Concise Israeli Lexicon (first ever) 2007
Issues of holocaust, abandonment, destruction, loss, illness, death and persecution typify Jewish lore. These themes underlie the lethal, aggressive, militaristic Israeli reaction in the present. As such, history is divided into two parts in this piece, the Jewish past and the Israeli reaction in the present. These words are used frequently and distributed through the education system and culture, becoming omnipresent to the extent that they dwarf and contextualize the rest of the language.
In order to essentialize and concretize what I experience as the dominant determinant in Jewish Israeli daily life, perception of the past and future outlook, I scanned every word in the Hebrew dictionary. I isolated words that function as fundamental pressure or trigger points, shaping identity and ultimately directing Jewish Israeli behavior and attitude. This assiduous linguistic exercise reduced the language to its bare symbolic essentials emphasizing their unfortunate cultural importance.
