Etgar Keret’s Literature and the Ethos of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance 1527563138, 9781527563131

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Etgar Keret’s Literature and the Ethos of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance

Etgar Keret’s Literature and the Ethos of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance By

Yael Seliger

Etgar Keret’s Literature and the Ethos of Coping with Holocaust Remembrance By Yael Seliger This book first published 2024 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2024 by Yael Seliger All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6313-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6313-1

In memory of my grandparents: Gottfried Hollander, Lottie (Guttmann) Hollander, Max Seliger, and Paula (Frank) Seliger.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ....................................................................................... x Preface ....................................................................................................... xii Introduction: Etgar Keret’s Literature ......................................................... 1 And the Rat Laughed Beyond the Second Generation Postmodern, Post-Holocaust Humanity Jacques Derrida and Holocaust Remembrance The Local and the Universal 1. Postmemory and Personal Holocaust Remembrance .......................... 30 Postmemory The “Return” Motif Subliminal Responses to Scenery and Pre-Holocaust Familial History Immovable Structures of Remembrance 2. Empathic Pragmatism .......................................................................... 39 Working-Through versus Working-Out Traumatic Remembrance Collective versus Personal Modes of Remembrance Postmodern Deconstruction of Traumatic Remembrance Literary Deconstruction Literature and the Vernacular 3. Etgar Keret: An “Urban Challenge” .................................................... 60 Secularism For the Love of Language Rejecting Authoritarianism Magic Realism Suicide and the Afterlife: “Life, Try it Sometimes”

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4. In Praise of Democracy ....................................................................... 97 The Urban Spirit Democracy and Politics National Commemorations Challenging the Literary Echelon Political Persuasion Mirrored Through Storytelling 5. Literature in Translation, Pandemic Stories, and Nonfiction ............ 113 The Modernist Revival of Biblical Language Sculpturing a Postmodern Literary Niche Offsetting Pandemic Isolation Nonfiction Writing Storytelling and Humanizing the Human Experience 6. Short Story Writing, Humor, and the Grotesque ............................... 134 Mastering the Short Story Genre Humor and the Grotesque Demystifying Fame The Malaise of Inertia Holocaust Remembrance and the Genus of the Postmodern Short Story 7. Coping with Holocaust Remembrance .............................................. 153 Personal versus Collective, National Holocaust Remembrance “Shoes” The Entwinement of Postmodernism and Post-Holocaust A Shared Post-Holocaust Literary Determiner: Derrida and Keret 8. Fly Already ........................................................................................ 163 A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy Unreliability of Perceptions Asthma Electronic Correspondence and Holocaust Remembrance Literature Authenticity and Intimacy 9. Coping with Traumatic Remembrance ............................................. 189 The Trial: Eichmann’s Trial in Jerusalem Commemorative Overload “Siren” The Legacy of the Author’s Mother and Father Concluding Thoughts on the Ethos of Coping with Traumatic Remembrance

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Closing Remarks ..................................................................................... 203 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 206

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been in the making for a lifetime. It began with a family history. Over the years, the personal became political. Following a gratifying career as a senior educator, I embarked on a PhD program in the humanities at York University, Toronto, Canada. Throughout the course of my PhD studies, I gravitated towards subjects that offered a blend of research into individual and collective memory, postmodern critical theory, and literature. It was at that time that Etgar Keret’s writings permeated my thoughts and captured my imagination. I knew where I was heading, but I needed the guidance and mentorship of someone who was knowledgeable, understood where I was coming from and the direction I wished to go, and could provide me with the best possible guidance. As my good fortune would have it, and for which I am eternally grateful, Sara R. Horowitz, a distinguished, leading scholar, was more than willing to take me under her supervisory and collegial wings. Along the way, whether we met in Jerusalem or Toronto, I could also count on my dear friend, Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi, professor emeriti, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to ask me questions that made me think deeply about my academic interests. I am also honored to have had Priscila Uppal, poet, novelist, and scholar, as an enthusiastic supporter. It is heartwrenching to imagine that in the midst of battling the spread of cancerous tumors, a battle she sadly lost, Priscilla continued to extend to me invaluable advice. Given the book’s intricate representation of multifaceted topics and subtopics, my work required careful structural and copy editing. My daughter, Neta Gordon, a gifted scholar in her own right, referred me to Lee Cadwallader who graciously undertook the role of lead editor of the manuscript. A senior content writer, teacher, and researcher, Lee is exceptionally gifted in promoting consistency, clarity, and accuracy of language. For all that, and more, I am forever indebted to Lee. I also wish to extend my grateful acknowledgment to Peretz Rodman, an AmericanIsraeli rabbi, teacher, and translator, who read an early version of the book, and enriched me with excellent, thoughtful, and helpful comments. I also wish to thank Emily Franzo for her illuminating appraisal of the manuscript in terms of its overall flow and readability.

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As is evident from my book, I think very highly of Etgar Keret as a postmodern author. I also admire him as a public persona who exudes affinity with those in need of social, economic, and political empathy. Keret is known far and wide in Israel and the world. Over the years of writing the book, I had the distinct privilege of conversing with him on several occasions. Whenever I asked him to clarify an issue, his response was always immediate and extremely helpful. In so many ways, it is thanks to Etgar Keret’s storytelling that I have evolved from defining my identity as a granddaughter whose ancestors were murdered during the Holocaust, to a writer of a book that casts light on matters that transcend victimization. To my dearest friends, you know who you are and what your friendship means to me. I cannot imagine bringing this project into fruition without you cheering me on. There were days when I had the sense that my friendsʊSilvia Eilath, Anne Glickman, Sharon Kirsh, Nilufar Motaref, Dafna Ross, Paul Ross, Martin Sable, Ahouva Shulman, and Lesley Simpsonʊhad more confidence in me than I had in myself. Thanks also to Carrie Betel, my star student. I am beholden to Cambridge Scholars Publishing. First, thank you Adam Rummens, Senior Commissioning Editor, for your invaluable and friendly guidance. Thank you also to Amanda Millar, Typesetting Manager, for your wisdom and assistance. I am also grateful to Courtney Dixon for designing the book’s cover. Finally, I may not know you by name, but my sincere gratitude to everyone involved in the formidable task of transforming a manuscript into a “real” book! To my parents, Chava (Eva Hollander) Seliger and Martin Seliger, and to my stepmother, Ruth Seliger, you will always be in my heart of hearts. To my one and only sister, Daniela Gordon; it was from you that I learned the meaning of unconditional love. I simply do not know what would have become of me had it not been for you. To my three, extraordinary children: Neta Gordon, Amir Gordon, and Shira (Brym) Friedland, you know best that this book is the book Ima always wanted to write. My life has been anything but an easy, straightforward ride. If, however, there is one thing I know with complete certitude, it is that my love for you has always been, and always will be without limitation. To me, you represent a fulfillment of the best of all blessings, not the least for the most formidable gift you and your partnersʊMartin Gough, Janice Robson, and Ben Friedlandʊhave bestowed upon me: five, perfect granddaughters! Mina Gough, Sasha Gough, Sophie Friedland, Molly Friedland, and Emily Gordon-Robson, for me, your Savta-Mom, you embody the promise of a bright, hopeful future.

PREFACE

And Who Will Remember the Rememberers? Forgotten, remembered, forgotten. Open, closed, open. Yehuda Amichai1

The guiding premise of this book is that only those who lived through the Holocaust can remember the Holocaust. No one can possibly remember things they did not experience. Thus, with the exception of Holocaust survivors, when we speak of Holocaust memory, we are actually referring to acts of remembrance.2 The idea of memory has a long history; thinking in terms of acts of remembrance is newer. The Torah commands the Israelites to remember the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-10) and the Exodus (Deuteronomy 16:1). Aristotle speaks of the preservation of “memory of something by constant reminding” (De Memoria), Plato visualizes memory as a wax imprint (Theaetetus), and St. Augustine theorizes about “images of the things perceived by the senses” (Confessions) as part of memory. Over time, memory came to be associated with cultivating mental capacities. The Age of Enlightenment and modernity bolstered greatly the stature of memory by linking memory with identity formation. Marx applies memory to social theory, Nietzsche is contemptuous of humans’ obsession with accumulating memories, Freud explains the human psyche as predisposed to repressing disturbing memories, and modern nationalist movements elevate collective memory to a superlative pedestal. In the aftermath of twentieth-century fascism, Jay Winter construes remembrance in his seminal work, Remembering War: the Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century, as constituting a process in which “history and memory are braided together in the public domain, jointly informing our shifting and contested understandings of the past.”3 Neither 1

Yehuda Amichai, “And Who Will Remember the Rememberers?” Open Closed Open, trans. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2000), 177. 2 Jay Winter, Remembering War: the Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2006). 3 Winter (2006), 6.

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history nor memory per se, “but the overlaps and creative space between the two,”4 inform us. I imagine post-1945 Western civilization fixedly gawking at its wretched reflection, as in Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting “The Scream.” With Germany’s unconditional surrender to Allied armies in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945, the fallout of what happened during World War II in twentieth-century Europe was yet to be fully grasped. With millions of displaced civilians—many with no home or family to go back to—plodding their way through shattered European cities and dismantled landscapes, the discernment of the outcomes of fascism was temporarily relegated to a cognitive back seat. When facts began to percolate as to the unimaginable magnitude of catastrophic acts of genocide against the Jewish people, aside from the pragmatic urgency to bring to fruition the Zionist blueprint of a national home for the Jewish nation, it was initially impossible to comprehend the cataclysmic profundity of the Holocaust. Emerging out of the ashes, survivors often locked recollections of the horrors into guarded silence. Aharon Erwin Appelfeld’s literature emblematizes a self-imposed muzzle. Of the Jewish children who survived the war, most hid in convents, orphanages, caves, attics, and sewers. Appelfeld found refuge in the woods. Born in 1932 in Zhadova (Jadova), a small town near the city of Czernowitz, Bukovina, Appelfeld grew up in a family steeped in German culture. His happiest childhood memories are associated with his mother. Nazi soldiers murdered her in front of the family home in 1941. Aharon and his father were deported to a labor camp in Transnistria. The boy managed to escape to the woods where he hid until 1944. He was twelve years old when he emerged from hiding and joined the Soviets who had recaptured Ukraine. In 1946, Appelfeld made his way to Israel, then Palestine, where he lived and became a distinguished writer until his death in 2018. Throughout his wanderings, Appelfeld stumbled upon places, railway stations, remote villages, and rivers. They all had names, but he recalled none. Relayed in his autobiography, The Story of a Life,5 Appelfeld speaks of memories that are felt in a physical sense, engraved into his body as opposed to his memory. A sudden noise would make him tense and feel the need to “retreat to the outer edges of the forest, running and ducking,” 6 his body acting as if the war was still on.

4

Winter (2006), 288. Aharon Appelfeld, The Story of a Life, trans. Aloma Halter (New York: Schocken Books, 2004). 6 Appelfeld (2004), 90. 5

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Primo Levi too equated memory with physical sensations. He entwined the physicality of memory with the limitations of language. Nearing the end of his life—whether by suicide or accident—what gnaws at Levi in The Drowned and the Saved7 is the inadequacy of words to express the fact that by mere chance he survived while “the best all died.”8 Charlotte Delbo was a member of the Résistance during World War II. She and her husband, Georges Dudach, were arrested in 1942. He was executed, and Delbo was interned in Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Ravensbrück. As Delbo explains in Auschwitz and After,9 when trying to put into words the inexplicable, it feels as if “you’ve forgotten all the words.”10 Aharon Megged equates silence in Foiglman11 with the Zionist Hebrew-Speaking Jew who censors Diaspora Jews holding onto the Yiddish language—the mameloshn (mother tongue) of millions of Holocaust victims. Neighborhood children know that Rachely’s oddness in Yitzhak Laor’s “Rachely’s Father Who Was an Actor” 12 has to do with her father never speaking about Auschwitz during the day, although at night his screams can be heard coming through his bedroom windows. Saul Friedländer’s hush is of a different kind. Born in 1932, Friedländer’s parents could not save themselves but saved their son by hiding him in a Catholic boarding school. By all accounts, Friedländer had the right to consider himself close enough to the Holocaust. Still, having lived during the years of the Holocaust in the guise of a Roman Catholic boy, he found it difficult to put himself in the category of Holocaust victims. Instead, as articulated in his memoir, When Memory Comes,13

7

Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Vintage International, 1989). 8 Levi (1989), 82. 9 Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz and After (Auschwitz, et après), trans. Rosette C. Lamont (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985). Auschwitz and After is a trilogy of works, comprised of None of Us Will Return (Aucun de nous ne reviendra), Useless Knowledge (La connaissance inutile), and The Measure of Our Days (Mesure de nos jours). 10 Delbo (1985), 236. 11 Aharon Megged, Foiglman, trans. Marganit Weinberger-Rotman (London, UK: Toby Press, 2003). 12 Yitzhak Laor, “Rachel’s Father Who Was an Actor,” trans. Sheila Jellen, in 50 Stories from Israel: an Anthology, eds. Zisi Stavi and Chaya Galai (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronoth and Hemed Books, 2007), 397-408. 13 Saul Friedländer, When Memory Comes, trans. Helen R. Lane (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979).

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Friedländer remarks that having lived on the edges of the catastrophe, “I remained in my own eyes, not so much a victim as—a spectator.”14 Sara Horowitz expounds in Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction15 on how muteness became preferable to “value-laden words whose simple meaning can no longer be trusted.”16 According to Horowitz, language per se was damaged by Nazi atrocities. Noting Elie Wiesel’s taxonomy of silence that draws upon traditional Jewish mysticism and modern absurdist literature, Horowitz points to mute protagonists in Wiesel’s fiction who “consciously refrain from speech, as though muteness were their vocation.”17 The constraints of silence were partially undone in 1961 when agents of the Israeli Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to stand trial in Israel. With the maturation of children of Holocaust survivors, the walls of silence continued to break down and “after the Holocaust” terminology came into being. Defined by Marianne Hirsch, one such key term is “postmemory.” Conceptualized by Hirsch in “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile,” “Mourning and Postmemory,” and The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust,18 postmemory seeks connections with what it can neither recover nor recall. Despite being fully cognizant of the fact that only the Holocaust generation can actually remember the Holocaust, the “generation after” is saddled with the weight of a terrible trauma. A painful visit to pre-World War II homeland and landscape is often woven into literature written by members of the second generation. David Grossman, Nava Semel, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Joseph Skibell—to name but a few writers of the second generation—are cognizant of the ethical dilemma embedded in the “return motif.” Grossman was born in 1954. Did he have the right to envision himself in his 1989 groundbreaking

14

Friedländer (1979), 155. Sara Horowitz, Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). 16 Horowitz (1997), 113. 17 Horowitz (1997), 119. 18 Marianne Hirsch, “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile” in Signposts, Travelers, Outsiders, Backward Glance, ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 418-446; “Mourning and Postmemory,” in The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings, eds. Neil Levi and Michael Rothberg (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 416-422; The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 15

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novel, See Under: Love,19 as a prisoner in a concentration camp? Sue Vice debates this literary-ethical predicament in Holocaust Fiction20 with respect to Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels.21 Vice considers Michaels’s 1996 novel formidable Holocaust literature. She does, however, find an instance in which Michaels laments pregnant Jewish women delivering lifeless fetuses, as they die a horrible death in the gas chambers, troubling. Presumably anticipating readers’ objection to imagining the unimaginable, Michaels’s narrator asks for forgiveness for “this blasphemy of choosing philosophy over the brutalism of fact.”22 Still, Vice takes exception to Michaels instilling herself in a place she could not possibly envisage. As Vice contends, Michaels does not have the ethical prerogative to “bring aesthetic and meaningful comfort from an event which offers no redemption of any kind.”23 Throughout my study I confine myself almost exclusively to what transpired after the Holocaust, beginning with the second generation. I tend to situate survivors’ recollections beyond the realm of discernment or penetration. I view testimonies by survivors as ethical wills that nobody has the right to tamper with. The way I see things, only a victim like Jean Améry can rightfully claim—as Améry did in At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz24—that an Auschwitz insignia tattooed onto his left forearm reads “more briefly than the Pentateuch or the Talmud and yet provides more thorough information.”25 Thus, thoughts put forth in this book on Holocaust remembrance do not pertain to memories of those who experienced the Holocaust firsthand. That being said, Jewish children and grandchildren of the Holocaust generation are beset by what I mean by coping with remembrance of the Holocaust. I never knew a day of suffering in a ghetto or a concentration camp, but the murderous amputation of my family’s ancestral tree justifies my preoccupation with the Holocaust. I was born and raised in Israel and now live in Canada where winters are cold and snowy. Implausible as this may sound, invariably, when venturing outdoors, shielded by a winter 19

David Grossman, See Under: Love, trans. Betsy Rosenberg (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1989). 20 Sue Vice, Holocaust Fiction (London, UK: Routledge, 2000). 21 Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996). 22 Michaels (1996), 168. 23 Vice, (2000), 9. 24 Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, trans. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980). 25 Améry (1980), 24.

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coat, scarf, and boots, I instinctively imagine my grandparents and other relatives imprisoned in a concentration camp, wearing nothing but ragged striped pajamas, a tattered jacket, and wooden clogs in freezing temperatures. The involuntary indignation that envelops me when listening to Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser ought to be perfectly understandable. Appropriately noted by Alex Ross in a 2012 write-up, “The Case for Wagner in Israel,”26 clearly there is more to Wagner as a composer than being Hitler’s favorite musician. No one, however, except Wagner himself is to blame for what Ross calls the prevalence of a “reductionist image” of the German composer.27 In offering a shift in conceptualization I am maintaining that acts of Holocaust remembrance—commemorative ceremonies, annual days of remembrance, museums, tours of places where mass killings occurred, and artistic endeavors of literature, music, painting, sculpture, and film— constitute means of coping with traumatic acts of remembrance. Holocaust museums, the display of visual, contextual, and literary narratives about the Holocaust are all about our capacity—individual and collective—to discern traumatic acts of remembrance. Having read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,28 how do readers of Frank’s legendary diary, particularly young readers, cope with the gaping discrepancy between idealistic Anne, “Yet in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart”—the most quoted entry in Anne’s diary dated July 14, 1944—and the abysmal reality of Anne dying a horrible death several months later at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp?29 This book posits the writings of the Israeli author Etgar Keret as a postmodern embodiment of the notion of coping with Holocaust 26

Alex Ross, “The Case for Wagner in Israel,” The New Yorker, September 25, 2012, https://www.newyorker.com/culture-desk/the-case-for-wagner-in-israel. 27 According to Ross, the issue is further complicated by the fact that Wagner was, contrary to Nazism, more of an anarchist who despised militarism. Furthermore, as told by Leah Garrett in A Knight at the Opera: Heine, Wagner, Herzl, Peretz and the Legacy of Der Tannhäuser” (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2011), in addition to leading lights such as Baudelaire, Proust, Mann, Joyce, Kandinsky, and Isadora Duncan who were Wagner devotees, ironically, the founder of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was mesmerized by Wagner’s operatic rendition of the medieval legend of Tannhäuser—the poetic knight, infatuated with the goddess Venus—and imagined it applicable to a mythical, redemptive call of the Jewish people. 28 Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, trans. Susan Massotty, eds. Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Presder (New York: Doubleday, 1995). 29 March 31, 1945 was determined by Dutch authorities as Anne Frank’s official date of death.

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remembrance through storytelling. The heart of the book is an exploration of Keret’s writing in relation to coping with Holocaust remembrance in our postmodern era. The postmodern theoretical scaffolding of my analysis of Keret’s literature is grounded mostly in Jacques Derrida’s postmodern philosophy. Relevant theoretical suppositions and academic inferences are included in the book insofar as they illuminate Keret’s stories as a paradigmatic exemplar of coping with Holocaust remembrance. I visualize the flow of the book comparable to an accordion whereby different pitches and registers are created by pressing keys and driving air into pleated layers through movements of expansion and contraction, spreading out when theorizing and speaking of coping with Holocaust remembrance in general, and tightening the scope when converging on Etgar Keret’s literature. In keeping with my main objective of advancing a comprehensive theoretical argument in relation to coping with Holocaust remembrance as reflected in Keret’s literature, with some exceptions, I provide summaries of stories written by Keret. While my inquiry includes delving into qualitative issues pertaining to Keret as a writer of literature, my focus is on the manner in which Keret’s stories engage with and reflect upon political and cultural topics, questions, and dilemmas related to Holocaust remembrance. Keret’s literature is integral to postmodern, post Holocaust zeitgeist. In the main, the theoretical and thematic framework of the book is cultural and not contingent upon construction of specific, organized timelines. Specific to Keret’s literature, I align referenced stories, collections of stories, interviews, conversations, and reviews with specific thematic topics as opposed to a timeline of publications. In part, this nonlinear characterization flows from Keret’s rejection of one-dimensionality of philosophical and political reasoning. Always on the prowl to uncover and expose alarming threats of totalizing and absolutism, Keret is never blasé about rendering in terse and non-apologetic, undiplomatic language a riposte to prejudiced convictions. Keret’s affection and closeness to the Hebrew language, particularly in its domesticated and informal format is a major theme in the book. While a few critics are bothered by the commonality of Keret’s jargon and deem him a writer who beggars language, I am among those who think otherwise. I believe Keret has a superior grasp of the inventiveness and idiosyncrasy of a language that encompasses the cadence of an ancient, biblical prose and its modulation from centuries of being an unspoken language to becoming an animated, bountiful, visionary, and multifarious vernacular.

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Keret’s tendency to employ unnamed, first-person narrative does create a language-related issue. Given the lack of equivocation as to the identity of the first-person narrator, all too often readers confuse the author with the narrator. As discussed in the book, Keret prefers to leave the degree to which his stories are autobiographical or pure fiction an open-ended, unresolved issue. Structurally, the book opens with notes on the difference between acts of remembrance and memory. I provide a critique of what I consider immobile modes of remembrance as opposed to personalized and more fluid approaches to Holocaust remembrance. I then shed light on the vital role assumed by literature—novels, short stories, and poetry—with regard to acts of remembrance in the aftermath of the Holocaust. With philosophy and history struggling to explain their failure to anticipate twentiethcentury cataclysmic carnage, literature emerged as better qualified to put into words the terrible blight thrust upon Western civilization by modern totalitarianism. I continue by examining Etgar Keret’s work inside and outside of an explicitly Zionist-Israeli cultural milieu. I go on to delve into Keret’s Weltanschauung illuminating his literature as both specifically Israeli and universally applicable. On the one hand, Keret’s romance with the Hebrew language and his umbilical connection to Tel Aviv’s spatial environment are integral to Keret as an Israeli writer. On the other, Keret’s contemplation of moral quandaries, religion versus secularism, empathy, wars and violence, death by suicide and the afterlife, love, friendship, and parenthood speaks to a universal circle of readers. I also contend that Keret’s eccentricity and defiance is unique, but it is not a stand-alone phenomenon. Rather, it is one of several developments in the history of Hebrew literature. Free-spirited, avant-garde Etgar Keret affirms a wellestablished mode in Israeli literature whereby writers of Hebrew literature do not shy away from denouncing what they deem politically and morally wrong, even in times of war and calls for unity. Throughout my analysis of Keret as a writer, I elaborate upon his mastery of the short story genre and distinct penchant for the grotesque and the humorous. In my discussion, I draw upon selections from Keret’s compiled books of short stories. Two of his books are discussed in greater detail. The first is Keret’s 2015 memoir, The Seven Good Years, A Memoir,30 and the second is his 2019—to date, his most recent—collection of short stories:

30

Etgar Keret, The Seven Good Years: A Memoir, trans. Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlesinger, Jessica Cohen, and Anthony Berris (New York: Riverhead Books, 2015).

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Fly Already.31 The memoir was written at a critical time in Keret’s life, between the birth of his son and passing of his father. Naturally, it is most revealing. As for Fly Already, while allusions to Holocaust remembrance crop up everywhere in Keret’s oeuvre, Fly Already is unique in the way it is unified by Holocaust remembrance. Thus, it reaffirms my theoretical premise regarding coping with Holocaust remembrance as a thematic string laced throughout Keret’s literature. The bibliographic list of books, articles, reviews, and interviews includes more than cited works and sources directly related to the content of the book. I have also listed readings that I recommend to readers interested in pursuing a study of Etgar Keret’s literature, and/or the subject of traumatic remembrance, and Holocaust remembrance. Keret writes in Hebrew. Stories translated into English appear in several collections, periodicals, and literary outlets. Given Keret’s popularity, it is not unusual for him to be interviewed multiple times by the same newspaper reporter, magazine writer, or social media journalist. To lessen the confusion, I indicate the specific publication I used for citations.32 Quotes from scholarly works, novels, and collections of stories are page numbered. For the most part, citations from magazines, interviews, reviews, newspapers, or social media sites are not. Where a relevant text is available only in Hebrew, I provide the translation into English. Lastly, yet importantly, this book was finalized prior to the events of October 2023, when massacres and kidnapping of civilians in the south of Israel were carried out by Hamas terrorists from Gaza. The magnitude of the attacks against innocent civilians led Israel to engage in an outright war against Hamas. The number of casualties on both sides is staggering and will undoubtedly continue to escalate. At this stage of the mayhem, it is clear that the sorrowful Israeli-Palestinian conflict has undergone a dramatic change. My prayer for a two-state solution notwithstanding, for now, while the situation is still extremely volatile, it is too early to come up with a comprehensive analysis of what tomorrow will bring. However, the moral urgency evoked in this book through a multifaceted discussion of coping with traumatic remembrance continues to be relevant and deeply necessary. Likewise, the literature of Etgar Keret, with its gravitas and nuanced humanistic conscience, means more today than it did before. 31 Etgar Keret, Fly Already, trans. Sondra Silverston, Nathan Englander, Jessica Cohen, Miriam Shlesinger, and Yardenne Greenspan (New York: Riverhead Books, 2019). 32 For example, the story “Breaking the Pig” appears in Missing Kissinger, as well as in The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories. As I indicate, the version I used for citations appears in Missing Kissinger.

INTRODUCTION: ETGAR KERET’S LITERATURE

I’ve passed forty. Were I in Auschwitz they would not have sent me to work, but gassed me straightaways. It binds. Yehuda Amichai33

And the Rat Laughed is an extraordinary, five-part novel by Nava Semel.34 Born in 1954, Semel was the daughter of Holocaust survivors.35 And the Rat Laughed commences in 1999 with a conversation between a grandmother and granddaughter at a Tel Aviv apartment. As part of a school assignment on the Holocaust, the granddaughter interviews her Holocaust survivor grandmother. The grandmother prefers to hold back and keep silent about her past but finds it difficult to refuse her granddaughter: I had a mother. I had a father. Won’t you make do with that? I loved and I lost. That’s the end of the story.36

The granddaughter is dissatisfied. She needs more details. Somewhat annoyed, the grandmother reluctantly adds that at the time, “being a Jewish little girl was the worst thing in the world.”37 Desperately wanting to save their child, her parents left her at the mercy of Christian peasants. Dumped into a backyard pit, starved, and raped by the peasants’ teenage son, the only solace the little girl knew was the company of a rat.

33

Yehuda Amichai, “All the Generations Before Me,” Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems (Bilingual Edition), trans Assia Gutmann, Harold Schimmel, Chana Bloch, and Stephen Mitchell (New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1981), 3. 34 Nava Semel, And the Rat Laughed (Tzhok Shel Achbarosh), trans. Miriam Shlesinger (Melbourne: Hybrid Publishers, 2008). 35 Semel passed away in 2017 at the age of sixty-three. 36 Semel (2008), 5. 37 Semel (2008), 15.

2

Introduction: Etgar Keret’s Literature

The granddaughter is disappointed. As a school project, her grandmother’s story will not do. Textbooks, teachings, and commemorations of the Holocaust are all about ghettos and concentration camps, and not about a girl hiding in some hole in the ground: Even though my grandmother really was in the Holocaust, I’m not sure it counts, because she was a little girl and she didn’t go through any of the big, horrifying things we learn about in history or read about or see in the movies.38

From present-day Tel Aviv to the Holocaust, from the Holocaust to the future and then back to the Holocaust, Semel’s haunting narrative oscillates between poetry, a memoir, and the genres of realistic novel and science fiction. At some point, the grandmother’s story morphs into the myth of “Girl & Rat.” The written text of the myth is lost in 2025 in the ashes of an ecological disaster, but the myth itself remains afloat through academic research and virtual games. It resurfaces in 2099 when archeological excavations uncover ruins of “Madonna of the Rat Church in a geographical place once called Poland.”39 Back in the days of the Holocaust, a Polish priest named Father Stanislaw rescued a Jewish girl from being murdered by local peasants. The priest kept a diary in which he tells of harrowing events that took place from September 1943 until February 1945. Kneeling, Father Stanislaw beseeches God: My Father, did You not see what was happening underneath the soil, or did You turn your back? Even Your Son was not a little child when He was made to suffer, and even then, on His final journey, He was not alone.40

In part, I cite Semel’s novel because it illuminates multidimensional facets of Holocaust remembrance. As expounded upon by Alan L. Berger in his review of And the Rat Laughed,41 Semel navigates through a thematic entanglement of individual versus national/collective commemoration, Jewish and Christian remembering/forgetting, Holocaust remembrance and the State of Israel, technological advancement and environmental disasters in relation to remembrance of the Holocaust, futuristic ravages of 38

Semel (2008), 54. Semel (2008), 118. 40 Semel (2008), 170-171. 41 Alan L. Berger, “The Holocaust Novel from Israel that Americans Can’t Handle,” review of And the Rat Laughed by Nava Semel, The Forward, October 26, 2009, https//:forward.com/culture/117704/the-holocaust-novel-from-israel-that-americacan’t-handle. 39

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Zionism and Judaism, and an indictment of the God of Monotheism. Berger also wonders whether Diaspora Jews are up to embracing Semel’s Holocaust novel in the way Israelis do. Either way, in and of itself, the distinction suggested by Berger between Diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews in relation to Holocaust literature is a component in an all-encompassing configuration of coping with Holocaust remembrance. As aforementioned, generally speaking, members of Keret’s generation are viewed as constituting the second generation. In due course, scholars began to include under the umbrella of the second-generation children born to Holocaust survivors, and children of Jews who lived through that era without experiencing the Holocaust firsthand. The list of reputable scholars who defined the boundaries and characteristics of secondgeneration Holocaust phenomenology is extensive. Several such key scholars are discussed in this book. Beyond the first and to an extent, the second generation, a foundational premise guiding this book is that with the coming of the third, fourth, and future generations, the generational perspective in analyzing remembrance of the Holocaust lost much of its pertinence. Furthermore, thinking in terms of coping with Holocaust remembrance frees us from generational constants. I also contend that the constitution and temperament of being defined by coping with remembrance of the Holocaust allows for adaptability to changeable times and amenability to varying political and cultural realities. Hirsch’s formalistic and stationary nature of postmemory (preface p. xv) was, perhaps, applicable to children born to Holocaust survivors. Beyond the second generation, inflexible forms of remembrance of the Holocaust obstructs and inhibits an ability to advance modifiable capacities to cope, and not “just” cope, but cope responsibly with traumatic remembrance. To be sure, the unprecedented savagery of twentieth-century fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust make it difficult to think in terms of fluidity in modes of coping with traumatic remembrance. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht suggests in After 1945: Latency as Origin of the Present42 that unlike in the immediate aftermath of World War I, and the Pollyanna-like hope to end all wars, the tenor of post-World War II was lingering latency that offers no assurances if and how we will reach a time to come, futurity. Much like Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, post-Auschwitz humanity is “moving the whole time without making any progress.”43 42

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, After 1945: Latency as Origin of the Present (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2013). 43 Gumbrecht (2013), 28.

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Introduction: Etgar Keret’s Literature

Nowadays, the issue of post-Holocaust humanity is debated as part of a discourse on modernism versus postmodernism. Seyla Benhabib suggests in “Epistemologies of Postmodernism: A Rejoinder to Jean-François Lyotard”44 that postmodern Western civilization finds it too difficult to give up the Enlightenment’s delusion “of an infinitely malleable world serving as mere receptacle of the desire of an infinitely striving self.”45 Too much of the Western humanistic tradition is invested in reason and progress; giving up on the Enlightenment’s promise means conceding to humans’ high propensity for committing unspeakable crimes. Whereas the exactness of what differentiates modernism from postmodernism remains debatable, the contention put forth in my study is that Etgar Keret is an archetypal postmodern writer who exemplifies the theoretical modality of coping with Holocaust remembrance. To take an example, while not always associated with melancholic woe, postmodern existential aloneness is a salient feature in Keret’s fiction. In many ways, the manner in which Keret coats postmodern aloneness with an overlay of idiosyncratic equanimity stems from Keret’s familiarity with being a child of Holocaust survivors. A story titled “The Girl on the Fridge”46 is about aloneness in our postmodern era. A protagonist named Nahum tells a friend by the name of Ogette that he once had a girlfriend who liked to be alone and that it most likely had to do with her upbringing. Personally, Nahum does not see it as a big deal; he thinks about the subject of childhood in the same way he thinks about the hollowness of a cavity in a tooth. Ogette persists, entreating Nahum to tell her more about his former girlfriend’s childhood and predilection for being alone. Nahum finds Ogette’s probing annoying. He nonetheless goes on to reveal that his former girlfriend spent much of her childhood on top of a refrigerator while her parents were away at work. She was perfectly content with her situation and spent the hours singing and drawing little pictures in layers of dust on top of the fridge. “The view from up there was very beautiful, and her bottom was nice and warm. Now that she was older, she missed that time, that alone time, very much.”47 “The Girl on the Fridge” suggests that in Keret’s world, it is often necessary to augment realism with magic, and vice versa, magic is 44 Seyla Benhabib, “Epistemologies of Postmodernism: a Rejoinder to JeanFrançois Lyotard,” New German Critique, No. 33, Fall 1984. 45 Benhabib (1984), 103. 46 Etgar Keret, “The Girl on the Fridge,” in The Girl On The Fridge, trans. Miriam Shlesinger and Sondra Silverston (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 41-44. 47 Keret, “The Girl on the Fridge” (2008), 43.

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possible by its connection to the harshness of postmodern realism. Keret’s magic realism is not the kind which, when sprinkled with shiny pixie dust, can turn reality into fairytale bliss. Magic realism in Keret’s stories is grayish and mundane, albeit, not totally lacking in optimism. “A NoMagician Birthday”48 is about harsh realism embellished with a whiff of magic. The narrator of the story lives alone. He has a hard time dealing with what he believes is the coldest winter of his life. His ex-girlfriend is going around telling everyone that he is gay and impotent. Recently, he learned that the raise in salary he was anticipating is not forthcoming. He works as a reporter for a newspaper and his immediate assignment is to travel to the Hadera observatory and “bring back a thousand words about a meteor belt that traveled past us only every hundred years.” The meteor phenomenon is of no interest to him; he would much rather cover a story about an Israeli living in Hebron “who’d been hit in the head and turned into a vegetable.”49 He is unsuccessful in pushing for the Hebron story. Frustrated, but with nothing else he can do, he makes his way to the observatory. The photographer accompanying him doesn’t think much of the meteor belt phenomenon either. “People on the West Bank are slaughtering each other, and here I am shooting a bunch of short-sighted dorks in parkas jerking off on a telescope.”50 Bored and unhappy, the reporter imagines his mother preparing for his upcoming birthday. As a gift, she will most likely present him with a mini-cassette recorder for his work. She will undoubtedly bake his favorite carrot cake and cook the spaghetti dish he loves. His brother will drive in especially from the town of Raanana, and his father will tell him how proud he is of him. He recalls his tenth birthday party. His parents hired a magician. Now, at this weary point in his life, he wishes he had the power to cause the meteors to ignite and burn everything down. That would make him very happy, like when the magician performed his tricks, and when his mother “floated on air like a ballerina on the moon” and his father “just smiled and said nothing.”51 Eventually, the reporter witnesses the meteors come and go as they do every hundred years. In the words of the petulant photographer, “it looked like shit and would look even shittier in the paper.”52

48 Etgar Keret, A No-Magician Birthday,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 6164. 49 Keret, “A No-Magician Birthday” (2008), 62. 50 Keret, “A No-Magician Birthday” (2008). 63. 51 Keret, “A No-Magician Birthday” (2008), 64. 52 Keret, “A No-Magician Birthday” (2008), 63-64.

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When there is no magic to offset realism in a postmodern, postHolocaust world, life becomes unbearable. Such is Shlomo’s predicament in “Slimy Shlomo is a Homo.”53 After classmates start saying “Slimy Shlomo is a Homo,” a substitute teacher encourages Shlomo to ignore his tormentors. In spite of that, when Shlomo asks her why all the kids hate him, she shrugs her shoulders and mutters, “How should I know? I’m just a sub.”54 Now and again, Keret’s magic realism can offset misery. In “The Real Winner of the Preliminary Games,”55 a protagonist named Eitan is hopelessly depressed. His mind instructs him to aim a cocked gun to his chin and shoot, but in an involuntary reflexive motion his finger stops halfway. It is not as if this helped Eitan acquire a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of life, and yet, “He wanted to live, he really did.”56 Magic realism and empathy are inextricably linked in Keret’s literature. Furthermore, as I maintain, Keret’s empatheia—in tune with the ancient Greek notion of pathos, suffering—is faithfully in accordance with his parents being Holocaust survivors. “The Flying Santinis”57 is about a boy named Ariel Fledermaus who has only one wish. He wants to join the circus and become one of the Flying Santinis. Unlike parents of other children who also dream of joining a circus, Ariel’s mother and father support their son’s aspiration. His mother packs Ariel’s clothes in a suitcase, and his father drives him to the circus to meet with Papa Luigi. As in Johann Strauss’s operetta, Die Fledermaus, everyone is in on the joke, everyone except for the credulous “bat,” Ariel Fledermaus. It is up to Papa Luigi to determine Ariel’s future; does or does he not have what it takes to become a Flying Santini. Luigi explains that many children want to join the circus but fail to appreciate the agility entailed in becoming a Flying Santini. Ariel’s willpower is boundless and he passes several challenging tests. Only one flexibility test remains, “You have to touch your shoes without bending your knees.”58 The boy bends over and reaches down. Only four millimeters between the tips of his fingers and his shoes separate him from realizing his dream. He tries as hard as he can 53 Etgar Keret, “Slimy Shlomo is a Homo,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 99100. 54 Keret, “Slimy Shlomo is a Homo” (2008), 100. 55 Etgar Keret, “The Real Winner of the Preliminary Games,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 53-57. 56 Keret, “The Real Winner of the Preliminary Games” (2008), 57. 57 Etgar Keret, “The Flying Santinis,” in Missing Kissinger, trans. Miriam Shlesinger and Sondra Silverston (London, UK: Vintage Books, 2008), 155-158. 58 Keret, “The Flying Santinis” (2008), 157.

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to extend his stretch when suddenly a deafening sound perforates the air “like wood and glass breaking together.”59 Ariel remains stuck in a bending position. Papa Luigi picks him up and rushes him to the nearest hospital where X-rays administrated show a herniated disc. Wiping the boy’s tearful eyes, Papa Luigi whispers to him softly, “You could have bent your knees … you could have bent them a little. I wouldn’t have said anything.”60 In “Terminal,”61 an aging Holocaust survivor named Hans and a younger protagonist-narrator named Zvi have nothing in common except brain cancer: “He was a shriveled-up old guy who spoke broken Hebrew, and I’m a fat, overgrown Sabra still on this side of forty.”62 Sharing a hospital room, a special bond develops between the two. Hans suggests in his fractured Hebrew that it is because they are “terminal sick.”63 The words “terminal” and “sick” evoke in Zvi’s imagination a picture of him boarding a flight which would take him somewhere wonderful. Hans tells Zvi that years ago, before Hitler, he was a chess champion at Mainz University. The Nazis murdered his wife and two children. He was left with nothing but “mein Schatten, how you say, aah ... shadow.”64 He raises his arm, creating a large shadow on the wall. It brings a smile to his face. To him, it is magic—“Zauber.” Whenever Zvi gets angry with Asher, the orderly, for being late in emptying the urine bags, Hans tells him to go easy on Asher, who is merely a “junger Mensch” trying to do his job. Humanistic empathy is Hans’ magic which, much like his shadow, not even the Nazis could destroy. When Hans dies, Zvi faces reality at its worst. He raises his right hand high, hoping to create a shadow on the wall. Alas, he cannot even do that. It is as if his own shadow rebels against him. Then, as if touched by a magic wand, Zvi is comforted by whispering “Zauber.” Empowering a Holocaust survivor with the magic of empathy through a play on words— terminal and shadow—is a linguistic artifice typical of Keret’s storytelling. Zvi deriving comfort out of a word acquired from a German-speaking Holocaust survivor defies realism. It is also Keret’s way of injecting new meaning into the German language: a language debased by Nazism.

59

Keret, “The Flying Santinis” (2008), 157. Keret, “The Flying Santinis” (2008), 158. 61 Etgar Keret, “Terminal,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 101-104. 62 Keret, “Terminal” (2008), 101. 63 Keret, “Terminal” (2008), 102. 64 Keret, “Terminal” (2008), 102-103. 60

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Introduction: Etgar Keret’s Literature

Whether the setting is a hospital room as in “Terminal” or a soccer game in “Shoes,” or a high school assembly in “Siren,”65 Keret often fictionalizes the integration of Holocaust remembrance into the humdrum of daily life, a trait shared with other Israeli authors—Savyon Liebrecht, Nava Semel, Lizzie Doron, and Amir Gutfreund among them—born to Holocaust survivors. Keret, however, objects to being pegged by secondgeneration typology. As a guest lecturer at Syracuse University, Keret explained that his objection stems from the fact that this type of classification views children of Holocaust survivors as children who were raised by parents “committed to the articulation of silenced memories.” He deems such categorization as “a reduction” of his family and his close relationship with his parents.66 Keret attempts to invalidate a blanket inference made by Iris Milner in “A Testimony to ‘The War After’: Remembrance and its Discontent in Second Generation Literature.”67 Among the Holocaust writers (Israeli) considered by Milner are Itamar Levi, David Grossman, Amir Gutfreund, Lizzie Doron, Michal Govrin, Savyon Liebrecht, Nava Semel, Gabriela Avigur-Rotem, and Lily Perry-Amitai. Milner’s study calls attention to “how ashamed they were of their parents, particularly their mothers, because of their looks, their clothing, their language, and accent (bad Hebrew, or, what was even worse, Yiddish) … in short, because of their complete otherness.”68 Some may say that the portrayal of Holocaust survivors by their children is not that much different from how children tend to view immigrant parents in general. Despite that, in the case of children of immigrant Holocaust survivors; a coating of past horrors superimposes itself on the “otherness” of the parents. As conveyed by Nava Semel to Ronit Lentin in Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence,69 children—like herself—raised in homes of Holocaust survivors grew up deciphering “transmission of nonverbal information” as in “body language and through crises and 65

Keret’s stories “Shoes” and “Siren” are discussed in later chapters. Proceedings of the event, together with four stories by Keret, a preface by Ken Frieden, and an introduction by George Saunders were later assembled into a booklet titled Four Stories, B. G. Rudolph Lectures in Judaic Studies (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2010). 67 Iris Milner, “A Testimony to ‘The War After’: Remembrance and its Discontent in Second Generation Literature,” Israel Studies, Indiana University Press, 8, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 194-213. 68 Milner (2003), 198-199. 69 Ronit Lentin, Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000). 66

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catastrophes.” The word “Auschwitz” was associated by Semel with “sleeping pills at night, with black clothes, with terror, and with something very terrifying, which I didn’t want to know exactly.”70 This type of memory is not at all how Keret remembers his childhood home. Keret always speaks of a happy home environment. His life is not free of personal struggles but he does not correlate personal problems with “complete otherness” of his Holocaust surviving parents. In more than one way, the rarity and marvel of Etgar Keret are embedded in the innateness in which he exudes and transmits elemental and intuitive empathy towards “complete otherness.” Noted by Dekel Shay Schory in “Etgar Keret on Lying: Three Examples,”71 there is something “gentle” and “therapeutic” in which protagonists in Keret’s stories distort and falsify factual truths. Schory goes on to say that Keret’s enormous appeal emanates from readers realizing that despite all the violence and grotesqueness in Keret’s stories, Keret’s writings and public persona are all about empatheia, the “humanly better” that elevates the Other out of anonymity. An archetypal example of the phenomenon of Keret is a story titled: “What, of this Goldfish, Would You Wish?”72 A protagonist named Yonatan sets out to create a documentary on the pursuit of happiness. The idea was for him—just him, no camera crew—to knock on doors and discover what would people wish for if they encountered a goldfish that could grant them three wishes. Yoni would then edit and make clips of the responses. Invariably, people ask for health and material comfort, that is, with one, notable exception. A Holocaust survivor “with a number on his arm” wonders whether, “if this fish didn’t mind, would it be possible for all the Nazis left living in the world to be held accountable for their crimes?”73 From a wide-ranging perspective, Christopher Merril asserts in “Parallel Universe: The World of Etgar Keret” that Keret “has caught something essential about the general despair of our time.”74 According to Merril, 70

Nava Semel cited by Lentin (2000), 34. Dekel Shay Schory, “Etgar Keret on Lying: Three Examples,” BGU Review, Heksherim Research Institute for Jewish & Israeli Literature & Culture (Winter 2018). 72 Etgar Keret, “What, of this Goldfish, Would You Wish?” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door, trans. Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston, and Nathan Englander (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 117-123. 73 Keret, “What, of this Goldfish, Would You Wish?” (2010), 118. 74 Merril’s write-up introduces a 2018 edition of BGU Review Heksherim Research Institute for Jewish & Israeli Literature & Culture, dedicated to Etgar Keret’s 71

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Introduction: Etgar Keret’s Literature

Keret is “deeply human, wise, and funny” with “an unerring eye for the absurd.” Steering a storyline from a creator of a documentary about the pursuit of happiness to Holocaust remembrance evinces Keret “a literary genius.” The underlying thesis of my argument is that coping with Holocaust remembrance is the pivotal link upon which discerning the phenomenon of Etgar Keret hinges. Even when seemingly absent or difficult to detect, coping with Holocaust remembrance is the leitmotif in Keret’s storytelling. Michal Peles Almagor is intrigued in “Here is a Different Place: ‘Lieland,’ Speech and Hebrew Literary Space”75 by the manner in which Keret interlaces the narrative with falsehoods as a way of probing the moral compass of Zionism. Almagor regards “Lieland”76 as an exemplar of Keret’s employment of “the materiality of language to engender place that is neither a Zionist utopia nor a dystopia.” Oscillating between two parallel worlds, a protagonist named Robbie, has been telling lies since he was seven years old. As he matures into adulthood, he becomes increasingly aware of the consequences of telling lies. In contrast, in “The Greatest Liar in the World,”77 Keret’s protagonist takes an inverse approach. Honest as a child, as an adult, he begins to tell lies to strangers, then to people he loves, and finally to himself: Lying to yourself is the best. It only takes a minute for the dingy puddle of reality that gets your socks to turn into something warm and velvety. Just one line and failure turns into voluntary submission, loneliness into choice and even the death that keeps closing in on you can change into a one-way ticket to heaven.

According to Almagor, Keret’s “Lieland” propounds “a familiar paradigm” by which the Jewish people pray for a return to Zion, the Promised Land, but in actuality resist “the notion of arrival, either as a purpose or as a failed experience”—in other words, lying to themselves about longing to return to Zion. Almagor views “Lieland” as centering on creating a place through language and attributes to Keret extraordinary prowess in destabilizing “the literature. The BGU Review publication was a follow-up to a conference sponsored by the Chicago Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago: “Keret’s Happy Campers; Etgar Keret and the Fate of Israeli Culture in the World Today.” 75 Michal Peles Almagor, “Here is a Different Place: ‘Lieland,’ Speech and Hebrew Literary Space,” BGU Review (Winter 2018). 76 Etgar Keret, “Lieland,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2010), 9-19. 77 Etgar Keret, “The Greatest Liar in the World,” trans. Jessica Cohen, Literary Hub, September 6, 2019, https://www.lithub.com/a-newly-translated-story-byetgar-keret.

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fundamental spatial paradigm of longing that characterizes Modern Hebrew literature.” By setting mythical Zion apart from temporal Zionism and worldly Israel, Keret illuminates “a rupture between history and myth.” Myths offer spiritual and moral teachings. Myths, however, are not meant to replace historical facts. The spiritual implications of the biblical myth of God creating the world in seven days can live happily side-by-side with Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution. Similarly, the mythology associated with Zion as the Promised Land is culturally significant as long as it is not used to falsify historical facts. It is precisely when one admits to untruths and fantasies about “the myth of the Promised Land” that one can claim authentic belonging and strive for accountability for the real, post-Holocaust Israel. When asked to situate himself on a Jewish-Israeli cultural continuum, Keret habitually pinpoints himself as Jewish first and Israeli second. I am never quite sure as to the degree to which some of Keret’s baffling proclamations are mostly meant as provoking. Regardless, and as delineated in this book, similar to many Israeli writers of prose and poetry, Keret is a secular Israeli writer who is troubled by secular-religious schism that overspills into politics. Of particular concern are fanatics who, in their intolerable messianic rhetoric, represent a major threat to Israel as a democracy. To be sure, amid the polarities of Israeli secularism and extremists is a vast terrain of cultural mutuality and overlap. Notwithstanding, given Israel’s high-strung political environment, all too often ideological differences degenerate into tempestuous disputes. Etgar Keret is proud of his affectionate bond with the Hebrew language. From the inception of cultural and political Zionism as a modern revolutionary movement for national independence, the revival of the Hebrew language took center-stage. Keret’s use of Israeli Hebrew affirms a comprehensive study by Dan Miron of Israeli literature which depicts literature written in the Hebrew language as an inventive conflation, a diverse blend. According to Miron, modern Jewish culture comprises a plurality of cultures or subcultures. At the same time, Miron also contends that secular Hebrew literature in particular regarded itself “as the true and legitimate custodian of national literary creativity.”78 I often speak of “the Keret phenomenon” when discussing Keret’s meteoric rise to fame. In the case of Keret, I have in mind Patricia Drechsel Tobin referring in Time and the Novel: the Generational Imperative to gifted writers in “a messy culture” in which the “artistically 78

Dan Miron, HaSifriya HaIvrit: Proza Me’orevet: 1980-2005 (The Hebrew Library, Mixed Prose: 1980-2005), (Tel Aviv: Miskal, Yedioth Ahronoth and Hemed Books, 2005).

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Introduction: Etgar Keret’s Literature

new” is “humanly better.”79 By phenomenon I also mean an impact or impression Keret creates that does not necessarily lend itself to an obvious, one-dimensional explanation. On the one hand, Keret’s style is of his own, idiosyncratic making. On the other, the sui generis nature of Keret’s art rests on the shoulders of writers who preceded him. In general, when considering the trajectory of Israeli-Hebrew literature, I am in favor of perceiving Keret’s shake-up of Hebrew literature as an evolutionary happening rather than a quantum leap. Put another way, I regard Keret as a prodigy of a rebellious Israeli mood which does not constitute a radical break with the past but an organic eventuality within a totality of shifting cultural trends. To be precise, the state-of-affairs backdrop to the Etgar Keret phenomenon is Israel in the eighties and nineties. Among others, it is an era associated with demythologizing of the Israeli army. For decades, in light of its interconnection with survival of the State of Israel, its repute was near sanctification. Keret does not dispute Israel’s dependence on highly effective armed forces. Rather, he has difficulties with everything that has to do with soldiery discipline. In a somewhat translucent sense of pride, he often refers to himself as the worst soldier ever to have served in the army. That may seem revolutionary, however, while the intensity with which the Israeli army’s conduct was questioned from the early eighties onwards was unprecedented, the truth is that Israel’s military network and hierarchy was never above censure; literature written by S. Yizhar—“The Prisoner”—and Binyamin Tammuz—“The Swimming Contest”—attests to that. 80 Thus, in the main, I look upon Keret’s singularity as intrinsic to changes in Israeli cultural dynamics. The oneness of the Keret phenomenon is integral to a certain cultural milieu that was ready to receive Keret’s literature. In the early days of Israel, an analogy made by Keret in “Cramps” (Gaza Blues: Different Stories)81 between an abusive manager of a workplace and an army officer—“His workers hated him ... They

79 Patricia Drechsel Tobin, Time and the Novel: the Generational Imperative (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978), 111-112. 80 “The Prisoner” by Yizhar appears in Modern Hebrew Literature, ed. Robert Alter (New York: Behrman House, 1975), and “The Swimming Contest” by Tammuz in The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories, ed. Glenda Abramson (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 81 Etgar Keret “Cramps,” in Gaza Blues: Different Stories by Etgar Keret and Samir El-Youssef, trans. Miriam Shlesinger, M. Weinberger-Rotman, and Dalya Bilu (London, UK: David Paul, 2004), 11-13.

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complained that he treated them like they were in basic training”82—would have offended many Israelis. Nowadays, it generates a smile of recognition. Situating Keret’s literature in a Jewish-Israeli cultural and political pressure cooker goes hand-in-hand with Keret as a postmodern, postHolocaust storyteller who masters the genre of the short story. Unique to the postmodern short story is fragmentation. Noted by Farhat Iftekharrudin, the language and delivery of the postmodern short story comes across as pieces stuck together.83 Keret’s “Asthma Attack”84 is a classic example of what Iftekharrudin means by fragmented pieces of storytelling affixed together. The pace at which Keret rushes through split and cracked pieces—ten lines in all—leaves readers breathless. When you cannot breathe, Keret says, you can hardly talk. An asthmatic may wish to say “I love you madly,” but has to forgo the last word: “madly.” The difference is merely in one word. For an asthmatic though, it can come down to a choice between “madly” or “inhaler” or perhaps even “ambulance.”85 Without question, Etgar Keret is a postmodern author. In History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies, Dominick LaCapra86 states that we live in a postmodern era and have long passed the time when it was possible to think of language as a neutral and self-contained instrument for conveying meaning. Mapping out an ethical relationship between language deconstruction and representation of the Holocaust, LaCapra singles out Jacques Derrida’s philosophy as a prime example of conjoining postmodernism with post-Holocaust. Derrida’s linguistic deconstruction is the theoretical foundation upon which I set up Keret’s postmodern Holocaust remembrance storytelling. Jacques Derrida’s philosophy is a mainstay pillar upon which postmodern thinking rests. Born into a Sephardic Jewish family in El Biar, a suburb of Algiers—Algeria was then part of France—Derrida experienced anti-Jewish laws decreed by the pro-Nazi, Vichy regime. Shortly after World War II ended, Derrida began to immerse himself in the study of philosophy. He moved to Paris and entered the École Normale Supérieure. It was a potent, dynamic era for a generation of French philosophers, among them Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles 82

Etgar Keret, “Cramps” (2004), 11. Farhat Iftekharrudin, The Postmodern Short Story: Forms and Issues, eds. Farhat Iftekharrudin, Joseph Boyden, Mary Rohrberger, and Jaie Claudet, (London, UK: Praeger Publishers, 2003). 84 Etgar Keret, “Asthma Attack,” in Four Stories (2010), 15. 85 Keret, “Asthma Attack” (2010), 15. 86 Dominick LaCapra, History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 83

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Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Paul Ricoer, Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes, Jean-François Lyotard, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Emmanuel Levinas. With the publication in 1967 of Writing and Difference (L’éecriture et la difference), a collection of essays written by Derrida between 1959 and 1966,87 Derrida was to become a postmodern superstar philosopher. Thousands of people lined-up to attend his lectures, and countless books, articles, and media programs were about the man and his philosophy. In 1983, Derrida was appointed director of philosophy studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, a distinguished appointment he held for the rest of his life. In addition, Derrida was a visiting professor at several universities, a member of international research groups, and an associate founder of several academic institutions. Generally speaking, readers find Derrida’s labyrinthine language and style of writing extremely challenging. I readily confess to struggling with Derrida’s tangled reasoning, inferences, and semantics. On more than one occasion, when attempting to make sense of complex, enigmatic texts, I had to rely on scholarly “Derrida pundits.” And, importantly, one must always keep in mind that largely, the complexity of Derrida is implanted in his negation of language as purely instrumental, devoid of biased meaning. Anyone, Derrida asserted, who claims to make use of language—be it in speaking or writing—which is completely impartial is either naive or, worse, intentionally disingenuous. In an attempt to avoid being caught-up in literal swirls, I have taken the liberty of cherry-picking from writings by Derrida that contribute directly to a better appreciation of Keret’s postmodern Weltanschung and that are not hopelessly demanding linguistically and theoretically. Thus, while I wish to assure readers that they are not in for a frustrating journey of meandering through an analytical maze, the fact remains that there simply is no proper discernment of Keret’s storytelling without an appreciation of Keret as a postmodern Israeli writer. A story by Keret titled “Nothing”88 exemplifies postmodern, linguistic deconstruction à la Derrida. A nameless woman is in love with a man “made of nothing.” She infers meaning from imagining a relationship with an illusory, phantasm male who boils water for a non-existent cup of coffee. Her parents are not too thrilled with her hallucinatory partner although, as her father points out, better than, god forbid, a junkie. She likes holding the invisible man’s hand and is perfectly content knowing that her love will never betray her: 87

Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference” (L’écriture et la différance), trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1978). 88 Etgar Keret, “Nothing,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 109-110.

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What could possibly let her down when she opened the door? An empty apartment? A numbing silence? An absence between the sheets of the rumpled bed?89

Keret’s “Nothing” is in line with Derrida’s way of taking nothing to reach beyond concretized nil. Keret’s “Nothing” is an offshoot or extension of Derrida’s conceptualization of “that which is yet to come”—that which is a continuous, non-arrival at a singular finality, that which reflects a rejection of modernity’s know-it-all hubris. It bears noting that whereas my inclination is to draw a philosophical parallel between Keret and Derrida, Nurit Buchweitz, chooses to connect Keret with the teachings of another postmodern French oracle: Michel Foucault. As Buchweitz suggests in “This is Not a Character: Resemblance and Similitude in Etgar Keret’s Suddenly, A Knock On The Door” Keret’s storytelling is shot through with “postmodern skepticism”90 which Buchweitz aligns with Foucault’s thoughts on resemblance/similitude. Resemblance corresponds to an illusion about something that is thought of as real while similitude is in a non-mimetic, non-relation to the real. For example, resemblance is applicable to Francisco Goya’s Los desatres de la guerra in that the painting reflects the artist’s visualization of the reality of war. Similitude questions the validity of being able to authentically express or describe a reality such as a war. Keret’s “instability of character” is surmised by Buchweitz to represent an alternative to modernity’s “investments in the figure of the individual as the locus of meaning.”91 There are attributes in Keret’s stories that “bear a resemblance to what we think is recognizable,” and characters that resemble “real” people, although they are “not designed to be a copy of people but to give shape to an emotive disposition.”92 Figuration is still present in Keret’s stories, but rarely does a protagonist serve in a leading role or is a protagonist charged with delivering a primary edifying message. The reader may experience, “gripping apprehension along with profound incredulity, but not identification, as with personalities ... It is not life that is described in the stories but its simulation.”93 As such, it is the cursory

89

Keret, “Nothing” (2008), 110. Nurit Buchweitz, “This is Not a Character: Resemblance and Similitude in Etgar Keret’s Suddenly, A Knock On The Door,” Studies in Literature and Language 7.2 (2013), 101-107. 91 Buchweitz (2013), 101. 92 Buchweitz (2013), 102. 93 Buchweitz (2013), 105. 90

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design of character by Keret that affirms Foucault’s “aesthetic principle of favoring similitude over resemblance.”94 According to Buchweitz, “What Animal Are You?”95 is an archetypal Keret exemplar of resemblance à la Foucault. The story opens with a statement: “The sentences I’m writing now are for the benefit of the German Public Television viewers.”96 It goes on to introduce a female German TV reporter who believes that simulating an author engaged in the process of writing would make for “great visuals” and asks whether the narrator/author would agree to be filmed in the act of writing a story. It may seem like a cliché, she says, “but cliché is nothing but an unsexy version of the truth ...”97 The author is skeptical. He seriously doubts that it is possible to feign writing literature. As an Israeli author, he is also mindful of being filmed for German Public Television: “I have a score to settle with the viewers of German Public Television but this isn’t the time to settle it.” Still, at that particular moment, for reasons he cannot explain, he goes along with the TV director and other crewmembers who guide him through faking writing for the camera. He is instructed not to simply scribble words hurriedly but to phrase something meaningful, for “when you write crap … it comes out terrible on camera.”98 Keret elaborated on the topic of figuration and shaping characters in literature in an interview with Deborah Treisman.99 He described how in the process of writing he invariably imagines becoming all the characters in a story. It is hardly ever about identifying with a single leading protagonist. “I can’t write a character I don’t feel some emotional identification with, even if it is the hired killer who murders the protagonist’s pregnant wife.” Since all his characters “exist in my head,” in some sense, “they have to be me.” He has no favorites or main characters. Instead, he views himself as someone who portrays people with interesting points of view. Characters are “much more a part of that super organism that is the story than separate and independent creatures.” Partaking in filmmaking 94

Buchweitz (2013), 106. Etgar Keret, “What Animal are You?” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door” (2013), 185-188. 96 Keret, “What Animal are You?” (2013), 185. 97 Keret, “What Animal are You?” (2013), 185. 98 Keret, “What Animal are You?” (2013), 186. 99 Etgar Keret, “This Week in Fiction: ‘Creative Writing’ by Etgar Keret,” interview with Etgar Keret by Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker, December 15, 2011,https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-this-week-etgar-keret2011-12-15. 95

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helped him envision physical attributes and movements of characters in a story: Learning on set the effect that different mise-en-scènes can have on the energy of a scene … made me want to use some of my film director’s tools on my prose characters.

