Hebrew SF and Fantasy from the Bible to the 90s

In this article we will describe some( but far from all) of the most interesting and important Hebrew

work of SF in various media, from the earliest begginings of the genre till the middle of the 90s.
It can be said that the first literary works, which resemble what we today call SF, are the Jewish apocryphal books of  Enoch  from the 3d century B.C. which describe the cosmic travels of a biblical figure in time and space, and his meetings with alien beings of various kind. At the end he learns the innermost secrets of the creation of the universe. These books created a genre about extraterrestrial journeys by biblical figures, which have some similarities to "cosmological" SF of the sort written by Olaf Stapledon.
There was also  Sefer Yehudit [The Book of Judith]. This famous Apocryphal book was apparently written in the 1st or 2nd century B.C. It may be seen as the earliest example of “alternative history”. It describes a historical period which never existed, in which the Babylonian king Nechedbunatzar is the ruler of Assyria in a time  after the return to Zion of some of the deported  Jews of Babylon. This is despite the fact that the author and his readers knew that the historical events described, including the battle of a Jewish woman against an Assyrian general who tried to reconquer the Land of Israel, never occurred.
In the 12th century C.E. the famous medieval poet and astronomer  Abraham Ibn Ezra  wrote a “Makhama “ a kind of a rhymed story called CHAY BEN MAKITZ” about a journey of the narrator and his friend to the six other planets then known in our solar system and meeting with their various populations which were described according to the then current notion about those planets , and so   the Mars peoples were described as war like etch.
Much later in the Middle Ages there also arouse the first stories about a creature who is is still the most important contribution of Hebrew literature to world SF: the artificial man, the " Golem". These tales deeply influenced various writers on the subject of artificial life such as Mary Shelley in her novel "Frankenstein".
UTOPIAS
Israel is in many ways the result of a utopian thinking of the kind, which was first presented in two utopian novels appearing at the turn of the 20th century.The first modern SF novel in Hebrew was written by Elhanan Levinsky. Masah L’Eretz Yisrael b’Shnat T”T b’Elef HaShishi [A Trip to The Land of Israel in the 800th Year of the Sixth Millennium] was first published in the magazine “HaPardes” in May 1892, and described a journey to a utopian Jewish state in the Land of Israel in the year 2040.
Ten years latter, in October 1902 there appeared in German the utopian book Altneuland [Old New Land] by Theodore Herzl, the father of the Zionist movement. It describes a voyage to the technologically advanced Land of Israel in 1923, in which there is a State of Israel. This book had an enormous influence on the development of the Zionist movement, and was the source of the name of the major Hebrew city, Tel Aviv. (A “Tel” is an archeological site; “Aviv” is the season of spring – and Tel Aviv was the title of the first Hebrew translation of Herzl’s Altneuland.) One of the first and most important debates in the Zionist movement was the question of which form of utopia was preferable: a Hebrew national culture, as described in Levinsky’s book, or a European cosmopolitan culture as in Herzl’s book

SF NOVELS
In 1951 there appeared the futuristic novel Yisrael b`Shnat 2000 [Israel in the Year 2000] by S. Goldfluss (perhaps the pseudonym of an unknown author). This book provided a social and technological prediction for Israel in the year 2000,with some remarkably accurate “hits”. For example, there is a description of a “rebellion” of domestic animals, which seems to be a metaphor for the Arabs .
SF IN POETRY

In Palestine of the 1930's and 40's, SF appeared in the poetic works of two of the best Hebrew poets of that era, Zalman Shneour and Jacob Cohen. Cohen wrote a play, "BeLuz" [In Luz] (1939), one of the few modern Hebrew works of some literary significance. It is about a hidden city of immortals facing an ideological crisis because of the debate whether to reveal itself to the rest of mankind and give them the secret of immortality, or to keep its isolation, peace and stagnation.
This tradition of poetic SF was continued by one of the most popular Israeli poets of the 60's and 70'70s, David Avidan, a futurist prophet like Cohen. He wrote many poems with SF subjects. and even created a full-length science fiction movie, Sheder Min HaAtid [ Message from the Future], about time travel, which was based on one of his poems. But he remained an isolated figure.

