Novelists From Israel

"(In Europe, Amos Oz is often talked about as some kind of modern Israeli prophet.) DR: That's because he can't let go of the old prophetic gestures. It's a nice role and he's comfortable with it, and maybe we need him to open people's eyes. Who knows, maybe it's just me who's cynical. But there's nothing prophetic about the rest of us, particularly the younger writers. Your horoscope can tell you more about the future than we can. I don't see writing as a kind of vocation or destiny, but as the only profession that I've mastered. If someone discovers something greater underlying it all, then I've been lucky. But I don't work an eight-hour day in order to deliver a message. I'm trying to find out something about myself, about my life, trying to control something in all this chaos. For me, writing is the only way to give order to my life. To earn a living by doing something that gives me peace, and that makes me happy"

"The concept post-Zionism stems from the so-called new historians who in the early '90s came up with new facts, new stories, facts that the nation builders had omitted from textbooks in order to foster a generation that was proud and prepared to join the army and die, a generation fueled by patriotic loyalty. Facts such as the Palestinians being driven from their houses and having to flee in 1948. These new historians were deemed to be very radical, they sabotaged the prevailing views of Zionism and Israel. I personally am a radical and post-Zionist, in the sense that I take into account the fact that what we learned at school was not the absolute truth. At the same time, I live here in Israel, and in this sense I enjoy the fruits of the occupation in 1948. But I totally condemn the occupation in 1967. Israel is my only home. I know that it is built on a crime, and I am willing to pay for that crime, but I'm not willing to let Israel become a two-nation state. I want two states for two people, and I want to see the refugees from 1948 receive compensation for the crime that gave me my home, but I will never agree to creating a joint Jewish-Palestinian state between the River Jordan and the sea. I think that would be a catastrophe for the Jews. I want the Palestinian community to thrive, but not at the risk of becoming a refugee myself. And I say that with the greatest love for those who disagree with me, the sons and daughters of the refugees from 1948. They are welcome to come here and live in Jaffa, just as I sometimes go to live in New York, or my sister lives in London. They will have full rights here, but not citizenship. They will have their Palestine, their own homeland. In order to achieve peace, we have to establish two states alongside one another."

"Rabinyan's writing is vivid and sensual, physical and intimate and at times, very direct and crude. Dorit Rabinyan is a very likeable woman. She is intense, reflective, and humorous."

"Dorit Rabinyan is a young author of Iranian background who writes beautifully about Iran and Israel."

""you know how difficult it is to realize that some pains can’t be cured by love?”"

"When two people meant for each other refuse to accept their vocation, they sentence themselves to a life full of hatred and blame and everyone is to blame for their missed opportunity."

"I've gotten used to so many symbolic interpretations of my work. Every fighting couple becomes a manifestation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (2019)"

"It seems that wherever you go, your country follows you like a shadow. (2019)"

"Creating new from old is to a large extent the story of our lives. We are born anew into an "old" narrative, as humans and as writers. (2019)"

"Writing is all about discovery. It is my own journey into the unknown, no less than my characters' journey. Knowing and creating are almost opposite for me. In order to create, I must leave ample space for the unknown. It turns the writing process into an adventure. (2019)"

"Encounters with pain and sorrow made me want to write. When I was 6, I was already writing sad poems about cats and dogs that had been killed and soldiers that were dying in war. It’s in my DNA. (2014)"

"Normally the characters I create are busy in some sort of crisis and, as a literary therapist, it is my job to help them overcome it. (2014)"

"The job of literature is to change the reader’s soul. I don’t want my readers just to enjoy themselves. I want them to go through some sort of experience that might change themselves. (2014)"

"You can feel the extremeness of Israeli society and life in my books without it being explicit. I only look for the individual experienced and give a taste of the complexity of life in Israel. (2014)"

"Living in Jerusalem and writing in Jerusalem is always a struggle, because the tension is huge, sometimes is even tragic. On one hand, is really disturbing, but, on the other hand, is a huge inspiration. (2014)"

"(Do you consider yourself a religious person?) No, not at all. I see the Bible as a source of inspiration, for me it’s literature. (2014)"

"Shalev is an ‘extraordinary writer,’ the French crime novelist Leila Slimani has said, one whose ‘style is poetic, luminous, demanding’ and who writes ‘with incredible delicacy and power about family, love and fear.’"

