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Articles

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2021): Volume 1, Issue 1

Limits to the Self: Revisiting the Jewish Wandering Syndrome in Eshkol Nevo’s Neuland

Submitted
March 28, 2026
Published
2026-03-28

Abstract

The notion of self attends to individual identity in relation with
meaningful social interactions. It is a system expanded to
multidisciplinary paradigms, often discussed in psychological and
sociological perspectives. Man as a social being is entitled to
understand and accept the social significance of self which is also
an outgrowth of accumulated experiences of the past. However,
this process is challenging especially to the members of a
community with an unusual record of history. To that end, this
paper attempts to examine the case of Israeli Jews for the
complexity in their identification of self even after the
establishment of Israel as a Nation State. Israeli writer Eshkol
Nevo’s most discussed novel Neuland is closely read to engage
with the concept of self in the Israeli context and to accentuate its
centrality among the new generation Jewish Israelis. Based on the
socio-psychological theoretical frameworks, specifically of
William James, Neuland is synthesized as a textual journey to
subjective and social identifications of the notion of self. The
causes and consequences of limits to self and its problematic
representation among a particular group of Jewish Israelis as
manifested in the text are subjected to textual interpretation.