''Tabula Rasa'' ( he, לוח חלק) is a 2010 novel by

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

i author

Nathan Shaham Nathan Shaham (Hebrew: נתן שחם; January 29, 1925 – June 18, 2018) was an Israeli writer. Biography Born in Tel Aviv, Shaham was a member of Kibbutz Beit Alfa from 1945-2018, and served with the Palmach in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He w ...

. Originally published in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, the book has not yet appeared in English translation. Shaham, himself a long-time member of

Kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

Beit Alfa Beit Alfa ( he, בֵּית אַלְפָא; also Beit Alpha, Bet Alpha and Bet Alfa) is a kibbutz in the Northern District of Israel, founded in 1922 by immigrants from Poland. Located at the base of the Gilboa ridge, it falls under the jurisdic ...

, has said he wasn't interested in assigning blame for the failures of the kibbutz depicted in the novel, only trying to understand what happened and why.

Plot

The novel charts the rise and fall of the fictional

kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

Givat Abirim, set against the backdrop of its modern-day

privatization Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...

and the introduction of differential wages. Its central character, Hanan Harari, is a painter and ideological communist in his seventies who has lived on the kibbutz since before the establishment of the state in 1948. Hanan's personal and professional vicissitudes, and in particular his increasing preference for abstract painting, become a metaphor for the disintegration of the collective vision of the kibbutz. Whereas his representational art once found enthusiastic acceptance and was prominently displayed in public places, Hanan comes under heavy criticism from the other members, including his wife, as his work becomes more abstract. But when the kibbutz is privatized, Hanan can no longer resist the market-driven pressures to create "sentimental landscapes that the gallery in Jaffa was so enthusiastic about and which he loathed."Quoted in Ketzia Alon (20 January 2011)
"The Kibbutz at 100 / Dead and dying"
''

Haaretz ''Haaretz'' ( , originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , ) is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in the Berliner f ...

'' (retrieved 18 November 2012).

Critical reception

Ketzia Alon of ''

'' hailed ''Tabula Rasa'' as both "an important historical and sociological document" and "a novel of monumental proportions, an impressive if sad memorial to the grand experiment in human engineering" that was the kibbutz: "Shaham has managed to find exactly the proper tone to tell the story of the life and death of the kibbutz: through neither bitter criticism nor tender nostalgia, but a highly sober literary perspective that produces realistic prose and the illusion of a genuine slice of life." ''

Maariv ''Maariv'' or ''Maʿariv'' (, ), also known as ''Arvit'' (, ), is a Jewish prayer service held in the evening or night. It consists primarily of the evening ''Shema'' and '' Amidah''. The service will often begin with two verses from Psalms, ...

'', on the other hand, lamented the book's length and described it as "simplistic and schematic".Arik Glasner (16 October 2010)
"''Tabula Rasa'' by Nathan Shaham"
''

n Hebrew N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...

(retrieved 18 November 2012).

References

External links

''Tabula Rasa'' at Publisher's website
(in Hebrew). 2010 novels 21st-century Israeli novels Novels set in Israel Books about the kibbutz Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir books {{2010s-hist-novel-stub