מאמרה של מאירה וייס: COPING WITH LIFE AND DEATH

THE AVRAHAM HARMAN INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY JEWRY THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY

OF JERUSALEM

COPING WITH LIFE AND DEATH

Jewish Families in the Twentieth Century

STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY

JEWRY AN ANNUAL

XIV

1998

Edited by Peter Y. Medding

Published fo r the Institute by

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York • Oxford

“We Are All One Bereaved Family”: Personal Loss and Collective Mourning

in Israeli Society

Meira Weiss (T H E H EBR EW U N IV E R SIT Y )

On February 4.1997, a tragic helicopter collision caused the death of seventy-three soldiers on their way to southern Lebanon. A national day of mourning was declared by the government. Politicians, dignitaries and the media reenacted their sad routines. Radio programs featured plaintive Israeli melodies; the national television networks provided wide coverage of the funerals as well as extensive interviews with friends and relatives; newspapers featured photographs and biographies of the fallen soldiers. In short, the media enlisted itself to promote a sense of community, a “we” feeling of being one big, bereaved family. A few days later, the well-known Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling published an uncommonly sharp critique in the daily Ha’aretz. Entitled “A Moment of Solidarity,” it reflected on the collective discourse of bereavement:

It seems that the more divided our society is, the more we need such moments.. . . The generation that did not experience the magical days of anticipation just prior to the Six- Day War. of the lingering national depression of 1973, could now renew (for a little while) the holy days of the “candle children" who appeared—albeit for a short time—after Rabin’s assassination.. . . Not that one should doubt the sincerity of people’s feelings. The trauma and mourning are real, even when disseminated by anchorpersons. . . . In such moments, the voice of reason must remain silent.. . . When such moments (as this) are to a large extent prescribed from above, by the elites, the public—or parts of it—easily lends itself to be manipulated.'

This article examines and extends the point made by Kimmerling. It does so by looking at a number of commemorative “moments of solidarity,” as well as at the actual reactions of bereaved families to the collective ideology of bereavement and commemoration. My point of departure is that these phenomena, in Israel and else- where, constitute a powerful social institution, a symbolic space where the public and the private, the military and the civil spheres meet to form “one big family.” This space, whether occupied by the smallest burial ceremony or the largest war memorial, is therefore traditionally marked by normative control.

Funerals and mourning have traditionally been viewed by anthropologists as uni- versal group mechanisms used by society for the enhancement of solidarity.2 This per

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spective has also been specifically applied to the situation of fallen soldiers, where bereavement and commemoration often contribute to the formation of what Emest Becker calls a national “hero-system.”3 Here the “symbolic immortality” of the fallen (in the words of Robert J. Lifton) reaffirms the sanctity of the homeland and the hege- mony of the collectivity.4 Sociologists, historians and anthropologists have demonstrated this phenomenon in various commemorative settings, such as the organization of military cemeteries, the political iconology of war memorials and the symbolism of rites of commemoration.5

These themes are also manifest in Israeli society, where the sheer number and frequency of war dead invest bereavement and commemoration with unique national significance. Israel’s very inception was tragically linked to the death of more than five thousand soldiers— nearly one percent of the total population— during its War of Independence in 1948-1949. Over the years, the tragic loss of soldiers— indeed wars in general— have been constructed by dominant groups as the unavoidable price for the survival of the Jewish state in the promised land.6 The sacrifice of the lives of young men has been a recurrent and virtually routine subject in Israeli literature, in which “the fallen” are generally endowed with an aura of symbolic immortality.7 This phenomenon has proved to be a fertile ground for social inquiry, whi'ch has recently grown more critical in nature.8

In sum. the number and frequency of war casualties have made bereavement and commemoration pervasive features of the Israeli social fabric. The following analysis does not purport to be an exhaustive discussion of commemoration in Israeli society. but rather seeks to establish its contours in several significant fields. The first field consists of state ministries, institutions and ceremonies— chief among them the national memorial day for the fallen. I begin with this field since it reveals the hegemonic character of bereavement and commemoration in Israel, and highlights the linkage between its Israeli and Jewish components. This national ideology provides the background for the subsequent analysis of the bereaved families themselves, first through an examination of the organization that caters to their various needs (Yad Labanim) and then through the reactions of several individual bereaved families.

“The Silver Platter” : Hegemonic Commemoration

The date set for Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron). the national day of remembrance for Israel’s war dead, is one day before Israel Independence Day (Yom Ha’azmaut). It also happens to fall exactly one week after Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom Hashoah). Memorial Day is therefore part of a larger narrative— one leading from destruction (holocaust) via sacrifice (the fallen) to salvation (independence). Every year, the Ministry of Education sends schools a “general memorandum.” which contains instructions for conducting Memorial Day ceremonies. The annual reissue of similar instructions exemplifies the cyclical time frame underpinning the mythical narrative of commemoration— Memorial Day as symbolic immortality.

