In her 1991 book The Mountain of Losses, Yehudit Hendel depicts the devotion bereaved family members display toward the care of their children’s graves as the center of their lives, an unconscious substitute for the care of the children themselves.²⁰ Those who cannot participate in this obsessive behavior end up taking their own lives, unable to bear the pain of grief. The extreme difficulty parents have in resigning themselves to the death of a child can, Hendel demonstrates, create a kind of communion with death. Thus is it common for spouses to pass away following the death of their partners, and for those in mourning to fall ill. In her poem “My Peace” the Hebrew poet Zelda describes the continued, living connection between a widow and her dead husband.²¹ Likewise, many Israeli literary works portray the experience of the Holocaust, the loss of a child in Israel’s wars, and even the hardships associated with immigration to Israel as post-traumatic conditions that persist throughout life.

In a culture imbued with psychoanalytic thought, it is hardly surprising that so many literary works feature a protagonist in a post-traumatic state who meets with an unhappy, frequently self-destructive end. It is impossible, they imply, to escape the specter of trauma without some sort of apocalyptic outpouring of repressed feelings. This is the common denominator in the novels of Hendel; the stories of Amos Oz, particularly Where the Jackals Howl;²² and the early stories of A.B. Yehoshua.²³ Similarly, portrayals of the psychological consequences of the Holocaust, as in the poetry of Dan Pagis and the prose works of Aharon Appelfeld, describe typical post-traumatic symptoms such as constant feelings of alienation, of living on “another planet,” and even visions of a spaceship floating in a blue bubble, all long after the horrific events took place. In his stories, Yehoshua describes the Israeli condition as a neurotic and pathological mental state, a kind of illness that, if left untreated, will result in devastating consequences for both the individual and society as a whole.²⁴

The psychoanalytic perception of the Israeli condition found in these and other Israeli literary works has established the Israeli post-traumatic myth—that is, the belief that the normative Israeli condition is a post-traumatic one. The Zionist narrative of the suffering victim has been replaced by the Israeli narrative of the persistent trauma. This narrative describes a sudden calamity that befalls an innocent individual, condemning him to unavoidable ruin. This myth underlies the character of the individual Israeli as well as the country’s national outlook and behavior. It enjoins us to treat them as a therapist treats a patient, i.e., someone suffering from a continuous pathological state of mind.

From this perspective, not only the Israeli condition but also the entirety of Jewish history from its inception through to its modern incarnation may be deemed extremely traumatic, from the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile through the wars of the Maccabees and the destruction of the Second Temple; from the Spanish Inquisition and the exile to the blood libels, pogroms, and antisemitic decrees of Europe, culminating in the genocide of the Holocaust. In short, a long and unbroken chain of traumas that have inspired centuries of Christian authors and artists to portray the Jewish people as destined for suffering. To live for hundreds of years as an oppressed minority in a constant post-traumatic state—can it be that such a history is written onto both the individual and collective Israeli DNA and as such can never be overcome?
 

In the end, the essential question is whether we should perceive bereavement as a permanent condition, a trauma from which there is no possibility of recovery, or as a temporary state that one can move past.

I favor the latter view. That is not to say, of course, that I do not appreciate the vast energies required to overcome trauma of any kind, let alone that of the Holocaust or the loss of a child in battle. I also concede that there are some individuals who, for various reasons, fall short of the task. Yet the world around me attests to the fact that there are many people who suffer the most unbearable of tragedies only to return, gradually, to a normal life. My own mother and father lost their only son, my brother, in Israel’s War of Independence when I was eight years old. I observed them closely as they crossed a gulf of suffering, undertaking the long and arduous process of recovery, each according to his or her character. I am acquainted with many people who have experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, have lost sons or brothers in Israel’s wars, and have encountered enormous difficulties in the process of immigrating to Israel. It seems to me that every one of them undertook a long and arduous process of recovery. For recovery, and not fixation, is the typical, natural condition for a person, much as health is the natural condition for a body, and not illness or injury. Moreover, a person’s psychological capacity to recover from trauma is, in my view, astonishing and worth taking pride in. Israelis who have experienced trauma abound, but most of them are in a state of recovery. Thus, it seems to me that the typical Israeli condition—that is, the condition of the typical Israeli—is not a persistent post-traumatic state, but rather a continuous struggle toward recovery, which is generally successful.

Of course, this success cannot be taken for granted. It exacts a colossal price and requires an enormous effort. In my eyes it is a marvel. And yet, this marvel goes largely ignored in Israel’s cultural discourse, which chooses instead to highlight our psychological deficiencies. In my opinion, this cultural fixation on trauma complicates, if not precludes, average Israelis’ private and collective efforts to resume a normal life. Consequently, I believe that post-traumatic conditions in Israel and elsewhere require a new perspective, as well as revised treatment.

To that end, we must consider the merits of the Jewish way of handling pain and suffering, which is related to the concept of the trial and the test. Take, for instance, the life story of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation. From a modern, psychological point of view, his life seems laden with traumas: He was commanded by God to leave his father’s home and country and travel to a distant, desolate land. There, he was forced to fight with five local kings and was tormented by his wife’s barrenness—the most manifest sign of failure in his era. When he finally fathered a son, he was commanded by God to sacrifice him with his own hands. He is pressured by one wife to disown the other one, along with the son he has fathered by her. He removes himself to Egypt, where his life is threatened. Finally, he witnesses firsthand the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra. The author of the book of Genesis, however, considered Abraham to have undergone a series of trials, not traumas, which he withstood with varying degrees of success. These trials were designed to assess his strength of character and moral integrity, and in so doing to establish his place on the ladder leading from man to God.

We see the theme of the trial repeated throughout the Jewish Bible and in talmudic stories, medieval Jewish tales, and Hasidic legends. Of course, as these stories tell us, not everyone has the inner strength to withstand a trial. Adam, for example, failed his test: “And the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, where art thou?”²⁵ And Adam, the prototype of man, hides away and lies. Cain, too, fails his test: He is traumatized by God’s refusal to accept his burnt offering. But God says to him, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin croucheth at the door; and to thee shall be his desire. Yet thou mayest rule over him.”²⁶ Trauma, God explains to Cain, creates the mythological creature called “sin.” It crouches outside your doorstep like a forbidden woman, and should you be tempted to let her in, she will make haste to come inside. Will you, God asks, have the power to resist opening that door? Will you have the power to “be accepted?” Cain does not. He is unable to stem his post-traumatic emotional erosion. He allows it to overcome him, and the result is the first murder.²⁷

Was Cain’s murder of Abel unavoidable? Most certainly not. The book of Genesis perceives Cain’s initial trauma as an opportunity to withstand a trial. This trial is a test of distinction: Will he be the kind of person who can “lift up”, do well, and realize the image of God in man despite, and in the wake of, this terrible slight? Or will he be the kind of person who will give in to the poisonous feelings that this slight has aroused? Similarly, the bereaved Job, stricken by a multitude of tragedies culminating in an excruciatingly painful rash of boils, finds himself in the midst of a dramatic psychological and religious crisis typical of post-traumatic situations. And yet Job summons his inner strength to repel the attempts of his three friends to shake his belief in himself and in God. Thus, Job’s story ends well, as he is rewarded for his ability to withstand his trial by the attainment of divine knowledge, a wisdom that offers perspective and reassurance.