Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film

354 Pages·2015·24.957 MB·English

by  Ranen Omer-Sherman

Imagining the Kibbutz
Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film
Ranen Omer-Sherman
Imagining the Kibbutz
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Imagining the Kibbutz
Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film
Ranen Omer-Sherman
the pennsylvania state university press
university park, pennsylvania
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Chapter 2 is adapted from Ranen Omer-Sherman,
Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
© 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the
University of Illinois. Used by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Omer-Sherman, Ranen, author.
Imagining the kibbutz : visions of utopia in literature
and fi lm / Ranen Omer-Sherman.
pages cm — (Dimyonot: Jews and
cultural imagination)
Summary: “An exploration of the literary and cinematic
representations of the kibbutz movement in Israel.
Authors discussed include Amos Oz, Savyon Liebrecht,
Nathan Shaham, Avraham Balaban, Atallah Mansour,
Eli Amir, and Batya Gur. Directors discussed include
Yitzhak Yeshurun, Akiva Tevet, Dror Shaul, and
Jonathan Paz”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-271-06557-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Israeli literature—History and criticism.
2. Kibbutzim in literature.
3. Kibbutzim in motion pictures.
4. Kibbutzim—History.
I. Title.
pj5012.k53o44 2015
892.4'09355—dc23
2014045413
Copyright © 2015 Th e Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by Th e Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802–1003
Th e Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of
the Association of American University Presses.
It is the policy of Th e Pennsylvania State University Press
to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock
satisfy the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.
Th is book is printed on paper that contains
30 post-consumer waste.
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VOLUME 2 תונוימד
DIMYONOT
Jews and the Cultural Imagination
samantha baskind, general editor Volumes in the Dimyonot series explore the
intersections, and interstices, of Jewish experience
editorial board and culture. These projects emerge from many
disciplines—including art, history, language,
Judith Baskin, University of Oregon
literature, music, religion, philosophy, and
David Biale, University of California, Davis
cultural studies—and diverse chronological
Katrin Kogman-Appel, Ben-Gurion
and geographical locations. Each volume,
University of the Negev
however, interrogates the multiple and evolving
Laura Levitt, Temple University
representations of Judaism and Jewishness, by
David Stern, University of Pennsylvania
both Jews and non-Jews, over time and place.
Ilan Stavans, Amherst College

other titles in the series:
VOLUME 1 David Stern, Christoph
Markschies, and Sarit Shalev-Eyni, eds., The
Monk’s Haggadah: A Fifteenth-Century Illuminated
Codex from the Monastery of Tegernsee, with a
prologue by Friar Erhard von Pappenheim
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For michali
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contents
List of Illustrations viii
Introduction 1
1 Trepidation and Exultation
in Early Kibbutz Fiction 23
2 “With a Zealot’s Fervor”:
Individuals Facing the Fissures of Ideology
in Oz, Shaham, and Balaban 67
3 Th e Kibbutz and Its Others at Midcentury:
Palestinian and Mizrahi Interlopers in Utopia 140
4 Late Disillusionments and Village Crimes:
Th e Kibbutz Mysteries of Batya Gur and Savyon Liebrecht 187
5 From the 1980s to 2010:
Nostalgia and the Revisionist Lens in Kibbutz Film 204
Afterword: Between Hope and Despair:
Th e Legacy of the Kibbutz Dream
in the Twenty-First Century 258
Acknowledgments 275
Notes 277
Bibliography 323
Index 334
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illustrations
1 David Maletz at Kibbutz Ein Harod, ca. 1925 / 49
2 Kibbutz Hulda, 1945 / 68
3 Amos Oz as a teenager at Kibbutz Hulda, ca. 1955 / 77
4 Amos Oz harvesting peanuts at Kibbutz Hulda, 1956 / 85
5 Amos Oz in his studio, 2014 / 104
6 Avraham Balaban at Kibbutz Hulda, 1949 / 133
7 Classroom at Kibbutz Hulda, 1955 / 137
8 Atallah Mansour at home in Nazareth, 2014 / 141
9 YitzhakYeshurun with cast and crew on set of Noa at Seventeen / 213
10 Ilan Yagoda’s Rain 1949 (1998) / 214
11 Kibbutz characters of Jonathan Paz’s Th e Galilee Eskimos (2007) / 217
12 Kibbutz veterans during production of Th e Galilee Eskimos / 219
13 Bella Kaplan’s Shared Accommodation, A Reality Th at Has
Passed (2011) / 234
14 Oded Hirsch’s 50 Blue (2009) / 250
15 Oded Hirsch’s Ha-baita (Home; 2010) / 252
16 Ha-baita / 253
17 Oded Hirsch’s Tochka (2010) / 254
18 Oded Hirsch’s Nothing New (2012) / 255
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Introduction
We did not attune our expectations to a distant morrow, but to their lifetime. As soon as
today is over. Quickly, in our time. Not dreams of a far-off future or the Kingdom of Heaven
at the end of a dark tunnel. It would all be right here, tomorrow. Th is little acre. Th is mule.
Th is child. Th e redemption will come here and now and not in a generation that is all saints
or all sinners or on the day that the tears of Jacob and Esau cease.
—Nathan Shaham
Th e impossibility of utopia is less a demonstration of the failure of conviviality than an
ongoing proof of our determination to keep on trying.
—Alberto Manguel
Even more than two decades after leaving the kibbutz, I need only close my
eyes for a moment or two for its rich textures and sensations to rush back in
almost unbidden with startling intensity: the growling rumbles of tractors
bearing wagons of sun-scorched and sweat-drenched laborers up the dusty
road from our fi elds and orchards, the furnace heat under white desert summer
skies, the gentle bubbling and hissing of the drip irrigation, the pungent aro-
mas of rotting orange peels and manure in the cowshed. Th e dining hall’s
incessant scraping of moving chairs, small talk, excited debates, anarchic herds
of roaming children, wicked jokes, and explosive laughter, all of it reverberat-
ing and fi lling the humming air, the bountiful refuse of eggshells, cucumber
peels, olive pits, and globs of sour runny yogurt topped off with cigarette
butts all stewing in the aluminum kolboinik atop each table. Th en, at night, the
drowsy and companionable silences of those sipping Wissotzky tea after being
reluctantly roused for the early milking shift. Th e exhausting work—how ever
did we summon the energy for those passionate arguments in the late nights of
the members’ assembly? Th ose seemingly endless days all came and went in a
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