House of Bondage

INTRODUCTION

Yossi Avni’s 1998 collection of four novellas in Hebrew Keneged ’arba‘ah banim (En. The Four Sons) explores from different vantage points the complex relationship between Zionism and homosexuality. In common with renowned Israeli filmmakers such as Eitan Fox and Avner Bernheimer, the lesser-known Avni has promoted and popularized Jewish nationalism through homosexuality since the mid-1990s. This risqué book, which ingeniously upholds the Zionist ethno-territorial doctrine by participating in trendy debates about transnationalism and diasporic subjectivities, has not yet received scholarly attention.

 

The novella Hahakham (En. The Wise) apparently tells a success story of queer immigration. Considered a security risk by Israeli authorities, Yonatan Feingold relocates to gay-friendly Germany in the early 1980s. Nine years later, Yonatan is still enraged at his homeland and maintains his distance from it. From the comfort of his new home in progressive Berlin, the well-to-do emigrant obsessively reminds himself of the poverty and heterosexism of “backward” Israel. To justify his immigration, the formerly closeted man pampers himself by openly participating in LGBT cultural events and by frequenting gay bars and nightclubs. The once-impoverished man also celebrates his escape from Israel by eating at delicatessens and by purchasing luxury cosmetics, fancy furniture, designer clothes, and other expensive items. He continues to revel in his success, enjoying the good life of hedonistic Berlin, and to congratulate himself for his good fortune even after the novella’s shocking denouement—his brutal rape. By renouncing his Israeliness, Yonatan positions himself in sharp contrast to the dominant Zionist narrative that stresses the necessity of returning to the Land of Israel and establishing there a sovereign state. Offering a pro-diasporic alternative to the concept of nation-state, he supposedly unsettles the teleological-progressive premise of communal and personal revival through the restoration of the triangle of people, culture, and land. Considered disloyal to the state because of his homosexuality, this queer supporter of extraterritorial existence appears to disrupt the imagined community’s cohesive sense of belonging and shared destiny. However, a closer reading complicates this queer disruption of nationalism. The novella actually does not destabilize the roots that ground the Israeli identity in the land or challenge the negative attitude of mainstream Zionism towards the Jewish diaspora. Behind the protagonist’s back, the novella subverts Yonatan’s emancipatory narrative and critiques his diasporic relocation to Germany, building a case against the unwise protagonist, who represents here the Jewish diaspora and its so-called “slave morality” (Nietzsche 1973). Characterized as the stereotypical assimilationist Jew, Yonatan is portrayed as a weak and a passive men, who ignores the harsh reality, including his own rape, and prefers to withdraw into a comfortable dream world. Stressing the narrator’s unreliability, the novella mocks Yonatan’s disregard of his own immense pains—his depression, compulsive emotional eating, chronic constipation, and extreme loneliness—suggests the self-destructive protagonist suffers in his new host country. By so doing, the novella only reaffirms the Zionist heteromasculinist ideology that advances ethnic separatism through territorialism.

 

Discussing the anti-diaspora ethos in many currents of early Zionism, Oz Almog describes the marginalization of Jews who preferred to remain in prosperous Europe rather than immigrating to Palestine. Since the fin-de-siècle, and to different degrees throughout the last century, these “assimilationist Jews” have been considered traitors that sabotage the nation-building enterprise. Emphasizing the history of violence against Jews in Europe, Zionist thinkers and activists accuse diasporic Jews of turning a blind eye to the dangers that lurk in exile. By opposing the idea of Jewish self-governance, and continuously living at the mercy of others, these “exilic Jews” are criticized for prolonging the suffering and hardship of their own people. According to Almog, various books “provided long descriptions of the physical agonies of the Jewish people, while explicitly and implicitly condemning Jews as passive victims” (2000, 78). This diminishing discourse, echoing the centuries-old anti-Semitic feminization of disempowered Jewish men, intended to spur immigration to the Land of Israel and galvanize the “normalization” of Jewish society. According to Daniel Boyarin, Zionism strove to turn the politically emasculated European Jews, who were stereotypically seen as physically and mentally weak, into respectable men by rooting them back in the fatherland: by cultivating their own land, the “homeless” Jews of diaspora would shed their queer feminine passivity and become independent, virile, and powerful. Boyarin describes this gendered narrative of progress, the Jewish homecoming to Palestine, as first and foremost a “return to Phallustine” (1997, 222). This romanticized return to the ancient ancestral land designates the symbolic reunification of the castrated Jews with their masculine Biblical progenitors.

