“Who ever does not intend to bring the remedy, to contribute to the healing, to bandage, to reach the common ground - had better not raise his voice these days” (104).[1] With these words, the Israeli writer Shulamith Hareven closes her autobiography, and opens its retrospective reading, which is the retrospective reading of her life and work. But this is not only her autobiography; rather, it is also the narrative of the state of Israel as she sees it. The story of Hareven’s I and the Israeli collective are built here symbiotically, but as both narratives progress, the collective narrative disintegrates and Hareven’s own narrative emerges.

The autobiography Many Days (2002) is the last work published during Hareven’s life, as is often the case with autobiographies (though not exclusively, as post-modern theories of autobiography have shown). Yet this autobiography is in no sense a classical autobiography. Hareven did not rewrite her life retroactively, but rather compiled previously published pieces representing the entire range of her work. She positions short stories from her various collections alongside poems, a novel excerpt, political essays and what she entitles ‘Memoirs,’ which are previously recorded oral narratives.[2] Only one segment – the novel excerpt – has been altered, introducing the first chapter of her novel City of Many Days (1972), but only part of the second chapter. The excerpt is also concluded by a number of lines which only appear in the middle of the third chapter, and which are added on in order to render this segment complete, independent of its original context. Though generally unaltered, the other segments are also subjected to new interpretation in their repositioning within their new context. This context is what Hareven deems ‘an Autobiography.’

The only component of this patchwork which was written in the autobiographical moment is its brief foreword, serving as reading instructions for the entire work (Mandel 67). Hareven explains her motives for writing, which appear to be numerous: basing her narrative in relation to the collective narrative, protecting her own privacy and asserting control over her own narrative, speaking for the collective, positioning herself as witness, and finally leaving an operative testament for her readers. In this paper, I intend to devote a section to each of these motives for writing, while locating Hareven’s narrative within the autobiographic context and within the Israeli context, exploring the issues that ensue from both these categories.

A great deal of what sets Many Days and its author apart from convention is based on the Israeli context in which the author lived the life she recounts in her autobiography. Nonetheless, I strongly believe that Shulamith Hareven and her autobiography should be of particular interest to any investigation of women’s writing and autobiographical discourse. The situation in Israel forms a unique confluence of circumstances; it is a state built on militaristic hierarchy and the constant threat of national emergency on the one hand, and on the patriarchal structure of traditional Judaism on the other.[3] This poses particular challenges for women living their lives, and even more so for the woman intent on writing her life’s story. As such, the Israeli context can serve as a test case, enabling access to pressing issues both of autobiography and of women’s writing and its position within a national context. In this paper, I will attempt to locate several of these issues, using contemporary and feminist theories of autobiography in my reading of Hareven’s work. These issues, namely the tension between the public and private sphere, between the individual feminine I and the collective national We, between being represented and representativeness, will not only serve my reading of Hareven’s autobiography. They will also be read in light of the unique Israeli conditions and thus be subjected to investigation in and of themselves.

Hareven’s biography is in many senses a classical Israeli narrative. Hareven was born in Poland in 1930. She immigrated to British-Ruled Mandatory Palestine during the Second World War. She was a member of the Hagana Pre-State military organization and served as a medic on the front during the 1948 war. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Hareven participated in the founding of Galatz, the Israeli military radio station. She also served as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, working with Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. She worked in the Israeli press, both as a war correspondent and as a columnist on current events. Hareven was the first woman member of the Israeli Academy of the Hebrew Language. Additionally, Hareven was a prominent peace activist and was among the founders of the influential Peace Now movement in 1978. In 1962, she published her first work, a volume of poetry entitled Predatory Jerusalem. She later published one more volume of poetry, entitled Separate Places (1969). She is more renowned for her works of prose, namely the historical novel City of Many Days (1972, English translation 1977), her books of short stories, In the Last Month (1966), Permission Granted (1970), and Loneliness (1980), and her biblical trilogy: The Miracle Hater (1983, English1988), Prophet (1989, English 1993) and After Childhood (1994). She was particularly well known for her political essays, which appeared in many leading Israeli newspapers until her death in 2003, and were compiled and published during her life in The Dulcinea Syndrome (1981), Messiah or Knesset (1987), and The Vocabulary of Peace (1995, English 1995). She also wrote two children’s books, and a thriller entitled The Link (1986) dealing with the Israeli espionage forces, which she chose to publish under the pseudonym Tal Yaari. She received important commendations such as the Prime Minster’s Creativity Prize and the Acum Prize, and in 1995 she was voted one of the 100 women “who move the world” by the French magazine, L’express.

