Abstract: The article focuses on a shelved early novel written by one of the most prominent Hebrew (female) writers, Lea Goldberg (1911–70). Goldberg worked on her novel, entitled Avedot (Losses), during the mid-late 1930s, but it was first published only in 2010, forty years after her death. The novel takes place in Berlin of 1932–33, the last months of the Weimar Republic and the first months after the rise of Hitler, and its protagonist is a Hebrew poet who had already settled in Israel/Palestine, but had traveled to Berlin to complete his doctoral dissertation. The article suggests a queer reading of this novel that highlights not only its queer temporality and the dominance of the notion of “no future” (as defined by Lee Edelman), but also its subversive attitude toward nationality, gender, and hegemonic (heteronormative) norms. By revisiting Goldberg’s shelved, allegedly marginal novel—alongside Michal Sapir’s 2018 Ha-rikud ha-moderni (The modern dance), which includes a queer adaptation of Avedot —this article seeks to allude to the queer potential that is already a part of Goldberg’s original text, even before its queer revision.
Guy Ehrlich (Wed,) studied this question.