Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah

Employing interviews with nine daughters of Holocaust survivors and an analysis of Zionist discourse, the Israeli-born Lentin (Trinity College, Dublin) explores the ways that the relationship between Israel and the Shoah has been gendered--the Shoah becoming "feminized" and Israel "masculinized." The myths and silences that have been built up around the Shoah in Israeli society had deep implications for the formation of her own generation, Lentin writes. They also have had a profound impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "This book is a personal act of reckoning, and of mourning the loss of life that was the Shoah, and the inability, or unwillingness, to mourn that very loss by an Israeli society absorbed in acts of survival," she writes. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR