Literary Jerusalem

What is Jerusalem? We know of it’s religious and historical prominence, as well as it's status as the epicenter of political conflict. We’ve read biblical and historical accounts galore, including Armstrong, Goldhill, Magidor, and Martini. Through these readings, we’ve seen people’s deep and unflinching attachment to Jerusalem create beautiful and moving stories. So, why hasn’t the Western world validated Jerusalem’s literary merit?

Harold Bloom theorized the Western canon was formed to create shared beliefs, ideas, and morals to perpetuate equal grounds for education and culture through a collection of books that have recognized literary authority. However, the canon has mostly focused on old, white men for centuries and only recently inducted female, black, Latinx, Asian, and Russian writers. Although the scope of the canon is expanding, it is still incredibly narrow and discriminatory. It is in the best interest of not only the canon but also humanity to incorporate middle eastern authors and content to a western audience. We are currently in the “chaotic age,” rooted in critical theory, feminism, critical race theory, and Marxism. This relatively undefined and mutable age is the perfect opportunity to begin integrating more worldly literature. I am arguing that Jerusalem is the next source of eastern literature in the West. The following books are just a few of my suggestions for the canon.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, Science, 2015. Harari received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Oxford and lectures in the department of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

From the outset, Harari seeks to establish the multifold forces that made Homo (‘man’) into Homosapiens (‘wise man’) – exploring the impact of a large brain, tool use, complex social structures and more. He brings the picture up to date by drawing conclusions from mapping the Neanderthal genome, which he thinks indicates that Sapiens did not merge with Neanderthals but pretty much wiped them out. ‘Tolerance’ he says, ‘is not a Sapiens trademark’ (p19), setting the scene for the sort of animal he will depict us to be.

I chose Sapiens because it has already made a profound mark in the United States, even making the list for Mark Zuckerberg’s book club. Sapiens is a profound statement on modern social science and the history of man. It’s no wonder a Jerusalemite wrote the work on the origin of humans, considering Jerusalem has one of the longest recorded histories of human religion and culture.

Native, Sayed Kashua, Essay, 2014. Kashua is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, author and journalist known for his heartfelt and humorous columns in Haaretz.

With his unique perspective as an Israeli Palestinian, Sayed Kashua’s collection of personal essays is a frank, irreverent, thought-provoking exploration of discovering one’s identity, bridging cultural divides, and following a creative passion—while raising a family in the process. He devoted his novels and his satirical weekly column published in Haaretz to telling the Palestinian story and exploring the contradictions of modern Israel, while also capturing the nuances of everyday family life in all its tenderness and chaos. Kashua has been documenting his own life as well as that of society at large: he writes about his children’s upbringing and encounters with racism, about fatherhood and married life, the Jewish-Arab conflict, his professional ambitions, and–more than anything—his love of literature. Sayed Kashua has been praised by the New York Times as “a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society.” 

I chose Native because of our familiarity with the author and because it provides English translations of essays written for an Israeli Newspaper. Native provides a direct connection to Israeli Palestinian life not only through its stories but also through its form.

Pumpkinflowers by Matti Friedman, Memoir/Military History, 2017. Matti Friedman is a Canadian-Israeli author and journalist. He is an op-ed contributor to the New York Times.

During the 1990s, Matti Friedman and his fellow Israeli soldiers fought in a string of conflicts that never collectively earned a name. These battles existed in historical parentheses, wedged between Israel’s first Lebanon War, in 1982, and it's second, in 2006. The writer, a former correspondent for The Associated Press in Jerusalem and the author of “The Aleppo Codex,” was assigned to a Lebanese outpost that soldiers called “the Pumpkin.” (In the jargon of Israeli radiomen, “flowers” are the wounded — hence the book’s title.) What did he discover? A country of kind, gracious people — strangers who invited him along on their picnics and were forever pressing lists into his hand of friends and relations ready to host him. And they all seemed to loathe Jews.

I chose Pumpkinflowers for its gripping war narrative that is reminiscent of great American war memoirs such as The Things They Carried or Little Yellow Birds. As a correspondent of The Associated Press in Jerusalem, Friedman has experience reporting hard-truth journalism in a constantly militarized city.

A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002. Oz is an Israeli writer and activist. He is an outspoken advocate for the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

A Tale of Love and Darkness is a memoir, telling of Oz’s mother’s tragic destiny and his development of a new self as a young boy. Oz reflects on how growing up in a war-torn area effects children. When his mother commits suicide, he joins kibbutz, changes his name, and, under his new identity, marries and has children. Through this journey, Oz decides to dedicate his adult life to political activism. The dedication: “This story is our story, I hope you read it and understand us as we understand you, hoping to see you outside and in peace, yours, Amos Oz” was heavily criticized by the extreme right to the point where Oz was arrested and Imprisoned by the Tanzin after it the memoir was translated into Arabic.

A Tale of Love and Darkness has been translated into 14 languages and Natalie Portman bought the rights to the book to make it a movie, filming in Jerusalem in 2014.

Necessary Stories by Haim Watzman, West 26^th street press, 2017. Watzman is an Amer­i­can-born and edu­cat­ed jour­nal­ist who made aliyah in 1978. In addi­tion to writ­ing and blog­ging, Watz­man has become the go-to author­i­ty on Hebrew to Eng­lish trans­la­tion. He is an Orthodox Jew and a champion for social justice.

Nec­es­sary Sto­ries, named after that col­umn, includes twen­ty-four of the one hun­dred plus Watz­man wrote for The Jerusalem Report. The read­er is intro­duced to a daz­zling array of col­or­ful char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions about life in mod­ern Israel and con­tem­po­rary Judaism.

In one mov­ing sto­ry, ​“Sin Offer­ing,” Watz­man imag­ines an inter­ac­tion between a des­per­ate Sudanese moth­er and a group of IDF sol­diers. In ​“Pos­ses­sion,” he bounces to teenagers in the Cleve­land sub­urbs bak­ing cook­ies while their divorced moth­er rumi­nates over a ter­ri­ble secret involv­ing her rab­bi. Equal­ly at home in these two worlds as well as the many oth­ers he out­lines for the read­er, Watz­man rais­es issues involv­ing mar­riage, par­ent­ing, death, duty, tra­di­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and immigration.

Finally, I chose Necessary Stories because of its short story form (for variation) as well as the diverse nature of the collection.

From these six books and authors, I believe I’ve made a respectable suggestion for additions to the Western canon, all rooted in the rich yet conflicted home of Jerusalem.

Secondary Sources

Bloom, Harrold. “The Western Canon / Harold Bloom - EBooks @ Adelaide.” The University of Adelaide, ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/literature/bloom/complete.html.