, secrètes, en faveur des Israéliens. Ardente comme je l’étais, j’aurais pu m’engager pour Tsahal. J’étais revenue en Algérie de mon plein gré, à peine majeure, sans l’assentiment de mon père. J’avais bravé un interdit, mais je voulais connaître aussi la terre des Algériens, la Casbah, le désert, leur langue, leur vie. (89)
The narrator expresses her “clandestine, nocturnal” support for Israel43 in the form of
secret prayers. Crystallized through the sound of the music and her experience of the Six- Day War filtered through the Algerian (Arab) side of it, the fact of her support and self- placement on the ideological-political spectrum of positions seems to have surprised her. It is in this moment of return to Algeria that the narrator understands her own positioning, largely as an effect of the acute sense of non-belonging (i.e., exclusion) she feels in the altered geopolitical landscape of 1967 North Africa, going so far as to muse that she could have enlisted in the Israeli Armed Forces. At the same time, we sense a certain amount of inner-conflict as she recognizes the truth of her position, which is implied by the very fact of her voluntary return to Algeria and what seems to be a genuine curiosity in understanding Algerian geography and ways of life. Yet this very curiosity and desire to return further reinforces her clear separation from Algeria, illustrating in unequivocal terms her status as an observer and an outsider. When she recalls that the military music played in the streets of Algiers, combined with “an unnamed fear,” dug a “real gulf” for her, what she implies is twofold. First, the gulf represents the impassable affective gulf within her – her ties to Algeria are over, and her support for Israel is solidified. Second, she implies here that the “real gulf” would be the result of the collective, incendiary political polarization engendered by the war. Indeed, that gulf was made very real and more deeply entrenched as a result of the Six-Day War, which is generally understood
43 This makes an interesting parallel/juxtaposition with Boukhobza’s narrator, who also engages in secret, clandestine, nocturnal behavior that she attempts to hide from her parents.
historically as a major turning point in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not only in terms of the development of that conflict, but also in terms of the evolution of Jewish responses and attitudes towards Israel, exemplified here by Cohen’s narrator.44
One last aspect of this passage worth mentioning is that Cohen’s narrator seems to go out of her way to mention that she returned to Algeria without her father’s consent. Including this detail is significant, as it appears as a bit of a non sequitur. I read its inclusion in the narrative as an indication of a connection between, on the one hand, patriarchal order at the private-familial and collective-political levels, and on the other hand, possible means of revolt or subversion to counter it. Her unapproved, unsanctioned return to Algeria mirrors in some senses what she experiences as an illicit support for Israel, which, it should be mentioned, remains an abstract ideal and an unexperienced imaginary for her. That she describes her actions (her return, and her support) here in these terms (unapproved, and clandestine) is indicative of the conflicting experience of Israel for Jews from the Maghreb, and all the more so for young women coming into their own as transnational, postcolonial subjects such as the narrator in this instance.
Boukhobza’s narrator expresses similar conflicting opinions, attitudes, and feelings towards Israel, which are often mediated through her disparaging portrayals of her father and other Israeli men. For example, in one of the earliest scenes in the novel which depicts her arrival in Israel at the beginning of the eponymous summer in question, she describes her interactions with the taxi driver who takes her from the Lod airport to Jerusalem. After he assumes that she is a European tourist and does not speak Hebrew, he tries speaking broken English to which she responds in fluent Hebrew. He is surprised:
44 Lucille Cairns and Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller corroborate this in their works on Israel (Francophone
Jewish Writers Imagining Israel and The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Francophone World,
“Israélienne? Tiens? J’aurais juré que tu étais française! Excuse-moi!” (“Israeli? Well! I would have sworn that you were French! Excuse me!”; my trans.; 11). When the narrator somewhat playfully replies that she “has nothing to pardon,” she notices the driver’s unease and describes his facial features that bely his affective state: “Les yeux noirs injectés de sang, surmontés de sourcils broussailleux, ne rient pas. Une flamme inquiète demeure tapie au fond de la prunelle” (“Black bloodshot eyes, topped with bushy eyebrows, unlaughing. A worried flame lurks deep within his gaze45”; my trans.; 11).
