Yael Darr | Tel Aviv University (original) (raw)
Papers by Yael Darr
Liverpool University Press eBooks, 2024
STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY JEWRY , 2021
At the onset of the Second World War, two very topical and disturbing novels for young Jewish rea... more At the onset of the Second World War, two very topical and disturbing novels for young Jewish readers were published on opposite sides of the world. In blunt and graphic language, they presented the dire situation of the Jews in Germany and Austria and the urgency of saving them. The general storylines are similar: in both books, young readers follow the upheavals in the lives of two children who, brutally separated from their parents and forced to flee their secure and stable world, confront antisemitism and fascism, hunger and murderous violence. Nevertheless there was a discursive chasm separating the two works. Their target readerships, although similar in age (children between the ages of 10 and 12), were so remote from one another geographically, ideologically, and culturally that one could assume that neither had read the other. Yankev Glatshteyn's Emil un Karl (Emil and Karl) was published in New York in 1940 and was written in Yiddish, which the Bund and Yiddishist movements viewed as the dominant Jewish language. The other, Levin Kipnis' Bintiv hapele (The Miraculous Path), was published in Tel Aviv in 1939 and written in Modern Hebrew, the language of Zionism and of a people seeking to revive itself in Eretz Israel. 1 Emil un Karl promotes the values of socialist solidarity and universal humanism. The plot is set in Vienna in the period following the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany (March 1938), against the background of the mass arrests and deportations of Jews from Germany and Austria, the events of Kristallnacht, and the severe maltreatment of the city's Jews. At its center are two nine-year-old boys caught in the grips of the Nazi regime-Karl, the son of non-Jewish socialist parents opposed to the regime, and Emil, the son of Jewish parents forced to cope with Austria's rapid decline into catastrophic Nazism. Both boys, who are cruelly orphaned, expelled from school, and torn from their familiar surroundings, find themselves alone in a hostile and dangerous environment. They are sheltered by two dissident socialists who risk their lives to save them. The story ends with the boys waiting tensely for a train that OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF-FIRSTPROOFS, Tue Dec 22 2020, NEWGEN /12_first_proofs/files_to_typesetting/validation
Paedagogica Historica, Aug 1, 2012
This paper examines militarisation in child culture in Israel's transition from a pre-state socie... more This paper examines militarisation in child culture in Israel's transition from a pre-state society engaged in the nation-building process to statehood. The paper studies children's culture and the literary corpus for children created in the 1940s and 1950s in Jewish Palestine, before and after Israel's establishment. It investigates the main stages in the rapid development of the militaristic narrative for childrenfrom the beginning of World War II in 1939, through the War of Independence in 1948, and during the first decade of statehood. By examining the nature of the national-military children's story, I demonstrate the extent to which militarisation in Israeli children's culture was dictated from above. I also argue that society's rapid change following the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 brought about a dramatic shift in the attitude of state institutions, and especially the education system, towards the militaristic narrative addressed towards children that was vigorously promoted prior to 1948.
Journal of Israeli History, Mar 1, 2013
This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of s... more This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of statehood, on the basis of a popular series of children's books published by Am Oved (the commercial publishing arm of the hegemonic Labor Party, Mapai). In contrast to the Yishuv era, after ten years of statehood, the concept of “home” dominates hegemonic children's literature on several levels. On the thematic level, home and family became the focal point. On the commercial level, the home emerged as the locus for reading and evaluating the book, i.e., it was perceived as “the market” catered to by the publishers. On the poetic level, the home was recognized as an arena in which writing for children takes place. This new dominance of “home” suggests a dramatic transformation both in the ethos on which Israeli children were raised after the transition from Yishuv to statehood and in the way “the Israeli child” was perceived by key taste-setters of the time: the shift from the “pioneer child,” whose main social and nation-building tasks were set outdoors, to the sheltered and familial “child citizen.”
