The story of Amos Oz

Amos Oz, the Israeli literary champion of all time, went last Friday (18 \ 12 \ 28) at the age of 79 after a fight with cancer.

Oz is considered one of Israel's leading writers from the second decade of his establishment until his last days.

He was one of the writers of the generation of the state, who began to write in Israel's early years and formed the basis for modern Hebrew writing.

Oz left behind a wife Nili and three children: Galia, Fania and Daniel.

                         Personal biography

Oz was born in 1939 in Jerusalem, to a revisionist family with a Jewish background. His father was literary scholar Yehuda Aryeh Klausner, and his uncle, Yosef Klausner, a literary scholar and historian who ran for president against Chaim Weizmann.

His mother Fania was a professor of philosophy and history at the University of Prague, and later also at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Oz grew up in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The poet Zelda was his teacher in the second grade.

Even though his family was secular, Oz studied at the religious school of Tachkemoni, because the alternative was to study in a school for workers' children, a socialist -oriented institution that belonged to the Labor movement . Some of his high school studies were given by Oz at the Gymnasia Rehavia.

When Oz was 12 years old, his mother committed suicide, and two years later he was forced to move from Jerusalem to Kibbutz Hulda where the family of Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai adopted him.

The landscapes of his childhood in Jerusalem and the kibbutz often served as a background and source of inspiration for his future works, primarily "A Tale of Love and Darkness," which tells the story of Oz's family.

Oz lives on Kibbutz Hulda between the years 1985-1954.

He served in Battalion 50 of the Paratroopers Brigade.

At the end of his military service, he completed a BA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the fields of literature and philosophy.

Oz later went on to study for a master's degree in philosophy at Oxford University in England.

At the end of his studies, Oz was teaching at the high school in Kibbutz Hulda, to which he joined as a full member.

In 1986, following Daniel's asthma, Oz left the kibbutz with his wife and three children and moved to Arad.

In his last years, Oz lived in Tel Aviv.

Over the years, Oz's family members also bought themselves over the years.

His eldest daughter Galia Oz is a director and author of well-known children's books. Fania Oz Salzberg is a writer and historian at the University of Haifa, and Daniel Oz is a poet and musician.

                       Professional career

At the beginning of his literary career, Oz had the courage to present heroes who live on the border between dark impulses and the steady routine world, while in the background stands the majority of kibbutz society, which receives considerable criticism.

Later in his career he minimized symbolic and fantasy writing and tended to realism, which focuses on the description of Israeli reality as he saw and understood it.

Oz claimed over the years that the American writer Sherwood Andeson influenced his writing.

Apart from a few small publications in the kibbutz newsletter and Davar, Oz did not publish anything until the age of 22, and then began publishing stories

.

The first book published by Oz was the collection of the stories "The Land of the Jackal," which was published in 1965.

A year later, his first novel, "A Different Place", was published.

Since then, Oz has published a book every year in the publishing house "Am Oved".

In 1988, Oz left the Am Oved publishing house and moved to Keter Publishing House where he received a unique contract that gives him a regular monthly salary regardless of the frequency of his publications.

From the outset, his literary style attracted the attention of readers and critics of literature, and his work was marked as one of the most promising and leading among his contemporaries.

However, the significant breakthrough in his career, Oz owes the novel "My Michael".

The novel "My Michael" takes place as is known in Jerusalem of the 1950s and describes a desperate relationship between a man who is stable and considerate to a turbulent and emotionally disturbed woman.

The book has been a great success in Israel and abroad (since it was translated into more than 30 languages), gave its author a place of honor at the head of the Israeli literary work, and was chosen as one of the most important books in the 20th century.

In the book "Black Box," Oz paints the unique character of each character through her letters alone.

The characters there are very different from each other, and the processes are reflected in correspondence between them and about them with the development of the plot.

Oz served as a full professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and is in charge of the SY Agnon Literature Chair.

He was a colleague, writer and visiting professor at many universities including the Hebrew University, Oxford, Berkeley, Boston and Princeton.

In 1991 he was elected a full member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language.