"Style is a part and parcel of the expression. I never “think out” devices. The device is a reflection of my psychic structure. It’s like my own voice. Part of it is the sound, the other part—my intonation."

"Amalia Kahana-Carmon is often described as the Israeli Virginia Woolf. Though she belongs to the age group of the Palmach generation of the fifties, she is normally classified as one of the “New Wave” writers on a par with A. B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz."

"Her stories plunge the reader directly into an unmediated world of subjective feeling. Usually the subjects of her novels and stories are young women facing the problems of growing up and contending with romantic attachments. In a later novel, With Her on Her Way Home (1991), she deals with the problems of growing old. Kahana-Carmon's language is carefully shaped and unadorned, but possessing an idiosyncratic subtlety that makes translation difficult."

"I write when I cannot hold back any longer. Call it an attack, an ir­resistible impulse. In a way, my writing has almost been clandestine. There was a constant feeling of guilt, and a continuous tension between my duties at home and my literary aspirations."

"After all, what are we trying to find in a book ? Ourselves. A good book offers you yourself in a more articulate way. Reading is actually plunging into one’s own identity and, one hopes, emerging stronger than before. You see, unconsciously, we are seeking to find an affirmation to our own world -perception and set of values. Since these change as we grow up and develop, our response to books changes as well. I don’t believe there is an objective yardstick by which a book may be evaluated. The “science” of literary criticism is an illusion—it is based on subjective impressions, and no one feels the sting more strongly than I, being a critic myself. The only thing I hope to do in my books, is to open up the reader to a new awareness. There is no logical or speculative message I intend to transmit. The “message” belongs to the realm of intuition, imagination and emotional perception. If I manage to make a reader sensitive to that special awareness which has inspired me to write, I consider myself a lucky writer."

"I wrote about the hard way in which one learns the pain of the break between dream and reality. And you know, in the beginning I tended to write, for lack of a better term, in the “romantic” vein. I was trying to search for human nature through the external order of things. I wanted to touch human misery without getting my hands dirty, out of a peculiar fastidiousness. I think I changed tremendously in this sense. I am not as much of an outsider anymore. I am more capable now of observing the pain, and being part of it at the same time. I have learned to come to terms with the “concrete” and naked reality and not flinch from expressing it in a more direct fashion."

"Living in a world of flux, subjugated to the indecipherable laws of constant vicissitudes, our encounters cannot but be momentary flashes. The glamor cannot last because we change, the others change, circumstances change. So I wouldn’t call the end of a relationship a failure."

"(What does the title of the story, “There, The Newsroom” mean?) A. K. -C. The essential news, the news which matters, is not in the newsroom but in the opposite direction. The things which shape our lives are not projected on the television screen."

"Every human encounter is the external embodiment of an attraction between two magnetic fields. The encounter comes suddenly, unexpectedly. It is a moment of truth. It is a moment of revelation, as when the right ray of sun penetrates through the right window pane, and falls with the right slant on one picture in the museum. This is the painfully short moment which shows us just what the artist had in mind. It happened to me once. I walked into a bookstore in Jerusalem. I opened one book after another, when suddenly I found myself reading something breathlessly. It was a book of poems by Pinhas Sadeh. There was a flash, I was touched by something powerful. For some reason, I could not purchase the book right away. A while later, back in Tel Aviv, I went to buy the book. When I opened it this time it was—difficult. The angle had changed. The ray of light passed me by. There was no illumination. The same happens with human encounters. We meet someone, and suddenly we are capable of being ourselves, just like we were supposed to be—ourselves without hiding, without pretending, with no pretexts. We are each a magnetic field. And each attraction, limited as it may appear to be, is a cosmic happening—it occurs within the broader pattern of things, within the endlessly complex structure which underlies our lives."