Once a part of the founding group of the State of Israel, by the end of her life Hareven found herself marginalized as part of the Israeli left wing, which had lost its status as a leading force within Israeli politics. The ideology and political discourse of the country she fought to establish had changed dramatically, from that of a minority fighting for self-definition to a powerful nation that must find a way to reconcile its position within the region. This national political shift marks the end of the symbiosis between Hareven’s personal narrative and the collective national narrative, a symbiosis that Hareven strove to construct throughout her life and strove to express through her autobiography. Hareven summons her past (work and life) in order to make a statement concerning the direction in which the Israeli narrative is progressing. Taking into account both triumphs and failures, this work is a true reckoning, both personally and nationally, calling for a process of healing through a dialogue of narratives.

Our Autobiography: the Private I and the National Collective

In Many Days, Hareven presents her own narrative as parallel to the Israeli national narrative. The narrative starts with the Holocaust, a point of both personal and national weakness. As the narrative proceeds, both the personal and national subjects develop, and culminate simultaneously with the establishment of the state of Israel, in what appears to be a reciprocal relationship of construction. From this point of strength the personal I emerges, and despite proclaiming a commitment to the national, Hareven’s narrative becomes more personal, rendering both her writing and activity essentially marginal.

To a certain extent, every individual is a product of the time in which she lives. In this sense, public occurrences have a personal existence and meaning alongside their collective meaning. Thus, every autobiography is also the story of a certain time, which situates even the most private of occurrences within a wider national context, granting it public significance. Hareven takes this recognition a step further, by erasing the differentiation between the creation of the personal by the national and the creation of the national by the personal. This amalgamation is a direct result of the distinct experience of the Tashach[4] generation, the generation which came of age during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and which had an active role in the period’s historical events.[5] This generation’s prominent Zionist ethos situated the collective above the individual, while acknowledging the Iindividual’s role in the creation of the national collective. This is clearly mirrored in Hareven’s perception of her own story and its place within the national story, and this is what causes, according to Hareven, the effacement of the border between the I and the We (3), rendering the personal story public and the public story personal.

As part of the symbiosis built between the personal and the collective narratives, Hareven positions herself in the heart of the collective consensus, both in action and in writing. However, by the end of this autobiography her distance from this hegemonic center is blatantly clear. This discrepancy leads us to look back at the rest of the narrative, revisiting precisely those places in which Hareven writes herself into the center. This compels the reader to question her actual position in relation to the hegemonic center. The reader is driven to ask whether her I was ever truly representative of the national collective. According to Mandel, “Since [in autobiography] the ego is in conflict with the truth, the reader very often gets that message. The author has created an illusion of an illusion” (66). In Hareven’s narrative, the points in which the reader becomes aware of this conflict lay in the tension between the authorial I and the collective We which it takes on.[6] I will present a reading of the central manifestations of this tension through a selection of sections from the narrative, both fictional and non-fictional, which relate to those experiences that are cardinal, both in the national narrative and in Hareven’s personal experience of it. I will examine Hareven’s positioning of herself in relation to the hegemonic center and in relation to the national collective, looking simultaneously at the building of a private/public symbiosis and at its deconstruction from within, searching for the personal I which emerges from the collective We.

The most conspicuous point of conflict surrounding the positioning of the author’s I is the section entitled “The Witness.” This story stands out, as Hareven declares in her foreword that this is the only non-autobiographical section of the book. Moreover, it is the only piece narrated in the first person, who cannot be identified with the author, as it speaks in the voice of a man. Additionally, this narrator belongs chronologically to the generation before Hareven’s (i.e. those who immigrated to British-ruled Mandatory Palestine before the Second World War).

In this fictional story, the narrator is a teacher who fails to believe his immigrant student’s account of the massacre occurring in Nazi-ruled Europe. He wishes to force his student to abandon his uniqueness and adapt to the collective, in accordance with the period’s Zionist ethos of creating a ‘New Jew’: “Soon you will adjust and soon you will look like all of us and you will talk like all of us, and no one will be able to tell that you are not from here” (48).

