(In this delicately structured and psychologically rigorou...)
In this delicately structured and psychologically rigorous short story collection, Yehudit Hendel maps out a shadowland between life and death, the mundane and the fantastic. These eight stories, which should be read as a cycle, offer variations on the themes of loneliness, family ties, obsession, and regret in contemporary Israel.
Yehudit Hendel was an Israeli well-known author, who published novels, collections of short stories, and non-fiction works. Her writings deal primarily with people and their reactions to what life has thrown their way.
Background
Yehudit Hendel was born in 1925, in Warsaw, Poland. She was a daughter of Akiva Hendel, a rabbi, and Nehama Hendel. In 1925, her grandfather, Ezekiel Hendel, a descendant of Ezekiel Taub, the founder of the Kazimierz Hasidic dynasty, sold his business and property in Warsaw and emigrated to Palestine together with his sons and daughters. He was one of the founders of Kefar Hasidim. Yehudit Hendel's parents remained in Warsaw and joined the family in 1930, settling in the Nesher district of Haifa, where her father, Akiva, worked as a bus driver. Her mother died of typhus when Hendel was a young girl.
Education
Yehudit Hendel studied at the elementary school in Nesher and was a member of the No'ar ha-Oved youth movement. After the death of her mother in 1942, the family moved to Haifa, where Hendel completed her high school studies at the Reali School. She then studied at Levinsky College of Education in Tel Aviv.
Yehudit Hendel's first stories were published in Mi-Bifnim in 1942 and subsequently appeared in various Israeli literary journals. Her point of view, her language, and the protagonists of her stories were largely different from those of the other writers of her generation. Her literary voice was one of the first female voices in Hebrew literature after the War of Independence.
Her first collection of stories, entitled Anashim Aherim Hem (They are Different) appeared in 1950, followed by her first novel Reḥov ha-Maderegot (1956), a social novel, depicting the disparity between two classes in the new Jewish state: the poverty-stricken, disadvantaged Oriental Israelis, living in downtown Haifa, and the established, influential Ashkenazi elite, living on Mount Carmel. Hapless Oriental characters, traumatized Holocaust survivors, and weary immigrants are the anti-heroes in Hendel's second novel, Ha-Ḥaẓer shel Momo ha-Gedolah (The Yard of Momo the Great, 1969), which is set again in downtown Haifa shortly before the Six-Day War. It was adapted for television by Judd Ne'eman. She also contributed to film documentaries such as Tzilia Khozereth.
Hendel, commonly associated with the "New Wave" in Hebrew literature, was one of the first Israeli novelists to foreground the fate and sufferings of ethnic minorities and of women in Israeli society. The novel Ha-Koaḥ ha-Akher (The Other Power, 1984) is a lyrical elegy to her late husband, the painter Zvi Mairovitch, in which Hendel describes and contemplates on the nature and meaning of the creative process. No less personal is her next work, Leyad Kefarim Sheketim (Near Quiet Places, 1987), a moving account of a voyage she undertook to Poland, juxtaposing pastoral landscapes and the awareness of the shattering past, the concentration camps and a Jewish world lost forever: "One cannot avoid the feeling that Poland is a great cemetery," she writes.
Sickness, death, loss, and bereavement became major themes in Hendel's works. In the collection Kesef Katan (1988; Small Change, 2002) she told of a woman dying of cancer, and of a man twice widowed; in Har ha-To'im (The Mountain of Losses, 1991) she critically reflects on the state-organized ceremonies in military cemeteries, pleading for a genuine and heartfelt private ritual of mourning. Following the collection of stories Aruḥat Boker Temimah (An Innocent Breakfast, 1996), Hendel published the novel Terufo shel Rofe ha-Nefesh (Crack Up, 2002), a skillfully narrated psychological novel describing the disintegration of a man who marries the wife of his deceased best friend, the woman he had always loved. The marriage is marred by hallucinations and guilt feelings, overshadowed by the imaginary presence of the dead.
Many of Yehudit Hendel's works were adapted for the stage, screen, radio, and TV. Her novels were translated from Hebrew into numerous languages, including English, Chinese, and French. Hendel was the recipient of various prestigious literary awards.
(In this delicately structured and psychologically rigorou...)
2003
Views
Yehudit Hendel considered the act of translation a double-edged sword. Agreeing with fellow Hebrew writer Chaim Bialik, she was quoted by Wendy Gold of Writing the Jewish Future online as "Translation is like kissing a bride through a veil."
Connections
Yehudit Hendel married Zvi Mairovich in 1948. The couple had two children: Dorit (born in 1952) and Yehoshua (born in 1963).
Father:
Akiva Hendel
Mother:
Nehama Hendel
husband:
Zvi Mairovich
Zvi Mairovich was a crucial part of the New Horizons group as a cofounding member. These artists promoted an abstract style, that would encompass Mairovich's own work. Prior to this time, Mairovich was more of a traditional landscape painter. While he maintained a focus on the subject, his style became more abstract, with start contrasts between dark and light flashes. Fellow members of the New Horizons group, including Arie Aroch, looked to move Israeli painting away from the concentration on Expressionism. Mariovich would stay with the group until 1959, developing his unique approach to landscape works through oil and chalks. He was selected to represent Israel in the Venice Biennale in 1956, 1958, and 1962 as well as the Sao Paulo Bienal of 1953 and 1959.
