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PARTISAN REVIEW
the State of Israel, marking a rupture in the previous realities of the
Yishuv. This transformed state of affairs bore numerous new revolu–
tionary features that necessitated changes in consciousness and culture.
Thus, at the very moment the first stage of Israeli identity ripened to
maturity, embodied in the identity and ethos of the Sabra, salient ele–
ments also surfaced that were destined to undermine its moorings.
To all appearances, the transition from the Yishuv to the state was a
stunning success story-the creation of the institutions of government,
the formation of a national defense force, and the establishment of the
basic frameworks for the functioning of national life. Yet that revolu–
tionary and sweeping transition from a small and lean network of insti–
tutions to a broad and open array of organs for governance was not
accompanied by a corresponding shift in the emotional foundations of
the society, its modes of thought, and cultural structures. They contin–
ued to be anchored in the sentiments, temperament, and elemental
approaches that had crystallized during the period of the Yishuv. To
make use of a metaphor, the culture of the campfire circle which had
been cultivated as an emblem of the pervasive camaraderie of the Pal–
mach and youth movement, also became a token of exclusiveness-the
exclusion of anyone external to that ethos, and in whom the old sym–
bology of Eretz Israel did not strike an immediate responsive chord .
The decades of the 19 50S and 1960s witnessed the emergence of a new
generation, termed in common parlance the "sons of the State." In its
amplified sense, this designates a specific cultural elite that reviled the lit–
erature of the Palmach generation. In their onslaughts on what they
dubbed the collectivistic culture of the "first person plural," Natan Zach,
David Avidan, Yehuda Amichai, and Amalia Cahannah-Carmon rocked
the foundations of Kassit and other coffeehouses that were the frequent
haunts of the Israeli boheme. To it they counterposed the claims of the
individual to autonomy and freedom from the restrictive shackles of the
collective. Most members of this group belonged to the Palmach genera–
tion, yet they repudiated the literary school of their peers, preoccupied in
their writings solely with their own life-world, a literature that gave
expression to the collective Eretz-Israeli experience. Socialist realism, a
common style and stance in their work, also infuriated the "modernists."
On the one hand, they wished to forge a link with the European cul–
tural avant-garde, on the other, they sought to sunder the historical
bonds tying Hebrew literature to the Zionist enterprise. Those links had
been an essential component in the creation of the nation. Though they
were termed the generation of the State, so as to distinguish them from
the preceding Palmach generational cohort, many made up what was
