Please find below details of my new book:
Berghahn Books
PUBLISHED: October 2000
ISRAEL AND THE DAUGHTERS OF THE SHOAH
Ronit Lentin
ISBN: 1-57181-774-3 HB £40.00
ISBN: 1-57181-775 1 PB £13.95
The murder of a third of Europe's Jews by the Nazis is unquestionably the
worst catastrophe in the history of contemporary Judaism and a formative
event in the history of Zionism and the State of Israel. Understandably,
therefore, the Shoah, written about, analysed, and given various political
interpretations, has shaped public discourse in the history of the State of
Israel. The key element of Shoah in the Israeli context is victimhood and
as such it has become a source of shame, shrouded in silence and
subordinated to the dominant discourse, which, resulting from the
construction of a "new Hebrew" active subjectivity, taught the post-war
generation of Israelis to reject diaspora Jewry and its alleged passivity
in the face of catastrophe. It is a myth that is shot through with images
of the "masculine" Israeli, contrasted with those of the weak, passive,
non-virile Jewish "Other" of the diaspora.
This book offers the first gendered analysis of Israeli society and the
Shoah. The author employs personal narratives of nine Israeli daughters of
Shoah survivors, writers and film makers, and a feminist re-reading of
official and unofficial Israeli and Zionist discourses to explore the ways
in which the relationship between Israel and the Shoah has been gendered in
that the Shoah was "feminised" while Israel was "masculinised." This new
perspective has considerable implications for the analysis of Israeli
society: a gendered analysis of Israeli construction of nation reveals how
the Shoah and Shoah discourse are exploited to justify Israel's, i.e., the
"new Hebrew's," self-perceived right of occupation. Israel thus not only
negated the Jewish diaspora, but also stigmatised and feminised Shoah
victims and survivors, all the while employing Shoah discourses as an
excuse for occupation, both in the past and the present.
CONTENTS: The Territories of Silence; Writing is the Closing of Circles':
Nava Semel; Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: The Narratives; Israel's
New Hebrews 'memorise' the Jewish Shoah; Israel's Second Generation; The
Feminisation of Stigma in the Relationship between Israelis and Shoah
Survivors; Reoccupying the Territories of Silence.
"This book is the work of a brilliant and courageous scholar who dares to
ask her own questions. Its narrative vision, born of ontological urgency,
is the product of a mature writer at home in her craft." Ruth Linden
Ronit Lentin is co-ordinator of the M.Phil. in Ethnic and Racial Studies,
Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin. She has published
extensively on gender and racism, gender and Shoah commemoration, racism in
Irish society and feminist research methodologies. She is the editor,
together with Anne Byrne of NUI Galway of (Re)searching Women: Feminist
Research Methodolgies in the Social Sciences in Ireland (Dublin: IPA, 2000).
Berghahn Books, 3 Newtec Place, Magdalen Road, Oxford, OX4 1RE, UK
Tel: +44 (01865) 250011 Fax: +44 (01865) 250056 Email:
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Dr Ronit Lentin
Course coordinator,
MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies,
Department of Sociology, University of Dublin,
Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Tel: 353 1 6082766. Fax: 353 1 6771300.
Email: [log in to unmask]
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