World Literature Today V. 63, No. 1, winter 1989, 19‑26.

Reprinted in: Israel Horizons, V. 37, No. 1, Spring 1989, 6‑13.

POETRY BY WOMEN IN ISRAEL

AND THE WAR IN LEBANON

Karen Alkalay‑Gut

Despite a constant state of war for forty years, before 1982 Hebrew poetry had almost no examples of political poems or poems about war by women. There are a number of reasons for this selective silence, and certainly there was a precedent in history for the exclusion of women in the essential use of the Hebrew language. Hebrew had been used only in prayer for many years and was a scholars' language, the property of religious men, and most women had little actual knowledge of it until the twentieth century. While Jewish women may have been literate in other languages, there were no encouragements to have more than a rudimentary ritual knowledge of the prayers in Hebrew. When the dream of a Jewish homeland was revitalized in the late nineteenth century, however, the women who helped to bring Hebrew to modern times by writing poetry found appreciative audiences. Because Hebrew was a language consciously resurrected for daily use, it needed all the help it could get from the world of literature and the competition for publication and honors between men and women writers that characterized the literature of the United States was entirely absent from the Hebrew literary scene. Any one who wrote in Hebrew was encouraged, a hero of the cause, and the work of women was welcomed by publishers eager for a variety of voices.

The socialist basis of the society emphasized the equality of women, and these ideals were put into practice in the fields, in the hospitals, and on the building sites. Yet when women wrote they restricted their subjects to selected matters, and described only their new and long‑anticipated landscape, their love of the country, and their emotions. They did not touch the one central subject that pervaded the poetry of male writers, the necessity of military defense and the tragic loss of life.

Poetry by men concerning war until 1982 was concerned not with its justification, but with the fact of the existence of war, and the poets of the first generation of the Israeli State, known as the "Palmach Generation" (the name for the army before 1948) wrote about the horrors and tragedies of battle as terrible inevitabilities. Wars were viewed as defensive, vital to the very existence of Israel and the Jewish people, and admittedly dangerous to the moral fiber of society. A typical poem is "Guard me, My God" by S. Shalom, which begins: "Guard me, God, from hating my fellow man/ Guard me from remembering what he did to me in my youth." Another example of poetry by men on this subject is Amir Gilboa's, "Isaac", a wrenching contemporization of Abraham's obligation to sacrifice his only son, as Israel felt it was forced to sacrifice its young men to battle.

In the morning the sun strolled in the woods

with me and father,

my right hand in his left.

A knife flashed from between the trees like lightning.

and I shrink from my eyes' terror before the blooded leaves.

Father, father, come rush to save Isaac

so no one will be missing from the meal at noon.

It is I who am slaughtered, my son.

Already my blood is on the leaves.

And father's voice was stilled,

his face pale

I wanted to scream, writhing against belief

and tearing open my eyes

I awoke.

And my right hand was drained of blood. (1)

The sense of personal involvement in interrelated political, spiritual and military issues ‑ and the authority to comment on these issues ‑ is extremely apparent.

Rachel Blaustein (1890‑1931), with a degree in agronomy, worked the fields and tended the animals. Yet her poem, "To My Country" written in the twenties, was the perfect example of the way women viewed their role in the literary world. The poem begins:

I didn't sing of thee, my country,

Nor laud thy name

With acts of heroism

In myriads of battles!

Only a tree ‑ my hands planted

On the quiet Jordan shores.

Only a path ‑ my feet wore

to the fields. (2)

and continues with an apology for the poverty of her gift of poems to her motherland. Her poetry constitutes only a partial involvement in the country, only a poor substitute for the complete involvement from which she was excluded as a woman.

The poems of "Rachel", as she is known, were concerned with the individual in a spiritual environment ‑ relating to the land of her dreams, and her dreams within that land. "To My Country" and other poems by her have been set to music, and are played regularly on the radio, as are the poems of the freedom fighter, Hana Senesh. Best known by Senesh is the following:

WALKING TO CAESAREA

My God, My God

May it never end:

The sand and the sea

Whisper of water

The flash of sky

The prayers of man.