Children's literature, culture, and cognition, May 23, 2018
The Nation and the Child – Nation Building in Hebrew Children’s Literature, 1930–1970 is the firs... more The Nation and the Child – Nation Building in Hebrew Children’s Literature, 1930–1970 is the first comprehensive study to investigate the active role of children’s literature in the intensive cultural project of building a Hebrew nation. Which social actors and institutions participated in creating a Hebrew children’s literature? How did they envision their young readership and what new cultural roles did they prescribe for them through literary texts? How tolerant was the children’s literary field to alternative or even subversive national options and how did the perceptions of the “national child” change in the transition from the pre-state Jewish settlement in Palestine to a sovereign state? This book seeks to provide answers to such questions by focusing on the literary activities of leading taste-setters and writers for children, from the most intense period of Israeli nation building – the 1930s and 1940s, the two last decades of the pre-state era, and the 1950s, the first decade following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 – through the 1960s, when the nation-building fervor gradually waned.
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 20, 2021
In the first half of the 20th century, there was an unprecedented flourishing of secular writing ... more In the first half of the 20th century, there was an unprecedented flourishing of secular writing for Jewish children in the United States and Palestine. Despite the profound cultural differences between the two communities, this chapter proposes to view these two bodies of writing as parts of a whole: a much larger corpus that includes all secular Jewish texts for children, informed by a shared multilingual and transnational paradigm of immigration. The chapter focuses on two works: Yankev Glatstein’s Emil un Karl (Emil and Karl), published in Yiddish in New York (1940), and Levin Kipnis’s Bintiv hapele (The Miraculous Path), published in Hebrew in Tel Aviv (1939). During this critical time, at the outbreak of the Second World War, these two writers, so distant geographically, ideologically and culturally, made a similar radical move: to set aside the divisive national and political discourse in favor of an inclusive transnational one.
European Judaism, 2009
For years, it had been assumed that since the end of the Second World War and up until the Eichma... more For years, it had been assumed that since the end of the Second World War and up until the Eichmann trial in 1961, Hebrew culture in Israel tended to repress the Holocaust or narrate it according to the Zionist ideology's viewpoint-to accentuate the events of the rebellion against the Nazis and to infer from them a lesson of national revival and restoration. The consensus concerning children's literature, in particular, maintained that it had been utterly committed in the early decades of statehood to extracting out of the Holocaust a 'fortifying tale' bearing a national lesson. This paper, however, argues the existence of a developed Holocaust discourse in children's literature written in Jewish Palestine during the war years, and suggests that children's literature even predated adult literature in setting the Holocaust theme at centre stage. This article aims to shed light on a rare narrative in the Israeli public discourse of the Holocaust: the literary story told to Jewish children in Palestine during the years of the Holocaust. At the time, this new narrative for children was extensive and diverse. For the first time in the history of Zionist children's literature, it challenged the Diaspora-negating code that had been dominant since its beginning. Nevertheless, only a few years later, with the founding of the State of Israel, this new narrative was rapidly 'forgotten' by the Israeli collective memory and proceeded to be neglected by literary and educational research as well. Although it spanned a short time period and failed to leave a literary impact on writings for children in Israel, this Holocaust narrative is tremendously important, having evoked the unique voice of the Jewish settlement in Palestine (the Yishuv) during the Second World War. It also serves as a case study of the crucial function of children's literature within the public discourse during traumatic times, illuminating the advantages of children's literature as a marginal and peripheral form of communication in the public domain.
International Research in Children's Literature, Dec 1, 2008
This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children&a... more This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children's literature, during the late 1930s and 1940s, from a single channel of expression to a multi-layered polyphony of models and voices. It claims that for the first time in the history of Hebrew children's literature there took place a doctrinal confrontation between two groups of taste-makers. The article outlines the pedagogical and ideological designs of traditionalist Zionist educators, and suggests how these were challenged by a group of prominent writers of adult poetry, members of the Modernist movement. These writers, it is argued, advocated autonomous literary creation, and insisted on a high level of literary quality. Their intervention not only dramatically changed the repertoire of Hebrew children's literature, but also the rules of literary discourse. The article suggests that, through the Modernists’ polemical efforts, Hebrew children's literature was able to free itself from its position as an apparatus controlled by the political-educational system and to become a dynamic and multi-layered field.