The irony of Keret instructing university students in creative writing does not escape him when considering similitude versus authentic representation. He admitted to Treisman that at times he thinks of teaching creative writing comparable to “an astronaut who has just landed on a new planet and insists on giving guided tours to its inhabitants.”100 A story titled “Creative Writing”101 echoes Keret’s qualms about the notion that it is possible to teach how to write creatively. A protagonist named Maya is encouraged by her husband, Aviad, to participate in a creative writing workshop. His hope is that this type of activity will function as a curative consolation for the depression suffered by Maya following a miscarriage. Maya agrees to enroll. Her first story depicts a world in which people no longer reproduce; instead, they split themselves into several selves. The second story portrays people who can only see those whom they love. Maya’s third story is about a woman pregnant with a cat. The woman’s husband suspects the cat is a progeny of his wife having an extramarital affair and husband and cat come to violent blows. Maya’s growing interest in the creative writing endeavor sparks Aviad’s interest and he too signs up for a beginner’s class. Following the instructor’s direction advising participants to jot down whatever comes to mind, without thinking too much, Aviad comes up with a tale about a witch turning a fish into a human being. The man-fish thrives to such an extent that at some point he forgets that once upon a time “he was in fact a fish.” Then, one day, while gazing at the horizon from a high-rise building he acquired in a lucrative real estate deal he is touched by a lucid memory of being a fish. A very wealthy fish, perhaps, “that traded on stock markets around the world, but still a fish.102 Reading Aviad’s story, the instructor suggests that perhaps Aviad ought to consider a different, more realistic ending. Blank, out of ideas, Aviad decides that there will be no ending. With that, both, Aviad’s creative writing episode and Keret’s encasing story come to an end. 100

Keret (Treisman 2011). Etgar Keret, “Creative Writing,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2013), 60-65. 102 Keret, “Creative Writing” (2013), 65. 101

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Treisman was curious about the degree to which readers should view “Creative Writing” metaphorically: are people in Maya’s text splitting themselves as an allegory to Maya’s miscarriage? Does splitting connote cracks in her marriage? What does being pregnant with a cat symbolize? What did Keret have in mind when depicting a fish morphing into a person? Keret’s response was that his stories generally “say something that is more complex, ambiguous, and contradictory than just a clear, coded message.” He honestly has no idea “if Maya has fallen out of love with her husband or is just afraid that she has, or, maybe, is actually afraid that her husband has stopped loving her.”103 He went on to say that he is not even sure whether his protagonist, Maya, knows the answer.104 Keret’s stories never quite arrive at a definitive landing place. The journey is navigated with a purpose and destination in mind, but a final embankment point is hardly ever reached. In an interview with Terry Gross titled “What Etgar Keret Learned from His Father about Storytelling and Surviving,”105 Keret recalled a scene from Miloš Forman’s film adaptation of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In the scene, Jack Nicholson in the role of Randle McMurphy tries to lift an enormously heavy water cooler. Keret identifies with the hopelessness of trying to lift a far too heavy object. And yet, he keeps on trying. The ultimate enemy, he said, is not fascism or racism. The ultimate nemesis is “the force of inertia.” A good story can resonate as a slap in the face that leaves readers confused enough to think, feel, and care “to be in an authentic place.” He added, “I feel like I’m writing for myself and for humanity, loving the world, you know?” The narrator of “One Gram Short”106 is attracted to a waitress named Shikma. She is adorable. Apparently, he has difficulties mustering the courage to ask her out on a date. Instead, he suggests they smoke marijuana. For some reason the idea of sharing a hand-rolled cannabis cigarette seems less brazen than suggesting a movie or dinner at a restaurant. Shikma agrees, which sends the young man off in search of a gram of marijuana. Ordinarily a reliable supplier of cannabis, Avri, a high school classmate, is out of stock, but he is acquainted with a lawyer by the name of Corman who always seems to have in his possession a stash of 103

Keret (Treisman 2011). Keret (Treisman 2011). 105 Etgar Keret, “What Etgar Keret Learned from His Father about Storytelling and Surviving,” interview with Etgar Keret by Terry Gross, Fresh Air NPR, August 5, 2016,htttp://www.npr.org/2016/08/05/488370839/what-etgar-keret-learned-fromhis-father. 106 Etgar Keret, “One Gram Short,” in Fly Already (2019), 8-17. 104

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medicinal marijuana. Corman lives up to his reputation, providing he can get something in return. He asks that Avri and the narrator attend a trial, a civil suit in which an Arab is accused of killing a ten-year-old Israeli girl in a hit-and-run car accident. Corman represents the parents of the girl and wants the young men to stir things up and create a commotion in the courtroom. “Scream at the defendant. Call him a murderer. Maybe cry, curse a bit, but nothing racist ...”107 Avri believes Corman’s quid pro quo deal is a terrific exchange of favors. The narrator, however, is aware of the absurdity of it all. “Smoking dope is illegal, but screaming at an Arab who ran over a little girl—that’s not only legal, it’s downright normative.108 Throughout the trial, the narrator fantasizes about Shikma and him as a married couple. He imagines a court case similar to Corman’s, except that this time, it is their daughter, Shikma’s and his, who is the victim of a hitand-run. In the story’s real happenings, once the trial of the Arab concludes, Corman rewards the narrator not just with one gram but twenty grams of marijuana. What does recreational pot smoking have to do with a trial of an Arab accused of reckless driving? As Keret suggested to Treisman in “This Week in Fiction: Etgar Keret,”109 the answer has to do with his quest for authenticity as an antidote and countermeasure to inertia. To an extent, the intimacy generated from a shared experience of smoking pot hinges on trusting someone with whom one is committing an innocuous illegal act. He recalled the first time he smoked pot with a female friend. It was not necessarily the effect of cannabis that he found especially gratifying. Rather, it was the sensuality of touching the girl’s fingers when passing the marijuana cigarette back and forth. “One Gram Short” is about craving sensual authenticity, inversely illuminated in the story by exposing its contrary: an “inauthentic and misplaced aura” that Corman orchestrates in the courtroom. Avri’s readiness to holler insults at the accused solely because he is an Arab: Is no more than a litmus test, as his cries in the courtroom are a simple exploitation of an existing zeitgeist … When you live in a country where

107

Keret, “One Gram Short” (2019), 12. Keret, “One Gram Short” (2019), 13. 109 Etgar Keret, “This Week in Fiction ‘One Gram Short’ by Etgar Keret,” interview with Etgar Keret by Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker, November 24, 2014,https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-this-week-etgar-keret2014. 108

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Introduction: Etgar Keret’s Literature smoking a joint is illegal but shouting at an Arab in court is normative, you just go with the flow.110

Keret’s idea of authenticity is universally applicable. Nonetheless, obvious or inferred, the specificity of the Israeli locale as the backdrop to Etgar Keret’s literature is pertinent and significant. Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol, Isaac Babel, Bashevis Singer, Sholom Aleichem, Kurt Vonnegut, and Raymond Carver are some of the non-Israeli authors revered by Keret. However, it is the Israeli social-political-cultural milieu that he knows best. In “Matchstick War,”111 Hamas is firing missiles from Gaza. BenGurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, where Keret teaches, is within the range of possible hits. When the siren goes off, everyone must make his or her way to the nearest shelter. On one such day, the alarm blares while Keret is in the cafeteria that is located too far from a bombshelter. As an alternative, Keret finds shelter at a windowless entrance to a university building. He is in the company of several students, “and a grave faced-lecturer who went on eating his sandwich on the concrete steps as if nothing was happening.”112 Waiting for the all-clear signal, the narratorauthor recognizes Kobi, “a crazy kid from my childhood in Ramat Gan who liked fifth grade so much he stayed in it for two years.”113 At fortytwo, middle-aged Kobi looks the same as Kobi the boy in elementary school. Kobi too recognizes Keret and the two engage in a friendly chat. Kobi is considering relocating to Beersheba. Now that the town is in rocket range, land values will drop, generating great real estate chances. Reminiscing over their childhood days in Ramat Gan, Keret and Kobi recall the time when Saddam Hussein rained down ballistic missiles on Ramat Gan and Kobi was worried about a Scud missile hitting his matchstick construction of the Eiffel Tower. Thrilled to have run into Keret once again, Kobi says “Just think: if it wasn’t for that Qassam rocket, we could have walked right past each other.”114 The ubiquitous ills of capitalism notwithstanding, the Israeli habitat always silhouettes into Keret’s storytelling. Keret is not only a prolific writer; he is also an avid, impassioned talker. We first met in 2013 at a café in Keret’s beloved city of Tel Aviv. We agreed on a meeting place, and from there walked to a nearby coffee 110

Keret (Treisman 2014). Etgar Keret, “Matchstick War,” in The Seven Good Years: A Memoir (2015), 60-61. 112 Keret, “Matchstick War” (2015), 60. 113 Keret, “Matchstick War” (2015), 61. 114 Keret, “Matchstick War” (2015), 62. 111

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shop. People passing-by recognize the famous writer. Now and then, someone waves in Keret’s direction and he acknowledges the gesture by nodding his head. I am awestruck and somewhat uncomfortable knowing that in terms of age, I could be his mother. I take fastidious notes and taperecord our conversation. I did not want to miss a word he said.115 Keret is extremely affable. He knows my subject of interest is Holocaust remembrance and is glad to be of assistance. On the one hand, Keret explains, as a child of Holocaust survivors, he feels privileged to live in the “space and culture” known as Israel. On the other, at times he finds it unbearable. Keret’s father, Efraim, was a Zionist Revisionist and a disciple of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the Zionist activist, orator, writer, and soldier who believed in militant Jewish self-defense. Keret hastens to add that in those days, combative revisionist activism was different. Articulated by Keret in “My Less Equal Israel,”116 in recent years, violence “is rearing its ugly head all around us—not just in the dark corners of our Israeli democracy, but also in the Knesset: When an entire leadership tries to pass laws to circumvent Supreme Court rulings … the general atmosphere becomes such that it doesn’t always make it easy to distinguish between what is permissible and what is not.

History, Keret predicts, will not judge Benjamin Netanyahu kindly. He will be remembered as “a prime minister who talked a good game but who, when put to the test, was a dismal failure.”117 On his part, Keret believes that the most commendable form of demonstrating allegiance to one’s country is to tell it as it is. He would agree with Richard Rorty who suggests in “Pragmatism, Literature, and Democracy”118 that “a culture of pragmatism” is best when aligned with liberal democracy. Democracy, Rorty says, is “bland, calculating, petty, and un-heroic,” but it is also the only safeguard against totalitarianism and as such “a reasonable price to pay for political freedom.”119 115

Whether in person or by email, Keret and I converse in Hebrew. The wording provided in English is my own and I have made every effort to produce a near verbatim translation. 116 Etgar Keret, “My Less Equal Israel,” trans. Sondra Silverston, Tablet Magazine, June 29, 2012, https://www.tabletmag.com sections/Israel-middle-east/articles/myless-equal-israel. 117 Keret, “My Less Equal Israel” (2012). 118 Richard Rorty, “Pragmatism, Literature, and Democracy,” in The Rorty Reader, eds. Christopher J. Vorparil and Richard J. Bernstein (West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2010). 119 Rorty (2010), 253.

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Keret has his doubts about the merits of group cohesion, in that he concurs with Derrida who in an interview with François Ewald—A “Certain ‘Madness’ Must Watch Over Thinking”120—remarked that cohesion can mean a threat as much as a promise. Asked by Ewald if he, Derrida, has found his community, Derrida replied that—if one thinks of belonging to a community in positive, even ideal terms—“It can never be found, one never knows whether it exists … Such a community is always to come.”121 “A Thought in the Shape of a Story”122 is about the dangers embedded in group unanimity. The placid tonality and serenity of “A Thought in the Shape of a Story” accentuates the story’s roaring message. A young, somewhat strange man is living on the moon. Not too long ago it was a sought-after living space. Presently, however, no one lives up there. Back then, the people living on the moon thought they were very special, for they had complete control over the shape of their thoughts. For example, I love you could be a thought envisioned in the shape of a coffee mug or a pot or even in a design of flared pants. Gradually, however, people began to feel the need to standardize and agree on the configuration of every thought. A mother’s love must be in the shape of a curtain, and a father’s love ought to look like an ashtray. Before long, everyone was convinced that this sort of cohesion and consistency were extremely beneficial for it made it easier to know what everyone was thinking. Everyone, that is, but the young man who remains convinced that “every person has at least one unique thought that resembles only itself and him.”123 The people did not like this sort of eccentricity. It reached a point whereby the guy was looked upon as a global threat, for the simple reason that the moon has very little gravitational force and is therefore dependent on discipline and order. Even the slightest deviation from the norm could result in disrupting an indispensible equilibrium. There could be no greater threat if everyone had different thoughts. Realizing the young person was not about to abandon independent thinking, the people felt they had no choice. They locked the man up in a single, three by three thought about loneliness. Confined to his narrow cell of loneliness, the lad comes up with a final 120

Jacques Derrida, “A Certain ‘Madness’ Must Watch Over Thinking: Interview with Jacques Derrida,” Jacques Derrida interviewed by François Ewald, Educational Theory, 45, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 273-283. 121 Derrida, (Ewald 1995), 282. 122 Etgar Keret, “A Thought in the Shape of a Story,” in The Nimrod Flip-Out, trans. Miriam Shlesinger and Sondra Silverston (London, UK: Chatto & Windus, 2005), 149-152. 123 Keret, “A Thought in the Shape of a Story” (2005), 150.

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thought “in the shape of a rope,” makes a noose, and hangs himself. The people on the moon were very impressed with the originality of a thought about despair in the shape of a rope. Before long, everyone had the same thought, “[A]nd that’s how all the people on the moon became extinct, leaving behind only that cell of loneliness.”124 When the first astronauts reached the moon, all they could find were thousands of craters in the shape of thoughts about nothing. As in most, if not all traits of his personality, Keret attributes his objection to group pressure to being a child of Holocaust survivors. As a child, he attended a school in which most of his classmates and teachers were of Iraqi ethnicity. The Holocaust narrative taught in his school conflicted with the version he knew from his home. Paraphrasing the school’s version of the Nazi Holocaust, Keret told me it went more or less like this. At a certain period in modern history, the German people went bonkers. Most people in Germany and elsewhere did nothing to stop terrible things from happening to the Jews because they were all vile antiSemites. The millions of Jews who chose to ignore the writing on the wall, and did not leave Europe, were foolish. Jews can only be safe in Israel. Any Jew who does not immigrate to Israel is an idiot.125 His parents went through the Holocaust, but their arms were not tattooed. At home, his parents listened to Wagner and his mother loved reciting poetry in Polish. Outside Keret’s childhood home in Ramat Gan, his parents tried to blend in, and they did not speak Hebrew with a foreign accent. Keret suggested to me some similarities with fifteenth-century Marranos, Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula who converted, or were forced to convert to Catholicism, but continued to practice Judaism in secret. He intimated to me that psychologically, the challenge of having to live with two different Holocaust narratives resulted in developing a schizoid reactive reflex—the kind of reflex known to spies who assume a dual identity. The duality of Keret as a standalone phenomenon and a successive link within an iridescent ambit of the development of Hebrew literature intrigues me. Keret’s tendency is to speak in binary terms when emphasizing his divergence from prominent Israeli writers such as Amos Oz, Haim Be’er, A. B. Yehoshua, and David Grossman. He does not denigrate mainstream Israeli literature although he views his writings antithetical to an “epic style” which typifies the meta-Zionist discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. I, however, wish to emphasize Keret’s indissoluble rootedness in what preceded him. True, Keret’s style differs from, say, Oz’s ornate 124 125

Keret, “A Thought in the Shape of a Story” (2005), 152. The translation from Hebrew into English is my own.

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opulence. That said, and whether Keret likes it or not, in the same way that Keret envisions a path leading from Kafka to Babel and to him, he constitutes an organic spin-off, a derivative offshoot of Binyamin Tamuz, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, S. Yizhar, Aharon Megged, Ruth Almog, A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and David Grossman—to name but a few Hebrew superstar writers. In summary, my contention is that Etgar Keret’s advent in the early nineties does not herald the dawn of a new era. Instead, Keret’s literature embodies a critical swerve from what led up to him. Landmarks in the development of Israeli literature, including the coming of Keret, can be traced back to the Palmach epoch, an era that culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel.126 The Palmach generation comprised a close-knit group although can hardly be thought of as monolithic. The common denominator was the need to balance idealism with realism, utopianism with practicality. The dream was of a Zionist oasis; the reality was the Jewish people crawling out of the ashes of the Holocaust and recovering from the heavy toll of the 1948 War of Independence. Remarkably, given the dire circumstances, perceptible variations and critical divergences from a dominant, shared national vision and political blueprint were already evident as part of the actualization of Israeli statehood. Navigating between embracing a meta-Zionist narrative and exposing its inconsistencies characterizes the writings of S. Y. Agnon, Haim Hazaz, Leah Goldberg, Avraham Shlonsky, Miriam Yalan-Shteklis, Amir Gilboa, Ruth Almog, Aharon Megged, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, Dan Pagis, S. Yizhar, Yehuda Amichai, Natan Zach, Dahlia Ravikovich, and others. Undoubtedly, a cultural heritage of critical reasoning and differentiation has fostered a wunderkind named Etgar Keret. Keret’s early years are marred with a dramatic erosion of Israeli consensus primarily over the continued occupation of post-1967 Palestinian territories. A political disquiet and turmoil began to gather momentum with the near disaster of the 1973 war, intensified over the next few years, and reached a crescendo with an embarrassing military expedition dubbed Operation Peace for Galilee. Ushered by Menahem Begin’s government and steered by Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, the 1982 maneuver aimed to weaken the Syrian hold over southern Lebanon and striking at PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) forces. In all likelihood, the 126

Palmach in Hebrew is an acronym for “attack or strike units” (pelugot ma‫ۊ‬ats). Founded in 1941, these units of both men and women were considered an elite army force. With the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1948, the Palmach was incorporated into the Israeli Defense Force. The mythical ethos of selfsacrifice, bravery, and moral integrity of Israel’s army endured for generations to come.

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operation would not have drawn significant public attention had it not been for the fact that, in the course of the military campaign, Israeli troops did nothing to thwart the massacre of Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila by members of the Christian Phalange militia. The reaction among Israelis to the army’s unseemly conduct was swift and vocal. The sanctity of the army was called into question. The “ein brera” (no alternative) mantra, of no other option except respond with military force to security threats, ceased to be incontestable.127 On September 25, 1982, several hundred thousand protestors, including soldiers in uniform— the largest rally in Israel’s history—gathered in Tel Aviv’s municipal square in a Peace Now demonstration.128 In “Life at a Louder Volume,” Maya Jaggi cites Keret’s reflection on the dramatic shifts with respect to the Israeli milieu: The image of us ... only reacting to aggression was broken. The first Lebanon war was Israel’s Vietnam. We started to become reflexive; you see that the narrative you live is not the only narrative—others are telling another story. I realized we’re making choices. You assume more responsibility.129

It is with reference to responsibility towards the Other that Jacques Derrida propounded in The Gift of Death130 the morally necessary principle: “Tout autre est tout autre” (every other is entirely other). Reiterated by Derrida in Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971-2001, after the Holocaust: It is not enough to regard ourselves tirelessly eloquent about the end of philosophy, about the inability of human sciences … about the return of the religious in its enigmatic and dispersed power, about uncontrollable 127

In addition to viewing security issues and the role of the Israeli army in less glorified terms, the eighties were a turning point for female writers—Amalia Kahana-Carmon, Yehudit Hendel, Shulamit Hareven, Michal Govrin, Yehudit Katzir, Zeruya Shalev, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Orly Castel-Bloom, Batya Gur, Savyon Liebrecht, Ronit Matalon, Hannah Bat Shahar, Nava Semel, and Agi Mishol to name but a few—as well as for Jewish writers of North African and Middle Eastern lineage. 128 Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the evacuation of Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000. 129 Etgar Keret, “Life at a Louder Volume,” interview with Etgar Keret by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian, March 17, 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/ 03/17/featuresreviews/guardianview11. 130 Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, Literature in Secret, trans. David Wills (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996).

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Introduction: Etgar Keret’s Literature ‘technological mutations’ that no longer seem commensurable with what we still call ethics, politics, culture, ecology, economy … and about the new for itself of a finite humanity that finally knows itself capable of a radical auto-destruction.131

The massiveness of the Holocaust brings Jakob Lothe, Susan Rubin Suleiman, and James Phelan to conceptualize “after the Holocaust” in After Testimony; the Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future as encompassing everything from living to dying, and that has led me to connote Holocaust remembrance with the idea of individual and/or group/society/nation coping with remembrance.132 In their study of coping with remembrance of tragedies, Living with Grief: Coping with Public Tragedies, Marcia Lattanzi-Licht and Kenneth J. Doka133 focus on societies rather than individuals. As Kenneth J. Doka articulates in “What Makes a Tragedy Public?”134 and in “Memorialisation, Ritual, and Public Tragedy,”135 the magnitude of a tragedy is not the only factor in determining modes and scales of responding and coping with remembrance of traumatic tragedies. For example, the response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 had little to do with the actual number of people killed and the damage incurred. Terrifying as it was, relative to other warlike strikes, the 9/11 assault was far from colossal. Rather, the coping mechanism had to do with a superpower’s sudden loss of infallibility. In addition, and in direct relation to the Holocaust and coping with its remembrance, responses to tragedies produce retrospective viewpoints on preventability, expectedness, and intentionality of violence. Generally speaking, retrospective assessment is situated along a “naturalto-human-made continuum:” the more natural the disaster—as in an earthquake—the less preventable. When a disaster is not an outcome of natural causes, and where at all possible, attempts can be made to prevent re-occurrences. However, this type of reckoning is not as straightforward as it may seem. While believed to be a necessary undertaking, post-9/11 131

Jacques Derrida, Negotiations: Interventions, and Interviews 1971-2001, ed. & trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 69-70. 132 Jakob Lothe, Susan Rubin Suleiman, and James Phelan, eds. After Testimony; the Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future, (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2012). 133 Marcia Lattanzi-Licht and Kenneth J. Doka, eds. Living with Grief: Coping with Public Tragedies, (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003). 134 Kenneth J. Doka, “What Makes a Tragedy Public?” in Living with Grief: Coping with Public Tragedies, eds. Marcia Lattanzi-Licht and Kenneth J. Doka, (2003), 3-13. 135 Doka, “Memorialisation, Ritual, and Public Tragedy” (2003), 179-189.

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preventive measures such as profiling Middle Eastern travelers turned out to be rather ineffective in reassuring the public of their safety. Furthermore, profiling travelers was/is construed as infringement on civil liberties. In fact, as Doka shows, present-day security procedures at airports are oftentimes perceived as protracted signs of looming danger. Last, public tragedies tend to leave a residue that remains dormant until reignited by yet another calamitous event. Put another way, new tragedies beget “old” responses to traumatic remembrance, as when a terrorist attack in Israel unleashes Holocaust-related fears of annihilation. When arguing that coping with traumatic remembrance of the Holocaust permeates Keret’s literature, I keep in mind Lawrence Langer’s disquiet in The Age of Atrocity; Death in Modern Literature136 about the beautification of suffering. At the same time, I consider the primacy of literature in general and Keret’s literature in particular if only, but not only, because factual historicity, philosophy, and political theory have come up short in relation to the Holocaust and its remembrance. Eminent historians, Saul Friedländer and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi among them, acknowledge the lead taken by literature in grappling with remembrance of the Holocaust. Citing Yerushalmi’s Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory137—an exemplary probe into the eruptive pull between the biblical dictate to remember and modern, secular historicity—Friedländer weighs in on the history-literature predicament in a write-up titled “Trauma, Memory, and Transference.”138 “Awaiting a redeeming myth, as in the wake of the expulsion from Spain when (the Jewish people) embraced the mystical symbolism of the Kabbalah,”139 and with no such post-Holocaust redemptive myth, historians resign themselves to literature as a surrogate. Avowed by Maurice Blanchot in The Writing of the Disaster, literature not history, keeps watch over absent meaning.140 History failed to anticipate a trajectory from the oak tree under which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe supposedly wrote his prose and poetry, to the year 1937 when the beech forest was cleared in preparation for the 136

Lawrence Langer, The Age of Atrocity; Death in Modern Literature (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978). 137 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991). 138 Saul Friedländer, “Trauma, Memory, and Transference,” in Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 252-263. 139 Friedländer (Hartman 1994), 255. 140 Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, trans. Anne Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986).

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construction of Buchenwald concentration camp, with Goethe’s oak tree left standing at the center. Succinctly conveyed by Jay Winter in Remembering War: the Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century, “Historical remembrance entails much more than chronology of events, documentations, and credible first-person narratives.” Acts of remembrance “must recognize the role of novelists, playwrights, poets, filmmakers, architects, museum designers and curators, television producers, and others in this varied set of cultural practices we term historical remembrance.”141 Lastly, as a concluding introductory remark, I note that emblematic of the intellectual and emotional perils delineated here is my personal struggle to wrestle with my family’s Holocaust history and cope with its traumatic remembrance. The despair I felt when trying to grapple with an archival document dated May 9, 1942 elucidates the matter. The document is a deportation order of all Jewish residents from the German town of Eisenach—my father’s hometown. Of all the evidence I have gathered over the years regarding the murder of members of my maternal and paternal families, this document strikes me as inhumanity at its incomparable, matter-of-fact, unvarnished worst. My grandmother, Paula Seliger, is number 106 on the list of deportees; nùmmer 106 - Eisenach-Stadt transport. On that merciless day, a Catholic nun retrieved a copy of the expulsion decree and for reasons only she knows decided to hold on to it. Years later, having located the whereabouts of Paula’s only child, my father, she sent the document to him and he subsequently entrusted it with me. The two-page document bears the signature of a Nazi official named Adolf Diamant. The most frightening aspect of this testament is its formality. Typed with some added hand-written notations, the names of Eisenach’s Jewish deportees are listed in alphabetic order, from Ella S. August-Lazar to Ilse S. Zimmer. I am forever haunted by an image of a man in uniform, boots, swastika armband and all, assuming a posture of self-grandeur as he presides over this preposterous operation, perusing the list, pausing here and there to jot down whatever it is that came to his depraved mind. I have read and reread the expulsion document that sent my grandmother from Eisenach to Lublin and from there to AuschwitzBirkenau. I turned it this way and that way. I even inspected it with a magnifying glass hoping to uncover God only knows what. I touched and kissed the spot where Paul Seliger’s name appears. To no avail; I could not 141

Jay Winter, Remembering War: the Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century (2006), 278.

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breathe life into it. This wretched piece of paper speaks of the meticulousness with which the Nazis carried out genocidal acts, but it reveals nothing that I can latch onto about my grandmother’s final days. Having written this book, I recognize that my pitiful attempts to extract some meaning out of a typed list of names was not about harvesting factual knowledge about my grandmother’s fate. In all probability, I have salvaged over the years all the facts I will ever be able to amass. Instead, my effort to tell my grandmother’s story by injecting life into an inexplicable, factual data was about coping with ash-covered remembrance. As Etgar Keret put it to me on a lovely afternoon in April 2013, at a café in Tel Aviv, deconstructing coping with Holocaust remembrance through storytelling is an act of survival.

1 POSTMEMORY AND PERSONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE

In “School Isn’t (Always) Like Jail”142 personal coping collides with communal modes of Holocaust remembrance and commemoration. The story opens with the author walking his son to school. It is Lev’s—the author-narrator’s son—first day at elementary school. Lev is carrying an oversized backpack and is beaming with pride. “Stooped-shouldered father” finds it difficult to keep up with his son’s rapid stride as they march down the school’s corridor in search of the boy’s first grade classroom. A handwritten poster hanging on the brick wall midway down the hall catches the author’s eye. Inscribed in red, the placard reads, “Like Lambs to the Slaughter.” “Like lambs to the slaughter” is a biblical quote.143 Its association with the Holocaust is attributed to Abba Kovner—a Hebrew and Yiddish poet and partisan figurehead in the Vilna ghetto—who, in 1942, called upon Jews to resist the Nazis and not succumb to being led to the slaughter like submissive sheep. In subsequent years, historians, psychologists, philosophers, and writers of literature, among them Yehuda Bauer, Idit Zertal, Raul Hilberg, Emil Fackenhein, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Daniel Goldhagen, Deborah Lipstadt, and Lucy Dawidowicz, repudiated the portrayal of Jews as passive and submissive victims. They argued that where at all possible, Jews did fight back, but given the expanse of the Nazi war against the Jews, and the widespread collaboration with the Nazis by the local nonJewish populations in Nazi-occupied Europe, resistance by Jews was all but doomed. In time, the sheep to the slaughter metaphor was adjudged preposterous in that it ostensibly put the blame on the victims.

142

Etgar Keret, “School Isn’t (Always) Like Jail,” trans. Sondra Silveston, Tablet Magazine, September 6, 2012, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/ articles/school-isn’t-always-like-jail. 143 Jeremiah 11:19 and Psalm 44:22. In Isaiah 53:7 the reference is not to lambs but to “like sheep to the slaughter.”

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Lev’s father assumes that the poster remained hanging on the wall from last year’s Holocaust Day of Remembrance ceremony. The poster’s archaic aphorism was enough to make Lev’s dad want to seize his boy and make a quick run for the school’s gates. In the back of his mind, he is also contemplating his wife’s cynical view of schools as institutions analogous to prisons: “The long corridors; the square, asphalt-paved yard into which the small prisoners are released a few times a day.” Father and son make their way to Lev’s designated classroom where a discussion takes place between the homeroom teacher, parents, and students. Agitated and borderline panic-stricken, Lev’s father is tempted to ask about emergency procedures in regard to earthquakes or missile attacks. Later, students, parents, and staff gather in the school’s assembly hall where the mayor of Tel Aviv addresses the students. Letting his keyed-up imagination run wild, Lev’s father envisions Lev as a grown up fighter pilot, then a high-ranking army officer, and then a mayor. He wonders what the point of all this is. “How many years did God give us on this ozone-punctured planet? Wouldn’t it be better to spend them playing with cats in the yard?” The opening ceremony concludes, and students line-up grade-by-grade, and are escorted by their homeroom teacher back to their respective classrooms. Lev seems happy, which, as Lev’s father recalls, is very different from what he felt years ago when attending “this hell called school.” Although “School Isn’t (Always) Like Jail” is not a blanket vilification of formal education, there is no question about Keret being a champion of informal education. Meakin Armstrong144 was curious to know what Keret tells university students who register for creative writing courses taught by the author. Keret said that he invariably begins with introducing the idea of “the badly written good story.” By turning literary hierarchy on its head, “and putting passion on top and not craft,” students have a much better chance of writing something that is not sterile. Writing that is lifeless “may look beautiful but is soulless.” The best stories according to Keret are usually “stories that people feel some type of urgency about.” I am also suggesting that the critique of conventional norms of formal schooling is intentionally encased by Keret within the context of coping with Holocaust remembrance triggered by words associated with the Holocaust—“like sheep to the slaughter”—inscribed on a school poster. As Keret suggested to Armstrong, “this is life—you’re put in a corner, and 144

Meakin Armstrong, “He’s Israel’s Top Writer, a Man Whose Work I Adore— and I Got to Spend Two Hours with Him.” Free Lance Writers, Guernica Magazine, interviewing Etgar Keret by Meakin Armstrong, August 20, 2015, http:// www.meakinarmstrong.com/ 2015/08/20/interviewing-etgar-keret.

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you have to get out. I believe that you can always get out.” Conveyed by D. G. Myers in “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” there is nothing anyone can do about the fact that the Holocaust happened; it is far too late for a reversal of this wretched chapter in the history of humanity. Yet, if we cannot affect its outcome, we still have the responsibility of drawing meaning out of the Holocaust. The ways in which we pay tribute to the memory of millions of victims is critical in defining us as human beings.145 Marianne Hirsch is a daughter of Holocaust survivors. In “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile,”146 Hirsch reflects on an essay written by the Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk. Published in 1991 in the German national weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Kaniuk’s essay—“Three and a Half Hours and Fifty Years with Günter Grass,”147—is a reflective account of his family’s life in Germany up until the Hitler era. The manner in which Kaniuk recalls German streets, aromas, sounds, and indigenous linguistic idioms kindled in Hirsch’s mind the concept of “postmemory in exile.” Postmemory consists of recollections that can never be fully incorporated into actual memory but continue to throb as nostalgic non-memory. As expanded upon by Hirsch in The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust, postmemory stands for “a syndrome of belatedness or post-ness”148 in relation to a familial Holocaust past. Others, among them Ellen Fine, Celia Lury, Alison Landsberg, James Young, and Henri Raczymow, think of postmemory as mémoire trouée, absent or belated memory, prosthetic memory, received memory, and vicarious witnessing. Despite being fully cognizant of not having been “there,” members of the generation born after the Holocaust are saddled with the weight of the trauma of Holocaust remembrance. Far be it from me to dispute Hirsch’s articulation in “Mourning and Postmemory” of the Holocaust as “a past that does not fade away.”149 As I shall convey, I myself experienced a postmemory instance in which it felt as if I were thrust back into reliving my family’s past in Germany. Instead, 145

D. G. Myers, “Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature, 51, no. 4 (Autumn 1999): 266288. 146 Marianne Hirsch, “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile” (1998). 147 Yoram Kaniuk, Dreienhalb Stunden und füfzig Jahre mit Günter Grass (Three and a Half Hours and Fifty Years with Günter Grass), Die Zeit, quoted by Marianne Hirsch in “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile” (1998), 419-420. 148 Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (2012), 3. 149 Marianne Hirsch, “Mourning and Postmemory” (2003), 418.

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my critique of Hirsch’s conceptualization of postmemory is consistent with Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwartz—Memories, Histories, Theories, Debates—who maintain that when considering Holocaust remembrance, one must always anticipate inconstancy and oscillation of historical circumstances.150 Hirsch structures the concept of postmemory as a fixed notion that lacks fluidity. As such, it is not responsive or dependent on shifting cultural and historical factors. To be clear, my critique of Hirsch’s modality of postmemory is not based on moral grounds. I do not doubt a claim made by Hirsch in “Objects of Return,” that as a member of the second generation she has few memories of her childhood but can recall in great detail her parents’ wartime days.151 Instead, my misgivings have to do with a principled objection to theoretical totalizing. I worry about referring to postmemory “as a structure of inter-transgenerational return of traumatic knowledge and embodied experience [italics in the original].”152 The notion of “structure” implies inalterable fixedness. I concur with Jenni Adams who argues in Magic Realism in Holocaust Literature: Troping the Traumatic Real that for postmemory to become less authoritative, thereby yielding to the fluidity of future configurations of Holocaust remembrance, it needs “to employ dialogic (in the manner of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘dialogic imagination’) representational strategies.”153 Typically, postmemory, belated memory, mémoire trouée, or vicarious witnessing goes along with an imagined homecoming to places one has never actually known. Sara Horowitz explains in “Nostalgia and the Holocaust”154 that children of Holocaust survivors—like Hirsch, Semel, and Keret—are fully aware of what separates their nostalgic yearning for a home they never knew from the nostalgia felt by their parents for the home they lost. Horowitz further notes that as disquieting as it may seem to speak of nostalgia in connection with the Holocaust, in this case, the 150

Memories, Histories, Theories, Debates, eds. Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwartz, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010). 151 Marianne Hirsch, “Objects of Return,” in After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future,” eds. Jakob Lothe, Susan Rubin Suleiman, and James Phelan (Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Press, 2012), 4. 152 Hirsch (2012), 6. 153 Jenni Adams, Magic Realism in Holocaust Literature: Troping the Traumatic Real (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 55. 154 Sara Horowitz, “Nostalgia and the Holocaust,” in After Representation? The Holocaust, Literature, and Culture, eds. R. Clifton Spargo and Robert M. Ehrenreich (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2010):41-58.

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concept of nostalgia embodies “an invocation of a world as yet untouched by the Nazi genocide, a world before transports, selections, and death camps.”155 It is not a wish to go back, say, from Tel Aviv to Lodz or from Toronto to Berlin; “it is the yearning that is desired and not the actual return.”156 In “We Would Not Have Come Without You: Generations of Nostalgia”157 co-written by Marianne Hirsch and her husband, Leo Spitzer, the contours of post-Holocaust nostalgic “return” are applied to members of the first and second generations. The first generation is represented by Lotte and Carl Hirsch, Marianne’s parents, and the second by their daughter and their son-in-law, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer. The year was 1988 and the return journey was to a city once called Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi). Located in the southwestern region of Ukraine, Czernowitz was once a vivacious, spirited nucleus of Jewish writers, among them Itsik Manger, Yitskhok Leybush Peretz (Isaac Leib Peretz), and Sholem Asch within a Jewish hub of artisans, civil servants, merchants, and real estate owners. With the arrival of Romanian and German forces in July 1941, all that was left of gutted Jewish Czernowitz was debris and nostalgia for an obliterated “cultural landscape.”158 For members of the first generation, in this case Lotte and Carl Hirsch, looking back onto “a place or time in the past generally reflects a bitter-sweet, affectionate, positive relationship to what has been lost.” It is this type of nostalgic yearning—“pleasure and affection layered with bitterness, anger, and aversion”—that is passed on to Marianne and Leo. As such, for the second generation, a “return visit” to Chernowitz is less about a specific location and more about “a transitional space where the encounter between generations, between past and present, between nostalgic and traumatic memory can momentarily, effervescently, be staged.”159 In my particular case, information about my family’s genealogy and life in Germany before and during the Holocaust denotes what Henry Raczymow calls “une mémoire trouée” (Memory Shot Through With Holes)—“We have no family trees; at the most, we can go back to our grandparents.''160 Agreeing to join my father and stepmother on a trip to 155

Horowitz (2010), 45. Horowitz (2010), 49. 157 Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, “We Would Not Have Come Without You: Generations of Nostalgia,” American Imago, 59, no. 3 (2002), 253-276. 158 Hirsch and Spitzer (2002), 256. 159 Hirsch and Spitzer (2002), 274. 160 Henry Raczymow, “Memory Shot Through With Holes,” Yale French Studies, No. 85 (1994), 104. 156

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Germany, during which an honorary citizenship was bestowed upon my father by the mayor of Eisenach—my father’s place of birth—I was confident that my “return” to Germany would be anything but an incarnation of Lot’s wife frozen for eternity in a gaze back onto Sodom and Gomorrah. I never saw myself as having any sort of inclination to cast myself in the role of Hamlet fixated on a ghost, and I fully concurred with Eva Hoffman cautioning in “The Long Afterlife of Loss” against the “Orphic danger”161 of dragging oneself into the irremediable murkiness of the Hades. My visit to Germany, so I thought, had nothing to do with a nostalgic odyssey and kindred “return.” I was mistaken. The year was 1981. As the El Al plane began its descent into Frankfurt’s airport and Germany’s landscape came into view, I recall feeling a mix of vulnerability enmeshed in embittered indignation at the bird’s-eye view of lush woodland and landscape splendor. How could this magnificent terrain nurture heinous human atrocities? It beggared belief; how could cultured men and women become so assiduous in their murderous plans as to construct gas chambers to look like showers? After landing in Frankfurt, we first headed for Bad Kissingen. Bad Kissingen is a Bavarian town situated on the southeast borderline of the Rhön. A popular vacation site, the “Bad” prefix indicates a town ranking as a therapeutic mineral and mud spa. Among its famed past visitors were Tsar Alexander II, Empress Sissi, Leo Tolstoy, and Otto von Bismarck. The town’s archival records make mention of the Rindfleish pogrom of 1298 when Jews were massacred in Bad Kissingen and other Bavarian communities. From the seventeenth century on, up until the Nazi era, Bad Kissingen’s Jews enjoyed several measures of protection granted by local rulers. The community’s first synagogue was constructed in 1705, a cemetery in 1801, and a second synagogue in 1902. Jews were active in Bad Kissingen’s local organizations, businesses, and the town’s prosperous tourist industry. For my father, the town embodied much of the effervescence of preHitler Germany. He evoked Bad Kissingen in superlative terms, reminding me of W. G. Sebald’s characterization in The Emigrants162 of Luisa Ferber’s affection for Bad Kissingen. In contrast, my interest in the place is narrowly confined to the Nazi era when German assailants desecrated 161

Eva Hoffman, “The Long Afterlife of Loss,” in Memory: History, Theories, Debates. eds. Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwartz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 405-415. 162 W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants, trans. Michael Hulse (London UK: The Harville Press, 1996).

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the town’s Jewish cemetery, destroyed its two synagogues, and deported the Jewish population to Dachau, from there to Izbica ghetto and Theresienstadt, and finally to Treblinka and Auschwitz. En route from the airport to the hotel, I purposely initiate a lively conversation with our cab driver. He speaks German with a foreign (Turkish?) accent. It is music to my ears. The luxuriousness of the hotel is striking. The incongruity of my father, a child of Holocaust victims, and Ruth, a member of what Susan Rubin Suleiman labels in “The 1.5 Generation: Georges Perec’s W or the Memory of Childhood” as “the 1.5 generation”163—children who lived through World War II—going out of their way to make my stay pleasurable sweeps over me. It is a hot summer day. My hotel room is elegant. A painting on the wall depicts serene, pastoral countryside. Ruth and my father are having their Schlafstunde—a mid-day rest which members of my family observe like a religious ritual. I, however, am too agitated. The idea of a laid-back siesta in Germany is incompatible with the tempestuous rage sweltering in my subconscious. I step onto the balcony from where I have a view of the hotel’s backyard garden. Since setting foot in Germany, I find myself on the lookout for some cataclysmal “evidence”—something incriminating that took place right here! I glance over a pretty sight of compacted shrubs enriched with arching branches covered with small white flowers, and a mix of pink, yellow, and blue blossoms encircling a large oak tree. I can think of little else but my father’s aunt, who, just like Sebald’s Luisa Ferber, committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree shortly before the Nazis closed in on Bad Kissingen and I fear I am about to lose my mind. I decide that the only way to take a hold of myself is to venture outdoors for a brisk, vigorous walk. I find myself loathing everything about Bad Kissingen’s synthetic, emerald green parks and oval-shaped ornamental ponds with super-cute ducklings swimming in synchronized watercourses. Orchestral music of Johann Strauss’s waltzes emanating from nearby parks amplifies the indignation of it all. Everything disseminates kitsch. As suggested by Saul Friedländer—my history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem— in Reflections of Nazism: an Essay on Kitsch and Death, 164 kitsch lacks depth. It is cheap, available for mass consumption, and is a vulgarization 163

Susan Rubin Suleiman, “The 1.5 Generation: Georges Perec’s W or the Memory of Childhood,” in Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust, eds. Marianne Hirsch and Irene Kacandes, (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2004). 164 Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death, trans. Thomas Weyr (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1984).

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of art. Nazi kitsch in particular was crude, trashy. Radiant young girls offering Hitler flower bouquets, grandiloquent Nuremberg rallies, and the choral ecstasy of ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer were nothing but a debasement of creative imagination and shoddy aestheticism. I scurry across the grounds adjoining the hotel and traverse several streets packed with eye-catching, colorful cafés. I quicken my pace away from the sugary vista of central Bad Kissingen and walk along a riverbank glade suffused with natural-looking bushes, shrubs, and deep-rooted flora. All at once, surrounded by rugged indigenous habitation, I am overcome by a piercing postmemory instant. An insufferable nostalgic yearning for this place engulfs me. Bad Kissingen is my birthright, my native soil, my ancestral territorial-cultural inheritance. I fall to my knees and sob—more like howl—uncontrollably. Subliminal responses to a fortuitous encounter with verdant scenery are at the core of Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory.165 A legacy of “the sunny confidence of the Enlightenment” is castigated as darkened myths by a landscape “fertilized by the bones and blood of the unnumbered dead.”166 Svetlana Boym writes in The Future of Nostalgia167 about nostalgic cultural memory in relation to homes, places, and landscapes. Nostalgia derives from the Greek nostos (returning home) and algia (longing). It is about “longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed” and about “the repetition of the unrepeatable.”168 At the Grunewald station, Boym comes across an iron plaque inscribed with dates and numbers of nameless Jews transported from Grunewald to death camps. The railroad station is no longer in operation; it is “beyond repair and renewal.”169 I do not recall the length of time I remained in a kneeling position. As if in a temporary fugue state of disconnection from my sense of self, I only have a vague memory of walking back to the hotel. In retrospect, the postmemory experience at Bad Kissingen spurred a personal journey—not of healing and repair, for what is mercilessly obliterated cannot be repaired, but of being aware more than ever before of the profundity and intensity of coping with Holocaust remembrance. Preoccupation with family history and Holocaust remembrance is not a mere idée fixe. Desperate excavation into evidence—no matter how relevant—typifies members of Holocaust families. Famously expressed in 165

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). Schama (1996), 19. 167 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001). 168 Boym, (2001), xiii, xvii. 169 Boym (2001), 194. 166

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a poetic aphorism by the Hebrew poet Uri Zvi Greenberg, after the Holocaust the Jewish people resemble a bird with a severed wing. A bird can fly with one wing, but once amputated, a wing can never grow back. No matter how hard I try to unearth pre-Holocaust “evidence,” the pith of the trunk of my family tree remains hollow. Cramming more details into a blank space is not “just” about unearthing as much information as possible; it is about learning how to cope with flying with one wing only.

2 EMPATHIC PRAGMATISM

“Car Concentrate”170 by Etgar Keret is about an inability to cope with remembrance of a traumatic past and its manifestation in a fetishistic attachment to a relic from the past. A red, compressed metal block stands in an otherwise empty living room of the home of a forty-six-year-old male. Every visitor to the house wishes to know more about the metal block and the reason for it being at the center of the man’s home. Depending on the narrator-protagonist’s mood, and who is asking, the man comes up with different answers. His hope is that by providing different explanations, he will elicit a variety of interesting conversations. “A conversation is like a tunnel dug under the prison floor that you—patiently and painstakingly—scoop out with a spoon. It has one purpose: to get you away from where you are right now.”171 Thus, there are days when the crumpled metal object stands for a remnant of a ‘68 Mustang convertible. On other days, it is a piece of art made of red steel, and sometimes the man refers to it as an anchor that holds an entire house in place. Women tend to want to touch the object, while men try to lift it. Things change when the man develops romantic feelings towards a woman named Janet. Janet and the man work together at the cafeteria of President Abraham Lincoln High School. Janet is a single mom raising twin boys named after the fabled biblical friends, David and Jonathan. The man likes to picture Janet as his own mother. In real life, his mother died in a car crash forty-five years ago. How he wishes it were his father, not his mother, who died. What would have happened to him and his brother? Would he turn out to be working in a cafeteria kitchen? Would his brother still be locked away in a maximum-security prison? One thing is rather clear: he would not have a remnant of a crushed Mustang on display in his living room. When Janet arrives for a visit, she does not touch the awkward-looking steel object; she merely gives it a brief glance. In an attempt to engage 170 171

Etgar Keret, “Car Concentrate,” in Fly Already (2009), 45-53. Keret, “Car Concentrate” (2009), 47.

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Janet in a conversation, the man tells her that the item is the sole possession he inherited from his father. To the man’s surprise and annoyance, Janet only wishes to know whether the man loved his father. Janet is not inclined to dwell on a lifeless object from the past and would much rather pursue a more meaningful dialogue about familial relationships. The man did not see this coming. He dodges the question about him loving his father by changing the subject and suggesting that the next time Janet comes for a visit, she should bring the twins along. Janet accepts the invitation. The twins are seven years old and “total sweetie pies.” David is the one who asks the man about the Mustang. The man tells him that he keeps it handy in the event that his pickup breaks down. When that happens he will mix the Mustang concentrate with water, wait until it dries, and then drive it to work. Predictably, a disaster ensues. Late at night, while Janet and the man are sleeping in the master bedroom, the twins drag a hose from the backyard court into the living room and soak the Mustang in water. Other than the twins creating a hideous mess in the living room, the Mustang remains a mere cumbersome chunk of scrap.172 Janet is furious with the man. She insists it is all the man’s fault, and she never wishes to speak to him again. The man is genuinely saddened. He talks himself into believing that if he gives Janet enough time and space, they will resume their intimate relationship. His plan is to appease her with a gift. Then, once she forgives him, he will tell her about his father, what a horrible, abusive father he was, and how he rather enjoyed seeing his father’s car compacted down into a flattened hunk of junk. He will tell her everything except for how he brought his father’s car to the scrap yard in Cleveland with his father’s body locked in the trunk. Janet will surely forgive him, bring back the boys, and together, the four of them will turn on the rusty faucet in the backyard, “and we won’t shut it off until that big empty room fills up like a pool.”173 In the end, apart from readers left assuming the man killed his father and guessing that Janet will not forgive him, the idea is for us to contemplate the discordance between crafting narratives of remembrance that are meaningful and forward looking as opposed to obsessing over stagnant relics from a painful past.

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Inexplicably, perhaps, I associate the remnants of the Mustang in “Car Concentrate” with objects of traumatic remembrance depicted by Brett Kaplan, Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representations (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007). 173 Keret, “Car Concentrate” (2009), 53.

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An ability to cope with traumatic memory does not mean coming to terms with a tragic past. It means working-through as an alternative to working-out remembrance. Working-through and working-out traumatic remembrance are psychoanalytic terms. Whereas the diagnostic terminology designates two distinct processes of mourning and remembrance, the processes are not always in diametrical opposition. Working-out remembrance manifests itself in compulsive behavioral repetition. A compulsion to relive a trauma repeatedly affects our ability to experience the present to its fullest and narrows the capacity to plan for a productive future. In contrast, while the process of working-through does not preclude occurrences of acting-out remembrance, it is possible to attain a capacity to work-through remembrance by acquiring a broader perspective of the past. Lastly, acting-out and working-through are applicable to individuals and to societies en masse. Dominick LaCapra applies the typologies of working-through and working-out to Holocaust remembrance in History and Memory after Auschwitz.174 LaCapra emphasizes that while the impulse to reenact a trauma of the magnitude of the Holocaust is perfectly understandable, and that asking the Jewish people to cope with Holocaust remembrance by working-through their tragic past is asking an awful lot, acting-out remembrance of the Holocaust is bound to prevent individuals and a collective from living life to its full potential. Particularly with regard to a nation as a whole, in this case Israel, there are profound implications to acting-out traumatic remembrance. Most specific, “never again” rhetoric, goaded by Holocaust fear mongering, stands in the way of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As stated by LaCapra in a 1988 interview with Amos Goldberg in Jerusalem, “Acting-Out and Working-Through Trauma,”175 working-through remembrance does not mean getting over the past; it means acquiring some sort of critical removal from the past, thereby fostering a capacity to acknowledge other peoples’ sufferings without minimizing one’s own. Equating a Nazi concentration camp with a Palestinian refugee camp is absurd. That, however, does not justify denying the abysmal living conditions in a refugee camp. LaCapra notes that working-through and working-out “are always implicated in each other,” but it is nonetheless important “to see them as countervailing forces.” None of this, LaCapra concludes, is to suggest that working174 Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998). 175 Dominick LaCapra, “Acting-Out and Working-Through Trauma,” interview with Dominick LaCapra by Amos Goldberg,” Shoah Resource Center, International School for Holocaust Studies, June 9, 1998.

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through remembrance of the Holocaust offers some sort of “Pollyanna redemptive mode;” it is, however, vital in safeguarding Holocaust remembrance against “apocalyptic politics” and immovable entrenchment in the past.176 A core issue in the study of Holocaust remembrance is the divide and/or the overlap between collective/communal and personalized forms of remembrance. In Shaping Losses: Cultural Memory of the Holocaust Julia Epstein and Lori Hope Lefkovitz identify some similarities between modes of collective remembrance and personalized modes, and, in contrast, instances when collective remembrance and individual remembrance are at odds with each other.177 LaCapra’s aim is to minimize “the binary opposition between the individual and society.”178 Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale is viewed by LaCapra as a format in which, through visual images (cartoons) that supplement a corresponding text, the collective and the personal interact effectively at the “level of metaphor or allegory.”179 Vladek, Art’s father, is a Holocaust survivor. In revealing his personal story, he also aspires to tell the history of Jews in Poland during the Nazi era. Vladek’s narrative is authentic, although not always factually accurate. It is through the medium of literature that Art ventures to “correct” Vladek’s recollections. Literature does not replace historicity. Rather, literature embodies the confluence between factual history and collective/personal remembrance. It is the fluidity and elasticity of literature that make it a fitting conduit for working-through Holocaust remembrance. As affirmed by Saul Friedländer in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,”180 despite the plethora of Holocaust documentation, historians provide relatively few compelling reasons to explain the occurrence of the Holocaust. According to Friedländer, the starting point of Holocaust representation that can “generate the search for a new voice” is “the reality and significance of modern catastrophes [italics in the text]”181 as imparted through literature. Patrick Modiano’s

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LaCapra (Goldberg 1998). Julia Epstein and Lori Hope Lefkovitz, eds. Shaping Losses: Cultural Memory of the Holocaust (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 178 LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz (1998), 43. 179 Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, part 1 & 2 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986 & 1991), 161. 180 Saul Friedländer, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992). 181 Friedländer (1992), 10. 177

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haunting narrative, Dora Bruder,182 which tells of Dora’s personal transit from Saint-Coeur-de-Marie, Dora’s boarding school at 62 Rue du PetitPicpus in Paris, to Drancy and then Auschwitz, resonates with readers in ways that factual, historical timelines do not. As Ruth Franklin asserts in A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, when it comes to Holocaust remembrance, there is an “uneasy balance between fact and fiction.”183 Franklin considers the overlap between Imre Kertész, the author and the protagonist of Fatelessness, and W. G. Sebald’s manner of conjoining fiction with fact-based happenings in The Emigrants as noteworthy examples of comparability between fact and fiction.184 Etgar Keret’s literature too exemplifies a steady mix and parity between individual and collective, history and literature. Keret’s storytelling does not negate historicity. Keret’s literature transcends factual history. A question arises regarding the Holocaust in relation to other historical genocides of the modern era. Tragically, in addition to the Holocaust, humanity’s list of modern-day mass murders is extensive. It includes Western colonialism, Mao Zedong’s killing of his own people and Tibetans, Stalin’s purges, Turks’ slaughter of Armenians, millions of Russian prisoners of war left to starve to death by the Germans, and the horrors of Cambodia and Rwanda. Of these genocides, the Holocaust is considered the most horrendous. Six million murdered Jews is a monstrous number, but numbers alone do not explain the singularity of the Holocaust. What makes the Holocaust unprecedented is a combination of expanse and totality. Never before had so many people of different nationalities, proactively or passively, facilitated an invading army’s onslaught against defenseless civilians and its extermination of men, women, and children. As asserted by Alon Confino in Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding, “No other genocide constituted such a historical and epistemological break as the Holocaust.” Up until the Nazi era, Confino writes, the French Revolution was acknowledged as the “foundational event” in the history of modern Western civilization. “With the coming of the Third Reich, the political and humanistic discourse of

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Patrick Modiano, Dora Bruder, trans. Joanna Kilmartin (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999). 183 Ruth Franklin, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 189. 184 Imre Kertész, Fatelessness, trans. Tim Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 2004). W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants, trans. Michael Hulse (London UK: The Harville Press, 1996).

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the French Revolution was totally invalidated.”185 There is no healing from the Holocaust, nor will there ever be. Aptly expressed by Jeffrey C. Alexander in Remembering the Holocaust: a Debate, Auschwitz epitomizes “the engorgement of evil … ruining everything it touches.”186 As Maurice Blanchot says in “Literature and the Right to Death,” Auschwitz defiled not only life but death too.187 Geoffrey H. Hartman188 speaks of the collapse of symbols and lack of suitable linguistic terms to recount the Holocaust’s unprecedented happenings. Survivors had to learn to think and speak anew about the sufferings they endured in the ghettos, forced labor camps, death marches, and extermination camps. Terminology and narratives continue to be in a state of flux. It is not a question of accuracy or veracity. Rather, as Marita Sturken elucidates in “Narratives of Recovery: Repressed Memory as Cultural Memory,”189 it has to do with narratives, diction, and phrasing adapting to changing circumstances since the day of liberation. In her study of literature written by Aharon Appelfeld, Jorge Semprún, Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, Jean Améry, Ida Fink, and Elie Wiesel, Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction, Sara Horowitz190 rejects the idea of there being an ethical issue regarding adjustments and revisions of fictional narratives about the Holocaust. The fact that, as an example, the original, Yiddish version of Elie Wiesel’s Night, Un di Velt Hot Geshvign, differs from the later French edition, La Nuit, is beside the point; what matters is that Wiesel never deflects “our attention away from the event.”191

185 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding (New York: Cambridge University Press 2011), 5. 186 Jeffry C. Alexander, Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press 2009), 49-50. 187 Maurice Blanchot, “Literature and the Right to Death,” in The Station Hill: Blanchot Reader, Fictional & Literary Essays, ed. George Quasha, trans. Lydia Davis, Paul Auster, and Robert Lamberton (New York: Station Hill Press, Inc., 1999), 189-199. 188 Geoffrey H. Hartman, Scars of the Spirit: the Struggle Against Inauthenticity (New York: Palgrave MaCmillan, 2004). 189 Marita Sturken, “Narratives of Recovery: Repressed Memory as Cultural Memory,” in Acts of Memor. Cultural Recall in the Present, eds. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Grewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999), 231-248. 190 Sara Horowitz, Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction (1994). 191 Horowitz (1994), 24.

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Horowitz, Hartman, and Sturken are in congruence with postmodern rejection of the notion that absolute certainty of meaning can emanate from oral and written language. Propounded by Jacques Derrida’s postmodern philosophy, the “undecidable” embodies that which is always effacing and adding, expunging and creating. Delineated throughout Derek Attridge’s extensive work with Derrida and about Derrida, Derrida’s undecidable blurs the distinction between “delete” and “insert.”192 Geoffrey Harpham193 emblematizes Derrida’s postmodern, larger than life philosophy as “principled irresolution.”194 Postmodernism’s deconstructed undecidable allows for reiteration and interpretation that create further reiteration and interpretation, which bring about even further reiteration and interpretation and so on. Derrida’s objective is clear: keep things moving. The “de” in Derrida’s deconstruction does not indicate doing away with what exists; rather, it pertains to the complexity of extrapolating meaning out of spoken and written language. As asserted by Robert Eaglestone, Derridian deconstruction signifies a “relationship between what can be discussed, the text and the exorbitant (that which cannot be seen but ought to be accessible) which lies outside the text but forms its context.”195 Saul Friedländer196 correlates the Final Solution— the euphemism used by Nazi leaders in reference to the systematic annihilation of the Jewish people—with the Derridian exorbitant. As for the relationship between postmodern deconstruction and literature, major Derridian scholars, Robert Eaglestone, Simon Critchley, and Geoffrey Bennington,197 affirm that Derrida’s philosophic discourse on the ethics of deconstruction endorses literature as a preferable conveyer of Holocaust remembrance. In Derrida’s words—“This Strange Institution Called Literature: An

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Derek Attridge, Jacques Derrida: Acts of Literature (New York: Routledge, 1991). 193 Geoffrey Harpham, Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). 194 Harpham (1999), 30. 195 Robert Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 191. 196 Friedländer, Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution” (1992). 197 Robert Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern (2004), Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Political Resistance (London UK: Verso, 2012), and Geoffrey Bennington, “Deconstruction and Ethics,” Deconstruction: A User’s Guide, ed. Nicholas Royle (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 64-82.