Senesh, who was captured when she parachuted into enemy territory during World War II, tortured, and killed, emphasizes the hope for a more spiritual world and a better future. In 1940 she wrote "In the Fires of War" in which she searches the battlefield with her flashlight for a human face. And in other poems she emphasizes the power of the individual to institute major changes in the world. "Blessed Be the Match" praises the "match" which though extinguished ignites a flame in the hearts of mankind and extolls the honorable hearts that knew when self sacrifice is necessary.

This voice from the dead affirming the value of life and the necessity for involvement in it has been a consolation for many, and the poems of Hana Senesh, although poetically considered less than significant, remain standard fare for memorial days and other public occasions. And the affirmation of the significance of life has continued to be a major subject for women. Zelda Mishovsky's (1914‑1984) "Each Man Has a Name", a long list of the characteristics that individualize each human being, is a poem particularly valuable in a time of military crisis.

Each man has a name

given him by God

and by his father and mother

each man has a name

given him by his stature and his smile

and given him by his clothes

each man has a name

given him by the hills

and given him by his walls

each man has a name

given him by his fate

and given him by his friends

each man has a name

given him by his sins

and given him by his yearnings

each man has a name

given him by his enemies

and given him by his love

each man has a name

given him by his celebrations

and given him by his work

each man has a name

given him by the seasons

and given him by his blindness

each man has a name

given him by the sea

and given him

by his death. (3)

Because this poem emphasizes, in a way perhaps never intended, the value of significant death, it is read often at military funeral services and the effect of poems like this one ‑ read over the grave of an 18 year old soldier ‑ on a constantly grief stricken society, cannot be underestimated.

Whatever their roles were in real life, in poetry the role of women in war was initially to support, to comfort, and to inspire.

An important aspect of this affirmation of the significance of existence and the necessity for individual efforts to enable social change has been an optimism about future peace. War was only a temporary situation, and there was always anticipation of better times. Speaking to a woman, Leah Goldberg (1911‑1970) wrote during the war in 1948: "You will go in the field. Alone. Unscorched by the heat of fires/ On roads that once bristled with horror and blood./ And with integrity you will be once again humble and acquiescent/ As of the grasses, as one of mankind." (4) The suggestion here is not only that war, but the heroic role ‑ even of woman ‑ was only temporary, and that the role of woman would revert back to its natural "humble and acquiescent" position once peace could be achieved.

Because the military situation seemed more quiet in the late fifties and early sixties, poetry in Israel followed the precedent of American and British literature and became confessional. As if obeying Leah Goldberg's declaration, the women poets seemed to become "humble and acquiescent." Turning from the concept of 'public' poetry, poetry written consciously to become part of a nation's literary heritage with an eye always on universally shared emotions, the poets of the 60's wrote about themselves. The subjects were the same ones then popular in American poetry by women: loneliness, identity, the impossibility of love. Typical was the poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch (b. 1936) who wrote of herself, her isolation, and her pain as a woman. Her "Mechanical Doll", describing an apparent recovery after a nervous breakdown and a return to the empty existence of a woman, has been standard reading for high school students since it was written.

And that night I was a mechanical doll

and I turned right and left, to all sides

and I fell on my face and broke to bits,

and they tried to put me together with skillful hands

And then I went back to being a correct doll

and all my manners were studied and compliant.

But by then I was a different kind of doll

like a wounded twig hanging by a tendril.

And then I went to dance at a ball,

but they left me in the company of cats and dogs

even though all my steps were measured and patterned.

And I had golden hair and I had blue eyes

and I had a dress the color of the flowers in the garden

and I had a straw hat decorated with a cherry.

The message in this poem ‑ of the necessity for a public facade, the inability of the sensitive person to function in an uncaring, unreal society, the irrelevance and even danger of the real individual to society ‑ struck a note of recognition in many readers, as did poems like "Time Caught in a Net" in which the narrator describes herself as "one of those little girls/ who sail around the whole world in one night/ and come to the land of Cathay/and Madagascar,//and who smash plates and cups/ from so much love,/so much love,/so much love. (5) This image of the passive‑aggressive woman caught in a double‑bind was so similar to that of the American woman of this period that there are times when the poetry of Ravikovitch and Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath seem almost interchangeable.