Since Avidan one can find science fiction elements in the works of a number of poets. Binyamin Gallai wrote a number of poems dealing with cosmic themes. Avner Trainin, a professional scientist, wrote poems about early pioneers of science, such as Leonardo de Vinci. In his poems there are references to scientific ideas such as parallel worlds. Scientific elements appear here and there in the works of other poets, such as Dan Pagis and Zvi Atzmon (also a scientist by profession). The works of poet Maya Bejerano reveal great interest in certain scientific ideas
The poet Rahel Chalfi is especially significant in this respect because in many of her poems there are references both to scientific and SF ideas. She has an especially strong cycle of 12 poems, which deals with witches burnts at the stake, based on her own research on the subject. This is the most important poetry in Hebrew on the subject of witchcraft. These poems were originally published in a collection of poems in 1979. They were recently reprinted in a complete collection of all her poetry up to 1999, Mahl’fot HaShemesh [Solar Plexus: Poems 1975-1999] (HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, 2002).
Especially prominent SF elements are found in the poems of Shlomo Shoval, who published two books of poetry based on SF subjects, and Amos Adelheit.

PULP LITERATURE

 

In Israel there existed from the 30s to the 80s an industry of original pulp literature.There were, for example, many original Israeli TARZAN   stories published between the 1930s and the 1970s. In fact there were more than 1000 (!) original Israeli tales of the Man of the Jungle, many of which are science fiction or fantasy. There are stories about Tarzan battling space invaders, and going to other planets. There are stories of horror, monsters, and the supernatural (vampires, mummies, etc.). Some tales depict Tarzan’s encounters with well known characters such as Flash Gordon (who had many adventures in space together with Tarzan and Boy), Captain Marvel, Dracula, Frankenstein, Doctor Fu Manchu, and others.

In 2000 the present writer published the book Tarzan b`Eretz HaKodesh [Tarzan in the Holy Land], which details the history of the Hebrew Tarzan. This describes in deatils this industry of original It includes numerous covers pictures, and a detailed bibliography of more than the 1000

original Israeli Tarzan stories.)

Another famous character space man Flash Gordon had appeared
AT 1963-64 in  Fourteen 30-35 page serialized "novels" published by Ramdor written by Israeli authors using pseudonyms, called FLASH GORDON ARPATKAHOT COVESH CHALAL [Flash Gordon: The Adventures Of A Space Conqueror]. These stories did not feature Dale, Zarkov nor Ming — plus reveals Flash's first name to be Jim! In the first book, Martian spies seeking H-Bomb technology kidnap Flash. The next three books pits Flash against Lunar invaders. After this, he finds a crashed flying saucer outside London; faces the return of the Martian spies; goes to the Gobi Desert to destroy a prototype H-Bomb built by the Chinese; and then disarms a madman who is a stowaway on an American satellite. The final five books unite the plot threads of the lunar invaders and Martian spies together in a final confrontation.Flash had already appeared in original adventures with Tarzan and Boy aginest various space invanders.
More About the Hebrew flash Gordon series see article with pictures :
ISRAELI FLASH GORDON

Another pulp series, this time pure SF, was produced in the 60s by a team of writers under the pseudonym "A. Bansh". They wrote the ""Ral Dark Series" between 1968-1970. We will descibe here these stories, since they were quite represantive of Hebrew SF and space opera .
1 Keisar HaCochav HaSagol (Empror of the Purple Planet,1968). The first and by far the best part of the series, it is a very funny space adventure, a humorous book, resembling works by Robert Sheckley and Fredric Brown. In the year 2222, Ral Dark is the leader of a mission to find a new planet in the Alpha Centauri system for colonization, on behalf of the human settlements in our solar system. The mission is urgent because the belligerent Earth threatens to destroy them and itself in the near future. On the way, the mission explores the planet Pluto and finds that it is inhabited by the invincible warriors of the Moslem star empire of Arcturus. The mission continues to Alpha Centauri and finds a suitable planet of colonization populated by two races. The first one is a race of good monsters, one of whom adopts Ral as its son, and the second one is a destructive species of gigantic Godzilas. The book ends with the Gonzilas’ extermination with the help of the Aracturian empire. I like this book very much.

