10487 Myths in Israeli Culture

Credits: 6 intermediate credits in Hebrew Literature or in Cultural Studies

Prerequisites: none

Recommended: Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua: Early Writings, Israeli Fiction and Cinema, Trends in Israeli Society, Government and Politics in Israel, History of Zionism: 1881-1914, Israeli Fiction in the Eighties

The course is based on Captives of a Dream: Myths in Israeli Culture, by Nurith Gertz (Am Oved, 1995). The materials also include The Complete Stories, by A.B. Yehoshua; The Story of Hirbet Hiza, by S. Yizhar; a reader containing selections from theoretical and research material; and selections from television news broadcasts, movies, and television series on DVD.

The course covers seven periods in Hebrew-Israeli culture in Palestine and Israel, from the 1930s until the 1990s, through the texts created in various sub-cultures and media: politics, literature, journalism, television and cinema. These texts reveal a number of central narratives which recur, in variations, carrying ideological meanings and messages embedded in them. Hebrew-Israeli society manifests, through these narratives, its nature and the nature of its attitudes towards the “outside” world in each period.

Chapters: The few against the many – posters, speeches and literary works in the 1930s; Among the nations of the world – journalism and literature during the War of Independence; Sons of light and sons of darkness – election speeches of Menachem Begin; The voice of the people – election propaganda, 1977-1984; The whole world is against us – newspaper coverage of the Lebanon war; Destruction and redemption – the “right wing-Jewish” narrative vs. the personal narrative in Hebrew literature; The 1991 Gulf War.