The fact that there were so few differences between the self perceptions of American and Israeli women would not have been surprising had Ravikovitch been living on a peaceful street in the suburbs of Boston somewhere, or Devon, but Israel was only temporarily at rest ‑ in the eye of the storm. The Six Day War of 1967 was followed by the surprise attack on all its many borders on Yom Kippur of 1973.

No one was more than a few miles from any of these borders; war in Israel physically involves every individual. And in 1973 not only was there the very real immediate danger of personal annihilation, but there was also fear and uncertainty about loved ones at the front. Thousands of young men and fathers were killed immediately, and many more met their deaths in the months following that attack. Wives, sisters, friends and mothers divided their time between the radio and television, spinning the dials for more news. But no matter how much their lives were taken up with the unavoidable problems of communications, supplies, fear, blackouts, etc., there seemed to be no specific poetic reaction. To live so entirely in a specific experience, and to avoid it so completely, is a truely amazing achievement, and begs further inquiry.

Dahlia Ravikovitch and Yona Wollach (1945‑1986) dominated the women poets of this generation. Living in antithetical situations, these two very different women may be parallelled with Plath and Sexton: Ravikovich controlled, intellectual, and interested in children, and Wollach flamboyant, self involved, hungering aloud for love. For Wollach, the military situation was reflected only in her choice of language in discussing her own situations. The terms of war, of contemporary religious and political conflicts, were employed as metaphors for personal relationships, and "Feelings" is a typical example:

Our feelings are hostages ‑

We exchange them

With each other

Mine for yours

Yours for mine

We give and take

What for what

Two hostages

For your love

Two hostages

For a kiss

Ten hostages

For your honesty

A plot of land

For your last thought

A jet plane

For silence

Release from follow‑up

For your laughter

A bundle of money

For understanding (6)

While there is here, as in other poems of Wollach, a clear causal relationship between the failure of individual relationships and the principles of communication embedded in the military uncertainty, the concern is with the couple, and not the society.

Why was there so little overt concern by women poets with the war that has constantly been threatening the existence of Israel since its generation? In the poems of Lisa Fliegel, an American immigrant, the major distinction between women and men in Israeli society is vocalized. "Those born here wear cradle to grave uniforms/ these are the conditions that unite them ‑ war and the valley of death." Men, who from the age of eighteen until their forties, are at the command of their country, who lay their lives on the line for over twenty years, are viewed as having more authority to deal with the subject of war than women who only remain behind the front lines and wait. On Memorial Day Fliegel describes herself as standing "apart because a woman can't really know ‑/ she doesn't fight". (7) Because they feel they have no right to speak of a war in which they could not physically risk themselves, she notes, many women avoid the topics of war and concentrate on their own problems. The reasons for keeping women behind the front lines are complex, dynamic and beyond the scope of this discussion. The result, however, has been that women in the army since the War of Independence in 1948 have in general played a diminishing role. This tendency has been reversed in the past three years, partly because of increasing technology which makes physical strength less significant, and partly because the long‑term mobilization necessitated by the war in Lebanon made woman‑power more important. If alterations in the concept of gender roles have also been a factor in these changes, they are not apparent or measurable, but do correspond with greater political and military involvement and criticism.

There were other reasons for silence than lack of the authority of military involvement. How could one discuss a war in which one's family was actively engaged? The possibility of endangering the life or the morale of a loved one was too great. For women who stand on the sidelines to suggest to their men that the battle they was fighting had better not be fought was to increase the chances that they would be killed. The role of the woman in society was one of unquestioning support, and consequently the potentially significant voice in poetry was also silenced.

The political female poet who maintained popular recognition during this time and remained popular through the Begin administration was the lyricist Nomi Shemer, whose gentle militarism was in line with the establish concept of a woman's role and the accepted politics of the government. In one of her most popular songs, "On the Honey and the Thorn," she warns that God combines the bitter (defense) with the sweet (peace) for the sake of "our baby daughter." The acceptibility of Shemer is clearly linked to her fulfillment of perceived roles and attitudes.

The general political consensus until the election of Menachem Begin in 1977 helped contribute to the relative military silence of women. Women felt no need to interfere in a situation about which there seemed to be almost no alternative and the men in charge appeared to be handling competently. There was no discussion of the basic issue of war in the poetry by men either. But with the dissolution of a general consensus and the rise of a more militaristic party which seemed to encourage obvious prevarication both to government leaders and the public, general discussion became necessary.