Instead of narrating through the voice of the victim, the immigrant who is a member of her own generation, Hareven chooses the authorial voice of the perpetrator, as a representative of the hegemonic center. Here the first person narrative, speaking in the hegemonic voice, serves to present the collective weakness of the Zionist ethos, and causes the reader to identify with the victim (Brenner 117), whose voice is suppressed both in the structure of the narrative, and in the story itself. The I and the collective are one, but do not match Hareven biographically or ideologically, and thus serve to differentiate her own identity from the collective’s narrative.

Why then does this piece appear as part of the autobiography? Because it reflects a certain “mood that existed in Israel in which lay – perhaps – the root of the weaknesses that exist in us today” (4). Hareven uses the analogy, or even identity, she perceives between herself and the collective to validate her life and her autobiography, but also uses moments, such as that of “The Witness,” in order to assert her own independence and critical view. While completing the parallel between the story of the I and the collective, “The Witness” points to their discrepancy, enabling the author to take a critical stance in relation to the collective, both retrospectively, regarding its past, and as part of the political stance of the autobiographical moment.

The second section I wish to discuss is one of the pieces which Hareven selected from previously recorded oral sources, entitled “Radio from Scratch,” in which Hareven recalls how she opened the military radio station’s first broadcast because of an emergency created due to technical difficulties. This honour was accidentally bestowed upon her or, more accurately, was won by her quick thinking and resourcefulness. She was not chosen; rather, she chose herself. In fact, when turning to archival material of this very event, the author finds that the recordings have been edited: “he [a senior officer] mixed [edited] me out and himself in – and that’s how the record sounds today: in his voice; so he opened the station and not I. Consider this, historians who believe in documents” (92).

Hareven positions herself in a privileged position both during the occurrence and in her account of it, and complains of those who do not accept this position. She does not, however, initiate a discussion on the roots of the resistance to her role during the event and after it. She protests the personal injustice, but not the patriarchal structure of the mechanisms of the state to which chauvinism and discrimination are inherent. Questioning the root of this injustice would mean questioning the very collective to which she belongs, which she sees as speaking for her and in whose name she wishes to speak, and is therefore impossible. Here, in life and its narrative, Hareven must position herself in the center of consensus, whether or not this hegemonic center returns her embrace. Like the officer who edited her out, Hareven must constantly edit herself in, fighting for the role she wishes to play.

This is also particularly evident in another section of oral record, entitled “Ma’abarot” (transit camps where Jewish immigrants from Arab countries were settled upon arrival to Israel in the fifties). Hareven describes herself as the sole bearer of the burden of receiving the new immigrants. She positions herself against all the official organizations that are meant to be in charge: the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Kibbutz Movement, and even the commanding ranks of the Israeli Defense Forces, to which she belongs. Though she remembers herself as a proud IDF officer, it is clear from her narrative that she is included in, though not necessarily accepted, by the military establishment. Thus, all her achievements as an officer were achieved despite the army, and not thanks to its assistance and support. She even states that no one used the female word for officer (Ktsina), and though she alone was in charge of the Ma’abarot project, everyone spoke of her in the masculine form of the Katsin Ma’abarot, thus depriving her of the basic recognition for her own achievements (98). This comment clearly acknowledges her discrimination, working for the system yet succeeding only by fighting against it. Nonetheless, she concludes this chapter not with a personal sense of achievement, but with a collective one: “We did something, after all” (104), insisting on her right both to act and speak in the name of the collective.

The section entitled “Shakespeare,” originally published as a short story, positions Hareven both in the hegemonic center as an active participant in the 1948 war, and as a unique individual. This individual I emerges years after the war, when Hareven tries to return a volume of Shakespeare’s works, which she herself pillaged from a Palestinian house conquered in Jerusalem, to the owner of the house. The victim is dissatisfied with this token of compensation, and refuses consolation: “[I] don’t want to hear, I want it all back.”(87). Hareven as an individual took only one book and can return no more: “Mister Awwad, I said, I didn’t come because of all those things. I just came to bring you something of yours that was in my possession” (87). As a member of the collective, she will never be cleared of the guilt of its sin. Though showing a breach between the personal and collective, this point in the narrative proves how inescapable the collective identity and destiny have been for Hareven.