2. PELIISHA MECOCAV OMEGA ( Invasion from the star Omega) {1969)
Decadent Earth is destroyed by a mysterious series of natural disasters. Hero of the solar system’s human colonies Ral Dark investigates and finds that the source of the troubles is a deranged Earthman, stranded on a planet of the star Omega. He is angry at the Earth people who didn’t rescue him. At least Earth is now cleaned of his decadent population, so the solar system colonists can move back to the home planet again. (Despite the seemingly similar universe there is no relation to the earlier book)

3.MISTOREY HASHEMES HYERUKA ( Mystery of the Green Sun (1969)
On Earth there are 2 superpowers, the West and China. To escape the inevitable nuclear war with China, Ral Dark goes on a mission to find a suitable planet for colonization by the people of the West. He finds a planet inhabited by intelligent horses who need human dung as medicine. They help the West to destroy China with three superior weapons in exchange for that precious commodity.

4.MERED AL COCAV NOGA ( Rebellion on Venus)(1969). Seemingly a continuation of the first book, with some of the same characters, but really a different work by a different writer set in a different universe. Ral Dark’s mission returns from Alpha Centauri to the solar system and finds that the planet Venus colony is ruled by a dictatorial governor from Earth. They help the Venusian colonists to fight for freedom. This book has none of the qualities of the first one.

5. TERUFAT HAPELE (The Wonder Medicine) (1969).
Aliens from the outer space give to humanity a wonder medicine which cures all ills on the condition that every human everywhere will take it. As a result, all humans lose their memory and become slaves of the aliens. Only six young people from six different countries (including IsraelI , a son of the Rabi of Tel Aviv ) led by Ral Dark have not taken the medicine. They fight the aliens and free humanity.

6. TALUMA BEMAMAKIM (Mystery Undergournd( 1970)
Famous astronaut Ral Dark while on vacation finds himself in an underground world inhabited by criminal super scientists (whom he personally knows). They use their super science to commit spectacular crimes in our world.Ral bring them to justice.

A seventh book (called in translation Atomic Fire on the Pole) was announced but didn’t appear.
An article in Hebrew which covers this series with pictures is here:
RAL DARK 

In 2002 the present writer published MiTarzan v’Ad Zbeng [From Tarzan to Zbeng] (Bavel, 2002). This book gives the history of popular (pulp) literature in Israel, including SF, from the 1930s on. This book, which includes numerous illustrations, received considerable attention in the Israeli press, and resulted in Eli Eshed being named “Israeli Author of the Year” by the leading Israeli  newspaper Ma’ariv .

More about pulp literature in Israel see :
PULP LITERATURE IN ISRAEL
and a German version : 

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

 

 

Probably the most famous SF creation in Israel is a series for young children "Dani-Din HaYeled HaRoe VeEino Nireh" [Dani-Din the Invisible Boy] (1961 – 2001) written by the veteran writer Shraga Gafni under the pseudonym “On Sarig”.
Gafni is one of the most prolific and best known writers for children in Israel. His fame rests especially on this series, which is a tale of an invisible boy Dani Din, whose adventures have become more and more fantastic over the years. Dani Din even went to space where he fought an invading race of aliens. The latest book is Dani Din HaRoeh v’Eino Nireh baJoongel [Dani Din the Invisible Boy in the Jungle] (M. Mizrahi, 2001) (drawings by M. Aryeh), in which Dani Din goes to Africa where he meets an Israeli jungle man.
This series’ 29 volumes are a part of the collective memory of most Israelis in the same way as Superman is for Americans.
Recently Gafni initiated two new fantasy series for children, both under the pseudonym “On Sarig”.1. Tzviki Matzhiki.
Tzviki Matzhiki v’Harpatkaotav HaMuflaot [Tzviki Matzhiki and his Wonderful Adventures] (Richgold, 1999). This first book in the series is about a child who goes into the world of a television program with his robot who can change shape, meets aliens, and flies in space. The second book in the series is Tzviki Matzhiki b’Taharut HaM’tihot [Tzviki Matzhiki in a Joke Competition] (Richgold, 2000).
2. Gili Gol HaKol Yachol
Gili Gol HaKol Yachol [Gili Gol Can Do Anything] (M. Mizrahi, 1999). This series is about a boy who discovers that he has astounding magic powers. Two books in the series have appeared, and a third is promised.