International Research in Children's Literature, Jul 1, 2012
Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's litera... more Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's literature. This new narrative is directed towards very young children, from preschool to the first years of elementary school, and its official goal is to instil in them an authentic ‘first Holocaust memory’. This essay presents the literary characteristics of this new Holocaust narrative for children and its master narrative. It brings into light a new profile of both writers and readers. The writers were young children during the Holocaust, and first chose to tell their stories from the safe distance of three generations. The readers are their grand-children and their grand-children's peers, who are assigned an essential role as listeners. These generational roles – the roles of a First Generation of writers and of a Third Generation of readers – are intrinsically familial ones. As such, they mark a significant change in the profile of yet another important figure in the Israeli intergenerational Holocaust discourse, the agent of the Holocaust story for children. Due to the new literary initiatives, the task of providing young children with a ‘first Holocaust memory’ is transferred from the educational authority, where it used to reside, to the domestic sphere.
Problemy Wczesnej Edukacji, Sep 30, 2016
Cultures vary according to the level of political potency they attribute to their young readers. ... more Cultures vary according to the level of political potency they attribute to their young readers. Some ascribe to their children the ability to experience political solidarity and are eager to offer them literature accordingly. Other cultures try to exempt children from taking any public interest and shield them within the home and family, distant from what is regarded as the aggressive public arena. In rare cultural and social conditions shifts from one attitude to another regarding children's political potency can be quite extreme. This article points to a dramatic change in the nature of politicization of Hebrew children's picturebooks, which took place in the decade following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This period saw a rapid transition from the former overt politicization of children's literature to a striking and active avoidance of political content. During the first decade of Israeli statehood children's picturebooks decisively disencumbered the children of their former active political tasks, thus implementing a new politics of a civic society in a sovereign state.
Jewish Social Studies, 2021
Focusing on Hebrew-language children's books published in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s by first... more Focusing on Hebrew-language children's books published in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s by first-generation immigrants from German-speaking countries, this article explores the cultural and social legacy that this community of recently arrived German speakers sought to transmit to its children. It illustrates this immigrant community's ambivalence toward both socialist-Zionist discourse-which was hegemonic among Jews in Palestine-and its own German cultural heritage. It shows that these publishing initiatives gave voice to an alternative model of immigrant adaptation: accepting and even embracing the patriotic local culture in Palestine, without completely merging with it. Even in the 1940s, when German culture was generally taboo, subtle yet persistent attempts to reproduce Germanness in Hebrew-language children's books revealed that this first generation of immigrants harbored conflicting feelings about their country of origin and their new national identity.
European Judaism, 2009
... 1 Spring '09 Page 3. Yael Darr ... The fact that Meltzer chose to illustrate the new... more ... 1 Spring '09 Page 3. Yael Darr ... The fact that Meltzer chose to illustrate the new solidarity that the young generation in Jewish Palestine should feel towards the Jews in Europe as an emotion that a grandchild feels towards his grandparents is not accidental. ...
Journal of Israeli History, 2013
This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of s... more This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of statehood, on the basis of a popular series of children's books published by Am Oved (the commercial publishing arm of the hegemonic Labor Party, Mapai). In contrast to the Yishuv era, after ten years of statehood, the concept of “home” dominates hegemonic children's literature on several levels. On the thematic level, home and family became the focal point. On the commercial level, the home emerged as the locus for reading and evaluating the book, i.e., it was perceived as “the market” catered to by the publishers. On the poetic level, the home was recognized as an arena in which writing for children takes place. This new dominance of “home” suggests a dramatic transformation both in the ethos on which Israeli children were raised after the transition from Yishuv to statehood and in the way “the Israeli child” was perceived by key taste-setters of the time: the shift from the “pioneer child,” whose main social and nation-building tasks were set outdoors, to the sheltered and familial “child citizen.”