The section entitled “Testimony,” which is part of Hareven’s political works initially published in the Israeli press, recounts the murder of Emil Grunzweig, an Israeli peace activist who was killed in 1983, when a hand grenade was thrown at a Peace Now demonstration. In this section, the collective voice Hareven takes on no longer reflects the leading voice of the hegemonic center in Israel. Hareven’s use of present tense in this piece demonstrates her insistence on perceiving herself as relevant and representative of the collective in the present time and not only in the past.

Hareven describes the procession of the demonstration, which suffered attacks and abuse from the beginning of their march. The assailants, as well as the man who threw the grenade, were all fellow Israeli Jews, accusing the demonstrators of being pro-Palestinians: “Rabbi Meir Kahaneh [a radical right-wing leader] [...] was shouting out that the demonstrators are traitors, a stabbing knife in the back of the people. To me it seems that a very large part of the demonstrators here are the back, rather than the knife”(129). Hareven stresses that the demonstrators were part of the collective mainstream, the core of Israeli society: soldiers, officers, and medics. Hareven situates herself and her fellow demonstrators in the heart of the consensus, thus earning their right of speech. Had they been a group of new immigrants with no military record, or Palestinian-Israelis who do not serve in the IDF, or any other marginal group, they would not have earned this same right. At this point, as in many others, Hareven speaks within the hegemonic center, accepting its militaristic norms and patriarchal hierarchies.

Hareven does not fight for everyone’s right of speech and her narrative is in no way inclusive, despite its correlation with the collective narrative. In order to win her own right of speech, she creates conditions excluding others. She attempts to reverse the assailants’ comments, clinging to the conviction that it is she who speaks for the collective. But both the angry mob and the Israeli government of the time (against which they were demonstrating) represent a rift between the one collective Hareven identifies with, and what emerges as multiple collectives, in which Hareven can only represent an individual opinion.

The closing section, an essay entitled “No One Asked the Medics,” can be read as a personal quip, as Hareven herself was a medic in the Hagana pre-state military organization, fighting in the 1948 war. Her objection to being overlooked reveals the self-importance Hareven has as an individual, but also the significance she attributes to every individual who is part of a collective, be it Israeli or Palestinian. Hareven turns to the individual narratives, demanding that they be heard: “A person speaks, a family speaks. And then something happens: people who have recognized each other’s distress are people who are able to make peace” (139). The tension between the demand for personal involvement and for an open and honest account, on the one hand, and the boundaries of propriety on the other, remains in the background. These are boundaries set in the name of “being civilized” (Tarbutiut) (3) and in the name of a commitment to the collective.

The evolvement of the relationship between the I and the collective is complex. “The Witness” builds a symbiosis of the I and the hegemonic We, using precisely that stance in order to criticize the collective, while taking responsibility for its weaknesses. “Ma’abarot” and “Radio From Scratch” portray a persistent battle of the I to be included in the collective, both in action and in narrative. “Shakespeare,” on the other hand, demonstrates the inescapability of the collective identity and responsibility, even when the individual goes against convention and crosses the lines of the collective. In “Testimony,” the I takes on the role of speaking for a collective with which it can no longer be recognized. Finally, “No One Asked the Medics” sounds the voice of the individual within the disintegrated collective, recognizing the individual’s role both in history, and in the future, as an option for a reintegration of narratives. We see in this selection, and in the narrative as a whole, a reciprocal relationship, in which collective and individual interact, forming each other, fighting each other, and finally reaching out for reconciliation.

My Autobiography: Asserting Control Over Narrative

There is undoubtedly something defiant about Hareven renaming as autobiography what was once published and defined as works of fiction. Mandel refers to the border between fiction and autobiography according to the author’s intention (63). Whereas in fiction the author’s intention pertains to the existence of that which was created as independent of the author’s real experience, autobiography claims to embody the entire life of its author. The author of an autobiography implicitly declares that the author and the protagonist are the same. This is what Phillippe Lejeune defines as the ‘Autobiographical Pact’ based on an “intention to honour the signature” (Anderson 3). The autobiographer intends to tell the truth, to testify that “this happened to me”(Mandel 53), or, as Hareven puts it, “I was there” (3). While Mandel believes the honest intentions of most autobiographers, he stresses the existence of fiction within autobiography, and the presence of autobiography in fiction. In both cases, the author intends for their words to be taken as true.