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Interview with Jacques Derrida”198—in the aftermath of the Holocaust, literature’s propensity “to analyze every presupposition” carries more weight than ever before.199 Over the years, Derrida regarded his lack of familiarity with Jewish sources as a loss. In “There is No One Narcissism”200 Derrida alludes to the “banal way” in which his family practiced Judaism. There came a time when he regretted not being versed in Jewish sources, not out of “nostalgia for a sense of Judaic belonging,” but because he believed that not knowing the classics of one’s tradition “is a lacuna in anyone’s culture—[his own] in particular.” Still, in her quest to unearth the Jewish Derrida, Shellie McCullough—“Deconstruction as a Prayer: Cinders and the ‘We’ of Derrida’s Jewish Self”201—praises Derrida’s Cinders (Feu la Cendré)202 as an extraordinary Holocaust remembrance text. Prayer and cinders are linked together by Derrida into a “polyphony of an indeterminate number of voices in uncertain genders,” millions of victims who cannot be identified by name and are bequeathed a voice “through the writing of a single author … named Élie”—Derrida’s Hebrew name.203 In The Nearest Thing to Life, James Wood204 expounds on literature by W. G. Sebald as reflective of the Derridian conception of “the game of not quite”205—the principled, postmodern destabilization of conclusive theorizing. According to Wood, Sebald’s writings can “save life from itself.”206 Born in 1944, Sebald left Germany and moved to England in 1966 where he resided until his premature death in 2001. Sebald is famous for augmenting the written text with extraneous photographs of desolated people and places. These “teasing photographs” accord authenticity to a text about retrieved memory. Remarkably similar to Etgar Keret, Sebald’s “drifting melancholy” oscillates between Kafkaesque desperation and 198

Jacques Derrida, “This Strange Institution Called Literature: Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Jacques Derrida, Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New York: Routledge, 1992), 33-76. 199 Derrida (Attridge 1992), 36. 200 Jacques Derrida, “There is No One Narcissism,” in Points... Interviews, 19741994, ed. Elizabeth Weber trans. Peggy Kamuf & Others (1995), 205. 201 Shellie McCullough, “Deconstruction as a Prayer: Cinders and the ‘We’ of Derrida’s Jewish Self,” University of Bucharest Review, X, no. 2, 2008. 202 Jacques Derrida, Cinders, trans. Ned Lukacher (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991). 203 McCullough (2008), 74-75. 204 James Wood, The Nearest Thing to Life (Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2015). 205 Wood (2015), 29. 206 Wood (2015), 63.

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humor. Both Sebald and Keret remind us that it may be difficult to extract a story out of ruins, but as Wood contends, “[W]e must go there … into the past, in search of places and people who have some connection with us, on the far side of time, so to speak.”207 Adia Mendelson-Maoz208 too embraces precepts of Derridian deconstruction. She views Holocaust remembrance literature written in Hebrew as a moral laboratory. David Grossman’s novel See Under: Love209 is considered by Mendelson-Maoz a landmark in what she envisions as postmodern forms of rupturing. Protagonists in See Under: Love include an Israeli boy dreaming of overpowering a monstrous Nazi beast. Having gathered much information about the Holocaust, Grossman’s boy protagonist arrives at the conclusion that an encyclopedia is an insufficient source of knowledge, and that storytelling is the best literary medium for studying the Holocaust. Dvir Abramovich debates an issue related to ethical propriety in relation to writing about the Holocaust. What is the right thing for an author to do or avoid doing?210 Abramovich cites critics who regard Grossman’s seminal novel taboo breaking. The contention made is that in Grossman’s pursuit of literary authenticity, he risks fictionalizing presence in a concentration camp, an experience he never went through. Abramovich refers to an interview in which Yael Admony asked Grossman about the ethics of someone who never knew a day in a concentration camp imagining being there. Grossman replied that inserting himself into a concentration camp reflects his struggle with an insoluble question: if he lived during the Holocaust, what would he do to survive.211 In all, the trajectory outlined here from history to literature is a prelude to exploring Etgar Keret’s ambit of empathic pragmatism as it relates to postmodern literature about Holocaust remembrance. The theoretical essence of empathic pragmatism is consistent with postmodern literary deconstruction in that it controverts the infallibility of right versus wrong. Intrinsic to empathic pragmatism is openness to rethinking and reevaluating opinions and practices in light of changing circumstances. As an example—an immediate and pressing example as far as Keret is concerned—Keret believes that both Israelis and Palestinians are right and 207

Wood (2015), 97. Adia Mendelson-Maoz, Sifrut KeMa’abada Musarit (Literature as a Moral Laboratory) (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2009). 209 David Grossman, See Under: Love (1989). 210 Dvir Abramovich, Back to the Future: Israeli Literature of the 1980’s and 1990’s (Newcastle: UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). 211 David Grossman, interview with Yael Admoni, in Abramovich (2010). 208

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wrong. As Keret conveyed to Runo Isaksen in Literature of War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers,212 as painful as it may be, thinking in binary terms of right and wrong will not bring about a resolution. It can only move forward through empathic and pragmatic evenhandedness. Keret’s “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God”213 is an epitome of empathic pragmatism. At the outset, the readers encounter a bus driver who adheres to a doctrine of nonnegotiable precepts. Along the way, Keret’s bus driver questions the soundness of holding on to an intransigent mindset. In due course, mulling over the biblical God, who, for a brief time, the driver seriously considered becoming, the bus driver arrives at the conclusion that, occasionally, even God opts for sensitive compassion over unmitigated maxims.214 Prior to experiencing a moral epiphany engendering an epistemological metamorphosis, the driver’s reputation is that of being uncompromising in his refusal to open the doors for passengers who arrive seconds too late at the bus stop. Not for high school kids, nor for “high-strung people in windbreakers who’d bang on the door as if they were actually on time,” and not even for “little old ladies … with trembling hands …”215 The driver was quite certain passengers thought the worst of him. It would have been so much easier to accommodate latecomers who would smile and thank him. However, for the driver, it was a straightforward calculation according to which every delay added up to a loss of approximately thirty seconds per latecomer. Thus, even if not opening the doors for latecomers meant a loss of fifteen minutes or so until the next bus arrives, it was a matter of what is best for society as a whole. All that changed once a destabilizing factor, in the form of a lad named Eddie, inadvertently broke through the bus driver’s unyielding belief system. Eddie was a decent fellow. He earned a living as an assistant cook at a restaurant called “Steakaway.” Eddie had “a rare condition” that, no matter when and where, caused him to oversleep by ten minutes, and no

212

Etgar Keret, Literature of War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers, interview with Etgar Keret by Runo Isaksen, trans. Kari Dickson (Northampton, Massachusetts: Olive Branch Press, 2009). 213 Etgar Keret, “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God,” in The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories, trans. Miriam Schlesinger, Dalya Bilu, Margaret Weinberger Rotman, Anthony Berrisn, and Dan Ofri (London, UK: The Toby Press, 2004), 1-4. 214 The cultural significance of Israeli bus drivers is discussed in Chapter 4. 215 “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” (2004), 1.

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alarm clock made any difference.216 Most people tolerated Eddie’s habitual tardiness, which essentially meant that there was no incentive for Eddie to fight this disorder. That is, until he became infatuated with Happiness. It took some time but finally Eddie mustered up enough courage to ask Happiness out on a date. He suggested an outing at Tel Aviv’s Dolphinarium Club and Happiness agreed. Eagerly anticipating his rendezvous with Happiness, Eddie was determined to fight his condition and stay awake until it was time to leave for the club. Alas, he did fall asleep. Upon awakening from his nap, Eddie was aghast realizing he was running late. Desperate to make up for lost time, Eddie ran in the direction of the bus stop. Unfortunately, he arrived just as the bus was pulling out of the station. He began chasing after the bus as fast as he could “because now he had something to lose and all the pains in his chest … weren’t going to get in the way of his pursuit of Happiness.”217 The bus driver had a clear view of Eddie from the side mirror, but true to his simple arithmetic of what constitutes the social good he proceeded to drive away. Eddie kept running until he could run no more. Completely out of breath, he fell to his knees. Unexpectedly, seeing Eddie collapse triggered something inexplicable in the driver, an apostasy! He remembered the time when he considered becoming God. As it happened, the plan to become God did not come to fruition and he was actually perfectly satisfied with becoming a bus driver, which, in truth, he deemed the next best thing. Keret, a frequent traveler by bus—at least until he became too famous—does not offer an explanation as to why becoming a bus driver in Israel could be perceived as second to being God. The fact is that in Keret’s story, seeing Eddie kneeling on the asphalt gasping for air, the driver recalled that when contemplating becoming God, he vowed to rule as a merciful God incarnate. The story, however, does not end here. In a highly unusual sequential continuum in the narrative, the authornarrator advises readers that although the story continues, perhaps it would be best for them if they stopped reading. Apparently, when all is said and done, Happiness did not show up for the simple reason that she had a boyfriend: end of story. I have yet to meet a reader who did, indeed, take the advice and stop reading. Notwithstanding, this bizarre deflection from the storyline warrants an explanation—one that can only be understood in the context of the Israeli milieu. To start with, prior to clarifying the reason for the previously mentioned detour in the narrative, one ought to address the issue of Keret 216 217

“The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” (2004), 2. “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” (2004), 3.

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naming Eddie’s sweetheart: “Happiness.” As a character’s name—more like quasi-character—“Happiness” appears in another Keret story titled “So Good.”218 The story opens with a protagonist named Itzik sitting on a bed, feeling like an idiot, “wearing nothing but pajama bottoms and cowboy boots.”219 He is dreading the arrival of Happiness. He recalls the first time Happiness showed up and disturbed his home life. Prior to that, back then, he was a boy who feared nothing. Unfortunately, everything changed once his father foolishly opened the door for Happiness and let her in. Now, no longer a boy, Itzik is determined not to repeat his father’s mistake. He will not allow Happiness to invade the personal space he created for himself as an adult. He blocks the entrance to his room by placing a dresser against the door and, just in case, fortifies his hunting rifle with cartridges. He is ready. “Nobody was going to turn him into a grinning zombie” like his parents “who loved daytime TV and García Márquez ...”220 Alas, neither the makeshift barricade nor Itzik’s resolve is a match for Happiness. The first to break through is Opportunity, but somehow Itzik manages to keep Opportunity at bay. Sheer Enjoyment arrives next. Itzik resists by showing her Holocaust images. It merely causes Sheer Enjoyment to slow down. Once Success bursts in holding a packet of winning lottery tickets, Sheer Enjoyment bounces right back. Refusing to capitulate, Itzik conjures up images of people afflicted with AIDS, abused children, and prisoners tortured in Secret Security dungeons. To no avail, Opportunity, Sheer Enjoyment, and Success gain the upper hand. Happiness wins. His tears dry up, the sky is blue, and the weather is perfect. “A van covered with The Simpsons and mortgage ads was there already waiting for him …”221 Returning to “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God,” up until the planned visit to the Dolphinarium club, and the narrator advising readers to discontinue reading, “So Good” and “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” bear universal pertinence. However, as previously noted, the latter part of “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” is understandable only in the context of Israeli life. In other words, Keret gives readers the option to stop reading early because only those familiar with Israeli daily life know the significance of Eddie’s time of arrival at the specific location of the Dolphinarium nightclub. Seemingly an innocuous scheduling matter, but 218

Etgar Keret, “So Good,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 147-150. Keret, “So Good” (2008), 147. 220 Keret, “So Good” (2008), 147. 221 Keret, “So Good” (2008), 150. 219

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as it pertains to Israeli reality, it transcends ordinary timing. Keret knows all too well that not only will readers continue reading the story to its conclusion, but that if anything, this forced break in the flow of the narrative is in fact Keret’s idiosyncratic way of drawing readers’ attention to Israeli existential circumstances. In real life, the Dolphinarium discotheque is located at Tel Aviv’s beachfront. On June 1, 2001, a Hamas-affiliated Islamist terrorist blew himself up while standing outside the club in an area packed with teenagers waiting to enter. The explosion killed twenty-one Israelis and wounded countless others. The dead and the wounded were mostly youngsters of immigrant families from the former Soviet Union. Within Keret’s fictional ambit however, the disappointing non-arrival of Happiness, Eddie’s date, saved his life. From a more panoptic, instructive perspective, the gist of the message conferred by Keret is that seeking happiness in an environment of political mayhem is delusive, hopeless. As for the ending of “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God,” having arrived at the club and having realized that Happiness is a no-show, perhaps even suspecting that in all likelihood Happiness never intended to date him, heartbroken Eddie begins to make his way back home. Merely a few meters away from the bus stop, seeing the bus about to pull away, defeated, exhausted, and this time in no particular hurry, Eddie does not attempt to catch up with the bus. On his part, the bus driver decides to wait for Eddie. Passengers are shouting at the driver to get a move on, but the driver does not even touch the accelerator until Eddie finds a seat. As the bus starts moving, the driver glances at Eddie in the rearview mirror and winks at Eddie, a “sad wink” that “somehow made the whole thing almost bearable.”222 With that, Keret leaves readers mulling over the meaning of “almost bearable.” “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” has caught the attention of several scholars. Among them is Chaim Navon, a modern Orthodox rabbi. In a 2003 theological study of Keret’s story, Navon offers an exegetical interpretation of “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” which sets out to illuminate Keret’s alignment with Jewish theology. Published in Hebrew, the title of Navon’s study underlines its theological pertinence.223 As Navon sees it, initially, actions taken by the bus driver are prompted by an ordinance that stipulates that social good outweighs any other consideration. Later, Eddie’s plight 222

Keret, “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” (2004), 4. Chaim Navon, “VeLamrot Kol HaIdiologiyot: Iyun Teologi BeSipur Shel Keret” (Despite all the Ideologies: a Theologian Study of Etgar Keret’s Stories), Alon Shvut LeBogrei Yeshivat Har Etsion (2003): 79-92.

223

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engenders a dramatic turnabout in the driver’s belief system: from prescribed dictates to flexibility motivated by emotive compassion. At the heart of Navon’s meditation is an attempt to demonstrate that ideological leanings or biases steering Keret’s story are inspired by Judaism’s moral codes. On the one hand, Judaism is comprised of a strict canon of laws that regulate every aspect of a person’s life. On the other, when emotive reasoning is believed to also be a derivative of God’s will, it mitigates the rigidity of the law. For example, according to Navon, empathy is the rationale for the kashrut law prohibiting mixing meat and dairy byproducts. Delineated in the Book of Exodus and repeated in Deuteronomy, the underlying edict forbids boiling a (kid) goat in its mother’s milk for it is deemed an act of cruelty. In other words, the biblical law is anchored in compassionate reasoning. I make mention of Navon’s take on “The Story About a Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God” not only with respect to the interesting theological frame of reference applied by Navon to the bus driver’s philosophic transfiguration, but more so in relation to what I perceive as the phenomenon of Etgar Keret. I am, indeed, fascinated by Keret’s popularity and sway which encompasses not only readers who espouse to cultural values, religious persuasion, and political viewpoints akin to his, but also to readers who aspire to customs and mores that are not necessarily consistent with Keret’s ideological persuasion. To be sure, not everyone familiar with Keret’s literature is an ardent Keret enthusiast. Among Keret’s critics are those who deem Keret’s exploits of the Hebrew vernacular as vulgarization of literary language. Others question the ethical rightness guiding Keret as an author. I intend to elaborate in a later chapter on Keret’s employment of the Hebrew language. In terms of questioning Keret’s moral compass, I believe Yigal Schwartz offers a convincing counterargument in an article titled “A Story or a Bullet between the Eyes—Etgar Keret: Repetitiveness, Morality, and Postmodernism.” Schwartz addresses critics such as Gabriel Moked and Aviad Kleinberg who censure Keret’s creative prowess for its supposed nebulous moral resonance.224 In essence, Schwartz claims that the tendency among Keret’s critics is to link “the poetic characteristics of Keret’s work to the phenomenon of modernism and postmodernism.”225 In 224

Yigal Schwartz, “A Story or a Bullet between the Eyes, Etgar Keret: Repetitiveness, Morality, and Postmodernism,” Hebrew Studies 58 (2017): 425443. Schwartz refers to write-ups by Gabriel Moked, Zman Amiti (Tel Aviv: Achshav & Ktav Publishers 2011), and Aviad Kleinberg, “Anihu,” Haaretz Sfarim, June 12, 2002, http://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/ article/.com/1.5213693. 225 Schwartz (2017), 431.

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other words, disapproval of Keret—“escapism, nihilism (and) the wholesale slaughter of sacred cows”226—stems from difficulties in understanding and accepting Keret’s postmodern “central poetic strategy.”227 According to Schwartz, in addition to homonyms, alliteration, rhythm, syntactic structures, and synonyms, Keret’s “tool box” consists of “philosophic moves that are interrelated” but at the same time “hostile toward one another.” The “looping repetition of narrative scenes” is disrupted by an “appearance of unusual conscious events” and by usage of replicated narrative scenes that collapse. According to Schwartz, the stylistic mode of narrative scenes replicating themselves in a mechanical way and then collapsing, is a fator in misreading Keret’s text.228 Schwartz further argues that, on the one hand, the repetition of phrases in stories such as “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door,” “Missing Kissinger,” and “Streets of Rage,” is cleverly designed by Keret to resemble folk proverbs that contain life lessons. On the other, so-called correctness in Keret’s literature does not spell out truism. What look to be folk proverbs in Keret’s stories engender new proverbs, that bring about more proverbs, and so on. Keret’s way of destabilizing incontrovertible interpretation and reasoning is through “proverbs and morals that stimulate and accelerate the process of mechanical reproduction.”229 More often than not, Keret’s style of “mechanical reproduction” ends up being funny and horrifying at the same time. This type of intertwinement of horror with humor reminds Schwartz of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Monty Python. Citing Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s write-up on poetics of repetition, “internal contradictions” are “in every aspect of [Keret’s] narrative: in the … text, in the principles of casting the characters, in the manner of constructing the space of the story, and so on.”230 The motif of violence in Keret’s storytelling is repeated multiple times and consistently interrupted by what can be construed as necessary counter-violence. Lastly, Keret being a virtuoso of the short story genre amplifies the sense that Keret’s tales are consistently “on the verge of exploding.”231 In all, Keret’s disapproving critics confuse his postmodern value system with a paucity of moral substance. No, Keret is not deficient in moral acumen; rather, Keret is utterly brilliant at creating an “almost unbearable tension between the 226

Schwartz (2017), 428. Schwartz (2017), 432. 228 Schwartz (2017), 432-433. 229 Schwartz (2017), 435. 230 Schwartz paraphrasing Rimmon-Kenan, “The Paradoxical Status of Repetition,” Poetics Today 1.4 (1980): 151-159. 231 Schwartz (2017), 443. 227

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aesthetic and the ethical,” and that, Schwartz concludes, is Keret’s “charm and power.”232 I am also proposing that Keret’s critics did not anticipate Keret’s enduring popularity. At first, the attention given to Keret was considered by some critics serendipitous and transitory. The more the fascination with Keret swelled, and the more Keret’s popularity lived on, the more difficult it became for some vexed critics to regard the phenomenon of Keret as an unfortunate dearth in readers’ ability to differentiate between pretentious, avant-garde eccentricity and state-of-the-art, sophisticated suave. It was then that some critics resorted to abstruse devaluations of Keret’s art. Keret, of course, is not above criticism, but to speak of paucity of moral substance in Keret’s writings is downright preposterous. Keret’s tone is oftentimes coarse and vulgar, and the storyline violent, but, as I am contending, the solidity of the ethos is that of post-Holocaust, postmodern empathic pragmatism. Keret’s ethics of empathic pragmatism relate to the chronicle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—a chronicle that is only going to get more wretched and more hopeless with Israel’s 2022 Israeli election of “a racist, misogynist, homophobic government.”233 Earlier, in the summer of 2014, the tenor of Israeli politics became exceedingly tense. The Israeli government launched a punitive military skirmish in Gaza following the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers by presumed Gaza Hamas terrorists. By the time a ceasefire was ratified Israel had incurred some losses, but nothing compared to the devastation inflicted on Palestinians. Satellite images showing Palestinian neighborhoods razed to the ground gave rise to international and local Israeli condemnation of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Keret too was among those who criticized the severity and magnitude of the government’s retaliatory actions. Right-wing extremists denounced Keret as a traitor, with some crazed fanatics stooping as low as recommending that Keret’s son be dropped from a plane without a parachute over Gaza. Disheartened, but not surprised, Keret suggested to Dan Ephron that, “this is basically the price you pay if you want to affect the society you’re living in.”234 As

232

Schwartz (2017), 443. Etgar Keret, “It’s the End of the Year as We Know it,” Alphabet Soup: the Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, December 31, 2022, https://www.etgarkeret. substack.com. 234 Etgar Keret, “Israeli Author Etgar Keret’s New Short-Story Collection; When a Writer Draws a Blank, Israeli Author Etgar Keret Turns a Dry Spell into Gold,” interview with Etgar Keret by Dan Ephron, Newsweek International, April 9, 2012, 233

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Keret asserts in a 2016 New York Times opinion piece,235 the problem is that people tend to think in antithetical terms; one is either anti-Israel or pro-Israel. Personally, he defines himself as “ambi-Israel,” propelled by ambiguity. The dichotomy of being pro-Israel or anti-Israel makes no sense to him. By analogy, one can love or fall out of love with one’s wife, but being pro-wives or anti-wives is illogical. One can or not wish to visit Switzerland, but being anti-Switzerland or pro-Switzerland is senseless. Implacable positions bar critical thinking and “absolve you from voicing any empathy for the other side.” Being ambi-Israel makes it possible to believe in the State of Israel as the rightful national home for the Jewish people but be empathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people. In an interview with Jessie Chaffee, “The Borders of Language,”236 Keret contended that for some, “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has symbolic power representing something more than the sum of its parts.” Empathy shown to Palestinians is perceived “as acts of treason, as some kind of sabotage in the fortitude of the walls that are defending us.” Others “find something reassuring in seeing it as a scene from Star Wars with clear-cut goodies and baddies, and resist the idea that the reality might be more complex.” As someone who travels frequently, Keret often feels trapped between a rock and a very hard place. In Israel he is rebuffed by some as a traitor, while overseas he is equated with Israeli apartheid. As Keret suggested to Maya Jaggi,237 Israelis are stressed to the extreme. He unceremoniously conveyed the same idea to me contending that every country has its subterranean sewage (biyuv), but in Israel, particularly in the aftermath of the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the grime levitated to the surface. “Moral Something”238 is a story about being ambi-Israel. The narrator of “Moral Something” is a young boy. Everyone around him is talking about an Arab who was condemned to death by the courts for killing a http://www.newsweek.com/Israeli-author-etgar-kerets-new-short-story-collection64043. 235 Etgar Keret, “I’m Not Anti-Israel, I’m Ambi-Israel,” The New York Times, June 24,2016,https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/opinion/im-not-anti-israel-im-ambiisrael. 236 Etgar Keret, “The Borders of Language: Interview with Etgar Keret,” interview with Etgar Keret by Jessie Chaffee, Words Without Borders Daily, July 20, 2016, http://www.wordswithoutborders.2016/07/20/org/dispatches/article/an-interviewwith-etgar-keret. 237 Keret (Jaggi 2007). 238 Etgar Keret, “Moral Something,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 117-118.

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female Israeli soldier.239 There is no debate over the severity of the crime and the appropriateness of the guilty verdict, but some object to the death sentence as a matter of principle. The boy’s homeroom teacher suggests to her students that people feel differently about the death penalty, and that having different opinions is perfectly legitimate. It is a viewpoint one arrives at in one’s heart. Most of the students are not quite sure what to make of the teacher’s credulous simplification of the issue and “Tzachi the retard … started laughing and said the Arabs would have to decide in their heart after it stopped beating.”240 After school, a group of boys comes up with the idea of conducting an experiment to find out what it would be like to execute a living creature. They decide on hanging a stray cat from a basketball hoop. A girl named Michal—the boy in the story thinks she is very pretty—happens to walk by. Michal sees what the boys were doing and tells them they are all disgusting, like animals. The boy walks to the side and vomits, “but not because of her.”241 Five words, “but not because of her,”—in Hebrew only three: aval lo biglala—reveal a boy caught between a moral precept and the adverse dynamics of group pressure. The prominent Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua took issue with the extreme violence depicted in Keret’s story. He argued that such disturbing behavior is unlikely to be found among Israeli children. Keret disagrees. Violence may not be what defines Israelis, but persistent exposure to violence, whether inflicted upon Israelis or caused by Israelis, is toxic. In “Strangers in Their Own Country,”242 Keret expresses shame over hate-crimes committed against Palestinians by Israelis. Tolerance of the Other, Keret says, “is not only a more Jewish-spirited state than any of the other models that the Jewish state can ever give us—it is also a much stronger and durable one.” Earlier, in “My Son’s First Election,”243 Keret recalls the Israeli elections that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He was six years old, and his parents decided to take him along to the 239

Capital punishment is legal in Israel although in practice, with the exception of the execution of Adolf Eichmann on June 1, 1962, Israel does not exercise the death penalty. 240 Keret, “Moral Something,” (2008), 117-118. 241 Keret, “Moral Something,” (2008), 118. 242 Etgar Keret, “Strangers in Their Own Country,” trans. Sondra Silverston, Tablet Magazine, December 23, 2014, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/ articles/strange-in-their-own-country. 243 Etgar Keret, “My Son’s First Election,” trans. Sondra Silverston, Tablet Magazine, January 23, 2013, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/ articles/my-sons-first-election.

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neighborhood’s makeshift ballot station. The resoluteness with which his parents cast their vote left an indelible impression on him: “The smell of a rosy future was in the air!” Several years later, Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s campaign slogans promote him as a strong leader as opposed to a fair-minded and honest one. Following his parents’ example, Keret took his son to the election booth. Lev wanted to know which party is Dad’s “favorite” and recommended that Dad vote for “the least-crappy one.” Lowering the bar to “the least crappy” is depressing enough, but for Keret, voting for Netanyahu is tantamount to electing “the crappiest,” somewhat akin to “choosing the captain of the Titanic after it has already struck the iceberg.” Speaking with Paul Whitefield,244 Keret noted that the aphorism “When you’re already in a hole, stop digging” does not seem to register with Israelis vis-à-vis the Palestinian conflict. Instead, Israelis seem to believe that “When you’re already in a hole; dig deeper!” Everyone longs for peace. Pragmatically speaking however, peace evolves out of “a compromise between sides and in that kind of a compromise, each side will have to pay a genuine, heavy price, not just in territories or money but also in a true change of worldview.” Longing for peace has taken on “transcendental and messianic meanings.” Words like accommodation or trade-offs sound far less exhilarating, but “the solution we are so eager for can’t be found in our prayers to God but in our insistence on a grueling, not always perfect dialogue with the other side.” Ceremonies at his son’s school often conclude with singing unison songs about peace. It frustrates Keret for he deems it a form of deceptive indoctrination. Children are programmed to believe that “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been imposed on us from above.” It may be much more difficult to compose enthralling songs, especially the kind like his son and other kids “sing in their angelic voices” about wishing to find a realistic middle ground. Compromise does not “have the same cool look on T-shirts.” In an interview with Sophie Lewis245 at a literature festival hosted by the Brazilian city of Paraty, Keret remarked that unlike peace fantasies, a modus vivendi is attainable even with someone you hate. It does not mean loving your opponent, “all it means is that you agree to stop killing each other.” Keret does not find writing about political issues particularly 244

Etgar Keret, “Opinion: Forget ‘Peace,’ How About Israel and Hamas Give Compromise a Chance?” interview with Etgar Keret by Paul Whitefield, LA Times, July 16, 2014, www.latimes.com/opinion-la/times-of-israel-gaza-hamaspalestinians-ground-offensive-peace-20140716-story.html. 245 Etgar Keret, interview with Sophie Lewis, GRANTA Magazine, August 14, 2014, https://www.granata.com/ interview-etgar-keret-.

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gratifying. “When I write an opinion, it’s as though I’m washing dishes. I hate it and the only reason I do it is I don’t feel I have a choice.” Conversing with Runo Isaksen, Keret proposed that if there were to be a political meeting point for all Israelis, it would be “neither philosophical nor cultural but pragmatic.”246 He regrets not learning Arabic in school. He studied French instead. “Why do we need French here? Who can you talk to? Everyone around you speaks Arabic!” Upon further reflection though, he admitted to being “a living paradox;” he will take Gustav Mahler over Arabic music any time.247 Keret lost his best friend while serving in the army. His friend did not die fighting, yet his army officer eulogized him as a courageous soldier loved by all. The truth is that his friend was a coward, hated the army, and was shunned by everyone except Keret. There is something terribly wrong, Keret noted, with a collective force that does not allow you to die as yourself. He regards nation-wide commemorative ceremonies, including formalities commemorating the Holocaust, as prescribed rituals that turn mourning into something extraterrestrial. His stories are about “people trying to keep their own personal memories instead of just swallowing some pre-digested mush.”248 “Throwdown at the Playground”249 mirrors perfectly a clash between social/national zeitgeist and personal predicaments. The author is spending time with his son at Ezekiel Park. In the morning hours, except for the author—whom others take to be out of work—there are no fathers in the park, only mothers, children, and dogs. He is known as “ha-abba” (the/the father), and he loves it! He takes part in conversations on breast pumps and cloth versus disposable diapers; “there is nothing more enjoyable than a few tranquil hours spent discussing sterilizing bottles with organic soap and the red-pink rashes on a baby’s bottom.”250 On one occasion, a mother named Orit interrupts Keret’s “private paradise” when she turns to him and asks whether Lev, once he graduates from high school, will serve in the Israeli army. The author tells Orit that, in all honesty, he has not given it much thought; Lev is still in diapers. Orit is adamant: unless things change dramatically, her boy will most definitely not serve in the Israeli army. Later, back at home, Keret tells his wife Shira about the exchange with Orit. Shira’s visceral reaction takes him by surprise. Visibly irritated, she exclaims that the issue of their son serving 246

Keret (Isaksen 2009), 20. Keret (Isaksen 2009), 25. 248 Keret (Isaksen 2009), 36. 249 Etgar Keret, “Throwdown at the Playground,” in The Seven Good Years, A Memoir (2015), 51-55. 250 Keret, “Throwdown at the Playground” (2015), 52. 247

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or not serving in the Israeli army has tormented her since the day Lev was born. Furthermore, echoing Orit from the park, her position is univocal: if politically things remain at a standstill with regard to the PalestinianIsraeli conflict, or, heaven forbid, deteriorate further, Lev will not serve in the army. The author objects. He is of the opinion that this sort of decision is not to be made by a controlling mother. When the time comes, it is a decision only Lev will have the right to make. Shira is vehement. She would much rather be thought of as too controlling than face the prospect of taking part in her son’s funeral some fifteen years down the road. Countering, the author clamors, “but we live in a part of the world where our lives depend on it!”251 Suddenly, mother and father realize that unbeknownst to them, Lev had entered the room. He is terribly upset and wants to know why his parents are fighting. Mother and father promptly declare a truce followed by an agreement to dedicate the future to family and home country peace. The story does not end there. The message about working towards peace is marred by what is rather typical of Keret: namely, self-effacing cynicism. Once again, on a different occasion, father and son are enjoying an idyllic day in the park. For no apparent reason, and to father Keret’s shock, Lev shoves “Orit’s peacenik son.” Shortly afterwards, meandering on their way home, Lev picks up a stick and begins chasing after a cat. Father Keret notes to himself: “Start saving for a defense attorney. You’re not raising just a soldier here, but a potential war criminal.”252 In one of countless Israeli newspaper write-ups, reviews, and interviews about or with Keret, Maya Sela253 once asked Keret whether he could see himself living anywhere but in Israel. Keret replied that his attachment to Israel is not based on an ideology. Rather, his convictions stem from an intuitive, inbred pulsation of being a child of Holocaust survivors who are happy to live in a place where they need not fear persecution just because they are Jews. The ways in which this sentiment interlaces and entwines with the culture that set the stage for the advent of Etgar Keret is the substance of the next chapter.

251

Keret, “Throwdown at the Playground” (2015), 54. Keret, “Throwdown at the Playground” (2015), 55. 253 Etgar Keret, “Lama Etgar Keret Nish’ar Kan Lamrot HaKol” (Why Does Etgar Keret Stay Here Despite Everything), Haaretz, interview with Etgar Keret by Maya Sela, July 24, 2014, https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/literature/2014-0724/ty-article/.premium/0000017f-df97-db5a-af7f-dfff9b330000. 252

3 ETGAR KERET: AN “URBAN CHALLENGE”

Etgar Keret was born on August 20, 1967, in Ramat Gan, Israel.254 He often speaks of being alive as a miracle. He came into the world prematurely—at six months—weighing only 900 grams. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, and he suffered from a bad case of jaundice. For Keret, though, the real miracle was being born to parents who survived the Holocaust. In Hebrew, Etgar means challenge, and Keret is a biblical (Books of Proverbs and Job) Hebrew synonym to city: Etgar Keret—an urban challenge. Best known for his short stories, Keret’s oeuvre includes graphic novels, films, screenplays, literary editing, a novella, journalist commentary, online presentations, television projects, and more. For the most part, he writes for adults. Occasionally he also writes for children. Internationally acclaimed, Keret is lauded by many as Israel’s contemporary, authentic literary voice. His works are translated into over forty languages. He is a sought-after speaker at cultural events and a prolific writer for literary journals, daily newspapers, and other media and literary outlets in Israel, North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Larry Rohter reported in 2012255 that along with notable writers such as Tony Kushner, Herta Muller, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Paul Auster, E. L. Doctorow, and Aleksandar Hemon, Keret is a regular invitee to PEN World Voices events. Similar to Marjane Satrapi from Iran and Elias Khoury from Lebanon, Keret is considered a Middle Eastern maverick who writes sublime stories that are at once Israeli specific and universally germane. Known for his joie de vivre, when in a sinister mood, Keret portrays himself as a court jester: the fool/entertainer of medieval and Renaissance eras. I, however, envision Keret as the wrestler in Roland Barthe’s 254

Ramat Gan is geographically situated in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Larry Rohter, “Live Performance Will Be Bigger Part of PEN World Voices Festival,” The New York Times, March 1, 2012, https://www.artsbest.blogs. nytimes.com.2012/03/01/live-performance-will-be-bigger-part-of-pen.

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Mythologies.256 The wrestler is not there to win, “One is not ashamed of one’s suffering.”257 Wrestling is about “the construction of a highly moral image: that of the perfect bastard.”258 Barthes’s perfect bastard is reputed to reach beyond the boundaries of the ring. Paradoxically, perhaps, he also “claims the protection of what he did not respect a few minutes earlier.”259 Wrestling is different from boxing. Wrestling “is a real Human Comedy,”260 and Keret is not a combatant boxer. He is a writer-wrestler of the tragicomic human story. Keret’s stories are frequently adapted into theatre productions. His compact, terse text with hardly any character development may seem at odds with the medium of the theatre, and yet, theatre directors successfully stage his stories. As observed by Yair Ashkenazi,261 Keret’s “Kafkaesque style” lends itself to branching out from the written text to the medium of the theatre. Directed by Noam Morgenstern, monologues by Keret were staged by the Comédie-Française. A children’s book by Keret and his wife, Shira Geffen—“Waiting for Nissim”—was adapted into an operatic musical. Shira Geffen was born in 1971. She is a gifted writer, director, and actor. Her father, Yehonatan Geffen, is a well-known Israeli writer, and her brother, Aviv Geffen, is a talented singer and songwriter. Written and directed by Keret and Shira, the film “Jellyfish” won top prizes, including the Camera d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Written and directed by Keret and Ran Tal, the film “Skin Deep” won the Israeli academy award in 1996 and received much international acclaim. An asthmatic child, he was frequently absent from school. His parents did not seem to mind. They rather liked keeping their youngest child at home. He spent much of his time reading. His favorite childhood book was Huckleberry Finn. He was nine years old when he first came across Mark Twain’s iconic book. Apart from the book leaving an indelible impression on him, he was pleased to be living in a country where there were no slaves. J. D. Salinger’s story, “The Laughing Man” (the Nine Stories collection), was also one of his favorites. Conveyed by Keret to Alex 256

Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). 257 Barthes, Mythologies (1972), 16. 258 Barthes, Mythologies (1972), 23. 259 Barthes, Mythologies (1972), 24. 260 Barthes, Mythologies (1972), 18. 261 Yair Ashkenazi, “Im Hafatsim U’Bubot: HaEtgar BeHa’avarat Sipurav Shel Etgar Keret El HaBama” (Objects and Dolls: the Challenge in transferring Etgar Keret’s Stories onto the Stage), Haaretz, October 11, 2017, http://www.haaretz.co. il/misc/article/.premium-MAGAZINE-1.451176.

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Clark, reading books by Douglas Adams at the age of thirteen “affected [his] attitude to the interaction of this thing called life.”262 As Keret revealed to Maya Jaggi, he was a teenager when he first read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. “Almost every war I’ve experienced in my country has sent me back to that book.”263 Tzakhi Yoked and Alon Hadar264 attended an event hosted at Columbia University with Keret as the keynote speaker. Students were told that they are about to meet one of the greatest Israeli authors of his generation. When Keret appeared on stage, they were somewhat taken aback. The person standing in front of them had a bad haircut with ill-fitting jeans, a wrinkled black t-shirt, and worn-out sneakers. Two hours later, they were lining up, eager to shake Keret’s hand and have him sign his autograph. In their write-up Yoked and Hadar make mention of Haim Be’er—a wellknown, old-time Israeli author—who once said that every time he learns of a birth of a child, he is delighted at the prospect of Keret acquiring another potential reader. Yael Darr specializes in Hebrew children’s literature. Her research spans from the years leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel to our postmodern era. Of particular interest to Darr are trends in children’s literature related to nationalism and the Holocaust in writings by canonic Hebrew writers such as Natan Alterman, Oded Burla, Chaim Nahman Bialik, Leah Goldberg, Fania Bergstein, Miriam Yalan-Stekelis, and Ayin Hillel. As of 2005, Darr’s comprehensive guide to children’s literature265 includes Etgar Keret as a major writer for children. According to Darr, Keret’s magnetic appeal to youngsters stems from his ability to interweave animated fantasy into problematic realities. Written by Keret and illustrated by Aviel Basil, Gur Hatul Adam Arokh Se’ar (Long-Haired Cat-Boy Cub)266 is a brilliant, tragic-comicrealistic-fantastic story for children aged four and up. It opens with a boy 262

Etgar Keret, “For the Past Year I Haven’t Read Any Books,” interview with Etgar Keret by Alex Clark, The Guardian, August 24, 2019, http://www. theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/24/etgar-keret-interview-fly-already. 263 Keret (Jaggi 2007). 264 Tzakhi Yoked and Alon Hadar, “Itur HaOz: Etgar Keret KeShagrir Tarbuti” (Oz Medal: Etgar Keret as Cultural Ambassador), Maariv, April 24, 2010, www. nrg.co.il/online/47/ART2/097/088.html. 265 Yael Darr, Od Sippur Ehad VeDai: Madrikh Mapa LeSifre Yeladim (One More Story And That Is It: A GuideTo Children’s Books), (Tel Aviv: Mapa Publishing, 2005). 266 Etgar Keret and Aviel Basil, Gur Hatul Adam Arokh Se’ar (Long-Haired CatBoy Cub), (Tel Aviv: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir Publishing House Ltd., 2013).

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narrator stating that his father is a very busy man. His mother says that there will come a day when her husband will regret not having paid more attention to his son. One day, while at the zoo, when father makes an effort to spend quality time with his son, he receives a phone call from his workplace. He is terribly sorry, but as he explains to his son, the call is super important—a lifetime business opportunity—and he must attend to it. Ensuring his son has enough money for food and for a ride back home, father leaves in a hurry. The boy has his face painted like a cat, visits many animal cages, and then, exhausted, falls asleep in one of the empty cages. In his sleep, he dreams of traveling on a spaceship full of animals. The ship’s captain, Havakuk,267 explains to the boy that, in his role as the captain, his mission is to seek deserted animals and bring them back to their natural habitat. Rescue operations are recorded in a special diary, which, as of today, includes extricating the boy from the cage and delivering him back to his home. As in many of Keret’s tales, the child protagonist has the fortitude to endure grownups’ blunders, but rarely does this engender real change in grownups’ conduct. Aviad Kleinberg268 complains that reviewing Keret’s writings is a thankless job. Readers perceive any intimation of criticism as a match between Israel’s most beloved enfant terrible and a narrow-minded, ostentatious critic. “The division of labor is clear and inevitable: Etgar will be groovy and wild and amusing, and the critic will be puffed-up and preposterous.” In short, Kleinberg surmises, “Keret is simply keen on being brilliant.” Anihu (I-Am-Him),269 Keret’s fourth collection of short stories, is considered by Kleinberg archetypal in that it epitomizes “Keret’s usual narrative acrobatics—surprises, paradoxes, sharp humor.” In line with Edgar Allen Poe and Franz Kafka, Keret’s absurd stories mirror “an ordinary situation in which people behave in a strange way, and sometimes a strange situation in which people behave as if there were nothing out of the ordinary.” Much like in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the presence of the supernatural in Keret’s stories may entail “logistical problems,” but it intertwines naturally with the storyline. Keret’s literature, Kleinberg argues, is all about confusion and discontentment in “everyday [life] and about the escapist solution that would seem to answer this discomfort.” 267

The biblical Book of Havakuk— pronounced Habakkuk in English—delineates the prophet Havakuk questioning God about bad things happening to good people, and good things happening to bad people. 268 Aviad Kleinberg, “Anihu (I-Am-Him),” Haaretz Sfarim, June 12, 2002, http:// www.haaretz.co.il/misc/article/com/ 1.5213693. 269 Etgar Keret, Anihu (I-Am-Him), (Tel Aviv: Kineret-Zmora-Bitan, 2002).

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In Chaffee’s WWB interview with Keret,270 the author spoke about an aspiration, a strong inclination to generate a dialogue with readers: “I want them to think and rethink and take a position. But I am not teaching them a lesson.” Politics, he added, derives from the word “polis,” meaning city. It is about allocation of resources, constructing walls, sewer systems, and so on. Literature is different, transcendent. He thinks about literature in intimate terms. “It’s like if writing fiction is the love of my life, I go out into the world, and sometimes I return with flowers, and sometimes I return with chocolate. I’m able to bring something new to the relationship.” Storytelling fosters connections and relationships among people, albeit the friendship is not symmetrical; “When somebody reads my stories, he may know me, but I don’t know him as well.” The least gratifying aspect of being a writer is that success “is measured in a capitalist way,” namely: how well does the book sell? The translation into Farsi of Keret’s memoir, The Seven Good Years, A Memoir, is an unprecedented feat in Modern Hebrew literature. It did not receive the blessing of the Iranian government, but as Aziz Hakimi—an Afghan translator/writer—revealed to Alison Flood,271 the hope is that the Farsi edition published in London in digital and print formats will reach Iranian readers via clandestine networks. Perhaps overly optimistic, Hakimi hopes that at the very least, Keret’s authentic stories about daily life in Israel may somehow lessen the enmity between Iranians and Israelis. On his part, as reported by Flood, Keret is thrilled with the Farsi translation. A book cannot stop bullets, he said, but there is something beautiful about the fact that even if, as an Israeli, he cannot travel to Tehran, his stories can. Literature converses in whispers. If you listen hard, you become receptive to change. Hannan Hever remembers when years ago, a colleague of his at Tel Aviv University, Adi Ophir, asked him to read some stories written by a student named Etgar Keret. Hever agreed, and as he got around to reading drafts of the stories, “I nearly fell off my seat; I was stunned! I thought he succeeded in creating a narrator figure that was simply astonishing, like nothing we’d ever seen before in Hebrew literature.”272 Stan Persky 270

Keret, (Chaffee 2016). Etgar Keret, “Israeli Book to be Distributed in Iran as ‘a Life Line Between the Countries’,” interview with Etgar Keret by Alison Flood, The Guardian,October 29, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/books//2015/oct/28/Israeli-book-to-bedistributed-in-Iran-as-a-life-line-between-the-countries. 272 For the full discussion between Hever and Ron see https://www. wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/finding-keret-two-israeli-editorsdiscuss-the-authors-discovery. 271

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contends273 that good literature is not only innovative but also necessary. I believe Keret’s stories are, indeed, necessary. Etgar Keret’s first collection of short stories was published in 1992. The reviews were mixed. Then, with the 1994 appearance of his second collection of short stories, Missing Kissinger, the marvel of Etgar Keret erupted into a cultural sensation. The judges who selected Keret as the 2012 Israeli winner of the prestigious Neumann Prize for Hebrew Literature274 honed in on Keret’s ability to inject human sufferings with glimmers of hope and redemption, and mitigate violence with empathy.275 Keret was commended for challenging readers to contemplate issues and tackle quandaries they might have otherwise overlooked or ignored. In a conversation with Dan Ephron,276 Keret admitted to being ill at ease with fame. “With all the changes, I found that I could write a story about what I used to be but not about what I am now. It’s as if I lacked the vocabulary … It took me a lot of time and a leap of faith to accept that I’m living a different kind of life.” In an interview with Elad Zeret277 Keret spoke about feeling overwhelmed by the transition from being barely tolerated by critics to having reporters fighting over a chance to interview him. As delineated in Israeli Culture Between the Two Intifadas: A Brief Romance by Yaron Peleg,278 Keret’s readers range from “disinterested teenagers” who, until they picked up a book by Keret, “had no stomach for literature,”279 to fellow authors and seasoned critics. Peleg visualizes Keret’s writing cadence as “video clips [put] into words.”280 He cites Asaf Hanuka—a gifted Israeli illustrator—who deems Keret a creator of a mirage of textual words that come across as photographic-cartoonist illustrations. 273 Stan Persky, Reading the 21st Century: 2000-2009 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011). 274 Past Israeli winners of the Neumann Prize include S. Y. Agnon, U. Z. Greenberg, Haim Hazaz, Leah Goldberg, Meir Shalev, and Aharon Appelfeld. 275 The wording in English is my own abridged translation from Hebrew of a newspaper report by Ronit Dekel that appeared in Haaretz, March 18, 2012. 276 Etgar Keret, “Israeli Author Etgar Keret’s New Short-Story Collection,” interview with Etgar Keret by Dan Ephron, Newsweek, September 4, 2012, https:// www.newsweek.com/israeli-author-etgar-keret-new-short-story-collection-64043. 277 Etgar Keret, “Etgar Keret: Ga’aguim LeKissinger” (Etgar Keret: Missing Kissinger), interview with Etgar Keret by Elad Zeret, Yedioth Ahronoth, Musaf Sifrut, June 5, 2013, http://www.yediotahronot.co.il/articles/05/06/2013. 278 Yaron Peleg, Israeli Culture between the Two Intifadas: A Brief Romance (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2008). 279 Peleg (2008), 64 280 Peleg (2008), 65.

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Michel Kichka281 is a talented Israeli writer and cartoonist in his own right. In a preface to Pizzeria Kamikaze—a graphic, cartoony publication on death and suicide collaboratively created by Etgar Keret and Asaf Hanuka282—Kichka remarks that historically, with the notable exceptions of Pinhas Sadeh and Binyamin Tammuz, old-time authors viewed the genre of cartoons as plebeian literature. That is, until the advent of Keret when everything changed. Stephane Kaas was a high school student in Amsterdam when he first came across a collection of short stories by Keret. Smitten, he passed the book along to his friend, Rutger Lemm, who became just as besotted. As reported by Jessica Steinberg,283 the mutual adoration of Keret was the beginning of a collaboration that enkindled a sixty-seven-minute documentary titled “Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story.” Launched at the thirty-third Haifa Film Festival in October 2017, through animation and interviews with family and friends, the documentary delves into events that shaped Keret’s life as a writer and “how some of his stories that sound crazy, actually are crazy.” Keret thought that the fact that Kaas and Lemm are not Jewish “made their perspective much more original.” In what is undoubtedly a tribute to Kaas and Lemm, as well as to Keret’s stature, the documentary won the 2018 International Emmy Award for arts programming.284 In a discussion with Meakin Armstrong285 Keret alluded to his popularity among prisoners. In his encounter with criminals locked up in a maximum-security jailhouse, Keret came to realize that these hardcore felons do not see themselves as depraved or wicked but as unlucky. Asked by Armstrong about creating a truly evil protagonist in his writings, Keret responded that it is too simplistic to think of people as consumed with

281 Michel Kichka, HaDor HaSheni: D’varim SheLo Siparti LeAbba (Second Generation: Things I Have Not Told Daddy), Tel Aviv: Hargol & Modan Publishers (2013). 282 Etgar Keret and Asaf Hanuka, Pizzeria Kamikaze, trans. Miriam Shlesinger (Tel Aviv: Alternative Comics, 2006). 283 Etgar Keret, “A Hunt for the Kernel of Truth behind Etgar Keret’s Stories,” interview with Etgar Keret by Jessica Steinberg, Times of Israel, October 11, 2017, https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-hunt-for-the-truth-behind/etgar-kerets-stories/ 2017/10/11. 284 See http://www.2teamproductions.com/blog/etgar-keret-based-on-a-true-storywins-international-emmy-award. 285 Etgar Keret, “Etgar Keret: We Can Try to Be Human,” interview with Etgar Keret by Meakin Armstrong, Guernica Magazine, August 17, 2015, http://www. guernicamag.com/2015/08/17/we-can-try-to-be-human.

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hate. Hatred is not a primal emotion, “it’s basically some kind of distortion of fear.” Fear, real or distorted, is applied by Keret onto Israel as a whole. A deep-seated anxiety over the permanence of Israel is entrenched in the collective subconscious of Israelis. Up until the early eighties, Israelis rarely questioned the raison d’être embedded in a consensus over security matters. Initially, the territorial gains won in the war of 1967 were perceived by most Israelis—including leftist intelligentsia—as consequences of a war thrust upon the nation by its enemies. Whilst lamenting over “the tragedy of Zionism,” Bernard Avishai286 is unequivocal in denouncing post-1967 war expropriation of Palestinian land. Yet, Avishai too acknowledges that the pre-war trauma—a Holocaust déjà vu generated by a conglomerate of Arab countries on a crusade to destroy the Zionist enterprise—had much to do with a post-war myopic vision. Karen Armstrong287 argues that the “lightning speed” with which Israel overcame being attacked on all fronts in 1967 caused many Israelis to “experience this dramatic reversal of fortune”288 as some sort of transcendental miracle. Eventually, however, with the burgeoning of the movement to settle on land previously owned by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, many Israelis could no longer contend with what was supposed to be a temporary occupation of territory, morphing it into a de facto annexation. As encapsulated by Gadi Taub, expansionism based on a sectarian call to redeem biblically promised territory prioritizes eretz yisrael (the land of Israel), while anti-expansionists regard medinat yisrael (the state of Israel) as the top priority.289 Holocaust remembrance is a component of the Israeli political hyperbole. Essential to Arye Naor’s “lessons of the Holocaust”290 is a denouncement of those who castigated supporters of Yitzhak Rabin’s Oslo Accords as Nazi collaborators. Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi decries in “From Auschwitz to the Temple Mount; Binding and Unbinding the Israeli

286

Bernard Avishai, The Tragedy of Zionism: How Its Revolutionary Past Haunts Israeli Democracy (New York: Helios Press, 2002). 287 Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2014). 288 Armstrong (2014), 232. 289 Gadi Taub, The Settlers and the Struggle over the Meaning of Zionism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 290 Arye Naor, “Lessons of the Holocaust versus Territories for Peace, 1967-2001,” Israel Studies, 8, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 130-152.

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Narrative”291 the continued occupation of Palestinian land as “a morally embattled present.” She praises Hanoch Levin for the courage to “conflate the iconic Jewish child from the Warsaw Ghetto and an innocent Palestinian child” in HaPatriot (“The Patriot”).292 The robustness, with which the pendulum of Holocaust oratory swings back and forth, from despair to hope and from hope to despair, is circumscribed by historical happenings. The terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics triggered Holocaust despondency, while Anwar Sadat’s presidential visit to Yad Vashem in 1977 bolstered the dream of the Jewish people arriving at a better place. Dan Bar-On defines the gamut between hope and despair as a demarcation between “culture of death and culture of life.”293 A culture of death is impelled by an inability to let go of “a myth of death and dying” and near zero receptivity to “hopeful prospects of a peace process.”294 According to Bar-On, the Jewish annual holiday cycle is part of the problem. Too many celebrations are associated with threats of destruction. Nowadays, the menacing enemy is no longer the Greeks, Romans, or Germans but Hamas and Iran. Given its military strength, Israel, Bar-On claims, ought to be able to keep in check disingenuous associations with the Holocaust. Israelis must “learn to live with the kind of ambiguity” that manifests itself in overcoming centuries of “self-definition that has been achieved mainly through the negative use of the Other.”295 Attending a Writers Festival in Singapore in 2017, Etgar Keret asserted that too many Israelis and Diaspora Jews “had given up on the option of peace” and that this has “more to do with some collective despair than any hard facts.” “Living,” he added, “is not only about surviving, but is even more so about exercising humanity and empathy.”296 Daniel Bar-Tal sets forth the following question: “Why does fear override hope in societies engulfed in intractable conflict,” as it does in 291

Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, “From Auschwitz to the Temple Mount; Binding and Unbinding the Israeli Narrative,” in After Testimony: the Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative for the Future, eds. Jakob Lothe, Susan Rubin Suleiman, and James Phelan (2012). 292 Ezrahi (2012), 296–297. Directed by Oded Kotler, Hanoch Levin’s HaPatriot was first staged in 1982. It was then banned by Israel’s Council for Film and Drama Criticism but subsequently allowed to re-open. 293 Dan Bar-On, “Israeli Society between the Culture of Death and the Culture of Life,” Israel Studies, 2, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 88-112. 294 Bar-On (1997), 97. 295 Bar-On (1997), 99 296 Etgar Keret, Singapore Writers Festival, 2017, http.nac.gov.sg/docs/defaultsource/nac-news-files/ Singapore-writers-festival-2017-celebrates.

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Israel.297 He goes on to propose that a physiological reaction to fear “grounded in the perceived threatening present is often based on remembered threats from the past.”298 The difficulty in structuring an edifice that is providential and optimistic stems from the fact that “hope orientation not only needs to inhibit the automatic activation of memories associated with fear, but also must replace these memories with new beliefs and behaviors.”299 Avishai, Ezrahi, Bar-On, Bartov, Oz, Bar-Tal, and Keret are anything but oblivious to the Arab world’s role in keeping Israelis on edge and, in Bar-Tal’s words, “to collective memories that fixate their fears.”300 Edward Said took meaningful steps when asserting that the unspeakable crimes committed against the Jews during the Holocaust must be allowed into any discussion adjudging Israel. The Palestinian-Israeli author Sayed Kashua agrees. As conveyed by Kashua in a published exchange of letters between Keret and him,301 Israelis have very good reasons for being hypersensitive about security threats. That said, fear alone does not explain, let alone justify, the Israeli government supplying water and electricity to Jewish settlements in the West Bank at the expense of local Palestinians. Referring to memory of the Holocaust as “a monster,” Yishai Sarid302 argues that Jews are not “there”303 anymore. “We [Israelis] are strong, thank God, and we’re independent, and we’re in a completely different place. We are no longer helpless Jews, but we still make allowances for ourselves as if we were still weak, helpless Jews.”304 In 2004, the Israeli government and parliament rubber-stamped Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip. The plan included dismantling—by force if necessary—post-1967 297

Daniel Bar-Tal, “Why Does Fear Override Hope in Societies Engulfed by Intractable Conflict, as it Does in the Israeli Society,” Political Psychology, 22, no. 3 (2001): 601-627. 298 Bar-Tal (2001), 605. 299 Bar-Tal (2001), 620. 300 Bar-Tal (2001), 621. 301 Etgar Keret and Sayad Kashua, “Tell Me a Story with a Happy Ending, Part I & II,” The New Yorker, October 13-14, 2014, www.newyorker.com/books/pageturner/tell-story-happy-ending-exchange-etgar-keret-sayad-kashua. 302 Yishai Sarid, The Memory Monster, trans. Yardenne Greenspan (New York: Restless Books, 2020). 303 By “there,” Sarid means that with the establishment of the State of Israel, the Jewish people are no longer at the mercy of Diaspora countries that with very few exceptions offered no protection to their Jewish citizens during the years of the Holocaust. 304 Sarid (2020), 179.

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Israeli settlements in Gaza. The decision to pull out of Gaza precipitated impassioned protests by die-hard settlers.305 Keret recounts those days in a story titled “My Good Shirt.”306 A Jewish settler “wearing an orange yarmulke” happens to cross paths with the author. In and of itself, an orange-colored yarmulke is not terribly unusual. In this case, however, specific to the controversy over Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, displaying the color orange designated Israelis who opposed the disengagement and flaunting the color blue meant one was in favor. By sheer chance—Keret is definitely not known for fine apparel or fastidiousness over his attire— on the day Keret ran into the Jewish settler he was dressed in an orange button-down shirt. Mistaking Keret for a political ally, the settler handed him a bunch of orange ribbons, imploring the author “to do a mitzvah,307 brother” and distribute the ribbons. Deciding that a fortuitous encounter with a complete stranger was not the time to explain that the color of his shirt is not indicative of his politics, Keret hastily tucked the orange ribbons into his shirt’s pocket, apologized, said he was in a rush to get home, and scurried away. Arriving home, his wife insists that he toss the ribbons into the garbage bin. She also wants Keret to dump the orange shirt too. His attempt to make light of things by saying the color orange looks good on him only agitates Shira even more. She is furious with her husband for not taking a paramount existential issue more seriously. In the end, berated by his wife and recalling a peacenik who, upon catching sight of the orange ribbons overhanging from his shirt’s pocket, yelled in his direction “right-wing fascist schmuck,” Keret decides to get rid of the orange shirt. “I’ve become the first victim of the disengagement. Just a fashion victim, true, but still. When they have the next sale, I’ve already promised myself to go for vomit yellow, mildew green, mud brown or any color repulsive enough to guarantee that no political movement will want to occupy it, ever.” Semi-legitimized by several Israeli governments, and as of the 2023 elections altogether licensed by Netanyahu’s government, the continued occupation of pre-1967 Palestinian territories is largely spearheaded by Jews who regard the territorial expansion as fulfillment of some sort of biblical prophecy. Secular Israelis who join the settlers’ movement are

305

Much to the credit of specially trained units of Israeli soldiers, the operation was executed without any serious incident. 306 Etgar Keret, “My Good Shirt,” trans. Miriam Shlesinger, Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2005, http://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jul-15-oe-keret15story.html. 307 A good deed.

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fewer in numbers and are mostly motivated by economic—lower housing costs—reasons. The combination of Jewish and secular may seem incongruous to some. However, it resonates as perfectly cogent to many Israelis and Diaspora Jews. Pursuant to the French idea of laïcité, Jewish secularism is not about antipathy to religion. It is about separating religion from public and governmental affairs. As argued by Charles Taylor,308 it is a mistake to denigrate secularists as “having lost, sloughed off, or liberated themselves from certain earliest, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge.”309 From a Jewish perspective, as spelled out by David Biale,310 “hiloni” (secular) is derived from ‫ۊ‬ol—the Hebrew term designating profane, “neither holy nor defiled.”311 Biale also affirms Amos Funkenstein’s notion of “secular Jewish theology”312 that is aimed at creating a “dialogue, however implicitly, with pre-modern Judaism.”313 Keret is the progeny of Hebrew writers who from the inception of modern cultural Zionism turned their backs on traditional religiosity, or were already born into a secular environment. Hannan Hever probes into theology and politics in Modern Hebrew literature.314 Hever’s overarching assertion is that secular Hebrew writers may be ambivalent toward Judaism as a religion but not as a culture.315 Thus, overall, it makes perfect sense for Etgar Keret to consider himself a secular Israeli Jew whose favorite holiday is Yom Kippur: the Jewish Day of Atonement.

308

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007). 309 Taylor (2007), 22. 310 David Biale, Not in the Heaven: the Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). 311 Biale, (2011), 5. 312 Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Historians consider Funkenstein’s work an important resource in exploring the relationship between metaphysics and science. 313 Biale, (2011), 13. 314 Hannan Hever, BeKoah HaEl: Teologia VePolitika BaSifrut HaIvrit HaMmodernit (The Power of God: Theology and Politics in Modern Hebrew Literature), (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute & Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 2013). 315 Stephen C. Feinstein promotes the idea of viewing Holocaust remembrance literature as secular exegesis. See Stephen C. Feinstein, “Mediums of Memory: Artistic Responses of the Second Generation” in Breaking Crystal: Writing and Memory after Auschwitz, ed. Efraim Sicher (1998), 201-251.