"I have two sons in the military service, one in the Air Force and one in the Army. So nobody can be against war more than myself. But to tell the truth, during the day to day routine, doing the normal things, small or great, war hardly enters our thoughts. It becomes a fact of life. Almost like air pollution."

"My work is an expression of myself, and I happen to be Jewish, I guess my point of view is affected by a hierarchy of values which is bound up with this point in history, and this place in the world. And I guess there is no escape from my own point of view."

"Every story is a breakthrough. Every story is catching a glimpse of some vast, infinite pattern which gives meaning to our lives. Every story is an acceptance, a realization that the all-encompassing pattern is there for a purpose. But the unconscious attempt to disguise the pattern is infinite, so every story comes as a surprise."

"I think I am mostly concerned with two issues: death-in-life versus life, and chaos versus order. These two are clearly intertwined, of course. I am talking about the individual revolt against the established order of things, the attempt to break through the visible. This attempt brings about an epiphany of a wider order of things which underlies our existence."

"A writer is a person who at a certain point in his life has found out that he is bothered by something which those around him seem to take in their stride. He finds out that here the usual modes of talk will not do, and he turns to investigate it the lonely way—on paper. It is doubtful if he is to find a solution to those pestering questions, but giving shape to his probings is itself a kind of solace. And then, something strange happens. The paper gets hold of him. It stimulates him, it becomes a meaning to itself. This person has passed a thin line into a new, a different world, to stay there forever. Forever, because not to obey this call now is tantamount to desertion, or still worse, to exile."

"Each author has a unique style, all his own...I believe every author is unique and every work is too, due to its unique style."

"America is, after all, the only Jewish community outside of Israel that is surviving. British Jewry is stagnant, dying. Then there are the French, of course, but in the Diaspora only in America is there open Jewish dialogue, vitality. Its Jewish community is thriving and will, I feel, survive. Sometimes, perhaps, it moves in the wrong direction. But it is self-confident and alive. Many people retain their Jewish identity despite marrying non-Jews. I myself have seen it. [Smiling] Perhaps you don't agree, but the mixed marriages they have there are not all that bad. We Israelis tend to patronize American Jewry. Why not instead be happy about it? American Jews accept their Jewishness. I feel, in fact, that we in Israel could learn a little something from this the better to enjoy our being Jewish."

"It could be fairly said that I disagree with the old, false romanticism about Judaism. In practice, Orthodox Judaism can keep you busy nearly all of the time with things you should be doing. Keeps you feeling guilty. But feeling Jewish should also feel pleasurable. What can be wrong with that?"

"I myself tell people that Israel is the only place that Jews can live where they don't have always to be thinking about being Jewish. For, as you are aware, the practice of Judaism is, in practice, impractical for many of us Jews."

"When I was eighteen, I joined the British army for four years. I served in Egypt and the western desert: Palestinian [Jewish!] units were kept distant from combat zones. After that came a year in the Hagana [pre-State Israeli army], mainly smuggling arms. Such experience makes one wonder how someone like Reagan, who has never been under fire, can order others to fight and shoot. It's crazy! Immoral!"

"Here in Israel, of course, every generation backs away from its parents. Rebels against the old. That has always been the case, and not here alone. Take, for example, Dylan Thomas, now largely ignored. You may be sure that in a few years some Yale professor will rediscover his genius. But I've always kept away from the so-called literary scene, from current fashions. Really, I write for my own pleasure, for my own enjoyment. It's been that way from the very beginning. I have never been involved in any circle or group. In a sense, my politics is in my poetry; it is my poetry. Slogan poetry, the kind written out of guilt, is bad poetry. It just coddles the poet's ego, makes him think that he's done something. But my politics are, in reality, involved in my every poem."

"I've spoken a few times at Peace Now rallies. I am generally against the right wing taking over. But I think I exert more influence, such as it is, through my poems than I would by espousing public positions."