Journal of Israeli History, 2012
Lea Goldberg served as a key literary taste-maker in the labor movement children's literature... more Lea Goldberg served as a key literary taste-maker in the labor movement children's literature for a period of about 25 years, from the mid-1930s until the end of the 1950s. This essay focuses on the peak of her activities in this field, a period beginning in 1943 and ending around 1960. These were the years of her uncompromising struggle to establish a children's literary canon through Sifriyat Po'alim, the publishing house of Hashomer Hatza'ir and Hakibbutz Ha'artzi federation. The essay explores the strategies employed by Goldberg in her pursuit of a meaningful balance between two contrasting labor movement approaches towards the revolutionary role of children's literature: the “political” approach, which recruited children's literature in order to promote revolutionary kibbutz values; and the “poetic” modernist approach, which defined literature itself as revolutionary. By maintaining a dialectic tension between the two models of a revolutionary “literary beautiful,” Goldberg led a quiet revolution in the hegemonic labor movement children's literature of her time.
International Research in Children's Literature, 2012
Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's litera... more Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's literature. This new narrative is directed towards very young children, from preschool to the first years of elementary school, and its official goal is to instil in them an authentic ‘first Holocaust memory’. This essay presents the literary characteristics of this new Holocaust narrative for children and its master narrative. It brings into light a new profile of both writers and readers. The writers were young children during the Holocaust, and first chose to tell their stories from the safe distance of three generations. The readers are their grand-children and their grand-children's peers, who are assigned an essential role as listeners. These generational roles – the roles of a First Generation of writers and of a Third Generation of readers – are intrinsically familial ones. As such, they mark a significant change in the profile of yet another important figure in the Israeli interge...
Focusing on Hebrew-language children's books published in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s by first... more Focusing on Hebrew-language children's books published in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s by first-generation immigrants from German-speaking countries, this article explores the cultural and social legacy that this community of recently arrived German speakers sought to transmit to its children. It illustrates this immigrant community's ambivalence toward both socialist-Zionist discourse-which was hegemonic among Jews in Palestine-and its own German cultural heritage. It shows that these publishing initiatives gave voice to an alternative model of immigrant adaptation: accepting and even embracing the patriotic local culture in Palestine, without completely merging with it. Even in the 1940s, when German culture was generally taboo, subtle yet persistent attempts to reproduce Germanness in Hebrew-language children's books revealed that this first generation of immigrants harbored conflicting feelings about their country of origin and their new national identity.
This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children&#... more This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children's literature, during the late 1930s and 1940s, from a single channel of expression to a multi-layered polyphony of models and voices. It claims that for the first time in the history of Hebrew children's literature there took place a doctrinal confrontation between two groups of taste-makers. The article outlines the pedagogical and ideological designs of traditionalist Zionist educators, and suggests how these were challenged by a group of prominent writers of adult poetry, members of the Modernist movement. These writers, it is argued, advocated autonomous literary creation, and insisted on a high level of literary quality. Their intervention not only dramatically changed the repertoire of Hebrew children's literature, but also the rules of literary discourse. The article suggests that, through the Modernists’ polemical efforts, Hebrew children's literature was able to f...
