Literature Courses
Literature Courses
AALL 155 Introduction to Israeli Culture
Professor Shai Ginsburg
In this course we will study select Israeli films of the last five decades. Watching some of the best films that were produced in Israel in these years, we will trace the themes and forms that are shaping contemporary Israeli cinema in contradistinction to American and European cinemas. We will analyze how these films deal with two of the fault lines that run across Israeli society: the tension between Jews and Arabs and between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. We will ask how Israeli films represent the social gap, immigration to and emigration from Israel, militarism and civil society, and masculinity and femininity to provide the viewer with a commentary on Israeli history and the present moment. Cross-listed with Jewishst 139; Rel 161P; Lit 163L
AALL 156/256 Representing the Holocaust
Professor Shai Ginsburg
Already during WW II Jews in Palestine began to consider the appropriate way of remembering, commemorating and representing the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany. Indeed, the idea of a memorial museum was first raised in 1942, while the destruction of European Jewry was still underway unhindered. The memory of the Holocaust, however, was never a simple issue. On the one hand, the state presented itself as the logical conclusion to the Holocaust. The Holocaust, so does the Zionist argument go, proves that Jews could not live free of persecution unless in their own independent state. On the other hand, in a society that valued military activism and criticized the traditional Jewish way of life for being passive, the failure of victims to resist the Nazi perpetrators posed a constant embarrassment. Within this double bind, we will discuss the way the Jewish Holocaust is represented and functions within Israeli-Jewish culture by examining various cultural media: literature, rock music, films, court transcripts, museums and more. We will investigate the limits of representation, and at the same time ask questions about the historical and ideological deployment of Holocaust representation in Israel.