The state ceremonies enacted on Holocaust Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day take the same general form in every school in the country and are attended by the nation’s highest-ranking officials and dignitaries.9 Their schedule, order and con

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tent arc prescribed in the instructions of the Ministry of Education, which supervises all schooling in the country except for that of the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) sector.10 Such school ceremonies are a primary educational means for conveying the messages of state ethos and national identity to younger generations of Israeli citizens. Memorial Day is a prominent example of commemoration as (following Gramsci’s concept) an "educational program.” 11

111 the year following the 1967 war, for example, the Ministry noted in its general memorandum that “the meaning of Memorial Day will be clearer to the pupils this year. We mourn today the death of our heroes, and feel pride in their heroism and de- votion. The champions of Israel went to the battle of freedom with open eyes, and in their death they commanded us life.”12 The last sentence is a powerful ideological statement that has become a popular motto in the national remembrance of the fallen. It reappears in various semantic and symbolic forms in the content of selected read- ings during Memorial Day ceremonies. The systematic construction and reproduction of the ideological nexus between death and life, sorrow and joy, remembrance and independence, is one of Memorial Day’s most significant feats. Memorial Day is therefore of utmost importance in the reproduction of an “ethos of sacrifice.” in which the death of soldiers— no matter when, where or how it occurs— is constructed as a “sacrifice” and thus justified as serving the national cause. (It is also an “ethos” in the original. Greek sense of a tragic deed that is ethically justified by virtue of being pre- destined by a larger moral cause.) Death is constructed as necessary for national life. In such a way, “the fallen" are both endowed with symbolic immortality and deper- sonalized. Their death is cleansed of its individual features and possible messy circumstances. It is therefore only “natural" that the festivities of Independence Day begin on the night immediately following Memorial Day. Only a split second distin- guishes between mourning and celebration.

Memorial Day ceremonies culminate in the reciting of "The Silver Platter” (Magash hakesef), a poem by Natan Alterman that centers on young soldiers, whose lives are the “silver platter / Upon which the Jewish state was served to you.”13 The two soldiers in this poem— one male, one female— share the collective features of the sabra archetype. They are young, hard-working (“in work garb and heavy-shod”), determined, natural (“unwashed and weary"), silent yet straight-talking. They bear no individual marks such as names or gender traits. Death does not change them, but only makes them more sabra-like. The bodily features idealized by canonical Memorial Day texts are those of the collective sabra. The fallen and the living sabras all have “the same physique, the same high-rise hair" (in the words of Naomi Shemer. from her song. “We Are From the Same Village"). And fallen, like ideal sabras. come “in a masculine step, strong and sunburned,” in the words of Hayim Hefer (from his “The Parade of the Fallen”).14

The sabras are wild, untamed and unstyled, yet pure and sincere. The fallen reflect and strengthen that image. They are pure sabras. They must be. since they are the national sacrifice. According to ancient Jewish tradition (probably common to many hu- man societies), the sacrificial offering to God— be it an animal, a food or a valuable— must be the best and purest of its kind. This precondition underpins the meticulous regulations of the halakhah as well as 'akedat Yizhak, the biblical melodrama of the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22: 1-19). Uri Zvi Greenberg, a poet who stressed Jewish na

181"We Are All One Bereaved Family’

tionalism, wrote that these fallen were “The chosen. . . . The true sons of the race of David” (from his “Those Who Live By Their Virtue Will Say”).1̂ By virtue of falling in battle, these sabra-soldiers became the chosen sabras. The motif of “chosenness,” of singularity, is here transferred from the religious to the nationalist realm. Chosenness becomes a master-narrative glorifying death in the service of the nation. This militaristic rhetoric later found its way back to certain religious circles, who now justify the exemption of yeshivah students from compulsory military service by cit- ing the Talmudic saying, "they kill themselves in the tent of Torah.”16

I argue that bereavement and commemoration present a general continuity between the new Israeli and the traditional Jewish collective identity. Israeli identity, it is often claimed, was constructed out of the rejection of traditional Jewish identity, espe- dally as embodied in the diaspora (galut). Notwithstanding the fact that Israeli and Jewish identities are often discursively (politically) separated, they are still closely connected in more fundamental and nonverbal practices— for example, those related to the body, such as bereavement and commemoration. The body that is being col- lectively bereaved and commemorated has several distinct features. First of all, it is prototypically Jewish. Traditional Jewish religious practice prescribes the burial of non-Jewish soldiers in an area beyond the perimeter of the Jewish cemetery, and this literal exclusion is exercised in cases where there is doubt concerning the Jewish identity of a fallen soldier— as has happened recently with respect to several new immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The exclusion of their bodies from the Jewish section of the cemetery has been criticized by a liberal minority (“he was good enough to die in the service of Israel, but not good enough to be buried as a Jew?”), yet this is still the practice. The maintenance of this tradition marks a nondiscursive continuity between the Israeli and Jewish identity— nondiscursive since it seems to hinge on some primordial conception (“flowing in our blood"). The monopoly of the local gov- eminent Orthodox authorities over undertaking and burials, for example, is taken for granted. Only in autonomous secular kibbutzim can burials be conducted without an Orthodox hevrah kadishcih (burial society). The hevrah kadishah is obviously bound by the halakhah. which is not followed by many secular Israelis, and yet any secular critique of this general situation is both perceived as profane and dismissed as questioning the foundations of Israeli existence.

Memorial Day itself, albeit a national, secular ceremony, features a major religious component, the "Yizkor” remembrance prayer for the dead. As liana Bet-El and Avner Ben Amos contend. Memorial Day is a theatrical performance in which the performers directly address the audience, without any attempt to create a realistic illusion.1 Performers and audience become one in a binding myth of sacrifice and martyrology. not unlike the agitprop plays staged in the Soviet Union following the 1917 revolu- tion and in Germany by left-wing groups during the 1920s: this theatrical tradition was in fact brought to Israel by immigrants who arrived from Russia and Germany.18

Yad Labanim: The Authorized Version of Personal Bereavement

Yad Labanim (“memorial to the sons”) is the national association of bereaved families, closely connected to the rehabilitation department of the Ministry of Defense.