 

Allusions to the biblical story of Exodus—the Jewish founding myth of liberation from the Egyptian “house of bondage”—lead the reader to further doubt Yonatan’s narrative of freedom. Both the title of the novella and of the entire collection refer to a key passage of the Haggadah, a Jewish sacred book that is recited during the Passover feast. In this passage, four sons—the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the silent—symbolize distinctive types of individuals who are drifting away from Judaism. The Haggadah suggests different ways in which the Passover commemoration of Exodus could bring them closer to their heritage and community. For example, by reminding the ritual participants of the enticing powers of the Egyptian fleshpot—that is, the hedonistic diaspora—and alerting them to the threat of mental enslavement and moral corruption that are associated with assimilation. Condemned as a pathological perversion, Yonatan’s BDSM fantasies, in which he submits himself to dominant Aryan-looking men, intend to illustrate his alleged servility and womanlike passivity, as Yonatan is derided for his professed diasporic servitude. Although Yonatan regards his journey from Israel to Germany as a sexual exodus, the novella represents his erotic pleasures as abnormal and suggests a true exodus in the form of a redemptive homecoming. Since Israel has decriminalized homosexuality a few years after Yonatan’s relocation to Germany, it seems that now he could leave behind the corrupting diaspora and return home; however, by not doing so, he prevents Israel from “curing” his self-imposed pains, unhealthy sadomasochistic desires, and submissive mentality.

 

Through graphic representations of Yonatan’s distressing sexual fantasies and paraphilic behavior, The Wisedistances itself from these “diasporic” activities to promote Jewish separatism by way of territorialism. Avni composed the novella at a time when Zionism was facing an ideological crisis, challenged by the rise of globalism and diasporism; against the zeitgeist of the 1990s, Avni strategically defends Jewish particularism and further nationalist claims by contrasting Israel’s homophobic past to its “civilized” present. This juxtaposition labels Israel, which accepts and bring sexual minorities into the circle of citizenship, as part of the progressive Western world. Homosexuality serves here as a litmus test of Israel’s modernity.  Following Jasbir Puar, who coined the term “homonationalism” to describe how a nation’s statues as “gay-friendly” has become desirable, I argue that The Wise embraces homonationalist discourse to reinforce the Zionist project (2007, 30). Emphasizing the normalizing rhetoric of homonationalism, Puar argues that gays and lesbians who adhere to the normative values of the state are granted acceptance, whereas those who do not, such as diasporic Yonatan, are excluded. By marginalizing Yonatan, The Wise links nationalism to homonormativity and show how they support each other: Israeli gay and lesbians become part of the nation and their inclusion produces narratives of progress and modernity.

 

EMIGRATION AS SALVATION

At the novella’s midpoint, Yonatan has a flashback to a degrading event that occurred nine years prior, in the early 1980s, when the Israeli Sodomy Law had yet to be repealed. Threatened with the exposure of his homosexuality, Yonatan agrees to provide a list of his lovers and homosexual friends. But Yonatan flees to gay-friendly Berlin to avoid naming names. Nine years later—by which time Israel has decriminalized homosexuality and become more accepting of sexual minorities—Yonatan tells himself a story of successful immigration, which has improved every aspect of his life. He recounts that as a homosexual in Israel, he did not enjoy the freedoms that he now enjoys in Berlin. In Tel-Aviv, he was on the “down low” and kept his sexuality a shameful secret, whereas in Berlin he celebrates it (124). He regularly patronizes gay bars and goes to LGBT cultural events in museums (87, 120). In contrast to Israel, Yonatan sees his relocation to Germany as a queer exodus: he has fled an oppressive “house of bondage” and found refuge in gay Zion. Escaping backward Israel where he was threatened with imprisonment, Yonatan is liberated in Germany; by choosing self-actualization over his homeland, Yonatan considers himself “a wise man.”

