You may have seen the obituaries today for the famed Israeli writer and activist Amos Oz. Read those for insights into his fiction, non-fiction writing, activism. There’s another part of this story that resonates with me. Amos Oz wasn’t born Amos Oz. The name change itself isn’t that strange for Israelis of his generation. Many were hebraizing their names. Ehud Barak was born Ehud Brog for instance. There are countless other examples. But for Oz this came with a deeper rebellion and transformation. Oz was born in Jerusalem in 1939 as Amos Klausner.
Amos Klausner was born into a Revisionist Zionist family of some political renown. This is to say he was born into a right-wing family, the movement ancestor of today’s Likud party, in an era in which politics and ideology defined not only ones political but to a great degree one’s social existence. Klausner’s mother committed suicide when he was 12. When he was fourteen he became a labor Zionist, which is to say a socialist, and left home and family to join Kibbutz Hulda. Kibbutz are quite different today. But in the early 1950s this meant choosing a life as a farm laborer on a communal farm. There he was adopted by the Huldai family. There he became Amos Oz.
“Oz” means “courage” in Hebrew.
In his words as an old man …
When I was 14, I left behind the intellectual, bookish world of my family. My idea was to be born again as a pioneer and hero on a kibbutz. It was a childish but powerful dream. My mother had committed suicide when I was 12 and I wanted to rebel against my father’s world. He was right wing. I would become a social democrat. He was short. I would grow tall.
I didn’t grow tall, but I assumed a new surname. Amos Klausner became Amos Oz, and in 1953 I moved from Jerusalem onto Kibbutz Hulda in central Israel, and joined 400 other men, women and children. Hulda was a small village of buildings with red-tiled roofs. I could cross the site on foot in 12 minutes.
By his own account he wasn’t a great farm laborer. But this was no youthful enthusiasm. He remained at Hulda until middle age when his family moved to the Negev desert for his son’s health. He began to write and as his writing career took off the Kibbutz allotted him more days to write.
It is this act of rebellion and self-creation that holds my attention, stays with me.