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Yad Labanim serves as the primary׳ representative and lobby of bereaved families. As a national association. Yad Labanim’s "front stage" texts (such as its bulletins) present a desired, conformist mode of bereavement. This mode is etatist and collectivist in nature— what may be termed an “authorized version” of personal bereavement.

Established in the mid-1960s, Yad Labanim began to issue annual bulletins for its members at the beginning of the 1970s. Throughout the years, a large corpus of such bulletins has accumulated. The scope of this chapter does not allow for an exhaustive analysis of these texts. I therefore chose to begin my textual presentation with a recent debate among members.

Early in 1989. the Ministry of Defense published a memorial album, comprised of photos and descriptions of war memorials in Israel, for dissemination among bereaved families. Tom Segev, a journalist and historian, reviewed the album in HcCaretz. Terming it the “Israeli macabre tombstone catalogue.” Segev criticized the album for expressing a nationalistic fetishism parallel to the chauvinistic European war memorials that George Mosse had earlier described.19 His attack provoked a host of letters to the editor from Yad Labanim members and these letters in turn formed the main body of the Yad Labanim bulletin of July 1989. Segev's challenge was met with an equally determined response, whose vigor arguably discloses the organization’s basic ideology.

While the various replies were different in style, length and emphasis, they made use of several recurrent arguments. The first argument focused on the uniqueness of the bereavement experience. “I do not know Mr. Segev personally,” noted many letters, “but it seems to me that he cannot see the album through a bereaved person’s eyes”— the inference being that since Segev had not lost a son in battle, he was in- capable of reviewing anything on the subject of bereavement. Another common, and related, theme was that “war memorials cannot be a subject of aesthetic criticism.” Put more generally, there is a “rhetoric of uniqueness” that underlies much of the Yad Labanim bulletins, as expressed perhaps most forcefully in a poem titled “To the Others." in which a bereaved mother terms herself “something from a different planet” and writes of “bereavement flowing through my body.”20 Intriguingly, the poet's claim for uniqueness is grounded in her body. Her body, the most personal and private of entities, is also the locus of “her" bereavement. By using a rhetoric of uniqueness (“something from another planet”) so reminiscent (in Israeli eyes) of that of Holocaust survivors, this mother and other Yad Labanim members could be seen as appropriating and legitimizing an autonomous discourse of bereavement, one that intended to demarcate their group from "the others.”

The fact is, however, that Yad Labanim members are often the main carriers of collective ideology. The private body— as an icon of the intimate relationship with bereavement— is used in specific cases where group solidarity is enhanced through a dispute with “the others” (Tom Segev. in this case). More often, though, the private body makes way for a generalized body— a body politic— consisting of the entire "people of Israel.” The rhetoric of solidarity capitalizes on the ethos of sacrifice in order to tum bereavement into a source of national obligation and personal pride.

Additional arguments used by Yad Labanim members were clear-cut expressions of the collective ideology of bereavement. Their letters emphasized the “glory, pride and honor” evoked by war memorials, which were said to “endow the loss of our chil

183“We Are All One Bereaved Family"

dren with meaning.” Such a phrase is a retelling of the national ethos of sacrifice. Memorials were a “sacred place” that Segev chose to desecrate. Many letters also noted the necessary role of memorials— the common meeting ground on Memorial Day— as a locus of identification between bereaved families and members of the army. Memorials denoted a feeling of oneness, of “us.” a sense of solidarity bought with blood.

Yad Labanim members have traditionally viewed Israel from the perspective of the military, speaking of a “nation in amis” (or more commonly: “nation in bereavement”). rather than taking advantage of their social license in order to promote, say, dovish calls for peace. This is not to say that the organization expresses an explicitly hawkish political stance: it has always attempted to stay out of politics by adhering to a depoliticized consensus. Moreover, when members attack “the others.” it is always in the name of the collectivity. This stance can be illustrated in the context of several recent disputes within the bereaved community with regard to standardizing commemorative practices. In stark contrast to the rhetoric of uniqueness, the dominant view has been in favor of standardization, since this best represents the notion of collectivism. In response to demands to personalize the script of Memorial Day ceremonies, members have argued that

the reading of the individual names (of the fallen) is of negligible im portance.. . . Today, to our sorrow, ceremonies are attended by fewer and fewer people and this does not honor the fallen. We should therefore limit ourselves to one central, standard Memorial Day ceremony that will include all of the fallen and be conducted in a respectable manner while involving not only the bereaved families but the whole of the Israeli community. The standardization of ceremonies w ill ensure that the memory׳ of the fallen will be kept forever.just as the memory of the destruction of the Temple has been kept for more than 2,000

"> 1years.-1

The standardization of military cemeteries is also defended. Requests for individual design (especially of epitaphs) have come from bereaved families whose sons were killed in training accidents by other soldiers, often as a result of negligence. These parents could not tolerate the standard epitaph proclaiming that their child had “died in the course of duty." In their bulletins. Yad Labanim members have once again taken on the role of guardians of the “authorized version.” "While civil and military cemeteries are located one near the other/’ argues a representative piece.

military cemeteries are much more pleasing to the eye and respectable. All the tombstones are standard and modest. In their lives, our sons were different: different in character, in rank, in duties. Until they fell in battle. In the face of death, all are equal. It is precisely because of this that we regret to see a few of the bereaved families destroying the order and the standard design and introducing changes, with the best of intentions, of course .. . . The changes give the cemetery the appearance of a “slum." The military cemetery is a public, not a private domain and as such it must contain order and standardization. I have seen many military cemeteries around the world and they are all built according to the same orderly principles.22

