The model held up for all of the immigrants, especially the men, was the Sabra, the native-born Israeli whose optimism, strength, and mythical heroism was something for all to aspire toward. Sabra came from the Hebrew word tzabar: a. cactus fruit, thorn-covered but sweet inside. In 1950s Israel, the Sabra was the New Israeli Man: handsome, tough, physically strong, an ardent Zionist, upbeat, without fear, and unencumbered by the weakness of his ancestors. The Sabra, by definition Ashkenazi, from a generation that had come to Palestine before the Holocaust, had shed the shameful baggage of the
...more
