The Environmental Turn in Modern Hebrew Literature

• In Event: Past and Future in Contemporary Israeli Fiction

Abstract

Over the past decades, a growing number of scholars have directed their focus towards ecocriticism and the portrayal of environmental issues in literary texts. In the study of Hebrew literature, however, this attention is relatively new and still evolving. This delay can be attributed, in part, to Hebrew literature's belated engagement with environmental issues. In my talk, I will discuss what I term the "environmental turn" in Hebrew literature during the 2020s: a growing number of literary works, by authors such as Dror Burstein, Tamar Weiss-Gabbay, Edna Gorni, Iddo Geffen and others, that directly confront environmental issues, and often experiment with new literary forms to articulate narratives addressing contemporary environmental crises. I will begin my talk by offering a brief literary history of environmental engagement in modern Hebrew literature, from Sabina Messeg's eco-poetics to the current wave of literary works grappling with climate change. Subsequently, I will focus on three contemporary works that respond to climate change in different ways: the "Anticlimate" anthology, edited by Ron Dahan (2021), the novella "The Weatherwoman" by Tamar Weiss-Gabbay (recipient of the Brenner prize in 2022), and the novel "Mrs. Lilienblum's Cloud Factory" by Iddo Geffen (2023). Through these texts, I will examine how current Israeli cli-fi (climate fiction) addresses local and global environmental issues such as desertification, floods and climate change and their impact on the Israeli landscape. Additionally, I will examine the selection of literary forms employed in portraying environmental concerns, and consider the possibilities that the Israeli literary imagination offers in confronting these challenges.

Author

• Chen Bar-Itzhak, Bar-Ilan University