Haya Bar-Itzhak – författare

The goals and challenges that face the people of Israel are vividly illustrated by the country's many folk stories. Here Haya Bar-Itzhak presents these tales - gathered from the early settlers of the kibbutz, from immigrants who arrived in Israel after independence, and from ethnic groups - to create a panoramic view of a fascinatingly complex society. Creating stories set in the past, even the recent past, is a way for societies to express their problems, adversities, yearnings, and hopes. Bar-Itzhak finds this true among inhabitants of the kibbutz, who find their society at a crossroads as a result of changes in Israeli society at large. She reveals the symbolic dimensions of their stories - some dealing with the death of young soldiers (sacrificed sons) in battle - as pointing to the complexity of a local culture that expresses the ethos of Labor Zionism. In a section dealing with the folklore of immigrants, Bar-Itzhak focuses on the narratives of Yemenite Jews and Polish Jews. Their stories express their traumatic meeting with Israeli society while providing a means for coming to grips with it. The final section, dealing with ethnic folklore of Moroccan Jews, explores the wonder tale through the perspective of disabled and elderly storytellers, who in the language of their community seek to defend their own values and norms, and examines the saints' legends and the body language usually employed in the telling of them. Throughout, the author illuminates the unique challenge of experiencing ethnicity as Jews vis-a-vis other Jews. ""Israeli Folk Narratives"" combines new data with insightful analyses. Anyone interested in folk stories and Israeli culture will be enlightened by this sensitive, thought-provoking book.

In The Power of a Tale: Stories from the Israel Folktale Archives, editors Haya Bar-Itzhak and Idit Pintel-Gensberg bring together a collection of fifty-three folktales celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA) at the University of Haifa. Established by the folklorist Dov Noy in the 1950s, the IFA is theonly archive of its kind in Israel and serves as a center for knowledge and information concerning the cultural heritage of the many ethnic communities in Israel.For this jubilee volume, contributors each selected stories from the more than 24,000 preserved in the archives and wrote an accompanying analytic essay. Stories selected represent 26 different ethnic groups in Israel, 22 of them Jewish. The narrators of the stories come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and education levels. They include both men and women of various ages who worked in diverse fields. Some were long settled in Israel while others were recent arrivals when their stories were collected and transcribed. They all shared one conspicuous quality—their talent as storytellers. The stories they tell encompass a myriad of genres and themes, including mythical tales,historical legends, sacred legends, demon legends, realistic legends, märchen of various sorts, novellas, jokes and anecdotes, and personal narratives.Contributors employ diverse approaches to analyze and interpret the stories. The methods applied include the classic comparative approach, which looks at tale types, oikotypes, and motifs; formalism, which considers narrative roles and narrative functions; structuralism, which aims to uncover a story’s deep structure and its binary oppositions; a psychological approach, which analyzes the tales using psychological theories, ranging from Freud to Lacan; Marxist theory, which sees the folktale as an expression of the class struggle; and more.Translated for the first time into English, the stories included and accompanying essays are evidence of the lively research being conducted today on folk literature. Scholars and students interested in Jewish folklore and literature will appreciate this diverse collection as will readers interested in Jewish and Israeli culture.

The first appearance of Jews in Poland and their adventures during their early years of settlement in the country are concealed in undocumented shadows of history. What survived are legends of origin that early chroniclers, historians, writers, and folklore scholars transcribed, thus contributing to their preservation. According to the legendary chronicles Jews resided in Poland for a millennium and developed a vibrant community.Haya Bar-Itzhak examines the legends of origin of the Jews of Poland and discloses how the community creates its own chronicle, how it structures and consolidates its identity through stories about its founding, and how this identity varies from age to age. Bar-Itzhak also examines what happened to these legends after the extermination of Polish Jewry during the Holocaust, when the human space they describe no longer exists except in memory. For the Polish Jews after the Holocaust, the legends of origin undergo a fascinating transformation into legends of destruction.Jewish Poland-Legends of Origin brings to light the more obscure legends of origin as well as those already well known. This book will be of interest to scholars in folklore studies as well as to scholars of Judaic history and culture.