“The Public Feelings project intersects with studies of race and ethnicity that consider how to think of the psychic and social life together, the use of melancholy as a historical and racialized category, and the production of hope in the face of long histories of oppression.” (p.7)
It is a known fact that Israel’s establishment was in many ways an answer to the Holocaust. I’m not sure that the Holocaust answers Cvetkovich definition of an event that can induce a cultural depression, not because I’m holding it as not so very dramatic, but on the contrary – due to its magnitude and imperceptibility. However, there is no doubt it induced a cultural trauma (and needless to say its effects were far more comprehensive than to alter the Jewish perception of humankind nature alone). It is also undoubted that the Jews had been the most systematically persecuted group, and due to the large immigration to the land of Palestine after the war – it developed into a unified society who shares a similar trauma. This trauma has been developed into a post-traumatic narrative, which has become part of the mentality of being an Israeli, no matter how long after the Holocaust you’ve been born. I’ll add, though with no intention of elaboration, that other traumatic events have also been of great significance in the Israeli mentality-shaping, such as the pogroms in Europe in the 19th ct., the independence war (1947-1948) etc.
One of the effects depression might have is anxiety (p. 18), and I think that might be one of the key ideas for understanding the Israeli post-traumatic mentality. This anxiety manifests itself in the willingness to join the army (which is mandatory) and help protecting the country, in the still (though not as much as it used to be) dominant perception that living in Israel is a national responsibility and in the solidarity Israelis feel in times of security threats.
An idea that occurred to me during the reading is that maybe in the case of Israel, the anxiety is part of a necessary post-traumatic mechanism, and not part of any continuing depression due to political failures (p.7). Despite the many issues Israel has to deal with, meaning first and foremost the long lasting fight with the Palestinians, Israel as a nation is not depressed. Its establishment was a turning point (a political success, to use Cvetkovich terminology), which didn’t erase the trauma, but symbolized the first time in quite a long while in which Jewish people, as a unified group, regains activeness.
**I read it now and I am quite shocked with the sentimentality pouring of what I’ve written. I guess it derives from the solidarity I described above which I feel due to the situation in Israel in the last few weeks. The more interesting point is that the fact that I chose to write a passage of this kind expresses the exact point I was trying to make – that to be an Israeli means to suffer from a cultural post-trauma, a post-trauma which makes me a spokeswoman for Israel in the time of need.