The road to 'Yerussalem' -Asteraiand the Hebrew literature of Beta Israel

Bibliographic Data

ID2968205
AuthorsAdia Mendelson-Maoz, Adia Mendelson‐Maoz (0000-0001-7362-674X, Open University of Israel, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume20
Issue1
Pages42-56
Publication date2014-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Identities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13504630.2013.864465
OpenAlexW2053975391
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited11

The immigration of the Beta Israel community from Ethiopia to Israel during the 1980s and the 1990s posed a challenge to Israeli society in relation to its ability to know, understand, and absorb a Jewish community with differing religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. For the Beta Israel, immigrating to Israel created a rift between their dream of returning to Jerusalem, a dream that would only be fulfilled after a journey of suffering, and its realization – in which they became an inferior and excluded minority within Israel. This article discusses Hebrew Ethiopian-Israeli literature, focusing on the major narrative of homecoming – the Journey to Yerussalem. This literature, which is relatively new and small, brings the voice of two generations – those who immigrated to Israel as adults, and the younger generation who were small children during the journey. Presenting various texts, and focusing on Asterai by Omri Tegamlak Avera (2008a Avera, O. T. (2008a). Asterai. Tel Aviv: Yediot. [Google Scholar]) I shall show how Ethiopian-Israeli literature constituted itself as a journey literature, contrasting the old generation with the younger generation's identity formation as it appears in the representation of this journey narrative, constructing a more complex, ambivalent approach to the concepts of immigration and absorption, homeland and diaspora

Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Archaeology · Diaspora · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Hebrew · Homecoming · Homeland · Immigration · Jewish literature · Jewish studies · Judaism · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · Anthropology · Classics · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Psychology

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