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Derived from Leviticus, chapter 16, Yom Kippur is an annual holiday set aside for the purpose of cleansing oneself of sins committed against God and against fellow human beings. Reiterated by Keret in a story titled “It is Never Too Late to Atone,”316 even if a person has no recollection of when and how you wronged him or her, it is incumbent upon you to ask that person for forgiveness. In Israel, day-to-day activities, from public transportation to television broadcasting, are paused on Yom Kippur: “no stupid reality show to divert your attention.” Keret was partial to Yom Kippur from an early age. While other kids loved Purim—mostly because of the dress-up costumes—he preferred Yom Kippur.317 He speculates that perhaps he was keen on a day of fasting, praying, and atonement because it suited his self-image as an eccentric oddball, a geek. Keret’s story recounts a Yom Kippur memory that dates back to when he was four years old. Of all the children in his preschool class, he had a strong liking for a pretty girl named Noa. Alas, he went about seeking Noa’s attention in a lamentable way. Catching sight of Noa running in the playground, he stuck his foot out, causing Noa to trip and fall. Slightly injured, miffed, and tearful, she told the teacher that it was Etgar’s fault. He denied it. Over the next several years, Noa and Keret attended different elementary schools but met again in high school. By then, except for her beautiful hair, Noa looked very different from how Etgar remembered her. The days were nearing Yom Kippur and he could think of nothing else but asking Noa to forgive him for his preschool transgression. It turned out Noa had no recollection of Etgar, let alone the incident for which he was apologizing. In fact, she thought it was a silly idea to atone for something trivial that had taken place some thirteen years earlier. However, realizing it mattered to him, she responded with “apology accepted” and walked away. On his part, Keret ends his rather flimsy atonement, declaring that from here on: [W]henever I have a strong urge not to tell the truth, I think of her outside her high school classroom, smiling broadly, her face full of pimples, saying she accepted my apology. Then I take a deep breath, and lie.

316

Etgar Keret, “It is Never Too Late to Atone,” trans. Sondra Silverston, Tablet Magazine, September 30, 2014, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/ articles/etgar-keret-never-too-late-to-atone. 317 Purim comes from the word “pur,” meaning “lottery.” Recounted in the biblical Scroll of Esther, the holiday celebrates saving Persian Jews from Haman, a highranking advisor to the king of Persia, who planned to annihilate the entire Jewish population. Part of the joy of Purim is expressed by dressing up in costumes.

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Not exactly the edifying ending readers might expect, but in perfect consonance with Keret’s humorous candor. “Atonement”318 is another story that revolves around Yom Kippur, but its abhorrent violence is antithetical to everything that Keret loves about Yom Kippur. A man named Menachem is furious with his wife over her conduct at the conclusion of the Yom Kippur synagogue service. The etymology of the Hebrew name “Menachem” derives from “to console” or “to comfort.” In Keret’s story however, the heartening meaning of the man’s name, together with the virtuous rectitude of Yom Kippur, are debased. Exiting the sanctuary, even before Menachem takes off his yarmulke, his wife pulls back her hand angrily from her husband’s clasp. He is behaving like an animal, she says, “dragging her out like she was some piece of goods.”319 Menachem is convinced that even the rabbi could hear her. His instantaneous inclination is to slap her right now, but he knows better and waits until they arrive home. There, he begins beating her mercilessly. Throughout the horrid ordeal, viciously smacked and kicked, the wife moans “Menachem, Menachem.” With a final kick to her ribs, Menachem steps back. There is blood on his synagogue shoes. He pulls up a dining room chair and sits with his back to her. Crouched in the corner, his wife pleads for forgiveness. “And he forgave her and so did God, and the timing was truly perfect, with only thirty seconds to go till it’s too late to offer forgiveness.”320 Keret’s secularism is embedded in the history of cultural Zionism as a movement for national independence and self-determination. Hebrew, as a spoken vernacular, and the language in which one writes non-sacred literature, was intrinsic to the movement. For a long time, the Jewish language of Jewish secularists in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century was Yiddish.321 With the massive blow to Yiddish-speaking Jewry during the Holocaust years, post-Holocaust Jewish secularism is often linked with the Hebrew language. The Hebrew vernacular did not come about ex nihilo. The Bible, Talmud, and borrowings from Aramaic, Yiddish, and Arabic resonate in the metamorphosis of Hebrew from dormancy to dynamic vibrancy.

318

Etgar Keret, “Atonement,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 166-168. Keret, “Atonement” (2008), 166. 320 Keret, “Atonement” (2008), 168. 321 An important secular socialist venture was the establishment of the Bund —Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund (The General Union of Jewish Workers). 319

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Contemplating “language in time of revolution,” Benjamin Harshav322 equates Hebrew secularism with Israeli nation building. Harshav maintains that particularly in terms of its organic relationship with the HebraicJewish past, the phenomenon of a “new [Hebrew] base”323 is typical of pioneering cultural transformation in which a social-political wave paves the way for a “peripheral nucleus to move to the center of culture.”324 Similar to Russian Futurism generating new forms of language out of the debris of World War I, Hebrew was thrust into the center-stage of late nineteenth and early twentieth century modern Jewish history. Modernized Hebrew provided Jews with a vehicle for expressing “in a language of their own … a new social identity, irrespective of their various countries of origin and political views.”325 Etgar Keret was born into a precarious political and social environment in which, to cite Hannan Hever drawing “a map of sand,”326 Hebrew literature and its language “are perfectly secure.”327 Keret’s Jewish secularism is multifaceted. “Pick a Color”328 opens with a black man moving to a white neighborhood. For no apparent reason, on a very dark night, the man’s white neighbors beat him up savagely. He almost dies. Recovering from his injuries at a hospital, he falls in love with a white nurse. After a convalescence period, a yellow priest marries the black man and the white nurse at a yellow church. The yellow priest had his doubts about the prospects of this union, but he tells the couple that God loves them. The black man and the white woman remain happily married up until the day a brown man robs the woman at knifepoint and stabs her to death. The same yellow priest conducts the funeral. He is angry with God for allowing this to happen and is ashamed of himself for his initial misgivings over a racially mixed marriage. God is in a wheelchair and offended by the priest’s indignation. He would have the priest know that He lost a woman he truly loved, and that ending up in a wheelchair was the work of the other gods who hated Him because He is different: they are all of golden color and He is silvery. God creating His 322

Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1993). 323 Harshav (1993), 177. 324 Harshav (1993), 178. 325 Harshav (1993), 81. 326 Hannan Hever, “Mapa Shel Hol: MiSifrut Ivrit LeSifrut Yisraelit” (Map of Sand: from Hebrew Literature to Israeli Literature), Theory and Criticism, 20 (Spring 2002): 163-190. 327 Hever, (2002), 175. 328 Etgar Keret, “Pick a Color,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2010), 76-79.

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species in His own image only exacerbated things. “I created you like this because this is what I know. It’s the best I can do.”329 Overhearing what God told the yellow priest, the black man realizes that his sufferings are not much different from the anguish experienced by God. The revelation helps imbue the black man with a revived sense of purpose. The semi-ecclesiastical oratory of “Plague of the Firstborn”330 differs from the transcendental quality of “Pick a Color.” In ancient times, God brought upon the Egyptians ten plagues as punishment for refusing to free and let the Hebrew slaves go. Following the Plague of Frogs, many Egyptians left for Nubia where they would wait “until the wrath of the god of the Hebrews had been spent and the plagues had run their course.”331 When the boy narrator and his older brother, Abdu, ask their father why their family is staying behind, father tells them that although he fears the clever and cruel god of the Hebrews, he and his family cannot leave. He did that once, when he left his young bride under the care of her uncle. He returned after amassing considerable wealth, but from then on vowed never to leave the valley and his family ever again. It is not as if the boys understand what their father reveals to them, but his resolute demeanor is enough to convince them that they could get through the plagues. That is, until the plague of the firstborn. On the day of the deadly plague, everyone rushes to Abdu’s room fearing that Abdu, the eldest son, is in terrible danger. They find him “sprawled out on his cot, his eyes shut tight.”332 Believing his eldest son is dead, father begins cursing the merciless god of the Hebrews, but Abdu’s mother shouts that Abdu could not be dead! Leaning over her son, she shreaks: “wake up!” and lo and behold, Abdu opens his eyes and asks in a sleepy voice “what happened?” A great miracle mother exclaims! “The god of the Hebrews has taken pity on us and on our son.”333 To everyone’s surprise, the father’s reaction is not at all joyous: “The god of the Hebrews harbors neither pity nor compassion towards us … only truth, only truth!” The mother is utterly bewildered; why is Abdu’s father not beside himself with joy and gratitude? Father raises his hand as if to strike his wife, muttering something about Abdu not being her first son. Then, seething, he walks away mumbling to himself: “Cruel indeed is the god of the Hebrews.”334 329

Keret, “Pick a Color” (2010), 78. Etgar Keret, “Plague of the Firstborn,” in The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories (2004), 53-56. 331 Keret, “Plague of the First Born” (2004), 53. 332 Keret, “Plague of the First Born” (2004), 55. 333 Keret, “Plague of the First Born” (2004), 55. 334 Keret, “Plague of the First Born” (2004), 56. 330

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What are readers to make of this story? Theology aside, Keret’s revival of the mythical narrative of the Exodus335 brings across a life lesson of arriving at a truthful moment of coping with traumatic remembrance. Whether it was the uncle or some other male in the uncle’s household who most likely raped and impregnated the young bride while her husband was away, it is the mother in Keret’s story who is victimized, and yet, she appears to have reconciled with a painful past, by way of—to use LaCapra’s psychoanalytic phraseology—working-through traumatic remembrance. By contrast, her husband is unable to move beyond actingout the memory of him as an absentee husband. Consciously or not, his inability to work-through guilt-ridden remembrance brings him to a preposterous point of expecting, perhaps even preferring that his firstborn died. A spattering of metaphysics of godly divination notwithstanding, Keret’s oeuvre is not about sectarian revelation. The only unexplainable miracle Keret believes in is his parents surviving the Holocaust. Whereas the supernatural crops up in several stories, it typically ends up transformed or recast as secular, everyday, quotidian living. “Venus Lite”336 is a good exemplar. The story opens with a first-person narrator seduced by the allure of the gods. The gods “came with nothing, asked for nothing, worked like Arabs and were satisfied.”337 Venus works at the narrator’s office. The timing of her arrival at his place of work seems perfect since the narrator is going through a period of needing something special to believe in, as in falling in love and knowing the bliss of love. He is annoyed with his therapist who recommended that he get a dog as companion and falls madly in love with Venus. He cannot get enough of the Roman goddess, a goddess endowed with so much beauty, love, and prosperity. Believing she could be his savior, he invites her on a date: first a movie and then a drink. They chat about living in Israel. She tells him that relatively speaking, life in Israel is good. He then asks if she believes in God. She says she does but that she believes in a plurality of deities. In other words, if he is asking her about the monotheistic belief in one god, the God, then no, she definitely does not. Later, in bed, her beauty enraptures him. “Perfect ... But that’s it. Tomorrow I’m getting a dog.”338 Keret is averse to any type of controlling power that entails complete compliance. As far as he is concerned, dictates of technology constitute 335

The Book of Exodus, chapters 1-18. Etgar Keret, “Venus Lite,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 147-150. 337 Keret, “Venus Lite“ (2008), 147. 338 Keret, “Venue Lite” (2008), 150. 336

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one such despotic subjugation. “Gadget Glut” is about him being “a technophobe.”339 It was only as late as 2014 that, reluctantly, he tried to overcome “an almost twenty-year emotional block” and muster the courage to learn how to record TV programs. He anticipates that at the point when “the unchecked development of artificial intelligence begins to threaten all human existence, [he’ll] learn how to download movies from the Web.” When everyone switched to Windows and CD-ROM, Keret continued to use DOS and floppy disks. Pressured by his publishers, he succumbed to opening a Facebook page. However, by his own admission, he continues to maintain his “primitive charm by managing not to understand how to tag people in photos or how to upload a video clip.” Humor aside, eccentric intransigence is not at the heart of Keret’s resentment of fast-tracked, high-speed developments. It has to do with a humanist philosophy that decries disconcertment felt by many of us when thrown into a whirlpool of abrupt changes that leave little room for noncompliance: An animal used to drinking from a particular watering hole is in no hurry to exchange it for a different one, however much larger and shadier the new spot may be. The animal knows that the familiar old pond fulfills its needs, while all kinds of danger might be lurking at the bottom of the new one. What’s a little shade and a bit more water compared to the possibility of being devoured by the second cousin of the Loch Ness monster?

Above all, Keret is struck by the incongruity of technological prowess visà-vis humans’ folly in launching wars and mass destruction. When interviewed for the New York Times Book Review340 and asked what books he finds himself returning to, Keret responded that Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five “is probably the fiction book I’ve reread the most in my life. Almost every war I’ve experienced in my country has sent me back to that book.” Nonconformist, free-spirited Etgar Keret is a delightfully affable person blessed with a sensational sense of humor. He is an avid talker, and an equally courteous listener. Catherine Lacey had the pleasure of accompanying Keret in 2015 on a tour of Manhattan, New York.341 Lacey 339 Etgar Keert, “Gadget Glut,” trans. Sondra Silverston, The New Yorker, May 18, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/innovation-etgar-keret-gadget-glut. 340 Etgar Keret, “By the Book,” The New York Times Sunday Book Review, July 12, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/.2015/07/12/books/review/etgar-keret-by-thebook.html. 341 Etgar Keret, “We Ate a Shit-Ton of Hummus with Israeli Short-Story Writer Etgar Keret,” interview with Etgar Keret by Catherine Lacey, Vice, Special Report:

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describes being enchanted by Keret’s “goofy sense of humor and love for the absurd.” Evidently, “Israel’s greatest vegetarian short-story writer” is “a hummus addict.” In the course of a gastronomic expedition in search of the best hummus West Village can offer, Lacey and Keret discussed Israeli politics. With Netanyahu as Prime Minister, things seem devoid of hope, yet Keret persists in retaining what Lacey calls “a reverent optimism.” He was heartbroken when Lev, his son, asked if they could move to New Zealand, where people are not always trying to kill each other. Still, as Keret elucidated in an interview with Dan Ephron,342 he would like to think that his Holocaust-survivor mother is not wrong in believing that people find ways to be happy even after going through unthinkable tragedies. Yes, Israeli politics worry Keret a great deal. For now, however, he is sanguine about remaining “an interminable optimist.” He admits to “this hubris:” if only he could gather Israelis together, he would talk them into seeing things his way. Up until the day Keret’s son was born—a day marred by paradoxical, life-and-death events—Keret could not imagine himself in a situation where he would be at a loss for words. He never experienced a paucity of words. As it happened, the very first time he was unable to run with his imagination, and find the “right” words, was when his son’s birth coincided with a ghastly terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. “When I sat down to write, I was trying to think: what was this like? And it was like nothing. My imagination was not functioning at that moment.”343 Until then, he found writing non-fiction tiresome: “It’s enough that we’re constrained by gravity and illness. Why should we write about that when our imagination can take us as far as we want?”344 That too changed with the birth of his son. Keret arriving at a ripening perspective on writing fiction and nonfiction ties in with a more expansive viewpoint on reciprocity between writer and reader, or, as Keret defines it: “writer-reader input.” According to Keret, the input ratio between film producer and audience is ninety percent producer and ten percent audience. Reading a novel amounts to seventy percent author input and thirty percent reader. Citing “Crazy

a House Divided, July 6, 2015, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbxb5Q/somuch-fucking-hummus-with-etgar-keret-757. 342 Etgar Keret, “12 Questions for Israeli Writer Etgar Keret,” interview with Etgar Keret by Dan Ephron, Newsweek, January 8, 2015, http://www.newsweek.com/ 12-questions-for-israeli-writer-etgar-keret-358896. 343 Keret (Chaffee 2016). 344 The subject of Keret’s nonfiction writing is discussed further in a later chapter.

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Glue”345 as an example, only with stories—short stories in particular— does writer-reader input equal a fifty-fifty reciprocity ratio. “Crazy Glue” tells the story of a couple in a troubled marriage. The husband is involved in extramarital affairs. Although it is unclear whether his wife’s awareness of her husband’s illicit shenanigans has anything to do with her increasingly strange conduct, it so happens that returning home one day from work, the husband discovers that everything in the couple’s apartment is glued down. His wife too is glued to the ceiling by the soles of her feet. She is completely naked. The extraordinary spectacle rekindles the husband’s love for his wife, and he decides to join her. Standing on a pile of books, he reaches up, kisses her lips, and remains dangling mid-air, glued to her lips. To date, Keret notes, there are nine different film adaptations—ranging from romantic comedies to horror movies—to a single written version of “Crazy Glue.” Keret further remarked to Lewis that he is aware of his aptitude for writing stories that evoke a sense of urgency, perhaps even panic. “I may not walk the walk but I can definitely talk the talk.” Keret explains his proclivity for the postmodern short story as a genre most suitable for communicating “the physicality of a conversation,” perceived by the author as analogous to his son’s bodily movements when playing video games. Franz Kafka’s lack of commitment to “the believability of the story” is in concordance with Keret’s own mode of countering the tradition of the well-crafted story. As surmised by Farhat Iftekharrudin346 in relation to Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme, and Richard Brautigan, “the fragmentary nature of our postmodern lives” often comes across as “mockery against form.”347 Interestingly, according to Keret, his insight into readers’ response to literature was gleaned from observing crowds at sporting events. A soccer game he attended in his youth left an indelible impression on the future writer. He does not recall the actual game but has never forgotten the frenzied crowd or a family relative’s outburst of rage over the home team losing the game. Of all the sports, soccer seems to Keret to resemble life most in that to enjoy a soccer game is to accept the fact that the “good guys” do not always win. 345

Etgar Keret, “Crazy Glue,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 41-43. According to Keret, “Crazy Glue” is the only story he has ever written that was inspired by a commercial, in this case, it was a commercial for glue. 346 Farhat Iftekharrudin, The Postmodern Story: Forms and Issues, eds. Joseph Boyden, Mary Rohrberger, and Jaie Claudet (London, UK: Praeger Publishers, 2003). 347 Iftekharrudin (2003), 6-7.

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In March 2017, as a guest speaker in Toronto, Keret reflected on politics and playing soccer.348 This being in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election in the United States, the packed audience was eager to hear the author’s thoughts on Hillary Rodham Clinton versus Donald John Trump. Not surprising, Keret told the Torontonian crowd that had he been an American citizen, he would have undoubtedly cast his vote for Clinton. Trump scares the living daylights out of him. That said, by analogy, as in favoring one soccer team over another, there are some arbitrary aspects to championing one political candidate over his or her opponent. For him the choice is not about Democrats, the soccer home team, versus Republicans, the “other” soccer team. Rather, it is advocating for a team that can personify optimism, in this case Clinton, as opposed to Trump’s pessimistic scaremongering. The same dichotomy is applicable to Israeli politics, with Trump-like Netanyahu’s team spewing rhetoric of impending doom. If ever a time should come when in Israel pessimism triumphs over hope, he will leave Israel. As for America, Keret is not giving up on America—not yet. According to Keret, ideological affiliations, behaviors, and attitudes have much to do with perceptions. The unreliability of perceptions preoccupies him. As an example, Keret argues that each one of us would likely be furious if, having spotted and signaled our intention to park our car at a vacant parking space, another driver pops out of nowhere and unabashedly parks his car in “our” spot. Our reaction, however, would be quite different had we known that the man is a devoted husband who is in a rush to pick up prescribed medications for his gravely ill wife. Literature, Keret believes, evokes emotional and intellectual responses that transcend blinkered perceptions. Perception, Marcel Proust tells us in his epic, autobiographic novel In Search of Lost Time 349 (À la recherché du temps perdu), is the key to understanding our identity and our search for meaning. Acquiring an awareness of biased perceptions of others is essential to living a life of fulfillment.350 We consider Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita great literature not because we are heedless to the depravity of Humbert Humbert—an impetuous, middle-aged man obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl—but because of the artful and multifarious manner 348

The event was moderated by Eric Beck Rubin. Or Remembrance of Things Past. 350 As noted by Jack Murray—“Proust’s Views on Perception as a Metaphoric Framework,” The French Review, 42, no. 3 (February 1969): 380-394—one of the difficulties in Proust’s approach to perception is that what may be grasped as a theoretical argument about perception could easily be mistaken for a metaphor, metaphors constituting an important element in what Proust considered as truth. 349

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with which Nabokov brandishes a protagonist warped in self-serving perceptions. “Fly Already”351 is the title story of Keret’s 2019 short story collection. It is an extraordinary story about the fallibility of perceptions. Keret wrote the story in the aftermath of a near-fatal car accident. The traumatic experience left a deep psychological imprint. First published in English on May 15, 2017, in The New Yorker, the story opens with a father and his son at a neighborhood park. Suddenly, the boy, nicknamed P.T., points in the direction of a four-story building. Initially, all his father could see was an ugly building “covered in plaster and dotted with air-conditioners.” Upon taking a second look, however, he is horrified to see what caught his son’s attention: a man on the building’s roof railing. The man is dressed in a white shirt “looking straight at me …” Dad shouts at the guy, “Don’t do it!” and the man on the roof signals that he can’t hear Dad and yells back at Dad: “What?”352 Meanwhile P.T. is beaming with excitement. Is it possible that the person on the roof is a superhero? Dad knows better and panics over the prospect of his son witnessing a man plummeting to his death. The scene brings back a memory of the fatal car accident in which his wife, Liat, died. P.T. was only two years old and has no recollection of the accident, but P.T.’s brother, Amit, was old enough to remember. For a long time after that awful day, Amit kept asking, “When is Mommy coming back?”353 Making matters much worse is the fact that the accident need not have happened had the father, prior to the family trip to the Dead Sea, attended to a mechanical problem with the car. Now, once again, it will be the father’s fault if his younger son witnesses a terrifying event. If only he could reach out to the man on the roof and tell him that he knows how it must feel because not too long ago, he too was beyond misery but can guarantee that over time the insufferable pain will dissipate. He makes a desperate attempt to draw the man’s attention to P.T., hoping the man will reconsider and not jump to his death while the kid is watching. On his part, P.T. shouts at the man: “Come on and fly already, before it gets dark!”354 Dad is determined to reach the man on the roof. He picks up his son and runs as fast as he can in the direction of the building. P.T. does not make things easier. He is angry with his father for interfering with what promises to be a spectacular instance of a superhero taking off, flying. He 351

Etgar Keret, “Fly Already,” in Fly Already (2019), 1-7. Keret, “Fly Already” (2019), 1-2. 353 Keret, “Fly Already” (2019), 3. 354 Keret, “Fly Already” (2019), 3-4. 352

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kicks and screams which makes the dart to the building, and then the climb up a narrow staircase leading to the roof, near impossible for Dad. Finally, father and son reach the rooftop, but there is no one there. Holding on tightly to P.T., Dad takes several hesitant steps towards the edge of the railing from where he dreads he will see a body sprawled on the sidewalk. At that exact moment, a woman pedestrian comes by. She sees a man on the roof holding a young boy who is struggling to free himself from the man’s tight hold. Mistaking the man for someone who is about to toss a child from the roof or jump to his death with the child, she shouts: “Don’t do it! Please, don’t do it!”355 In an abrupt change of scenery, Dad and P.T. are having ice cream with the woman who moments earlier mistook Dad for someone who was about to commit an act of murder or murder-suicide. As fate would have it, the woman’s name is the same as P.T.’s mother: Liat. Much like everyone else in the story, she too has known much sorrow: she lost a child. P.T. seems relaxed and at ease with the woman. With an ice cream in one hand, he reaches out for the woman’s milkshake with the other. Dad is about to reprimand his son, but the woman stops him. “He’s so cute,”356 she says softly—a rather warmhearted, amiable ending to an eerie, sad story. The irreconcilability of ending with the rest of the story is typical of Keret’s inflammatory style. On the one hand, encasing a fast-paced drama within a substructure of a short story shakes readers out of contemplative slothfulness and emotional inertia. At the very same time, the clipped simplicity of “he’s so cute” provides a temporary entr’acte, a respite between complete pandemonium and a moment—however brief—of hope, placidity. As previously noted, the trigger that prompted “Fly Already” was a serious car accident during which Keret thought he was going to die. It happened on a reading tour travelling from Connecticut to Boston. Deborah Treisman357 found the infusion of humor into a story written under much physical and emotional distress to be intriguing. Keret explained that “humor is like an airbag in a car: it appears only in cases of emergency.” Humor, he added, “is the weapon of the weak … [I]t protects you against a reality which you cannot change but at the same time, cannot accept.” It befits the fast pace of the genre of the short story in that both 355

Keret, “Fly Already” (2019), 7. Keret, “Fly Already” (2019), 7. 357Etgar Keret, “This Week in Fiction: Etgar Keret on the Necessity of Humor in the Face of Tragedy,” interview with Etgar Keret by Deborah Treisman, The New Yorker, May 15, 2017, http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction- thisweek-etgar-keret-2017-5-15. 356

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come about instinctively, “like blinking or sneezing.” Treisman was also curious to know whether the woman in “Fly Already” thought the father was going to throw the child or jump from the rooftop with the child. Keret prefaced his response by saying that regardless of being the writer, once a story is out there, he becomes one among several interpreters. Having said that, he is inclined to think that the woman thought the man was going to jump off the roof with the boy. “No rational argument here, just a purely emotional one: as impossible as it is for me to imagine someone who kills his child and commits suicide, it is even more impossible for me to imagine someone who kills his child and goes on living.” Most importantly, the fundamental issue is that regardless of a father, child, and a passer-by woman witnessing the same occurrences, each one has a different perception of what he or she witnessed. The very same man is standing at the edge of a rooftop. P.T. “sees” Superman whereas his father “sees” a suicidal man. Finally, there is the implicit matter of the mindset of a person’s perception of death by suicide as preferable to life—not by any means an incidental matter in Keret’s life. Death by suicide of a close friend precipitated one of Keret’s bestknown, stories: “Pipes.”358 The story is among Keret’s early stories and is one of his personal favorites. In “Portrait of the Author as a Young Man Serving in the Israeli Army”359 Keret reveals that he wrote “Pipes” while serving “in one of the most heavily guarded army bases in Israel.” He was nineteen years old and terribly depressed: I wrote the story during an especially long shift in an isolated, windowless computer room deep in the bowels of the earth … I couldn’t explain to myself why I wrote it and exactly what purpose it was supposed to serve. The fact that I had typed all those made-up sentences was exciting, but also frightening.

“Pipes” opens with a seventh-grade adolescent diagnosed by a school psychologist as suffering from severe perceptual disorders. When shown pictures of a person without ears, the boy fails to notice the oddity. Several years later, the young lad drops out of high school and undertakes a job at a factory that specializes in manufacturing industrial pipes. In the main, he enjoys the monotonous, mechanical work. On one occasion, just for the fun of it, he rolls a few marbles down a newly constructed pipe. To his 358

Etgar Keret, “Pipes,” in Gaza Blues, Different Stories (2004), 53-56. Etgar Keret, “Portrait of the Author as a Young Man Serving in the Israeli Army,” trans. Sondra Silverston, Tablet Magazine, August 26, 2013, https://www. tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/portrait-of-an-author-etgar-keret.

359

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utter amazement, the marbles do not roll back. They simply vanish. Having no family or friends who would miss him, he decides to design a large enough pipe, crawl into it, and disappear just like the mystifying marbles. For the first time in his life, having arrived at the decision to disappear, he feels imbued with a sense of purpose. “I don’t think there was another human being in the whole world who wanted to disappear more than I did, and that’s why it was me who invented the pipe.”360 Disappear he does. Arriving at the far end of the pipe, Keret’s protagonist realizes that he has actually made his way to heaven, where he discovers misfits like him passing the time playing with the marbles he dispatched. Keret’s heaven is not an eternal resting place for righteous people. Keret’s heaven is a place “for the people who were genuinely unable to be happy on earth.”361 Committing suicide, however, does not grant you an instantaneous entry into heaven. Actually, people who attempt to kill themselves always get a second chance at life because they will have a better go the second time around. Heaven is for those who have absolutely no chance of fitting into the world. Bottom line: if one is hopelessly unhappy “down there,” and people tell you “you’re suffering from severe perceptual disorders,” strive to find the way to heaven. And by the way, “could you please bring some cards, ‘cause we’re getting pretty tired of the marbles?”362 Contemplating “Pipes,” I am reminded of Derek Attridge conversing with Jacques Derrida about Samuel Beckett.363 Attridge asked Derrida whether he believed Beckett’s literature is “so deconstructive” and “so self-deconstructive” that there is not much left to add. Derrida replied that although this is undeniably true about Beckett, “the two possibilities are in the greatest possible proximity and competition.” That is, “He [Beckett] is a nihilist and he is not a nihilist.”364 Similarly, Keret is an agnostic and not an agnostic. “Bad Karma” (Suddenly, A Knock On The Door)365 is a case in point. A young man kills himself jumping from a top floor building. The suicidal man himself is extraneous to the storyline. The real story centers around a protagonist named Oshri Sivan. Oshri is very good at talking credulous clients into purchasing life and health insurance policies. He is particularly persuasive when sharing his personal experience. As Oshri tells prospective 360

Keret, “Pipes” (2004), 55. Keret, “Pipes” (2004), 56. 362 Keret, “Pipes” (2004), 56. 363 Derrida, (Attridge 1992). 364 Derrida, (Attridge 1992), 62. 365 Etgar Keret, “Bad Karma,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2010), 89-98. 361

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clients, once upon a time, while seated at a café, a man jumped to his death from an eleventh-floor window and, “wham,” landed right on Oshri’s head! Aside from the instantaneous death of the suicidal man, Oshri suffered a serious head injury that left him in a coma for six whole weeks. Upon regaining consciousness, Oshri discovered that he had no health insurance to cover the pricy cost of hospitalization. The material lesson ascertained from this unfortunate experience notwithstanding, the more recondite, esoteric effect of emerging from a prolonged state of unconsciousness was “the absence of memory, the sense of existing without a name and without a history, in the present.”366 Six whole weeks during which there was only “this little hint of a future, in the form of an unaccountable optimism attached to a strange sense of being.” Thus, in Keret’s story, a prolonged state of unconsciousness is not medically comparable to being in a coma. Rather, it means drawing breath while having a sense—a sense that cannot be communicated to others—of hovering between being alive and not quite being alive. It is not to be confused with the Roman Catholic notion of purgatory, nor with nirvana. It is a state of incommunicable awareness. “Bad Karma” continues with Oshri as a married man and a father to a daughter named Meital. One day, driving with his wife in the passenger seat and Meital in the back, they arrive at an intersection where a two-car collision had occurred. An ambulance arrives and the paramedics attend to a man covered in blood. The man is taken away on a stretcher. Peering at the scene from the back window, Meital wants to know where the paramedics are taking the man. Doing his best to sound positively reassuring, Oshri tells his daughter that the man is going to a better place where he will feel weightless and lighthearted. “A place filled with colors and tastes and smells that you couldn’t even imagine.”367 His wife glowers at him and he falls silent. Then, when he looks in the rearview mirror, he can see “Meital smiling and waving bye-bye at the man on the stretcher.”368 In a conversation with Leva Lesinska369 during his stay in Riga, Keret suggested that suicide is a choice a person makes “as an insider and an outsider.” Ever since his first brush with suicide, when his army friend shot himself, he thinks of suicide as something “outside of life experienced 366

Keret, “Bad Karma” (2010), 91. Keret, “Bad Karma” (2010), 97. 368 Keret, “Bad Karma” (2010), 98. 369 Etgar Keret, “High Register, Low Register,” interview with Etgar Keret by Leva Lesinska, Eurozine, April 17, 2013, www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-04-17keret-en.html. 367

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from the inside.” He was the one who had the misfortune of discovering his friend’s body. “Pipes” was written shortly thereafter. Utterly devastated, Keret struggled to find his way “back to life.” Little by little, he became cognizant of a sense of responsibility for his own life. Linda Grant370 argues that “The Nimrod Flip-Out”371 is an example of a story by Keret in which suicide relates to “the inner world of sadness and paranoia that afflicts Israelis.” A relatively long story, “The Nimrod FlipOut” is about a close friendship between three young men: Miron, Uzi, and Ron (the narrator). The story opens with Miron undergoing treatment in a psychiatric hospital subsequent to suffering a mental breakdown. Uzi and Ron try to figure out what precipitated Miron “freaking-out.” The doctors attribute Miron’s breakdown to the trauma of serving in the Israeli army. His parents believe it is because of “some bad magic mushrooms” he ate on his trip to the East. Miron himself blames God for “messing everything up.”372 Next, Uzi “flips-out,” as does Ron, and not once. All three suffer recurring emotional collapses. The pattern is the same: flipping out, recovering, flipping out and recovering again, and so on. At some point in the story, the reader learns that once upon a time, there was a fourth friend: Nimrod. Alas, years ago, Nimrod killed himself. The ongoing, periodic flip-outs experienced by the remaining three friends all point to Nimrod’s suicide. It happened while serving in the army. All four friends were in the same unit “with a cushy office job” that Nimrod liked to describe as “padded pad.”373 Things went terribly wrong one Saturday. Nimrod’s girlfriend, Netta, had broken up with him and Nimrod was in a depressed state of mind. On that fateful Saturday Nimrod, Miron, and Ron were on rotating guard duty. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary until an officer burst in, clamoring that “[T]he guy on duty had put a bullet in his head.”374 Having completed their army service, the three go on with their respective lives. They hold different jobs, date different women, and so on, albeit, they continue to live vicariously off their memories of Nimrod. As Miron puts it to Ron:

370

Etgar Keret, “Life, Try it Sometime,” interview with Etgar Keret by Linda Grant, The Independent, February 25, 2005, http://www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment /books/features/etgar-keret-life-try-it-some-time-12655. 371 Etgar Keret, “The Nimrod Flip-Out,” in The Nimrod Flip-Out (2005), 7-28. 372 Keret, “The Nimrod Flip-Out” (2005), 7. 373 Keret, “The Nimrod Flip-Out” (2005), 17. 374 Keret, “The Nimrod Flip-Out” (2005), 19.

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The way he (Nimrod) flips us out isn’t always the best idea either, but the truth is that he wouldn’t be doing it to us if he didn’t feel in his heart that we agree. There’s nothing we can do about it. We’re screwed, Ron.375

As Keret revealed to Grant, in the immediate aftermath of his real-life army friend killing himself, Keret “had the strong feeling that because [they] had such a strong connection [he] had to stay his friend and stay nineteen.” In the years to follow, having discovered a penchant for storytelling, writing evolved into the foremost “commercial for life. Life: try it sometime.”376 Keret entwines the divide between life and death with the law of probability and the butterfly effect. The supposition underlying the law of probability is attributed to a mathematician/meteorologist named Edward Lorenz. Lorenz spoke of predictions—as in weather forecasts or economic projections—that are prone to inaccuracies due to unforeseen, circumstantial changes. Furthermore, fluctuations or shifts that seem negligible at first can evolve into major disasters. Thus, a seemingly innocuous transmission of a virus from animal droppings to humans at a faraway market, say, in Wuhan, China transmutes into a menacing global pandemic. (In an essay titled “The Butterfly Effect: Everything You Need to Know About This Powerful Mental Model”377 the idea that a mere flapping of butterfly wings could result in a typhoon is applied to Adolf Hitler and his so-called artistic aspirations. The authors speculate that had Hitler’s application not been rejected (twice) by The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, humanity would have procured some mediocre watercolor drawings, as opposed to world war and catastrophic acts against humanity. I make mention of this speculative anecdote despite doubting its plausibility.) Keret sets in motion the randomness of the law of probability and the butterfly effect in “Cheesus Christ.”378 The narrator of the story is interested in discovering what people have in mind knowing that in a few seconds they will die a violent death. Evidently, based on findings gleaned from an MIT survey, the word most likely to be cried out under such dire circumstances—as in a plane crash—was the “f” word. Jeremy Kleinman, however, was an exception. In the split second before dying in an air disaster, he blared “without cheese!”379 Apparently, while still among the 375

Keret, “The Nimrod Flip-Out” (2005), 28. Keret (Grant 2005). 377 http://fs.blog/the-butterfly-effect. 378 Etgar Keret, “Cheesus Christ,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2010), 2024. 379 Keret, “Cheesus Christ” (2010), 20. 376

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living, cheeseburger without cheese was Kleinman’s favorite item on the menu of a restaurant called Cheesus Christ. Moreover, he was not the only one with a gastronomic predilection for cheeseburgers without cheese. Other customers ordered a cheeseburger without cheese, the reason being that just like Kleinman, they kept kosher, which prohibits mixing meat and dairy products. The demand for cheeseburgers without cheese was such that the restaurant’s shift manager took it upon herself to convey the apparent popularity of this carte du jour item to the restaurant’s CEO who resided in Atlanta. As shift manager, the dedicated employee considered communication with the CEO integral to her responsibilities. This time, however, the CEO failed to acknowledge her communiqué. It was disconcerting and got her thinking about the break-up with her boyfriend. She had her reasons, but she never imagined that this would bring him to kill himself. Had it not been for the guilt she was still carrying over her boyfriend’s suicide, the flagrant lack of respect shown by the CEO would have led her to quit her job. Not that she thought the CEO would end his life over her resignation, but one never knows. It is at this point in Keret’s beguiling story that the hypothetical law of probability and the butterfly effect come into play. As told by the story’s narrator, MIT neuroscientists arrived at the conclusion that “scientific probability” is predicated on what is commonly known as the butterfly effect, based on the idea that a Brazilian butterfly fluttering its wings can cause a tornado. Furthermore, in all probability, the chances that something negative and destructive occurs “are a thousand times greater than the chance of something beneficial happening.”380 By and by, the CEO makes a lucrative profit selling his business. He relocates to Brazil, and it is from a luxurious Brazilian resort that the CEO finally attends to the matter of the cheeseburger without cheese. Seated outdoors, typing on a laptop resting on his knees, he composes a belated thank you message to the restaurant’s employee. Alas, just as he taps “SEND,” his finger inadvertently touches the wings of a butterfly that happened to be resting on the laptop’s keyboard. “The butterfly fluttered its wings,” and somewhere “on the other side of the world, evil winds began to blow.”381 It is the incalculable law of probability and the butterfly effect that Keret juxtaposes with him choosing life over suicide in the aftermath of his friend’s death. As Keret explained to Terry Gross in a conversation 380 381

Keret, “Cheesus Christ” (2010), 23-24. Keret, “Cheesus Christ” (2010), 24.

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about “what Keret learned from his father about storytelling and survival,”382 Keret felt terribly hurt and angry. The bullet that killed his friend “hit the cabinet behind the seat where we were supposed to sit.” How could his friend do this to him? “[W]e live our life thinking that we are kind of an elite star in a Hollywood movie … it’s our name up there; big on the poster and that all the other people are kind of extras.” His friend was living a story that at some point he decided to bring to an end. “He was somebody that I loved, and … he had loved me,” but he wanted out. Writing “Pipes” was Keret’s way of opting for life. Somewhat analogous to the protagonist of “Pipes,” envisioning a pipe he could crawl into and disappear had set in motion a life’s work of storytelling that would take him to “a place where things would make sense.” Omri Herzog383 entwines Keret’s “apocalyptic probability” with the appearance of angels in several stories by Keret. Among the stories Herzog considers are “Hole in the Wall,” “Monkey’s Uncle,” and “Bubbles” (in Missing Kissinger), “Pipes” (in Gaza Blues, Different Stories), “One Last Story and That’s It,” “On the Nutritional Value of Dreams,” and “So Good” (in Girl On The Fridge), “Ladder” (in Fly Already), “Katzenstein” (in The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories), “Guava” (in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door), and a novella titled Kneller’s Happy Campers.384 In the main, Keret’s angels are lacking in virtue and grace. As such, they have little in common with depiction of angels in traditional, religious works of art. Keret’s angels are not omniscient although similar to biblical angels they serve as heavenly emissaries. They have no halo and tend to be temperamental and even dishonest. In other words, in their less than meritorious nature, they are much like humans. Finally, Keret’s angels are in the habit of showing up as a precursor to pending disasters, as, for example, antecedent to a plane crash. In “Guava”385 a passenger named Shkedi is about to die in an aviation disaster. An angel appears just as the plane is about to crash. The angel’s assignment is to grant Shkedi his last wish. The angel informs Shkedi that he has been bestowed a final wish. Shkedi wonders whether this final wish is similar to winning the lottery, or more like an award for righteous deeds. 382

Keret, (Gross 2016). Omri Herzog, “Pitom Dfika BaDelet MeEt Etgar Keret, Anahnu Orhim LeRega” (Suddenly, A Knock On The Door by Etgar Keret, We are Momentarily Here as Guests). Haaretz, September 1, 2011, http://www.haaretz.co.il/1/1205091. 384 Etgar Keret, Kneller’s Happy Campers, trans. Miriam Shlesinger (London: Chatto & Windus, 2009). 385 Keret, “Guava,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2010), 160-162. 383

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The plane is about to crash, and the angel is well aware of the urgency of his task. The last thing he needs is for Shkedi to be searching for meaning. All he knows is that he has a job and that it does not entail providing explanatory rational. Although taken aback by the tactlessness of the angel, Shkedi wishes for peace on earth. The angel is baffled. He was expecting the usual monetary or material compensation for loved ones, but it is too late. Shkedi is dead. His soul has ascended to heaven and his body reincarnated. He is now a “second hand but good as new” guava.386 A guava, Keret’s philosopher-narrator explains, has no thoughts or ability to speak, but it has feelings. This particular Shkedi-guava is petrified of being blown off the tree. Meanwhile, Shkedi’s angel has no choice but to make Shkedi’s wish for peace on earth come true, and humans “beat their swords into plowshares and nuclear reactors soon began to be used for peaceful purposes.”387 Alas, blissful paradise on earth was of no consolation to the panic-stricken guava who can think of nothing else but “just don’t crash!”388 With that, Keret’s tour de force in magic realism concludes. Magic realism, life, death, the afterlife, mortals, and angels intertwine effortlessly in Keret’s stories. How does he do it? One way is by creating a montage whereby he, the author, assumes the character and role of every person, object, and motion in a given story. He is at once a petrified guava dangling from a tree, a misanthropic angel, a near-death righteous passenger, a doomed airplane flight, cosmic peace, and so on. The net result is a polymorphic, fractured whole that resists certitude and intactness. Realism and fantasy disrupt each other’s space, thwarting cohesion and predictability. Fiction, Keret argues, is not a practical entity. You cannot quench thirst or hunger with it. A novel, a poem, or a short story cannot shield you from a hurricane, but literature is nonpareil in simulating humanity’s dismal failure to live up to Shkedi’s final wish. Who is to blame for bad things happening to good people like Shkedi? In “Fungus: Who is to Blame When Bad Things Happen to Good Characters,”389 Keret tackles Job’s biblical quandary. A nameless man cannot get enough air into his lungs and collapses on the floor of a café. The story, however, is not about the man, nor about a female waiter named Galia who quickly comes to the man’s assistance. A “dark-skinned, bald guy” volunteers to rush the man over to a nearby hospital rather than wait for the ambulance. The Good Samaritan can hear the injured man 386

Keret, “Guava” (2010), 161. Keret, “Guava” (2010), 161. 388 Keret, “Guava” (2010), 162. 389 Etgar Keret, “Fungus” in Fly Already (2019), 154-157. 387

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whimpering from the backseat of the car. Alas, in his hurry to get to the hospital, the driver fails to notice a Renault van heading his way. The driver of the Renault is wearing a yarmulke and does not have his seat belt fastened. There is a fatal crash, but readers are informed that the story is not about the accident either. What then is the story about? It is about writing literature. More specifically, it is about literature as antithetical to bad things happening to good people. Frustrated with his inability to come up with a good story, the author puts the blame on his wife whom he accuses of constantly interrupting him. In truth, however, as the author himself admits, this is his problem and his fault. “The story isn’t working. It’s not even a story. It’s an itch. It's a fungus under my fingernail.” In other words, unlike the enigmatic conundrum why bad things happen to good people, when it comes to writing, the onus is on the writer. “The fact that you invent something doesn’t exempt you from responsibility and, unlike life, where you can shrug and point up to God in heaven, there’s no excuse here. In a story, you’re God.”390 James Warner391 contends that Keret’s objective is to demystify writing about life and death. Kneller’s Happy Campers392 is viewed by Warner as paradigmatic in that it conjures up a narrative about a man who, having taken a great deal of trouble to take his own life, is disappointed to discover that the afterlife is as dull and depressing as the life he knew prior to committing suicide.393 By beclouding metaphysical notions and convictions surrounding life and the afterlife, Keret deflates the lore of arcane mysteries nurtured by humans throughout the ages. “Simyon”394 is an effectual example of Keret striving to demythologize primordial, entrenched “truths” about life and death. The backdrop to “Simyon” is the Israeli milieu, but as is emblematic to Keret’s oeuvre, the story is universally pertinent. The story opens with two somewhat inept army officials arriving at the home of a woman named Orit. Assuming the solemn role of bearer of bad news, a second lieutenant informs Orit that her husband, Sergeant Simyon Bielsky, died in a terrorist attack at the Beit 390

Keret, “Fungus” (2019), 156. James Warner, “Translating Monsters into Songbirds: The Stories of Etgar Keret,” Open Democracy, August 2, 2011, http://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ translating-monsters-into-songbirds-stories-of-etgar-keret. 392 Etgar Keret, Kneller’s Happy Campers (2009). 393 As a side note, Keret contends that “My Last Story” by Janet Frame epitomizes the inextricable, entangled relationship between literature, life, and death. https://electricliterature.com/post/3620502158/etgar-keret-janet-frame-last-story. 394 Etgar Keret, “Simyon,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2010), 25-30. 391

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Lid junction.395 Expecting the usual reaction of shock, devastation, occasionally even fainting, the army appointees are taken aback by Orit’s demeanor. In a casual, matter-of-fact tone, she conveys to the messengers that although they have come to the correct address, and despite the fact that official records at the Ministry of Internal Affairs state that she is married to Simyon, she is not Simyon’s “real” wife. In a flashback, two years ago, Orit decided to wangle her way out of compulsory service in the Israeli army. Assi, then Orit’s boyfriend, comes up with a plan. Since married women are exempted from army duty, Assi asks his close friend, Simyon, to participate in a fictitious marriage to Orit. Assi will attend to all the preliminary arrangements, including obtaining a rabbinic marriage license. All Simyon would have to do is act as the groom in a mock-up wedding ceremony. Orit is somewhat offended by Assi’s willingness to relegate the role of the bogus husband to Simyon. Nonetheless, she goes along with the scheme formulated by Assi. As for Simyon, he agrees. Following a brisk, simulated wedding ceremony, the three friends decide to celebrate the occasion at a falafel kiosk. Feeling a bit giddy, Simyon makes a feeble attempt to seal the deal with a kiss on Orit’s lips. It is an innocuous gesture but enough to stun Orit. Overcome by a nauseating blend of “frying falafel oil and that moldy smell of the rabbinate that clung to her hair,” she vomits into a nearby flower stand. When she looks up, her eyes meet Simyon’s wounded look. After lingering on for a brief moment, Simyon turns around and runs away. Since then, there was no reason for Orit to have thought about Simyon, that is, until this unintended moment. At the army officials’ request, Orit agrees to identify the body. It had been two years since Orit last saw Simyon, but “the smell of the corpse was just like the smell of his breath on her face two years ago.”396 Convinced Orit’s stoic indifference is actually indicative of being in a state of shock, the army personnel respectfully ask whether Orit would like a moment alone with the deceased. When Orit shows no interest, the officers surmise that this is a classic instance of a wife numbed by grief. “Really, 395

Keret does not provide details of the deadly occurrence at the Beit Lid junction, but Israelis know that the reference is to a terrorist attack at the Beit Lid junction in 1995. The intersection is a major, central crossroad. On that day, the place was crowded with Israeli soldiers returning to their military base after a weekend off. Dressed in Israeli army uniform and stationing himself in the middle of the crowd, a Palestinian Islamic Jihadist detonated explosives concealed under his clothing. Shortly after, a second suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the midst of people who had come to assist victims of the first explosion. 396 Keret, “Simyon” (2010), 30.

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it’s okay to cry … there is no point in holding it in” is how the story concludes. Having Simyon killed in a terrorist attack, as opposed to in combat, fits well into Keret’s demystification of death. As for Orit’s inability to shed tears over the death of a man who had shown her much kindness, it is purposely left unresolved. Yaron Peleg debates Keret’s temporal approach to life and death.397 Peleg equates Keret’s “life: try it sometime” with love and romance. To be sure, there are many expositions of love, intimacy, and sex in Keret’s stories. I hesitate, however, to go along with Peleg’s idea of romance as “an organizing principle of redemptive significance”398 in Keret’s stories. I am even less inclined to agree with the poet-critic Rachel Shklovsky, who ascribes to Keret hippie-like adulation of free love. Reading into some thirty stories by Keret in search of antiestablishment dialectics, Shklovsky affiliates Keret’s literature with the New Left movement of the sixties, pointing to similarities between R. D. Laing’s anti-psychiatry radicalism and Keret’s idiosyncrasies. I respectfully disagree and fail to see a correlation between R. D. Laing “normalizing” schizophrenia—“the divided self”—and Keret’s creative leaps of imagination.399 If I were to select one story that exemplifies the bedrock of Keret’s philosophy of life and death, it would be “Surprise Egg.”400 The historical backdrop to “Surprise Egg” is the 1987-1993 Palestinian uprising, Intifada, during which Israelis lived through devastating terrorist suicide bombings. Deadly explosives detonated in coffee shops, bakeries, buses, bus stops, markets, road junctions, malls, train stations, hotel lobbies, supermarkets, restaurants, and medical centers. “Surprise Egg” opens with a woman in her thirties killed in a terrorist attack at a bus stop. The usual practice is to transport bodies of the victims to the Israeli Forensic Institute in Abu-Kabir for an autopsy. In this case, given the obvious cause of death, the pathology examination requirement makes little sense to the narrator. “A body isn’t some surprise egg that you open without knowing what you’re going to find inside—a sailboat maybe, or a racing car or a plastic koala.”401 As it turned out, however, the results of the autopsy were surprising. It revealed multiple malignant 397

Yaron Peleg “Love, Suddenly: Etgar Keret Invents Hebrew Romance,” Hebrew Studies, NAPH (National Association of Professors of Hebrew), 49 (2008): 143164. 398 Peleg (2008), 159. 399 Rachel Shkolvsky, “HaOsher Hu Rega Ganuv Veholef: Etgar Keret” (Happiness is a Stolen and Passing Moment: Etgar Keret), Iton 77, June 2002. 400 Etgar Keret, “Surprise Egg,” in Gaza Blues, Different Stories (2004), 73-78. 401 Keret, “Surprise Egg” (2004), 73.

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tumors that had metastasized aggressively. The woman would have died within a few weeks, that is, had she not first been killed in the terrorist attack. When the husband arrives at the morgue to identify his wife’s body, the pathologist faces a moral dilemma: should the husband be informed of his wife’s illness, or would family members, friends, and acquaintances be better off not knowing that her death was imminent? On the one hand, the medical diagnosis is comforting. No need for relatives and friends to agonize over “if only” speculations: if only she had taken a cab and not a bus, if only she had taken an earlier bus, and so on. On the other, to be killed in a terrorist attack has more gallantry to it. The mayor of Jerusalem and a government representative intended to attend the woman’s funeral only because she was a victim of a terrorist attack. Still, the pathologist muses, what is cancer but God terrorizing us with something “so lofty and transcendental that it is beyond our grasp?”402 Beyond the wording of this vitally important literary composition, as Keret articulated in an interview with Ramona Koval,403 he views “Surprise Egg” as a metaphor for Israel. “Israeli society is obsessed with outside dangers and with the [IsraeliPalestinian] conflict and represses so many core issues.” As a writer, he identifies with the story’s pathologist: “I can make very critical observations, but they won’t save the patients; they’re no good for anyone.” Apparently, a jury of judges thought otherwise when awarding Keret the prestigious Sapir Prize for Literature in 2018.404 In its original Hebrew version, the title of the book for which Keret won the Sapir Prize is Takala BiKtse HaGaleksia. Translated verbatim, it means “a glitch at the edge of the galaxy.” The published English version, however, is titled Fly Already.405 The panel of judges, headed by Orna Ben-Naftali of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, described the experience of reading Keret’s stories comparable to reading an inverted, disrupted novel. The profundity with which Keret portrays protagonists who, despite their sufferings, are not morally benumbed, and the sophistication with which 402

Keret, “Surprise Egg” (2004), 77. “Interview with Etgar Keret: Summer Season, Books and Writing” by Ramona Koval, Australian ABC Radio National, January 2, 2005, www.abc.net.au/m/arts/ bwriting/stories/etgar-keret /1265803. 404 The wording of the citations related to Keret winning the Sapir Prize are my translation from Hebrew into English of an article that appeared in the Israeli newspaper Maariv. For the full write-up in Hebrew, see http://www.maariv.co.il/ culture/ literature/articles-68123. 405 The discrepancy between the Hebrew and English titles of the book is addressed in a later chapter. 403

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he penetrates the innermost tendrils of contemporary life in Israel and elsewhere, impressed the judges. They thought very highly of Keret’s mastery of the short story genre, and the prowess with which he tackles intricate issues under the façade of an easily understood vernacular. In his acceptance speech, Keret expressed his surprise and delight. He spoke about being beholden to his team of editors, publishers, translators, his wife, son, and his mother: his greatest source of inspiration.406 Naturally, he said, winning is very gratifying, but “like love or gifts, it’s not something you can strive for. It just happens.” For him, receiving an Israeli award for Hebrew literature is the ultimate recognition, for “This is the language I write in, this is where I live, and that’s the most important thing.” I once asked Keret whether being a celebrity clashes with his artistic personification of the underdog, the déclassé, the marginalized Holocaust survivor, the lonely child, and the misfit soldier. In his usual candid manner, Keret prefaced his response with the benefits of being economically secure. His brother drew his attention to the fact that protagonists in his first book use public transportation, in the second they use taxicabs, and in the third, they travel by plane. Humor aside—near impossible for Keret— if nothing else, he is truly humbled knowing that readers find a measure of solace in his stories. He is not oblivious to the dangers of intoxicating fame and tries as best as he can to keep his ego in check. He recognizes the importance of good and bad reviews. He also revealed an extraordinary detail. Evidently, notoriety helped cure a speech impediment: he no longer stutters. If “Surprise Egg” is in my opinion Keret at his quintessential, postmodern Israeli best, I suggest “What Do We Have in Our Pockets?”407 is Keret the humanist par excellence. In its assiduous simplicity and unembellished language, “What Do We Have in Our Pockets?” represents for me the epitome of the marvel of Etgar Keret. It brings to mind Martin Buber’s classic Hasidic parable: “Two Pockets, Two Notes.”408 Both texts are edifying in the manner in which they encapsulate humanistic virtue. Buber’s allegorical tale tells of Rabbi Simcha Bunam Bonhart of Przysucha who believed that every person ought to envision owning a garment with two pockets. Each pocket holds a different, instructive message. When feeling lowly and dejected, one would reach into the pocket in which the message reads that the world was created for each one 406

Keret’s father died in 2012 at the age of eighty-four. Etgar Keret, “What Do We Have in Our Pockets?” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2010), 87-88. 408 Martin Buber, “Two Pockets, Two Notes,” in Tales of the Hasidim, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken Books, 1947). 407

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of us. When feeling proud and conceited, one would reach into the other pocket where the message retrieved would remind us that we are but dust and ashes. Keret’s narrator-protagonist holds very different items in his pockets. Buber’s items are figurative whereas Keret’s items are material. They include a cigarette lighter, cough drop, postage stamp, slightly bent cigarette, toothpick, handkerchief, pen, and two five-shekel coins. This odd stockpile of objects is assembled with a great deal of thought, the idea being “to always be prepared [and] be at an advantage at the moment of truth.”409 As to what constitutes a decisive moment of truth, the answer is that the moment will present itself when encountering a beautiful woman who has an envelope but needs a stamp. The woman is standing next to a mailbox. It is a rainy evening and she is cold and has a bit of a cough. She is holding an envelope in her hand but needs a stamp and is wondering where she could find a post office open at this late hour. If you can offer her a stamp, as well as a cough drop, the beautiful woman will be ever so grateful. She is bound to reward you with a smile and may even ask what else would you happen to have in your pockets. To this you will be able to reply: “Everything you’ll ever need, my love. Everything you’ll ever need.” Standing on the shoulders of Hasidic wisdom, Keret too pins his hopes for humanity on some sort of equity between giving and taking, altruism and self-centeredness.

409

Keret, “What Do We Have in Our Pockets?” (2010), 87.

4 IN PRAISE OF DEMOCRACY

It behooves me to open the chapter by clarifying that when passing judgment on Israeli politics, overriding any criticism is a nonnegotiable principle pertaining to the validity of the State of Israel. Lawfully legitimized on November 29, 1947, by a United Nations General Assembly vote—the UN Partition Plan for Palestine—Israel is here to stay. I concur with Leon Wieseltier who in a book review of Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land: the Triumph and Tragedy of Israel410 states that when it comes to Israel, too much of the discourse is judgmental. By judgmental Wieseltier does not mean too critical or not critical enough. Rather, all too often critics take the liberty of adjudicating Israel “for its viability or its validity, as if some fundamental acceptance of its reality is pending upon the resolution of its many problems with itself and with others.” As I see it, criticism of Israel in regard to the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories is fully justified. However, even the most vociferous denunciation of Israeli politics must be anchored in an a priori principle regarding the legitimacy of Israel as an autonomous, sovereign state. I deplore any non-democratic trends in Israel. However, Israel’s right to exist is not up for debate in the exact same way that not too many people in their right mind would question France or Britain’s right to exist, despite brutal histories of colonialism, or the United States’ legitimacy despite the monstrosity of slavery and unspeakable crimes against Indigenous people of the Americas. Discerned by Keret in a discussion with Runo Isaksen,411 figuratively speaking, Israelis acknowledge that something is wrong with their PC, so to speak, but they have no idea how to fix it. In content and style, Keret’s literature echoes his fear for the future of Israeli democracy—threats that have amplified as of the elections of 410

Leon Wieseltier, “The State of Israel,” The New York Times Book Review, November 24, 2013, https://nytimes/com/2013/11/24/books/review/my-promisedland-by-ari-shavit. 411 Keret (Isaksen 2009).

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November 2022 and the formation of an extremist, right-wing government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Keret is an active participant in demonstrations against anti-democratic trends of Netanyahu’s government. Passivity can only enable wrongdoings to amass greater muscle until it is too late. When things look bleak, Keret speaks of feeling confused and helpless. Yigal Schwartz412 pictures Keret’s way of red-penciling moral injustices as delivering blows to awaken readers. Like all guardians of liberal democracies, he fends off any provisional exception to democracy. There can never be a pretext—even temporary—for tampering with democracy. As articulated by Derrida in “Nietzsche and the Machine,” democracy is above any political agenda, party, or movement. The nightmare of Nazism taught us that democracy can never again “depend on the decisions of a specific group of citizens, a nation, or even of a continent.” 413 Israeli democracy still reigns in the urban space of the city of Tel Aviv. Grounded in Michel de Certeau’s cultural-historical-psychoanalytictheologian theory about interactive spatial dynamics in everyday life, Barbara Mann414 views Tel Aviv as an authentic Israeli sphere. Mann juxtaposes Call it Sleep by Henry Roth with Tel Aviv East by Shimon Ballas.415 Roth and Ballas experience space as “inextricably connected to the experience of time … and a representation of history.”416 Specific to Tel Aviv—an urban jewel in the crown of modern Zionism—Mann views the city as “a hybrid between East and West, myth and reality.”417 Situated by the Mediterranean Sea, Tel Aviv was founded by some sixty Jewish families in 1909. Initially, the settlement was named ahuzat bayit (homestead), and was later renamed tel aviv (hill of spring). In a

412

Yigal Schwartz, “Nisayon LeAter Et Manganon HaPeula Shel Sipure Etgar Keret (Locating the Modus Operandi in Etgar Keret’s Stories), Haaretz, September 25, 2015, http://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/article-print-page-premium-1.2738391. 413 Jacques Derrida and Richard Beardsworth, “Nietzsche and the Machine,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies: “Futures of Nietzsche: Affirmation and Aporia” (Spring 1994): 7-66. 414 Barbara Mann, “Literary Mappings of the Jewish City: Other Languages, Other Terrains,” Prooftexts, 26, no. 1-2 (Winter/Spring 2006). 415 Henry Roth, Call it Sleep (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994). Shimon Ballas, Tel Aviv East, Trilogy (Tel Aviv: Hakibbuz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah, 2003). 416 Mann (2006), 3. 417 Mann (2006), 83.