Before moving on to the culmination of this exchange between the narrator and the taxi driver, I want to pause here and examine the dynamics already at play. First, there is the assumption that because she has arrived on an incoming flight from Europe, the narrator is therefore European; the taxi driver has no awareness of the possibilities of
transnational frameworks, and this underscores the Israeli focus on nation-building. Second, that the narrator describes the driver’s physical appearance in terms that accentuate his affect as it mirrors his stereotypically Jewish features (black eyes and bushy eyebrows) tells us much about her perceptions of Israel. His bloodshot eyes
imbued with a “worried flame” seem to bely the destructive effects of life in Israel which is evidently an anxiety-inducing place of unrest. This sense of unrest and unease is further emphasized by the driver’s response to the narrator’s playful comment in that it illustrates a mistrust and defensiveness, even perhaps a latent response to trauma, towards Europe.
As the exchange continues and becomes more complex, the taxi driver asks the narrator if she had a good vacation, now assuming that she is in fact Israeli and had been in Europe as a tourist, thus once again illustrating his lack of awareness (or denial) of
transnationalism. When she responds that she is not returning to Israel from vacation, but rather has arrived there on vacation now, the driver “accelerates furiously” and initiates the following exchange:
“Tu ne te plaisais pas ici ? La guerre te fait peur peut-être ?
- Peut-être.
- Toutes les mêmes, s’emporte-t-il avec amertume. Vous nous laissez tomber
tandis que nous… Qu’est-ce qu’il y a de plus en Europe hein ? Quand on mettra tous les Juifs dans un ghetto, alors…” (12)
This short dialogue reveals much about the complicated web of attitudes and affects surrounding Israeli nationalism and the dynamics between Zionist politics, within which there is a great spectrum of beliefs and positionings, and Jews who choose not to commit to living in Israel. The driver’s tone shifts from accusatory to bitter; by assuming the narrator left Israel because she did not like it and was afraid of the war, he demonstrates first a misogynist belief that women are afraid of war and run away from it in fear.
Yet, his bitterness also signals a sense of abandonment, which may be a reference to France’s shifting stance towards and support of Israel. In the years between the end of the Second World War and the creation of the State of Israel, France was Israel’s
strongest ally, aiding Jewish refugees by transporting them from French docks to Palestine in 1947. Eventually, the Franco-Israeli alliance dissipated and eroded,
beginning in 1967 with the Six-Day War and then-French president De Gaulle’s insults to Israel, and continuing with subsequent French presidents of the Fifth Republic who, in Lucille Cairns’ words, “were more interested in courting the Arab world than in preserving friendship with Israel” (4). Boukhobza’s allusion towards these shifting political relations through the biting words of the taxi driver illustrates the complicated and conflicting attitudes that shaped Israel at the time and situates the Lebanon War within its historical context. Finally, the driver’s embittered tone serves as a warning and
reminder that Europe is not a safe place for Jews, either. Echoing the sociopolitical discourse of Holocaust memory in Israel since the Eichmann Trial, the driver legitimizes Israel’s existence through his bitter remarks.46 Ultimately, his bitterness and anger signal
the unsettling and incendiary debates surrounding Israel since its foundation, but they seemingly do nothing to change the narrator’s own views, nor do they change her transnationality.
A bit further in the narrative, once the narrator has parted ways with the taxi driver and reunited with her mother at her parents’ apartment, she takes advantage of her father’s absence to ask her mother, “Et papa, il soutient encore Begin ? Il estime toujours que nous avons eu raison de faire le Liban ?” (“And Dad, does he still support Begin? Does he still think we were right to invade Lebanon?” ; my trans.; 18). Here, Israeli nationalism is embodied by the father figure, both the narrator’s own father and
Menachem Begin, the Prime Minister who authorized the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, thus beginning the First Lebanon War which forms the political backdrop of
Boukhobza’s novel. By placing her father and Begin within the frame of the same sentence and the same question, the narrator implicitly and explicitly links militarized Israeli nationalism with masculine patriarchy, while her use of the adverb “encore” implies that her father’s political stance is outdated and has already been proven wrong and catastrophic.
