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A Pretty Pass: Passing and Creating Race through Proximity in Israeli Literature

Mon, December 18, 8:30 to 10:00am, Marriott Marquis Washington, DC, University of DC Room

Abstract

My work introduces the concept of “passing” into Hebrew-Israeli literature. By adapting the term from African-American literature of the Harlem Renaissance, I complicate the way in which the Sabra, the New-Hebrew, is perceived: no longer an essentialist archetype created as a byproduct of Israeli nation building processes, but constructed through a complicated web of individual passers trying to fit in. I argue that implementing the idea of “passing” within Israeli immigrant literature of Holocaust survivors, decentralizes political readings, introduces racial questions into the Diaspora Jew/Sabra dichotomy, and exposes how state ideologies contribute to the marginalization of texts and individuals.
The question is discussed in relation to a few of the forgotten novels of Dahn Ben-Amotz. Born in Poland as Musia Tehilimzogger, Ben-Amotz was sent to Palestine in 1938 when he was 14 years old. His metamorphosis, shedding the skin of a meek Diaspora Jew and becoming the ultimate personification of the New-Hebrew in order to avoid exile in the Promised Land, is the quintessential example of the Israeli passer—one that transcends the national narrative and is ideological only to itself. 
If Israel is indeed a nation of passers, invoking Judith Butler’s reading of Nella Larsen who challenges perceptions of “biological” race, provides us with an alternate account of a country established not through Zionist ethics, but through racial construction: an entire race of New-Hebrews created through proximity.
Alternatively, looking at Diaspora Jews and their passing into New-Hebrews, which must involve a termination of any connection to past heritage and ethnicity—to paraphrase Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin—leads us to an uneasy paradox: If Diaspora Jews must abandon their difference if they wish to be full citizens of Israel, could the justification for coercing Jews to become New-Hebrews is the alleged intolerance of the Jews?

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