The situation became extreme when the war in Lebanon began in 1982. Although initially viewed by the general population as a possibly justifiable pre‑emptive strike, the operation soon began to be perceived as a full‑scale war, one led by potentially irresponsible leaders. Having condemned Nazi war criminals because the excuse of following orders can constitute no justification for immoral acts, Israeli society could not justify itself by blaming the leaders. It was up to the individual to keep informed of all the vagaries and implications, to take a proportional share of the responsibility and the blame, and to do whatever possible to rectify the situation.

My own situation was illustrative. Two months before Israel's invasion of Lebanon I was attending an academic conference in Austria. One of my colleagues was from the University of Beirut, and the questions we asked each other brought forth my first tentative political poems when the war broke out two months later.

TO ONE IN BEIRUT

Not a day goes by without my thinking of you . . .

as in a clandestine affair I am reminded

by the newspapers, the sounds in the air,

that you are there, and I in Tel Aviv.

Today brings a letter, postmarked Princeton,

sent through Jounieh to Larnaca on its way here.

You are well, as of the sixteenth of July, 1982,

and today is the 30th. Last night

on the news, we were still pounding the city.

As long as we kept from politics, we were friends

strolling together down the sea road in an Austrian town,

shocking the guide with our nationalities

and talking Pound, sex, divorce, food, wine.

How our lives would be fine

now, if that was all there was

to talk of. But where we live

we speak only of death and think

of somewhere else.

The helplessness of the individual in a political situation was part of the issue. The other part could be seen in "Friend and Foe", written a few days earlier.

Skyhawks fly over my city

on their way to bomb yours.

We are awakened by the noise

and I fall asleep restlessly

dreaming of you and your daughters.

My Lebanese friend had reminded me that "If anything happens to my girls,/I hold you personally responsible." and in the poem I found myself answering:

Friend! My husband is in civil defense

and my sons are too small for the army. You

have daughters and are old and alcoholic.

We can't fight this war.

But both of us are in it

and responsible. (8)

Responsibility was a central issue. Not only was this war the first considered avoidable and non‑defensive, it was the only war in which decisions concerning its progress continued to be made for an extended period of time. The military action ‑ although initially perceived as defensive (to stop the katushas, fired from PLO bases in Lebanon, from killing Israeli citizens) ‑ was becoming an offensive war. The basic values ‑ of love of peace, of war only as self defense, of society as a place of protection for the innocents ‑ that were embedded in the original conception of Israel, were now becoming fogged, and it seemed time for an acknowledgement of this. Even if some aspects of the war were considered necessary, a traditional acknowledgement of shame and regret was equally necessary.

I was not the only one. An unprecedented movement, "Mothers Against Silence," urging the government to consider the significance of the lives of their sons in their political and military decisions, was a major sign that something had changed in the attitude of women to war. Simultaneously, political poems by women began to appear in literary journals and newspapers. Riva Rubin, who had come to Israel from South Africa years before to escape the immorality of Apartheid, now found her two sons in Lebanon. The elder was a medic, the younger a tank driver. Both of them seemed so young, so helpless. They should have been protected. But, like Isaac's mother Sarah, mothers backed out of the picture when it came time for the sacrifice.

Rubin's poetry traced a growing aggressiveness in her personality that was reinforced by her maternal concerns. Some reflect the defensive maternal instinct. Just before the war, she protested the endangered situation of children living in border towns.

Night Fears

Boogeyman, Goblin,

Sandman, Troll,

Babayaga

Tokolosh

KATYUSHA (9)

The Katyusha rockets had become incorporated into the terrors of childhood, but these fears ‑ random and faceless as any fairy tale monster ‑ were real. And yet the alternatives were equally terrifying: It was against these rockets that her sons were being sent to fight. And in fighting the nightmares of children they too had entered the world of nightmare, where the concepts of villian and hero were often interchangeable.