For Yad Labanim members, many of whom receive pensions from the rehabilitation department of the Ministry of Defense, collectivism is a source of political as well as personal power. While each carries his or her own personal sense of bereave

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ment (“flowing in my blood”), it is the body politic, the homeland, that they work to sanctify. In contrast to the public facade erected in the bulletins, the everyday life of many bereaved parents is fraught with contradiction and uncertainty. Recent years have seen a growing number of clashes between bereaved parents and the military. Parents have begun more openly to question the circumstances of their sons’ death, especially in cases of training accidents. There have been public debates, which have reached Israel’s High Court of Justice, concerning parents' rejection of the standard epitaph to be inscribed on their son's tombstone. Moreover, bereavement generally provides a social license to review and change one’s life. When the demands of bereaved parents are considered closely, it can be seen that rather than challenging the public discourse, they reappropriate it in ways that are more beneficial and reward- ing to them. This top-down process has been going on. in exactly the same manner, throughout Israeli history.23

Social Expectations Versus Personal Reaction: The Bereaved Families’ Point of View

The following case study of three bereaved families stems from a secondary analysis of data originally gathered between 1973 and 1980.24 Fieldwork was conducted among three couples of bereaved parents who had lost their sons in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. I began visiting these families, as well as some hundred others, as part of my voluntary service on behalf of the rehabilitation department of the Ministry of Defense. I began to visit the bereaved families a week after they were notified of their son's death and I stayed in contact with ten families for about half a year, keeping in particularly close touch with the three families who later became my main respondents. Let me briefly introduce these families before proceeding:

» Fania and Yolek immigrated from Poland in the 1930s. As of 1978. they lived in a prestigious area in a large northern city, both employed as high-ranking public officials.

• Cuna and Yetti immigrated from Rumania in the 1960s, but still view themselves as ',new immigrants.” They live in an ethnically mixed neighborhood, populated mainly by workers. Cuna is a high-ranking public official; Yetti. a nonprofes- sional worker in a large factory.

.Abigail and Yochanan. of Yemenite origin, live in a large urban neighborhood ״Yochanan is a low-ranking public official, Abigail works occasionally as a cleaner.

The three couples ranged in age between fifty and sixty. This was a first marriage for all of them; each had been married for about thirty years and had other children. All were urban families that defined themselves as nonreligious. None had been treated by any social agency before their loss. All had functioned normally before the loss and appeared to do so afterwards. I visited these families on a regular basis from October 1973 until 1978, and practically became one of the family. I joined them at mealtimes, when they hosted guests, when they visited government offices, at memorials for their son. and at organized meetings with other bereaved parents. The fol

185“We Are All One Bereaved Family'

lowing ethnography presents my retrospective analysis of these three couples' re- sponses to the social prescriptions of bereavement, focusing on the conflicts associated with bereavement in order to shed light on the authority structure of the discourse of bereavement. These conflicts will be subsumed here under three very general cat- egories: transformation, detachment and manipulation.- Transformation refers to the possibility of inducing change in social norms. Detachment, made into a theory of re- sistance by the Stoics, refers to the possibility of retiring from the social stage into domains of one’s own making. In the case of manipulation, the individual tries nei- ther to transform the social structures nor detach him or herself from them. Rather he or she makes deliberate use of them in ways unforeseen by their legitimate guardians. In other words, manipulation is “working the system,” or a “ploy.”

Bereavem ent and Transformation

Transformation is a relatively rare phenomenon among the bereaved. Its most significant instances included questioning the authority of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as the single reliable source of information, investigation and punishment in cases of death in battle. Another challenge was the attempt to transform the standard epitaphs prescribed by the IDF. The following examples illustrate attempts at transformation on the part of these three families.

On the last day of the Yom Kippur War. Cuna’s family was informed that their son was missing. About one month later they received official notification of his death: his body was found seven months later. From the day he was told his son was missing until the day of his own death (three years later). Cuna devoted all of his free time and energy to an investigation of the details of the battle in which his son fell, de- manding prosecution of the commanders involved. He identified the officers who were "responsible for ־crimes’” and demanded that they be tried for wrongdoing. He also demanded a committee of inquiry and the right to help choose its members.

Cuna himself questioned the soldiers of his son’s unit (the witnesses to his death), compared the evidence, found contradictions, and drew conclusions. The following exchange, for example, took place during a discussion between Cuna and one of his son’s officers:

Cuna: They could have been freed in seconds.Officer What are you talking about. . . have you ever seen a burning tank? One

tank after the other, it only takes seconds.Cuna: You’re wrong. It takes two minutes a tank. Now let’s see if you know the

angle of the tanks. You don’t know. They faced the wind. [Cuna goes over the details of the battle with maps, names and numbers of tanks, the angle of each one and when each tank started to burn].

Cuna was emphatic that his struggle against the establishment was not aimed at destroying the social order or central social symbols. On the contrary, he saw it as proof of his loyalty and dedication to the state of Israel and to its law. Nonetheless. Cuna’s struggle can also be seen as an instance of transformation of social norms— a challenge to the formerly taken-for-granted normative reliability of the IDF as the single authoritative source of information about, and inquiry into, death in battle.

With regard to the standardized design of military graves, again it was Cuna who

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made the most determined attempts at transformation. Perhaps in line with his refusal to go along with the IDF version of his son's death, he also refused to accept the military standard for graves. His act of defiance included the placing of a marble book on his son's gravestone and a set of marble flowerpots alongside. In Cuna’s words. “I will put as much marble (on my son’s grave) as I want. . . . I’ve already bought marble flowerpots with the army emblem . . . and I will put them on the grave!”

