O que resta da vida e o contexto histórico: a respeito da identidade judaica e sua expressão na literatura hebraica

Abstract

The definition of Jewish identity in modern times has concerned scholars for decades. To understand the origins of this concern, it is necessary to resort to ideological and literary texts that dealt with the “new Jew”. Following this issue, the need to understand and define identity characteristics that followed the various specifications developed by thinkers in the early 20th century stands out. With the unfolding of the conceptions of Zionism and achievement of its intent in the land of their ancestors, new nomenclatures followed, like “new Hebrew”, “sabra”, “Israeli.” It was in Hebrew literature that, from the late 19th century, the main artistic record of the changes and passages of “Jew” to “Israeli” were made. In recent decades, in which relevant academic papers have exposed many aspects of Israeli history and society, showing the idiosyncrasies of many segments previously forgotten or overlooked, new features have been placed in the foreground, besides exposing the weaknesses and fragmentation of concepts now considered outdated by some. This text, which aims to briefly go over these qualifiers, will discuss how some features of constructions and deconstructions of identity are manifested in the literature, specifically in the Hebrew novel Sheerit hachaiym (free translation: What remains of life) by Zeruya Shalev, published in 2011.