46 Annette Wieviorka and Esther Benbassa, both French historians specializing in Jewish history, identify the 1961 Eichmann Trial as a turning point in Israel’s political discourse of Holocaust memory. Wieviorka and Benbassa both explain that prior to the Trial, the many survivors who became early citizens were largely perceived as weak and therefore counterproductive to the Israeli nation-building project, which was predicated upon narratives of the strength and heroism of its early Zionist founders. The Eichmann Trial shifted this perception due to its emphasis on survivor testimonies, at which point the Holocaust and its legacies became deeply woven into Israel’s self-legitimizing discourse as justification and proof for the necessity of a Jewish-sovereign State. See Benbassa, Suffering as Identity, pp. 124-149, and Wieviorka,
L’Ère du témoin, pp. 81-126 for more on the shifting dynamics and politics of Holocaust memory in Israel.
The militaristic, masculine nationalism embodied in the figures of Begin and the narrator’s father is further emblematized in a photograph the narrator finds in her parents’ living room of her brothers in their military garb. As she contemplates the photograph, she wonders where her brothers are and is overcome with a feeling of solitude,
thematizing the fracturing and isolation brought about by war and the disillusionment and alienation the narrator experiences towards the real Israel – that of war and violence – rather than the idyllic one she had imagined:
Je remarque, enfin, dans un cadre en plastique doré, une photo de mes frères en habit militaire. Où sont-ils ? Dans les montagnes du Chouf ? À Beyrouth ? Plus je les détaille, plus j’éprouve un sentiment de solitude, comme un voyageur qui réalise soudain qu’il s’est trompé de destination, qui s’était cru arrivé dans une station balnéaire pour jouir du soleil, de la mer, et comprend qu’il a débarqué dans un paysage lunaire où des crevasses, démultipliées à l’infini, lui indiquent son chemin de pèlerin. (18-19)
Through its narration, this passage mirrors the evolution of attitudes surrounding Israel and Zionism from their early days to the narrator’s present moment. The idyllic
representation of Israel as a seaside resort, which turns out to be false, echoes the early days of Israeli Statehood, when there was a need for such marketing in order to attract diasporic Jews, particularly Sephardic and Mizrahi, and thereby justify the State’s existence. The reality of Israel in the early 1980s turns out to be, at least for the narrator, more akin to an alienating and infinitely cracked, crevasse-laden moonscape that is supposed to guide the “pilgrim” on his path.47 Boukhobza’s choice of vocabulary in the
47 In “Maghrebian Feminism Meets the Bride of God,” Nathan P. Devir explains that this sense of alienation, disorientation, and deception was especially true for the first waves of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews arriving in Israel:
It was not until the final stages of the Second World War, amid the realization that European Jewry was being systematically wiped out, that members of the Yishuv (the pre-state Zionist settlement dating from the 1880s) began to look toward Jews from Islamic countries to further populate the future Jewish state and to thereby assist in the crucial war of demography. The Jews from these countries who subsequently arrived in Israel were often put against their will into makeshift ma’abarot (transit camps) and thrust into a vastly different (European) cultural milieu. These changes led to the breakdown of their communities, and also created profound divisions in the nascent Israeli society. (55)
analogies the narrator makes to describe her disorienting experience of return to Israel, first as a “traveler,” then as a “pilgrim” is also telling of the contradictory attitudes and rhetoric surrounding Israel. On the one hand, “traveler” designates a varying degree of direction and intentionality, and is even sometimes used euphemistically to describe nomads, while “pilgrim” connotes an intentional journey with a higher, and perhaps