 

From Yonatan’s perspective, his immigration was a form of salvation. He convinces himself that he is thriving in his new environment, not only because he is free to express his sexuality, but also because his financial situation has improved significantly. He justifies his relocation by repeatedly comparing his currently high standard of living in affluent Germany to his poverty-stricken childhood in low-income public housing in “wretched Israel” (133). He purposely mentions the French luxury cosmetics that he purchases, as well as the expensive cologne he wears (87). He compulsively praises the lower cost and the higher quality of German food, disregarding what he considers to be inferior and overpriced Israeli goods and products. When he goes to a supermarket, he readily describes the abundance of fruits and vegetables, the different types of mushrooms, the impressive selection of cheeses, and the seductive smell of baked goods (93). He enjoys this daily ritual of grocery shopping because it gives him a chance to distance himself even further from Israel and his childhood; he remembers when he and his younger siblings regularly went to bed hungry. While in the supermarket, this émigré also expresses his frustration that his mother, who lives in Israel, still cannot afford some of her favorite foods, such as expensive lox (113). When he thinks about food, he uses a comforting mathematical mantra: “two times three equal six” (115, 140). By this, he means that “life in Berlin is six times easier” because in Israel everything costs twice as much and the salaries are three times lower (93). So Yonatan also chooses Germany over Israel for economic reasons: it makes more sense to him to live comfortably in the German land of milk and honey. Threatened with exposure and unemployment in Israel, the formerly destitute protagonist remains afraid of sliding back into poverty. The wealthy expatriate, then, considers his sexual exodus an economic safety net. Yonatan feels protected in his welcoming new home. But his feeling of safety is a mere illusion.

 

Considering his traumatic flight from Israel, Yonatan’s besetting rage is understandable: he can only remember, for instance, “the unforgivable griminess of the coastal towns” (114). He uses harsh imagery to describe his homeland: “Israel is not my home but a grave. It is a damned land, cursed for eternity. It is a land of hot tin huts and hairy rats” (112). But, attempting to reject Israel, he reiterates European anti-Semitic discourse, especially when he implies, as in Fritz Hippler’s 1940 Nazi propaganda film Der Ewige Jude, that Jews are a rat-like people. He is glorifying his new German home by debasing Jews and the Jewish state, and tries to turn himself into a German by copying what he disturbingly imagines a “real German” would say. Applying Homi Bhabha’s theorization of mimicry, Yonatan’s overreaching attempt at passing as a “true German” is a travesty (1984); his exaggerated imitation of an envisioned German hegemony exposes him as an imposter—a foreign visitor with a stereotypical image of the locals—who has only a superficial understanding of present-day Germany. Moreover, the logic behind Yonatan’s mimicry is also faulty because racist Germans will not ignore nonchalantly his “Jewish race” simply because he disavows it.

 

BODY LANGUAGE: CONSTIPATION AND FORESKINS

Against Yonatan’s celebratory narration, the reader slowly realizes that his fury covers an immense pain. This pain is embodied the protagonist’s physical suffering. While Yonatan tells a story of successful immigration, the novella exposes a quite different situation; this soi-disant triumphant émigré is in constant pain, and unable to fully assimilate into German society. Depicting Yonatan’s pain, the novella scorns his persistence in maintaining this fast-collapsing fantasy about the German fleshpot and “the good life” in the diaspora.

 

Yonatan’s misconceptions about diasporic wellness are evident in his awkward social interactions and his troubled love life. As a result of his inferiority complex about his weight and Semitic physique, the self-degrading protagonist always finds himself alone at the end of a night out. Due to his painful loneliness, Yonatan often withdraws into a private world of sexual fantasies, in which handsome young German men violently force themselves on him. The novella rebukes the protagonist’s vivid imagination: for Yonatan, these comforting and empowering daydreams “prove” that he is desirable, but these fantasies also demonstrate the protagonist’s frailty, especially when he fantasizes about dominating Aryan men. By pointing to Yonatan’s rape fantasies—and implying that they are perverse and socially unacceptable—the novella shows how this newcomer desperately seeks acknowledgment and social approval even at the expense of his own humanity.

 

Yonatan’s so-called diasporic subjection materializes through another type of erotic reveries. The circumcised protagonist often fetishizes foreskins, synecdoche for the superiority of “undamaged” German men. Since Yonatan does not consider himself equal to Germans, this self-emasculated man is predisposed to submit himself to his masters’ will and to serve them readily. Ridiculing servitude and mental bondage,the novella not only criticizes the protagonist, who stubbornly ignores reality, but also denounces the seemingly passive and submissive “exilic Jews,” who similarly insist on remaining in the perilous diaspora. The novella allegorizes Yonatan’s rape as a national abuse rather than a violent personal tragedy, and thus, by negating the diaspora and its supposed negative impact on Jews, vicariously advances Jewish separatism and Zionism.