It is important to note that Oz's books and stories are included in the curricula of the Ministry of Education for matriculation examinations in literature, and his works are being studied in literary circles in universities in Israel and around the world.

In addition, his work served as a basis for research, and books about him, written by renowned researchers including Nurit Gertz, Ziva Shamir and Yair Mazor, were published in Israel and abroad.

It is important to note that alongside Oz's novels, novellae, and essays, he published articles on literature and politics in newspapers in Israel and around the world, such as Davar, Yedioth Ahronoth, Haaretz and The New York Times.

                               Processing Oz's books on the big screen

Some of Oz's books received additional exposure when they were processed into the big screen. "My Michael" works for the cinema by Dan Wolman in 1975, starring Oded Kotler and Efrat Lavie; In 1992, the film "Black Box" was directed by director Yeud Levanon; The book "Panther in the Basement" was filmed by American director Lynn Roth ("The Little Traitor") and released in 2007.

But it is possible that the most popular cinematic adaptation of all is based on Oz's monumental book, "A Tale of Love and Darkness," in 2015.

The film was written and directed by Natalie Portman, in which she played the lead role as Oz's mother, and was first screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

. Amos Oz's political career

Amos Oz is one of the leading intellectuals in Israel, on the left side of the political map, and this is also reflected in the public sphere in which he spoke regularly (especially after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993).

He began his political activity in the early 1960s when he took part in the social democratic group called "From the Fundamentals" which supported the late Minister of Defense Pinhas Lavon in his struggle against David Ben-Gurion in the shadow of the "shameful business" affair.

The group opposed the excess of roles that Ben-Gurion took upon himself.

Oz's positions were clearly dovish in the political, social and democratic spheres in the socio-economic sphere.

This is reflected in the fact that since the outbreak of the 1967 Six-Day War, Oz has on many occasions criticized the situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the settlements and the influence of the occupation on Israeli society.

Oz was active in the Committee for Peace and Security, supported the Moked Party and the SHALI camp. In addition, he was one of the founders and spokespersons of the Peace Now movement, which was established in 1977.

Oz was identified with the Labor Party for years, and was close to Shimon Peres, who regularly consulted with him on political matters.

After the Rabin assassination, Oz moved from Labor to Meretz, where he was close to Shulamit Aloni.

In the 2003 elections, Oz appeared in the Meretz party's election broadcasts and called on the public to vote for her.

In the 2006 elections, they placed Oz in the 116th place on the Meretz list for the Knesset.

In the 2009 elections, they placed Oz in the 115th place on the Meretz list for the Knesset.

Oz initially supported Operation Cast Lead, but as the operation continued, Oz changed his mind and condemned some of the actions taken by the IDF as war criminals and called for the perpetrators to be held accountable.

On February 21, 1988, Oz, together with his colleagues Yehuda Amichai, Amos Ayalon, and AB Yehoshua, published an open letter in the popular American newspaper The New York Times urging American Jews to condemn the IDF during the first intifada.

Oz supported the establishment of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

In the run-up to the 2001 elections, a group of peace activists published a prominent announcement in Haaretz, in which they categorically denied the return of the Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel,

He helped formulate the Geneva document in October 2003.

He opposed the actions of members of the "price tag" and "the hilltop youth."

Three years ago he announced that he would not continue to participate in events on behalf of the Foreign Ministry, in protest of Israel's policy in the territories.

For this reason he was called "the guru of the left."

                             Prizes won by Amos Oz

Oz is considered one of the most recognized Israeli writers in the world; His books have been translated into dozens of languages, and in addition to the Israel Prize awarded in 1998, he won the Goethe Prize in 2005 for "A Tale of Love and Darkness" and in 2008 became the first Israeli to win the Heinrich Heine Prize.

In addition to this, he was decorated with the Legion of Honor of the French Republic, the Kafka Prize awarded in the Czech Republic and the Chinese Literature Prize, Jingdeong.

His book "The Gospel According to Judah," published in 2017, came to the short list of the Man-Booker Prize, and Oz himself appeared several times on the list of writers nominated for the Nobel Prize.

In addition, Oz received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute, Ben Gurion University and the universities in Dublin, Milan and Buenos Aires.