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Opinion | What does it matter if a book is written by a man or a woman? | Israel today

2022-06-15T07:39:33.651Z


The founding mothers of Hebrew literature do exist, but they were hidden in the tools • Last year, for the first time, the number of prose books published by women exceeded those published by men


The most amazing thing about Hebrew literature is the fact that literature written in Hebrew at all exists.

Although Jews who lived in Morocco or Warsaw 300 years ago prayed in the sacred language, and sometimes made trade contracts in Hebrew, they did not think of reading a 300-page novel in that language.

The Hebrew language was observed in synagogues, around the Seder table, but no one stayed up in bed until the middle of the night holding a book written in Hebrew.

And maybe that's why, when Book Week comes, I'm always a little excited about the look - a plethora of books, written in a language that has been revived.

Ben-Gurion is attributed the phrase "when we have a Jewish thief, a Jewish prostitute and a Jewish murderer, we will know that we have a state." For many years, canonical Israeli literature existed almost without murderers, thieves and prostitutes, There is a great need for detectives.This trend has gradually changed since the 1980s with the detective books of Batya Gur and Shulamit Lapid, and today Hebrew literature already allows itself to dive into the dark and disturbed corners of the human psyche in general, and the Israeli psyche in particular. , In the detective books of Dror Mishani.

But the biggest change that has taken place in Israeli literature since the establishment of the state to the present day is probably hidden in the dry report recently published by the National Library. In 2021, the number of prose books published by women exceeded those published by men, reflecting their share of the population: 52%.

One can, of course, ask why this figure matters at all.

After all, what interests us when we choose a book is not the question of whether the story in front of us was written by a man or a woman, but whether it is a good story.

For years, canonical Hebrew literature was written mostly by talented men, who composed great literary works.

Thus a glorious lineage of founding fathers was created here, which can be admired or fought for, imitated or slaughtered, and sometimes both.

The founding mothers of Hebrew literature do exist, but as is the case with many mothers in previous generations, they too were hidden to the tools compared to men: they received less visibility on the bookshelves, and received less recognition, and alternatively, were presented as an extraordinary "phenomenon".

Writer born 1926 Amalia Kahana Carmon wrote about it when she described the track of a woman writing as "running obstacles", and warned women writers against "the help of women of literature". 

I hope we have since managed to get out of the women's aid and mingle with the crowd.

During Book Week this year, the books of Noa Yadlin, Tzuria Shalev, Orly Castel-Blum and Maya Arad will be placed alongside the books of Meir Shalev, Etgar Keret and Eshkol Nevo.

And whoever chooses to pick them up will do so not because he is looking for “women’s literature,” but simply because he hopes to read a good story.

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-06-15

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