On the Unknown Soldier Symbol in Israeli Culture
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Irit Dekel
Abstract
The “unknown soldier” symbol in Jewish Israeli commemorative discourse was referred to first by veneration in Avraham Stern’s poem “Unknown Soldiers” (1932) and then by negation, such as in the popular Yehuda Amichai poem “We Do Not Have Unknown Soldiers” (1969). It is often cited and read in commemorative ceremonies. In negating this category, I argue, cultural strategies of remembrance and forgetting were used as recruiting mechanisms for missions of nation building, which demanded various forms of sacrifice that favor the collective over the individual. Reading the ways in which the “unknown soldier” symbol had been used in the Yishuv Jewish community and in Israel, I suggest that until the 1970s, losing one’s life in battle was a way to regain one’s name as an individual, while afterwards, the use of the symbol, whether negated or revered, points to the anonymity of an individual within a fragmented collective that does not necessarily venerate national sacrifice.
© 2017 by Academic Studies Press, Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Title
- Table of Contents
- From the Editors
- ESSAYS
- Inclusion and Exclusion in the Mishnah: Non-Jews, Converts, and the Nazir
- Textual Study and Social Formation: The Case of Mishnah
- Genealogies of the Future
- The Role of Life Motifs in Commitment Journeys of Ba’alei Teshuvah
- Mipnei Darkei Shalom: The Promotion of Harmonious Relationships in the Mishnah’s Social Order
- On the Unknown Soldier Symbol in Israeli Culture
- Why Religious Discourse Has a Place in Medical Ethics: An Example from Jewish Medical Ethics
- יוניש ךילהתב למס – ל"זח תורפסב הפוחה
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Jon D. Levenson, The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 235
- Todd M. Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015
- Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012
Articles in the same Issue
- Title
- Table of Contents
- From the Editors
- ESSAYS
- Inclusion and Exclusion in the Mishnah: Non-Jews, Converts, and the Nazir
- Textual Study and Social Formation: The Case of Mishnah
- Genealogies of the Future
- The Role of Life Motifs in Commitment Journeys of Ba’alei Teshuvah
- Mipnei Darkei Shalom: The Promotion of Harmonious Relationships in the Mishnah’s Social Order
- On the Unknown Soldier Symbol in Israeli Culture
- Why Religious Discourse Has a Place in Medical Ethics: An Example from Jewish Medical Ethics
- יוניש ךילהתב למס – ל"זח תורפסב הפוחה
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Jon D. Levenson, The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 235
- Todd M. Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015
- Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012
