Finalist for the 2021 Best Book in Israel Studies presented by the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies and Concordia University LibraryFlesh of My Flesh looks at one of the most silenced and repressed aspects of Israeli culture by examining the trope of sexual violence in modern Hebrew literature. Ilana Szobel explores how sexual violence participates in, encourages, or resists concurrent ideologies in Jewish and Israeli culture, and situates the rhetoric of sexual aggression within the contexts of gender, ethnicity, disability, and national identity. Focusing on writings of incest survivors, Sepharadi authors, wounded soldiers, and Hebrew authors such as Shoshana Shababo, Gershon Shofman, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Yoram Kaniuk, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, and Tsvia Litevsky, Szobel unveils the various roles of sexual violence in destabilizing hegemonic notions or reinforcing norms and modes of conduct. Thus, while the book looks at poetic and social possibilities of action in relation to sexual violence, it also exposes the Gordian knot of sexualized gender-based violence and the interests of patriarchy, heteronormativity, nationalism, racism, and ableism.

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: "A Great, Oppressive, Suffocating Blasphemy": Sexualized Violence as an Insidious Trauma1. "Lights in the Darkness": Prostitution, Power, and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature2. Sepharadi Jewry in Pre-State Israel: Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexual Violence in the Work of Shoshana Shababo3. "Do Not Bandage the Wounded": Wounded Soldiers and Nonconsensual Relations in Israeli War Literature4. "Subduing the Terrible Sound of Silence": Memoirs of Incest Survivors5. "The Girl with the Billy-Goat's Hoof ": Parental Abuse, Metamorphosis, and Poetics in the Poetry of Tsvia LitevskyConclusion: "Silence Cries Out"NotesBibliographyIndex