The story of Israel and its raison d’être are suffused by memories of the Holocaust, which construct the self-definition and identity of the state. This article examines works by three contemporary Israeli women artists—Dvora Morag, Miri Nishri, and Bracha Ettinger—who subvert the traditional telling of history and enable rethinking of the past as the basis for the individual’s existence in the nation state. Through the works of these artists, official memory disintegrates into fragments of personal memories of the artists’ mothers, enabling a new moral, historical perspective. The reconstruction of history through stories that pass from mother to daughter contrasts sharply with Jewish tradition in which the historical story passes from father to son. The yearly Passover retelling of the Exodus admonishes “Thou shalt tell thy son on that day to say, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt’”. The two narratives, the Exodus from Egypt and the Holocaust, are told as stories of redemption of the Jewish people—from ruin to resurrection. The art examined here reassesses the past, while unraveling parallels between the stories from a female perspective that reflects a personal moral stance.

中文翻译：

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你应该告诉你的女儿：母亲告诉女儿他们的大屠杀故事——当代以色列女艺术家的三个案例研究

以色列的故事及其存在的理由充斥着对大屠杀的记忆，这些记忆构成了国家的自我定义和身份。本文考察了三位当代以色列女性艺术家——Dvora Morag、Miri Nishri 和 Bracha Ettinger——的作品，她们颠覆了传统的历史叙述方式，使人们能够重新思考过去作为个人在民族国家中存在的基础。通过这些艺术家的作品，官方记忆瓦解为艺术家母亲的个人记忆碎片，从而形成了一种新的道德、历史视角。通过母亲传给女儿的故事来重建历史，与历史故事从父亲传给儿子的犹太传统形成鲜明对比。每年逾越节的出埃及记重述告诫“那天你要告诉你的儿子说，‘这是因为我出埃及时，耶和华为我所做的事’”。出埃及记和大屠杀这两个故事被讲述为犹太人的救赎故事——从毁灭到复活。这里考察的艺术重新评估了过去，同时从反映个人道德立场的女性角度揭示了故事之间的相似之处。