The Death of Blessed Memory: A Crisis in Secular Israeli Identity in Yaakov Shabtai’s “Departure”

Abstract

Yaakov Shabtai’s “Departure” seems, at first glance, only to chronicle the illness and death of an unnamed grandmother living in Tel Aviv, as witnessed through the eyes of her grandson. The grandmother, an observant Jewish woman with socialist politics, liberal social views, and many friends, differs strikingly from her Israeli family. They are wholly secular Jews who disavow belief in religion. They observe yahrzeits, Jewish religious festivals, and holy days only as long as grandmother lives. They discontinue all Jewish observance the moment the grandmother dies, thus allegorizing a complete intergenerational break in Jewish identity. The story ends with the melancholic narrator realizing that he has no memory of the date of his grandmother’s death. This article contends that this seemingly simple narrative has profound historical and referential meanings. The story functions as an allegorical critique of escalating social and religious divisions in Israel, as well as the implications of the loss of Jewish religion on Jewish identity. “Departure” reveals that the process of dis-identification and post-Zionism begins with the family: symbolically with the figure of the grandmother, whose peaceful, sociable identity stands in peril of becoming removed from the possibilities of her mode of Jewish being influencing future generations.