ABOUT AUTHOR AHARON MEGGED

By: Shira Myers

Aharon Megged's History:

Aharon Megged was born in 1920 at Wroclawek, Poland.  

At the age of six he immigrated to Israel with his parents, and settled down with them in Ra'anana.

Later he joined "The youth pioneer movement", training in Kibbutz Giv'at Brenner, and finally spent twelve years in Kibbutz Sedot Yam.

From the year 1968 to the year 1971 he served on the staff of the Israeli embassy in London as the cultural attaché. In addition to this, he spent more time abroad in the USA lecturing, writing and as an author-in-residence at Oxford University and at the University of lowa. Although Aharon was an immigrant, he had a full command of the Hebrew language and published more than thirty books and plays, which were translated to English, Spanish, French and many other languages.

Owing to his amazing life work he won countless prizes. Among them are the Bialik prize in 1974, the Israel prize for literature in 2003 and the Koret prize for jewish function in 2004.

Aharon Megged now lives in Tel Aviv where he continues to write and publish books, adding to his collection of literary work.

Aharon Megged's Writing Style:

Aharon Megged's writing style is very complex, it is satirical and cynical on one hand and harsh and critical on the other. His writing focuses on the actions and character of the "new Jew". Especially on the differences and gap between the "gola jew", who lived his life abroad and the "new Jew", the "sabra", who was born in Israel and into a reality of war, survival and an everlasting need to defend himself and his young and unstable country.

Megged's tactics to draw his picture of society is by telling the story of individuals, and through it explain his opinion about the Israeli society at large. Megged's work is full of his personal history, thoughts, opinions and ideas. Starting with writing about the "wonderful Jewish virtues of wit, humanity and idealism" based on the time he lived in, after the fifth aliya, when people left their money and convenience abroad and came to the harsh land of Israel. His writing eventually got to stories about heroics and holocaust survivors, based on the gap between the generations in Israel at his time and on the extraordinary people he knew, one of them as Chana Senesh.

Although he was born abroad, and has spent a decent time amount of time in England and the USA, he indicates about himself that his work "is taken from the earth of this country, the old, biblical and new Israel, with all of the satirics, complications, wars and threats for it's existence".

What influences him to write in a critical way is his opinion about what happened in Israel following the holocaust.

 Since there were two generations in Israel, so different in the place and time in which they lived (or grew up) the gap between them could not be overlooked or taken care of. Because of this, many debates and questions about Israel's future were brought up and some remained unsolved even today. In addition to this, there were other things that influenced his writing. Some of the things that influenced his writing the most were; him being a Jew, the Bible, the wars he had fought in Israel (especially the War of Independence in 1948) and the life in Israel for the last fifty years. He saw Israel fight, bleed, lose its people and children, rise, fall and rise again.

Aharon Megged's message in the story:

I think Aharon Megged's message to us, the readers, in his story The Name is that the obligation of remembrance is ours, and ours alone. As the "new Jews" and sabras, we are responsible that the connection to our past will not be disconnected.

Morever, we must always remember our history, our ancestors and their world. Although our history isn't always victorious or happy to hear, we have to make the effort of putting the memorial of our broken people and shattered history into our lives.

If we do disconnect from our line and give up our place in history we will be left floating in the air, like a leaf in the wind. In addition to this, there will be nothing bonding with our glorious history, amazing people or the mere reason of our existence.

Reflection:

Now that the project is over, I feel that working on this project was an important experience. Although it wasn't always easy and fun, I am happy to have learned about the importance of remembrance and of the great amount of responsibilities that my generation, and myself as a part of it, carry.

I have worked alone on the project, so I can't tell stories about the chemistry between my partner and myself, but I had all the help I needed from my teacher, Mrs.Addi.

Although I had a fairly o.k time writing my project, there were some things that I think the teachers should think about and change for the next project they do. Firstly, I think the project would be much more interesting if we would pair up with our colleagues in Canada and actually work on the project with them. Secondly, It would be much better for us if we had more time to work on the project in class.

That's about it, hope you enjoyed reading my project!

Shira  

Bibliography:

The Jewish virtual library, Entered 21 December 2005

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/megged.html   

Modern Hebrew Literature - a Bio-Bibliographical Lexicon, Retrieved 30/03/2005,

Entered 19^th December 2005

Wikipedia, Retrieved June 3, Entered 19^th December 2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aharon_Megged