Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel

A large number of political plays have been written in Israel over the past fifty years, and they are perceived, by audiences and critics alike, as major interventions in the country's ongoing political debates; the result is that Israeli drama is at the centre of many public controversies. In this first full-length study of Israeli political drama Glenda Abramson shows that during the early years of the State of Israel most of its intellectuals were identified with the 'official' interpretation of Zionism. After the Six-Day War in 1967 an influential group of playwrights, concerned with the evolution of Zionist ideology in the modern nation state, began to question the ethical basis of Zionism. Hanokh Levin, Yehoshua Sobol, Yosef Mundi, Miriam Kainy, Amos Kenan and others have gone on to examine Zionism as it affects contemporary Israeli society.

First sentence: The literature of the 1950s is an element in our understanding of Israeli society at that time, for while it may not advance our real knowledge of events it does, to a certain extent, map the society's emotional landscape.

Year

1998

Language

English

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

1

Pages

275

ISBN

9780521025751

Data source: Wikidata