Liverpool University Press eBooks, 2024
STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY JEWRY , 2021
At the onset of the Second World War, two very topical and disturbing novels for young Jewish rea... more At the onset of the Second World War, two very topical and disturbing novels for young Jewish readers were published on opposite sides of the world. In blunt and graphic language, they presented the dire situation of the Jews in Germany and Austria and the urgency of saving them. The general storylines are similar: in both books, young readers follow the upheavals in the lives of two children who, brutally separated from their parents and forced to flee their secure and stable world, confront antisemitism and fascism, hunger and murderous violence. Nevertheless there was a discursive chasm separating the two works. Their target readerships, although similar in age (children between the ages of 10 and 12), were so remote from one another geographically, ideologically, and culturally that one could assume that neither had read the other. Yankev Glatshteyn's Emil un Karl (Emil and Karl) was published in New York in 1940 and was written in Yiddish, which the Bund and Yiddishist movements viewed as the dominant Jewish language. The other, Levin Kipnis' Bintiv hapele (The Miraculous Path), was published in Tel Aviv in 1939 and written in Modern Hebrew, the language of Zionism and of a people seeking to revive itself in Eretz Israel. 1 Emil un Karl promotes the values of socialist solidarity and universal humanism. The plot is set in Vienna in the period following the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany (March 1938), against the background of the mass arrests and deportations of Jews from Germany and Austria, the events of Kristallnacht, and the severe maltreatment of the city's Jews. At its center are two nine-year-old boys caught in the grips of the Nazi regime-Karl, the son of non-Jewish socialist parents opposed to the regime, and Emil, the son of Jewish parents forced to cope with Austria's rapid decline into catastrophic Nazism. Both boys, who are cruelly orphaned, expelled from school, and torn from their familiar surroundings, find themselves alone in a hostile and dangerous environment. They are sheltered by two dissident socialists who risk their lives to save them. The story ends with the boys waiting tensely for a train that OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF-FIRSTPROOFS, Tue Dec 22 2020, NEWGEN /12_first_proofs/files_to_typesetting/validation
Paedagogica Historica, Aug 1, 2012
This paper examines militarisation in child culture in Israel's transition from a pre-state socie... more This paper examines militarisation in child culture in Israel's transition from a pre-state society engaged in the nation-building process to statehood. The paper studies children's culture and the literary corpus for children created in the 1940s and 1950s in Jewish Palestine, before and after Israel's establishment. It investigates the main stages in the rapid development of the militaristic narrative for childrenfrom the beginning of World War II in 1939, through the War of Independence in 1948, and during the first decade of statehood. By examining the nature of the national-military children's story, I demonstrate the extent to which militarisation in Israeli children's culture was dictated from above. I also argue that society's rapid change following the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 brought about a dramatic shift in the attitude of state institutions, and especially the education system, towards the militaristic narrative addressed towards children that was vigorously promoted prior to 1948.
Journal of Israeli History, Mar 1, 2013
This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of s... more This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of statehood, on the basis of a popular series of children's books published by Am Oved (the commercial publishing arm of the hegemonic Labor Party, Mapai). In contrast to the Yishuv era, after ten years of statehood, the concept of “home” dominates hegemonic children's literature on several levels. On the thematic level, home and family became the focal point. On the commercial level, the home emerged as the locus for reading and evaluating the book, i.e., it was perceived as “the market” catered to by the publishers. On the poetic level, the home was recognized as an arena in which writing for children takes place. This new dominance of “home” suggests a dramatic transformation both in the ethos on which Israeli children were raised after the transition from Yishuv to statehood and in the way “the Israeli child” was perceived by key taste-setters of the time: the shift from the “pioneer child,” whose main social and nation-building tasks were set outdoors, to the sheltered and familial “child citizen.”
Children's literature, culture, and cognition, May 23, 2018
The Nation and the Child – Nation Building in Hebrew Children’s Literature, 1930–1970 is the firs... more The Nation and the Child – Nation Building in Hebrew Children’s Literature, 1930–1970 is the first comprehensive study to investigate the active role of children’s literature in the intensive cultural project of building a Hebrew nation. Which social actors and institutions participated in creating a Hebrew children’s literature? How did they envision their young readership and what new cultural roles did they prescribe for them through literary texts? How tolerant was the children’s literary field to alternative or even subversive national options and how did the perceptions of the “national child” change in the transition from the pre-state Jewish settlement in Palestine to a sovereign state? This book seeks to provide answers to such questions by focusing on the literary activities of leading taste-setters and writers for children, from the most intense period of Israeli nation building – the 1930s and 1940s, the two last decades of the pre-state era, and the 1950s, the first decade following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 – through the 1960s, when the nation-building fervor gradually waned.