Hero

Let me sing a song of love on this mountain peak till they find me

(The colours of thousands

of universes imploding

to softness) blackly

Black (my throat my lips)

burned away

(Silver

the cold) fills me

black (the stars soft

their tips) black

as my stagnant tears

(I warm myself)

on the cooling turret (clinging)

with my charred arms

I will require large points of reference now my vision is shattered

But it was on the more popular level that poetry by women really struck home. At a demonstration outside the Parliament building, one of the organizers read the following poem by "an anonymous mother":

Being the mother of a soldier in Lebanon,

Is to tremble each time you hear the helicopter's roar,

And to jump each time the phone rings,

and to freeze with shock at each knock on the door.

Our boys do not complain: only their eyes speak. . .

their bodies are not tired, and they have strength,

But in their hearts there are questions and their souls know no rest.

Forgive us, our sons, that, this once,

We presume to break our silence and shout aloud. (10)

The silence was broken ‑ despite the fears of the danger of speaking out ‑ and the reasons were not based on the misgivings about physical danger, not only maternal fears and needs for protection, but the moral justification of this risk.

The moral crisis came when the Christian Lebanese Army massacred women and children in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shattila, and Israeli soldiers, guarding the camps, refrained from intervention. The Israeli public was outraged, not only because of the terrible murder of women and children, but also because of the morally equivocal position of the soldiers. Dahlia Ravikovitch published two poems in the most popular literary journal, Moznaim. Both of these poems take their stands on the war on the basis of the simple humanity she felt was being lost in the rhetoric of politicians. "A Baby Can't be Killed Twice", for example, pairs the young Israeli soldiers with the children they didn't allow to escape from the massacre.

"Back to camp, march!" the soldier ordered

the shrieking women of Sabra and Shatila.

He had his orders to fulfill.

And the children were already lying in the puddles of sewage,

mouths gaping,

calm.

No one will hurt them.

A baby can't be killed twice.

.. . . . .

Our sweet soldiers ‑

they asked nothing for themselves.

How strong their wish

to come home in peace. (11)

The effect of Ravikovitch's subsequent public appearances at anti‑war rallies, where she was interviewed for the evening news and quoted in the daily papers, can only begin to be measured if one imagines Sylvia Plath at a sit‑in. If someone who has been the emblem of self‑involvement could now conceive it her duty to protest the war, who could remain silent?

These poets were widely discussed, their poetry published in newspapers and newstand magazines, and debated in panels at the university. They have been anthologized, published in book form, and ‑ most significantly ‑ read and discussed.

Other voices also began to be heard, some more stridently than others, all of them ‑ in a country that thrives on controversy ‑ welcomed by magazines, weekly literary supplements of daily newspapers and feminist journals. Maya Bejerano, whose intellectual poetry, influenced by Eliot and Stevens, has been concerned with the role of women, took on the subjects of Lebanon and the destruction of the country. The "Good Fence", the open border between Israel and Lebanon, considered in 1980 a great step forward in Israel because it indicated improved relations between the two countries, was reconsidered by Bejerano three years later:

Child's play makes it possible to understand the "Good Fence."

The high railing is the good fence to children on the balcony

Who know that it is possible to fly off it, and do not fly,

See the distance and covet it,

For hours look through its bars as their desire grows. (12)

The direct political involvement of Shelley Elkayyam led her to help form an international peace movement, entitled "East For Peace." Elkayyam's primary goal, "the integration of Israel in the Middle East" by encouraging coexistence and mutual understanding, (13) was given greater impetus because of the war in Lebanon. In "Battle Fiefdom" Elkayyam uses the language of war to oppose war; the speaker, having developed an identity of its own, becomes her own army. "I became a sword at the last galloping battle./ Every evening cutting into the wind/ popping out of the back of my neck/ hard bulbs of lies. . ." (14)

Although the war in Lebanon was not exclusively a women's occupation, and almost every poet became somehow involved in the issue, the women were those who were suddenly in an issue they had not publicly aired before. The war in Lebanon opened up new possibilities for many, although the possibilities were not pleasant, and some women even became poets because of the strong feelings generated by the war. Raya Harnick's poem, "Your Socks", speaks with the authority of a woman who is inextricably involved, as is every human being, in the effects of war, past present and future:

Your socks in the drawer

the clothes folded in the closet

your fatigues, too,

and your watch ticks on my hand

wakes me in vain every morning

at precisely four thirty.

Where were you rushing to at four thirty

to what destruction to what end

at four thirty in the month of June

what were you rushing for where was the fire. . .

