With both feet on the clouds : fantasy in Israeli literature / edited by Danielle Gurevitch, Elana Gomel, Rani Graff.

Originally published in Hebrew in 2009 by Graf Press and the Heksherim Institute at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev under title: ʻIm shete ha-raglayim ʻamoḳ ba-ʻananim : fantasy in Hebrew literature, a selection of essays.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- What is Fantasy? -- What Is Reality? -- What is Unimaginable? -- May He Come in Haste: Urban Fantasy in Soothsayer by Asaf Ashery -- Etgar Keret�s Fantastic Reality -- Postmodern Jewish Superstition in David Grossman�s To the End of the Land -- Dybbuk, Husband, Home: Shmuel Hasfari and the Fantastic Tradition in Israeli Theater -- Magical Realism in Israeli Cinema -- The Grand High Witch of Dreams -- The Man from the Yellow Star -- Why Doesn�t It Rain Fish Here?

Kosher Vampires: Jews, Vampires, and PrejudiceTravel Literature: The Itinerary of an Armchair Traveler�s Journey to Eretz Israel in a Seventeenth-Century Yiddish Story -- Ghost Stories in Medieval Hebrew Folktales: The Case of Sefer Hasidim and Sippurei Ha-Ari1 -- A Terrible Fable and Enchanting Fiction: The Story of Joseph De-La Reina and Its Reflections in Two Novels of Yehoshua Bar Yosef -- The Borders of Messianic Imagination in Jewish Thinking

Why do Israelis dislike fantasy? Put so bluntly, the question appears frivolous. But in fact, it goes to the deepest sources of Israeli historical identity and literary tradition. Uniquely among developed nations, Israel's origin is in a utopian novel, Theodor Herzl's Altneuland (1902), which predicted the future Jewish state. Jewish writing in the Diaspora has always tended toward the fantastic, the mystical, and the magical. And yet, from its very inception, Israeli literature has been stubbornly realistic. The present volume challenges this stance. Originally published in Hebrew in 2009, it is the first serious, wide-ranging, and theoretically sophisticated exploration of fantasy in Israeli literature and culture. Its contributors jointly attempt to contest the question posed at the beginning: why do Israelis, living in a country whose very existence is predicated on the fulfillment of a utopian dream, distrust fantasy?

In English.

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