In her foreword, Hareven specifies which parts of this work are in fact autobiographical, and which are works of fiction. This is particularly interesting in light of the author’s many statements against trends of New Historicism, which seek the autobiographical behind fictional works, emphasizing the relevance of the work’s historical context in its interpretation. In her foreword, Hareven criticizes readers’ biographic curiosity, as well as authors’ compliance with these trends. This exposure, which does not acknowledge the propriety of privacy, is denounced as being uncivilized, for: “Culture begins where the private can be differentiated from the public” (3). Hareven’s adamant defence of the concept of privacy seems to be a central reason for her publication of this work. On the most immediate level, this autobiography seeks to prevent the publication of autobiographical material external to the author’s work itself, an act which Hareven perceives as a desecration of human dignity (3). This fear haunted her throughout her life, and was exacerbated as she neared her death. In an interview with poet Shin Shifra, Hareven complains about journalists’ questions pertaining to autobiographical elements of fiction, claiming that “literature is out of luck [...] a painter or musician is not asked about the autobiographic background of their work.” This fear is also clearly expressed in the anecdote that appears in the author’s foreword. In it Hareven recounts how Willa Cather’s letters were published posthumously despite her explicit instruction that they remain private. Thus, the autobiography Hareven publishes, of her own initiative, is supposed to preemptively prevent further attempts to expose what she deemed private, after her death. Hareven purportedly reveals what she considers to be the truth about her life, hoping to prevent a violation of the author’s sanctified privacy. This position of asserting control over her own narrative is clearly expressed in Hareven’s dedication of a copy of her autobiography given to Yael Feldman, the primary scholar of Hareven’s work: “Before you write my biography, please read it first (in the order brought here) and say for yourself if I could have done all this ‘in a room of my own’” – referring to a quote by Feldman (Feldman, “Violence,” 16).

Thus, Hareven herself created one comprehensive life narrative, revoking the strict borders between different genres, specifically between her political essays and her fictional writing, which she religiously upheld throughout her career. This act supposedly unifies her various works, reconstructing the one true story. Yet this autobiography evades the continuity, narrative development, and linear progress that might be expected of a work entitled Autobiography. The ordering of the chosen pieces does not reflect the chronology of their writing; consequently, they cannot serve as a reflection of the author’s development as a writer. While they do reflect the chronology of the external events during the author’s lifetime from a thematic viewpoint, the protagonists do not match the author’s age at each given period. Thus, the text resists coherent narrative integration. Once resituated in the autobiographical context, the formerly independent pieces take on new meaning, reflecting the author’s position at the moment of compilation. This moment serves to assert control over narrative: over her own, which she can rewrite and reedit as she wishes, and which others should respect after her death; and over the national narrative, which she has taken part in shaping, and wishes to influence in its continuation. This is at once an autobiographical position, regarding her life past, and a political position regarding the future of which she knows she will not be a part.

Between Private and Public: Action and Writing

In pre-state Israel and consequently in the State of Israel, there was an emphasis on the creation of a new society, which declared equality between the sexes as one of its tenets. Thus, women such as Hareven were included in the public sphere, in pre-state military organizations and then in the Israeli Defense Forces. Nonetheless, the “varied forms of participation could not conceal the essentially gendered nature of the new Jewish society and women’s relative marginality within it” (Bernstein 288). This contradiction situates the tension between the public and private spheres in the center of the discussion of Jewish women in pre-state Israel (Bernstein 288), and marks the condition of women within the State of Israel as well.

