In this book Haya Bar-Itzhak brings together studies she has conducted on narratives from different groups in the State of Israel. She provides an ample perspective on the narrative articulation of a wide variety of relevant issues, including Jewish settlement in the land of Israel, the immigration of Jews from different parts of the world, and the interaction between ethnic groups and the wider society. Bar-Itzhak proposes that the main fields of Jewish folklore in Israel are rural settlement, immigration and absorption, and ethnicity. She argues that Jewish folklore study in Israel has tended to concentrate on Jewish ethnic communities and to focus on what was seen as exotic and traditional. But with changing conceptions of what constitutes folklore and the maturing of settlement folklore, this latter topic has also become a focus for folkloristic research. Hence, the book is divided into three sections: (1) The Settlement in the Land of Israel: Kibbutz Local Legends; (2) Legends of Immigration and Absorption; and (3) Ethnic Folklore in Israel.
Part I: The Settlement in the Land of Israel: Kibbutz Local Legends
Most scholars in the field have preferred to concentrate on the “big” cultural narratives such as the myths of Israeli culture. In her studies of rural settlement in Israel, Bar-Itzhak has focused on the periphery rather than the center: kibbutz local legends with no circulation beyond the community. In Chapter 1, “‘Forest of Thorns into a Flourishing Garden’: Local Legends and Cultural Interpretation,” Bar-Itzhak focuses on what she calls “legends of beginnings,” based on data she gathered at the Kibbutz Gennosar. She deals with one legend, “The Jujube Tree,” which she treats, following Sherry Ortner, as a “key symbol,” a sacred symbol woven into the complex system of ideas in a way that unifies the entire system, and therefore becomes a communicative connection between generations.
Chapter 2, “Processes of Change in the Kibbutz as Reflected in Local Legends,” deals with “historical legends” of Kibbutz Ein Harod, focusing on narratives told by a kibbutz storyteller. Bar-Itzhak notes two trends in these narratives, mythicizing and demythicizing, expressing a tension between the wish to preserve a national and local mythology and the desire to portray the past in all its complexities, a tension which, she argues, characterizes contemporary kibbutz society.
Part II: Legends of Immigration and Absorption
Bar-Itzhak argues that Israeli scholarship was formerly oriented more towards preserving and rescuing the folklore that immigrants had brought with them than to studying the folklore resulting from the contact between immigrants and Israeli society. As a way of focusing on themes that have not been thoroughly explored, she studies the metamorphosis of folklore in the wake of migration and the creation of new folklore among immigrant groups.
Chapter 3, “‘The Camouflaged Plums’: Sweet versus Bitter in Legends of Absorption of Polish Jews,” focuses on the folklore created by Polish immigrants as a result of the culture shock they experienced in Israel and shows some of the conflictive facets of this immigration. In this folklore the author finds stories about the initial encounter with the land, with old timers, and with food.
Chapter 4, “The Legend of Yemenite Jews as an Expression of Immigration and Absorption,” deals with legends of Yemenite Jews in Israel, emphasizing their encounter with Israeli culture after their immigration, which she classifies in three categories: (1) legends set in Yemen and concentrated on traditional themes; (2) legends that take place in Yemen or both in Yemen and Israel, and deal with the annunciation of the Jewish revival; and (3) legends that deal with problems of immigration and absorption, which arose as a result of the meeting with Israeli reality and culture.
Part III: Ethnic Folklore in Israel
In this part, Bar-Itzhak illustrates how folklore from countries of origin is transmuted in the encounter with the Israeli milieu. Chapter 5, “Old Jewish Moroccan Women Relate in an Israeli Context,” is based on two wonder tales and two storytelling events. In a situation of severe family crisis in Israel, a folktale that was frequently recounted by Jewish women in Morocco served to express frustration and to transmit a message that the narrator had been unable to convey otherwise without creating a conflict with her family.
In Chapter 6, “Ethnic Nonverbal Components in the Jewish Moroccan Saints´ Legends,” the author explores body language by focusing on saints’ legends told by Moroccan Jews.
Bar-Itzhak sheds light on how Israeli social and cultural issues are articulated in narrative form. Her most remarkable insights come from her folkloristic approach, which allows her to set her eyes on issues that scholars from other disciplines tend to disregard. This advantage is apparent when she questions the assumption of the unproblematic nature of Polish immigration vis à vis that of other non-Western groups, or the conflicts between how the different generations interpret the kibbutz epic.
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[Review length: 811 words • Review posted on December 5, 2006]