Amos Oz | |
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.jpg) Oz in the 1980s | |
| Native name | עמוס עוז |
| Born | Amos Klausner (1939-05-04)4 May 1939 |
| Died | 28 December 2018(2018-12-28) (aged 79) Petah Tikva, Israel |
| Occupation |
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| Notable awards |
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| Spouse | |
| Children | 3, includingFania |
Amos Oz (Hebrew:עמוס עוז; bornAmos Klausner (עמוס קלוזנר); 4 May 1939 – 28 December 2018)[1] was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual. He was also a professor ofHebrew literature atBen-Gurion University of the Negev. From 1967 onwards, Oz was a prominent advocate of atwo-state solution to theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict.
He was the author of 40 books, including novels, short story collections, children's books, and essays, and his work has been published in 45 languages, more than that of any other Israeli writer. He was the recipient of many honours and awards, among them theFriedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, theLegion of Honour of France, theIsrael Prize, theGoethe Prize, thePrince of Asturias Award in Literature, theHeinrich Heine Prize, and theFranz Kafka Prize.
In his obituary,The New York Times called Oz one of "Israel's most prolific writers and respected intellectuals".[1]
Amos Klausner[2] (later Oz) was born in 1939 inJerusalem,[3]Mandatory Palestine, where he grew up at No. 18 Amos Street in theKerem Avraham neighborhood. He was the only child of Fania (Mussman) and Yehuda Arieh Klausner, immigrants toMandatory Palestine who had met while studying at theHebrew University of Jerusalem. His father's family was fromLithuania, where they had been farmers, raising cattle and vegetables nearVilnius.[4] His father studied history and literature in Vilnius (then part of Poland), and hoped to become a professor of comparative literature, but never gained headway in the academic world. He worked most of his life as a librarian at theJewish National and University Library.[5][6] Oz's mother grew up inRivne (then part of Poland, now Ukraine).[7] She was a highly sensitive and cultured daughter of a wealthy mill owner and his wife, and attendedCharles University in Prague, where she studied history and philosophy.[8] She had to abandon her studies when her father's business collapsed during theGreat Depression.[9]
Oz's parents were multilingual (his father claimed he could read in 16 or 17 languages, while his mother spoke four or five languages, but could read in seven or eight) but neither was comfortable speaking in Hebrew, which was adopted as the official language of Israel. They spoke with each other in Russian or Polish,[10] but the only language they allowed Oz to learn was Hebrew.[1]
Many of Oz's family members wereright-wingRevisionist Zionists. His great-uncleJoseph Klausner was theHerut party candidate for the presidency againstChaim Weizmann and was chair of the Hebrew literature department at theHebrew University of Jerusalem.[11] Klausner had a large personal library in his home and hostedsalons for Israeli intellectuals; the lifestyle and scholarship of Klausner left an impression on Oz as a young boy.[12]
Oz described himself as an "atheist of the book", stating from asecular perspective that his Jewish heritage "contains first and foremost books [and] texts".[13][14] His parents were not religious growing up, though Oz attended the religiousTachkemoni school [he], since the only alternative was a socialist school affiliated with theLabor movement, to which his family was even more opposed.[15] The noted poetZelda Schneersohn Mishkovsky was one of his teachers.[11] After Tachkemoni, he attendedGymnasia Rehavia.[16][17]
During theHolocaust, some of his family members were killed in Lithuania.[12]
His mother, who suffered fromdepression, committed suicide in January 1952, when he was 12.[2][7] Oz would later explore the repercussions of this event in his memoirA Tale of Love and Darkness.[18]
At the age of 14, Oz became aLabor Zionist, left home, and joinedKibbutzHulda.[3][19] There he was adopted by the Huldai family and changed his surname to "Oz" (Hebrew: "courage").[2][20] Later asked why he did not leave Jerusalem for Tel Aviv, he replied: "Tel Aviv was not radical enough – only the kibbutz was radical enough".[21] By his own account, he was "a disaster as a laborer...the joke of the kibbutz".[21] When Oz first began to write, the kibbutz allotted him one day per week for this work. When his novelMy Michael became a best-seller, Oz quipped: "I became a branch of the farm, yet they still said I could have just three days a week to write. It was only in the eighties when I got four days for my writing, two days for teaching, and Saturday turns as a waiter in the dining hall."[21]