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 20, 2021
In the first half of the 20th century, there was an unprecedented flourishing of secular writing ... more In the first half of the 20th century, there was an unprecedented flourishing of secular writing for Jewish children in the United States and Palestine. Despite the profound cultural differences between the two communities, this chapter proposes to view these two bodies of writing as parts of a whole: a much larger corpus that includes all secular Jewish texts for children, informed by a shared multilingual and transnational paradigm of immigration. The chapter focuses on two works: Yankev Glatstein’s Emil un Karl (Emil and Karl), published in Yiddish in New York (1940), and Levin Kipnis’s Bintiv hapele (The Miraculous Path), published in Hebrew in Tel Aviv (1939). During this critical time, at the outbreak of the Second World War, these two writers, so distant geographically, ideologically and culturally, made a similar radical move: to set aside the divisive national and political discourse in favor of an inclusive transnational one.
European Judaism, 2009
For years, it had been assumed that since the end of the Second World War and up until the Eichma... more For years, it had been assumed that since the end of the Second World War and up until the Eichmann trial in 1961, Hebrew culture in Israel tended to repress the Holocaust or narrate it according to the Zionist ideology's viewpoint-to accentuate the events of the rebellion against the Nazis and to infer from them a lesson of national revival and restoration. The consensus concerning children's literature, in particular, maintained that it had been utterly committed in the early decades of statehood to extracting out of the Holocaust a 'fortifying tale' bearing a national lesson. This paper, however, argues the existence of a developed Holocaust discourse in children's literature written in Jewish Palestine during the war years, and suggests that children's literature even predated adult literature in setting the Holocaust theme at centre stage. This article aims to shed light on a rare narrative in the Israeli public discourse of the Holocaust: the literary story told to Jewish children in Palestine during the years of the Holocaust. At the time, this new narrative for children was extensive and diverse. For the first time in the history of Zionist children's literature, it challenged the Diaspora-negating code that had been dominant since its beginning. Nevertheless, only a few years later, with the founding of the State of Israel, this new narrative was rapidly 'forgotten' by the Israeli collective memory and proceeded to be neglected by literary and educational research as well. Although it spanned a short time period and failed to leave a literary impact on writings for children in Israel, this Holocaust narrative is tremendously important, having evoked the unique voice of the Jewish settlement in Palestine (the Yishuv) during the Second World War. It also serves as a case study of the crucial function of children's literature within the public discourse during traumatic times, illuminating the advantages of children's literature as a marginal and peripheral form of communication in the public domain.
International Research in Children's Literature, Dec 1, 2008
This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children&a... more This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children's literature, during the late 1930s and 1940s, from a single channel of expression to a multi-layered polyphony of models and voices. It claims that for the first time in the history of Hebrew children's literature there took place a doctrinal confrontation between two groups of taste-makers. The article outlines the pedagogical and ideological designs of traditionalist Zionist educators, and suggests how these were challenged by a group of prominent writers of adult poetry, members of the Modernist movement. These writers, it is argued, advocated autonomous literary creation, and insisted on a high level of literary quality. Their intervention not only dramatically changed the repertoire of Hebrew children's literature, but also the rules of literary discourse. The article suggests that, through the Modernists’ polemical efforts, Hebrew children's literature was able to free itself from its position as an apparatus controlled by the political-educational system and to become a dynamic and multi-layered field.