Bereavem ent and Rejection

An issue that recurred frequently among many of the bereaved families I visited was whether or not to conduct the Passover seder. Traditionally considered the hallmark of Jewish family gatherings, this annual ritual was questioned by the bereaved. Abigail's words illustrate this situation: ‘־I always held the seder at my house . . . now I don’t have the patience. There is no reason to have a seder. Why celebrate? My son is gone and there will be no seder and that's that. I'm tired of sitting with my family the whole evening.” Contrary to her past family involvement and dedication to tradition, it is only after the loss that Abigail dares to express her alienation from what she calls "the prim- itive world” of her family. Note that Abigail is of Yemenite origin: her words thus re- produce a stereotype of the "Orientals” (Sephardim) attributed to Jews of Western origin (Ashkenazim). Abigail, like many other bereaved mothers, uses the social license of bereavement in order to reject the normative domestic order. In the case of the Passover meal, this normative order belongs to the domain of family and tradition.

Rejection of the normative order of bereavement itself was demonstrated by Fanya, Yolek’s wife. She refused a military funeral for her son because, in her words, “it is unbearable to see how they lower the coffin.” (It should be noted that the common practice in Israel is to bury the dead in shrouds, without a coffin. Military funerals, however, do utilize coffins, allegedly because the physical condition [or at times the absence] of bodies needs to be concealed. Yet the coffin also promotes the ideologically required standardization, since all coffins are identical, devoid of individual insignia and signs of rank.) In addition to her refusal to bury her son in a military׳׳ funeral. Fanya also insisted on selecting the fallen soldiers to be buried beside her son, so that she would "be able to enjoy the company of these soldiers' parents.” At first,I thought about Fanya’s behavior in terms of denial. Unconsciously, I employed the pathological worldview of the “normal” course of grief. Later, however. I came to view Fanya as a rebel. Fanya did not deny her son’s death: she only rejected the prescribed pattern of bereavement. As Fanya repeatedly told me a couple of years afterwards: “All I wanted was my own grief.”

Bereavem ent and M anipulation

Attempts at manipulation were the most common reaction to the public prescriptions of bereavement. These usually included attempts to attain personal gains such as a new car. a new job or an improved position at work. Yochanan's use of his son's death as a power resource was quite typical. As he told me, being a bereaved father and an ex-fighter in the army granted him the power to impose his will on those superior to him in social status. Yochanan appealed many times to the heads of the rehabilitation

187"We Are All One Bereaved Family"

departments for financial support in buying a new car. I accompanied him 011 one of these meetings, where his opening words were: “My son fell in war. I'm glad he did- n’t die in a car accident, but in war. As a former fighter, I'm proud of him. You have to help me now to get a new car, with the emblem of the IDF on it."

Two days after being notified that his son was missing, for a period that lasted eigh- teen months. Cuna made demands on the rehabilitation department (as well as on the IDF manpower department and on the president of Israel) that he be allowed to take possession of the luxury' car his son had ordered, which arrived in Israel after his death. Cuna’s letters detailed the financial investment he and his wife had made in their son’s upbringing, an investment "that can bring no return . . . now that he's dead.” Having received the car. Cuna boasted about it. saying, “look what the Ministry of Defense has bought me!”

When Yetti’s manager asked her to work in a place that she did not approve of. an argument ensued. Yetti exclaimed: “I'm the only Israeli in this whole factor}׳ . . . only my son fell here . . . you should be ashamed, all of you." She then resigned her job and applied to the Ministry of Defense to find her a new one. Yolek. a manager in a government office, clung to his son's death in order to gain recognition for his man- agerial skills, assuming that by virtue of his tragedy, he was now entitled to special treatment. Yolek placed in his pocket the Ministry of Defense booklet listing the monthly stipend paid to bereaved parents. Its title "Bereaved Parents,” was always peeking out. so that nobody could overlook it. Yolek also began to regularly absent himself from work, telling his colleagues that he had matters to attend to at the Ministry׳ of Defense, although it was common knowledge that such activities could have been conducted outside working hours. His behavior gave Yolek a sense of new strength. “They can't restrain me any more.” he told me. A year and a half after his son’s death he sought promotion to the position of department manager, a step that he had been hesitant to take in the past.

Other instances of manipulation commonly occurred during meetings with Yad Labanim members. As Yad Labanim was set up for the specific purpose of securing benefits for the bereaved, it is not surprising that members often discussed such is- sues as the most efficient w׳ay to utilize bereavement as a power resource. The following examples, from the March 1981 protocols, are typical:

• We’re not giving up . . . we have various methods of imposing our demands . . . we’ll tight like heroes.

.Unfortunately, we have to beg in front of these clerks ״• We must make use of the power in our hands . . . the bereaved don't realize the

kind of political power they’ve got. We have the right to the blood of our sons, and if we have to go to the government, we must go through the Ministry of Defense and approach each member of the Knesset in person. . . . All bereaved parents should demonstrate in front of the Knesset, if needed.

• How much is the state's monthly stipend for a one-hundred-percent handicapped soldier? All of us here are one-hundred-percent handicapped. . . .

• If that official had been warned that we were going to bring television cameras . . . a demonstration of widows and orphans . . . it would have been different.. . . we must realize our potential.

