Israeli Cultural Identity

The motif of orphanhood is central to the Israeli Cultural Identity. Orphan’s usage in this context, however, is the deprivation of some protection or advantage. The Jews of Israel were deprived of adequate protection and a fair advantage and because of that the creation of a Jewish homeland was even more important. While many Jews in Israel, were traditional orphans who had lost their parents, all Jews in Israel were orphans in the way that they were deprived of some protection or advantage in the world.
From the very start of Israel, the Jews knew that without a homeland, there would be no place refuge for the Jews. Israel would become the “orphanage” of the Jews, the place where all Jews could come home to and be safe. The Israeli Jew came to create another kind of Jew in the homeland, one who was even braver and stronger than before and one free from past terrors such as the Holocaust, and it was the “new Jew” was crucial to the success of the homeland.
This aspect of the Israeli cultural …show more content…
It was because Raya and Yehuda felt the need to adhere to this idea of the “new Jew,” that they refused to consider any of the names that Grandfather Zisskind suggested for the new baby. Grandfather Zisskind from The Name is a perfect example of the past featuring the present, because when Grandfather Zisskind speaks about the past, specifically Mendele, many from his family tell him to stop and others excuse his behavior by saying “he no longer knows what he’s talking about.” Grandfather Zisskind is so enamored by the past and does not tiptoe around past horrors or traditions in the way that many Israeli Jews of the time did. Even in Parent’s Day, the narrator’s ex-wife denies the narrator’s right to speak much about his hardships, family, and childhood, because this collective identity of the “new Jew” does not dwell in past