 

At the beginning of the novella, after eating a big meal and condemning Israel, Yonatan has a stomachache, and feels as though he has been punched in the belly (85); by the end, this abdominal pain will materialize horrendously in his brutal rape (136). Ex post facto, Yonatan’s aching body not only foreshadows this sexual assault, but encourages the reader to allegorize the rape as the inevitable outcome of living at the mercy of others. Throughout the novella, however, the vulnerable protagonist repeatedly fails to understand the foreboding signals of his own body. Time and again, he overlooks the warnings of impending violence. For example, while excessively eating flavorful knödel, he visualizes these ball-shaped dumplings as “large Roman ballista stones that attack my Carthage-like belly” (88). Although this imagery evokes aggression and even self-destruction, Yonatan offhandedly ignores the alarming vision and resumes eating. He similarly disregards an ominous vision in which huge worms bite him from within (96). His immense pain is present on almost every page. Tangibly, Yonatan suffers from constipation, but he fails to make the obvious connection between his voracious consumption of food and the difficulty he experiences evacuating his bowels. To prove to himself that he savors the German fleshpot, Yonatan obsessively cooks and compulsively eats the expensive food he can now afford. He hopes to fill an emotional void with food, but is never full or satisfied. Many pages of The Wisedetail the various “comfort foods” the protagonist involuntarily consumes, as well as the agonizing hours that he spends afterward in various lavatories. His aching body warns him of the dangers of living in diaspora: the unsatisfying pleasures that are found in the fleshpot will inevitably result in pain and chronic misery. Since the title of the novella refers to the Passover Haggadah, The Wise implies here that like the newly liberated Israelites, who consider returning to the Egyptian “house of bondage” (Ex. 20:2) in order to eat once again from the “fleshpot” (Ex. 16:3), Yonatan is willing to suffer the destructive consequences of his diasporic existence. The novella implies here that by living off the fat of the German land, the unwise protagonist is enslaved by his own pursuit of happiness.

 

In Hebrew, the noun “constipation” (‘atzirut) has the same root as the words “stop” (‘atzar) and “detainee” (‘atzir). Yonatan is not really free in Germany because he is confined to various lavatories for long and tiresome periods of time. No wonder that when this physically and figuratively immured man sits on the toilet, he “hopes for liberation” (“meyahel leshihrur”) (96). This ingenious wordplay suggests that the exhausted expatriate, who cannot find relief in his host country, subconsciously yearns for a “true” exodus. The Hebrew word for “exodus” (yetzi’ah) is also a common euphemism for “defecation.” Symbolically, Yonatan is awaiting painfully both “releases.” Yonatan’s relocation to Berlin is not as successful as he leads himself to believe. After all, the attainable “comfort food” that he consumes to excess eventually causes him discomfort: he cannot find rest in restrooms because these claustrophobic spaces represent for him painful displacement. His upset stomach proverbially exposes his sadness. One term for “melancholia” in Hebrew is marah shehorah (“black bile”)—a literal translation of the original Greek melankholia. Like the ancient Greeks, Jews also traced depression to the liver and spleen. Likewise, and following Freud’s definition of melancholia as a pathological form of mourning (1953, 243), Yonatan’s melancholy finds expression by means of painful abdominal irregularity.

 

Yonatan’s constipation is a type of deterrent corporal punishment: should the suffering protagonist have resisted the tempting fleshpot, as the famished Israelites did, in order to be truly liberated from his pain? In this case, because the diaspora has provided the means—that is, an abundance of affordable food—it is accused of aiding and abetting Yonatan’s “crime.” The diaspora is on trial here for being an enticing instigator that enables the greed and injudiciousness of this naïve immigrant. Juxtaposed with Yonatan’s apparent vices and poor judgment, the title of the novella appears now to be ironic, even sarcastic, for not recognizing his own “gut feelings” about living in the corrupting diaspora.