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write-up on Tel Aviv in the year 2000, Yehuda Shenhav418 laments the lost Zionist ethereal élan. Nowadays, the conversation is no longer about turning swamps infested with malaria into livable space, but about Tel Aviv’s unaffordable real estate. Rachel Harris419 thinks of Tel Aviv as the city that never sleeps, swarming with hedonistic and pleasure-seeking attractions, la dolce vita Israeli style. Karen Grumberg420 refers to Tel Aviv as a “vernacular space” where identity is forged. Similar to Mann, Grumberg’s discourse is rooted in Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau’s socio-economic teachings on day-to-day living. A phenomenon like Tel Aviv does not come about in a vacuum. It arises out of “an intricate web of social relations.”421 Grumberg’s overview of Israeli literature by Amos Oz, Orly Castel-Bloom, Yoel Hoffman, and Ronit Matlon suggests that the relationship people develop with a place is not about ideological persuasions. It is about “interactions with and within the place.”422 Be it Oz’s dialectics on light and darkness of Israel’s southern desert, Castel-Bloom’s urban experience, or Hoffman’s Israeli-European bourgeois salons, all mirror identity formation through synergistic interaction between the “I” and a living, breathing place. Tel Aviv’s Meir Park is one of Keret’s favorite places. As Keret described to Jerry Portwood,423 an equal number of children and dogs love visiting the park’s playground. The park is adjacent to Frishman’s Beach: “a safe haven” for soldiers, foreign workers, and tourists, where one is welcome to view sunsets that, as far as Keret is concerned, make Frishman’s Beach “one of the most beautiful spots [he’s] ever been.” Tel Aviv’s youthful, Mediterranean vivaciousness contrasts with Jerusalem’s age-old austerity. In a conversation with Leon Wieseltier, A. B. Yehoshua424 remarked that when raising your arm in Jerusalem to flag 418

Yehuda Shenhav “Merhav, Adama, Bayit: Al Hitnarmelut Shel Siah Hadash” (Expanse, Land, and Home: on the Normalization of a New Conversation), Theory and Criticism, 16 (Spring 2000): 3-12. 419 Rachel Harris, “Decay and Death: Urban Topoi in Literary Depictions of Tel Aviv,” Israel Studies, 14, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 75-93. 420 Karen Grumberg, Place and Ideology in Contemporary Hebrew Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011). 421 Grumberg (2011), 23. 422 Grumberg (2011), 249. 423 Etgar Keret, “Etgar Keret Beach Bum, the Acclaimed Author Explains Why Conflict Cultivates Creativity,” interview with Etgar Keret by Jerry Portwood, OUT, October 15, 2012, https://www.out.com/entertainment/art/books/2012/10/15/ etgar-keret-tel-aviv-author. 424 Leon Wieseltier, “Going to Jerusalem; Interview with A. B. Yehoshua,” PEN America, a Journal for Writers and Readers, no. 10: “Fear Itself’ (2009): 87.

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down a taxi, people might think you are conversing with God. Jerusalem’s holier-than-thou orthodoxy is the reason he left Jerusalem for Haifa. The city of King David reminds him of a scene from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov falls to his knees, about to confess his crime to the St. Petersburg police. Onlookers suspect he is drunk except for one person who shouts that he (Raskolnikov) must be going to Jerusalem! Amos Oz defined for Stan Persky the international controversy over Jerusalem as “comparative fanaticism.”425 When Johnny Temple of Akashic Books asked Keret to co-edit and write the introduction to Tel Aviv Noir,426 Keret was skeptical. Tel Aviv is such a happy, friendly, liberal city. The city, Keret told Temple, is nicknamed “the Bubble”—an energetic, high-spirited urban entity. In the end, Keret acquiesced but remained adamant that although part of Tel Aviv is an enclave for petty criminals, drunks, and peace-loving Israelis who “have undergone extensive automatic-weapons training and handgrenade tutorial,” it is still “a lovely, safe city.” Dana, Keret’s sister, swapped progressive Judaism with ultra-Orthodoxy and left Tel Aviv for Jerusalem. In “My Lamented Sister”427 Keret mourns a sister who died—metaphorically—“in a small wedding hall in Bnei Brak” and now “lives in the most Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem [Meah Shearim].”428 The timing was particularly hurtful, for his sister pledged herself to religiosity during the 2006 Lebanon War. With several of his friends killed or injured, the last thing Keret was able to tolerate was his sister retreating into a cloistered neighborhood “in the armpit of Jerusalem.”429 His secularism upsets his sister, yet, she loves him. She is always interested to hear about his family and success as a writer. She can only imagine how painful it must be for her brother to know that neither she nor her children are permitted to read his stories. In 2000, in an effort to please his nephews, Keret signed a contract stipulating that Dad Runs Away with the Circus, a children’s book written by Keret and illustrated by Rutu Modan,430 will be printed in two versions: mainstream style, and a 425

Amos Oz, interview with Amos Oz by Stan Persky, in Reading the 21st Century, Books of the Decade, (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 87. 426 Etgar Keret & Assaf Gavron, Tel Aviv Noir, eds. Etgar Keret & Assaf Gavron, trans. Yardena Greenspan (New York: Akashic Books, 2014). 427 Etgar Keret, “My Lamented Sister,” in Seven Good Years (2015), 80-85. 428 Keret, “My Lamented Sister” (2015), 80. 429 Keret, “My Lamented Sister” (2015), 81. 430 Etgar Keret, Dad Runs Away with the Circus, trans. Miriam Shlesinger (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2004). Rutu Modan’s career

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special edition respectful of religious attire. In the end, by rabbinic ruling, the religious observant version was nixed too. I asked Keret about religious/traditional practices in the Keret family. He responded by citing what his son once said, “My aunt believes there is a God. And my mother said there isn’t one. And me and Dad—we are still undecided.” Terry Gross wanted to know what Keret thinks about segregation between men and women at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.431 Keret replied that a religious-based segregation at the Wailing Wall is not new. Nowadays, however, a growing number of women resist this degrading practice. He went on to say that “sadly, the more dominant thing is to segregate Palestinians from Jews.” Yes, his sister’s way of life frustrates him but if you love someone as he loves his sister, you find ways to bridge over differences. “I disagree with [my sister] about almost everything. But at the same time, she’s a good and positive person who tries and, I think, succeeds to make this world a little better.” Nimrod, Keret’s older brother, left Israel and moved to Thailand. In “Idol Worship”432 Keret remembers wanting to be like his brother: a stalwart proponent of social justice who studied mathematics and computer science while becoming a leader in the movement to legalize marijuana in Israel. Often critical of Israeli militarism, he nonetheless fought alongside Israeli forces. It is this type of integrity that Etgar Keret hoped to emulate, “a soldier who, even in uniform, never forgets his free spirit.” In “Shiva”433 the three siblings come together to sit Shiva following the death of their father.434 The author’s older brother is sitting to his right and his sister on a low stool to his left.435 On the last Shiva evening, once relatives and friends depart, and Keret’s mother retires to her bedroom, the includes editing, writing, and illustrating comic books and stories. She is the cofounder of Actus Tragicus—an independent publishing house for comics artists and graphic novelists. She is known for her black humor and for depicting complex fictional characters. Modan is the recipient of many Israeli and international awards. Her collaboration with Etgar Keret began in 1993. Nobody Said it Was Going to be Fun (1996) was the first comic book they co-wrote. As Modan tells it, she considers herself fortunate that Keret shares her fondness of comics. 431 Keret, (Gross 2016). 432 Etgar Keret, “Idol Worship,” in The Seven Good Years (2015), 64-68. 433 Etgar Keret, “Shiva,” in The Seven Good Years (2015), 151-154. 434 Shiva (sitting Shiva) is a traditional custom of mourning the death of a Jewish person over seven days. A Shiva is usually observed at the home of the deceased or at the home of a family relative. 435 It is customary among observant Jews for family members to sit on a low stool or chair during a Shiva.

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three remain together a little while longer. Tomorrow morning Keret’s sister will return to her ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem and his brother will leave for Thailand. For now, however, over a cup of tea and cookies, they put aside their differences and remember their beloved father “without apology or criticism, just like children should.”436 Whether residing in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or anywhere else in Israel, the incongruity of peace-loving Israelis undergoing army training to become skilled warfare pundits gnaws at Keret. In one of my conversations with Keret, he spoke about “the right to feel confused” (mevulbal) when one’s attention is taken up by anxieties over survival (haradot kiyumiyot). He is not oblivious to the fact that Israel has no choice but to depend on a strong army, but when militarism is exercised against Palestinian villages and towns under Israeli occupation, it amounts to ugly belligerency. Domination over others may vary in degrees of ferocity but it is always, without exception, amoral. “Cocked and Locked”437 is a Kafkaesque story narrated by an Israeli soldier named Meyer. A Palestinian activist provokes Meyer by hollering obscenities at him. He taunts Meyer by repeatedly mentioning Abutbul—a friend of Meyer who was badly wounded in a violent altercation between Israeli soldiers and local Palestinians. Not really intending to shoot, Meyer points a gun at the Palestinian. The Arab is undeterred. Unbuttoning his shirt, pointing to his heart, he derides Meyer: “Go ahead and shoot, ya Homo!”438 A sergeant named Eli arrives on the scene. Seeing Meyer pointing a gun at the Palestinian, he knocks Meyer down to the ground. He hollers at Meyer, demanding to know what is happening; is Meyer out of his mind, standing there “looking like a damn cowboy.”439 Where does Meyer think he is, the Wild West? Eli then sermonizes about Israelis having to hold themselves to higher standards and not stoop low to the level of Palestinians. Yes, he would have no qualms dragging Palestinians from their homes, “and putting bullets through their fucking heads,” but if he did that, he would be “just like them.”440 Exacerbated by the sergeant’s ostentatious blather and sanctimonious master-subaltern platitudes, Meyer erupts. He grabs hold of the Arab’s head and kills him by bashing his head against a telephone pole.

436

Keret, “Shiva” (2015), 154. Etgar Keret, “Cocked and Locked,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 11-14. 438 Keret, “Cocked and Locked” (2008), 65. 439 Keret, “Cocked and Locked” (2008), 66. 440 Keret, “Cocked and Locked” (2008), 67. 437

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Keret believes that the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the conclusion of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords on November 4, 1995, constitutes a far-reaching, disastrous juncture in Israeli politics. As discerned by Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi,441 the eruptive backlash in Israel and elsewhere to the shocking event is an instructive case study in “sociology of commemoration.”442 From the funeral attended by heads of states and senior diplomats from some eighty nations, to parks, squares, streets, and buildings named after Rabin, to bumper stickers, books, songs, artistic displays, a national memorial day, and pilgrimages to the exact spot where Rabin was shot, the mnemonic avalanche was staggering. Importantly, Vinitzky-Seroussi attributes much of it to Rabin’s metamorphosis from mythological soldier in his early days to years later, a prime minister championing peace. Remembrance of the Holocaust and commemoration of Israeli wars entwine in Keret’s storytelling. As delineated by Yoram Bilu and Eliezer Witztum,443 unlike remembrance of the Holocaust, commemorative trends of the Israeli wars exhibit fluidity. For decades, “State-authorized agencies of the cult of the dead”444 were anchored in the nation’s remembrance of the 1948 War of Independence. However, the near disaster of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the lack of consensus over the 1982 military venture in Lebanon,445 set in motion a “shifting salience [of remembrance]

441

Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, Yitzhak Rabin’s Assassination and the Dilemmas of Commemoration (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2009). 442 Vinitzky-Seroussi (2009), 5. 443 Yoram Bilu and Eliezer Witztum, “War-Related Loss and Suffering in Israeli Society: Historical Perspective,” Israel Studies, 5.2 (2000): 1-31. 444 Yoram Bilu and Eliezer Witztum (2000), 5. 445 Hoping to win back territory lost to Israel in the war of 1967, Egyptian and Syrian armies—equipped with Soviet weaponry and assisted by Iraqi and Jordanian troops—launched a full-scale attack on Israel on October 6, 1973. On that day, Israelis were observing the holy Day of Atonement in synagogues and homes. Despite being unprepared for an attack on its borders, Israel quickly mobilized its military forces and, with some assistance from the US, successfully pushed back on its attackers. Victory came at a high cost in lives, and Israelis were furious with their government—headed by Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan as Minister of Defense—for failing to heed to intelligence warnings of looming security threats. Golda Meir took the blame for the government’s mishap and resigned. The gesture mitigated some of the anger, but the Yom Kippur War remains imprinted in Israel’s collective memory as a tragedy that could and should have been averted. Notwithstanding, I agree with Shlomo Avineri’s assessment in Haaretz, September 23, 2022, of the 1973 War as Israel’s greatest military

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from collectivism to individualism.”446 In an anthology on “narratives of dissent,” Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman explore the upsurge in differing mores of commemoration.447 Among the contributors to the anthology, Noa Roei448 recalls that in the aftermath of the 1967 victory, Happy New Year (Jewish) greeting cards emblazoned with images of military garb were extremely popular. Some two decades later, military motifs are deemed inappropriate. Esther Raizen449 attests to bereavement shifting from the battlefield to the space of a family in mourning, “a vulnerable unit, condemned to schizophrenic existence that is fueled by the need to keep up appearances of strength as it crumbles in pain, sending individual members into loneliness.”450 Liav Sade-Beck451 delineates changes in modes of commemoration by zeroing in on the proliferation of personalized commemorative websites that run counter to Iscor—Israel’s official, state commemorative website. Israelis hold their writers in high regard in the matter of collective remembrance. The repute of the Israeli literary echelon can be traced back to Jewish authors and their primary role in sculpturing modernized, cultural Zionism. Noted by Menachem Brinker,452 in Israel, it did not seem anomalistic to think of an author such as Amos Oz as a savior of Israelis during the sixties and seventies. As for Keret, despite his enormous popularity, he is terribly uncomfortable with being perceived as beacon a of oracular wisdom. As Keret puts it, it may very well be that David Grossman and Amox Oz wake up in the morning thinking about the future performance, on par with other historical recoveries from surprise attacks such as Operation Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor. 446 Yoram Bilu and Eliezer Witztum (2000), 26. 447 Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman, eds. Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2013). 448 Noa Roei “Consuming Nostalgia: Greeting Cards and Soldier-Citizens,” in Narratives of Dissent, eds. Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman (2013), 7898. 449 Esther Raizen “Bereavement and Breakdown: War and Failed Motherhood in Raya Harnik’s Work,” in Narratives of Dissent, eds. Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman (2013), 135-151. 450 Esther Raizen (2013), 136. 451 Liav Sade-Beck, “We Shall Remember Them All: The Culture of Online Mourning and Commemoration of Fallen Soldiers in Israel,” in Narratives of Dissent, eds. Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman (2013), 117-132. 452 Menachem Brinmer, ed. Sovev Sifrut: Ma’amarim Al Gvul HaPhilosophia VeTorat HaSifrut VeHaOmanut (Essays on the Borderline of Philosophy of Art and Literary Theory), (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magness Press 2000).

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of the Middle East. He, personally, wakes up hoping no one stole his car. Then it is time for a cup of coffee, after which, perhaps, he will have his first political thought for the day. When asked to comment on literature written by Palestinians, Keret responded that, provided Palestinian literature amounts to more than a lament over the Israeli-Palestinian saga, he is, of course, curious about Palestinian art. That said, he does not presume to know much about Palestinian life, and he doubts Palestinians need Israelis to enlighten them. A Keret devotee and peace activist named Liz Shulman took exception to Keret’s reluctance in acknowledging his stature as influential writer and public persona.453 Shulman’s critique came as a reaction to a story by Keret titled “A Mustache for My Son.”454 In the story, Keret’s son is celebrating his sixth birthday. As a birthday gift, Lev wants his father to grow a mustache. There are very few things Keret would consider denying his only child, and growing a mustache—“a hairy and mysterious creature … far more enigmatic than its older sibling, the beard”455—is not one of them. It also happens to be an opportune time to grow a mustache. His father was recently diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Instead of wellmeaning people inquiring about his father’s health, they will ask, “What’s with the mustache?” and he will only have to respond, “It’s for the boy.” The story continues with Lev’s father undergoing acupuncture for his aching back. A retired Israeli officer is being treated at the same clinic. The man talks incessantly about serving as a secret service agent in an elite, Israeli military unit. The author can hear the man reminisce about a clandestine operation, which, among others entailed the officer disguising himself as an Arab. The first thing he did was glue to his face a fake mustache. The way he sees it, your parents could have come from Poland, but if you have an impressive mustache and decent shoes, people could believe you are an Arab. He then goes on to describe hideous interrogation methods inflicted on Arabs suspected of terrorism. Having had enough of the officer’s stream of chauvinistic bigotry, Lev’s father knows exactly what he must do next: get rid of his mustache! Shulman was affronted by Keret’s “dominant Ashkenazi narrative,” and what she perceived as legitimization of “the status quo of colonialism.” A narrative that contextualizes Palestinians as suspected 453

See the full conversation between Liz Shulman and Etgar Keret at http://www. mondoweiss.net/2012/02/etgar-keret-in-ny-times-magazine-try-on-orientationwith-an-iconic-arab-look/. 454 Etgar Keret, “A Mustache for My Son,” in The Seven Good Years, A Memoir (2015), 140-143. 455 Keret, “A Mustache for My Son” (2015), 140.

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terrorists, she argued, stereotypes all Palestinians. She wondered whether Keret, the “absurdist” and “quirky” maverick, had succumbed to being yet another cliché-ridden, peace-loving, ineffective liberal. Keret responded that he fails to understand the relevance of a so-called “dominant Ashkenazi narrative” to a story about a person who grows a mustache in an act of escapism. He, wisely, I believe, chose to ignore Shulman’s castigation of mainstream, Israeli peaceniks as ineffectual liberals. Instead, he conveyed his enormous appreciation of her fight for justice. He then apologized for having to cut their discussion short, for “my father is dying and I simply got to run.” Keret’s story does not stigmatize nor defame Arabs, and Shulman may have misread the author’s intention. Nonetheless, she broached an important subject: Etgar Keret as a public figure. Whether Keret likes it or not, he is a celebrity whose stories and actions matter a great deal to readers of all ages, and of many political persuasions. Could it be that, perhaps Keret needs to acquire better strategies when grappling with his stardom? Keret’s wide circle of readers included—perhaps still includes—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2011, Netanyahu invited Keret to join an official visit to Italy. Keret’s written recollections of the expedition were published in Haaretz newspaper on June 15, 2011. In the English translation, the write-up is titled “Netanyahu Says There’s No Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”456 The odyssey begins at Keret’s Tel Aviv home when he informs his wife, Shira, of his decision to accept Netanyahu’s invite. To his surprise, Shira does not object. She beseeches him to deliver a hand-written note to Netanyahu in which she implores the Prime Minister to do everything in his power to bring peace to the region “for the sake of all the children.” Keret wonders whether his wife envisages the Prime Minister as the Western Wall into which people shove prayers scrawled on pieces of paper. As a participant, Keret is given directives that must be adhered to at all times, no mishaps. Italian and Israeli reporters can ask two preapproved questions, but no spontaneous questions. At the press conference, waiting for Netanyahu and Berlusconi to arrive, everyone is interested in a blueand-white tent set up by the Italians. Keret is particularly interested in a large painting situated behind the speaker’s dais. The painting shows a person playing a harp—King David—and beside him “something that 456

Etgar Keret, “Netanyahu Says There is No Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Haaretz, June 15, 2011, https://www.haaretz.com.2011-06-15.ty.article. netanyahu-says-there-is-no-solution-to-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/0000017fdbb8-ab5a.

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resembles the severed head of Goliath.” Presumably the Philistine is meant to indicate “the roots of the conflict.” Initially, Keret admits to being somewhat charmed by Netanyahu’s friendly demeanor and intelligence. The Prime Minister is all smiles. Eventually, however, there is no escaping Netanyahu’s opportunistic demagogy and tautological repetition. He never veers from his political mantra: the problem is not Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land. The deadlock in negotiating a peace treaty has nothing to do with Israel giving up a kilometer here and a kilometer there. The ultimate, overriding obstacle is the Palestinians’ refusal to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Whether or not Netanyahu fully believes his own hyperbolic oratory was not as disconcerting to Keret as Netanyahu’s verbosity in spewing falsehoods. Keret’s account ends in a note of despair. He accepted Netanyahu’s invitation hoping to gain some insight as to where things are headed. Now he knows: nowhere. Adia Mendelson-Maoz does not necessarily negate Keret’s political persuasion but maintains that Keret goes too far in discrediting the Zionist avatar of the Hebrew male.457 In her write-up, Mendelson-Maoz explores several stories by Keret. The stories and the novella examined by Mendelson-Maoz are: “Shooting Tuvia” (in The Nimrod Flip-Out); “Siren” (in The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories); “Clean Shave,” “Missing Kissinger,” and “Hat Trick” (in Missing Kissinger); “Ari,” “Upgrade,” and “Simyon” (in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door); “Pipes,” “Shoshi,” “Shoshi 2,” and “Shoshi 3” (in Gaza Blues, Different Stories); “The Girl on the Fridge” (in The Girl On The Fridge); and Kneller’s Happy Campers. Anecdotally, perhaps it bears mentioning that regarding friendship between males, according to Keret, there are only four photos in his study: one of his late father and mother, one of his brother and sister, one of his son, and a thirty-three-year-old photo of him and Uzi—Keret’s best friend for over fifty years.458 In all, MendelsonMaoz arrives at the conclusion that Keret’s “design of the figure of the living dead” aims to dismantle the Zionist conceptualization of idealistic masculinity embodied in the native-born Sabra. Metaphorically associated with the thick-skinned, thorny but sweet on the inside cactus fruit, the Israeli male Sabra is close to nature, fearless, devoted to his friends, and is known for his patriotism. Mendelson-Maoz further contends that Keret’s 457

Adia Mendelson-Maoz, “Keret’s ‘Living-Dead’ and the Sacrifice of Israeli Masculinity,” BGU Review—A Journal of Israeli Culture, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Heksherim Research Institute for Jewish & Israeli Literature & Culture (Winter 2018). 458 Etgar Keret, “A Thousand Words,” Alphabet Soup: the Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, November 2, 2021, https://www.etgarkeret.substack.com.

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stories mirror “unfair power games” between a handsome, Israeli bully and a prototype of the powerless Diaspora Jew—the kind Keret identifies with—albeit, she acknowledges that Keret attributes to both types “immense survival powers.” According to Mendelson-Maoz, the prevalence of suicide in Keret’s stories is antithetical to Israelis mythologizing heroism and more consistent with Keret’s “negation of strong masculinity.” Men die in Keret’s stories while serving in the Israeli army, however, all too often by killing themselves, or dying in non-combative situations. Mendelson-Maoz is well aware of other Israeli writers who go to great lengths to demystify the Zionist fantasy of “a new Jew,” but believes that Keret in particular goes too far in disparaging Israeli manliness. I disagree. Without a doubt, Keret destabilizes Zionist-Israeli masculinity through cynical portrayals of over-the-top manliness and vulgar male chauvinism. That being said, Mendelson-Maoz overplays the dichotomy in Keret’s storytelling between the macho he-man and the complaisant, vulnerable male Jew. Keret may not want his son to serve in an army that answers to a leader like Netanyahu, but he is consistent in maintaining that at least for now, life in Israel is dependent on an army’s muscle and serving in the Israeli army is an obligatory duty. Accordingly, I believe Keret’s writings are much more about ameliorating gender differentiations than denigrating men. Perhaps “Suddenly, the Same Thing”459 best personifies Keret’s experiential predicaments regarding living in Israel. The symbolism in the story of the birth of Keret’s son coinciding with a devastating terrorist explosion is painfully glaring. Not only did these events occur on the same day; the hospital where Lev was born was in close proximity to where the blast went off. Amid the calamitous pandemonium of attending to the wounded, a male nurse catches sight of the famous writer waiting in the hospital’s corridor to catch a first glimpse of his newborn son. The male nurse approaches Keret. He first wants reassurance that this is the “real” Etgar Keret, after which he asks the author for his thoughts on the suicide bombing. Keret apologizes, saying that he did not witness the horrendous event. The male nurse is visibly disappointed; “Too bad you weren’t there. A reaction from a writer would’ve been good … someone original, someone with a little vision.460 Keret is taken aback, “What kind of original thing can you say about an explosion and senseless deaths?” To which the male nurse retorts “beats me; you’re the writer.”461 459

Etgar Keret, “Suddenly, the Same Thing,” in The Seven Good Years (2015), 3-

6. 460 461

Keret, “Suddenly, the Same Thing” (2015), 4. Keret, “Suddenly, the Same Thing” (2015), 5.

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Shortly thereafter, Keret is holding his newborn son in his arms. The infant is crying. Keret tries to comfort him, assuring his boy that there is nothing to worry about; by the time he grows up there will be no more terrorist attacks and there will be peace in the Middle East. The infant continues to wail. The author tries again. Perhaps every now and then, things will go wrong, but by then, there will be someone with enough vision to conjure up something eloquent in writing. The baby stops whimpering as if contemplating what his father had just said, but “even he doesn’t buy it and … goes back to crying.”462 Rebecca Frankel interviewed Keret in Washington DC for Moment Magazine.463 Frankel thought Keret’s thick Israeli accent had “a soothing quality to it.” Eager to talk about his son, Keret proudly showed Frankel a photo of a baby with chubby cheeks—cheeks that have earned Lev the nickname Jabba the Hutt, one of George Lucas’s famous aliens in Star Wars. The photo shows Lev biting into a blue-and-white banner; blue and white being the colors of the Israeli flag. Conversing with Frankel, Keret spoke about wishing to cast light on “moral ambiguities of war” through his stories; moral ambiguities for there is no “pointedly marking right or wrong.” Nothing about the conflict is straightforward. During the Intifada, he felt good about collaborating with the Palestinian writer Samir elYoussef in a joint literary endeavor that came to fruition in 2004 with the publication of Gaza Blues. He loses his appeasing mood when Hezbollah or Hamas missiles target Israeli cities. He is not a pacifist. Mahmoud Shuqair is an acclaimed Palestinian writer of short stories and was among the Israeli and Palestinian writers whom Runo Isaksen interviewed.464 Seated at a café in East Jerusalem, Shuqair told Isaksen that he recently had the opportunity to read several stories by Keret. Fluent in Hebrew, he is enormously respectful of Israeli writers of prose and poetry such as A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and Yehuda Amichai, but it is in Keret’s writings that he finds humanism that is “not bound by any kind of Israeli ideology.”465 The Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan466 too 462

Keret, “Suddenly, the Same Thing” (2015), 6. Etgar Keret, “Etgar Keret Has a Cold,” an interview with Etgar Keret by Rebecca Frankel, Moment Magazine (September/October 2015). 464 Mahmoud Shuqair, Literature of War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers, interview with Mahmoud Shuqair by Runo Isaksen, trans. Kari Dickson (Northampton, Massachusetts: Olive Branch Press, 2009), 113-129. 465Shuqair (Isaksen 2009), 116. 466Ghassan Zaqtan, Literature of War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers, interview with Ghassan Zaqtan by Runo Isaksen, trans. Kari Dickson (Northampton, Massachusetts: Olive Branch Press, 2009), 131-146. 463

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appreciates the political stance taken by many Israelis, above all by Keret. “We really are partners in this conflict. We were both born into it, and this is our shared place, with only one hour between him in Tel Aviv and me in Ramallah. But when we talk about our memories, he talks about his grandfather in Europe.”467 Many Israelis, Keret among them, are haunted by nightmares of Israel reduced to a smoking hole in the ground. Stories involving buses encapsulate Keret’s Armageddon dread. Egged was founded in 1933 and is Israel’s largest public transportation cooperative. The Hebrew etymology for “egged” is a derivation of the idea of gathering, assembling. Israeli children learn in school about bus drivers transporting soldiers, delivering arms, food, and goods to battlefields and blockaded communities during the 1948 War of Independence. Bus drivers are engraved in Israel’s collective memory as courageous participants in the Burma Road Campaign to liberate besieged Jerusalem, and in Operation Yoav to reconnect the country with the southern Negev. In and of itself, aggrandizing heroic acts linked with historical battles as part of a nation’s collective memory is not much different from, say, Canadians glorifying the Battle of Vimy Ridge of World War I, or Americans ennobling the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. What is unique to Israel is that long after the establishment of Israel, after decades of operating as part of a standardized system of public transportation, suddenly, with the outbreak in the late eighties of the Palestinian uprising, Israeli buses were thrown into battle once again. The list of locations where explosives detonated near or on buses is long. The bombings did not constitute an imminent threat to the country as a whole but had a terribly demoralizing effect on Israelis. “The Night the Buses Died”468 is a thoroughly Kafkaesque story. It opens with the narrator seated at a bus stop waiting for a bus to arrive. Next to him on the bench is an elderly man—perhaps a symbolic vestige from a past generation steeped in pioneering idealism. A jogger passing by yells something about dead buses, “All of them, all dead.”469 Realizing this was not a joke, and with no other means of transportation, Keret’s narrator decides to walk home. Along the way, he notices several abandoned bus stops. Crossing Ben Gurion Avenue—an all too obvious reference to David Ben Gurion, Israel’s legendary first prime minister—he sees a corpse in the shape of a bus. Upon arriving at the central bus station, a macabre scene unfolds of countless disemboweled corpse-buses. Distressed 467

Zaqtan (Isaksen 2009), 137. Etgar Keret, “The Night the Buses Died,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 113-116. 469 Keret, “The Night the Buses Died” (2008), 113. 468

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passengers roam around aimlessly, yearning “to hear the purr of a motor.”470 A bus inspector in uniform is quite certain the problem is only local and temporary. Taking charge, he assures the perturbed crowd that a fleet of buses is on its way from Haifa and will arrive shortly. Alas, not a single bus appears and before long, the inconceivable truth dawns on everyone, even the bus inspector: “none had been spared.”471 The story offers no explanation as to when, why, and how the buses have all died. The apocalyptic timbre of Keret’s story is universally applicable, but the story is Israeli-specific in that it resonates among Israelis as a palpable metaphor for the real possibility of complete ruin, a second Holocaust. “Hole in the Wall”472 takes place at a central bus station in a desolate neighborhood. Workers sent by the bank yanked out an ATM machine, leaving a gaping hole in the wall. A lad named Udi thrusts his face into the wall’s hollow cavity and makes a wish: he wishes for an angel to appear and make a girl named Dafna fall in love with him. Miraculously, Udi’s wish comes true. The angel is scrawny and hunched down. He is not fond of flying and wears a trench coat to conceal his disfigured wings. He is also a teller of lies. A friendship of sort develops between Udi and the pitiable, pathetic-looking celestial creature. One day, mostly out of curiosity—Udi had no way of knowing what will happen—Udi pushes the angel off the top of a wall. The angel topples over, drops to the ground “like a sack of potatoes,” and plummets to his death. Udi is stunned, but at the very same time, realizes that the angel was “just a liar with wings.”473 Apparently, Keret has undervalued angels show up at Israeli bus stations.474 In “Vladimir Hussein,”475 buses are running at an exceptionally slow pace. The usual punctual schedule is in complete disarray. Finally, after a long delay, a bus arrives. Irked by the wait, a passenger named Vladimir Hussein collapses into a vacant seat with a deep sigh of fatigue. For no apparent reason, a passenger mutters “dirty Arab”476 in Vladimir Hussein’s direction. Vladimir Hussein keeps his composure. Seemingly unruffled, he 470

Keret, “The Night the Buses Died” (2008), 115. Keret, “The Night the Buses Died” (2008), 115. 472 Etgar Keret, “Hole in the Wall,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 28-31. 473 Keret, “Hole in the Wall“(2008), 31. 474 In “Love, Suddenly: Etgar Keret Invents Hebrew Romance,” Yaron Peleg interprets “Hole in the Wall” as a story about inverted romance between atypical friends. According to Peleg, Udi is in pursuit of love, “not just as a rebellion, but a disengagement from a clearly identifiable Israel,” Hebrew Studies (National Association of Professors of Hebrew, 2008): 163. 475 Etgar Keret, “Vladimir Hussein,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 153-156. 476 Keret, “Vladimir Hussein” (2008), 153. 471

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turns to the confrontational passenger and informs him that he is actually half-Russian and half Arab. His mother is from Riga and his father from Nablus. The belligerent passenger stoops even lower and hisses: “two diseases in one body.”477 This time Vladimir Hussein loses it. He pulls an iron crowbar out of his bag, lunges at the passenger, and cracks his skull. Just as Vladimir Hussein prepares to dismount the bus, an elderlylooking man hands him a green beret. At first, Vladimir Hussein is inclined to interpret this as an appeasing gesture. In other words, the elderly man believes the prejudiced bully deserved what was coming to him. Seconds later, however, as the bus begins to pull away from the bus stop, Vladimir Hussein flings the beret in the direction of a trash bin and drops to the ground: “The explosion came a few seconds later, showering him with garbage.”478

477 478

Keret, “Vladimir Hussein” (2008), 153-154. Keret, “Vladimir Hussein” (2008), 156.

5 LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION, PANDEMIC STORYTELLING, AND NONFICTION WRITING

In “Sleepover”479 Keret is at a literary event in Zagreb, Croatia. A waiter at a café by the Adriatic Sea offers the author a lesson in language and political acumen. During the Bosnian War, between April 1992 and December 1995, one would try to be on guard even when merely ordering a cup of coffee. Since there are different words for coffee in Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian, the word “coffee” bore acrimonious political connotations. It got to the point where people stopped ordering coffee and would ask for an espresso instead, “espresso” being an Italian word shared by the combative ethnic groups. The revival of the Hebrew language from centuries of slumber was at the core of modern Zionism. In its modernist transfiguration, Hebrew underwent an exciting course of renewal and enrichment. (In a Spring 2017 issue of the Jewish Review of Books, Alan Mintz reviews Lewis Glinert’s The Story of Hebrew—Lewish Glinert, The Storyof Hebrew (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2017)—Mintz agrees with Glilnert’s assessment of Zionism as a success story, particularly in relation to the revival of the Hebrew language giving a “bookish tongue” a vibrant voice. He also seconds Glinert’s contrary assertion, which is that by telling the success story of modernized Hebrew, we have “radically underestimated the importance of Hebrew as the matrix of Jewish literacy for almost two thousand years.” Lastly, Mintz commends Glinert for keeping an eye on Yiddish, “Hebrew’s sibling [which] saved Hebrew from shriveling into its own self-seriousness.”) Gal Koplewitz cites Amos Oz480 asserting that modernizing Hebrew was Zionism’s greatest achievement. When it comes to the Hebrew language, Oz, Koplewitz notes, is a chauvinist. Still, Oz’s relationship 479

Etgar Keret, “Sleepover,” in The Seven Good Years (2015), 129-132. Gal Koplewitz, “Amos Oz and the Politics of the Hebrew Language,” The New Yorker, November 12, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/ amos-oz-and-the-politics-of-the-hebrew-language.

480

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with the Hebrew language is not as liberating and unfettered as it is for Keret. At twenty-five, Oz was as articulate, “almost oracular in his tone” as at seventy-nine. Keret is never “almost oracular” in tone or in aspiration. For Oz, finding the right words is an “esek bish, a mess—a cluttered affair that fogs up meaning even as it tries to get it across.” In comparison, for Keret, finding the right words has an unshackling vigor to it, an empowerment that enables him to run with his imagination. Abby Margulies481 cites Jonathan Safran Foer noting that Oz equates writing in Hebrew with “trying to whisper in a cathedral.” Keret’s voice is not Oz’s mellifluous hush; Keret’s voice is more like the sound of banging on doors in an attempt to throw them wide open. Keret’s generation is beholden to writers such as S.Y. Agnon, Haim Hazaz, Devorah Baron, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, Ruth Almog, Amos Oz, Meir Shalev, A. B. Yehoshua, Haim Be’er, and S. Yizhar. In Koplewitz’s words, luminaries of Israel’s young country of immigrants “had one foot in the Hebrew of the Bible and the other in the mélange of linguistic influences.” Writers of Keret’s generation are anchored in solidified linguistic foundations as they branch out in search of their own artful voice. Conversing with Terry Gross,482 Keret expanded on the marvel of writing in a language that offers bountiful possibilities of combining colloquial and biblical phraseology. “I can say two words that are from the Bible and then the word Internet.” A phrase in Hebrew that combines biblical wording with rap lyrics makes perfect sense to Israelis. Ramona Koval483 compares Keret’s linguistic exploits with M.C. Escher’s mathematical and geometrical imagery. Similar to Escher’s optically fantastical drawings, lithographs, and woodcuts, Keret’s literary formations are “improbably woven together.” By commixing high and low registers, Keret creates “an interesting tension inside the sentence.” Keret’s grasp of the Hebrew vernacular redefined “Israel’s linguistically artistic landscape,” thereby “offering a wider, more genuine definition of what it means to be an Israeli.” In the main, philologists-sociolinguists delineate present-day spoken Hebrew as an amalgam of biblical, liturgical, and Talmudic Hebrew, with lexical and syntactic borrowings from Yiddish, Arabic, Ladino, and

481Abby

Margulies, “Etgar Keret’s Chaos Theory,” review of Suddenly, A Knock On The Door, Tablet Magazine, March 29, 2012, www.tabletmag.com/jewish-artsand-culture-books/95411/etgar-keret-chaos. 482 Keret, (Gross 2016). 483 Keret, (Koval 2005).

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European languages.484 The wonder of the modernist renaissance of the Hebrew language is indisputable. Nowadays, however, some contend that the so-called resurrection has gone too far, by which they mean the profusion of Hebrew slang. Keret disagrees. As he told Rebecca Sacks,485 the evolution of Hebrew slang came on the heels of “a chaotic and anarchistic” process of “defrosting a language that was not in use as a spoken vernacular for a very long time.” Claims made regarding some sort of debasement of the Hebrew language amount to nothing but elitist arrogance. Indeed, I believe Hanoch Bartov is spot on in “By the Book”486 when asserting that “the totality of Hebrew in our lives” encompasses accepting slang “as the most natural thing in the world.”487 I also second Gabriel Moked488 who commends Keret for sculpting a linguistic niche in Israeli literature, which is simultaneously sophisticated and trendy. For Moked, reading stories written by Keret is comparable to gorging oneself 484

Some suggested readings on the development of Modern Hebrew include Joshua Blau, The Renaissance of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic: Parallels and Differences in the Revival of Two Semitic Languages (California: University of California Press, 1982); Asher M. Bar, “Mishnaic Hebrew. An Introductory Survey,” Hebrew Studies 40 (1999), 11-151; Norman Berdichevsky, Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company 2014); Encyclopedia Judaica, “Hebrew Language,” Encyclopedia Judaica 16, Jerusalem (1971), 1560-1662; Edit Doron, ed., Language Contact and the Development of Modern Hebrew (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2016); Maya-Agmon Fruchtman, A Question of Determination: Determinative and Delimitative Categories in Israeli Hebrew (Tel Aviv Papyrus, 1982); Lewis Glinert, The Grammar of Modern Hebrew (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Joel Hoffman, In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language (New York: New York University Press, 2004); William Homby, ed., Hebrew Study from Exra to Ben-Yehuda (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999); Raphael Kutscher, ed., A History of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: The Magness Press, 1982); E. J. Revell, Hebrew Texts with Palestinian Vocalization (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970); Ghil’ad Zuckerman, Language Contact and Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan, Studies in Language History and Language Change, 2004). 485 Etgar Keret, “Something Out of Something: Talking with Etgar Keret,” interview with Etgar Keret by Rebecca Sacks, The Paris Review, May 1, 2012, www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012.05.01/something-out-of-nothing-with-etgarkeret. 486 Hanoch Bartov, “By the Book,” in The Writer in the Jewish Community: An Israeli-North American Dialogue, eds. Richard Siegal and Tamar Sofer (London & Toronto: Associated University Press, 1993), 28-34. 487 Bartov, “By the Book” (1993), 31. 488 Moked (2011).

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on scrumptious appetizers. He evokes Keret as a storyteller equal to O. Henry and Raymond Carver. Keret’s jargon is anything but a violation of Hebrew etiquette. Rather, Keret features an idiosyncratic and communicative linguistic register comprised of sparse lexicon, slang, coarse figurative language, clipped phraseology, intentional syntactic solecism, and improprieties in grammatical construction. In all, Moked appraises Keret’s Hebrew as a philological treasure. In the matter of reading Keret in translation, the focus here is on translations from Hebrew to English—English being the lingua franca of most contemporary Diaspora Jews. Keret considers translators as coworkers. “People think about translation as if the content of your work is some kind of liquid, and when you translate it, you spill it from one glass to another.” In reality, cultural allusions, connotations, and innuendos that are integral “to the nature of your story can easily get lost in translation.”489 Here, Keret’s approach to literature in translation is in line with Sandra Berman and Michael Wood’s assertion that “translation has itself become an important border concept in the humanities, affecting some of the most salient intellectual and ethical issues of our time.”490 Translations have contributed to greater awareness of Otherness. We are now mindful of reciprocity “between languages and peoples, between values, enmities and loves.”491 Jen Rickard Blair492 discussed the topic of literature in translation with Keret and Nathan Englander.493 Blair attests to an enchanting, harmonious friendship between the two authors. They read each other’s mind, with Keret often starting a sentence and Englander completing it. Both feel strongly about translators not receiving the respect and credit they deserve. Translators, Keret said, “are like ninjas—the only time you notice them is when they’re no good.”

489

Keret (Chaffee 2016). Sandra Berman and Michael Wood, eds. Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 5. 491 Berman and Wood (2005), 8. 492 Etgar Keret, “Translators are Ninjas,” interview with Etgar Keret by Jen Rickard Blair, World Literature Today, August 21, 2012, https://www. worldliteraturetoday.org/translators-are-ninjas-etgar-keret-nathan-englander/2012/ 08/21. 493 Nathan Englander is a successful writer in his own right. He is also one of Keret’s translators from Hebrew into English. 490

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Naomi Sokoloff494 teaches narrative theory. She deems Etgar Keret’s “Goldfish” an invaluable exemplar of the benefits derived from reading literature in translation. There is no substitute for reading a text in the original language. Keret’s competence in switching between registers works best in Hebrew. The Hebrew text flows effortlessly. It loses some of its rhythm and fluidity in translation. That said, Sokoloff believes that, beyond the intrinsic merits of reading Keret’s literature, specific to university and college students, teaching Keret’s literature in translation opens up important horizons related to narrative theory, formation of text, treatment of time, and textual interruptions. Keret’s translators attest to finding him as supportive as he is brilliant. Miriam Shlesinger,495 one of Keret’s first translators, expresses her hopes that “the author, audience and critics will find it in their hearts to accept [translation] solutions, faute de mieux.” Jeffrey Green496 states that specific to translating Holocaust-related literature, it is impossible not to get too close to the narrative. In a discussion with Keret, I wanted to know what he thought about Green’s view on translating as analogous to theatre acting. Keret agreed but with one proviso: unlike acting on stage, there is no ad-libbing when it comes to translating an original text. Adam Rovner497 spoke about the subject of translating Keret’s The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories into Arabic. Up until Arab readers encountered Keret’s storytelling, most had a rather monolithic view of Israelis as hubristic chauvinists. On his part, in an effort to bring into the fold as many Arab readers as possible, this was the only time Keret agreed to incorporate significant changes—mostly pertaining to sex—into the translation. As Keret expressed to Rovner, the business of translation is fraught with sensitive issues but is integral to the world of literature. He himself has read many writers in translation, including two of the writers who influenced him most: Franz Kafka and Isaac Babel.

494

Naomi B. Sokoloff, “Teaching Narrative Theory: Etgar Keret’s ‘Goldfish’,” Hebrew Higher Education, 14 (2012): 77-89. 495 Miriam Shlesinger, “The Necessity of Choosing,” Words without Borders Magazine, March 5, 2009, httts://www. wordswithoutborders.org/article/thenecessity-of-choosing/2009/03/05. 496 Jeffrey M. Green “Translating Aharon Appelfeld,” Midstream Magazine (May 1989): 34-37. 497 Etgar Keret, “Tradition, Translation, and Alien Toasters,” interview with Etgar Keret by Adam Rovner, Words without Borders Magazine, March 12, 2009, https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/atyicle/interview/etgar-keret-on-traditiontranslation-and-alien-toasters.

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Conversing with Elad Mann,498 Keret expressed how the global breakout of COVID-19 forced him to contend with writing in an era of a pandemic—“bad for your health but good for writing.” Aside from literature by Kafka, Keret recommends reading Orly Castel-Bloom’s Dolly City, and science-based reports in The New York Times. Joy Bernard499 reports that the despondency Keret felt when Tel Aviv was under pandemic curfew led the author to think about his father. A Holocaust survivor, Keret’s father never spoke about “bad periods.” Instead, his father would impress upon his three children to think in terms of “easier periods and more difficult ones.” On August 20, 2021, as a countermeasure to the isolation imposed on many by the pandemic situation, Keret launched a communicative, biweekly newsletter called Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret.500 Years ago, Keret approached his publisher with the idea of very short stories popping up on matchboxes. His publisher rejected the idea offhand; writers write books, not matchboxes. Some thirty years later, Keret created his own “matchbox project” whereby readers are invited to suggest to him—twenty words max—an idea for a story. As Keret conveyed in “The 100 Days Email,”501 up until the pandemic, he would never use someone else’s idea for a story. “Thanks” to COVID-19 he has discovered an “unusual, intimate encounter” with his readers.502 He also revealed that another reason for undertaking a populist approach to writing is the troubling expansion of far-right sectors in Israel. “I now understand that I write because it is the only way I know how to cope with reality and survive it. That was the insight that led me to start this newsletter.”

498

Elad Mann, “Bimkom SheHaTikshoret Telamed Otanu LeAbed Et HaNetunim ...” (Rather than the Media Teaching Us to Process Data) HaAyin HaShvi’it (The Seventh Eye), April 9, 2020, https://www.the7eye.org.il/368186. 499 Etgar Keret, “Writing to Fight the Inertia: Etgar Keret Finds Inspiration in Corona Virus,” interview with Etgar Keret by Joy Bernard. The Jerusalem Post, October 14, 2020, https://www.jpost.com/Israel-news/culture/author-etgar-findsinspiration-in-coronavirus-645606. 500 Powered by Substack, readers can access Keret’s newsletter by subscribing to Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret. 501 Etgar Keret, “The 100 Days Email,” Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, November 18, 2021, https://www. etgarkeret.substack.com. 502 This being three months since the launch of the Alphabet Soup newsletter, Keret took the opportunity to thank Noa Gana, Ofra Kobliner, Asaf Hanuka, Nir Matarasso, Alina Gurban, Lev Keret, Shira Geffen, Natasha Geffen, Frida Malpica Garcia, Issac Ben Aharon, and David Polonsky—friends, relatives, illustrators and photographers—who are involved in the production of the newsletter.

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“Outside” and “Eating Olives at the End of the World” are stories in which Keret tackles a new reality brought about by the pandemic. “Outside” appears in an anthology of twenty-nine stories written by authors from around the world and edited by Ilan Stavans.503 The anthology is modeled after Giovanni Boccaccio’s 1353 The Decameron: an assemblage of stories about the Black Death. Keret wrote “Outside”504 when COVID-19 lockdown ended in Tel Aviv and outdoor restrictions were lifted. Within minutes of venturing outdoors, he collided with a pedestrian riding a scooter. Perhaps, he thought, stepping outside was a bad idea. He went back home and wrote “Outside.” In the story, a female narrator steps outside after a lengthy pandemic lockdown. In general, people preferred to stay inside, “perhaps simply happy to keep away from everyone else.” A dictate by the local authorities, however, ordered residents to spend time outdoors. Soldiers were dispatched to force people to leave their homes. The woman observes that after a relatively lengthy period of isolation, “it’s not always easy to remember what exactly you used to do for a living.” Once outside, she is not sure where to go. The soldiers signal to her to get moving. Some people “look genuinely panicked.” Eventually, she decides to buy a pack of cigarettes at a nearby grocery store. Ready to pay for the cigarettes, she realizes that in her confused and anxious state of mind, she left her purse at home. The man behind the counter is quick to snatch back the pack he had just handed her. His hairy hand, “like a rat,” brushes against her hand. Leaving the store empty-handed, she encounters a beggar. His clothes are filthy. She then remembers what one normally used to do in a situation like this: look in the opposite direction and walk away quickly: There is nothing to be afraid of. It’s like riding a bike: The body remembers everything and the heart that softened while you were alone will harden back up in no time.505

End of story. As Keret revealed to Delphine Matthieussent,506 “I don’t think we had a perfect world that was taken from us.” He finds it 503

Ilan Stavans, ed. And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the COVID-19 Pandemic (New York: Restless Books, September 5, 2020). 504 Etgar Keret, “Outside,” trans. Jessica Cohen, The New York Times Magazine, July 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes. com/interactive/2020/07/07/magazine/etgarkeret-short-story.html. 505 Etgar Keret, “Outside” (2020).

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impossible to relate to “victim narratives” that ruminate over “how much better life was before the pandemic.” In “Eating Olives at the End of the World”507 a first-person narrator is eating olives just as the world is about to come to an unavoidable end. He was initially planning to bake a pizza, but there was no pizza dough or tomato sauce to be found in the supermarket. The only item left was a lone jar of “pimento-stuffed olives.” Preparing to pay for the olives, the female cashier is in disbelief: “The world is about to end and you’re offering me money?” The terribly distressed woman tells the narrator she will never be able to see or hug her grandson ever again. Her grandson, she sobs, is so scrumptious, “is like a warm loaf of bread.” Sympathetic but confused, the narrator tries to offer the cashier extra cash for the olives, but again, she refuses his money. She asks for a hug instead. Next, the narrator is seated on his balcony, watching TV, and eating olives. There is nothing else on TV except episode number four-hundredand-thirty-six of a Spanish-speaking Argentine soap opera. There are no subtitles, and the narrator does not speak Spanish. However, with the world about to end, language and meaning do not seem to matter. He closes his eyes and recalls the supermarket’s cashier. “When we hugged I tried to be small, to be warmer than I really am. I tried to smell like I’d only just been born.” With this metaphoric hint of possible rebirth, the story ends. Orna Levin508 anchors her analysis of Keret’s pandemic storytelling in theories advanced by Mikhail Bakhtin, Daniel Grassian, and Homi K. Bhabha. Levin suggests that the timbre of “Eating Olives at the End of the World” is apocalyptical until the moment the cashier initiates a hug in lieu of cash. Reading the story in light of our own COVID-19 experience, the cashier’s wishes for physical contact and the narrator’s willingness to oblige have the effect of softening the grim tonality of the story. Added to

506

Etgar Keret, “Top Israeli Writer Enjoys Pandemic-Fueled Creative Surge,” interview with Etgar Keret by Delphine Matthieussent, The Jakarta Post, November 26, 2020, https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/ 2020/11/25/ top-israeliwriter-enjoys-pandemic-fueled-creative-surge. 507 Etgar Keret, “Eating Olives at the End of the World,” trans. Jessica Cohen, The New York Review Books, April 12, 2020, https://www.nybooks.com/online/2020/ 04/12/eating-olives-at-the-end-of-the-world. 508 Orna Levin, “Sifrut Korona Hybrdit MeEt Etgar Keret: Iyun BeShnei Sipurim MiTkufat HaGal HaRishon” (Hybrid Corona Literature by Etgar Keret: an Analysis of Two Stories from the First Phase of the Pandemic), Ka’et, No. 5, (2020): 221-207.

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that is the inference at the end of the story hinting at rebirth, a new beginning: “I tried to smell like I’d only just been born.” In an effort, perhaps, to counteract pandemic isolation, Keret circulated “Outside” and “Eating Olives at the End of the World” in multiple formats. In addition to the written text, dissemination included Keret reading “Eating Olives at the End of the World” aloud to radio listeners, simultaneous screenings of a digital version of “Outside” in the summer of 2020 on large billboards in Tel Aviv, New York, and Tokyo, and producing a feature film based on “Outside.” The film incorporates dance movements choreographed by Inbal Pinto. Surreal times call for surreal creative artistry.509 Creating a literary narrative is an important part of surviving a massive blow. What became of us during and after the outbreak of the pandemic, and what will become of us once we can look back on what was lost and what has changed, is integral to the narrative. Our hearts go out to our children. Living in the shadow of the pandemic is not what we had in mind for them but, importantly, as of yet, we cannot theorize comprehensively about long-term ramifications. I believe Melissa Weininger’s essay, “Etgar Keret: Outside the Israeli Bubble,”510 is an unfortunate example of hasty theorizing. According to Weininger, the universal nature of “Outside” is indicative of Keret belonging to a contemporary movement in Israeli culture, a so-called trend that is turning away “from Hebraic culture and its hyper-nationalistic associations with Zionism.” I am not nullifying embryonic literature about the pandemic. Nor do I wish to weigh in on Weininger’s bizarre notion of Keret becoming disenchanted with “Hebraic culture.” Rather, I am wary of theories that emerge as a kneejerk reaction to an anomalous phenomenon, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Far more relevant and effective are the associations made by Levin of soldiers in “Outside” banging on residents’ doors, coercing them to step outside with rounding up Jews in the Holocaust, and the storeowner’s hairy hand with Nazi depiction of Jews as hairy rats. In fact, Keret’s pandemic storytelling is emblematic of him as a postmodern writer. As far as Keret is concerned, postmodern postulations about unreliability of language and meaning have been validated tenfold by an unforeseen global pandemic situation that straddles the lines between what is known and what remains undetermined. 509

Cross-genre literature is, of course, not new. The same goes for interlacing prose with poetry, drawings, and photos, and for accompanying reading a text with music and dance. 510 Melissa Weininger, “Etgar Keret: Outside the Israeli Bubble,” Moment Magazine (September 21, 2020).

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Keret wrote “A Foreign Language”511 years prior to the pandemic sweeping the globe but it has much to do with intricacies of language, meaning, translation, and transliteration. The story epitomizes Keret as a postmodern Holocaust remembrance writer. A heartbreaking story, “A Foreign Language” is a two-part story, with a young boy narrating the first. His father has just received a pipe from his two sons for his fifty-first birthday. Dad expresses his gratitude and eats some birthday cake that his wife had baked. He kisses everyone and then goes into the bathroom to shave. Through not-so-subtle hints, the reader suspects that Dad’s intention is not to shave, but to commit suicide behind the closed bathroom door. Father, the narrator reveals, was always very sensitive to noise and dreamt of building an isolated, reclusive cabin in a quiet Scandinavian forest. “When my brother and I cried … he just felt like strangling us.”512 Every so often, the boys could hear Dad humming a Hungarian song he remembered from happier days, before the Nazis destroyed everything. The song went like this: Ozo sep? Ozo sep? Okineko seme kek. Okinekp same fakete. Who is the most beautiful? Who is the most beautiful? The one with the dark eyes. He/she’s the most beautiful.513

Roman Katsman514 designates the first part of “A Foreign Language” as “Etgar Keret’s postmodern mythopoeia.” Originating in Hellenistic Greek myth making, mythopoeia is a genre popularized by J. R. R. Tolkien, William Blake, Jorge Luis Borges, and J. K. Rowling. In Keret’s story, an emotionally shattered father clings to myth making about a different life, not a Holocaust and post-Holocaust life that would end with killing himself. Katsman’s study also explores the linguistic issue of Keret inserting into the text translation and transliteration of a Hungarian lyric. Keret, Katsman argues, takes for granted that readers trust him to provide an accurate translation and transliteration. Furthermore, the presumed trust between reader and writer in matters of language and hermeneutics is Keret’s way of mitigating the dysfunctional relationship between a Holocaust 511

Etgar Keret, “A Foreign Language,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 113-117. Keret, “A Foreign Language” (2008), 115. 513 Keret, “A Foreign Language” (2008), 115. 514 Roman Katsman, “Ga’aguim LeMitus: Ishiyut, Etika, VeIdiologia BaMitophoesis HaPostmoderni Shel Etgar Keret (Longing for Myth: Personality, Ethics, and Ideology in Etgar Keret’s Postmodern Mythopoesis), Mikan Journal, no. 4, (2005): 20-41. 512

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survivor and his sons. The sons seem oblivious to their father’s sorrowful disposition, but readers would be justified in attributing the psyche of the boys to years of growing up in an insufferably gloomy home environment. As Dad is about to drown himself—“Bloo-bloo-bloo, the water in the bathtub murmured in Scandinavian”—the boys hope but cannot be sure that Dad was pleased with their birthday gift. “Nur Gott weiss,”515 the older brother surmises. “Only God knows” is another way of saying that the brothers are psychologically too damaged to have the emotional fortitude to even want to know what was happening behind the bathroom’s closed door. Keret’s postmodern discourse of coping with Holocaust remembrance reveals as much as it conceals and remains forever ruptured. In the second part of the story, the girlfriend of the narrator—an adult by now—demands that he express his love for her in an exotic, foreign language. She is adamant; it must be I love you in a foreign language, that is, not in Hebrew, the narrator’s mother tongue. Eventually, expounding on the importance of mastering a foreign language, he gives in to his girlfriend’s caprice. To be sure, one never knows when the situation calls for proficiency in a foreign language. His mother survived the Holocaust by pleading in German for her life while having intercourse with a Nazi officer. “Then, when they were doing it, she pulled a knife out of her belt and slashed his chest open, just like she used to open chicken breasts to stuff them with rice for the Sabbath meal.”516 A gut-wrenching postmodern story on coping with Holocaust remembrance, “Foreign Language” is intentionally comprised of miscellany of languages, narratives, connotation, translations, and transliterations. Tara Anderson517 once said that whenever she reads a story by Keret she expects “something surreal and improbable, yet completely possible to happen.” The demarcation between autobiographical and pure fiction was always difficult for Keret to envisage. Which may explain why prior to the birth of his son, he was not particularly interested in writing nonfiction. The idea of writing a memoir was deemed an anathema altogether. “Gravestone Fiction: Have You Ever Tried to Carve a Story in Stone?” is a perceptive write-up by Keret in which fiction and non-fiction

515

Keret, “A Foreign Language” (2008), 117. Keret, “A Foreign Language” (2008), 116. 517 Etgar Keret, “In Louisville: Writer Etgar Keret Shares ‘Seven Good Years’,” Arts and Culture, interview with Etgar Keret by Tara Anderson, October 16, 2015, http://wfpl.org/category/arts-and-culture/Louisville-writer-etgar-keret-sharesseven-good-years. 516

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collide.518 Readers learn that it took Keret fourteen years to come up with an ending to a story based on real life events. A friend of Keret’s asked him to write a gravestone inscription in memory of the friend’s brother. Given Keret’s fame, his friend thought the author was best suited for such a sensitive task. The two spent three hours trying to draft an inscription but came up with nothing. Later, inspired by the experience, the author writes a story but is unable to come up with an ending until fourteen years later. Noticeably, save for the last paragraph, every paragraph in the story opens with the words: “And then.” I believe the repeated conjunction draws out that enigmatic crossroad between fiction and non-fiction, life, death, and writing literature. It is essentially a sad story but, as always, speckled with Keret’s ingenious humor. Clearly inspired by Keret’s “failure” to satisfy his friend’s request that he write a gravestone inscription, in the story for which it took Keret a very long time to come up with an ending, Noam, a friend of the narrator/author, dies. Noam’s parents divorced soon after their son was born, and just like their squabbles over the terms of the divorce, they are now wrangling over the wording of the gravestone. Certain that an author could put into words the best possible inscription, they call upon Keret. He declines, explaining “Crafting a gravestone inscription has nothing to do with writing fiction.” Noam’s parents persist. To buy some time, the author jots down on a piece of paper Noam’s date of birth and death. He is not very good with the Hebrew calendar and uses Gregorian dates. Noam’s father is not impressed: “A Hebrew writer who isn’t good with Hebrew dates?” Noam’s mother comes up with an idea. She suggests that the wording be whatever Noam had said to the author the last time they met. Unfortunately, the last thing Noam had said to the author was “That’s that, finito, you and I are done!” Not wishing to add to Noam’s parents’ grief, the author lies and says that just as Noam was about to leave, he articulated a simple, wholesome thought: “Look at us, we’re not kids anymore.” Noam’s mother grows suspicious of the author and calls him a liar. Noam’s father is furious with his ex-wife and demands that she apologize to the “famous writer.” She refuses and shouts that not only is the author a liar, he is a coward who, in his stories too, cuts corners, withholding the truth. Back home, the author thinks Noam’s parting words to him, “that is it, you and I are done,” would have actually been a good gravestone inscription. No matter how hard he tries to think of other possible 518

Etgar Keret, “Gravestone Fiction: Have You Ever Tried to Carve a Story in Stone?” trans. Jessica Cohen, Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, January 24, 2023, https://www.etgarkeret.substack.com.

