Abraham b. Joshua wrote so much in his life that even his own archive, kept in the National Library, managed to surprise him time and time again. “Really? Did I write that?”, He would ask with a smile when he came across third-grade notebooks that his father, the writer Yaakov Yehoshua, kept. These are placed next to a student file from his years at the Hebrew University, scripts he wrote at the beginning of his career, sketches he wrote long before the age of podcasts and entertainers of the guys – also a collection of filitons he composed for class parties at Rehavia Gymnasium, Scouts and the army. Contrary to popular belief, his first book was not “The Death of the Old Man,” but a book about how to be a guide for viewers. Among his trainees in the tribe, by the way, were Aharon Barak, later president of the Supreme Court, and Ruby Rivlin, later president of the state.
The short stories “Death of the Old Man” and “In Front of the Forests”, which are considered by many to be his most important works, were published in the 1960s and quickly established him as a central and revolutionary creator, one of the most important voices in Hebrew literature. Aharon Appelfeld, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, Yoram Kaniuk and others; A writer who did not hesitate to write about a tongue-tied Arab forest ranger who eventually burns the forest. He did not hesitate to write about dreams shattering to pieces, as he did for the kibbutz in the story “Three Days and a Child” from 1965, in what became one of the excellent films of the late Uri Zohar, and participated in the Cannes Film Festival. A given moment at the other end of the world, was very impressive.
When the novel “The Lover” (Schocken) was translated into English in the late 1970s, critics of the New York Book Review went berserk. They wrote that the novel is likened to a series of circus performances at the end of which the juggler stands and bases his entire balance on one finger, which cannot withstand the load. The parable is clear: the connections between the characters he painted are loose and temporary, and a shadow of danger hovers over them all.
He grew up at the Hebrew University during the years everyone was there: the young critic Gershon Shaked, who wrote about him as soon as he published his works, Adi Tzemach, Menachem Brinker, Gabriel Moked, Dan Miron (to whom he dedicated his latest novel), Ehud Ben-Ezer and many others. There he also met Ika-Rebecca, later a prominent psychoanalyst, his partner and the mother of his children.
Later, Shaked would receive for criticism the things he wrote before they were published. The first reader was always his partner Ikea. She was followed by Amos Oz and his wife Nili, and when he had to – he did not hesitate to give his writings to investigators who would comment on them. He did so, for example, when he finished writing “Journey to the End of the Millennium,” when he sent the manuscript to the historian Prof. Israel Yuval.
father. Joshua was an extinct species. While other writers tend to wander between different editions over the years, for 40 years Prof. Menachem Perry, the founder of the New Library, was its editor-in-chief and their names were intertwined. From “Late Divorce” – with the new episode, through “Molcho” and “Mr. Money” to “The Third Temple”. An inseparable connection. Who is who in the words that appear in the latest novella, “Thus, in a literary wink of a comic utopia, he parted from his readers with a skeptical and pessimistic author” ?.
He himself saw in “Mr. Money” his most significant, complex and profound book. The critic Yosef Oren wrote about this novel when he came out, that he demonstrates the richness of his imagination and his mental daring in what continues the campaign against European Zionism, and this time he strives to give Eastern Zionism a historical foundation. And in Eastern Zionism lies a story within a story. The story of someone who grew up with a father who was a fourth generation in Jerusalem and researched the entire history of the old settlement and a mother of Moroccan descent, but grew up inside the old-fashioned Rehavia, for all that that implies.
He was a great writer who did not make a story of himself and despite the success refused to settle for literature as his main livelihood and taught over the years. When his books came out, he would send them to friends. According to the enthusiasm he recognized in the responses, he gave himself scores in neat tables. He did not keep his writings until the late Sharfi Weiser, the mythological director of the Department of Manuscripts and Archives at the National Library, told him: Transfer to us. We’ll save for you. Since then, Joshua used to arrive with crates in the trunk. This, by the way, is why the manuscripts of his first stories are not.
“A good man,” they say of him over the years. A gifted, boneless, tongue-in-cheek writer with uncompromising political involvement. One who wrote letters to the chiefs of staff and other activists. On all areas of the life of the Jewish people. “
father. Joshua, “Bolly” according to his friends, was one of the most quoted writers. His remarks revolved around questions of national identity, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nationality and religion, exile and Zionism. For him, the personal was the political and the political was the personal. Since 1967 it has stood out as the voice of the Israeli left. For the past decade, he has been desperate for a two-state solution for one Jewish-Arab state from the sea to the Jordan.
He confronted Israeli Arabs who demanded the abolition of Israel’s Zionist Jewish character, as happened with the Arab Christian writer Anton Shamas, whom he sent to move to the Palestinian state if he was not willing to settle for the civil partnership offered to him by Israel. He did not hesitate to refer to the role of the Jews in the Holocaust and in his words: “I have never heard the Jews analyze the Holocaust as a failure. Even though red lights were lit.”
A content Morris car moves slowly into a garage. It has no driver. In a matter of moments, it becomes clear to the garage owner that the car is being pushed by a pale and strange young man who claims that in order to repair it, only one screw is required. This scene is of course taken from “The Lover”, because only A.B. Joshua could discern within the sometimes sleepy reality, the small and critical elements. May his memory be blessed.