 

SEXODUS

Focusing on his painful failures at finding love, casual sex, or even just friendship, it becomes apparent that Yonatan’s “sexodus” narrative is a lie. When this lonely man goes to gay bars and nightclubs, he apprehensively stands in dark corners and avoids making eye contact. Since he believes that Germans could not find him attractive, he wryly compares himself to a worm (87). When Yonatan describes his stomachache, he visualizes worms crawling through his digestive system and nibbling him from the inside. At the bar, self-loathing Yonatan turns himself into the spinelessness creature that torments him. This dehumanizing self-portrayal also sheds light on his BDSM fantasies, in which he grovels at the Germans’ feet. In these erotic reveries, Yonatan is forced time and again to have sex with a large number of abusive German men, and relishes the act of servicing his abusers. Although he finds great pleasure in these fantasies, they are nevertheless depicted as “distorted” and “abnormal” sexual acts which allegorically mirror the submissive mentality of the invertebrate Jews of diaspora: rather than resisting their abusers, they masochistically prefer to endure pain in order to retain their civil status.

 

In many of Yonatan’s fantasies, muscular athletes arrive uninvited at his home and “do with him as they please” (98, 106). Similarly, “beefy thugs,” who break into his apartment, “do things to him” (84). In another daydream, an ideal man, “who is all foreskin,” sneaks into Yonatan’s home and takes him by force. Soon after that, Yonatan is raped by another Aryan-looking man “with a huge uncircumcised organ.” Because of his “primitive yellow strength,” this blond man easily subdues Yonatan (90). To disassociate himself from Jews, Yonatan fantasies about Teutonic men and fetishizes their foreskins. This body part, which supposedly distinguishes “real” men from “castrated” Semites, consumes Yonatan’s imagination. In his erotic reveries, Yonatan gets aroused thinking about his abusers’ uncircumcised penises, which remind him of soldiers with oversized helmets standing at attention (90). In Israel, this imagery of German soldiers evokes more than the seductive allure of authority figures in uniform; it connotes the Holocaust and incites national anxieties attached to this collective trauma. The novella antagonizes the protagonist and criticizes his obsequiousness by accenting his reputedly “morbid” fantasies. In another military-themed “sweet fantasy,” a group of infantry soldiers, “atrociously handsome in a satanic way,” incessantly stab Yonatan with their sword-like penises (85). This violent imagery is perhaps even more discomforting for the protagonist’s intent: Yonatan incorporates the familiar Israeli Holocaust discourse—primarily the identification of Nazis with Satan—into his own paraphilic pleasures.

 

Yonatan is denounced for choosing to live among Germans despite being fully aware of their Nazi past and inherent brutality, and his rape by a German man perhaps comes as no surprise. Following an attractive blond man into a secluded backyard, Yonatan is excited to meet face to face the man of his dreams. The man, however, is furious at his stalker. In his anger, he pulls out his uncircumcised penis and urinates on Yonatan (134). As if he were an alpha dog that protects his territory, the man aggressively establishes his dominance over the intruder by humiliating him. While pissing on Yonatan, the man laughs, taunts the submissive stranger (135). The abuse intensifies as the man continues to mistreat Yonatan, and violently rapes him. Although a forced act, Yonatan enjoys it. Yonatan describes the moment of the man’s ejaculation as “sweet like honey” (137), and it seems that Yonatan, desperately seeking social acceptance and validation, misinterprets his rape as lovemaking.

 

After the rape, the now-loosened protagonist—not only in figuratively sense, but also physically—is finally able to go to the toilet and empty his bowels. After his long period of painful constipation, Yonatan relieves himself; he no longer feels imprisoned—“constipated” in Hebrew—in his host country. When he describes his exhilarated visit to the restroom, he says that his face is “radiating from relief” (139). At last, he finds rest in the restroom. Ironically, rather than opening Yonatan’s eyes to his own distressing reality, the rape has “opened his corked bottle” and eased his abdominal pain, which signifies his depression (137). After his assault, while cooking another sumptuous meal in which he turns pain into champagne, Yonatan continues to praise the German fleshpot, and convinces himself that “a wounded rectum can heal” (140). This lavish feast is so bitter that it leaves a bad taste in the reader’s mouth.

 

The name of Yonatan’s rapist—Christian—helps to forge the novella’s separatist agenda (137): when this name is revealed toward the end, Yonatan’s personal tragedy becomes symbolic of Jewish collective trauma: a paradigmatic example of how Christians treated Jews throughout history. As an allegorical dramatization of national abuse, Yonatan’s rape epitomizes the devastating repercussions of living in the diaspora at the mercy of non-Jews. The Wise stages Yonatan’s assault as an ahistorical drama, in which reluctant Jews bring upon themselves unnecessary travails by lingering in the diaspora; the novella vicariously promotes the idea that Jews should separate themselves from Christendom, immigrate to Israel, and by so doing break the cycle of violence in which they are trapped.

