Renowned Israeli writer, playwright and Zionist A.B. Yehoshua has passed away at age 85.
Abraham Gabriel Yehoshua was born to fourth-generation Jerusalemite Yaakov Yehoshua and his Moroccan Jewish wife Malka in British-Mandate Jerusalem in 1936, the second of two children. He attended the secular Gymnasia Rechavia and served in the IDF Nahal Brigade’s airborne battalion.
A prolific writer, his work translated into 28 languages worldwide. His creations were known for their complexity, humor and in his later years, their realism. Among the most widely read of his short stories in 1968 was “Facing the Forests,” but myriad tomes were to follow, including works on antisemitism, Jewish identity, Zionism and politics.
Although he was a strong advocate for the so-called “two state solution” in his earlier years, Yehoshua changed his mind in 2016, positing that instead, a “joint endeavor” with equal rights for Palestinian Authority Arabs would make more sense.
But the writer was a staunch Zionist, one who was convinced that only Jews in Israel were fully Jewish. Nevertheless, he acknowledged the Jewish Diaspora has been in existence for some 2,500 years and is likely to continue for millennia more.
“I have no doubt that in the future when outposts are established in outer space, there will be Jews among them who will pray ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ while electronically orienting their space synagogue toward Jerusalem on the globe of the earth,” he wrote in a 2006 essay sent to the American Jewish Committee.
A.B. Yehoshua received the 1995 Israel Prize for Culture in addition to numerous other honors, including the Bialik Prize and the Jewish National Book Award.
He is survived by his three children (Sivan, Gideon and Nahum); he was predeceased in 2016 by his wife Ika, a psychoanalyst.
Baruch Dayan Emet
