The unspoken pact between the husband and the son has changed the relationships in the family. Their newly forged male camaraderie, which replaces the tension that existed between the two when the son was young, turns the mother into an outsider and a victim. The men join forces against her, tormenting her in every possible way. Their callousness leaves her with an overwhelming sense of helplessness, which in turn gives rise to a profound empathy with the Arab minority that feels equally helpless and weak in relation to the Israeli occupier.
It is against this background that the alliance is formed between Hassida and the Arab family, which she now prefers to her own. Though it begins as a pact between the two women, it later expands to include the Palestinian man, because of his warmth and compassion toward his baby. Hassida is touched by the warm aura that envelops the Arab couple when they look at their baby. As she watches them, she feels “a radiance permeating her, as if she had witnessed a rare vision. ‘Of all the sights I have seen in America—cities, waterfalls, wide highways—this is the most beautiful’” (147). Through her loving eyes, the Others are revealed in all their splendor, utterly human and inviting.
THE POWER OF SISTERHOOD
The maternal element is a principal component in the female comradeship that Liebrecht captures so marvelously in her stories. This sisterhood has the power to overcome hostility between Jews and Arabs. It is also capable of bridging the gap that exists in Israeli society between the ruling elite, the Ashkenazic Jews, and the weaker ethnic group, the Sephardic Jews. Nurturing babies and caring for the well-being of children bring together women of different generations, disparate world views, and diametrically opposed religious beliefs. In Liebrecht’s work, women have a special and very important task: they are the guardians of life.
The story “Written in Stone” describes how the power of this kind of sisterhood overcomes differences in age, education, and mentality, and brings together women belonging to different worlds to cooperate for the sake of preserving and perpetuating life. The story centers around the relationship between an older Sephardi woman and her Ashkenazi daughter-in-law, Erella. The death of the son/husband, Shlomi, during reserve duty causes excruciating pain to both women. Erella, whose beloved husband was killed less than three months after their marriage, has difficulty coming to grips with her loss. She refuses to relinquish his place in her life and clings to Shlomi’s mother, hoping that she will acknowledge and accept her. But the bereaved mother demonstrably ignores her daughter-in-law, never granting her a word or a look.
The mother’s thundering silence is explained by the loud accusations hurled at the young widow by the older female members of the family. According to them, Erella is to blame for Shlomi’s death. This unreasonable accusation stems from an identification of Erella with the ruling establishment. It was the establishment that tore the boy away from his village and from his family, sending him to study in town in a program for gifted students. It was the promise of higher education and social advancement, the women believe, that cost the young man his life. While studying at the university, Shlomi met the Ashkenazi girl, and by marrying her, only deepened his estrangement from his family and ethnic group. Sharing his life with Erella, Shlomi no longer observed the religious commandments, and that was the reason why he was killed.19
The hostility the family shows toward Erella does not lessen over the years. There is nothing the young woman can do to change their attitude. They are not even placated by her loyalty to Shlomi’s memory, symbolized by the fact that she never removes the wedding ring he gave her. Even the fact that she faithfully shows up at his mother’s house every year on the anniversary of his death does not soften the hearts of the women of the family. When she remarries and becomes pregnant, the mother asks her to stop coming to her house, but the young woman does not accede to her demand and continues to come, hoping that her suffering will alleviate her guilt and sorrow.20
The turning point in the story comes only years later, when Erella herself has joined the circle of bereaved mothers after the death of her own daughter from her second marriage, who was named Shlomit after the dead Shlomi. The old woman breaks her silence and talks to her daughter-in-law only now, when Erella is married for the third time and pregnant again. This time the old woman is determined to remove the young woman from the circle of death, so that the fetus in her womb may have a chance to live. In order to persuade her, she shows her a love letter that Shlomi wrote to Erella, returned to her by the army authorities with his belongings after he was killed. The reason she gives for never forwarding the letter explains the motive behind her cold attitude toward her daughter-in-law. “A mother, her son dies—she dies. A wife, her husband dies—she lives” (115).
Erella is shocked by this explanation, which sheds new light on the troubled relations between them. She is astounded by a new realization: “All these years you wanted to protect me” (117). The old woman’s attempts to keep her away from the family, from the house of mourning, suddenly assume a new significance. To her amazement, she learns that her mother-in-law, too, was a young widow, and that her first husband’s name was also Shlomo. Now Erella comprehends the old woman’s guilt for having named her son Shlomi, after her first husband—a name that, according to her belief, brought him death.
Erella now understands the old woman’s admonition not to name her new baby after Shlomi, because this is a “name written in stone,” on a grave (117). Erella realizes the profound logic of putting a boundary line between the living and the dead. The wisdom of generations and a bitter personal experience have prompted the old woman to try and keep her away from the forbidden territory. One cannot build a new life in the shadow of a life that was cut off; one has to find the spiritual strength to tear oneself away and begin anew.
The story concludes with a description of the profound change that has taken place within Erella: “Today she had been set free! This woman had the power to release her from the vow that neither of them had ever understood. And she had done it. The old woman had let her go” (117). Her pregnancy, so burdensome to her before, now fills her whole being with unfamiliar happiness. She feels wondrously weightless, “as if her body were made of light” (118). Liebrecht breaks away from the stereotypical pattern of a mother-in-law envious of her young daughter-in-law, and instead describes the pact between the two as a bond between mothers. In “Written in Stone,” this bond overcomes the gap between the Sephardic culture and the Ashkenazic, and focuses on an Israeli common denominator—fostering the next generation.21
FEMINIST PROTEST
A more extreme protest against the disfranchisement of women by the patriarchal religious establishment is found in the most feminist of Liebrecht’s stories, “Compassion.” The ironic title refers to the misfortunes of the female protagonist, Clarissa, a Holocaust survivor who was hidden in a convent during the war years and afterward came to Israel. The transition from an orthodox Jewish home to a Christian convent and then to a secular kibbutz in Israel totally undermined her sense of belonging, so when she later fell in love with an Arab, she went to live with him in his village. After she had borne him children, the husband demanded that she marry an old uncle of his, so that he could marry a younger wife. Her refusal to comply did not stop him from marrying the woman anyway, since as a Moslem he was allowed to have four wives. Still, the husband punished her by locking her up in a shack and keeping her totally isolated.22
Clarissa’s predicament does not break her spirit, but when she finds out that her husband and her son are about to murder her daughter because she refused to marry an old man, preferring her young beloved, Clarissa is gripped by a powerless rage. From her place of confinement, she sees her husband and son setting out on their murderous expedition, and she is prepared to kill them in order to prevent them from carrying out their scheme. “Had she been free and light-footed, had she had a knife in her hand, she would have sped after them on the mountain slope to stick the knife in their backs, withdrawing it and plunging it in again and again until they sank dead at her feet” (193).
The isolated, abused, and humiliated woman knows that nobody