 

THE HOMONATIONAL MOMENT

Yonatan’s immigration to Germany pertains to the biblical story of Exodus. As a key intertext of the novella, this religious metanarrative—reconstructed by secular Zionism as a story of emancipatory struggle for Jewish self-determination (Ophir 1994)—is supposed to evoke patriotic sentiments. The allusion to the Passover Haggadah, which narrates the story of Israel’s bondage and salvation, suggests that submissive Yonatan has a slave mentality. Beyond figurative enslavement by his own diasporic depravity, Yonatan literally services his gentile masters in the German “house of bondage.”

 

On one of his many visits to public restrooms, the constipated protagonist notices a fecal stain on the toilet bowl. Since other people are waiting for him to finish, Yonatan is afraid that when they enter his stall, they would think that the dark smear is his. He imagines the “plausible” reaction of the next visitor: “This person did not clean up after himself. Such brutishness. A German would never do something like that. He must certainly be a Jew” (101). Terrified of not being seen as a “real” German, Yonatan immediately rushes to clean up the “Jewish” stain. The narrator’s instrumental usage of emotive language here is worth noting. He provocatively calls the fecal stain she’eirit hapleitah and haroset in order to show his contempt for Israel and Judaism. Such contrived manipulation, however, ultimately works against Yonatan since he is once again exposed as an imperceptive and insensitive person, who does not fully comprehend the catastrophic events of Jewish history, especially the enormity of the Holocaust.

 

She’eirit hapleitah is a biblical term that literally means “the surviving remnant” (Ezra 9:8–15). It refers to the deported Jews who later returned to the Land of Israel from their Babylonian exile. This expression is commonly used in modern Israel to poetically refer to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. In the first decades of Israeli statehood, this term was wielded as a derogatory phrase that singled out those who did not immigrate to Palestine when they had the chance or who had not resisted the Nazis. Pleitah can also mean “discharge,” which is an Israeli euphemism for excrement, while she’eirit connotes “residue.” When Yonatan describes the fecal stain that he cleans as she’eirit hapleitah, his play on words is not just an exaggerated imitation of the ceremonious Israeli Holocaust discourse. His vulgar parody, which outrageously compares Jews to German feces, belittles the Holocaust and dehumanizes its victims and survivors to a degree that far exceeds conventional Zionist disapproval of diasporic passivity. By employing such transgressive imagery, Yonatan practically excommunicates himself from Israeli society and Jewry. His disrespectful invective certainly alienates the reader.

 

Haroset is a paste-like mixture of apples and nuts that is served during the Passover feast. It symbolizes the clay from which the Israelites made bricks for building the pyramids. On the simplest level, Yonatan mocks this Jewish ritual when he visualizes this customary dish as German feces. Being an Israeli deportee, whose civil liberties were taken away from him, Yonatan’s parodied version of the Passover ritual ridicules the emancipatory Zionist interpretation of the exodus story. In his experience, Israel is not a place of freedom. However, this scene can also be understood as another demonstration of Yonatan’s servility; like the Israelite slaves, he encounters haroset while “slaving away” in a German lavatory. In Zakhor, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi explores the Jewish concept of memory. In his discussion of the Passover ritual, he argues that this celebration is intended not to spur recollection of the past but rather its re-actualization (1996, 43). In this sense, when Yonatan cleans German haroset from a toilet bowl, he vividly displays and relives diasporic subjection. In this moment, it seems that the inattentive protagonist fails to remember the motto of the Passover Haggadah—“in every generation a person should see himself as though he, personally, came out of Egypt”—and to internalize its Zionist moralistic lesson about the necessity of Jewish homecoming and sovereignty. The reader realizes that Yonatan is still in the diasporic “house of bondage.”

 

The biblical notion of bondage emerges in the novella also in the form of BDSM fantasies. These fantasies are viewed as abnormal, and Yonatan pathologized, branded a deviant. Since, according to Gayatri Gopinath (2005), sexual deviance corresponds to national deviance, Yonatan’s queerness manifests in his immigration to Germany and—using Nietzsche’s terminology (1973) that early Zionism adopted—his diasporic “slave morality.” The narrative establishes a cycle in which the personal and the political mirror each other; Yonatan’s slave morality is reflected by his sordid BDSM fantasies and sexual activities, which is reflected by his slave morality, and so on… and so Yonatan’s sexual preferences affect and are affected by his anti-Zionist worldview: because the protagonist submits himself to dominant men and masochistically enjoys being controlled and abused by them, he is stigmatized as helpless and dependent—a passive man. This passivity is manifested in the “feminized” sexual position that he adopts or is forced to perform. In phallocentric Israel, the receptive partner in anal intercourse is known as “the passive one” because he is perceived as “the woman” and thus assumed to be weaker physically and mentally. Since Yonatan exemplifies the Jewish exilic experience, his passivity actualizes for the reader diasporic powerlessness and submissiveness.

