Against the Sabra Current: Hanokh Bartov’s Each Had Six Wings and the Embrace of Diasporic Vitality

When the State of Israel proclaimed its independence on May, 14, 1948, its provisional government justified the state’s establishment by pointing to the Holocaust: “The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people—the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe—was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish state, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations.”¹ While Israel’s role as a sanctuary enabling Jews to