And your clothes in the closet

the dress uniform, the fatigues,

the ranked army jacket next to the curtain.

And the watch that wakes me in the night

at four thirty exactly.

Harnick, who lost her son ‑ an officer active in the peace movement ‑ early in the war of 1982, affirms the interconnectedness of all generations of Israelis in the fate of those who fight in this and other poems such as "And At Night":

And at night he came to me

the unborn boy

and looked into my eyes

and asked:

Where is my father?

His eyes were

your eyes, my son. And the slant

of his brows were yours

and mine, and the boy asked:

Where is my father?

Your father, my son, was swept up

in the spirit of the mountain. He remained

in a strange land, my son.

Someone made a mistake my beautiful boy

and now you will not be.

Where is my father he asks,

the unborn boy.

Where is my son she asks

the mother who no longer lives.

Where I ask the man

who remained on the crest of the mountain. (15)

The effect of war was not isolated, bad only for those who fought, but destroyed generations to come. The biblical concept of the "sins of the fathers visited on the sons" becomes even more poignant when it is the death of the father and the absence of "sons."

"Behind the Lines ," by Yehudit Cafri, gives the same sense of loss and interconnectedness, to the extent that a woman, made mad by society, is irrevocably effected by events.

Lately

she has come to live there.

She stays in that forest

almost all the time;

going barefoot and uncombed

conversing with the reeds

and watching the ants.

I would always tempt her

to come back to us, at least at night

or when she was cold

or when she was afraid.

But now I can't succeed.

She looks at me

with hostile gaze

and retreats into her shadow castle

becomes freckles of light and shadow.

No she doesn't want to come back.

Sometimes she sits for hours

and waits

for the birds to begin to speak with her

for the ants to move forward

with their burden of seeds and pits.

Sometimes she throws nervous glances

to the place where the road enters the forest

as if after all

she still waited for some

someone

who was once there

with her

and me

and disappeared

when the war began. (16)

"Behind the Lines" is, it will be remembered, the "proper" place for women during war. Here it has become the only proper moral position to choose. In writing the poem, however, Cafri is taking a more extreme position than the woman in the poem, by refusing to wait passively behind the lines, and attacking their very existence. And indeed this seems to be the major change in the poetry of women about the war in Lebanon.

It has been often suggested that Menachem Begin's retirement, his subsequent seclusion from politics and personal depression, was to some extent caused by the resistance of women to the war. "Mothers Against Silence," many reporters agree, broke down the singleness of vision of the former Prime Minister. If women, who had traditionally waited in silence, allowing their men the decisions, were now vocal in their disagreement, something serious had happened.

Clearly the stereotype of the "Moral Mother" cannot be the only viewpoint from which to deal with military issues. (17) But it was society's respect for this stereotype that was so effective. And from this voice, other female voices have begun to be heard. The involvement of women poets in military issues does not appear to be diminishing with the withdrawal of Israeli troops. The issue of combat in the army has been reopened and women have now been offered far more authoritative positions in the army than in previous years. Since the army is often a stepping stone to civilian positions of authority, this change is not minor.

In numerous other ways the influence of this recent war is still felt: In a recent popular anthology of love poetry by women which listed responses to a questionnaire about subjects such as love and society, a number of women poets stated blankly their opposition to the war and the necessity of peaceful alternatives. Cafri shifted the questions of love, and society, and responded to "love of society": "War is the destruction of life. The solution of power means the recurrence of war. . .There are no solutions in power, but only destruction and death. . . .It is necessary to find a true solution through discussion. . .'Let respect for others, their intentions and rights for life and liberty, be as pleasant to me as my own.'" (18) When one considers the usual expectations for a volume of love poetry, the military concerns of the poets are quite remarkable.

Peace remains a distant goal in the Middle East, but at least now it is not solely an issue for the male population to determine. Let it be hoped that women may open a dialogue on levels that men have not, as yet, been able to reach.

GAZA ‑ 1974

I

After dinner with the grandmother ‑

young wives of the household

feed the children and serve dessert to the men.

I am a guest, an English teacher new

to the Middle East, without

even the basic Arabic most Israelis know

and I cannot play in pantomine ‑

like my daughter ‑ with the children and the goats.