The Pangs of History – the Desire for the Future in Contemporary Israeli Literature

• In Event: Past and Future in Contemporary Israeli Fiction

Abstract

My paper examines the formal and thematic representations of a desire for and anxiety about historical changes – what I refer to, following Fredric Jameson, as historicity, the subjective experience of historical change – in contemporary Israeli novels. I will show how the desire for historicity is expressed in the novels thematically and formally, and how it is connected not only to specific “Israeli” problems but also to global conditions stemming from the failings of the neoliberal order, which is bringing forth catastrophes, changes, and hopes worldwide.
Until recently, Israeli society and politics seemed engulfed in a chronic, unchanging “wide presence,” often summarized under the term “the situation” (המצב). Importantly, this “problem with historicity” isn’t solely “Israeli”; as many have shown, it is connected to the global rise of the neoliberal order. And, since at least 2008, to its ongoing crisis. This imagination of history has been reflected in Israeli literature over the past 30 years, resulting in works described by Vered Shem-Tov and Ilana Gomel as “limbotopic,” indicating a problem with imagining a different future. However, recent catastrophes have painfully revealed that Israel has now exited this “wide presence” and is encountering immediate and terrifying historical changes. Unsurprisingly, these changes are expressed in recent literary works. What might come as a surprise is that the desire for and fear of historicity existed even in works written and published before the events of the last 18 months.
In my paper, I will explore two such works. The first is the novel “Nehemia” (2019) by Yaakov Z. Mayer, which depicts the tales of Nehemia Cohen, a 17th-century kabbalist and conman journeying to meet the false messiah Shabtai Tzevi. The second is the novel “A New Order” (2023) by Avner Wishnitzer, which deals with revolutionary changes in the early 19th-century Ottoman Empire. As I aim to show, both novels represent a renewed desire for historical movement. Moreover, this desire is connected to a depiction of a crumbling theological political and theological. Their thematic context—the Ottoman Empire or European 17th-century Jewry—serves as an allegory for the issues haunting contemporary Israeli and global societies.

Author

• yoav ronel, Ben Gurion University of the Negev