Israel, Palestine and the Bildungsroman | CPT PPP Coverage

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Published by the author of the American Splendor graphic novel series, Harvey Pekar’s graphic novel Not the Israel my Parents Promised Me is different in several respects. It is something of a twist on the genre invented by Goethe, in that it is more an intellectual and ethical journey than a geographical one.

Its protagonist is Pekar’s comic avatar “Harvey”. Harvey is based in Cleveland. He has never actually visited Israel. However, over the course of his life, he becomes disenchanted with the idea of Israel. This ideal of Israel was promised to him by his ardently pro-Zionist parents, who were Polish-Jewish immigrants to the US.

While getting to know the countercultural New Left in the 1960s, Harvey changes his mind. He no longer identifies with Israel as an ethical state and a sanctuary for the Jewish after the Holocaust. Instead, he comes to view it as a nationalist and colonial project intent on military conquest and the dispossession of the Palestinians.

Harvey does not experience excessive shame over Israel’s actions, nor does he hold it to unreasonable standards. Rather, he comes to believe that addressing Israeli colonialism is necessary, given that “nationalism and ethnic pride, in the long run, delay human development, and the misery they cause must be recognized”.

While focused on a mature and cynical character, this graphic novel is faithful to the tenets of the Bildungsroman. We see “a loss of faith in the value of the hero’s home and family”, which “leads inevitably to the assertion of the youth’s independence”.

As in Glidden’s graphic novel, Harvey’s disenchantment with the idea of Israel is balanced by his understanding that the Jewish diaspora has interacted with a range of non-Jewish civilisations. These include interactions during the Babylonian exile, in Andalusian Spain in the early modern period, and during the era of emancipation in 18th century Germany, which led to a revival of Hebrew.

Harvey’s point is that Israel and Zionism cannot control the meaning of Judaism as Judaism continues to be formed and reformed together with the non-Jewish world.