Oz did hisIsrael Defense Forces service in theNahal Brigade, participating in border skirmishes withSyria. After concluding his three years of mandatory regular army service, he was sent by his kibbutz to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied philosophy and Hebrew literature.[3] He graduated in 1963 and began teaching in the kibbutz high school, while continuing to write.[22] He served as an armyreservist in a tank unit that fought in theSinai Peninsula during theSix-Day War, and in theGolan Heights during theYom Kippur War.[21][23]
Oz married Nily Zuckerman in 1960, and they had three children.[1][3] The family continued to live at Hulda until 1986, when they moved toArad in theNegev to seek relief for their sonDaniel's [he]asthma.[1] Oz was a full professor of Hebrew literature atBen-Gurion University of the Negev from 1987 to 2014.[17] He also served as a writer in residence and visiting scholar at universities abroad.[24] In 2014, the family moved toTel Aviv.[17] His oldest daughter,Fania Oz-Salzberger, teaches history at theUniversity of Haifa.[20]
Oz died of cancer on 28 December 2018 inRabin Medical Center,Petah Tikva, aged 79.[1][2][25][26] He was buried at Kibbutz Hulda.[25]
In February 2021, Oz's daughterGalia [he] accused her late father of subjecting her to "sadistic abuse". In her autobiography, Galia alleged that Amos Oz beat, swore at, and humiliated her in a routine of emotional, verbal, and physical abuse, writing that "The violence was creative: He dragged me from inside the house and threw me outside. He called me trash." Members of Galia's family have denied the allegations, claiming: "We have known all our lives a very different Amos, a warm and affectionate man who loved his family deeply and gently."[27] In 2022, Oz's son Daniel published a memoir staunchly defending his father and criticizing his sister for supposedly distorting the truth.[28]
If I were to sum up my books in one word, I would say they are about 'families'. If you gave me two words, I would say 'unhappy families'.
Oz published his first book,Where the Jackals Howl, a collection of short stories, in 1965.[30] His first novel,Another Place (published in U.S. asElsewhere, Perhaps) appeared in 1966.[8][31] Subsequently, Oz averaged a book per year with theHistadrut pressAm Oved. In 1988, Oz left Am Oved for theKeter Publishing House, which offered him an exclusive contract that granted him a fixed monthly salary regardless of output.[8] Oz became a primary figure in the Israeli "New Wave" movement in literature in the 1960s, a group which includedA. B. Yehoshua,Amalia Kahana-Carmon, andAharon Appelfeld.[32]
Oz published 40 books,[25] among them 14 novels, five collections of stories and novellas, two children's books, and twelve books of articles and essays (as well as eight selections of essays that appeared in various languages), and about 450 articles and essays. His works have been translated into some 45 languages, more than any other Israeli writer.[8] In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation ofA Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.[22] The story "Esperanto" from the collectionBetween Friends was translated intoEsperanto in 2015.[33]
Oz's political commentary and literary criticism have been published in the Histadrut newspaperDavar andYedioth Ahronoth. Translations of his essays have appeared inThe New York Review of Books. TheBen-Gurion University of the Negev maintains an archive of his work.[34]
Oz tended to present protagonists in a realistic light with an ironic touch while his treatment of the life in the kibbutz was accompanied by a somewhat critical tone. Oz credited a 1959 translation of American writerSherwood Anderson's short story collectionWinesburg, Ohio with his decision to "write about what was around me". InA Tale of Love and Darkness, his memoir ofcoming of age in the midst of Israel's violent birth pangs, Oz credited Anderson's "modest book" with his own realization that "the written world ... always revolves around the hand that is writing, wherever it happens to be writing: where you are is the center of the universe." In his 2004 essay "How to Cure a Fanatic" (later the title essay of a 2006 collection), Oz argued that theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war of religion or cultures or traditions, but rather a real estate dispute – one that will be resolved not by greater understanding, but by painful compromise.[35][36]
