A. B. Yehoshua | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Yehoshua in 2017 | |
| Born | Avraham Gabriel Yehoshua December 9, 1936 Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine |
| Died | June 14, 2022 (aged 85) Tel Aviv, Israel[1] |
| Occupation |
|
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Alma mater | Hebrew University of Jerusalem (BA, 1961) Teachers College (1962) Sorbonne (MA, French Literature) |
| Literary movement | Israeli "New Wave" |
| Notable works | Mr. Mani (1990); The Lover (1977); "Facing the Forest" |
| Notable awards | ACUM Prize 1961 National Jewish Book Award 1990, 1993 Israel Prize for Literature 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2006 A Woman in Jerusalem |
| Spouse |
Rivka Kirsninski
(m. 1960; died 2016) |
Avraham Gabriel Yehoshua (Hebrew: אברהם גבריאל (בולי) יהושע; 9 December 1936 – 14 June 2022[2]) was an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright. The New York Times called him the "Israeli Faulkner".[3] Underlying themes in Yehoshua's work are Jewish identity, the tense relations with non-Jews, the conflict between the older and younger generations, and the clash between religion and politics.[4]
Avraham Gabriel ("Boolie") Yehoshua was born to a third-generation Jerusalem family of Sephardi origin from Salonika, Greece. His father Yaakov Yehoshua, the son and grandson of rabbis, was a scholar and author specializing in the history of Jerusalem. His mother, Malka Rosilio, was born and raised in Mogador, Morocco, France, and immigrated to Jerusalem with her parents in 1932. He grew up in Jerusalem's Kerem Avraham neighbourhood.[5]
He attended Gymnasia Rehavia municipal high school in Jerusalem.[6] As a youth, Yehoshua was active in the Hebrew Scouts. After completing his studies, Yehoshua was drafted to the Israeli army, where he served as a paratrooper from 1954 to 1957, and participated in the 1956 Sinai War. After studying literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he began teaching. He lived in Jerusalem's Neve Sha'anan neighborhood.[7]
From 1963 to 1967, Yehoshua lived and taught in Paris and served as the General Secretary of the World Union of Jewish Students. From 1972, he taught Comparative and Hebrew Literature at the University of Haifa, where he held the rank of Full Professor.[8] In 1975 he was a writer-in-residence at St Cross College, Oxford. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard (1977), the University of Chicago (1988, 1997, 2000); and Princeton (1992).
Yehoshua was married to Rivka, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, until her death in 2016. He died of esophageal cancer, on June 14, 2022, in Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.[9][10]
From the end of his military service, Yehoshua began to publish fiction. His first book of stories, Mot Hazaken (The Death of the Old Man), was published in 1962. He became a prominent figure in the "new wave" generation of Israeli writers, who differed from their predecessors in focusing more closely on the individual, and interpersonal concerns, rather than the psychology of a group. Yehoshua named Franz Kafka, Shmuel Yosef Agnon,[11] and William Faulkner as formative influences.[12] Harold Bloom wrote an article about Yehoshua's A Late Divorce in The New York Times,[13] mentioning the work again in his The Western Canon.[14]
Yehoshua is the author of twelve novels, three books of short stories, four plays, and four collections of essays, including Ahizat Moledet (Homeland Lesson, 2008), a book of reflections on identity and literature. His best-received novel, Mr Mani, is a multigenerational look at Jewish identity and Israel through five conversations that go backwards in time to cover over 200 years of Jewish life in Jerusalem and around the Mediterranean basin.[15] It was adapted for television as a five-part multilingual series by director Ram Loevy. As do many of his works, his eighth novel, Friendly Fire, explores the nature of dysfunctional family relationships[15] in a drama that moves back and forth between Israel and Tanzania.[16] His works have been translated and published in 28 countries; many have been adapted for film, television, theatre, and opera.
Yehoshua was an Israeli Peace Movement activist. He set out his political views in essays and interviews and attended the signing of the Geneva Accord. Yehoshua was both a long-standing critic of the Israeli occupation and also of Palestinian political culture.[15]
He and other intellectuals mobilized on behalf of the dovish New Movement before the 2009 elections in Israel.[17]
According to La Stampa, before the 2008–2009 Israel-Gaza conflict he published an appeal to Gaza residents urging them to end the violence. He explained why the Israeli operation was necessary and why it needed to end: "Precisely because the Gazans are our neighbours, we need to be proportionate in this operation. We need to try to reach a cease-fire as quickly as possible. We will always be neighbours, so the less blood is shed, the better the future will be."[18] Yehoshua added that he would be happy for the border crossings to be opened completely and for Palestinians to work in Israel as part of a cease-fire.[18]
Yehoshua was criticized by the American Jewish community for his statement that a "full Jewish life could only be had in the Jewish state." He claimed that Jews elsewhere were only "playing with Judaism."[15] "Diaspora Judaism is masturbation," Yehoshua told editors and reporters at The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he said, it is "the real thing."[19]
