Identity and affiliation crisis in the Jewish Novel
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Abstract
There has been a feeling of alienation and loss of identity among many Israeli writers throughout the modern history of Hebrew literature, and this matter has extended to apply to all Jewish immigrants to the land of Palestine as a new land and alien to them. Whether with their consent or against them, the Jewish identity was broken away from the reality that they have adapted to over many years. Not only that, it has led them to the illusion about the life that Zionism decorated for them in Israel under the new Israeli selfhood. They were completely disappointed after the true dimensions of that illusion were revealed to them.
Accordingly, it can be said that the Jewish character felt alienation and isolation when it was broken away from its reality in the countries in which it lived and it tried to create a new society, but it seemed a strange, complex and distorted society. Further, this society did not have the ingredients which can lead its people to live a normal life. Consequently, this selfhood lost its identity in an endless journey of alienation. This feeling of alienation was exacerbated by immigrants after the 1948 War. In addition to the walls of feelings of alienation which surrounded them, other walls besieged them; they were the walls of the painful past that haunted them and made them sleepless, and gave them the feeling that there would be no clear picture of a stable future.
We also find that most of the characters in the Jewish novel suffer from these obsessions and this feeling, so this research explores the issues of alienation and belonging in Modern Hebrew literature through the study and analysis of the novel (“The Reckoning and the Soul החשבון והנפש”) written by the Israeli novelist Hanoch Bartov, an analysis that reveals interpretations for Psychological behavior of human characters, in addition to analyzing the political motives and personal attributes of the writer for being the first factor in the presence of those characters.
Accordingly, it can be said that the Jewish character felt alienation and isolation when it was broken away from its reality in the countries in which it lived and it tried to create a new society, but it seemed a strange, complex and distorted society. Further, this society did not have the ingredients which can lead its people to live a normal life. Consequently, this selfhood lost its identity in an endless journey of alienation. This feeling of alienation was exacerbated by immigrants after the 1948 War. In addition to the walls of feelings of alienation which surrounded them, other walls besieged them; they were the walls of the painful past that haunted them and made them sleepless, and gave them the feeling that there would be no clear picture of a stable future.
We also find that most of the characters in the Jewish novel suffer from these obsessions and this feeling, so this research explores the issues of alienation and belonging in Modern Hebrew literature through the study and analysis of the novel (“The Reckoning and the Soul החשבון והנפש”) written by the Israeli novelist Hanoch Bartov, an analysis that reveals interpretations for Psychological behavior of human characters, in addition to analyzing the political motives and personal attributes of the writer for being the first factor in the presence of those characters.
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How to Cite
Mohammed Hattab, A. . (2020). Identity and affiliation crisis in the Jewish Novel. Journal of Misan Researches, 16(32), 151-187. https://doi.org/10.52834/jmr.v16i32.8
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