Hareven did not live according to these underlying traditional dictates, confining women to the private sphere. Nor did she write according to them. She took full advantage of opportunities made available within the complex of contradictions of Israeli society (as did other women, in many different ways).[7] In her activity in the public sphere, as military officer, political activist, and public speaker, as well as in her writing, as novelist, poet, and as an essayist, Hareven abolishes the confinement of women to the private sphere. She does so from within the hegemonic center (for example, from within the IDF), but to a far greater extent than this center would initiate or could accept. In doing so, she contributed to the general feminist struggle. Yet Hareven did not consider these efforts as part of her political agenda and opposed her classification as a feminist, almost as tenaciously as she opposed the autobiographical category (Feldman 112). Thus, it is perhaps more accurate to define Hareven’s efforts as negating the role of the private sphere altogether. That is, she relocated the private sphere to where she believed it belongs: away from the public eye. In this Hareven seems to be adopting norms of her time (Bernstein 306), and of traditional patriarchy, while impugning contemporary trends which abolish the hierarchical binary opposition public/private. Both male and female writing are, in her opinion, equally responsible to draw the proper border between public and private.

The political commitment to the collective is also a central norm in the literature created within Israeli society. According to Amalya Kahana Carmon, the voice of Hebrew literature is the voice speaking for the collective (3). This is the voice of the leader of prayer (in the Jewish tradition, prayer is led by a male member of the congregation who is referred to as ‘Shliach Tzibur,’ literally: ‘messenger of the public’ or even ‘representative of the public’). In order to speak one must perceive one’s self and be perceived by other’s as representative of the collective. This is even truer of autobiography, in which a woman’s narrative, lacking representativeness of the collective subject, denies women the right of entrance into the Hebrew discourse (Hess 149). The voice of the feminine I and her experience are not in the realm of interest of this literature. The masculine ear cannot even perceive its unique pitch. Kahana Carmon uses the illuminating metaphor of the bat’s song, whose pitch is so high that it cannot be heard by the unaccustomed ear.

However, as discussed, Hareven overstepped the boundaries of the feminine sphere and acted within the public, often as its representative. Accordingly, her literary writing touched on the inner workings of the national experience: in her own autobiography, she writes about the Holocaust (in the section entitled “Mahogany”), about the Kibbutz (in the section entitled “The Witness,” which deals also with the Holocaust), and about the 1948 war (in the chapter entitled “Shakespeare”).[8] The political essays, brought into the book alongside selections from her fictional work, penetrate even further into the ‘masculine’ sphere, as she touches on pressing political issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and internal Israeli tensions. In these essays, Hareven tends to stress her own political actions. It is not only retroactively that she would have us believe that ‘this happened to her’; rather, throughout her life and writing, action is perceived as a prerequisite for entering the political discourse. The Israeli spokesperson must earn the right to speak through tangible actions. One manifestation of this tacit rule is the political success reaped by high-ranking officers of the IDF, upon retiring from military service.

In Hareven’s declared commitment to the ungendered national collective (both in action and in writing) and in her refusal to be read as a feminist, she detaches herself from the collective feminine We. This can be read as a sacrifice of her own feminine I, and of a private I in general. This can also be read more positively. Lubin, for example, discusses the substitution of the I for the collective We by active, writing, and fighting women (138). She sees this both as a way of avoiding submission to the masculine genre (the ‘Genius Individual’ typical of western, male autobiography) and as a way of entering the national discourse, not only as a symbol, but as part of the collective. In any event, this commitment to the collective, sacrificing the personal (which for women often means sacrificing the feminine), is characteristic of national discourses which are all-encompassing. Such national discourses demand that all other categories of life and writing be subjected to the national narrative, and deem as marginal any alternative narratives. Thus, Hareven’s narrative is part of a larger phenomenon, and presents not only issues of writing women within the Israeli context, but also issues of women writing within any national contexts.

The retrospective recollection of the past forges present meaning into the marrow of one’s remembered life and validates the form one has given to one’s life (Mandel 64). In Hareven’s case, however, this is a collection of already existing writing. This writing served not only to document, but also to affect the course of this life. Paul John Eakin recognizes the autobiographical act as a mode of “self invention that is always practiced first in living and only eventually – sometimes – formalized in writing” (8). Hareven invented herself into the heart of the consensus. Throughout her life, she created her autobiographical self through her work. Thus, the invention of self was not retroactive. It was, however, retrospective, as in the autobiographic moment; the action she calls upon is not writing, but editing. The act of rejoining the pieces is a renewed form of writing, bearing new meaning.