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wordings “to fit a 30 by 70 inche marble rectangle,” the words continuously end up “coalescing into a story”—a story without an ending. That is, until fourteen years later, a time coinciding with Keret reaching a point in his life whereby he felt ready and at peace with writing a memoir. Just about every Israeli knows who Etgar Keret is. Accordingly, at his son’s behest, The Seven Good Years: A Memoir was first published in English, not Hebrew. The memoir spans over seven years, from the birth of his son to the death of his father. Interviewed by Tobias Carrol519 shortly after the publication of the memoir, Keret restated that for a long time writing non-fiction was perceived by him as “a lesser thing” than writing fiction. Writing fiction is not about taking charge of the elements but more about losing control and connecting with the subconscious. “I think that when I write [fiction] I feel very much like I’m in a dream. I’m half-passive in my experience of telling a story; the story presents itself.” Writing a memoir felt different, but it definitely helped crystallize experiences that have much to do with storytelling. In the process of bringing to light real events, he came to realize that an occurrence he was stressed about “was actually very amusing in hindsight.” His wife, Keret told Ryan Krull,520 believes he has “an exaggerated reaction” to life. “I get emotionally attached to taxi drivers. I fight with people in the street and then feel bad and visit them and bake them a cake.” Publishing a memoir also meant that sensitive issues could no longer be masqueraded as fiction. Etgar Keret was now out in the open, transparent. As Keret indicated to Dan Ephron,521 up until The Seven Good Years: A Memoir, his short stories were not discerned as factual mirroring of “Israel’s big national narrative.” The truth, however, is that maybe his stories were not political per se, but they were always a form of “dissection” of dilemmas facing Israelis as a nation. “Sometimes the distinction between political and apolitical seems arbitrary.” As conveyed to Terry Gross,522 up until his son’s [Lev] birth, Keret was “living in this kind of never-ending present.” Then, with Lev’s birth:

519

Etgar Keret, “Writing Was Always an Act of Losing Control,” interview with Etgar Keret by Tobias Carrol, Hazlitt Magazine, June 18, 2015, https://www. hazlitt.net/features/writing-was-always-act-of-losing-control-interview-etgar-keret. 520 Etgar Keret, “The Rumpus Interview with Etgar Keret,” by Ryan Krull, Rumpus Newsletter, July 27, 2015, https://www.therumpus.net/2015/07/27/rumpusinterview-with-etgar-keret. 521 Keret, (Ephron 2015). 522 Keret, (Gross 2016).

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5. Literature in Translation, Pandemic Stories, and Nonfiction You know that when he’ll turn eighteen, he’ll join the army and go there for three years of compulsory service—you can’t help yourself thinking about the future … speculating about it, dreading it or even … trying to be more active to change it and improve it. So I think that becoming a parent kind of made me try to be more responsible. It [also] made me much more stressful.

Reviewing The Seven Good Years: A Memoir, Ranen Omer-Sherman523 observes that despite its relative brevity, Keret’s memoir offers “startling revelations [and] delivers some very big truths.” Although my sense is that Keret is uncomfortable with being perceived as an emissary of “very big truths,” I concur with Omer-Sherman adjudging Keret’s memoir as evincing “quiet courage and wisdom.” Nurit Buchweitz524 reflects upon Keret’s memoir as a key to understanding “Keret’s poetics.” Keret’s “identity card” as a writer unveils through “authentic representation.” “Recuring themes, dualities and duplications” illuminate Keret’s distinct style, defined by Buchweitz as “augmented reality”—a term borrowed from computer technology whereby virtual elements create an enhanced perception of reality. Before any debate, however, political or otherwise, there is a personal, emotional background. Survival, Buchweitz asserts, is the starting point of writing for Keret. Writing is the ultimate shield against wrongful discrimination of others. The Seven Good Years: A Memoir opens with the birth of Keret’s son on a day that a terrorist bomb goes off nearby. “Suddenly, the Same Thing” is about the newborn son encountering two opposing realms of life: his mother’s blissful breast, and everything else, which is hell. In “Big Baby,” the author is holding his two-week-old son. The small infant reminds him of travelling to Europe with his parents. It was not the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben that left the greatest impression on him, but the compact-size utensils that came with meals on the plane. Some thirty years later, once again, he is impressed by the relativity of dimensions. “Here is a man who weighs no more than ten pounds—but inside he’s angry, bored, frightened, and serene, just like any other man on this planet.”525 The baby has yet to learn how to speak and he soils himself a lot but is otherwise “a 523

Ranen Omer-Sherman, “The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret,” The Forward, May 30, 2015, https://www.forward. com/culture/books/308972/etgar-keret-findsredemption-the-seven-good-years-a-memoir. 524 Nurit Buchweitz, “The Seven Good Years as Etgar Keret’s Rosetta Stone,” BGU Review, Winter 2018, http://www.in/bgu/il/en/heksherim/BGU%Review%202018/ Nurit-Buchweitz-BGUR. 525 Keret, “Big Baby” (2015), 7.

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complete person wrapped in a nineteen-inch package.”526 Keret’s imagination runs wild and he pictures his son an intellectual, a junkie, a psychopath, and a self-hating Jew. His wife interrupts his meandering imagination, suggesting he do something useful such as changing the baby’s diaper. In “Call and Response” Keret admits to having a problem with reality. A telemarketer named Devora is on the phone. She first wants to know if this is a good time to tell him about a TV promotion plan. He says no, it is not a good time, for minutes ago he fell into a hole and is waiting for a rescue team. Later, his wife rebukes him; why can he not just decline politely? Keret responds with labyrinthine reasoning. In the Middle East, he says, people fear the worst—wars, death—which causes them to be suspicious and aggressive towards strangers. To them, being receptive to strangers is an awful waste of time and time is of the essence in the Middle East. As for the author, although he guards his time “just as jealously:” I have a real problem saying no to strangers on the phone … I’m imagining the scarred face of the person on the other end who has led a life of suffering and humiliation.527

When Devora calls the second time, the author tells her that the real Etgar died, and he is Michael, Etgar’s younger brother. Devora is very sorry for his loss. He thanks her and whispers, “I have to hang up. I have to say Kaddish528 now.”529 “Yours, Insincerely” introduces the second year of the memoir. Keret has fond memories of the Hebrew Book Week. Once a year, in June, his parents and their three children would attend Ramat Gan’s book fair. His sister would get all excited when an author would show up and sign books. Keret, however, thought dedications scribbled by authors were pretentious and insincere. To this day, he still loves being around displays of books, except nowadays, he is one of those authors. According to Keret, there is nothing like a few days away from Israel “to bring out the Jew in you.” “Defender of the People” and “Strange Bedfellows” are about encounters with the resurgence of anti-Semitism. Be it Warsaw, Melbourne, Berlin, or Zagreb, like most Israelis, the author is on the lookout for anything that resemble a swastika. In school, Israelis are taught all about centuries of Jews being persecuted, discriminated against, expelled, and slaughtered. He is the first Israeli writer to be 526

Keret, “Big Baby” (2015), 8. Keret, “Call and Response” (2015), 12. 528 Kaddish is a Jewish prayer, a version of which is recited for the dead. 529 Keret, “Call and Response” (2015), 14. 527

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invited to Bali. Over five hundred people attend the opening event where Keret is reading to the audience in a Bali palace. “I may be the first Israeli, maybe even the first Jew the audience has ever seen.” They look at him while he reads. They look focused but he wonders: “What do they see when they look at me?”530 What are they really thinking? In “Swede Dreams,” a Swedish tabloid maligns Israelis, branding them barbarians who harvest organs from Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers. Could it be that Europeans still hold on to the belief that the blood of Christian children is an ingredient for backing Passover matzos? In a nightmarish dream, Keret is in an unknown city, at a train station, standing behind a hot dog cart. A large crowd of frightening people is yelling at him “in a strange language that sounded like a scary blend of German and Japanese.”531 They demand a hot dog, staring at him “with the ravenous eyes of predators.” Mustard and relish splatter his shirt. His hands begin to shake when he wakes up. Uzi, Keret’s close friend, offers an interpretation of the nightmare. He says this is a typical dream of a second-generation child raised by Holocaust survivors. No therapist can be of any help. There is only one solution: a wise investment in a foreign bank. Skeptical, the author nonetheless follows Uzi’s advice. It seems to work. Instead of dreams about trains and Nazis, friendly settings of banks appear in his dreams. Then, with the 2008 global financial meltdown, nothing much remains of his investments. Uzi tells Keret to think of the bright side; at least the money invested was not with Madoff. Up until then, Keret never heard of Madoff. Now that he learns “all about Bernie,” he arrives at the conclusion that “apart from the bit about the about the rip-off, we have a lot in common: two restless Jews who love to make up stories.”532 In “Bombs Away,” year four, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tirades on the inevitable destruction of Israel are disquieting. Uzi is convinced that the “crazy Iranian” is prepared to destroy Israel even if it means the total annihilation of Iranians. The author’s wife, however, is more concerned with a wet spot on the ceiling and asks Keret to call a plumber. Keret wonders: if Israel is to be eradicated in the near future, why bother. In fact, why care about gardening, washing dishes, or putting the garbage away? Then, one night, Ahmadinejad appears in the author’s dream. The Iranian hugs the author, kisses him on both cheeks, and says in fluent Yiddish, “Ich hub dir lieb—my brother, I love you.”533 The author gets up, cleans 530

Keret, “Strange Bedfellows” (2015), 32. Keret, “Requiem for a Dream” (2015), 37. 532 Keret, “Requiem for a Dream” (2015), 41. 533 Keret, “Bombs Away” (2015), 74. 531

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the entire house, and tomorrow, first thing, he will be sure to call a plumber. In “Imaginary Homeland” Keret recalls stories his mother told him about life in Poland. Orna Keret was born in 1934. Her mother, father, and brother perished in the Holocaust. She survived by escaping from the Warsaw ghetto and obtaining a false identity as a Catholic girl named Irena. In Israel, she became Orna, lived in Tel Aviv, studied during the day, worked at a shoe factory at night, met and then married Ephraim Keret. Blessed with three children, and happily married for fifty-two years until Ephraim’s death in 2012, Orna never stopped reminiscing over Polish scenery, culture, and cuisine. As a child, Keret imagined Poland as a black-and-white mix between Dickensian cobblestone streets and The Hunchback of Notre Dame-like churches. Nowadays, he travels to Poland almost every year. The Poles love him. During one such visit, a photographer takes his picture in a café and emails the picture to him. He stares at the picture until Lev looks at his father’s computer screen and asks, “How come that picture has no colors?” “It’s magic,” Keret says, ruffling his son’s hair.534 As an internationally acclaimed writer, Keret is a frequent guest speaker at literature gatherings. At the MacDowell Colony of New Hampshire, he is among a diverse group of writers. Keret is emboldened by the realization that as a writer, he “is neither saint nor tzaddik nor prophet standing at the gate.” He is just “another sinner” who happens to be able to articulate in words that are more precise “the inconceivable reality of our world.”535 He remembers clearly the day he asked his older brother to read one of his early stories. His brother thought the story was very good. Then, making sure Etgar had another copy of the story, he used the paper to clean up after his dog. In “Bemusement Park'' Keret is visiting Paris’s Euro Disney with his wife and son. The weather is cold, people are not particularly friendly, and the lineups for the rides are endless. The obscenity of what money can buy appalls Keret. Waiting in one of the lineups, he swipes his iPhone in search of biographical tidbits on Walt Disney. Apparently, Disney was not an outright Nazi but “a regular anti-Semite who hated Communists and was overly fond of Germans.” 536

534

Keret, “Imaginary Homeland” (2015), 95. Etgar Keret, “Just Another Sinner. A Writer’s Best Hope is to Articulate Woe and Avoid Killing Too Many Frogs,” Tablet Magazine, October 2, 2008, https:// www.tablet mag.com/sections/belief/articles/just-another-sinner. 536 Keret, “Bemusement Park” (2015), 118. 535

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Towards the end of the memoir, Keret’s wife suffers a miscarriage and Keret’s father is gravely ill. The doctors who diagnosed Keret’s father as suffering from cancer at the base of his tongue lay out several options: do nothing, buy some time by undergoing chemotherapy, or go through an operation to remove his tongue and larynx. Keret’s father takes pride in being good at decision-making, particularly when things are at rock bottom. He learned this during World War II, hiding in a hole in the ground in Poland for almost two years. He therefore chooses to undergo the operation, reasoning that at his age he does not “need a tongue anymore.”537 His father’s cancerous tumor blocks his esophagus. Food and liquids reach his stomach through a plastic tube. On one occasion, at a café in Tel Aviv, the author’s father decides to imagine himself in a parallel world—a world in which he can still enjoy drinking a cup of coffee. To the author’s shock, his father orders a cup of coffee and drinks it. The hot drink goes right into his lungs, causing him to choke and then spit everything onto the café’s floor. People at the café are horrified but Keret’s father is rather pleased with himself.538 In “Accident” Keret stands vigil at his father’s sick bed. His dad is a Holocaust survivor and reached the age of eighty-three. “That’s not just a half-full glass; it’s an overflowing one.”539 A day before he died, Keret’s father asked his son to explain to him the Israeli adaptation of American Idol. Years after his father’s death, Keret misses his father in the way a child whose father went away believes he will be coming back. Much of the concluding of Keret’s memoir is about the legacy passed on to the author by his father. On one occasion, Keret is giving his son a bath. Lev slips in the bathtub. Keret instinctively shields Lev’s head by positioning his hand on the rim of the tub. Lev is impressed. He asks the author about a father’s duty to protect his child, and, now that his grandfather has passed on, who will protect Lev’s father? In one of the last memoir write-ups, the author visits the house constructed in his honor by the Polish architect, Jakub SzczĊsny, on Cháodna Street, Warsaw. An elderly woman is waiting at the entrance to welcome the author. She is holding a jar of homemade jam. She tells the author in Polish that when the Nazis came, and forced the Jews into a 537

Keret, “Ground Up” (2015), 124. Keret describes the incident in greater detail in “Coffee and Cigarettes,” Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, August 17, 2021, https:// www.etgarkeret.substack.com. 539 Keret, “Accident” (2015), 138. 538

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ghetto, her mother prepared two jam sandwiches for her daughter’s Jewish friends. The friends did not survive the Holocaust. The jam the woman made for Keret is the same jam. The elderly woman is sobbing and Keret hugs her. Later in the evening, Keret’s mother calls him from Tel Aviv. As always, she asks, “Where are you?” Tearfully, he replies, “I’m here, Mom, I’m in our home in Warsaw.”540 “Pastrami” concludes the memoir. The write-up represents much of what I cherish about Etgar Keret. The realism of “Pastrami” is downright frightening, but Keret’s way of telling the story evokes his father’s extraordinary humanistic proclivity for cushioning terrifying realism with empathy, love, hope, and delectable humor. In its solicitude, and unbounded generosity of spirit, “Pastrami” elucidates the marvel of the phenomenon of Etgar Keret. Lastly, “Pastrami” endows the entire memoir with a cyclical design in that the last story links with the first. Seven years have gone by since the day Keret’s son was born in Tel Aviv during a deadly terrorist attack. Shira, Etgar, and their seven-year-old son are traveling by car to northern Tel Aviv. Shira is the designated driver. Suddenly, an earsplitting air raid siren blares. Shira has the wherewithal to pull the car over and turn off the engine. Lev is instructed to step out of the car and lie on the ground, face down. The child is in a state of shock and remains standing upright. Knowing he must get his son to lie flat on the ground, the author proposes that they play a game called “Pastrami Sandwich.” Dad hurriedly explains the gist of the game. Mother and father are to take the position of two slices of bread, and Lev is to be the in-between layer of pastrami. It works! Shira is at the bottom, Lev is on top of her, and the author shields them by “pressing against the damp earth with [his] hands so as not to crush them.” “Being the pastrami is the best,” mother and father call out.541 Next, they hear a loud, far away boom followed by an eerie stillness, and then silence. Several minutes go by and nothing else happens. Keret’s arms hurt, and ants are crawling all over Shira. Mother and father agree it is time to stand up, but Lev wants to continue playing. He is waiting for a rocket to fall far enough away to hurt anyone, but close enough for him to be able to collect pieces of shrapnel that he plans to show his classmates. The game ends after Lev’s parents promise that, in the event of another air raid, they will resume playing, and Keret assures his son that if playing “Pastrami” gets to be boring, he will teach his son how to play another fun

540 541

Keret, “Jam” (2015), 163. Keret, “Pastrami” (2015), 170.

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game: “Grilled Cheese.” What happens, Lev asks, if there are no more sirens? Shira responds that “Pastrami” can be played without sirens too. Undoubtedly, “Pastrami” mirrors genealogical traits Keret inherited from his Holocaust surviving parents: courage in the face of terror, providing a protective parental sheath, and a narrative—frightening as it may be—delivered with sensitivity and tender, inoffensive humor. Almost twenty years later, “Pastrami” resurfaced in Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret.542 Subtitled “a family sandwich seasoned with a sprinkle of fear and excitement,” Keret mentions that “Pastrami” is one of the few non-fiction pieces he reads to audiences at literary events. He finds himself coming back to “Pastrami” in difficult times to remind himself that “[e]xistence is like a Russian doll: inside the enormous, violent, threatening sphere of the world, there hides a different sphere called ‘family,’ which is no less wild and unpredictable, but also warm, funny, and full of solace.” Ryan Krull543 wanted to know whether Keret believes that, as a writer, it is his duty to share with non-Israelis a reality, such as the one alluded to in “Pastrami,” that they might find difficult to grasp. Keret responded that as a writer he aims “to humanize the human experience.” “Pastrami” is not meant as a grand philosophical approach to life. Rather, Lev refused to lie on the ground during a missile attack. Inventing a game was a way of making him drop to the ground before a missile explodes, “without shouting at him or forcing him.” He then added: “Even if my son is traumatized by this fearful experience … at least he gets to keep all his organs intact.” The source for the memoir’s title, “the seven good years,” is the Book of Genesis, Chapter 41. The biblical narrative tells of Joseph, who is summoned to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. In one dream, Pharaoh is standing by the Nile River when seven well-fed cows and seven starved cows come into view. In another dream, Pharaoh sees seven ripe grains and seven dried-out heads of grain. Joseph interprets the dreams as revealing a future during which Egypt will know seven years of prosperity, followed by seven years of famine. He recommends an economic plan of austerity whereby, in times of prosperity, provisions be made for years of scarcity. Alice O’Keeffe544 wondered whether, in light of the book’s title, 542

Etgar Keret, “Pastrami, A Family Sandwich Seasoned with a Sprinkle of Fear and Excitement,” Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, January 10, 2023, https://www.etgarkeret.substack.com. 543 Keret, (Krull, Rumpus Newsletter, 2015). 544 Etgar Keret, “Etgar Keret: Israelis Boycott Me as a Traitor, and Foreigners Because I’m Israeli,” interview with Etgar Keret by Alice O’Keeffe, The Guardian,

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Keret foresees some bad years to come for Israel. Keret responded by saying that the years ahead may or may not be bad, but there cannot be a good future without negotiating a two-state resolution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. Keret is considering writing a second memoir in memory of his father. Fiction or nonfiction, Keret’s writing is idiosyncratically personal. As an academic, I am suggesting that the pervasiveness of the personal in Keret’s writing bears on authentic higher learning. As academics, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber545 contend that personal storytelling has much to do with “slowness” in higher education. By slowness Berg and Seeber do not mean speaking v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y or achieving less. Rather, slowness stands for “live classes” and “the politics of pleasure”546 as opposed to present-day corporate university, where fiscal considerations take precedence over opportunities for learning and development of critical thinking. Slowness entails designing courses in storytelling style. “The storyteller adapts as he/she goes along in response to students’ reactions.”547 There is more to The Slow Professor but here, its relevance and pertinence is to expand our understanding of the all-around breadth of Etgar Keret’s élan vital.

August 1, 2015, www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/01/etgar-keret-booksinterview-the-seven-good-years. 545 Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber, The Slow Professor, Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). 546 Berg and Seeber (2016), 34. 547 Berg and Seeber (2016), 49.

6 SHORT STORIES, HUMOR, AND THE GROTESQUE

There are critics and reviewers who feel the need to demystify Keret’s popularity and universal appeal. Gadi Taub548 suggests that Keret’s magnetism emanates from his ability to cruise effortlessly between logic and paradoxes, the grotesque and humor. Principally, Taub does not share Keret’s turn to postmodernity, but nonetheless can see why Keret became such an essential and relevant symbol for an entire generation. This, Taub argues, is not the first time in Israel’s history that an author has captivated the imagination of an entire generation. For example, Taub makes mention of Natan Alterman’s poetry that in the 1930s and 1940s—the decades leading to national independence—bound the Jewish yishuv in Palestine with an oracular spell. It seems to Taub that Keret’s allure springs from Israelis’—young Israelis in particular—enthrallment with what they deem as storytelling that smartens Israeli solecism and brashness with, in Taub’s words, “hesed dak, adin”—fine, delicate grace. Keret’s deviant humor and twisted violence makes it easier for readers to do some soul searching as to where they fit on Keret’s spectrum of wrongdoings and perpetuity of inertia. Keret indicated to Taub that he receives letters representing a heterogeneous mix of readers: from right-wing settlers to secular leftists and Arabs. “Breaking the Pig”549 is one of Keret’s best-known, timeless stories. The reaction to it by critics and readers—children and adults alike— bespeaks Keret’s appeal. “Breaking the Pig” is about a boy who wants a Bart Simpson toy, and a rather boorish father who decides that this would 548

Gadi Taub, “Rega, Eifo HaPoenta? Sefer Hadash Shel Etgar Keret Hu Hizdamnut Tova LeVarer Ma Hofekh Oto LeSemel Shel Dor Shalem (One Moment, What is the Main Point? A New Book By Etgar Keret is a Good Opportunity to Find Out what Makes Him a Symbol for an Entire Generation), Haaretz, May 15, 2002, http://www. haaretz.co.il/misc/ article/gadi-taub-review-anew-book-by-etgar-keret-a-good-opportunity. 549 Etgar Keret, “Breaking the Pig,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 1-5.

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be an opportune time to teach his son a lesson in fiscal responsibility. Instead of his son spending his weekly allowance, the money is put away in a piggy bank, “an ugly porcelain pig with a slot in its back,”550 towards purchasing the Bart Simpson doll. The boy has no choice but to go along with his father’s plan. In an unanticipated turn of events, the boy develops a strong affinity with the porcelain pig. He names the piggy bank Margolis as, perhaps, a roundabout way of getting back at his father. Apparently, the name Margolis was stuck on the mailbox and the boy’s father tried but could not remove it. With each passing day, the boy develops a strong attachment to Margolis. “Honest, I love you more than Mom and Dad. And I will always love you, no matter what, even if you break into candy stores.”551 Meanwhile, having noticed the diligence with which his son is saving his pocket money, the father congratulates himself on teaching his son an invaluable lesson in the acumen of fiscal prudence. One day, satisfied that the time has come to reward his son with the coveted Bart Simpson toy, the father fetches a hammer with the intention of smashing the piggy bank and retrieving the accumulated money. The boy is horrified at the thought of destroying Margolis and somehow manages to talk his father into delaying the assault on his friend. At night, he smuggles Margolis out of the house and leaves him in a deserted field. Brokenhearted, but satisfied that he was able to lead Margolis to safety, the boy parts with his friend, assuring him that pigs really feel great in wild fields with thorns. Margolis makes no response, but the boy can tell that he is terribly sad for he knows they will never see each other again. In “Breaking the Pig, the Story, and the Story behind the Story,”552 Keret describes being five years old and receiving from a family friend a smiling, pink, porcelain pig as a gift. At first, he was disappointed: “What could you play with a porcelain pig?” But then he learned how the smiling pig could be put to use as a piggy bank. Alas, his happiness faded when he learned that the only way to retrieve the coins dropped into the piggy bank “was by breaking the poor little pig.” He remembers looking into the pig’s enormous eyes and growing enormously fond of him. However, still a youngster, he felt compelled to hold back his tears at the thought of having to break his new friend. As the son of a mother and father who suffered terribly in the Holocaust, he told himself from a very young age that it was 550

Keret, “Breaking the Pig” (2008), 1. Keret, “Breaking the Pig” (2008), 2. 552 Etgar Keret, “Breaking the Pig, the Story, and the Story behind the Story,” trans. Jessica Cohen, Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, November 19, 2021, https://www.etgarkeret.substack.com. 551

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his duty to avoid adding “more pain and sorrow to their cup of grief, which was already full to the brim.” According to Keret, analogous to the coins piling up inside the pig, sorrow related to his parents’ past kept amassing inside him “with no way to get out, until the day I shattered into pieces.” Thankfully, in time, he discovered a different way to offload sadness building up inside him, a way that did not entail shattering anything. Instead, all he had to do was write stories. Academic articles about “Breaking the Pig” include an analytic essay by Omri Yavin and Dor Yaccobi.553 According to Yavin and Yaccobi, Keret speaking through the first-person child narrator in stories such as “Breaking the Pig” is emblematic of a larger theme in Keret’s literature, namely, the discordance between the adult parent and the child. Yavin and Yaccobi further contend that, given Franz Kafka’s indelible imprint on Keret, Kafka’s troubled relationship with his father, is highly relevant to the conversation. Few would dispute Kafka’s influence on Keret, but a Kafka-Keret correlation cannot apply to a true to life relationship with their respective fathers. The psychological inseparability between Kafka the writer and Kafka the son who was contemptuous of his biological father is wellknown. Posthumously published as Letter to His Father (Brief an den Vater),554 Kafka’s letter delineates over thirty years of begrudging an authoritarian and hypocritical father. Be it an accurate characterization of Kafka’s father or a skewed portrayal by an indignant, emotionally scarred son, no such characterization can be projected onto Keret in terms of his relationship with his father. The perceptible discord between a boorish father and a lonesome son in “Breaking the Pig” is reflective of a recurring theme in Keret’s literature that has to do with dysfunctional relationships between adults and children, but it is not some sort of extrapolation from within Keret’s family. The first version of “Breaking the Pig” appeared in 1994’s Missing Kissinger. It was initially intended for adult readers. Several years later, the idea of republishing the story as literature for children began to gather momentum. Curious to learn more, I asked Keret to what extent was he involved in the decision to republish the story as children’s literature. With his usual alacrity and geniality, Keret explained that despite designating

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Omri Yavin and Dor Yaccobi, “Leilot Bli Yarea‫ۊ‬: Yesodot Kafkaiyim BeSifrut HaYeladim Shel Etgar Keret” (Moonless Nights: Kafkaesque Motifs in Children’s Literature by Etgar Keret), Hebrew Higher Education, 20 (2018). 554 Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father, trans. Karen Reppin, bilingual edition (New York: Schocken Books, 1966).

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“Breaking the Pig” as literature for adults, it was brought to his attention (by parents) that children too are fond of the story. From the get-go, it was agreed that the wording of the text would not be changed. The only difference would be in supplementing the 2015 children’s version with illustrations. The added illustrations notwithstanding, several critics remained skeptical as to the appropriateness of the story for young readers. At any rate, Kineret Publishing House reissued the story as children’s literature with illustrations by David Polonsky—a Ukrainianborn Israeli book illustrator and artistic film director. In addition to illustrations that went with the existing text, Keret asked Polonsky to draw a pictorial, closing scene that does not appear in the worded text. A drawing shows the boy returning home, having left the piggy bank in a field. His father is asleep on the living room couch, and the boy covers his father with a blanket. None of this appears in the text, but as reasoned by Keret, in light of the fact that readers tend to have a low opinion of the father—adding that he agrees with his readers although he still believes the father’s intentions were good—the supplemental drawings offer a conciliatory message. Seeing a dysfunctional parent-child relationship turned on its head, young readers are able to contemplate the possibility of a loving father-son relationship. In complete contrast, there is very little in “The Mysterious Disappearance of Alon Shemesh”555 by way of mollifying harsh realism. In Hebrew, “alon” means “oak tree” and “shemesh” means sun. With the unfolding of an increasingly harrowing storyline, Hebrew speaking readers are fully cognizant of the ironic paradox embedded in a name that connotes notions of strength, energy, and light. The disparity between the almost jovial tone in which the story is told and the nightmarish events taking place amplifies the hideousness of the tale. The story opens with Alon Shemesh being away from school on Tuesday. Miss Nava, the homeroom teacher, gives Jacob, Alon’s best friend, an extra homework sheet for Alon. The following day, both Alon and Jacob are absent from school. Miss Nava assumes Alon, and now Jacob too, are sick with some sort of innocuous cold or flu. At this point, she has no reason to be terribly concerned and asks the class for volunteers to deliver the day’s homework assignments to Alon and Jacob. Yuval lives on the same block as Alon and gladly volunteers. Dikla, who feels a strong attraction for Jacob, is more than willing. The next day, all four students, Alon, Jacob, Yuval, and Dikla, are conspicuously absent. Miss Nava is 555

Etgar Keret, “The Mysterious Disappearance of Alon Shemesh,” in The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories (2004), 71-73.

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beginning to feel apprehensive, but the gravity of the situation is yet to dawn on her or anyone else. A student named Aviva Kranstenstein suggests that, similar to the Jewish pioneers in the early days of immigrating to Israel, “Maybe they [absent students] came down with typhoid fever.” Gafni dislikes Aviva intensely. He threatens that unless “she shut her trap,”556 he will burn every book Aviva owns. Miss Nava phones the homes of the absent children, but there is no answer from any of them. She informs the class of her intention to visit all four missing students after school hours, but under no circumstances is anyone else to visit the homes of the absentee students. The students are in a defiant mood. After school, they gather at King David Park; and, with the exception of the narrator and a student named Michel de Casablanca, resolve to disregard Miss Nava’s directive: if she can visit their friends, so can they! By the end of the week, all other students, teachers, administrative personnel, and the principal are gone. The only ones left standing are the narrator and Michel. Outraged, chain-smoking, the narrator’s mother reaches out to several parents but, except for Michel’s home, no one answers the phone. The story ends with Michel proposing that everyone must be at a cookout on the beach. The narrator, however, is doubtful. He wonders whether maybe, just maybe, Aviva Krantenstein was right “and they really did all die of typhoid fever.”557 An opaque sense of malaise and inertia seeps through the entire story. Persuasively contended by Avishai Margalit,558 when it comes to morality—which Margalit differentiates from ethics—there is no justification for inertia. We are connected to people that are closest to us in thick ethical relations, and in thin moral relations with others. Ethics are negotiable, but morality is not. “Being moral is a required good; being ethical is in principle an optional good.”559 Ignoring signs of a looming catastrophe is immoral. Susan Neiman560 is unequivocal when stating that after the Holocaust, we must all beware of and guard against moral inertia. Discerned by Jeffrey Blustein,561 “Human community is worthy of

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Keret, “The Mysterious Disappearance of Alon Shemesh” (2004), 72. Keret, “The Mysterious Disappearance of Alon Shemesh” (2004), 73. 558 Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004). 559 Margalit (2004), 105. 560 Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 561 Jeffrey Blustein, The Moral Demands of Memory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 557

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affiliation and loyalty only in so far as it takes its responsibilities seriously.”562 Imperfect as its practices may be, the rationale and principle of the welfare state represent for Keret a system that countermands inertia. Historically, at the heart of Labor Zionism was the ethos of the welfare state. Continued adherence to some attributes of a welfare state notwithstanding, nowadays, Israel is de facto a capitalist society, and Keret has nothing good to say about capitalism—an economic system which propels wanting more for the sake of wanting more. “The Most” is a Keret story that appears in an anthology celebrating National Flash-Fiction Day.563 The story tells of a boy born into a family of “really nice [people] but so normal you could die.”564 Too late for them, but perhaps their boy grows up to want more, be exceptional. At the age of twelve, he attends a boarding school in Switzerland that specializes in fostering exceptionality. For example, the school is coaching a girl named Caroline to become the most beautiful. A boy named Raul is groomed to become the most obnoxious, and another student is schooled in wanting the most, “and it was enough that he excelled at wanting it.”565 Sadly, despite his best efforts, the boy is a failure by the school’s benchmarks. He remains all too ordinary, shows no signs of wanting more of anything. The school has no choice but to expel him, together with Raul who went too far in excelling at being obnoxious and killed the biology teacher. Back at home, in an effort to please her son, the boy’s mother asks whether she can prepare him something special. The boy cannot think of anything; what he had “was somehow enough.”566 The way Keret sees it, “somehow enough” denotes a moral precept that can go far in thwarting the inertia in us. One can always rely on Keret’s perceptive, erudite sense of humor when delivering moral precepts. Even in terribly sad stories, a morsel of comic relief is always detectable. Keret’s sense of humor is of such visceral intuitivism that it is highly effectual in boosting and enhancing

562

Blustein (2008), 228. Etgar Keret, “The Most,” trans. Sondra Silverston, in Sleep is a Beautiful Color, eds. Santino Prinzi and Meg Pokrass (Southampton: National Flash Fiction Day and Gumbo Press Publication, 2017), 113-114. The story was originally titled “My Time at the International Boarding School for the Fostering of Excellence, https:// electricliterature.com/my-time-at-the-international-boarding-school-for-thefostering-of-excellence-new-fiction-by-etgar-keret-e0110d017117#.jweng6g2. 564 Keret, “The Most” (2017), 113. 565 Keret, “The Most” (2017), 113. 566 Keret, “The Most” (2017), 114. 563

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moral messaging. Roman Katsman567 renders Keret’s humor “demonstratively different” from other categories of laughter and humor in Modern Hebrew literature, in that Keret situates humor within a “chaotic cloud of inexhaustible possibilities.” Among such “inexhaustible possibilities” is humor in relation to coping with Holocaust remembrance. “Any struggle against banality ends in a creation of a new level of banality”—with the comic effect functioning as “means of coping with trauma, pain, and fear.” Keret’s stories affirm Paul Woodruff’s notion of the real comic as that which makes fun of the comic itself. As delineated by Woodruff in “Rousseau, Molière, and the Ethics of Laughter,”568 the definition of the comic is embedded in the difference between warm and hot laughter. Warm laughter is predicated on mutual respect and reciprocity between the target audience and the person triggering laughter. As such, Woodruff considers Richard Pryor’s comedic genius the consummate example of engendering warm laughter. Pryor’s objects of ridicule were people with whom he identified. He could ridicule his audience because everyone knew he saw himself as inseparable from his target audience. In complete contrast, hot laughter lacks congenial reciprocity. Hot laughter occurs when the subject of ridicule is viewed as “a thing”569 which, according to Woodruff, amounts to “bad metaphysics and bad morals.”570 Through congenial solicitude and a shared history between author and reader, Keret triggers warm laughter in stories about coping with Holocaust remembrance. There is nothing entertaining about the actual occurrence of the Holocaust, but an image in “Himme”571 of an Israeli roach exterminator wearing a T-shirt that reads “The Eichmann of Roaches” with “a picture of a giant roach floundering on its back”572 is funny. It is the innocuous ludicrousness that legitimates laughter—minimally a smile—in connection with Holocaust remembrance. Our laughter is warm because Keret’s roach exterminator does not defame or take away from the monstrosity of the Holocaust. Rather, Himme is a schlimazel trying to make a living. Yes, a dark phantom of Nazis associating Jews with vermin comes involuntarily to mind with “The Eichmann of Roaches,” and yet the 567

Roman Katsman, “Stam: the Unbearable Lightness of Banality, or on the Nature of Etgar Keret’s Humor” BGU Review, (Winter 2018). 568 Paul Woodruff, “Rousseau, Molière, and the Ethics of Laughter,” Philosophy and Literature, 1, no. 3 (Fall 1977): 325-336. 569 Woodruff (1977), 328. 570 Woodruff (1977), 332. 571 Etgar Keret, “Himme, A House Without Roaches,” in The Nimrod Flip Out (2005), 187-213. 572 Keret, “Himme” (2005), 198.

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craziness of the imagery generates a moment of comic relief that is entirely appropriate. Jacqueline Bussie’s notion of “laughter of the oppressed”573 builds upon on Mikhail Bakhtin’s conceptualization of laughter as a form of release in situations of oppression. According to Bussie, warm laughter arises out of a confluence between the inept and the oppressed: “a creative potential to upset the status quo, overcome traditional fears and prohibitions, and empower the disempowered.”574 “Vacuum Seal”575 by Keret exemplifies Bussie’s understanding of warm laughter. Essentially a heartbreaking story, pearls of empathic humor adorn “Vacuum Seal.” The story tells of an Israeli soldier named Alon Schreiber. Much like Keret’s real life experience as a soldier, Alon Schreiber does not fit into army life, particularly as conceived by a sergeant who takes sadistic pleasure in tormenting army trainees. By the sergeant’s warped standards, the skill of vacuum sealing is the key to becoming a competent soldier, and by the sergeant’s account, Alon Schreiber is “a piss-poor excuse for a human being, a piss-poor excuse for a soldier, and a piss-poor excuse for a vacuum sealer.”576 In the course of putting Schreiber through a rigmarole of backbreaking drills, the sergeant spews insults at him, showering Schreiber’s face with spit. The preposterousness and idiocy of the sergeant’s insults generate farcical humor. On one occasion, the sergeant orders Schreiber to vacuum seal everything, from army supplies to personal belongings. Schreiber obeys but takes things a tragic step further. Having vacuum sealed his army uniform, undergarments, shoes, sheets, towels, tent, mattress, and army paraphernalia, he moves on to vacuum seal his own body, limbs, organs, and all, until there is nothing left of Schreiber, not even his soul. The comic relief infused into a distressing story—and a biting condemnation of brutish army training—magnifies the plight of the vulnerable and defenseless. Humor, Keret contends, is the weapon of the weak. You laugh at the things you do not like in life and do not have the power to change. In “Silent Film, Happy Birthday to my Favorite Storyteller”577 Keret refers to Charlie Chaplin, “the little man with the nervous mustache who 573

Jacqueline Bussie, The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo (London, UK: T & T Clark International, 2007). 574 Bussie (2007), 15-16. 575 Etgar Keret, “Vacuum Seal,” in The Girl On The Fridge (2008), 37-40. 576 Keret, “Vacuum Seal” (2008), 38. 577 Etgar Keret, “Silent Film, Happy Birthday to my Favorite Storyteller,” in Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, April 16, 2022, https://

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was born exactly 133 years ago today,” as his childhood hero. His favorite Chaplin movie is “The Kid.” Superman and Rambo was for other kids, not for Keret: As a short kid with flat feet and a wadding gait, I instantly connected with Chaplin’s iconic Tramp character. He was poor, weak and short, but stubbornly insisted on fighting for what he wanted … 578

Chaplin’s quintessential portrayal of Hitler as a psychopath in The Great Dictator is fabled. Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, and Peter Kassovitz’s Jakob the Liar are more controversial. Addressing the issue of cinema that breaks taboos, Yosefa Loshitzky579 explores ways in which the comic can expand Holocaust representation by making provisions “for a greater artistic living space.”580 Berys Gaut581 affirms that what most of us find funny “is dependent on what we consider ethical.”582 There is no humor in murder. There is, however, humor in coping with acts of remembrance of trauma. Thus, I believe it is appropriate to laugh when Lizzie Doron recalls her Holocaust survivor mother referring to a cake she burnt as “Buchenwald delicatessen.”583 As Robert Skloot contends,584 comedy that appears “after tragedy has been in evidence”585 is not about minimizing a tragedy. It is about revealing “our depressed responses”586 in relation to coping with remembrance of traumatic tragedies. “Siren”587 opens with a portrayal of a makeshift stage made of “sheets of black cartridge paper with the names of concentration camps and www.etgarkeret.substack.com. 578 Keret, “Silent Film, Happy Birthday to my Favorite Storyteller” (2022). 579 Yosefa Loshitzky, “Forbidden Laughter? The Politics and Ethics of Holocaust Film Comedy,” in Re-Representing the Shoah for the 21st Century, ed. Ronit Lentin, (New York: Berghahn Books (2004), 127-137. 580 Loshitzky (2004), 132 581 Berys Gaut, “Just Joking: the Ethics and Aesthetics of Humor,” Philosophy and Literature, 22 (1998): 51-68. 582 Berys (1998), 61 583 Lizzie Doron, VeYom Ehad Od Nipagesh (And One Day We Shall Meet), (Jerusalem: Keter Books, 2010). 584 Robert Skloot, The Drama We Carry, the Drama of the Holocaust (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988). 585 Skloot (1988), 43. 586 Skloot (1988), 46. 587 Etgar Keret, “Siren,” in The Story About A Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories (2004), 57-60.

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pictures of barbed-wire fences,”588 hastily put together by staff and students in preparation for a Holocaust memorial ceremony. It is not remembrance of the Holocaust itself that triggers laughter upon reading the preamble to the story. Keret’s depiction elicits chuckles not for lack of respect for the victims of the Holocaust. Rather, Israelis are all too familiar with this sort of contrived effort to create an ambiance of grave solemnity and have grown cynical about this type of improvised décor that is supposed to invoke instantaneous consciousness of an unparalleled catastrophe in Jewish history. Published in Keret’s first collection of stories, “Siren” is the epitome of prompting authentic coping with Holocaust remembrance.589 Unlike Keret’s efficacious humor, the grotesque in Keret’s literature aims at eliciting consternation and disquietude. To my mind, Keret echoes Wolfgang Kayser590 in extricating the grotesque from the comic. According to Kayser, late eighteenth-century German Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), and its contempt for rationalism and scholasticism, epitomizes the grotesqueness of “the abysmal quality, the insecurity, and the terror inspired by the disintegration of the world.”591 The komisch enhances “a secure level of reality,” while the grotesque “totally destroys the order and deprives us of our foothold.”592 Kayser categorizes grotesqueness by degrees of transparency: the greater the transparency, the more shocking the effect. The crowd gasping in horror, and then bursting into laughter at the sight of the hideously disfigured hunchback in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, is grotesqueness at its extreme transparency. There is not a sliver of subtlety in the scene. Conversely, as Kayser notes, Kafka’s “cold” grotesqueness is not as translucent, and therefore the reaction to it is more subdued, restrained. Charles Baudelaire,593 the French poet and art critic, did not reject offhand laughter triggered by grotesqueness. Baudelaire refers to the comic as imitation and the grotesque as formation: [Laughter] excited by the grotesque has in itself something profound, axiomatic and primitive, which comes much closer to the life of innocence 588

Keret, “Siren” (2004), 57. See Chapter 9 for an analysis of “Siren.” 590 Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, trans. Ulrich Weisstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957). 591 Kayser (1957), 52. 592 Kayser (1957), 59. 593 Charles P. Baudelaire, Selected Writings on Art and Literature, trans. P. E. Charvet (London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd. 1972). 589

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Baudelaire’s focal point is more on differentiating between “the absolute comic” and the “significative comic.” The absolute comic is felt intuitively and is equated by Baudelaire with “fallen humanity.” Significative comic “speaks a language that is clearer, easier for the common man to understand, and especially easier to analyze, its element being obviously double: art and the moral idea.”595 I regard Keret’s “Hat Trick”596 unique in that its grotesqueness is at once fully transparent à la Hugo and contained à la Kafka. In Keret’s story, a magician habitually ends his show at birthday parties with the traditional, delightful trick of pulling a rabbit out from a hat. Children tend to find the hat trick tediously familiar, but it is the magician’s favorite. That is, until on one occasion, things go terribly wrong. Instead of an adorable, fuzzy rabbit emerging out of the hat, out comes a rabbit’s severed head with no body attached to it. Apart from one or two shrieks of horror, for the most part, the youngsters are elated. The magician is shocked and repulsed. Back at home, his answering machine is brimming with telephone messages. He is quite certain the messages are from outraged parents of children who witnessed the ghastly incident. However, to the magician’s astonishment, the messages are from parents hoping that the rabbit severed head trick was not a one-time anomaly, and that the magician will be able to repeat this gory act in upcoming celebrations. Depressed but with no other source of income, the magician has no choice but to comply with his clients’ wishes. Then, at another birthday party, instead of the head of a dead rabbit, a baby’s dead body crops up. The magician decides to call it quits. He is at a loss trying to understand why things have gone so wrong. Why is this happening to him and why now? The story ends with the magician being no wiser except for considering that perhaps “this isn’t the best time for rabbits or for babies either (and) that this isn’t really the right time for magicians.”597 Adam Parr598 believes that the brutality of “Hat Trick” obscures the fact that “the banality of everyday violence” in Keret’s stories is typical of our civilization: 594

Baudelaire (1972), 152. Baudelaire (1972), 152. 596 Etgar Keret, “Hat Trick,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 23-27. 597 Keret, “Hat Trick” (2008), 27. 598 Adam Parr, “My Favorite Etgar Keret Story, a Brief Appreciation,” WWB Daily, March 24, 2009, http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/ 595

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[Keret] jabbing into quotidian details, along with those irreconcilable contrasts—that seem perfectly natural and perfectly unselfconscious when you’re reading them—make Keret unique among writers of his generation in skill and perspective.

Beyond Keret’s adeptness at interchanging the comic with the grotesque, it is self-evident to me that Keret’s employment of delectable humor and grotesqueness would not be nearly as effective were it not for the artistry with which he masters the genre of the short story. On one occasion, Keret expressed to me his desire to write a novel. Repeatedly, as he begins to write a new story, he tells himself that this is it, the story will bloom into a “huge epic.” Then, the story just ends. The abruptness with which a story wraps up often takes him by surprise, but once arrived at, he never wavers: The End! Jacob Silverman599 is not wholly enamored with the genre of flash fiction. He is of the opinion that flash fiction is overrated but with one, notable exception: Etgar Keret’s storytelling. A subtype of short fiction, Flash Fiction is generally comprised of stories of one thousand words or less. Franz Kafka wrote several such stories. Nowadays, flash fiction “is easily hawked as suited for our [postmodern] age.” For the most part, Silverman contends, flash fiction is not very good—more like “literary tokenism” that can be “consumed between commercial breaks.” That is, with the exception of Etgar Keret and Donald Barthelme—considered by Silverman Keret’s American analog. Save for some “pitfalls of the form,” such as endings that seem overwrought and “making up for abbreviated plots,” the stories often end on a note of transcendence. Regarded by Silverman as an outstanding accomplishment in ameliorating the standard of Flash Fiction, Silverman cherishes the manner in which Keret casts the grim reality of the Israeli and Palestinian war through “magical-realist lens.” Keret conveyed to Carolyn Kellogg600 that he often reflects upon the short story format as “letters sent from the id to the superego.” Phillip Lopate601 notes that being so brief is restrictive in terms of providing my-favorite-etgar-keret-story-a-brief-appreciation. 599 Jacob Silverman, “Why Flash Fiction is an Overrated Genre, and Why Etgar Keret is a Master of it?” Politico, March 27, 2012, https://www.politico.com/ states/new-york/story/2012/03/24/why-flash-fiction-is-an-overrated-genre-andwhy-etgar-keret-is-a-master-of-it-067223. 600 Etgar Keret, Suddenly, A Knock On The Door by Etgar Keret, interview with Etgar Keret by Carolyn Kellogg, LA Times, April 8, 2012, http://www.articles. latimes.com/2012/apr/08/entertainment/la-ca-etgar-keret-20120408. 601 Phillip Lopate, “On Etgar Keret,” WWB Magazine, March 5, 2009, http://www.

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“psychological individuation or sociological background” of protagonists. Yet, Keret has found a way to tap into collective psyches. Ids and egos in Keret’s stories are “colonized by advertising images, pop culture, consumerism; their consciences dulled by brutality, war and political impotence.” The result is “cutting-edge,” postmodern fiction that is “selfreflexive, speculative, [and] magical realist …” Keret’s short stories are new and hip and, at the same time, an extension of an older storytelling tradition of Kafka and Isaac Babel. Every word counts when writing short fiction. Finding minimalistic ways to convey themes, motifs, and storylines is challenging. Traveling to Australia, Keret was entranced by the agility of Australian surfers at Bondi Beach. He remarked to Ramona Koval602 that he could relate to surfers’ effort not to lose their balance when riding a wave. As Keret explained, when writing a story: I just try to catch a wave, to paddle with my hands and legs long enough and strong enough. I have this kind of zero gravity feeling; … you can go wherever you want, and your characters can defy the laws of physics.

Similar to other, fundamental traits he possesses as a person and an artist, Keret ascribes his penchant for the genus of the short story to being a child of Holocaust survivors. As a child, he felt compelled to compensate for the horrors his parents went through by being likable and accommodating. Later, as an adult and a writer, he recognized that writing is not about being agreeable. “I have something to shout; it is some sort of cry for ambiguity.” As an author who thrives on impromptu brazenness, he is aware of the paradox of him teaching creative writing to university students. To an extent, as Keret suggested Rebecca Sacks,603 he deems studying creative writing analogous to facilitating Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. As a writer, you are all alone; hence, the need for a support group. David G. Roskies604 reminds us that long before the advent of postmodern language deconstruction, Sholem Aleichem’s “stories-in-monologue were also about language” and obscuring “the boundary between text and reader.”605 Amid Sholem Aleichem’s era, wordplay and the blurring of wordswithoutbordrs.org/article/2009/03/05/on-etgar-keret. 602 Keret, (Koval 2005). 603 Keret, (Sacks 2012). 604 David G. Roskies, “The Story’s the Thing,” in What is Literature, ed. Hana Wirth-Nesher (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 119-128. 605 Roskies, “The Story’s the Thing” (1994), 1245.

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demarcations between “high” and “low” registers through the use of diglossia—as when an author would use two variations or dialects of the same language—was already popular among Yiddish writers of short stories. The Holocaust gutted the marvel of the Yiddish-speaking world and, along with it, the stature of the short story genre. Quite possibly related to the waning prestige of the Yiddish short story, the standing of the genre of the short story in Hebrew literature lagged behind that of the novel. There were some exceptions, as in the works of Gershom Shofman, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, and Binyamin Tamuz. In addition, as noted by Ronit Matalon,606 Hebrew literary periodicals of the sixties and seventies— Keshet, Achshav, and Siman Kriah—made headways in promoting short story writing. In the main, however, regardless of writers such as S. Y. Agnon and A. B. Yehoshua launching their bounteous careers by writing short stories, the foremost aspiration of Hebrew writers was to be acknowledged as authors of novels. Frank O’Connor607 claims that unlike the novel, the short story is not bound by “a concept of a normal society.”608 Short stories by Kafka, Gogol, Chekhov, Maupassant, Babel, Carver, and Ozick, rarely have heroes. Instead, there is a sense “of outlawed figures wandering about the fringes of society.”609 The format of the short story delimits the form and heightens the intensity “that is so necessary in a story but so embarrassing in a novel.” Capturing a fragment of a story, the storyteller enlivens an audience “by piling incident on incident, surprise on surprise.”610 This, however, it not to say that the short story is more “real” than the novel—a notion O’Connor attributes to Lionel Trilling’s homage to Isaac Babel’s portrayal of Jewish gangsters and Cossacks. À propos Babel, there is much of Babel’s vigor and fire in Keret’s stories. However, as elucidated by O’Connor, Babel is most animating when striking a blend of Russian mutiny—which did not save him from being arrested on false charges, tortured, tried, and executed by Stalin’s decree at the age of forty-five—and Judaism. In contrast, Keret avoids vehement ideological tribalism. Instead, empathy and pragmatism propel Keret’s Weltanschauung.

606

Ronit Matalon, Ad Argiah; Masot Al Ktiva VeAl Sifrut (Until I Comfort; Essays on Writing and Literature), (Tel Aviv: Afik Publishing House, 2018). 607 Frank O’Connor, The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (1963). 608 O’Connor (1963), 17. 609 O’Connor (1963), 18. 610 O’Connor (1963), 28.

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In “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door”611ʊa brilliant story within a storyʊa bearded man is pointing a pistol at the author, ordering him to tell a story. The author indicates that he does not tell stories, he writes them. Besides, this is not something he can do on demand, with a gun pointed at his head. When his son wants a story, he asks nicely. This man intends to defraud the author of a story. The armed man does not care. He was born in Sweden, and, as the author may or may not know, Sweden is not just about IKEA, ABBA, and the Nobel Prize. Sweden is about being polite, but this is definitely not Sweden. This is the Middle East, where one takes things by force. Nobody listened to Palestinians’ aspirations for autonomy, so they resort to force. Jewish settlers too learned to grab territory in the West Bank by using force. “Bottom line, it’s either a story or a bullet between the eyes.”612 Suddenly, there is a knock on the door. A man is standing at the door. He says he is conducting a survey on levels of humidity and has a few questions for Etgar Keret, the famous author. He is “a war veteran who left pieces of his spleen behind in Lebanon.”613 Armed with a revolver, he too demands a story from Keret, the author. “Vamos, stop making excuses. Sit down over there, and out with it.”614 The author is confounded. How does he get into such messy situations? He cannot imagine anything like this ever happening to Amos Oz or David Grossman. Suddenly, there is another knock on the door. A young man disguised as a pizza delivery driver is at the door. Upon seeing the author, he first wants to know whether this is the bona fide Etgar Keret, the writer. He is armed with a meat cleaver, and he too came for a story. United in their demand for a story, the three men stipulate that the story must be fictitious and brief. “Don’t be so anal. Things are tough, you know.”615 There is terrorism, poverty and they have had enough of reality. They encourage the author to be creative, imaginative, and inventive: “take it all the way.”616 The author draws a blank. He longs to come up with something, but he is out of ideas. Then, sure enough, there is another knock on the door. The Swede has had it: no more knocking on the door! Sensing he now has a bargaining chip, the author insists: no story without a knock on the door. The story concludes with the men agreeing. He can 611

Etgar Keret, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door ((2010), 3-8. 612 Keret, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” (2010), 4. 613 Keret, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” (2010), 5. 614 Keret, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” (2010), 5. 615 Keret, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” (2010), 6-7. 616 Keret, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” (2010), 7.

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have his knock on the door, “Just so long as it brings us a story!”617 To quote Steve Almond, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” is a perfect embodiment of Keret’s “irrepressible dream logic.” It is “a pep talk worthy of Beckett.”618 “The Story, Victorious619 is another literary gem. The story is about materialistic rewards of manufacturing short stories. The story opens with an audacious statement: “This story is the best story in the book ... the best story in the world.” 620 People are bound to wonder about the implausibility of a relatively young and topographically miniscule Israel producing the best story ever, but this is no different from Israel having the best military force on the planet. The best story—better than anything Chekhov or Kafka could come up with—will entitle one lucky winner to receive a new car: a Mazda “with a metallic gray finish.”621 Unique to the best story in the world is that it not only tells something, it also has the capacity to listen. A second winner will also be chosen, albeit the prize is a cheaper car. Lastly, once readers lose interest in the victorious story, the story will not continue; it will come to a stop. A derisive confluence between the best army and the best story, literature and materialistic vulgarity, conjoin in Keret’s beguiling reflection on postmodern short story writing. The dread of losing his gift for storytelling is at the heart of “One Last Story and That’s It.”622 A task-oriented demon arrives at the door of a writer of short stories. The demon has come to retrieve a borrowed talent for writing. Unlike other writers in similar situations, this author did not protest and was very agreeable. He even offers the demon a truffle and a drink of lemonade. Recognizing the demon is accountable to his superiors and merely doing his job, the writer does not put up any resistance except for one request: he beseeches the demon to allow him to write one last story—“Just so I can hold on to the taste.”623 Reluctantly, the demon agrees but stipulates that the story must be short. 617

Keret, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” (2010), 8. Steve Almond, “Who’s There?” The New York Times Book Review, April 13, 2012, http://www.nytimes/com/2012/04/13/book/review/suddenly-a-knock-on-thedoor-by-etgar-keret. 619 Etgar Keret, “The Story, Victorious,” in Suddenly, A Knock On The Door (2010), 106-108. 620 Keret, “The Story, Victorious” (2010), 106. 621 Keret, “The Story, Victorious” (2010), 107. 622 Etgar Keret, “One Last Story and That’s It,” in The Story About A Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories (2004), 75-77. 623 Keret, “One Last Story and That’s It” (2004), 75. 618

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Seated on the writer’s living room couch, munching on two more truffles, the demon watches a TV show. He can hear the writer clicking away expertly at the computer keyboard. True to his word, within minutes, the writer presents the demon with four typed pages. The demon decides to read the story. He is impressed and touched. The author thanks the demon and remains smiling even after the demon digs out his talent and puts it in a box “lined with Styrofoam peanuts.”624 The demon muses: if only he were human, he could easily see the author and him becoming friends. Just as the demon is ready to depart, the author has a question. Out of curiosity, what happens to all the talents? Where to they end up? The demon has no idea. All he knows is that his job is to bring the collected talents to a stockroom and ask for a receipt. Half-jokingly, the writer offers that if by any chance the demon were stuck with leftovers, he would be more than glad to receive back a talent. While still maintaining his businesslike façade, truth is, the demon has had it. He is fed up with this distasteful job. Dissimilarities notwithstanding, I associate Keret’s “One Last Story and That’s It” with Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. In Marlowe’s iconic sixteenth-century play, Faustus is a German scholar who, in addition to wanting to learn about magic, covets acquiring more knowledge. Whereas both Faustus and Keret’s writer make a deal with the devil, when the time comes to honor the deal, unlike Keret’s writer, Faustus panics and begs for mercy. Keret’s demon has little in common with Marlowe’s Mephistopheles except for the fact that both are accountable to a higher authority: Mephistopheles to Lucifer, and Keret’s demon to stockroom supervisors. On the face of it, the endings of the two tales are different. Upon relinquishing his soul to Lucifer, Doctor Faustus will die. Keret’s writer gives up his talent for storytelling, not his life. However, therein lies the rub; is losing his talent not tantamount for Israel’s Scheherazade to losing his soul? Unfailingly, reading Keret’s literature elicits intense reactions. At times, the impact resonates so strongly that it leads to overblown feedback or, for lack of a better term, over-the-top interpretations. Keret is still on a learning curve when it comes to processing feedback from readers and critics. One particular response to a story, “Shooting Tuvia,”625 taught the author an invaluable lesson in interpretive responses. “Shooting Tuvia” is about a boy who receives a dog from his parents as a birthday gift. The 624 625

Keret, “One Last Story and That’s It” (2004), 76. Etgar Keret, “Shooting Tuvia,” in The Nimrod Flip Out (2005), 29-35.

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boy loves the dog. He names him Tuvia after a popular TV personality known for his clever impersonations of Israeli politicians. The dog is devoted to the boy but hates everyone else. He barks indiscriminately at anyone who crosses his path, occasionally bites, and yowls incessantly when the boy is away at school. One day, after Tuvia bites the boy’s sister, everyone—except the boy—agrees that Tuvia must go. The boy’s father takes the dog for a ride, drives a distance of one hundred kilometers, and sets Tuvia loose. Undeterred, without much difficulty, Tuvia finds his way back, and both boy and dog are ecstatic to be reunited. Alas, several weeks later, Tuvia knocks the boy’s grandmother to the ground and bites her. This time, the consequences are serious. The dog is driven to a faraway dump, where he is shot by the boy’s father with an M-16 rifle. It takes six months, but Tuvia resurfaces. His legs are deformed, one eye is shut for good, and his jaw is paralyzed. From then on, and for the next twelve years, Tuvia lives a quiet life until he dies of old age. Adia Mendelson-Maoz’s analysis of “Shooting Tuvia”626 is an example of what I consider an unnecessarily inflated response to Keret’s literature. According to Mendelson-Maoz, Keret’s portrayal of Tuvia correlates with Keret’s habitual depictions of pugnacious, macho Israeli male protagonists. Apart from seriously doubting the merit of projecting characteristics of a dog onto humans, or vice versa, as already alluded to, I do not share Mendelson-Maoz’s view of Keret as a writer who is set on disparaging the modernist Zionist/Israeli vision of a “new,” male Hebrew Jew. Another, perhaps even more off-kilter interpretation of “Shooting Tuvia” originated with the German newspaper Die Welt. In their desire to publish a story by the popular Israeli writer, Die Welt reached out to Keret with a request that he forward them one of his favorite political stories. Keret responded that he would be happy to oblige, but none of his stories are political stories per se. The Germans then suggested that he simply select any story of his liking. Keret agreed and picked “Shooting Tuvia.” The ensuing telephone call from Die Welt’s publicist caught Keret by surprise. After all was said and done, they appreciated Keret choosing a first-rate political exposé of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with the boy’s father signifying a belligerent Israeli male, and the boy the quiescent bystander. Initially Keret thought the Germans’ interpretation was downright absurd. However, over time, upon further reflection, Keret began to see the possibility of reading “Shooting Tuvia” as a political story, albeit not the politics Die Welt had in mind. In keeping with his efforts to stimulate 626

Adia Mendelson-Maoz, “Keret’s ‘Living-Dead’ and the Sacrifice of Israeli Masculinity,” BGU Review (Winter 2018).