 

By denouncing Yonatan’s diasporic slave morality, The Wise attempts to normalize Israeli homosexuality, implying that, unlike the deviant protagonist, gay Israelis are devoted patriots who comply with the national ideology and conform to its normative gender roles. In doing so, it revalidates and authenticates outdated social constructions of gender rooted in early Zionist movements. George L. Mosse argues that since the nineteenth century, Western nationalism and male respectability have supported each other while condemning “the unconventional as threating to the state” (1982, 221). The state considers the homosexual a “pervert, who lacks self-control and follows his morbid fantasies” (227). In Unheroic Conduct, Boyarin examines the process by which various fin-de-siècle Jewish movements redefined desirable gender norms and suitable sexual expressions to fit this mode of respectability (1997, 189-220). He claims that political Zionism, which modeled itself on Western paradigms of nationality, sought to normalize the so-called physically and psychologically deformed diasporic Jew by means of territorialism. The desire to create a Jewish state originated in the desire to create a “New Hebrew Man,” who, unlike his repudiated effeminate counterpart, would be healthy, active, virile, potent, brave, and thus honorable. It was believed that an autonomous Jewish territory could provide the setting for such transformation. In the same vein as this heterosexualization process, The Wise implies that the sickly protagonist—who has forsaken the territorial solution, and so masculinity itself—regresses, degenerates. Losing the physical, mental, and moral qualities considered to be “normal,” Yonatan becomes a diasporic “queer.” In contrast, by virtue of their settling in Israel and endorsing the Zionist project, the novella discerns gay Israelis as able-bodied machos and respectable straight-like men—that is to say, “normative.”

 

Lisa Duggan describes homonormativity as a neoliberal strategy of inclusion, in which gays and lesbians strive to integrate into the status quo by emulating heterosexual lifestyles. Homonormativity, she writes, “is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them” (2003, 50). Similarly, The Wise does not challenge the dichotomized construction of gender, but rather reinscribes it onto the Israeli national discourse. For this reason, the effeminophobic novella punishes the tragic queer protagonist for deviating from the norm, while obliquely privileging those who want and are able to adjust themselves to the hegemonic consensus. The normalizing rhetoric of The Wise holds and supports a Zionist agenda; at the expense of those who are defined as “improper,” the novella promotes patriotism in order to incorporate gays and lesbians into the nation-state and legitimate them. Since Yonatan’s anti-patriotism and BDSM fantasies do not represent appropriate national behavior, he is ridiculed and ostracized. This unmanly protagonist, who “treacherously” immigrated to Germany, is distinctly different from the majority of gay Israelis, who are as manly as they are loyal to the state. The Wise then appears to be a cautionary tale that warns Israelis against emigration and the dangers of diaspora. Published at a time when Zionism was in an ideological crisis, challenged by the rise of globalism, the novella comes to the aid of the ethno-territorial doctrine. Against the growing legitimacy of diasporic subjectivities in the 1990s (Band, 1996), The Wise resists this post-Zionist zeitgeist. It brings to life the outdated Zionist negation of the diaspora by illustrating a scenario in which a gay Israeli man loses his masculinity/morality because of his self-imposed exile, revitalizes the early Zionist link between personal passivity and national submissiveness, and shores up territorialism as a solution to diasporic passivity and powerlessness. In the end of the novella, the protagonist fantasizes about the house that he would have bought, if he had won the lottery. Despite his rape, Yonatan imagines that he lives happily ever after with Christian near the affluent Berlin suburb of Wannsee (155). This closing scene is the last nail in the coffin: Yonatan dreams of making a life with his German abuser in the city where Nazi officials met in 1942 to plan the Final Solution. In contrast to Yonatan’s “death wish”—the Zionist presumption that if anti-Semitism does not obliterate diasporic Jews, assimilation will—The Wise proposes to resolve the Jewish Question by means of separatism and homecoming

