By Sheila Orysiek
SAN DIEGO — Hanna Armoni’s Are You Waiting for Eliahu?: The Story of a Woman Freedom Fighter, 1942-1948 (Yair Publishing, 2007) is a book with a difficult autobiographical story to tell. As a youngster living in pre-Israel Palestine, she joined the Lehi, one of several underground insurgency groups determined to oust the British at the time of the Mandate.
Desperate to get beyond the usual tasks assigned to women, such as cooking and laundry, she insists on joining in illegal, violent and deadly “operations” against the British and Arabs as well as other Jewish underground groups. Armoni never questions if this is the correct road to independence. She has no qualms with her choice.
The author’s style is a staccato of short sentences and tends to become a drum beat of violence. On pages between the chapters of the book are lists of news items of death, execution and destruction on all sides: British, Jewish, Arab. The drumbeat becomes a crescendo.
Though Armoni survives physically intact, many of her friends and her husband do not. She has a young daughter, now fatherless, but even the fact she might be killed in an “operation” gone bad which would leave that child completely orphaned, does not deter her from putting herself in danger. Emotionally she seems entirely compartmentalized.
Her story jumps forward to a second marriage. Her new husband adopts the child but in another jump she reveals that as an adult the daughter is unhappy that her biological father’s identity was not revealed to her.
By the end of the book, I can say that I know what Armoni did – underground “operations” – and the reason why she chose to participate in them – Independence for Israel – but I can’t say that she has conveyed her entire self. The portrait the author presents is incomplete and fractured and it is difficult to connect with such a view. She certainly has a story to tell, but I wish she had filled in the spaces.
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Orysiek is a freelance writer who specializes in arts and literature. Comments may be made in the space provided below this article or sent to the author at sheila.orysiek@sdjewishworld.com