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an open dialogue over his own craft, Keret told Rebecca Sacks that “Shooting Tuvia” was a story about growing up and living “in very crazy and very violent surroundings.”627 When asked by a reader about reflecting back on his body of work and perhaps rewriting an ending to any of his stories, Keret replied that his characters are always, in some way, him. When his protagonists make mistakes, or worse, cause harm “I can feel, while I am writing, the same frustration and guilt that I know from moments in my life when I understand, in retrospect, that I behaved wrongly.”628 Keret went on to say that when he writes about an insensitive and offensive protagonist, he may want the character he created to act differently, “but honestly, if he’d [protagonist] been sensitive and done the right thing from the start, I probably wouldn’t have had a story.”

627

Keret (Sacks 2012). Etgar Keret, “Glad You Asked,” Alphabet Soup: the Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, September 19, 2023, https://www.etgarkeret.substack.com.

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In a 1997 analysis of postmodern Israeli culture Gadi Taub629 notes that although he deems Etgar Keret a postmodern writer in the same way that he views Quentin Tarantino a postmodern film director, he does not fully buy into Keret's emphatic insistence on being regarded as an all-around postmodern author. From his side, Keret is uncomfortable with Taub’s qualifying modification, which he perceives as watering down the close link between modernism and the Holocaust. Karen Armstrong asserts that “the sheer scale of the Nazi genocide reveals its debt to modernity; no previous society could have implemented such a grandiose scheme of extermination.” Modern science and factories, railways, and the chemical industry were all used “to deadly effect.”630 For Keret, the single most relevant demarcation between modernity and the postmodern era is the Holocaust. He was unequivocal when he told me that any inkling of nostalgic longing for the luminosity of modernity, an epoch that facilitated Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka, is downright offensive. Keret tells it ever so well in an astounding, unsparing story called “The Sad Story of the Anteater Family.”631 Prior to the arrival in town of a man named Alexander Mensch, life was uncomplicated. In its infinitesimal entirety, the town was made of a single avenue with twenty houses on each side. Children spent their days running up and down the town’s street. Everyone adored Silky and Nehama Anteater and Ariel, their son. Silky Anteater's body "was covered with shiny fur, he had the most incredible nose, and he could dance so beautifully and tell funny jokes.”632 Overt

629

Gadi Taub, HaMered HaShafuf: Al Tarbut Tse’ira BeYisrael (Dispirited Rebellion: on Youthful Israeli Culture), (Tel Aviv: Hakibbuz Hameuchad Publishing House, Ltd., 1997). 630 Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014), 341. 631 Etgar Keret, “The Sad Story of the Anteater Family,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 49-60. 632 Keret, “The Sad Story of the Anteater Family” (2008), 50.

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associations with anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda depicting Jews as longnosed, hairy creatures suffuse the narrative as it goes on to tell how the people loved watching Silky Anteater breaking into a jig every Friday evening, “with his fur shining in the soft glow of the torches, and his tongue shooting out of his mouth.”633 Things change dramatically when a character named Alexander Mensch appears unexpectedly on the scene. Arriving by foot all the way from Bern, Mensch is appalled to learn that the town had no name and no school. Wasting no time, using words like “Kultur” and “Levantines,” Mensch lectures about truth, knowledge, and progress. He names the town “Progress,” and sets up to construct a school. Prior to the dedication ceremony of the new school, Mensch summons Silky Anteater and forbids him from breaking into a dance at the celebratory event. At the ceremony, Mensch recites poetry written by Schiller and Goethe, and plays some violin music composed “by a dead Austrian.”634 From there on, the school's weekly schedule designates Mondays and Tuesdays as Kultur days, and Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays as Wissenschaft days devoted to the sciences. In the beginning, the people do not like the idea of a school, but they get used to it and even begin to enjoy it. As a character named Nehemian Swan observes, one could even get used to an ungodly, hellish place like a Turkish prison. On one such Wissenschaft Friday, an enormous poster of Silky Anteater’s face appears on the wall of the school. In class, Mensch draws out similarities between Silky’s face and “a four-legged mammal that eats ants.”635 Deeply offended, Silky confronts Mensch and demands to know why the children are being taught all those horrible lies about him. To which Mensch replies with utmost authority that these are not lies but proven, scientific facts about a hairy creature similar to Silky Anteater who has an unusually shaped nose, and a long tongue. Things worsen for the Anteater family as kids begin tormenting Ariel, Silky’s son. At first, they merely keep their distance from him, but before long, they begin pushing him to the ground, forcing ants under his clothes. Silky has no choice but to remove his son from school. As father and son make their way home, “The tufts of fur on his father’s arm felt good as they brushed against Ariel’s neck.”636 It requires little effort to relate "The Sad Story of the Anteater Family" with modernity's hubristic veneration of culture and the supremacy of scientific knowledge. Explored in David Simpson's "report on half633

Keret, “The Sad Story of the Anteater Family” (2008), 50-51. Keret, “The Sad Story of the Anteater Family” (2008), 55. 635 Keret, “The Sad Story of the Anteater Family” (2008), 56. 636 Keret, “The Sad Story of the Anteater Family” (2008), 60. 634

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knowledge,"637 the postmodern turn was largely informed by what we have come to distrust in modernity. Further elaborated upon by David Harvey,638 what signifies the modernity-postmodernity split is a divide between modernity's elitism, authoritarianism, fixed meanings, and meta-narratives, versus postmodern cultural and language deconstruction, fragmentary pastiche, petite history, and skepticism. The prefix “post” in postmodernism does not necessarily stand for “after” modernity. Rather, it represents a reaction to modernity giving far too much credence to scientific knowledge, rationalism, and progress. (Even those who welcome Frederic Jameson's chastisement of the French “oracles” of postmodernism—Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard—for downgrading language to “a permanently second-degree relationship to sentences that have already been formed,”639 do not advocate a wholesale return to modernity's metaphysics and hermeneutics. The general, overriding philosophic trend is to accept Jürgen Habermas’s view of modernism as an unfinished project rather than a total failure.)640 David H. Hirsch’s641 blistering critique of postmodern philosophy as it relates to the Holocaust is interesting, however, not convincing. According to Hirsch, in their turn to Martin Heidegger as their philosophic muse—a philosopher who joined the Nazi Party in 1933, was married to a vile antiSemite, and remained reticent about the Holocaust long after his rendezvous with the Nazis ended—postmodern theorists “resolutely mock the idea of truth itself."642 I empathize with Hirsch’s fury regarding Heidegger as a source of philosophic inspiration, albeit, I tend to go along with Jacques Derrida's view of Heidegger as typifying an overall, deplorable European failure. As Derrida conveyed to Michal Ben-Naftali,643 Heidegger's mistake "lies in 'spiritualization Nazism'" but he was not alone. As Derrida asserts, Heidegger embodied a contemptible "Zeitgeist that affected all European 637

David Simpson, The Academic Postmodern and the Rule of Literature: A Report on Half-Knowledge (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995). 638 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1991). 639 Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 393. 640 Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique 22 (1981): 3-14. 641 David H. Hirsch, The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism after Auschwitz (Hanover & London: Brown University Press, 1991). 642 Hirsch (1991), 68. 643 Jacques Derrida, “Interview with Professor Jacques Derrida,” by Michael BenNaftali, trans. Moshe Ron, Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies, January 8, 1998, https://www.yadvashem/org/odot_pdf/ microsoft%20word%20-203851.

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culture," which for some twelve long years, led to general complicity of Europe—including European diplomacies, churches, and universities—with the Nazis. Regardless, Hirsch is primarily contemptuous of Michel Foucault, the influential French poststructuralist, for saying nothing about the Holocaust up until the early eighties. Without a doubt, "Foucault's silence" about the Holocaust is disturbing. However, I am not ready to equate—as Hirsch does—Foucault’s critique of “bourgeois ideas of justice” with “Hitler’s disdain for bourgeois legal proceedings.”644 Even Gertrude Himmelfarb,645 a harsh critic of postmodern philosophers, concedes that at the very least, one cannot accuse postmodernists of overlooking “what may be the hardest case in modern history, the Holocaust.”646 The connection I make between Derrida and Keret is predicated on believing that Holocaust remembrance is the seminal, formative determiner in shaping their postmodern Weltschauung.647 Gideon Ofrat recalls648 Derrida’s visit in 1998 to Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. "Nothing at all," Derrida said, "can be burnt, not even a loveletter, without thinking about the Holocaust.”649 And, if there is hope for humanity after the Holocaust, it is in "the possibility of literature, the legitimization that a society gives it … with the unlimited right to ask any question, to suspect all dogmatism, to analyze every presupposition, even those of the ethics or the politics of responsibility.”650 According to Robert Eaglestone,651 Derrida’s postmodern deconstruction “grows out of singularities,

644

Hirsch (1991), 258-259. Gertrude Himmelfarb, “Telling it as You Like it: Postmodernist History and the Flight from Fact,” in The Postmodern History Reader, ed. Keith Jenkins (London: Routledge, 1997), 158-174. 646 Himmelfarb (1997), 164. 647 When writing my PhD thesis, I was drawn to Foucault as a postmodern philosophical muse. Foucault is oriented towards politics, and I am too. At some point, however, I realized that it would be impossible for me to overlook Foucault’s far too long silence on the subject of the Holocaust. It was then that I embraced Derrida as my postmodern metaphysical shepherd, and I have never regretted doing so. 648 Gideon Ofrat, The Jewish Jacques Derrida, trans. Peretz Kidron (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001). 649 Ofrat (2001), 152. 650 Jacques Derrida, “This Strange Institution Called Literature: Interview with Jacques Derrida,” in Jacques Derrida, Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New York: Routledge, 1992), 36. 651 Robert Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 645

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from specific times, places and texts … and that singularity was the Holocaust.”652 Mack Hayden653 inquired about the connection between Keret being both a writer and a child of Holocaust survivors. In his response, Keret said that, unquestionably, his parents being Holocaust survivors instilled in him a desire to live life in ways that “transcend material existence.” He cited his father, who told him, “[I]f you grow up and you have a nice car, a nice apartment, a nice family and that’s it, then I’d be very disappointed.” The truth is that almost every aspect of Keret's life, including becoming a vegetarian, interlinks with being a child of Holocaust survivors. In "Going Vegetarian in Israel,"654 five-year-old Etgar Keret and his father are off to see Disney’s Bambi. The plan was to see the film first, and then eat out at a hamburger place. All went well up until the scene in which Bambi’s mother is shot dead by human hunters. Keret was terribly upset and inconsolable. His father’s attempt to reason with his son, suggesting that perhaps the meat was needed to provide food for the hungry, only made things worse with Keret bawling: “I don’t want to eat Bambi’s mom!” Years later, an adult and a famous writer, Keret explained that for his Holocaust survivor father the possibility that a killing was committed for the sake of survival could make all the difference. For his son, however, shooting Bambi's mother transcended any reasoning. After the movie, at the hamburger place, at Keret’s insistence, father and son forego the hamburger and settle for a plate of French fries, which they "ate in silence.” Back then, vegetarianism was not as popular in Israel as it is nowadays, but as far as five-year-old Keret was concerned, even his mother’s chicken schnitzel, which up until the Bambi trauma was his favorite dish, could not break his resolve to become a vegetarian. True, “Bambi had no friends who were chickens,” and yet “the die had been cast: I had become a vegetarian.” Shoes”655 is an outstanding, postmodern encapsulation of coping with Holocaust remembrance. The story has attained canonic literary stature. The storyteller is a young boy. On Holocaust Memorial Day, the boy's class and Sara, the homeroom teacher, are traveling by bus to the Vohlin Memorial 652

Eaglestone (2004), 289-290. Etgar Keret, “Etgar Keret Brings His Funny, Humanist View to Nonfiction with The Seven Good Years,” interview with Etgar Keret by Mack Hayden, Paste Magazine, July 2, 2015, https://pastemagazine.com/articles/ 2015/07/etgar-keretbrings-his-funny-humanist-view-to-nonf.html. 654 Etgar Keret, “Going Vegetarian in Israel," trans. Sondra Silverston, The New York Times Magazine, October 29, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/ magazine/going-vegetarian-in-israel-html. 655 Etgar Keret, “Shoes,” in Missing Kissinger (2008), 120-125. 653

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Museum. The boy feels special. Of all the students in his class, he, his cousin, another boy named Druckman are the only ones whose grandfather died in the Holocaust. The Vohlin House décor seems posh and beautiful. Mounted on the walls are lists of names of people and countries. The teacher warns students not to touch anything on display, but the boy touches one of the pictures: "a cardboard photograph of a pale and skinny man who was crying and holding a sandwich."656 A girl named Orit Salem said she would tell the teacher on him, but the boy does not care. As far as he is concerned, she can tell on him to the principal too. It is his Grandpa, "and I’m touching whatever I want!”657 As Keret suggested to me, coping with Holocaust remembrance encompasses a deconstructed journey of discovery, history, mourning, commemoration, and doing justice, but it most certainly ought not to consist of a “don’t touch!” imperative. Following the tour of the museum, students view a documentary showing Jewish children forced into a truck and gassed. An encounter with a Holocaust survivor ensues. The survivor beseeches the students to boycott German-made products. Be it a television set or anything else, they should always keep in mind that concealed by the outer frame are parts retrieved from bodies of murdered Jews. Two weeks after the visit to the Vohlin Memorial Museum, the boy’s parents return from their annual vacation abroad. As always, they have a gift for the boy and his older brother. Had this not been at the heels of the Vohlin Memorial Museum experience, a package displaying an Adidas logo would have been received with a great deal of joy by the boy. As it is, the parents’ trip did coincide with the visit to the Vohlin Holocaust Museum, thereon ascribing to the German-made Adidas running shoes a completely new meaning. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, the boy mutters a polite “thank you” as he accepts the bag containing a shoebox. The boy associates the box's rectangular shape with a coffin. Inside the shoebox is a pair of white running shoes. There are three blue stripes on the shoes and a visible Adidas Rom label on the side. Keret’s obvious and transparent allusions to the white and blue stripes of concentration camp garb, and a shoebox in the shape of a coffin, is thoroughly befitting given that the narrator is a child. Euphemisms are for adults, not for children. Cajoled by his older brother to try the shoes on, the boy makes a shaky attempt to trigger some Holocaust cognizance. He wonders if his mother knows that the Adidas shoes are German-made. Apparently, she does. "Adidas" she announces, "is the best make in the 656 657

Keret “Shoes” (2008), 120-121. Keret “Shoes” (2008), 121.

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world!”658 The boy tries again. He reminds his mother that Grandpa was from Germany too. Lovingly, his mother corrects him. Actually, Grandpa was not from Germany; he was from Poland. For a fleeting moment, the boy believes he had detected an intimation of sadness in his mother's eyes, but it did not last. As she puts the shoes on his feet and laces them up, he quits trying. It is no use. For Mom, "shoes were just shoes and Germany was really Poland."659 The boy’s mother is eager to know whether the shoes feel comfortable, but before he can reply, the boy's older brother interjects. "Those shoes aren't just some cheap local brand; they're the very same shoes that Cruyff used to wear.660 Dolefully resigning himself to his failure to evoke Holocaust awareness, the boy tiptoes slowly towards the door, trying to put as little weight on the shoes as possible, so as not to put pressure on his grandfather who—in accordance with what the survivor-speaker said—is physically implanted into the running shoes. Once outdoors he comes across several schoolmates getting ready to play a game of soccer. He teams up with a group of boys playing for Holland against Argentina and Brazil. At the beginning of the game, he remembers not to kick with the tip of his shoes, so that it would not hurt Grandpa, but then he forgets. He even scores the tiebreaker with a volley kick. When the game is over, he remembers the shoes. By now, the shoes feel very comfortable. The story ends with the boy looking down at his shoes as he "speaks" to Grandpa: "What a volley that was, eh?" Grandpa does not respond, but thinks the boy, "from the lilt in my step I could tell that he was happy too."661 Thus, an intimate bond takes root in a neighborhood soccer field between a grandfather who perished in the Holocaust and his caring grandson. Yaron Peleg662 considers "Shoes" a quintessential Keret story about Holocaust remembrance. Through a brilliant maneuver, Keret extricates Holocaust remembrance from fixed, unmoving memorial sites to a living, breathing space. Dvir Abramovich663 affirms that Keret’s engagement with the Holocaust situates remembrance of the tragedy in a broader context. According to Abramovich, Keret presents an unusual moral twist that very 658

Keret “Shoes” (2008), 123. Keret “Shoes” (2008), 123. 660 Keret “Shoes” (2008), 124. Johan Cruyff (Hendrik Johannes Cruijff) was a famous football player, manager, and creator of a philosophic theory known as “Total Football.” 661 Keret “Shoes” (2008), 124-125. 662 Peleg (2008). 663 Dvir Abramovich, “Israeli Holocaust Memory in a Short Story by Etgar Keret,” Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, XXXII (2019): 21-33. 659

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few authors have given or are likely to give regarding Holocaust remembrance. As a side issue, I disagree with Abramovich’s interpretation of the boy’s mother in "Shoes" as choosing “to block and suppress that flow of memories that may disrupt the convenient patina of silence that she has adopted about an uncomfortable subject.”664 I am quite certain that Keret did not intend to pass judgment on the mother’s manner of coping with Holocaust remembrance. More importantly, Keret is calling for personalizing coping with Holocaust remembrance and demythologizing existing modes of commemoration. In 2005, Roman Katsman discussed “Shoes” in relation to mythopoeia in Keret’s postmodern writings.665 Mythopoeia, Katsman argued, becomes operative in “Shoes” at the point where grandfather inhabits his grandson’s personal Holocaust remembrance. Factually, the boy never knew his grandfather. Mythically, through his personal mode of coping with Holocaust remembrance, the boy breathes life into a relationship with his grandfather. Eight years later, Katsman revisited the theme of mythopoeia in Keret's literature and modified his thinking by setting forth the notion of “minimal metaphysical origin.”666 Katsman construes "minimal" as “the constitution of the whole human condition on the infinitely small but inexhaustible originary scene.”667 In other words, “minimal origin” or “mythic minimalism” is not about curtailing or lessening; it is about “an inexhaustible source of possibilities of life and creation.”668 According to Katsman, the minimal origin in Keret's literature "opens reality to countless possibilities.”669 The potency of “mythic minimalism” and its significance to coping with Holocaust remembrance cannot be overstated. “Shoes” mirrors Keret’s fortitude in making it possible for a child to imagine an alternative narrative to factual historicity, a history so monstrous that neither a child nor an adult can possibly process through conventional acts of remembrance such as a visit to a Holocaust museum. Katsman lauds the principled ethics in Keret’s literature, which, as Katsman suggests, enriches and betters life and humanity.

664

Abramovich (2019), 28. Roman Katsman, “Ga'aguim LeMitos" (2005). 666 Roman Katsman, “Etgar Keret: The Minimal Metaphysical Origin,” Symposium, 67, no. 4 (2013): 189-204, http://www.researchgate/net/publication/ 27191933035_Etgar_Keret_The_Minimal_Metaphysical_Origin. 667 Katsman (2013), 189. 668 Katsman (2013), 191. 669 Katsman (2013), 192. 665

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In addition to shoring up Keret’s conceptualization of coping with Holocaust remembrance by way of postmodern personalization, Katsman challenges critics who fault Keret for popularizing the colloquial vernacular—lean or impoverished language (safa raza" in Hebrew). Katsman argues that Keret’s language is of such quick-witted, razor-sharp quality that it “causes signs to reveal their origins: life behind death, truth behind relativism, or freedom behind determinism.”670 Katsman points to Keret navigating between the Bible and world literature and correlates the teacher’s injunction in “Shoes” not to touch any Holocaust items on display at the Volhyn museum with biblical taboos on touching sacred objects. “Hat Trick” reminds Katsman of “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Clean Shave” of Homer’s Odyssey. For Katsman, Keret’s manner of entwining high and low culture represents cultural canonization whereby “multiplicity of singularities" replaces collective uniformity. A "search for meaning and purpose," "free creation and innovation," and "an origination of ethics”671 are each emblematic to Keret's literature—the type of literature that is receptive to new singularities. Lastly, the way Katsman sees it, Keret’s “Shoes” personifies “an oscillation between two historical perceptions: deterministic and ethical.”672 Personally, I cannot think of a more succinct, unpretentious, sagacious short story about coping with Holocaust remembrance than “Shoes.” Except for poetry, I know of no other unassuming, sparse text that encapsulates ever so intuitively mammoth themes of generational traumatic remembrance, communal-collective commemoration versus individual remembrance, pedagogy of teaching the Holocaust, and the appropriateness of imbuing literature about coping with Holocaust remembrance with humor. The ultimate challenge put forward by Keret in “Shoes” is how to cope with remembrance of a cataclysmic tragedy without turning remembrance into a “don’t touch!” phantom. Keret’s young protagonist offers an alternative to commemorative sites and objects that we dare not touch. "Shoes" is about the formation of personal, relevant dialogues. In Katsman's words, it is historiography in a true, “metaphysical sense of the word,” for it is “more real than the one that has been realized.”673 Keret's literature about coping with Holocaust remembrance is an antidote to a possible eventuality, wherein the Holocaust is classified as one among other mass murders. As such, Keret's storytelling is the 670

Katsman (2013), 191. Katsman (2013), 193-194. 672 Katsman (2013), 196. 673 Katsman (2013), 197. 671

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countermeasure to what Jacques Derrida feared as a real possibility of the Holocaust ending up trivialized. As Derrida told Michal Ben-Naftali,674 he dreads the Holocaust ending-up "relativized" as an "episode, among so many others, of the murderous violence within humanity." Historically, Derrida noted, there have been genocides before and after the Holocaust. The Bible is full of horrific mass killings, "So one knows that perhaps, in the future, this [Holocaust] will be, if not erased or forgotten, at least classed, relativized by being classed." Keret's "Shoes" reinforces Derrida's objection to "archivization" of the Holocaust through "acts of piety and of memory" in the form of Holocaust museums. "Archivization preserves, but it also begins to forget"—thereupon the "ambiguity of the concept of archive." Eventually, Holocaust museums may evolve into "just another monument" where everything is consigned to the exteriority of archives and recorded. A place where countless names are kept on plaques and therefore, "because it is kept, well, it may be lost, it may be forgotten."

674

Derrida, (Ben-Naftalin 1998).

8 FLY ALREADY

Fly Already is the English title of Etgar Keret’s 2018 collection of twentytwo short stories, some of which have appeared earlier in various publications. As already indicated, the original Hebrew version bears a different title: Takala BiKtse HaGalexia. Translated verbatim it means “a glitch at the edge of the galaxy.” In addition to augmenting Keret’s stature as a writer, the book solidifies the overall assertion made in my study regarding the pervasiveness of coping with Holocaust remembrance in Keret’s oeuvre. A disparity between the Hebrew and English titles of a book is unusual for Keret. Throughout the years of studying Keret’s literature, knowing Keret’s open-ended approach to interpretations, including his own, I never asked him for definitive, authorial exegesis. In this case, however, clarifying an inconsistency between the Hebrew and English wording seemed a mere technical matter. In any event, Keret explained to me that his North American publisher deemed that as a title for a book in the English translation, A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy is suggestive of science fiction, a genre that is incompatible with Keret’s writing. The idea of “fly already” as a title for a collection dates back to 2017, when the story “Fly Already” appeared in The New Yorker.675 From then on, Keret was enamored with the ephemeral notion of defying gravity as a title for a future book. As for the option of “fly already” as the Hebrew title for the collection of short stories, “fly already” in Hebrew translates into oof mipo or oof k’var, which are basically impertinent ways of telling someone to get lost—hardly the nuanced inflection of “fly already” that Keret had in mind. All things considered, as of Keret’s 2019 collection of short stories, there are two different titles to the same book, with the invocation of a transcendental metaphoric trope embedded in both the Hebrew and English editions.676 675

An analysis of the story “Fly Already” appears in Chapter Three. Henceforth, I refer to the book as Fly Already and quote from its English version.

676

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Yoni Livneh677 is incisive when pointing out that the tone of Fly Already is set from the very first story. “The Next-To-Last Time I Was Shot Out of a Cannon”678 is about a cage cleaner in a Romanian circus. Unhappy with his job and his life in general—“my back hurt and the whole world smelled of shit”679—he goes along with the circus manager’s offer to make some easy money as a human cannonball. Shot out of the cannon, the man reached the top of the tent, making a hole in it, “and continued flying to the sky, way up high.”680 Instead of landing on the ground, the man lands in the water. Seconds later, forgoing payment, all the man wants is to relive the indescribable euphoria of defying gravity. According to Livneh, “The Next-To-Last Time I Was Shot Out of a Cannon” sets in motion an air of “dynamite story-telling sticks” repeatedly detonated by Keret with almost every subsequent story. Biographically, Fly Already intersects with a serious car accident during which Keret thought he was going to die. Travelling on a reading tour from Connecticut to Boston, Keret’s driver crashed into another car. Keret described the feel of being near death to Alex Clark681 as “a candle that we know will go out in a second and everything will go dark.” A police officer pulled him out of the smoldering car, but the subliminal reckoning that “All in all what is happening now, my death, is just a glitch at the edge of the galaxy” permeates Fly Already. Fly Already earned Keret the prestigious 2018 Israeli Sapir Prize for Literature. According to Gili Izikovich,682 Keret did not expect to win. His bet was on Yael Neeman.683 The jury of judges expanded on Keret’s virtuosity in utilizing fulsome, indigenous vernacular when tackling complex integrants of contemporary life in Israel and elsewhere. They

677

Yoni Livneh, “Takala BiKtse HaGalexia: Etgar Keret Mitnaতmed Paতot (A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy: Etgar Keret Backs off from His ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ Pose), Maariv, June 9, 2018, https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0.7340.L-5280983.00. html. 678 Etgar Keret, “The Next-To-Last Time I Was Shot Out of a Cannon,” in Fly Already (2019), 18-21. 679 Keret, “The Next-To-Last Time I Was Shot Out of a Cannon” (2019), 18. 680 Keret, “The Next-To-Last Time I Was Shot Out of a Cannon” (2019), 20. 681 Keret, (Clark, The Guardian, 2019). 682 Gili Izikovich, “Even Etgar Keret Was Surprised He Won Israel’s Most Prestigious Literary Prize,” Haaretz, January 30, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/ Israel-news/2019-01-30/ty-article-magazine. 683 Yael Neeman was shortlisted for Once There was a Woman (in Hebrew), (Tel Aviv: Ahuzat Bait Publishing House, 2018).

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compared delving into Keret’s short stories to reading a sophisticated, ruptured novel from within.684 Zohara Ron685 did not agree with some critics who viewed Keret as passé, a relic of the 1990s. Ron argued that the decision to award Keret the Sapir Prize for Literature was comparable to granting Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. To this day, Keret mingling phantasm with reality and a penchant for twisted humor beguiles her no less than it did when she read his first collection of short stories. Elana Gomel and Vered K. Shemtov686 perceive discordance in Keret’s storytelling between an illusionary sensation of defying gravity and harsh, grating sense of realism as “no way out.” We are stuck in a present that has lost its significance as a distinct time interval between the past and the future. Whereas loss of hope in a future that may look any better than the present is discernible in much of the literature written in Israel, it is most perceptible in Keret’s writing. In a similar vein, Matt Rowland Hill687 holds Fly Already to be “a dazzling short story collection” and “pitchblack satire” about a future that is destined to repeat the follies of the present. Ariel Horowitz688 interviewed Keret shortly after Keret won the Sapir Prize. Horowitz asked Keret about the author’s role in revolutionizing Israeli literature. Keret was uncomfortable with the idea of being “revolutionary.” His literature may veer from what is presumed to be Israeli literature, but luminaries such as Amos Oz, Meir Shalev, and David Grossman are hardly to be thought of as dinosaurs of the past. For one thing, they too call for political and cultural change. More to the point, it is 684

The write-up appeared in Maariv newspaper, January 21, 2019, http://www. maariv.co.il/landedpages/printarticle.aspx?id=681231. The translation and paraphrasing are my own. 685 Zohara Ron, “Etgar Keret Adayin Matshik, Aval HaSefer HaZeh Koder VeAfel Harbe Yoter (Etgar Keret is Still Funny, but this Book is Gloomier and Darker), Globes, February 2, 2019, https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did= 1001270985. 686 Elana Gomel and Vered K. Shemtov, “A Sense of No Ending: Contemporary Literature and the Refusal to Write the Future,” Dibur Literary Journal, no. 6 (Fall 2018): 43-46. 687 Matt Rowland Hill, “Fly Already by Etgar Keret—a Dazzling Short Story Collection,” The Guardian, September 14, 2019, http://www.theguardian.com/ books/2019/sep/14/fly-already-etgar-keret-review. 688 Etgar Keret, “Hofesh, Anarkhia, VeHoser Ahrayut: Re’ayon Im Etgar Keret” (Freedom, Anarchy, and Lack of Responsibility), interview with Etgar Keret by Ariel Horowitz, Makor Rishon, June 8, 2018, https://www.makorrishon.co.il/ culture/2018/06/08/52963.

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not as if he is calling for a coup d’état as means of toppling a regnant literary echelon. Revolution connotes with radicalism, and he is not a radical. Rather, he is a nonconformist, individualist writer. Keret is well-known for his openness with interviewers. Horowitz, however, managed to rattle Keret by continuing to question Keret’s steadfast allegiance to the genesis of the short story genre. To Keret’s annoyance, Horowitz’s line of questioning seemed to imply that Keret was an involuntary prisoner to literary and stylistic shackles. Would anyone, Keret asked Horowitz, dare begrudge Amos Oz his fidelity for the genre of the novel? Could anyone imagine challenging Yehuda Amichai: “What, you have written another poem?” He, Etgar Keret, is who he is: a writer of short stories. Having read the wording of the interview, it is unclear whether Horowitz regards the genre of short stories inferior to novels. Still, and uncharacteristically, Keret became somewhat unhinged, suggesting that writing a novel is akin to following IKEA instructions when assembling a piece of furniture. Both types of creativity require adherence to a predetermined, fixed format. By contrast, writing short stories is about creating a literary space exuding freedom, energy, and anarchy. Then, less irate and in a more even-tempered tone, he went on to say that his blustery writing style is precisely why he would make a terrible president of Israel, while Amos Oz’s sublime and majestic style would make him a superb choice! He then added that when it comes to literature, it is no different than trying to explain love in tactical, expedient terms. In “Human Writes,”689 Keret equates his identity as a writer of short stories with being an asthmatic. He perceives asthma a metaphor for his abbreviated, compressed writing style. If he were to portray himself without these traits, he would be talking about a different person, “healthier and less anxious” and perhaps even “more popular among novel-readers.” As it is, for better or worse, he suffers from a congenital disease and writes short stories. Neither is a matter of choice. In “Asthma Attack,”690 Keret notes that “Asthma Attack” was first published in Hebrew in his 1992 collection of stories, Pipes.691 Subsequently he learned that many copies of the book “were purchased as gifts by mothers and aunts of asthmatics.” Meaning, “the majority of the 689

Etgar Keret, “Human Writes” trans. Jessica Cohen, Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, August 29, 2021, https://www.etgarkeret. substack.com. 690 Etgar Keret, “Asthma Attack” trans. Jessica Cohen, Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, December 2, 2021, https://www.etgarkeret. substack.com. 691 Keret, “Asthma Attack,” in Four Stories (2010), 15.

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early adopters of my literary world, the readers who’ve been with me from the very first story … are my inhaler-toting brothers and sisters.” As a writer living in Israel—relatively small in territory and population—Keret attests to sometimes feeling like a gladiator on display. Everyone knows he lives in Tel Aviv, is a secular Ashkenazi Jew, and identifies with the political left. When visiting other countries, he can protect his anonymity. The fact that his stories appear in multiple languages is enormously gratifying, but he can only write, think, and live life in Israeli Hebrew. True, non-Israeli writers, Jewish and non-Jewish, are his greatest source of inspiration, but if it ever came to relegating raising his only child to someone else, he would not hesitate to entrust his child to David Grossman and would not permit Kafka or Bashevis Singer to spend an hour alone with the kid! Given the sheer number of stories that Keret churns out, it is easy to lose sight of common threads that bind a cluster of stories into a consolidated book. Neglecting to uncover a unifying leitmotif begets an incomplete grasp of Keret. As an example, in an insightful analysis of selected stories by Keret, Motti Shalgi and Raquel Sterpak zero in on Keret’s 1994 collection of stories, Missing Kissinger.692 The somewhat awkward, saccharine-sounding messaging of “missing Kissinger” is reinforced by the cover illustration (of the Hebrew edition) showing a moon-faced young boy with a head of lush brown hair, large blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and red lips. Tears are streaming down the boy’s cheeks. The Hebrew wording of the book’s title and the carefully designed cover illustration are indicative of a cynical exaggeration of the entire idea of missing Kissinger. The fact is that Kissinger’s reputation as a brilliant mastermind of American foreign policy—Klemens von Metternich reincarnate—is justifiably tarnished. Historians deem Kissinger’s efforts seeking a relationship with China, a détente with the Soviet Union, and his orchestration of Middle East “shuttle diplomacy” as largely motivated by a desire to promote his own image as a diplomatic maverick. In other words, Keret knowing full well that Kissinger instigated thousands of civilian deaths during years of ruthless and pointless bombing of Cambodia and

692

Motti Shalgi and Raquel Stepak, Kri’at Etgar Keret: Nituah Mivhar Sipure Etgar Keret (Reading Etgar Keret: An Analysis of Selected Stories), Tel Aviv: Ankori Publishing, 2002. The study is in Hebrew. It is available by request through the National Library of Israel, https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ ALEPH990022556330205171NLI.

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North Vietnam693 endows the title of the book, the cover illustration, and its content a cynical twist. If Missing Kissinger bespeaks cynicism but is perhaps not entirely devoid of hope—in the words of Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem,” “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”694—Fly Already is all about wariness and incredulity. Interviewed by Mitzi Rapkin695 shortly after the publication of Fly Already, Keret spoke openly but without his usual alacrity about feeling lost: “I’m trying to prepare my son for this world, but I guess I’m preparing him towards what was relevant ten years ago.” Neta Hoter696 acknowledges Keret as the most influential Israeli writer of his generation but contends that the elements of surprise generated by Keret in the past have now lost their effectual potency. To be sure, there are several outstanding stories in Fly Already, but Hoter is of the opinion that the book as a whole comes across as regurgitation of Keret, the surrealist storyteller. I sympathize with Hoter and others who are intent on constantly recapturing the initial exhilaration over Etgar Keret’s literature. This being said, excitement over a bombshell revelation cannot be sustained forever. A prodigy endowed with exceptional talents must and is bound to evolve. From my standpoint, Fly Already is a stunner in that it entrenches coping with Holocaust remembrance as a thematic core and the ethos that binds Keret’s storytelling. The newness related to coping with Holocaust 693

For historical evaluations of Henry Kissinger’s career see Mario Del Pero, The Eccentric Realist: Henry Kissinger and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009); Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005); Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014); Greg Grandin, Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2015); Martin Indyk, Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group House, 2021). 694 “Anthem” is a poem/song from Cohen’s 1992 album: The Future. 695 Etgar Keret, “Etgar Keret on the Power Struggle between a Father and Child,” interview with Etgar by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing, December 23, 2019, https://www.lithub.com/etgar-keret-on-the-power-strugglebetween-a-father-and-child. 696 Neta Hoter, “Takala BiKtse HaGalaxia: Et Rov HaSipurim Hispaknu Lishkoah (A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy: We Have Forgotten Most of the Stories), Makom Tarbut, July 15, 2018, www.makom.co.il/culture/books-and-theatre/booksreviews/article-ae82c1964d9461006.htm.

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remembrance is three-tiered: several new stories, a carefully designed sequential order in which all the stories—old and new—appear, and the insertion of electronic correspondence (email text). I view Fly Already as a perspicacious effort to broaden and deepen our humanistic capacity to cope with having to live—Jews and non-Jews—with the knowledge that the Holocaust did happen, and not in some primordial era but in the twentieth century. Remembrance of the Holocaust is fully transparent in earlier stories such as “The Sad Story of the Anteater Family,” “A Foreign Language,” “Shoes,” “Himme,” “Terminal,” “So Good,” “What, of This Goldfish, Would You Wish?” “What Animal Are You?” “Siren,” and “Requiem for a Dream.” Fly Already has all the thumbprints of Keret’s writing, but it goes further than ever before in foregrounding coping with Holocaust remembrance as the fundament substratum in Keret’s literature. The email correspondence in the book is situated between selected stories. It transpires between two men: Michael Warshavski and Sefi Moreh. Warshavski is the son of a Holocaust survivor, and Moreh is the director of the outer-space-themed “Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy Escape Room.” Leading up to the electronic communication are several stories, which as conferred by James Warner,697 elicit “a world of impossible ethical dilemmas.” In summary, by way of zeroing in on several new stories, the order in which stories are assembled, and the centrality of the email correspondence, I valuate Fly Already as a crescendo in Keret’s storytelling. In “Tabula Rasa”698 a protagonist known as A. has a recurring dream in which he is on a grassy hill next to a cow grazing the grass. For reasons he cannot explain, the dream “aroused the same feelings in him—calm that turned into frustration that turned into anger that quickly turned into compassion.”699 A. resides in an orphanage headed by a man named Goodman. A. hates Goodman despite the fact that Goodman took A. under his care after A.’s parents abandoned him—a fact Goodman never gets tired of reminding A. Goodman is the type of person who thrives on telling others that they depend on him. Children in Goodman’s orphanage suffer from an incurable disease that makes them grow too quickly and end up dying before they reach the age of ten. A., however, lives on. He is very fond of a girl whom he names Nadia, “after a sad, agile Romanian

697

Warner (2011). Etgar Keret, “Tabula Rasa,” in Fly Already (2019), 29-44. 699 Keret, “Tabula Rasa” (2019), 30. 698

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gymnast.”700 Nadia names A. Antoine. The only way out of the institution is by passing a life-skills exam, but A. has already failed the test nineteen times. Following his twentieth attempt, A. is confident that he answered all the factual questions correctly. Alas, Goodman informs him that he failed yet again. A. protests but, as Goodman explains to A., passing the test is not a matter of knowing factual data but of providing the right answers with regard to hidden “intention and character.”701 Totally discouraged, A. attempts to escape but is caught by the guards and summarily brought back to the orphanage. It is then that Goodman reveals to A. that he may look like a real person but was, in actuality, manufactured in a laboratory as Adolf Hitler’s clone. The story continues with an aging Holocaust survivor pointing a gun at A. The elderly man holds A. responsible for the murder of his entire family. In his defense, A. claims he cannot possibly be Hitler. Yes, at least according to Goodman, he was manufactured at a laboratory, but A.’s real name is Antoine. He challenges the legitimacy of the charges made against him, insisting that the accusations amount to nothing but muddled-up sophistry. As for retributive justice, A. believes that a person who insists on revenge eighty years after the fact “has to make some compromises.”702 The story ends with readers left to ponder the multifarious meaning of the concluding line: “The metallic click of the gun being cocked sounded so far away now.”703 Contemplating the title of the story, one wonders about the contextualized meaning of “tabula rasa.” Translated from Latin, it means clean slate. Beginning with Aristotle’s treatise on nothingness ceasing to be nothing once it becomes a thought, a long-standing epistemological discourse exists on the relatedness of tabula rasa to the innateness of human nature. Roman Catholic fundamentals on the notion of the “original sin,” John Locke’s empiricist explication on the human mind as a blank slate gradually filled with data, psychological and biological theories on genetic influences, and artificial intelligence all converge in the concluding paragraphs of the story, subtitled “The Final Solution.” Put another way, how did human nature evolve from a state of tabula rasa to setting up for the execution of an incomprehensible plan—euphemistically labeled “Final Solution”—of exterminating an entire nation-people? Is humanity doomed to keep bringing to life Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—a monster 700

Keret, “Tabula Rasa” (2019), 34. Presumably the reference here is to Nadia Comaneci at the 1976 Olympics. 701 Keret, “Tabula Rasa” (2019), 38. 702 Keret, “Tabula Rasa” (2019), 44. 703 Keret, “Tabula Rasa” (2019), 44.

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spurned into hatred and vengeance, or, can we go back, start afresh, tabula rasa? At the very least, what would it take to live and cope with remembrance of the merciless twentieth-century genocide of the Jewish people? “Windows”704 shows Keret’s futuristic, nightmarish brilliance. The story is surreal. It tells of a protagonist, Mickey, whose memory may or may not be in working order, but the reality in which Mickey lives, is comprised of deceptive illusions. The narrative is that of tragic mendacity shot through with sanctimonious glibness. A frightening look into a delusory, nonexistent world of a man stuck in a windowless apartment is conveyed by Keret in explicit and quotidian language. It is a horror story about our own lives that lends itself to myriad speculative interpretations. The story opens with a young man named Mickey suffering from memory loss after an accident. A man in a brown suit, who throughout the story likes to use banal platitudes when communicating with Mickey, assures Mickey that his ailment is only temporary. “Memory,” says the man, is like the ocean, “you’ll see things will slowly begin to rise to the surface.”705 The man also advises Mickey to get as much sleep as possible, because that is when memory comes back in the form of dreams. Mickey’s apartment seems to have a door and windows. The door and windows are “synchronized” to create an illusion of “continuity of a home.”706 A month goes by, and nothing changes. Staring through the windows, Mikey imagines seeing things, like a nonexistent woman waving to him from a kitchen, or a white van pulling up next to an oak tree. Echoing the Oceana of George Orwell’s 1984, where people live under the ever-watchful eye of Big Brother, Mickey is advised to dial zero when feeling confused or upset. Dialing zero will automatically connect him with “a Support Centre.” At some point, through some technological upgrade controlled and operated by the Support System, Mickey is “matched up with a different human figure”—“neighbor”—named Natasha. From the minute Natasha enters Mickey’s isolated life, Mickey longs for her to reappear. As time goes on, an intimate closeness develops between Mickey and Natasha. Whenever Natasha is not around, he misses her terribly. He dreams of Natasha and wakes up drenched in sweat. Dialing zero, an overtired male voice suggests that there is a way “to block the sex” and “suppress sexual arousal” with the help of “a [numerical] access code.”707 Eventually, Natasha and Mickey break up. Mickey feels the 704

Etgar Keret, “Windows,” in Fly Already (2019), 56-71. Keret, “Windows” (2019), 57. 706 Keret, “Windows” (2019), 58. 707 Keret, “Windows” (2019), 67. 705

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rehabilitation treatment received has worked well enough and that he is qualified to leave his secluded dwelling. That, however, is not about to happen. Instead, upon waking up one day, Mickey finds that a wall, a door, and some windows have disappeared. Some walls are still standing but with no door. Natasha is worried about Mickey. She is in tears and she tells the man in the suit that everything about her relationship with Mickey felt real. Now that she and everything else is gone, she hopes Mickey does not kill himself. The man in the suit tells her she has nothing to worry about for the simple reason that it is impossible to kill something that was never alive. “The most one can do is turn it off.”708 Left in a very dark place, Mickey reaches for the phone and dials zero. Alas, “The only thing he could hear on the other end was a long, endless beep.”709 Surrealism reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s filmic imagery and Salvador Dali’s painting of a melting clock comes to mind when I ponder over Keret’s narrative of liquefied memory, fallacious realism, and illusionary doors and windows. Writing, Keret told Sandee Brawarsky,710 is more of a reflex than a conscious decision. In her review of Fly Already, Brawarsky points out that “although Keret can break your heart, he can heal it too.” That is very true, but having read and reread “Windows” several times, my heart refused to heal. Best surmised by Keret himself, “I always write my own story … I’m getting older. I understand life around me less and less.” In “Goodeed,”711 altruism takes on a new meaning. A wealthy woman named Dara gives a large sum of money to a homeless man. The man thanks her and Dara is overcome with ecstatic joy. She describes to her friends the “sensation of doing what you want, allowing yourself to feel good.” Dara and her friends are tired of making donations at charity events. “They wanted the look, maybe even the hug … from a man whose life they’d rescued from the sewer.”712 Then they come up with a brilliant idea: a software application called “One Good Deed a Day”713 that would provide all the necessary data about people—homeless, beggars, and so 708

Keret, “Windows” (2019), 70. Keret, “Windows” (2019), 71. 710 Etgar Keret, “Etgar Keret’s Literary Magic on Display in a New Book,” interview with Etgar Keret by Sandee Brawarsky, The New Jersey Jewish Week, September 19, 2019, https:nj/jewish/news/timesofisrael.com/pulling-rabbits-outof-his-literary-hat. 711 Etgar Keret, “Goodeed,” in Fly Already (2019), 82-88. 712 Keret, “Goodeed” (2019), 85. 713 Keret, “Goodeed” (2019), 87. 709

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on—in dire need of assistance. Not, heaven forbid, for the sake of amassing any profit, Mark Zuckerberg agrees to promote the app but shortens its name to “Goodeed.” Six years after Dara first encountered the homeless man, she runs into him again. She immediately offers him a handout, but he tells her there is no need, he is no longer poor. Dara keeps trying, but the man declines, “and it wasn’t till she began to sob that he took the money.”714 “Crumb Cake” and “Dad with Mashed Potatoes” are about dysfunctional families. In “Crumb Cake”715 people are envious of what they believe is an extraordinarily happy and respectful relationship between a mother and son. What envious people do not know is that the son chooses not to tell his “half deaf and half dead”716 mother about him winning millions of dollars in a lottery, and that Mom is possessive of her son in a rather sick way. In “Dad with Mashed Potatoes”717 a mother insists that her children stop referring to the day her husband abandoned them as the day Dad “shape-shifted” and start calling it “the day Dad left.” Whether or not Dad actually left is unclear. All the children know is that on that day, when they returned from school, the house was not empty. Rather, there was Dad waiting for his children “in his armchair, glowing in the full whiteness of his glorious rabbit hood.”718 Occasionally, the children wonder whether Mom was right when she said a rabbit had entered their house for no reason and “it wasn’t our father at all.” However, these doubts dissipate when, for instance, Dad soothes their pain by licking them with his rabbit tongue and making them laugh; “Dad is the only one who knows how to make us laugh this way.”719 “Arctic Lizard”720 is an exceptional story in which Keret builds upon existing, present-day realism a harrowing fantasy about an envisaged future. The frightening reality unleashed by Donald Trump’s presidency, or for that matter Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, befogs the demarcation between what has already transpired and what can easily happen if we allow for continued erosion of principled fundamentals of democracy. In the story, Donald Trump’s autocracy has turned America into a dystopia. Among several “law and order” dictates in Trump’s dictatorship, 714

Keret, “Goodeed” (2019), 88. Etgar Keret, “Crumb Cake,” in Fly Already (2019), 89-98. 716 Keret, “Crumb Cake” (2019), 98. 717 Etgar Keret, “Dad with Mashed Potatoes,” in Fly Already (2019), 99-107. 718 Keret, “Dad with Mashed Potatoes” (2019), 99. 719 Keret, “Dad with Mashed Potatoes” (2019), 102. 720 Etgar Keret, “Arctic Lizard,” in Fly Already (2019), 108-117. 715

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children serve as combat soldiers. Keret’s protagonist is a soldier in Unit 14+. He was recruited a day after the nation-wide broadcast of “President Trump’s famous twenty-first century Alamo Speech.”721 Americans mythologize Trump’s “America First” rallying cry, in the very same way Texas schoolchildren remember the historical, nineteenth century Alamo Speech as quintessence patriotism. Back home, the narrator has a girlfriend named Summer. He loves Summer but is about to change his will to bequeath Sergeant Baker everything he owns. Baker is not a paragon of virtue. Still, Baker is the one who shattered his spine when saving the narrator’s life. Baker’s ID says he is fourteen, but Keret’s protagonist believes he is younger, more like twelve. Unit 14+ was assembled a year after Trump was elected for a third term. A war with Mexico set off countless terrorist attacks in shopping malls, movie theatres, stadiums, and arenas, essentially turning America into one gigantic coast-to-coast battlefront. Given the loss of so many adult soldiers, henceforth children are drafted into Trump’s army, with or without parents’ consent. As an incentive, children are paid “real salaries,” but the income is incidental compared to the chance of acquiring collectable “Limited edition Destromon Go’s, master characters with mega CP’s that only appeared in war zones.”722 Prized awards in Trump’s army are not medals of courage but electronic game collections of war memorabilia. If he can manage to stay alive for the next ten weeks, the collection is his and he can return to Summer a king, but if he dies, his collection is “all Baker’s. Son of a bitch deserves it, though.”723 Gone are the days when youngsters like Baker and the narrator were students in some godforsaken high school. Today they are proud owners of electronic booty. The story has a stirring, graceful ending. The reader can sense a transformation in resonance and tenor of the narrative. At night, Keret’s child protagonist is in his tent. He is inspecting an Instagram post he had just received from Summer. The picture shows “a giant number ten made of M&Ms laid out on her belly.”724 Summer does this every Sunday. She spells out the number of weeks left until his discharge from the army “in something like Star Wars figures, gummy bears [and] those little packets of ketchup.”725 In a fleeting, authentic moment, Keret’s child soldier is just

721

Keret, “Arctic Lizard” (2019), 108. Keret, “Arctic Lizard” (2019), 112. 723 Keret, “Arctic Lizard” (2019), 112. 724 Keret, “Arctic Lizard” (2019), 114. 725 Keret, “Arctic Lizard” (2019), 114. 722

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a normal child reliving, perhaps even craving, a time when life offered so many effortless delights. “Arctic Lizard,” with its transparent remonstrance regarding endangerments to liberal democracies, is sequentially situated as a precursor to an email exchange that relates distinctively to coping with Holocaust remembrance. A man named Michael Warshavski initiates the conversation with a complaint regarding the Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy Escape Room being closed on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Of all holidays and statutory days, Warshavski believes the escape room ought to be accessible to the public on Holocaust Remembrance Day. In his email to the director of the escape room, Sefi Moreh, Warshavski states that his intention was to visit the escape room with his mother as a way of taking her mind off the horrors she lived through during the Holocaust years. Noting that his mother is confined to a wheelchair, he also inquires about handicapped accessibility. Moreh promptly responds attesting to handicapped accessibility, proudly mentioning the accommodation accorded Stephen Hawking, the eminent handicapped physicist-cosmologist, when Hawking visited the place. He would be honored to host Warshavski and his mother, but on a different day. At this sequential point, the email exchange is paused, and magic realism filters through the disruption created by Warshavski in the form of “Ladder,”726 a storytelling gem reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Salman Rushdie. “Ladder” has three parts to it, each one under a different subtitle. In the first part, “Divine Insight,” the angel Raphael summons a subordinate angel named Zvi for a heart-to-heart conversation. Raphael needs to understand why Zvi is so unhappy to be an angel in heaven. Why the “farpishter punim” (in Yiddish)—“the face a person makes when he’s not happy.”727 Prior to dying, Zvi’s job on earth was to notify families of a husband, son, or brother killed in military action. Raphael is unaware that a depressing job like that exists on earth, but, regardless, someone like Zvi who witnessed so much sorrow ought to be more appreciative of his good fortune in ascending to heaven. Zvi has no argument with Raphael but admits to feeling uncomfortable. He describes his situation as “a limp kind of unhappiness” and correlates his melancholic countenance with the discomfort felt wearing sagging underpants “that have been washed too many times.”728 It turns out Zvi misses a woman he was once in love with. Raphael is sympathetic but reminds Zvi that returning to earth is not an option. The 726

Etgar Keret, “Ladder,” in Fly Already (2019), 118-128. Keret, “Ladder” (2019), 119. 728 Keret, “Ladder” (2019), 120-121. 727

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only two available options are heaven or hell, and if the choice is to be an angel in heaven, one must learn to be at peace with oneself, happy. Raphael then suggests that perhaps a change in Zvi’s daily chores will bring about a sense of contentment. Zvi welcomes the idea. He imagines himself commissioned by God with biblical tasks such as revealing to Sara the prophetic divination regarding the birth of Isaac. Raphael dismisses the idea offhand. Given that “God left us,”729 this particular line of employment is no longer viable. Bottom line: Zvi either takes charge of some gardening duties and raking clouds or goes to hell. In the second part, “Sweat,” as hard as Zvi tries, the only part of the day he finds faintly rewarding is when after a day’s work, when other angels descend “into the sea of sublime serenity,”730 Zvi keeps himself busy to avoid feeling desolate. On one such day, Zvi envisions a neverending ladder—the type that the biblical chronicle attributes to Jacob. Dreaming in heaven is rare, but in the story’s final part, “The Smell of Fresh Laundry,” Zvi dreams of stumbling upon a tin ornamented with sketches of butter cookies. Against his better judgment, Zvi opens the tin and out comes a hideous, miniature creature. The tiny creature is ferocious. It curses, bites, spits, and kicks. Zvi wakes up soaked in perspiration. He wipes a drop off his forehead, tastes it, and it tastes salty. Fully cognizant of the consequences of what he is about to do, Zvi lowers a multi-rung ladder through the clouds and begins his descent to earth. Nearing earth, Zvi can already sense the earthly smells “of sweat, of fresh laundry, of rotting wood; the sweet scorched smell of cake left in the oven too long, the smell of something.”731 The afterlife is a recurring motif in Keret’s literature. Among some unforgettable stories are “Pipes,” “Hole in the Wall,” “Bad Karma,” “Not Completely Alone,” “Guava,” “Knockoff Venus,” “One Last Story and That’s It,” “Jetlag,” and “Long View.” The striking singularity in Fly Already is in positioning the hereafter—“Ladder”—between pieces of makeshift electronic correspondence about coping with traumatic Holocaust remembrance. Warshavski is dissatisfied with Moreh’s formulaic response and reiterates his opinion regarding the erroneousness in closing the escape room on Holocaust Remembrance Day. After all, the escape room is all about “heavenly bodies” that, as far as Warshavski knows, “did not

729

Keret, “Ladder” (2019), 122. Keret, “Ladder” (2019), 125. 731 Keret, “Ladder” (2019), 128. 730

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deviate from their orbits when six million Jews were sent to their deaths.”732 Moreh replies that observing the sanctity of Holocaust Remembrance Day is in keeping with commemorating the most traumatic occurrence in modern history. At the very least, for one, single day, we all need to devote ourselves to learning about the Holocaust and put on hold all other activities. Warshavski’s bellicose reaction to Moreh sermonizing about the sanctity of remembering the Holocaust comes as no surprise. It is what readers anticipate, but, instead, Keret interposes another halt in the email exchange in the form of an ingenious, gut-wrenching story: “Yad Vashem.”733 Erected in Jerusalem on Mount Herzl, also known as Har HaZikaron, Mount Memorial, Yad Vashem—Israel’s national memorial site for Holocaust victims—was founded in 1953. Etymologically, “yad vashem” means a memorial and a name. It derives from a verse in the Book of Isaiah (56:5) that promises the people a lasting name and memorial. Yad Vashem’s statement of purpose is to commemorate, inform, educate, and research the Holocaust for generations to come. A new, ultramodern Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem designed by Canadian-Israeli architect Moshe Safdie focuses on personal stories of Jewish men, women, and children who perished in the Holocaust. The redesigned complex is four times the size of the initial structure and makes extensive use of multimedia technology.734 While Jerusalem is arguably the most meaningful location in the world where a Holocaust memorial ought to stand, as delineated by Omer Bartov,735 some facets embedded in the conceptualization and architecture of the memorial site were not without problems. For one thing, “humanity’s greatest defeat”736 did not take place in Israel. Jerusalem’s “ancient, somehow forgiving landscape”737 notwithstanding, the simplistic didactic lesson inherent in the location of Yad Vashem is that had the State of Israel existed before Nazism, the Holocaust could not have happened. Thus, the state, Israel, can be traced back to the Holocaust, “but so too the

732

Keret, Fly Already (2019), 129. Etgar Keret, “Yad Vashem,” in Fly Already (2019), 131-138. 734 The opening of the new museum in 2005 was honored by leaders from some forty countries and Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the UN. 735 Omer Bartov, “Chambers of Horror: Holocaust Museums in Israel and the United States,” Israel Studies, 2, Number 2 (Fall 1997): 66-87. 736 Bartov (Fall 1997), 67-68. 737 Bartov (Fall 1997), 69. 733

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Holocaust belongs to the state.”738 Does that mean millions of victims are to be considered potential Israelis?739 As part of his thoughtful contemplation of entanglements and sensitive intricacies with respect to Holocaust remembrance, Bartov deliberates two additions to Yad Vashem: the Children’s Memorial and the Valley of the Communities. The omnipresence of innocent Jewish souls is reflected at the Children’s Memorial through mirrors, memorial candles, and countless flickering tiny lights. Unfortunately, the sheer darkness of the space is distracting. Instead of focusing on remembrance of murdered children, visitors become claustrophobically preoccupied with trying to navigate through the pitch-black maze in their effort to reach the exit. The 1993 addition, however, of The Valley of the Communities, “A rocky labyrinth dug into the mountainside … onto which the names of all Jewish communities destroyed by the Nazis are carved,”740 is extremely effective. It is a graphic reminder of prewar Jewish men, women, and children, torn out of hundreds of communities, gone. Nothing left but bare and ancient land, “the plants are fresh and wild, and the sky is bright and transparent.”741 In Keret’s haunting story, touring Yad Vashem is the backdrop to a spousal relationship fraught with acrimonious squabbles. Invariably, readers are mortified: how is it possible to conceive of a narrative that combines the throes of pregnant women in a Nazi extermination camp with a tale about an American woman choosing to have an abortion? Yet, in Keret’s exceptional literary pen, the jolting effect deepens our grasp of the substance of coping with remembrance of the Holocaust long after its actual occurrence. Keret’s protagonists, Rachel and Eugene, are American tourists. Shortly after entering the museum, Eugene accidently bumps into a glass partition. The partition symbolizes Europe before and after Kristallnacht. Unleashed on November 9, 1938, the colossal pogrom was an ominous 738

Bartov (Fall 1997), 69. Yad Vashem continues to be fraught with controversy. For example, in 1994, members of Israel’s LGBT organization recited Kaddish (mourner’s prayer) in Ohel Yizkor—Yad Vashem’s Tabernacle of Remembrance—in memory of Jewish homosexuals murdered by the Nazis. Some religious members of Israel’s parliament found this objectionable and demanded that Yosef Burg, then president of the International Committee of Yad Vashem, resign. In the end, respectful of biblical laws that forbid homosexuality but maintaining Yad Vashem’s standing as a secular place, a spokesperson of Yad Vashem “resolved” the issue by lashing out at LGBT supporters and LGBT censurers! 740 Bartov (Fall 1997), 69. 741 Bartov (Fall 1997), 70.69 739

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prelude to what was yet to come. The glass panel signifies not only the fate of the Jewish people before and after Kristallnacht but also Western civilization before and after the unfolding of the depravity of twentiethcentury fascism. Crashing into the glass partition is painful and causes Eugene’s nose to bleed. Rachel thinks they should return to the hotel, but Eugene would rather stay. He stops the bleeding by shoving a wad of tissue up his nostrils. His bruised nose is the least of his problems; his stressful relationship with Rachel is far more troubling. When he surprised Rachel with two tickets to Israel, “He was thinking making love in a suite at the hotel as the sun was beginning to set beyond the walls of Jerusalem behind them.”742 Alas, that was not to be. The tour guide stops in front of a photo showing Jews standing in the snow, stripped naked, about to be forced into a ditch and shot dead. Eugene becomes aware of the guide staring at him. His first thought is that she knows he is not Jewish, but then she points to his shirt, “You’ve got blood on your shirt.”743 With a hand gesture, Eugene signals that he is fine and that the tour should proceed. Eugene gapes at an elderly couple seen in the photo. The woman is trying to cover her privates with her right hand while her husband holds her left hand. Touched off by a reflexive reaction, Eugene imagines Rachel and him forcibly taken far away from their Upper West Side flat, ordered to strip naked, and shoved into a pit in the ground prior to being killed. “Would they, too, end their lives holding hands?”744 The tour moves on to a section dedicated to Auschwitz. A large photo shows six shaven-headed, pregnant women. The guide explains that, almost without exception, pregnancy in Auschwitz meant an immediate death sentence. Once again, precipitated by a subliminal trigger, Eugene’s mind meanders to Rachel and him at the doctor’s office. At the time, Eugene was embroiled in rage, threatening to take legal action against the gynecologist who performed an abortion at Rachel’s behest. Rachel steps away from the group. Eugene apologizes on behalf of his wife, explaining that they recently went through losing a baby. The tour proceeds in a hushed shuffle to the Children’s Memorial. The area is pitchblack except for countless tiny flickering lights. Amplifying the dark miseen-scène is the sound of a somber, bass male voice reading out the names of murdered Jewish children. Scarcely being able to have a clear vision of anything, Eugene notices that Rachel had rejoined the group. She is standing right in front of him. He caresses her back and apologizes to her for having told the group about the miscarriage. Rachel snaps back stating 742

Keret, “Yad Vashem” (2019), 132. Keret, “Yad Vashem” (2019), 133. 744 Keret, “Yad Vashem” (2019), 133. 743

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that it was not a miscarriage, it was an abortion. Wanting to believe that Rachel is speaking out of grief, Eugene whispers back that he blames himself for the abortion and being inattentive to her emotional needs. In a clipped, terse voice, Rachel mutters that her decision to opt for an abortion had to do with not wanting to have a child with him. Eugene does not respond. He is distracted by the reverberating bass voice pronouncing the name “Shoshana Kaufman.” He remembers knowing “a chubby little girl”745 named Shoshana Kaufman. It cannot be the same girl, but Eugene envisions the Shoshana he knew shot dead in the snow. The indignation Eugene suffered upon discovering that Rachel underwent an abortion without consulting with him ripped through his heart. He was furious that Rachel deprived him of patting her stomach while trying to envision the life breeding inside her. The hurt was so egregious that for the first time in his adult life he wept. Now, discomposed in imperceptible tragedy, he is once again in tears. A close by Japanese tourist whispers to visibly distraught Eugene: “It’s awful, she says in a heavy foreign accent, what people are capable of doing to one another.”746 Keret’s artistry of navigating between incomprehensible evil and the dreariness of marital unhappiness leaves readers gasping for air. Juxtaposing the horrifying fate of pregnant women in Auschwitz with Rachel choosing to have an abortion is so audaciously grotesque that it thrusts coping with Holocaust remembrance beyond streamlined, wonted reflection. It is precisely the unthinkable—Eugene meandering between harrowing photos and self-pity, and the obscenity of mingling Auschwitz with extraneous marital quarrels—that signifies Keret’s way of forcing us to contemplate how ill-prepared we are in coping with a calamitous history for which there will never be a palliating assuagement. Sequentially, a blistering email from Warshavski to Moreh follows “Yad Vashem.” Incensed with Moreh’s didactic sermonizing about the importance of observing Holocaust Memorial Day, Warshavski hurls insults at the director. There is no mystery with respect to the Ashkenazi derivation of his surname, Warshavski. His family came from Warsaw, and his mother is in a wheelchair because the Nazis put her in it.”747 Not so in regard to Moreh’s surname. Warshavski cannot help but wonder whether it derives from the Ashkenazi “Lehrer” or, more likely, the Arabic “Moalim.” As for the director pontificating about respecting the memory of Holocaust victims by closing the escape room on Holocaust Remembrance Day, all it means is depriving Holocaust survivors of some sort of 745

Keret, “Yad Vashem” (2019), 135. Keret, “Yad Vashem” (2019), 136. 747 Keret, “Yad Vashem” (2019), 137. 746

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breathing space while providing Moreh’s staff with a pleasant day off work. Remaining courteously deferential and professional, the director apologizes for unintentionally upsetting Warshavski and perhaps his mother too. Even so, closing the place on Holocaust Remembrance Day is related to compliance with municipal bylaws. In other words, it is beyond his control. The next pause in the flow of the email correspondence between Warshavski and Moreh is in the form a story manifesting Keret’s disdain for capitalist materialism. “The Birthday of a Failed Revolutionary”748 tells the story of a very rich man, “Too rich, some said,”749 who amasses a fortune by purchasing land and building lots of tiny flats which he sells at exorbitant prices. He has no friends because he suspects that all the people who seek his company are only interested in him because of his wealth. Feeling rather lonely, one day he decides to give his life special meaning by dispensing of all the money he has. He comes up with an ingenious plan: he would “buy people’s birthdays.” Not actual birthdays, “which can’t really be bought,” but everything that is associated with birthdays: “presents, greetings, parties, etc.”750 Except for a few people who regard the idea as unethical, for the most part, the response is overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Subsequently, the man attends a funeral where he comes up with the idea of buying the anniversary of deaths—“Not from the people themselves, of course, but from their heirs.”751 He envisions hiding inside graves, concealed by glass that is transparent on one side only, from where he would be able to observe mourners. Alas, as fate would have it, the rich man dies the morning after coming up with this rather odd idea: His body was found among the torn wrappings of presents he’d received for a birthday he purchased from a failed revolutionary … [with] one of the presents … sent by a ruthless, tyrannical regime.752

Hoping to receive a share of the rich man’s inheritance, thousands of people eulogize the man. Warshavski’s retort to Moreh’s citation of bureaucratic bylaws comes next. At this point, readers can visualize Warshavski’s gesticulations as he puts into words his searing exasperation, clamoring that this type of 748

Etgar Keret, “The Birthday of a Failed Revolutionary,” in Fly Already (2019), 139-143. 749 Keret, “The Birthday of a Failed Revolutionary” (2019), 139. 750 Keret, “The Birthday of a Failed Revolutionary” (2019), 141. 751 Keret, “The Birthday of a Failed Revolutionary” (2019), 143. 752 Keret, “The Birthday of a Failed Revolutionary” (2019), 143.