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Thus bereavement, as an authority structure, embodies a dialectics of signification. While prescribing various rules and regulations for the bereaved whose goal is to promote standardization and collective identity, the public discourse of bereavement provides as well a social license for standing outside the nonnative order. Bereavement is also linked to financial advantage: “the families of the fallen are defined as creditors, and the State as indebted to them.”26 The Israeli Fallen Soldiers’ Families Law (Pension and Rehabilitation) states that “all those who dwell in Zion empathize with the bereaved families, whose dearest were sacrificed on the altar of independence.”2” Paradoxically, whereas Israeli society adopts the discourse of bereavement in the public domain of ritual, commemoration, memorials and the like, the relative latitude it grants the bereaved in the personal, informal realm allows the individual to vent his or her pain more authentically. In the past, bereaved parents tended to take advantage of this social license more through manipulation than through transformation or rejection. However, a movement toward transformation began after the Lebanon War and this is now presenting a new form of challenge to the normative order of Israeli society.

The National Cult of the Dead

It is a haunting thought that the inherently collective nature of commemoration cannot but have a part in reproducing the very condition that initially led to the death of young people in the service of their nation. National ideologies of commemoration have several recurrent motifs, one of the most prominent being sacrifice. In his clas- sic ethnography of “Yankee City.” Lloyd Warner pointed out that Memorial Day’s principal theme was sacrifice: “the sacrifice of the soldier for the living and the obligation of the living to sacrifice their individual purpose for the good of the group.”28 The same applies to Israel's Memorial Day. However, whereas the "cult of the fallen” is officially noted in Yankee City only one weekend a year, in Israel it has greater presence, visibility and power. Thus, in addition to the national Memorial Day, annual rites of commemoration are also held in Israel by each of the prestate under- ground military organizations (Haganah. Irgun and Lehi), and by various units of the IDF. In addition, regular events and ceremonies take place at Yad Labanim centers, which are located in virtually every city and town in Israel. Finally, bereavement is tragically ongoing, as a result of a continuous pattern of terrorism, military actions and accidents in the armed forces. All of the texts mentioned in this essay are ern- blematic of the profound engagement of Israeli society with commemoration; an engagement so extensive as to be recently termed a “national obsession" and a “national cult of memorializing the dead.”29

This Israeli "obsession" with commemoration, besides being factually grounded in the sheer number and frequency of casualties of war and terror, is arguably rooted in two major sources: the political meaning of commemoration as a symbolic mediator between past and present: and the use of commemoration for social mobility. Zionist ideology has always been preoccupied with creating a "national mythology" that would link the present-day project of nation-building with the distant Jewish history׳ in the Land of Israel. The problem faced by Zionism was how to construct a histori

189"We Are All One Bereaved Family”

cal bridge to a land from which the Jewish people had been exiled for nearly two mil- lennia. "Perhaps the primary goal of Israeli political culture,” argues Myron Aronoff. "has been to make the continuity of the ancient past with the contemporary context a taken-for-granted reality.”30 This was no doubt all the more important since the Jews’ right to statehood had been challenged by many, both Jew and Arab. The "fallen” thus became visible and unimpeachable evidence of the right to statehood. Furthermore, the sacrifice of the fallen— often associated in American culture with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ— was connected in Israel with ancient biblical heroes as well as with newer heroes among the pioneers {haluzin1)?x Two prominent myths now linked to the commemoration of Israeli soldiers are those of Massada and David and Goliath. The message of Massada. the ultimate story of Jewish sacrifice in the face of a superior enemy, is that "Massada shall not fall again.”32 Some swearing-in ceremonies for new army recruits, who are given the Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, are traditionally held at Massada or at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Similarly, the story of David and Goliath— again the myth of the few versus the many— serves to mobi- lize citizens into a state of perpetual conscription and a feeling of siege.33 Tel-Hai has also become institutionalized as an official part of the Israeli culture of commemoration. Its actual motif is the battle of Tel-Hai, where six Jewish settlers died on March 1, 1920. while defending a small northern settlement against Arab forces. The reputed dying statement of Joseph Trumpeldor. leader of Tel-Hai. was "never mind, it is good to die for our country.”34

As noted, the Israeli "cult of the dead" is also utilized for social mobility. In Israel, the military is arguably the most important of all social networks. Despite the events of the last decade (notably the Lebanon War and the intifada), army service is still considered to be a reward in itself for most Israeli men. as it defines the extent to which an individual belongs to the "social-evaluative” system of Israel.35 The fact that kibbutz members have traditionally served in disproportionate numbers as officers and as fighters in elite units that have suffered high casualties has often been cited as evidence of their continuing vanguard role in society, although there is some evidence that this is less true now than in the past. Conversely. Israeli-Arabs and ultra- Orthodox Jews— who do not generally serve in the army— are marginalized, as is true to a lesser extent with regard to women, who serve almost exclusively in non- combat roles.36 Recently, Aronoff reported that in interviews conducted during the Lebanon War. leaders of nationalist religious Jews and of Eastern Jews told him that the relatively higher rates of casualties suffered by their respective groups were "evidence of their having moved to the forefront of the national struggle,”3׳ and this pattern has been reinforced in recent years in Israel's security zone in Lebanon. The death of family members in military sen ice. as a closer ethnography of individual bereaved families should illustrate, is also used as a means for personal mobility— either for individual gains in the form of financial benefits and/or a social license to change one’s course of life.38

The Israeli culture of commemoration, or "cult of the dead." thus has a dual ethnic nature. On the one hand, it strives for a collective body— the sabra— cleansed of individual features such as ethnic origin, gender, age or rank. It ultimately presents itself as a key symbol cutting across historical periodizations and ethnic divisions. In this sense it belongs to what Robert Bellah and his colleagues have termed "the lan

Meira Weiss190

guage of commitment," a language characterizing communities that are "in an important sense constituted by their past.” These communities are "communities of memory." which "carry a context of meaning" that "turns us towards the future.”39 This language of commitment has long been dominant in Israeli society, while the op- posite model of the “self-reliant individual" has only begun to emerge since the 1980s.40 As the "routine" Israeli military conflict created both collectivism and bereaved families, these two models became interdependent.41 As the collectivity glo- rified its fallen soldiers and supported their bereaved relatives, the bereaved families committed themselves to the collective ethos of sacrifice and to the ideologically legitimate standardization of bereavement.