Testimony

Every autobiography can be read as a form of testimony. Hareven positions herself as a witness, stating: “I was there” (3). In her autobiography, there is a section entitled “The Witness,” a section entitled “Testimony,” and a section dealing with the importance of first hand testimony as a historical source (“No One Asked the Medics”). Felman views autobiography as a form of testimony, rather than as a form of confession (a traditional view on autobiography, based on the works of Augustine and Rousseau). Testimony involves the speaker and the readers in a joint venture of recovering meaning, at a point when the final verdict has not yet been given. Testimony assumes a moment of crisis of truth (Felman and Laub 5). Accordingly, Hareven’s testimony poses her version of the truth at a crucial moment in Israeli history. At the time of the book’s publication after the abrupt end of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, with the renewed violence beginning in the year 2000, the Israeli collective faces a moment of crisis. It seems that this collective may change dramatically, that it must change dramatically. Hareven does not want to revise history (although she does offer a correction, regarding who opened the first military radio broadcast, as discussed above). Nonetheless, she does wish to offer her truth about the events, for it is that truth that can shape the future and alter the pessimistic verdict brought on by the renewed violence. Perhaps this is where the autobiographic exposure is most evident in the text. Hareven does not expose the backstage of her work, by supplying what she would deem autobiographic gossip about her life. Rather, she exposes the backstage of the state of Israel and of the national collective. She exposes the shamefacedness, be it in lack of funds (at the radio station), lack of organization (in the Ma’abarot), or lack of morality (in the armed forces). This exposure positions Hareven as a valuable first hand witness, who can tell more than the ‘official’ version of national history. Her narrative bears more than just personal significance. Hareven positions herself as a witness, in order to defend the narrative as she knew it, and in order to defend what was created and appears to be in danger as the narrative shifts.

Testimony is not only a recounting of the events as they happened. In testimony, one commits oneself and others. One commits the other to the reckoning: to take responsibility – in words – for history or for the truthfulness of occurrence, for what is, by definition, beyond the personal, for what is valid and has a general outcome and not a personal one (Lubin 136). It is to this end that Hareven summons her past, in order to earn her right of voice, while excluding other voices. She takes responsibility and calls on the rest of the collective to share this responsibility. The demand for an account at the turning point – the author’s death and Israel’s crisis – is a call to all individuals, challenging them to take part in a process of healing that may ultimately save the collective and its narrative.

Last Will and Testament

Through the process of selecting previously published works and recompiling them, the personal narrative and the national narrative are built as one. We read its gradual coming into being and the process of its decomposition. Both the subject and the State undergo these two processes. Both narratives culminate simultaneously, in what is portrayed as a reciprocal relationship of mutual construction. It is from this empowerment that a subject is formed, and can turn away from the collective. It appears that as Hareven’s individual voice comes into being, the collective concurrently declines from power and becomes dissipated. It is from the position of I that Hareven reaches out to save the collective. She calls for a reintegration of all the personal accounts to form one narrative, including the narrative of the other: her own, and that of the Palestinians. Still, for Hareven the prerequisite stands; the personal account will only be significant if it represents the collective.

Hareven tried to act within the hegemonic center and tried to write herself into its narrative while doing so. In the retrospective narrative that ensues from her autobiography, the partnership of the two narratives is broken down. From within the collective, the I emerges. This seems to be, for Hareven, a painful process of parting, rather than a positive process of self-definition. The I asserts its voice as a testament to the collective, calling upon individuals to work towards collective healing. The disintegration of the collective and the end of its narrative in this autobiography are accompanied by the author’s death. According to Mandel, because autobiographies are often written when the subject is nearing death, in their coterminousness, the book and life reveal the same truth (71). However, as Hareven’s narrative was also a national one, it will go on without her.

Hareven ended her own narrative on a positive note, excluding the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (which occurred in 1995), and the outbreak of the current crisis between the Israelis and Palestinians in the year 2000. These last events demonstrate most clearly how torn Israeli society is within itself and how difficult its position is within the Middle East region. Despite Hareven’s proclaimed loyalty to the national collective, the reader can no longer identify this collective with the author’s I. In order to leave an operative testament, Hareven chose to leave her readers with the call for healing. Her life’s work and writing as portrayed in this autobiography serve as a model for such a constructive process.