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mindless obedience to authority facilitated the Holocaust! He then adds that he reckons the director is obviously not “the sort of person who would hide a persecuted minority in his attic.”753 “Allergies”754 follows Warshavski’s outburst. Unable to have children of their own, a woman named Rakefet and her husband—the narrator of the story—adopt a dog. The couple’s infinite devotion to the dog, Seffi, borders on an obsession. Other than the couple, Seffi hates everybody else. He often bites people, forcing the couple to move between neighborhoods. After biting a young girl, Seffi develops some strange allergies. The vet says the dog is most likely allergic to dog food and recommends a diet restricted to beef. Seffi recovers, but the allergies return soon after the dog bites an elderly Russian who dies from falling and hitting his head. Meanwhile, the vet is killed on military reserve duty and the couple decides to attend to Seffi’s allergies by feeding him pigeons. The husband wakes up in the early hours of the morning, so as not to be seen by the neighbors while downing pigeons with a slingshot. The couple and Seffi are doing well, with the husband enjoying his caveman-like game and Rakefet becoming an expert in French pigeon recipes. In fact, the pigeons are so tasty that the couple shares Seffi’s food. The story ends with the husband on the kitchen floor, sitting next to Seffi as they both “howl at Rakefet as she cooks our pigeons.”755 Moreh’s reaction to Warshavski’s disparaging insinuations comes as a follow-up to “Allergies”—an eerie blurring of the lines that separate humans from pugnacious dogs who bite children and elderly people—and another story called “Fungus.”756 Deeply offended, Moreh would have Warshavski know that his family too experienced victimization, albeit in Iraq, not Poland. Notwithstanding, despite Warshavski’s indignant affront, and without consulting with his co-workers, he has decided to open the escape room to Warshavski and his mother on the morning of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Warshavski responds with a rather flimsy apology. Perhaps equating the director with Nazi collaborators was uncalled for, although comparing the history of discrimination against Jews in Iraq with the genocidal war waged by the Nazis against European Jews is preposterous. “To the best of my knowledge, there was no genocide in Iraq and no Jew was led to the gas chamber or the crematoria.”757 He finds the director’s ignorance of 753

Etgar Keret, Fly Already (2019), 148. Etgar Keret, “Allergies,” in Fly Already (2019), 145-152. 755 Keret, “Allergies” (2019), 152. 756 See Chapter Three for a review of “Fungus.” 757 Keret, Fly Already (2019), 158. 754

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history embarrassing and can only hope that during the upcoming trip to the escape room, the focus will be on astronomy and not the history of the Jewish people. Warshavski’s last email arrives after the visit to the escape room. This time addressed to “Dear Sefi,” Warshavski appreciates the hospitality accorded to him and his mother by the director. He was satisfied with the tour, although he found the visit to a room in the shape of a flying saucer aggravating. Noting that the experience “is supposed to be a journey to outer space, not the North Pole,”758 he recommends adjusting the room’s temperature. In and of itself, imbuing Holocaust remembrance discourse with every day electronic correspondence style is striking. Email is a form of speech that combines the format of letter writing with colloquial, oral conversation. By maintaining the use of “to” (intended recipient) and “from” (sender), an email resembles conventional letter writing. The diction, however, is more speech-like with a proclivity for neologism, buzz words such as spam, mail merger, snail mail, and so on. Allowances are made for acronyms and grammatically incorrect punctuation—absence of commas, full stops, and omission of capital letters—as well as abbreviated words and phrases, as in “plz” instead of “please.” Whereas accentuating meaning in letter writing is achieved by using adjectives, and in oral speech through intonation, in emails it is often attained through repetition of letters (yessssss) or atypical punctuation (!!!!!!!!/???????). Formal letter writing has a long history. Email is relatively new, prone to shifts and alterations, and, given present-day pace of technological innovations, quite possibly transitory. Some, perhaps, would argue that electronic mail is somewhat discourteous and as such, ill-suited for a conversation related to the Holocaust. I, however maintain that, when generated and steered by Keret, it is fitting and pertinent. Through a direct, energetic, and hurried pace, Keret has conjured up an air of exigency in relation to present and future Holocaust remembrance. Germaneness is a reason for Keret to entrust a tactless sectarian bigot with critical precepts regarding norms of commemoration. Impertinent as Warshavski may be, I envision him as an adult version of Keret’s child protagonist in “Shoes.” Readers tend to applaud the boy in “Shoes” for defying his teacher’s instruction not to touch Holocaust artifacts displayed at the Volhynia House: “But I did touch one picture … It’s my Grandpa and I’m touching whatever I want!” Who among us readers does not find the misinformed boy who confuses Poland with Germany to be sweet and 758

Keret, Fly Already (2019), 164.

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endearing? We have, however, no such patience for Warshavski, despite the fact that his annoyance with administrative regulations is perfectly reasonable. The mere interest shown by the guileless boy in “Shoes” makes us want to believe in the possibility of an earnest dialogue about present and future Holocaust remembrance, while Warshavski’s effrontery and outwardly boorish conduct perturbs us to the point of ignoring the fact that he is a loyal son who takes care of a wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor. In effect, Keret’s Warshavski reminds me of Art Spiegleman portrayal in Maus of Vladek, Spiegleman’s bigoted, Holocaust-survivor father. Both individuals are flawed characters, which is a way both Spiegleman and Keret deflate the tendency to confuse righteousness with victimization. A Keret devotee, Maya Sela759 discerns the emails between stories in Fly Already as Holocaust humor that elicits involuntary laughter. According to Sela, the nucleus of Fly Already is “the same dark, absurd, and uncompromising world where the kids and teens have become grownups who still don’t know how to save themselves and their children from the horror.” Stories by Keret that “sometimes make the reader laugh while getting him a little choked up” propound “a future little catastrophe” festering in our own backyard. Essential to Keret in this type of milieu is soul-searching and self-scrutiny as a writer. In “Todd,”760 a friend named Todd asks the author to write a story that would “get girls jump into bed” with Todd.761 He even suggests a title for the story: “Todd.” It is not as if Todd is not interested in the author’s life, but given the author’s fame, Todd gets all that from newspaper write-ups, radio interviews, and TV programs. The writer objects, explaining to Todd that this is not how writing literature works. Todd persists and, eventually, the author comes up with a story. Surprisingly, the story is quite good. The author even cries when he finishes writing it. Todd, however, hates it. At no point, Todd argues, did he ask for a good story. “I forgot for a minute that you’re so tight-assed about writing that you need metaphors and insights and all that.”762 All Todd wanted was a simple story with a pointless ending, a “cool postmodern trick.”763 The bruise to his ego and

759

Maya Sela, “Etgar Keret’s New Book: As Witty as a Good Holocaust Joke,” Haaretz, June 10, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/.premium. MAGAZINE-etgar-keret-israel-s-dark-star-whose-light-never-goes-out-.16158163. 760 Etgar Keret, “Todd,” in Fly Already (2019), 22-28. 761 Keret, “Todd” (2019), 22. 762 Keret, “Todd” (2019), 28. 763 Keret, “Todd” (2019), 28.

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his life-long commitment to authenticity notwithstanding, the author agrees. He can feign quality writing too. The final electronic communiqué of the book ushers in important issues relating to the quest for genuine intimacy in various aspects of life. It also provides us a cosmic take on evolution. The email is not between Warskavski and Moreh, but in a fantastical way, the concluding email in Fly Already confers upon the exchange between Warshavski and Moreh an extraterrestrial, cosmic pertinence. Addressed to Chief.Department.of.Rational.Species.Study, and sent by Field.Agent.SEFI,764 the subject of the email is “Escape Room—Destroying Evidence of Extraterrestrial Presence.”765 As reported by Field Agent SEFI, an agent of a foreign planet, subsequent to five months of “genetic surveillance” a decision was made to sever all ties with humans. Foremost in determining the urgent need to break off all connections with earthlings was a recent altercation involving a human known as Warshavski. Whereas the perils of associating with earthlings was always well known, it is now feared that humans’ predisposition to belligerence constitutes a threat of “menacing force,” which, if left unchecked, can result in a possible “end of our species.” Here, a discrepancy between the Hebrew text and the English translation is worth mentioning. The English text reads “the end of our species.” The Hebrew term used to indicate imminent disaster is “shoah.” In Hebrew, shoah means a catastrophe, and specific to the Jewish people, the term has come to designate the Holocaust. I believe a thoughtprovoking link by association is lost in the English translation. Having destroyed all evidence of past extraterrestrial encounters with humans, Field Agent SEFI signs off “molecularly yours” and embarks on his journey “back to the mother planet.”766 Sequentially, a story about procuring intimate pleasure from the act of smoking cannabis, “Pineapple Crush,”767 comes on the heels of this exchange about severing ties between humanity and extraterrestrials. Mike Glazer broached the subject of smoking pot with Ben Sinclair and Etgar Keret.768 764

I assume the similarity in names—Sefi, the director of the escape room, SEFI, the foreign planet agent, and Seffi, the dog in “Allergies”—is intentional. 765 Etgar Keret, Fly Already (2019), 170. 766 Etgar Keret, Fly Already (2019), 170. 767 Etgar Keret, “Pineapple Crush,” in Fly Already (2019), 171-206. 768 Ben Sinclair and Etgar Keret, “Stoned Conversations: High Maintenance’s Ben Sinclair and Author Etgar Keret,” interview with Ben Sinclair and Etgar Keret by Mike Glazer, High Times, October 29, 2019, https://www.hightimes.com/ entertainment/stoned-conversations-high-maintenance-ben-sinclair-author-etgar-

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Sinclair, an actor, writer, and producer, was curious about there being more than one story in Fly Already about smoking weed.769 Keret responded that although he derives much pleasure from smoking pot, he is not in the habit of smoking every day. He does not function well under the influence of marijuana, although, he noticed, “People are very nice to me when I’m stoned.” More to the point, the notion conveyed in Keret’s stories is that smoking cannabis is not about some Dionysian, chemically induced gratification. Rather, an authentic reward is procured through the intimate act of sharing a smoke. At sundown, when the sun caresses Tel Aviv’s Mediterranean coastline, just prior to disappearing for the night, the narrator of “Pineapple Crush” indulges in “uninterrupted puffs.”770 Except for several puffs, “hits,” throughout the day, he pictures his life as an “ugly low table left in your living room by the previous tenants ...”771 A good puff does not change things, but metaphorically speaking, it softens the hurt one feels when bumping into the ugly low table. In his estimation, he must have enjoyed over one thousand “uninterrupted puffs” over the past four years. He works at an after-school program. Some of the kids are difficult, at times violent. He does not particularly like his job but will take working with kids any time over the company of adults. Along the way, he is fired for intentionally standing by, doing nothing, while one kid badly beats another kid. He does not regret what he did or did not do, because the kid who was beaten up was nasty and always picked on weaker kids. One evening, a woman in her forties, with “smart eyes” and a “glistening complexion,”772 walks by and asks if she could have some of his pot. They end up smoking together. Later, out of curiosity, he follows her on his bike to her luxury apartment building. That is what he likes doing: following people, particularly women. It is February in Tel Aviv. The evenings are chilly but pleasing. She is a lawyer and just like him, rather unhappy. Among others, her partner in life does not allow her to smoke pot because it is illegal and “because it screws up your short-term memory.”773 Over the next several days, the narrator and the woman continue to meet and share a smoke by Tel Aviv’s seashore. On one occasion, they smoke “some stuff” called “Pineapple Crush”774—courtesy keret.. 769 “One Gram Short” and “Pineapple Crush.” 770 Keret, “Pineapple Crush” (2019), 174. 771 Keret, “Pineapple Crush” (2019), 173. 772 Keret, “Pineapple Crush” (2019), 174. 773 Keret, “Pineapple Crush” (2019), 179. 774 Keret, “Pineapple Crush” (2019), 202.

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of his friend Avri who just arrived from Amsterdam. The potent cannabis is known as “Pineapple Crush” because “if you smoke enough of it, you can fall in love with a pineapple.”775 The platonic affair ends when the woman decides to leave everything, including her partner, and move to a faraway country. The narrator will miss their friendship, and she too will miss intimate evenings with her “angel of weed.”776 He hopes she settles somewhere warm because, he recalls, “Every time I passed her a joint and our hands touched, her fingers felt cold.”777 The gratification derived from a short-lived experience of symbiotic, harmonious closeness in “Pineapple Crush,” paves the way for the final story in Fly Already: “Evolution of a Breakup.”778 The story has a quasifuturistic tenor to it. The narrator describes the history of the human race, but along the way the narrative becomes specific and personal. In the beginning, humanity consisted of one, single cell. The cell mutated into an amoeba and then into a fish. It took a very long time but eventually the fish became a lizard. “The earth felt soft and unsteady,”779 so we climbed on trees where we felt more secure. At some point, we came down from the trees and began walking upright. We also began to speak. After that, we liked watching TV shows and had a tendency to settle for jobs we did not like. We felt lucky, then unlucky, then lucky again. We had a son who went off to college, and it left us with a sense of abandonment. We fought and smashed things we thought were unbreakable, and we swapped partners. Then, it ceased to be “us” and “was just me.”780 “I” was in a relationship with a woman with whom I fought. A friend tried to assure us that by morning “everything would look different.”781 But that did not happen and things worsened, forever. It was right about this time that a friend lights a cigarette and wants to know the reason for the narrator using the plural tense. “Instead of answering, I just looked around and realized I was alone—I mean completely alone.”782 I fully agree with the writer and editor Carolyn Kellogg who praises Keret for engendering in Fly Already an “impossible blend of humor and tragedy, cynicism and empathy.”783 As articulated by David Silverberg,784 775

Keret, “Pineapple Crush” (2019), 202. Keret, “Pineapple Crush” (2019), 178. 777 Keret, “Pineapple Crush” (2019), 206. 778 Etgar Keret, “Evolution of a Breakup,” in Fly Already (2019), 207-209. 779 Keret, “Evolution of a Breakup” (2019), 207. 780 Keret, “Evolution of a Breakup” (2019), 208. 781 Keret, “Evolution of a Breakup” (2019), 209. 782 Keret, “Evolution of a Breakup” (2019), 209. 783 Carolyn Kellogg, “Praises for Etgar Keret,” Fly Already,’s back-cover endorsement. 776

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Fly Already features “some of the darkest imagery Keret has brought to print to date.” Ranking Keret with Salman Rushdie and Kurt Vonnegut, Silverberg refers to Etgar Keret as a “master of the short story who finds humor in the darkest places.” Gili Izikovich785 asked Keret whether Fly Already evinces a new reality. Keret did not offer an interpretive explication beyond stating that the book has to do with him being fifty and the disturbing processes that he sees speeding up in the world. “Wait, you mean it is okay for the prime minister to incite against the police and the judicial authorities? It’s okay for the president [Trump] of the United States to lie? That’s fine from now on?” Then, upon further reflection, Keret noted that he continues to believe that despite all the gloom and doom, “There is human compassion whose very existence is a victory.” Izikovich touched upon the subject of Israel, Keret’s homeland, taking a relatively long time—as compared to countries in Europe, North America, and elsewhere—to grant him a prestigious literary award such as the Sapir Prize. Keret responded by noting that he does not regard it as indicative of receiving less support in Israel, but of not having the “presence of an important person in one’s home country.” He also remarked that “if a writer is also supposed to be some kind of intellectual or spiritual leader—I’m sort of the opposite of the typecast

784

Etgar Keret, “A Master of the Short Story Finds Humor in the Darkest Places,” Interview with Etgar Keret by David Silverberg. The Washington Post, September 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com.entertainment/books/a-master-of-theshort-story-finds-humor-in-the-darkest-places/2019/09/06. 785 Etgar Keret, “Even Etgar Keret Was Surprised He Won Israel’s Most Prestigious Literary Prize,” Haaretz, January 30, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/ Israel-news/2019-01-30/ty-article-magazine.

9 COPING WITH TRAUMATIC REMEMBRANCE

Few stories by Etgar Keret are stricto sensu about coping with Holocaust remembrance. One does not always think about Keret in the same way one thinks about Hebrew Holocaust writers such as Uri Zvi Greenberg, Yocheved Bat-Miriam, Aharon Appelfeld, Savyon Liebrecht, Amir Gottfried, Yoram Kaniuk, and Nava Semel. Yet, as my study contends, coping with Holocaust remembrance permeates Keret’s oeuvre. A cursory overview of approaches to Holocaust literature from before and after the establishment of Israel is helpful in understanding how Keret’s storytelling fits in. Hanna Yaoz’s786 review opens with second-generation poets and novelists of the 1940s. Natan Alterman, Avraham Shlonsky, and Uri Zvi Greenberg are well-known, major writers of the first epoch. Invariably, these authors left behind families, friends, towns, villages, and timehonored ways of life. Shock and apprehension, embroiled in the need and the determination to tell, encapsulates Yaoz’s second phase in Israeli Holocaust literature. Abba Kovner, Tuvya Rübner, and Dan Pagis are some of the authors designated by Yaoz as representatives of this chapter. Yehiel De-Nur— Yehiel Feiner prior to immigrating to Israel—is emblematic of the vexing torment authors felt when compelled to lay bare Nazi atrocities. Better known as Ka-Tsetnik 135633787—from the German term Konzentration Zenter (concentration camp), Ka-Tsetnik’s entire family was wiped out during the Holocaust. It was rumored that in the course of writing Salamandra (Sunrise O Hell) and Bet HaBubot (House of Dolls),788 KaTsetnik wore concentration camp garb, did not wash, and ate and slept as 786

Hanna Yaoz, “Inherited Fear: Second-Generation Poets and Novelists in Israel,” in Breaking Crystal: Writing and Memory after Auschwitz, ed. Efraim Sicher (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 160-169. 787 The number tattooed on Ka-Tsentnik’s arm when imprisoned at Auschwitz. . 788 Originally written in Yiddish, Salamandra was translated into Hebrew by the author and published in 1946. Sunrise Over Hell was translated by Moshe M. Kohn and published in 1955. House of Dolls was also translated by Moshe M. Kohn and published in 1977.

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little as possible. Nobody disputed the facts, but many were taken aback by Ka-Tsetnik’s explicit accounts of sexual slavery in Auschwitz. Some praised Ka-Zetnik for the courage to tell things as they were, no matter how heinous. Others argued that Ka-Tsetnik’s account, truthful as it was, had come perilously close to sadomasochistic, pornographic trash. Lea Goldberg’s 1955 Ba’alat HaArmon (The Lady of the Castle) also came under fire. A mere decade after World War II, some were offended by Goldberg’s undying reverence for the very same European culture that gave rise to Nazism. In Goldberg’s case, however, with every passing year, receptivity by readers and critics shifted—wisely might I add—from extraneous criticism to recognizing the profundity of Lea Goldberg’s artistry. In contrast, Ka-Tsetnik’s reputation plummeted further, with scholars of Hebrew literature admonishing Ka-Tsetnik for manufacturing deplorable kitsch. I choose to go along with Galia Glasner-Heled’s789 empathetic appraisal suggesting that Israelis’ perception of Ka-Tsetnik as a writer is marred by the spectacle of Ka-Tsetnik as a witness at the trial of Adolf Eichmann.790 Midway through reliving atrocities he witnessed at Auschwitz, Ka-Tsetnik collapsed. Memorably delineated by Haim Guri in Facing the Glass Booth: the Jerusalem Trial of Adolf Eichmann,791 the 789

Galia Glasner-Heled, “Reader, Writer, and Holocaust Literature: ‘The Case of Ka-Tsetnik’,” Israel Studies, 12, no. 1 (2007): 109-133. 790 The trial was held before a District Court tribunal in Jerusalem. Eichmann was indicted on fifteen counts, including genocide against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity. Proceedings began on April 11, 1961. Whereas the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal hearings relied mostly on written evidence, the Eichmann trial was about historical documentation and testimonies by survivors. The trial was open to the public and televised for the world to see. In Israel, with television yet to arrive, the trial was radio broadcasted. Chief prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, describes in Justice in Jerusalem (Harper & Row, 1966) shopkeepers and bus drivers stopping to listen to daily courtroom proceedings, and schoolchildren and teachers bringing transistor radios to school. Sounds of radios broadcasting of the trial could be heard from open windows throughout the country. 791 For further readings on the Eichmann Trial, see Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (2000), Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (2005), Shoshana Felman, The Judicial Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (2002), Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity (Oxford, 2002), Hanna Yablonka, The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann (2004), Dalia Ofer, “The Strength of Remembrance: Commemorating the Holocaust During the First Decade of Israel,” Jewish Social Studies, 2, no. 2 (2000), Judith Stern, “The Eichmann Trial and its Influence on Psychiatry and Psychology, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, no. 2 (2000), Derek Jonathan Pensler, “Transmitting Culture:

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image of Ka-Tsetnik slumped on the floor was forever etched in the public’s memory and somehow tarnished his repute as a writer who could produce a “successful reading experience.”792 Yaoz praises the third group of writers for not evoking the establishing of the State of Israel as some sort of mythical rising of the phoenix from the ashes of the Holocaust. I concur with Yaoz. Without a doubt, the Holocaust was a determinant in obtaining international support for Jewish sovereignty, however, the genesis of striving for a national home for the Jewish people in Zion pre-dates the Holocaust. Among the authors whom Yaoz commends for diffusing myths regarding an indissoluble linkage between the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel are Uri Orlev, Aharon Meged, David Grossman, Rivka Miriam, Lizzie Doron, and Nava Semel.793 Specific to Etgar Keret as a writer of Holocaust and Holocaust remembrance literature, Nurit Govrin’s magnum opus—an enriching, overarching study of Hebrew literature—is most fitting.794 Govrin’s modality is unique in that it follows thematic logic, as opposed to a chronologic, periodic approach. In all, Govrin constructs five thematic clusters. Writers who experienced the Holocaust firsthand constitute Govrin’s first cohort. Govrin characterizes Dan Pagis, S. Shalom, Alona Frankel, and Aharon Appelfeld as wanting to tell a story that is excruciatingly painful for them to put into words. The overriding theme of Govrin’s second group of writers is literature based on what was imparted to them by parents who survived the Holocaust. Citing Nava Semel’s selfcharacterization as a writer in a procession of emotionally disfigured amputees, Govrin denotes motifs of silence, volatility, and overprotection, or, alternatively, inaccessibility and withdrawnness of parents, as typifying Radio in Israel,” Jewish Social Studies, 10, no. 1 (2003), Tamar Liebes, “Acoustic Space: the Role of Radio in Israeli Collective History,” Jewish History, 20 (2006). 792 Glasner-Heled (2007), 117. 793 The focus here is on Israeli writers. I am, however, mindful of other forms of artistic responses to the Holocaust and its remembrance. For example and as noted by Stephen Feinstein—“Mediums of Memory: Artistic Responses of the Second Generation,” in Breaking Crystal: Writing and Memory After Auschwitz, ed. Ephraim Sicher (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 201-275—Haim Maor’s “The Mark of Cain” showing a portrait of a bearded man, his eyes covered with a black cloth, and his forehead marked by a yellow triangle, is a brilliant artistic expression of “all the problems of [Holocaust] memory.” 794 Nurit Govrin, Kri’at HaDorot: Sifrut Ivrit BeMa’agaleha (Readings of Generations, Cycles in Hebrew Literature), 1 & 2 (Tel Aviv: University of Tel Aviv, Makhon Katz Leheker HaSifrut HaIvrit, Dfus Bnei Shaul, 2002).

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literature written by Nava Semel, Savyon Liebrecht, Lea Aini, and Itamar Levy. Govrin’s third thematic configuration is comprised of Israeli writers who are not necessarily children of Holocaust survivors but are greatly influenced by their interaction with survivors. Amir Gutfreund’s Our Holocaust795 is singled out by Govrin as a literary treasure that elucidates social, cultural, and psychological realms through which young Israeli protagonists discover “traces of Shoah … in the most surprising places, like the little shops where Dad went to order wallpaper or buy light bulbs,”796 and in “Shoah-smart”797 Grandpa Yosef. Writers who were raised and educated in Israel comprise Govrin’s forth cluster. Typically, literature written by the fourth group rejects hegemonic, top-down narratives of Holocaust commemoration. Govrin pairs writer and theater director Joshua Sobol with Keret, despite that Keret was born almost three decades after Sobol. Govrin’s barometer measures levels of countercultural dissent. As such, Keret’s personalized, myth-making alternative to established norms of Holocaust remembrance is compatible with Sobol’s award-winning 1984 drama, Ghetto. Alternating between contemporary Tel Aviv and the Vilna Ghetto under Nazi occupation, Sobol’s Ghetto was intended to repudiate the anathematization of the Judenrat—Nazi-appointed Jewish ghetto councils.798 According to Govrin, Sobol and Keret are linked in deconstructing conventional modes of Holocaust remembrance. Govrin sculpts an even more compounded kinship between a 1945 Holocaust story by the novelist Moshe Shamir, and a story by Keret written some fifty years later. Govrin’s way of threading the two together is through an intriguing thematic correlation. HaGimgum HaSheni (The Second Stutter) by Shamir was published shortly after World War II. To Shamir’s credit, at a time when many—including members of Shamir’s kibbutz, Mishmar HaEmek—showed credulous insensitivity toward Holocaust survivors, he was quick to grasp the incomprehensibility of what survivors went through. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the Zionist hope was that survivors’ gutted lives would somehow morph into a foggy vestige of the past. Shamir knew better. 795

Amir Gutfreund, Our Holocaust, trans. Jessica Cohen (London, UK: The Toby Press, 2006). 796 Gutfreund (2006), 85. 797 Gutfreund (2006), 258. 798 Leah Goldberg’s The Mistress of the Castle, Ben-Zion Tomer’s Children of the Shadow, and Moshe Shamir’s The Heir predate Sobol’s Ghetto, arguing that the horrid role undertook by the Judenrat was not a matter of choice.

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Shamir’s story is about two survivors who were imprisoned in the same concentration camp. The Nazi heading the camp was a bestial sadist who inflicted unspeakable tortures on the Jewish inmates. Importantly—to the storyline—he also happened to stutter. When liberation comes, one survivor finds redemption in love. Outwardly, the second survivor recovers too, but beneath the physical façade he is beleaguered by harrowing memories. People he encounters do not wish or do not know how to acknowledge the insufferable despair gnawing at him, that is, except for one oddity that is impossible to ignore: a stutter. By Govrin’s yardstick, the common denominator unifying Shamir and Keret—as in “Shoes” and “Siren”—is the thematic substratum of individualization and personalization of Holocaust remembrance. Govrin’s thematic construct concludes with a fifth aggregate that in a cyclical manner connects with the first. Unlike writers of the first group, authors of the fifth faction witnessed the Holocaust from afar. They, however, connect with the first cohort in that they attempt to fictionalize being “there.”799 No matter how irrational, having fled Nazi Europe, Gershon Shoffman, Jacob Fichman, and Uri Zvi Greenberg were haunted by having to forsake loved ones and leave them behind to a terrible fate. Greenberg’s poetry is legendary. Born in Galicia into a prominent Hasidic family, Greenberg served in the Austrian army during World War I. Having witnessed all too many anti-Semitic pogroms, he left for Palestine. His parents and sisters remained in Poland. None survived the Holocaust. Learning the fate of his entire family, friends, and community, Greenberg whipped himself into a frenzy of jotting down poetic lines of anguished lamentation. First published in 1951, Greenberg’s elegiac verses, Re‫ۊ‬ovot HaNahar (Streets of the River), are considered by Govrin the foremost collection of Hebrew Holocaust poetry. Motifs of Holocaust images such as piles of shoes, eyeglasses, suitcases, and mounds of shaven hair mark Govrin’s fifth cohort. Accordingly, she ties together Etgar Keret’s “Shoes” and Michal Govrin’s “La Promenade, Triptych”800 on thematic grounds despite several attributes setting the authors apart. Orthopedic shoes worn by an aging Holocaust survivor are the artifact in “La Promenade, Triptych,” and Adidas running shoes in Keret’s “Shoes.” 799

Israelis know that references to “there,” sham in Hebrew, allude to where the Holocaust took place. 800 Michal Govrin, “La Promenade, Triptych,” trans. Dalya Bilu, in Facing the Holocaust: Selected Israeli Fiction, eds. Gila Ramras-Baruch and Joseph Michman-Melkmann (New York & Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society, 1985), 227-260.

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The female protagonist in Michael Govrin’s story is dependent on orthopedic shoes. The shoes are cumbersome and unattractive, but enslavement to these medically prescribed shoes is not a matter of choice. By correlation, and in a way emblematic of Holocaust survivors, she is enslaved to memories of the Holocaust. Keret’s boy protagonist in “Shoes” believes that the Holocaust nightmare is fixed into a pair of running shoes given to him by his loving parents. By creating a mythic interconnection with a pair of shoes, the grandchild is no longer dependent on his mother or teacher in forging a connection with a grandfather who perished in the Holocaust. Personalizing his own mode of coping with Holocaust remembrance makes perfect sense to the boy and is his way of coping with Holocaust remembrance. In summary, be it novels, short stories, or poems authored by Israeli writers, some fit squarely into a generation-by-generation chronology of Holocaust remembrance, but others do not. All, however, fit adroitly into Govrin’s thematic configuration. Be it chronological or thematic modalities, Hebrew literature about Holocaust remembrance echoes growing difficulties in coping with Holocaust remembrance through existing, fixed rituals of commemoration. Dalia Ofer801 suggests that in the days following World War II, the official objective was to ennoble Jewish acts of resistance to the Nazis, as in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, enacted “a meta memory of the Holocaust”802 into law in the form of an annual commemorative day, to be known as Yom HaShoah VeHagvura—meaning in Hebrew (verbatim), “holocaust and bravery day.” The annual date designated was the 26th of the month of Nisan.803 The annual commemorative day commences with a two-minute siren during which Israel comes to a standstill. A second national commemorative day honoring fallen soldiers—to which victims of terrorism were subsequently added— was enacted into law in 1963. The two constitutional, primary remembrance days were calendared in close proximity. Such proximity may have made sense in the early days of Israel coming into its own as a sovereign state. 801

Dalia Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How? The Memory of the Holocaust and the Israeli Experience,” Israel Studies, 18, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 70-85. 802 Ofir (2013), 82. 803 Unlike the Gregorian (solar) calendar, the Jewish (lunar) calendar follows moon cycles. As a result, a Jewish year can end up several days short of the solar year. In order to avoid being out of sync with agricultural seasons and the Gregorian calendar, every so often, the twelfth month of the Jewish year—Adar—is repeated twice. A year in which a second month of Adar is added to the annual calendar is referred to as a “leap year.” The Hebrew names ascribed to Jewish months date back to the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE.

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Nowadays, as set out by Keret in one of his best-known stories, “Siren,”804 the exigency of entwining genocide with national security is debatable. On Holocaust Memorial Day, students and staff assemble in the school’s auditorium. Minutes prior to the commencement of the ceremonial formalities, Shelley asks Eli to reserve the seat next to him. Shortly after, to Eli’s dismay, Shelly takes a seat next to Ron. Ron’s best friend, Mikey, is conspicuously absent. It turns out he is being interviewed by army officials as a possible recruit to an elite Israeli navy unit. The commemoration ceremony concludes with a presentation by a Holocaust survivor, after which students return to their respective classrooms. On the way to his classroom, Eli runs into Sholem, the school’s janitor. Sholem is visibly distressed. Eyes welling up with tears, he tells Eli that he recognized the guest speaker: “That man in the hall, I know him; I was in the Sonderkommando too.”805 Eli has absolutely no idea what Sonderkommando806 means. Mistakenly, however, he believes he can deduce some meaning out of the “commando” fragment of the word, albeit, for the life of him he cannot picture “our skinny old Sholem in any kind of commando unit …”807 By now, Mikey is back from his army interview, and Eli spots Mikey and Ron—Mikey’s ever-loyal Sancho Panza-like companion—steal Sholem’s bicycle. Driven by an impulse to be Sholem’s protector, with a touch of retaliatory jealousy over Shelley’s preference of Mikey and Ron over him, Eli marches to the principal’s office and informs on Mikey and Ron. It does not take Mikey and Ron long to discover the identity of the informant. The two corner Eli in a field, intending to beat him to a pulp. Eli is utterly terrified. Instinctively, he raises his hands to protect his face, when suddenly, “out of nowhere, there came the wail of the memorial siren.”808 Eli had completely forgotten that today is Remembrance Day for the fallen soldiers. To their credit, Mikey and Ron step back and stand at

804

Etgar Keret, “Siren,” in The Story About A Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God (2004), 57-60. 805 Keret, “Siren” (2004), 58. 806 Sonderkommando were inmates, mostly Jewish, who were forced to handle corpses of gas chamber victims—including bodies of loved ones, family members, friends—in Nazi death camps. This heinously cruel work bought inmates short survival time, but they too were doomed to be replaced with another group of inmates and gassed. 807 Keret, “Siren” (2004), 59. 808 Keret, “Siren” (2004), 60.

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attention. Eli is no longer frightened. The sound of the siren protected him “with an invisible shield.”809 As I see it, Keret’s “Siren” is an affirmation of Jacques Derrida’s faith in the exceptionality of literature. Enunciated in an interview with Attridge, “This Strange Institution Called Literature,”810 literature is an “institution which allows one to say everything [tout dire].”811 In principle, as Derrida asserted, the “law of literature” defies or lifts the law; “It is an institution which tends to overflow the institution.”812 Not history, not even philosophy, but literature “has the power to say everything, to break free of the rules, to displace them, and thereby to institute, to invent and even to suspect the traditional difference between nature and institutions, nature and conventional law, nature and history.”813 Finally, literature is inseparable from democracy. In Derrida’s well-known, seemingly paradoxical, delightfully beguiling cogitation, literature has the highest responsibility: a duty of irresponsibility. A web of questions emanates from Keret’s “Siren.” Why is Mikey interviewed by army officials on Holocaust Memorial Day? Surely this is not the only available day for conducting an interview with a prospective army recruit. Why does Keret assign to the female protagonist, Shelly, a rather tacky and negligible role? Is the gender subtext intentional? What are readers to infer from Eli envisioning a commemorative siren as a protective “invisible shield?” Is Keret’s Israel—blemishes and all—the single, most protective safeguard against another Holocaust? Moreover, if that were true, how does one not view the Holocaust as the ultimate raison d’être for the existence of the State of Israel? Judith T. Baumel maintains814 that the rationale and ethos of commemorative acts pass on from one generation to the next. As such, commemorative practices serve “the interest of the commemorators and not necessarily of those being commemorated.”815 Tuvia Frilling816 wavers 809

Keret, “Siren” (2004), 60. Derrida, (Attridge 1992), 33-75. 811 Derrida, (Attridge 1992), 36. 812 Derrida, (Attridge 1992), 36. 813 Derrida, (Attridge 1992), 38. 814 Judith T. Baumel, “Everlasting Memory: Individual and Communal Holocaust Commemoration in Israel,” in The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth Making and Trauma, eds. Robert Wistrich and David Ohana (London, UK: Frank Cass and Company, Ltd., 1995). 815 Baumel (1995), 146. 816 Tuvia Frilling, “Remember? Forget? What to Remember? What to Forget?” Israel Studies, 19, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 51-69. 810

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between forgetting and remembering in regard to the Holocaust, but in the long durée, Frilling believes that the Holocaust resonates “as a kind of bond, an embrace, a cohesive force in Israeli society.”817 Yehuda Elkana818 thinks otherwise. He speaks of the need to forget. Deported in 1944 from Yugoslavia to Auschwitz, Elkana survived and immigrated to Israel. By “forgetting,” Elkana most definitely does not mean erasing from memory acts of genocide committed by the Nazis. Rather, the call to forget is directed at Jews entrenched in “a profound existential ‘angst’ fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust.” Omer Bartov819 maintains that on the one hand, it is unfair to be critical of Israel for “manipulative commemorations of the Holocaust.” After all, “the Jewish state could hardly afford not to officially commemorate the murder of European Jewry.”820 On the other hand, striving for normalization implies allowing for hope—albeit, Bartov qualifies, “a society, one of whose central historical experiences is an event such as the Holocaust, cannot be entirely normal.”821 On his part, Michael Bernard-Donals822 objects to conflating the Holocaust with other responses to catastrophes in Jewish history. Affixing Holocaust remembrance into a long-standing “tapestry of destruction”823 lessens the oneness of the Holocaust. In line with BernardDonals, James E. Young824 is not in favor of reciting traditional liturgical prayers when commemorating the Holocaust. It may provide a shared text, but it assumes that all Holocaust victims would wish to be memorialized through religious rites. The Holocaust did not happen only to religious Jews; it happened to all Jews. Holocaust commemoration ought to be reinvigorated “to encompass multiple memories and meanings,” making

817

Frilling (2014), 65. Yehuda Elkana’s “The Need to Forget” was first published in Haaretz, March 2 1988. The article was reprinted in The CEI Weekly in August 2014. See www. ceiweekly.blog-spot.com/2014/08/in-memoriam-need-to-forget-by-yehuda-elkana. html. 819 Omer Barton, Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996). 820 Bartov (1996), 99. 821 Bartov (1996), 100. 822 Michael Bernard-Donals, Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust (New York: State University of New York Press, 2009). 823 Bernard-Donals (2019), 168. 824 James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). 818

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coping with Holocaust remembrance “more the perennial guardian of memory and less its constant tyrant.”825 The Holocaust, Keret argues, will always invoke coping with an overload of remembrance, although in his case, the details of what his parents endured were always tangential to the tenor in which the Holocaust narrative was communicated to him. His parents taught him to live with ambiguity. When his father would describe what it was like to hide in a dugout trench, he would typically open with a philosophic preamble suggesting that every person has the aptitude to become a champion. Sadly, though, most of us never realize our potential for greatness. Thus, someone with a talent for playing tennis ends up being a mediocre musician. He, however, was fortunate. Hiding from the Nazis for some 600 days brought to light an invaluable talent for sleeping. Crouched in a hole in the ground, he would close his eyes, sleep for six or seven hours, wake up, ask his father if the war was over, and upon being told that it was not, he would go back to sleep. (In a documentary filmed several weeks after his father’s death, a tearful Keret described how his father always moved his feet in his sleep).826 Glossing over horrors of the wartime years was never about accuracy of memories; it was always about a capacity to paint over traumatic events with a stroke of optimism and a whiff of humor. Keret’s mother, Orna Keret, was born in Warsaw, 1934. Forced by the invading Nazi army into the Warsaw ghetto, she, together with other Jewish children, would risk slipping away from the ghetto to procure scraps of food for her starving family. In “A New House in the Old Country, An Architect Built Me a House in Warsaw—Coincidently Right Where My Mother Risked Her Life to Save Her Family,”827 Keret recalls his mother telling him that as conditions in the ghetto worsened, she told her father that she did not care if the Nazis killed her. Her father beseeched her to survive so that the family’s name would continue. She did survive, but her mother, father, and brother were murdered. She remembered a German soldier giving her some chocolate. Soon after, the Germans led a 825

Young (1993), 281. The documentary is in Hebrew with English subtitles. The televised series is called “Culture Heroes” and the specific episode is titled “Etgar Keret, What Kind of Animal Are You?” http://www.youtube/com/watch?v=SCcajgPjTbM. 827 Etgar Keret, “A New House in the Old Country, An Architect Built Me a House in Warsaw—Coincidently Right Where My Mother Risked Her Life to Save Her Family,” trans. Sondra Silverston, Tablet Magazine, October 19, 2012, https:// www.tabletmag.com/sections/community-articles/a-new-house-in-the-old-country/ 2012/10/19. 826

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large group of Jews into a synagogue and set everything and everyone inside on fire. Following the end of the war, she spent some time in Polish and French orphanages, after which she left for Israel. She enjoyed the fact that her famous son was popular in Poland but for a long time refused to accompany him on his trips there. In the preface to “Inside Out,”828 Keret mourns the death of his mother. She passed away right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. When you are a child, Keret says, you are the center of the world. “What’s important to you is important, and what isn’t—simply doesn’t exist.” When World War II ended, with everyone else in her family dead: “She was left with no external, adult narrative to mediate between her experiences and the world. All she had was a giant mosaic composed of countless shards of memories and experience-fragments.”

In Jewish culture, parents are obligated to relay to their children the history of their ancestors. Orna shared the family’s history with her children as she remembered it: “without names, without dates.” Now it is up to Keret to tell his mother’s story to his son and to his readers. Finding the right words to do justice to the memory of his formidable mother proved to be extremely challenging. The result was an exhibition: “Inside Out.” Housed at Berlin’s Jewish Museum, objects on display included texts by Keret about Orna, “the diminutive Wonder Women from Poland, as seen through the eyes of her buck-toothed, youngest child,” and several commissioned works by contemporary artists. Keret is proud of the Berlin exhibition in memory of his mother, although, as he notes in “As Long as Someone Remembers You,”829 alongside his desire to share stories about his mother, “there is also a different desire: to keep her memory to myself.” Stories his father told usually took place in seedy bars with prostitutes and drunks as leading characters. Even when Keret was still too young to know what prostitutes and drunks are, he could sense his father’s empathy for people who were in bad situations and yet strived to overcome misfortune. There was always a tension, Keret recalls, between something

828

Etgar Keret, “Inside Out,” Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, May 3, 2022, https://www. etgarkeret.substack.com. 829 Etgar Keret, “As Long as Someone Remembers You,” Alphabet Soup: Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, March 28, 2023, https://www.etgarkeret.com.

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horrible—often times completely illegitimate—and some beautiful human spirit compensating for that. Conversing with Hamish McKenzi830 about his childhood home, Keret emphasized that for his parents, it was always about their three children prioritizing “our [Keret and his two siblings] unconditional love and our willingness to do whatever we needed to protect the people close to us.” His parents did not particularly like being labeled “Holocaust survivors.” In a strange way, outwardly, they seemed puritan, “but in their mind, they were very, very radical and free and wanted to get the most out of life and not to walk the path of it.” In almost the same breath, Keret suggested that artists are inherently people who “don’t deal with reality in a good way, because if they dealt with it in a good way, they wouldn’t need to revert to art.” (This particular statement by Keret sounds a bit odd to me. Perhaps this was one of those instances when Keret was being controversial for the sake of being controversial.) As a son and as a father, parenting is always on Keret’s mind. “To the Moon and Back”831 is about a man who more than anything wants his son to think of him as the most devoted father. The child’s name is Lidor, and his parents are divorced. The judge awarded full custody to “the bitch.”832 Among several infuriating parenting arrangements, Dad only gets to be with his son on the day before or the day after Lidor’s real birthday. This year, as a special birthday gift, he bought his son a remote control drone. Just as father and son head for a park where Lidor could fly the drone, the man realizes he neglected to purchase the batteries required to operate it. Anxious about creating an impression of ineptness, without providing any particular reason, Dad tells his son they need to get to a nearby shopping mall. Lidor raises no objection. At the mall, to Lidor’s delight, the two ride the escalator up and down several times. Eventually, Dad leads his son to a store where he knows he can buy batteries. At the entrance to the store, in an attempt to divert his son’s attention, Dad encourages Lidor to look around the store and pick another birthday present, anything he fancies. As if glued to the entrance of the store, Lidor points to the cash register. He wants the cash register as a present. “Pimple Face cashier”833 explains the cash register is not for sale. Lidor, however, is adamant: he wants it! Dad offers to pay two thousand shekels for the cash register, but to no avail. It 830

Etgar Keret and Hamish McKenzi, “The Active Voice: Etgar Keret is Thinking,” Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox with Etgar Keret, February 17, 2023, https://www.etgarkeret.substack.com. 831 Etgar Keret, “To the Moon and Back,” in Fly Already (2019), 72-81. 832 Keret, “To the Moon and Back” (2019), 72. 833 Keret, “To the Moon and Back” (2019), 75.

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is not for sale. An irate customer wants the cashier to summon the police. Dad is undeterred. He attempts to dislodge the cash register, but it is far too heavy. In the end, the cash register remains where it is. Batteries in hand, father and son head back to the park where Lidor will get to fly the drone. “Up to the sky,” Dad shouts, “Up to the moon and back!”834 Evidently, as Keret told Deborah Treisman,835 the trigger for “To the Moon and Back” was a disquieting political event that left a profound, parental impression on him. In March 2016, an Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian terrorist in the head after the terrorist was already disarmed. An Israeli court convicted the soldier of manslaughter, a verdict that set off nation-wide protests. Among others, vociferous demonstrators declared that the soldier is not just someone’s son; he is everyone’s son. From a legal and moral standpoint, Keret had no doubt the soldier committed a crime: he shot and killed a man who was no longer a threat to anyone. Prior to becoming a father, Keret would not have considered the matter further. However, as a father, he could not disconnect from the emotional veracity of loving one’s child unconditionally. In the coming days, as far as Keret was concerned, the protestors lost their poignancy by degenerating into “pure bullying.” The melodrama, however, associated with “everyone’s son” prompted “To the Moon and Back”—a story about a desperate father who resorts to aggression as “a necessary act of selfdefense.” Asked by Treisman about the moral standing of the father and the child in “To the Moon and Back,” Keret thought the father is neither admirable nor contemptible. As for the child, Lidor does what children do. Of all the stories written by Keret, “Pride and Joy”836 was his father’s favorite. “Pride and Joy” tells the story of a teenager named Ehud Guznik. Ehud’s parents could not ask for a better son. He is conscientious, assiduously diligent, an excellent student, and a gifted basketball player. His father predicts that one day Ehud will be “the Moshe Dayan of basketball, except without the [eye] patch.”837 Alas, at some point, something goes terribly wrong: the taller the boy grows, the more his parents shrink in size. A day after the Passover week, Zayde, the family’s dog becomes ill. Treated by the vet, Zayde turns out to be fine. However, the vet is alarmed by a noticeable shrinkage of Mr. and Mrs. Guznik. Subsequent blood tests and medical diagnosis come as a shock: the Guzniks suffer from a rare disease of irreversible physical diminution for which there is no cure. Utterly devastated and refusing to accept the 834

Keret, “To the Moon and Back” (2019), 81. Keret, (Treisman 2017). 836 Etgar Keret, “Pride and Joy,” in The Nimrod Flip-Out (2005), 65-73. 837 Keret, “Pride and Joy” (2005), 67. 835

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finality of the medical verdict, Ehud believes that by thwarting his own growth he can halt his parents’ withering. The exemplary son begins to smoke two packs a day of cheap, unfiltered cigarettes. He eats unhealthy food and sleeps as little as possible. Before long, his grades suffer, and he is no longer a star athlete. He reeks of cigarettes, and his friends will not come near him. No matter, Ehud persists until one day, when father and mother measure a mere fifteen centimeters, the shrinkage stops. From then on, wherever he goes, Ehud tucks his parents into his shirt pocket, from where his father cheers him on and his mother cries tears of pride and joy. As always, offering interpretations of his stories is antithetical to Keret. On one occasion, though, he pointed out to me that the ability to extract a smile out of a terrifying narrative is the empathetic, humanistic legacy his Holocaust surviving parents passed on to him.

CLOSING REMARKS

Renana Keydar studies law and literature. Contemplating the linkage between ethics, justice, and storytelling,838 Keydar reflects on the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem as a watershed moment foregrounding “a unified [Holocaust] meta narrative.”839 If, for Walter Benjamin, the horrors of World War I gave rise to the genre of the novel and thereby relegated storytelling to a lower status, the 1961 court proceedings spawned a return to storytelling in that the trial spotlighted personal narratives. Handpicking witnesses from pre-Holocaust towns and villages across Europe, Gideon Hausner, Israel’s Chief Prosecutor—the “omniscient narrator”840— assembled “a choir of shattered voices in the courtroom.”841 Three decades later, Omer Bartov842 cautions against viewing the Holocaust as an “ineffable, incomprehensible, and therefore somewhat ahistorical event.”843 That, Bartov argues, would be tantamount to saying that the Holocaust was an act of the gods, thus absolving humans from taking responsibility. According to Bartov, Keret gives no credence to representing the Holocaust as some sort of divine intervention or cataclysmic force majeure. The Holocaust was not outside of human control. Furthermore, Keret’s literature offers an alternative to entrenched lines of Holocaust remembrance. Remembrance of the Holocaust in Keret’s oeuvre extends far beyond the limits of the death camps” and encompass “the general problems we face today in writing on the history of humanity and in seeking to distill its meaning for our own culture and society.”844 On the one hand, Keret attributes everything about him as a 838

Renana Keydar, “Rethinking Plurality: On Ethics and Storytelling in the Search for Justice,” Dibur Literary Journal, no. 1 (Fall 2015), “Spoken Word, Written Word: Rethinking the Representation of Speech in Literature,” https:www. networks.h-net/code/28655/discussions/97645/toc-new-publication-dibur-literaryjournal. 839 Keydar (2015), 25. 840 Keydar (2015), 24. 841 Keydar (2015), 25. 842 Omer Bartov, “Intellectuals on Auschwitz: Memory, History and Truth,” History and Memory, 5, no. 1 (Spring-Summer, 1993): 87-129. 843 Bartov (1993), 91. 844 Bartov (1993), 91.

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person and writer to being a child of Holocaust survivors. On the other hand, Keret renders this sweeping, panoptic view of his existential being as mere biological coincidence. As substantiated by Bartov—and in complete consonance with my thinking—although Holocaust remembrance is omnipresent in Keret’s literature, he does not presume to grasp “the heart of darkness any better than the next person.”845 In my introduction, I cite And the Rat Laughed by Nava Semel. By way of concluding the book, I come full circle and turn to an article by Ranen Omer-Sherman in which he binds Semel and Keret together in respect to Holocaust remembrance.846 Extracting some sort of beauty from Semel and Keret’s literature, Omer-Sherman casts Semel and Keret— along with David Grossman—as outstanding, second-generation writers who invite us to reflect upon extremely difficult issues about a traumatic past and its bearing upon the present and the future. Semel and Keret are viewed by Omer-Sherman as indispensible in a transformative process whereby Israelis are becoming aware of Holocaust remembrance as a constituent in shaping their moral integrity. As noted by Omer-Sherman, the moral code of Israeli society is often represented in literature written by Semel and Keret by measuring the disparity between painful family memories and nationalistic forms of Holocaust remembrance. In all, Omer-Sherman attributes to Semel and Keret the prowess—each in their own distinctive way—to render the Shoah’s legacy as cautionary watchfulness against social apathy toward oppressed and vulnerable others. I share Omer-Sherman’s adulation of Nava Semel and Etgar Keret. I concur with Omer-Sherman’s appreciation of the creative ardor with which Semel and Keret dramatize such a difficult subject as Holocaust remembrance. Omer-Sherman is also discerning in pointing out that neither Keret nor Semel attribute any cathartic impact to their writings. I do, however, perceive Semel and Keret’s literature as different types of coping with traumatic remembrance. Semel’s perception of herself is that of a zealot guardian of her mother’s Holocaust history, a secondgeneration daughter of the Shoah who absorbed information about the Holocaust by osmosis. Semel spent years trying to penetrate the barrier of silence imposed on what happened to her mother between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three. That, however, does not mirror Keret’s childhood, youth, and adulthood. True, as illuminated throughout this book, almost every trait that distinguishes Keret as a person and storyteller 845

Bartov (1993), 91. Ranen Omer-Sherman, “To Extract from it Some Sort of Beautiful Thing: The Holocaust in the Families and Fiction of Nava Semel and Etgar Keret,” Humanities Journal, 9, no. 4, 2000, https://www.mdpi.com/ 2076-0787/9/4/137.

846

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has something to do with his parents being Holocaust survivors. At the same time, his parents’ Holocaust past was not cloaked in dark secrecy. In writing this book, my intention was to accentuate the individuality and singularity of Etgar Keret as a masterful, gifted writer, one who was greatly inspired by his Holocaust surviving parents in thrusting forward a distinctive conceptualization of the ethos of coping with Holocaust remembrance. The modality of coping with Holocaust remembrance promoted in this book intertwines the depth and scope of a collective wound with a moral duty to bear the wound responsibly. It is by elucidating the ethos of coping with Holocaust remembrance that Keret broadens and intensifies our awareness and cognition of the sagacity of participating in a shared capacity for collective empathy with others. It is most certainly not about the Jewish people being “reasonable” regarding the Holocaust. Rather, it is about the forthrightness and moral sincerity of empathetic coping with traumatic remembrance.

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—. “Ratziti LeHavin Lean Panenu Muadot, Mitbarer Ki LeShum Makom” (I Wanted to Understand Where are We Heading; it Turns Out: Nowhere). Interview with Etgar Keret by Yehonatan Liss. Haaretz, June 16, 2011. http://www.haaretz. co.il/misc/2.444/1.1177301. —. “School Isn’t (Always) Like Jail.” Translated by Sondra Silverston. Tablet Magazine, September 6, 2012. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/school-isntalways-like-jail. —. “Silent Film, Happy Birthday to My Favorite Storyteller.” Translated by Jessica Cohen. Alphabet Soup: The Matchbox Project with Etgar Keret, April 16, 2022. https://www.etgarkeret.substack.com. —. “Something Out of Something: Talking with Etgar Keret.” Interview with Etgar Keret by Rebecca Sacks. The Paris Review, May 1, 2012. www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/05/01/something-out-ofsomething-talking-with-etgar-keret. —. “Stoned Conversations: High Maintenance’s Ben Sinclair & Author Etgar Keret.” Interview with Ben Sinclair and Etgar Keret by Mike Glazer, October 29, 2019. https://hightimes.com/entertainment/stoned-conversations-highmaintenances-ben-sinclair-author-etgar-keret. —. “Stories We Tell.” Interview with Etgar Keret. Words Without Borders Daily, 2016. www.wordswithout-borders.org/etgar-keret-stories-we-tell. —. “Strangers in Their Own Country. Israeli Liberals and Democrats Felt Alienated from their Government. The Upcoming Elections Could Mend that Rift.” Translated by Sondra Silverston. Tablet Magazine, December 23, 2014. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/strange/ bedfellows. —. “Stupor in Our Time.” Translated by Sondra Silverston. The New York Times, March 26, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/opinion/stupor-in-our-time. html. —. Suddenly, A Knock on the Door. Translated by Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston and Nathan Englander. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. —. “Suddenly: an Interview with Etgar Keret” by Courtney Becks. Rain Taxi Online Edition, Summer 2012. https:www.raintaxi.com/keret_becks.

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