Notes1. See Baruch Kimmerling, Ha’ciretz, 13 Feb. 1997. The crash also led to a certain amount

of discussion concerning the issue of a unilateral withdrawal by Israel from the "security zone" in southern Lebanon. This discussion, however, was given more coverage in the foreign media than in Israel, where national mourning was predominant.

2. See, for example. Jack Goody. Death, Propriety and the Ancestors: A Study o f Mortuary Custom Among the LoDagaa (Stanford: 1962); Loring M. Danforth, The Death Rituals o f Rural Greece (Princeton: 1982): Lawrence J. Taylor (guest ed.), "The Uses of Death in Europe." Anthropological Quarterly 62. no. 4 (Oct. 1989), 149-154: Phillippe Aries, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore:1974): idem, The Hour o f Our Death (New York: 1981): Phyllis Palgi and Henry Abramovitz. “Death: A Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Annual Review o f Anthropology 13 (1984). 385—117.

3. See Ernest Becker. The Birth and Death o f Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem o f Man, 2nd ed. (New York: 1971), ch. 10.

4. See Robert J. Lifton, “The Sense of Immortality: On Death and the Continuity of Life,” in Death in America, ed. David E. Stannard (Philadelphia: 1977); idem. The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity o f Life (New York: 1979); George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory o f the World Wars (Oxford: 1990); and Joachim Whaley (ed.). Mirrors o f Mortality: Studies in the Social History o f Death (1988).

5. On military7 cemeteries, see Maurice Bloch. Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages and Kinship Organization in Madagascar (London: 1971); and George Mosse. "National Cemeteries and National Revival: The Cult of the Fallen Soldiers in Germany." Journal o f Contemporary History 14 ( Jan. 1979), 1 -20 . For a discussion of the political iconology of war memorials, see Maurice Bloch. "Tombs and States," in Mortality and Immortality: The Anthropology and Archaeology o f Death, ed. S.C. Humphreys and Helen King (London: 1981). 137-147: Charles L. Griswold, "The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography,” Critical Inquiry 12 (Summer 1986), 688-719: Colin McIntyre, Monuments o f War: How to Read a War Memorial (London: 1990); and Alan Borg, War Memorials: From Antiquin■ to the Present (London: 1991). On the symbolism of rites of commemoration, see "A Study in Collective Memory," Social Forces 61, no.2 (1982), 374-462; and Robin Wagner Pacifici and B am Schwartz. "The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past,” American Journal o f Sociology 97. no. 2 (Sept. 1991). 376-420.

6. See Phyllis Palgi and Joshua Durban. “The Role and Function of Collective Representations for the Individual During the Mourning Process: The Case of a War-Orphaned Boy in Israel." Ethos 23. no. 2 (June 1995), 223-243.

7. See Hanna Nave. Shevuyei hashekhol (Tel Aviv: 1993); and Dan Miron Mul haah hashotek: 'iyunim beshirat milhemet ha'azmaut (Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem: 1992).

8. Examples of social inquiry include the reproduction of the "fallen" as a national symbol in Hebrew war literature (see Dan Miron); political propaganda (see Nurith Gertz, “Social

191"We Are All One Bereaved Family"

Myths in Literary and Political Texts,” Poetics Today 7, no. 4 [1986], 621-639); and war memorials (see Esther Levinger. Andartaot lenoflim beyisrael [Tel Aviv: 1993] and Maoz Azaryahu, "War Memorials and the Commemoration o f the Israeli War of Independence. 1948-1956.” Studies in Zionism 13. no. 1 [1992], 57-77). The “fallen.” of course, is also an issue for war widows (see Lea Shamgar-Handelman. Israeli War Widows: Beyond the Glory o f Heroism [South Hadley, MA: 1986]); and it comes into play in the treatment of the bereaved (see Palgi and Durban. "Role and Function of Collective Representations”; and Ruth Malkinson. Shimshon Rubin and Eliezer Witztum [eds.]. Ovdan veshkholbahevrah hayisreelit [Tel Aviv: 1993], 231-295).

9. These three days have been the subject of sociological analysis— a fact that in itself at- tests to their importance in Israeli public life. For the history and significance of Holocaust Day. see James Young. “When a Day Remembers: A Performative History of Yom HaShoah." History and Society 2. no. 2 (1990), 54-75; and Eliezer Don-Yehiya. "Memory and Political Culture: Israeli Society and the Holocaust.” in Studies in Contemporary Jew!?, vol. 9. M odem Jews and Their Musical Agendas, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn (New York: 1993). 139-162. For Memorial Day, see Don Handelman and Elihu Katz, “State Ceremonies of Israel: Remembrance Day and Independence Day," in Models and Mirrors: Tow ards an Anthropology o f Public Events, ed. Don Handelman (Cambridge: 1990). 191-233; for Independence Day, see Eliezer Don-Yehiya, “Festival and Political Culture: Independence Day Celebrations." The Jerusalem Quarterly 45 (1988). 61-84 . For Holocaust Day and Memorial Day, see liana Bet- El and Avner Ben-Amos, “Rituals of Democracy: Ceremonies of Commemoration in Israeli Schools,” Neue Sammlung (1993), 52-58 .