International Research in Children's Literature, Jul 1, 2012
Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's litera... more Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's literature. This new narrative is directed towards very young children, from preschool to the first years of elementary school, and its official goal is to instil in them an authentic ‘first Holocaust memory’. This essay presents the literary characteristics of this new Holocaust narrative for children and its master narrative. It brings into light a new profile of both writers and readers. The writers were young children during the Holocaust, and first chose to tell their stories from the safe distance of three generations. The readers are their grand-children and their grand-children's peers, who are assigned an essential role as listeners. These generational roles – the roles of a First Generation of writers and of a Third Generation of readers – are intrinsically familial ones. As such, they mark a significant change in the profile of yet another important figure in the Israeli intergenerational Holocaust discourse, the agent of the Holocaust story for children. Due to the new literary initiatives, the task of providing young children with a ‘first Holocaust memory’ is transferred from the educational authority, where it used to reside, to the domestic sphere.
Problemy Wczesnej Edukacji, Sep 30, 2016
Cultures vary according to the level of political potency they attribute to their young readers. ... more Cultures vary according to the level of political potency they attribute to their young readers. Some ascribe to their children the ability to experience political solidarity and are eager to offer them literature accordingly. Other cultures try to exempt children from taking any public interest and shield them within the home and family, distant from what is regarded as the aggressive public arena. In rare cultural and social conditions shifts from one attitude to another regarding children's political potency can be quite extreme. This article points to a dramatic change in the nature of politicization of Hebrew children's picturebooks, which took place in the decade following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This period saw a rapid transition from the former overt politicization of children's literature to a striking and active avoidance of political content. During the first decade of Israeli statehood children's picturebooks decisively disencumbered the children of their former active political tasks, thus implementing a new politics of a civic society in a sovereign state.
Jewish Social Studies, 2021
Focusing on Hebrew-language children's books published in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s by first... more Focusing on Hebrew-language children's books published in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s by first-generation immigrants from German-speaking countries, this article explores the cultural and social legacy that this community of recently arrived German speakers sought to transmit to its children. It illustrates this immigrant community's ambivalence toward both socialist-Zionist discourse-which was hegemonic among Jews in Palestine-and its own German cultural heritage. It shows that these publishing initiatives gave voice to an alternative model of immigrant adaptation: accepting and even embracing the patriotic local culture in Palestine, without completely merging with it. Even in the 1940s, when German culture was generally taboo, subtle yet persistent attempts to reproduce Germanness in Hebrew-language children's books revealed that this first generation of immigrants harbored conflicting feelings about their country of origin and their new national identity.
European Judaism, 2009
... 1 Spring '09 Page 3. Yael Darr ... The fact that Meltzer chose to illustrate the new... more ... 1 Spring '09 Page 3. Yael Darr ... The fact that Meltzer chose to illustrate the new solidarity that the young generation in Jewish Palestine should feel towards the Jews in Europe as an emotion that a grandchild feels towards his grandparents is not accidental. ...
Journal of Israeli History, 2013
This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of s... more This article explores the master narrative narrated to Israeli children in the second decade of statehood, on the basis of a popular series of children's books published by Am Oved (the commercial publishing arm of the hegemonic Labor Party, Mapai). In contrast to the Yishuv era, after ten years of statehood, the concept of “home” dominates hegemonic children's literature on several levels. On the thematic level, home and family became the focal point. On the commercial level, the home emerged as the locus for reading and evaluating the book, i.e., it was perceived as “the market” catered to by the publishers. On the poetic level, the home was recognized as an arena in which writing for children takes place. This new dominance of “home” suggests a dramatic transformation both in the ethos on which Israeli children were raised after the transition from Yishuv to statehood and in the way “the Israeli child” was perceived by key taste-setters of the time: the shift from the “pioneer child,” whose main social and nation-building tasks were set outdoors, to the sheltered and familial “child citizen.”