 

The patriotic agenda of the novella becomes more evident when considering the context of its publication. The reader contrast the auspicious situation of the Israeli vibrant LGBT community in 1998, when The Wise was published, with the less pluralistic and tolerant Israel of 1982, when the early events in the story take place. The reader is made aware of the sea change in the social acceptance of Israeli sexual minorities that occurred when the law against sodomy was repealed in 1988. In the course of the protagonist’s lengthy stay in Germany, LGBT rights have advanced significantly. Yonatan, however, has not experienced this revival. While he recalls Israel as a backward country, the reader regards it as a progressive place. The more Yonatan reproves the parochialism of Israel, the more the reader is conscious of the protagonist’s ignorance and misconceptions of his homeland. By calling attention to this reformation process, the novella not only celebrates the advancement of the Israeli LGBT community, but also implies that this progress is a sign of Israel’s Westernization. This fusion of nationalism and homonormativity generates a new hybrid of the two; Puar has termed this synergic concept “homonationalism” (2007). According to Puar, liberal discourses of gay and lesbian acceptance and inclusion are instrumentalised by nation-states to fulfil nationalist objectives; it positions the equitable treatment of sexual minorities as the icon of “civilization” and “progress” and portrays societies that do not meet this standard as “barbaric.” If Zionism at the turn of the twentieth century modeled itself on Western concepts of masculinized nationality, Zionism at the turn of the twentieth-first century similarly adapted itself to contemporary Western notions about gender identities and sexuality. Homosexuality, which previously was used to galvanize a radical change in Jewish society, is deployed nowadays to indicate once again that Israel is part of the Western world. By adopting and implementing progressive Western-like LGBT laws, Israel signals that it shares similar values with other Western nations. As a narrative of progress, The Wise regards Germany, which Yonatan venerates as a bastion of liberalism, as not so different from a reformed and modernized Israel.

 

CONCLUSION

The Wise alludes to one of the songs of the Passover Haggadah, “Vehi’ she‘amdah” (En. “what has saved us”): “for not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise up against us to destroy us.” Although time after time gentiles harm Jews, the unwise Jews fail to learn from their past mistakes and so remain in exile. Yonatan is scolded for leaving Israel, the diaspora that he represents negated, and The Wise resists the trendy pro-diasporic zeitgeist of the 1990s by supporting the “return” of Jews to the sovereign Jewish state.

 

Yonatan’s rape is a national abuse, the diasporic Jew characterized as a submissive subordinate. Associating femininity with weakness and passivity—traits that early Zionism attributed to homosexuality and national degeneration—The Wise stigmatizes the diasporic Jew as a perpetual victim, who venerate the abuser’s ascendancy and invites their own abuse. It does not denounce the perpetrator for his crime, but rather blames the victim for his passivity. As if his violent assault was not bad enough, Yonatan suffers here multiple times: he is cynically held responsible for his own rape, judged for repressing it, and condemned for obstructing the Jewish national revival by emigrating from Israel and assimilating into German society. The homonormative novella also stigmatizes the protagonist for not being a straight-acting Zionist gay—for being an anti-patriot queer.

 

The Wise promotes Jewish separatism through territorialism. It suggests that the self-abased protagonist could restore his lost masculinity, morality, and health by means of a modern exodus. Yonatan is not an able-bodied man; his physical and mental conditions have deteriorated since he emigrated from Israel. This self-hating Jewish immigrant suffers from constipation and depression; the novella indirectly suggests that this somatization could be resolved with his return to Israel. Delusional Yonatan, however, chooses to stay in Germany because he sees Israel as a backward country. When considering the context of the novella’s publication, it is clear to the reader that Israel at the turn of the twenty-first century is not the same Israel that Yonatan left in the early 1980s. The reader deduces that in a reformed and modernized Israel, which has promoted LGBT rights since the early 1990s, Yonatan would be welcomed back. The Wise sustains a homo-Zionist agenda; it advocates the assimilation of mainstream Israeli gays and lesbians through patriotism. This “normalizing agenda” correlates with Israel’s strategic homonationalism: by promoting LGBT rights, Israel presents itself as a progressive Western country. This agenda is problematic because it is designed to scapegoat “unseemly” LGBT subjects—for example, non-Zionists or Palestinians—while reinforcing existing discriminatory discourses and limiting the political and rhetorical strategies available to those who are marginalized.

 

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