Hebrew Gender and Zionist Ideology: The Palmach Trilogy of Netiva Ben Yehuda

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Hebrew Gender and Zionist Ideology:The Palmach Trilogy of Netiva Ben Yehuda Yael S. Feldman Abstract Israeli readers were hardly prepared for Netiva Ben Yehuda's dramatic entry into the scene of Hebrew writing in 1981 with her first novel, 1948-Bein hasfirot, and its two sequels (1985, 1991). This essay offers a corrective to the reception of the Palmach trilogy that mostly ignored the feminist slant of Ben Yehuda's historical revisionism. It highlights her ingenious invention of Hebrew gender avant la lettre, and places her as a precursor of the analysis of the ideological roots that lie behind the betrayal of the promise for sexual equality, which "the Palmach had inscribed on its flag." I was never ever a suffragette. But as I was anyway stuck deep in this business [the Palmach]-I was ambitious, very ambitious, to prove my worth; especially since I knew that from that particular aspect that preoccupied us at the time-the war-I was surrounded by many males who were much worse than me. Much more "feminine" than me. I used to call such a male a feminus. -NETIVA BEN YEHUDA, 1948-Between Calendars The language of Netiva Ben Yehuda (b. 1928), no less than her ideas and convictions, poses a great challenge to the translator and interpreter. She is unique among the writers of her generation not only because of her late entry into the Israeli writing scene (1981), but also because of her lifelong devotion to the cause of spoken Hebrew. Her uniqueness does not stem from these factors alone, however. Though she has become somewhat of a media figure since the 1980s, she had hardly been recognized before as a professional writer. Rather, Netiva Ben Yehuda, "Tiva" to her many friends, had long been identified as a living emblem of the myth of the Palmach, those legendary elite units that spearheaded the struggle [End Page 139] for Israel's independence in 1947-48. Indeed, Ben Yehuda had for many years embodied precisely that heroic voluntarism and utter loyalty to the Jewish national rebirth in the Jewish homeland that had been the hallmark of the Palmach since the 1940s. She was also known for her sharp tongue and scathing humor-qualities that stood her in good stead when she finally came into her own as a writer. Simultaneously, however, Ben Yehuda was ahead of her time: her bold sexual permissiveness stood out in a period marked by sexual puritanism. She brazenly carried out her own private sexual revolution, living (rather than writing) through the body1 in an age that locked up both body and emotions "in the cellar," to use Shulamith Hareven's useful metaphor in her 1972 novel, City of Many Days; we may even conjecture that Ben Yehuda's sexual freedom might have served as the model for Hareven's characterization of Sara in that novel. Less familiar, but crucial to her story, is the fact that the nickname by which she had become known early on, "the yellow devil," was given to her by the neighboring Arabs. This nickname came along with the high price that had been put on her head after she single-handedly commandeered the first successful Jewish ambush of an Arab bus early in 1948. That ambush was meant to retaliate for the growing frequency of Arab attacks on civilian transportation in the Galilee, following the November 1947 United Nations vote for the division of Palestine. It turned out to be, as will be seen below, the first step in Ben Yehuda's "voyage in."2 Even less known is her pre-military history: this model sabra, the daughter of a leading pioneer and educator (Baruch Ben Yehuda, later the director general of the first Israeli ministry of education), was an outstanding athlete. Her achievements as a discus thrower had made her a serious candidate for the Olympics-a projected career that was cut short in 1948 by a bullet that damaged her arm muscles. Fearlessness, physical prowess, and total devotion were some of the features that distinguished this young officer, whose military specialties included topography, reconnaissance, and demolition. Yet for later generations, it was mainly Ben Yehuda's...