"The Ashkenazic West is more ideological; the Sephardim are, I think, more easy, more human. They don't disown their own because of a football game on Shabbat. Of course I am not talking about Shas; they're just political gangsters. The problem is that the politicians-Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Sarid, all of them have cushy jobs on the side. They don't truly feel responsible for representing voters, the citizens…In Israel your vote has nothing to do with the outcome of an election. Unlike in America, here alienation is built right into the system. But to return to the Sephardim, their good side is that although they may hate each other, they manage to live together...but some of the right-wing Ashkenazim are really psychopaths."

"I am opposed to our keeping all of the West Bank. It's plain that the time has not yet come for Arabs and Jews to be together. All that I really want is to live in a Jewish State. It's a remarkable paradox: the Left is now for policies which would separate the communities while the very far Right, living right there in the occupied territories, are in reality working for integration. Left and Right have exchanged positions, turned completely around. A true paradox! But you know, all such abstractions are relative. What is the "beautiful"? Instead of a sunset or a flower, today it could be a jet plane. Words inflate like money: the more they're printed, the more value they lose. (HC: Do you ever ponder what seems to have gone wrong here in Israel?) YA: Oh, I don't like to complain. We now have our Jewish State. The reality is far from the ideal. The Jewish people have married Israel, this land. But as in a real marriage, things have cooled down. Complaining about it sounds like an old man complaining about his age. An old couple should just live together. That's all. It is, after all, perfectly normal. We have, after all, passed the honeymoon stage, passed the romance, but this is, nonetheless, a true marriage. Such is my Zionism. I am, you see, beyond illusions. In America people, without the slightest intention of doing so, every year repeat "Next year in Jerusalem." Now that is what I call true cynicism."

"(HC: You may now be quasi-retired, but you don't at all sound ready to stop working. Nevertheless, you can look back on much of a lifetime of significant achievement and many awards. What projects have you yet in mind? What do you still want to accomplish?) YA: Oh, to continue with my own thing with poetry: to clean up the language, to use it the right way. I have no wish to be a prophet or a guru. As always, I shall use my own life as my material. You know, I have never been a poet in the professional sense. It's been that way all my life, and so it should remain."

"Yehuda Amichai and Haim Gouri, both poets, also wrote memorable fiction."

"Amichai’s poems about Jerusalem give us Jerusalemites the ability to lead an almost normal life in a place that always seems on the verge of collapse from the weight of so much history and holiness."

"I am a poet largely because poetry verges closely on mythic power...The fool is the one who insists on his truth to the exclusion of others. And after all, truth, beauty, the very meaning of words-all these are relative values. This is the realm of poetry. However, you could also say that I am a poet as the result of laziness. I am too lazy to write more prose than I do. Prose is like making love to one woman instead of to fifty, which you can do with poetry...Writing should always be a pleasure, spontaneous-like making love."

"If one can pursue two courses simultaneously, why not a dozen? An infinite number? It verges on a sort of science fiction. But I have always been fascinated by doubles, split personalities, and alternative possibilities."

"If international media is objective it serves Hamas. If it just shows both sides it serves Hamas. My argument is that the media can't just claim to bring both sides of the story. If you do that you are only bringing one. Hamas' side that's cowardly and that's it's lazy, it's an insult insult to the victims, including the Palestinian victims. It's also an insult to the core idea of what journalism is. Believe me I know, I was a journalist for 31 years. I have no problem with criticism of Israel, but when you know that one side lies and one side makes every effort to verify the facts, the least we can expect is that you don't give a Never Ending platform to their lies."

""Friendship and trust" were the foundation of the (current Israeli) government and only "friendship and trust" will keep it in power."

"It is incomprehensible how one can hold an Israeli flag in one's hand and shout 'death to Arabs' at the same time. This is not Judaism and not Israeli, and it certainly is not what our flag symbolizes. These people shame the people of Israel."

"We (Israel) might not be expecting a final status agreement soon, but there is a lot we can do to improve the lives of the Palestinians and the dialogue with them on civil issues."

"Israel will continue to do everything to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear capability."