Journal of Israeli History, 2012
Lea Goldberg served as a key literary taste-maker in the labor movement children's literature... more Lea Goldberg served as a key literary taste-maker in the labor movement children's literature for a period of about 25 years, from the mid-1930s until the end of the 1950s. This essay focuses on the peak of her activities in this field, a period beginning in 1943 and ending around 1960. These were the years of her uncompromising struggle to establish a children's literary canon through Sifriyat Po'alim, the publishing house of Hashomer Hatza'ir and Hakibbutz Ha'artzi federation. The essay explores the strategies employed by Goldberg in her pursuit of a meaningful balance between two contrasting labor movement approaches towards the revolutionary role of children's literature: the “political” approach, which recruited children's literature in order to promote revolutionary kibbutz values; and the “poetic” modernist approach, which defined literature itself as revolutionary. By maintaining a dialectic tension between the two models of a revolutionary “literary beautiful,” Goldberg led a quiet revolution in the hegemonic labor movement children's literature of her time.
International Research in Children's Literature, 2012
Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's litera... more Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's literature. This new narrative is directed towards very young children, from preschool to the first years of elementary school, and its official goal is to instil in them an authentic ‘first Holocaust memory’. This essay presents the literary characteristics of this new Holocaust narrative for children and its master narrative. It brings into light a new profile of both writers and readers. The writers were young children during the Holocaust, and first chose to tell their stories from the safe distance of three generations. The readers are their grand-children and their grand-children's peers, who are assigned an essential role as listeners. These generational roles – the roles of a First Generation of writers and of a Third Generation of readers – are intrinsically familial ones. As such, they mark a significant change in the profile of yet another important figure in the Israeli interge...
Focusing on Hebrew-language children's books published in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s by first... more Focusing on Hebrew-language children's books published in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s by first-generation immigrants from German-speaking countries, this article explores the cultural and social legacy that this community of recently arrived German speakers sought to transmit to its children. It illustrates this immigrant community's ambivalence toward both socialist-Zionist discourse-which was hegemonic among Jews in Palestine-and its own German cultural heritage. It shows that these publishing initiatives gave voice to an alternative model of immigrant adaptation: accepting and even embracing the patriotic local culture in Palestine, without completely merging with it. Even in the 1940s, when German culture was generally taboo, subtle yet persistent attempts to reproduce Germanness in Hebrew-language children's books revealed that this first generation of immigrants harbored conflicting feelings about their country of origin and their new national identity.
This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children&#... more This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children's literature, during the late 1930s and 1940s, from a single channel of expression to a multi-layered polyphony of models and voices. It claims that for the first time in the history of Hebrew children's literature there took place a doctrinal confrontation between two groups of taste-makers. The article outlines the pedagogical and ideological designs of traditionalist Zionist educators, and suggests how these were challenged by a group of prominent writers of adult poetry, members of the Modernist movement. These writers, it is argued, advocated autonomous literary creation, and insisted on a high level of literary quality. Their intervention not only dramatically changed the repertoire of Hebrew children's literature, but also the rules of literary discourse. The article suggests that, through the Modernists’ polemical efforts, Hebrew children's literature was able to f...
Studies in Contemporary Jewry, 2021
Front Matter of Vol 32 No Small Matter No Small Matter visits five continents and studies Jewish... more Front Matter of Vol 32 No Small Matter
No Small Matter visits five continents and studies Jewish children from the 19th century through the present. It includes essays on the demographic patterns of Jewish reproduction; on the evolution of bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies; on the role children played in the project of Hebrew revival; on their immigrant experiences in the United States; on novels for young Jewish readers written in Hebrew and Yiddish; and on Jewish themes in films featuring children. Several contributions focus on children who survived the Holocaust or the children of survivors in a variety of settings ranging from Europe, North Africa, and Israel to the summer bungalow colonies of the Catskill Mountains. In addition to the symposium, this volume also features essays on a transformative Yiddish poem by a Soviet Jewish author and on the cultural legacy of Lenny Bruce.