10. Schools in the ultra-Orthodox sector generally do not observe Memorial Day at all, or else (since they are partially funded by the government), observe it in a perfunctory manner. A few years ago, television coverage of ultra-Orthodox youths who went about their normal busi- ness during the Memorial Day siren rekindled an often-raised debate regarding government sub- sidies to the ultra-Orthodox sector and the deferments from military service that are routinely granted to yeshivah students.

11. See Rina Shapira and F. Hayman. "Solving Educational Dilemmas by Parental Choice: The Case of Israel," International Journal o f Educational Research 15 (1991), 3 -1 4 : and Stephen R. Goldstein (ed.), Law and Equality in Education (Jerusalem: 1980).

12. General memorandum, Israel Ministry of Education, 30 March 1968 (p. 10).13. Natan Alterman. “Magash hakesef’. The quote appears in translation in Ceremony fo r

Yom Hazikaron: Memorial Day fo r Israel’s Fallen, a bilingual anthology compiled by the Israel Information Center for distribution abroard.

14. Hayim Hefer, “M iz'ad hanoflim,” in ibid.15. Uri Zvi Greenberg, "Rehovot hanahar,” in ibid.16. In Hebrew, "memitim ’azmam beohalah shel Torah."17. Bet-El and Ben-Amos, "Rituals of Democracy.”18. See Gideon Offrat, Dor tashah beomanut yisrael (Tel Aviv: 1990).19. Tom Segev. "Katalog hamakabreh hayisreeli." H aaretz 19 May 1989: cf. Mosse, Fallen

Soldiers.20. Bulletin. Yad Labanim (1990).21. Ibid., 18.22. Ibid. (1978), 60.23. See Emmanuel Sivan. Dor tashah (Tel Aviv: 1991).24. Meira Weiss, “M a'am ad hahoreh hashakul: hebetim shel mered, heshbon nefesh ve-

hagshamah azmit” (Masters' thesis. Tel Aviv University. 1978; idem, “The Bereaved Parent's Position: Aspects of Life Review and Self-fulfillment." Current Perspectives on Aging and the Life Cycle 3 (1989), 269-280.

25. Peter L. Berger, Invitation to Sociology (Garden City: 1963).26. See Shamgar-Handelman, Israeli War Widows.27. Israel Parliament Records, vol. 4 (Jerusalem: 1950), 105.28. Lloyd Warner. The Living and the Dead: A Study o f the Symbolic Life o f the Americans

(New Haven: 1959).

Meira Weiss192

29. See Alex Weingrod, “Dry Bones: Nationalism and Symbolism in Contemporary Israel.” Anthropology Today (Dec. 1995); and Myron Aronoff. "The Origins of Israeli Political Culture,” in Israeli Democracy Under Stress, ed. Ehud Sprinzak and L am 7 Diamond (Boulder and London: 1993).

30. Ibid. (Aronoff). 48.31. See Warner, The Living and the Dead, 279.32. See B am Schwartz, Yael Zerubavel and Bernice M. Barnett, “The Recovery of

Massada,” The Sociological Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1986), 147-164.33. See Gertz, “Social Myths in Literary and Political Texts."34. For an analysis of the Tel Hai narrative, see Yael Zerubavel. “The Historic, the

Legendary, and the Incredible: Invented Tradition and Collective Memory in Israel,” in Commemorations: The Politics o f National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: 1994), 105-127: idem, “New Beginnings. Old Past: The Collective Memory of Pioneering in Israeli Culture,” in New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years o f the State, ed. Lawrence J. Silverstein (New York: 1991), 193-215.

35. See Dan Weitz. and Baruch Kimmerling. "Some Social Implications of Military Service and the Reserve System in Israel,” Archives Europeennes de Sociologie 15 (1974). 262-276; and Reuven Gal, A Portrait o f the Israeli Soldier (New York: 1986).

36. See Meira Weiss. "Engendering the Gulf War: Israeli Nurses and the Discourse of Soldiering,” Journal o f Contempoaty Ethnography (1998).

37. See Myron Aronoff. Israeli Visions and Divisions (New Brunswick: 1989), 132.38. See Weiss. "The Bereaved Parent's Position” and idem, "The Bereaved Parent's

Position: Aspects of Life Review and Self-Fulfillment,” Current Perspectives on Aging and the Life Cycle 3 (1989). 269-280.

39. See Robert Bellah. Richard Madsen. William R. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Stephen M. Tipton. Habits o f the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: 1985), 153; and David Middleton and Derek Edwards (eds.), Collective Remembering (London: 1990), 5.

40. See S. N. Eisenstadt. The Transformations o f Israeli Society: An Essay in Interpretation (London: 1985): and Moshe Lissak and Dan Horowitz. Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity o f Israel (Albany: 1989).

41. See Baruch Kimmerling. “Anomie and Integration in Israeli Society and the Salience of the Israeli-Arab Conflict,” Studies in Comparative International Development 9. no. 3 (1974), 64 -8 9 : idem, The Interrupted System: Israeli Civilians in War and Routine Times (New Brunswick: 1985).

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מאמרה של מאירה וייס: COPING WITH LIFE AND DEATH