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Oz was one of the first Israelis to advocate atwo-state solution to theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict after theSix-Day War. He did so in a 1967 article "Land of our Forefathers" in the Labor newspaperDavar. "Even unavoidableoccupation is a corrupting occupation," he wrote.[37][38] In 1978, he was one of the founders ofPeace Now.[20][39] He did not oppose (and in 1991 advocated)[23] the construction of anIsraeli West Bank barrier, but believed that it should be roughly along theGreen Line, the 1949 Armistice line between Israel and Jordan.[21] He also advocated that Jerusalem be divided into numerous zones, not just Jewish and Palestinian zones, including one for theEastern Orthodox, one forHasidic Jews, an international zone, and so on.[23]
He was opposed toIsraeli settlement activity and was among the first to praise theOslo Accords and talks with thePLO.[23] In his speeches and essays he frequently attacked thenon-Zionist left and always emphasized his Zionist identity. He was perceived[by whom?] as an eloquent spokesperson of theZionist left. WhenShimon Peres retired from the leadership of theIsraeli Labor Party, he is said to have named Oz as one of three possible successors, along withEhud Barak (laterPrime Minister) andShlomo Ben-Ami (later Barak's foreign minister).[21] In the 1990s, Oz withdrew his support from Labor and went further left to theMeretz Party, where he had close connections with the leader,Shulamit Aloni. In the elections to thesixteenth Knesset that took place in 2003, Oz appeared in the Meretz television campaign, calling upon the public to vote for Meretz.[40]
Oz was a supporter of theSecond Lebanon War in 2006. In theLos Angeles Times, he wrote: "Many times in the past, theIsraeli peace movement has criticized Israeli military operations. Not this time. This time, the battle is not over Israeli expansion and colonization. There is no Lebanese territory occupied by Israel. There are no territorial claims from either side... The Israeli peace movement should support Israel's attempt at self-defense, pure and simple, as long as this operation targets mostlyHezbollah and spares, as much as possible, the lives of Lebanese civilians."[41][42] Later, Oz changed his position of unequivocal support of the war as "self-defense" in the wake of the cabinet's decision to expand operations in Lebanon.[43]
A day before the outbreak of the2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, Oz signed a statement supporting military action againstHamas in theGaza Strip. Two weeks later, he advocated aceasefire with Hamas and called attention to the harsh conditions there.[44] He was quoted in the Italian paperCorriere della Sera as saying Hamas was responsible for the outbreak of violence, but the time had come to seek a ceasefire.[45] Oz also said that if innocent citizens were indeed killed in Gaza, it should be treated as a war crime, although he doubted that bombing UN structures was intentional.[46]
In a June 2010 editorial inThe New York Times, he wrote: "Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force... To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one... Israel has to sign a peace agreement with PresidentMahmoud Abbas and hisFatah government in the West Bank."[47]
In March 2011, Oz sent imprisoned formerTanzim leaderMarwan Barghouti a copy of his bookA Tale of Love and Darkness in Arabic translation with his personal dedication in Hebrew: "This story is our story, I hope you read it and understand us as we understand you, hoping to see you outside and in peace, yours, Amos Oz."[48] The gesture was criticized by members of rightist political parties,[49] among them Likud MKTzipi Hotovely.[50]Assaf Harofeh Hospital canceled Oz's invitation to give the keynote speech at an awards ceremony for outstanding physicians in the wake of this incident.[51]
Oz supported Israeli actions in Gaza during the2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, criticizing the tactic of usinghuman shields, widely imputed to be employed by Hamas at the time, asking: "What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap, and starts shooting machine-gun fire into your nursery? What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?"[39][52]
Oz published, in Hebrew, novels, novellas, and collections of short stories. He wrote essays and journalism for Israeli and foreign papers.[3] Works by Oz are held by theGerman National Library, including:[71]
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