Another well known writer of fantasy for children isTamar Borenstein Lazar
Like Gafni she is one of the most productive and best known writers for children in Israel. So far Tamar Borenstein Lazar has published no less than 330 books! Among others, she published the series Kundasi (in the 1960s) and Lexy (in the 1970s), about boys who solve puzzles with an SF background. She continues to publish new books in her two long-running and popular series about the adventures of talking monkeys. Kofiko (which has been appearing since 1954 and so far includes about 140 books) is the adventures of a talking monkey who lives with an average Israeli family. Chipopo (which has been appearing since 1960 and so far includes over 30 books) is about a talking monkey who travels around the world and solves detective problems. In more recent books, she revealed that the two monkeys did not in fact come from Africa, but are actually aliens from the Planet of the Apes, and are cousins. More and more she is developing a full “mythology” around the alien origins of these classic characters. She has a third series, Speesee, about an alien child from another planet who takes a pair of Israeli children on voyages back in time to the period before the establishment of the State of Israel. Recently she began publishing a new fantasy series for children, Majik HaKosem MeHaMahshev [Majik, the Magician from the Computer] (Dani, 2001-2002), about a magician child who comes out of the computer and the Internet. So far, four books have appeared in this new series.

THE SITE OF KOFIKO  :

Those two writers and their series like many others were chiefly illustrated by Arye Moskovitz (who signs his works M. Arye). Moskovitz is probably the foremost illustrator in Israel both in terms of popularity and productivity. Moskovitz has illustrated many thousands of books over a period of more than 50 years, perhaps more than any other illustrator in history. His illustrations for Gafni’s Dani Din series, and for Tamar Borenstein Lazar’s two series about talking inteligent apes Kofiko and Chipopo, as well as many other famous children’s series and books, are considered definitive, and are also part of the collective memory of almost all Israelis. Among his other accomplishments,Moskovitz is the best known Israeli fantasy illustrator for children.

The best space opera for children was the series "The Adventures of Captain Yuno" (started in 1964) by Eli Sagie. Here we follow the continuing adventures of a boy astronaut on various planets. Unfortunately, the series stopped in mid-plot after the author became one of Israel's most successful authors of comedies.
An article in Hebrew with cover illustrations about this series is here:

An important children's SF book is HaMasa HaShelishi shel Aldeberan [The Third Voyage of the Aldeberan] (1979) written by a major Hebrew writer Dan Tsalka , about a boy who travels in time and makes contact with an alien robot in the Byzantine age.
More about Israeli science fiction and fantasy for children  :

COMICS

Original comics appeared in the Hebrew language at the beginning of the 20th century in Warsaw, in the children’s magazine “Olam Katan” [“A Small World”]. In the 1920s Hebrew comics were published in magazines that came out in the United States. In Israel the first Hebrew comics appeared in the 1930s. The author of many of the first Hebrew comics was poet and playwright Lea Goldberg, who, together with the illustrator Aryeh Navon, wrote a variety of humorous comics for children. Many had a fantasy plot; for example “Ori Mori” about a child who builds a settlement at the bottom of the sea, and “Olam Hafuch” [“Upside-Down World”] (1938) about a boy who reaches a world in which everything is upside down.
In the 1950s adventure comics began to appear in the children’s magazines “HaAretz Shelanu” [“Our Land”] and “Davar l’Yeladim” [“Davar for Children”]. Some of these were a series of adventures of “Gidi Gezer” [“Gidi the Carrot”], an Israeli fighter who receives his powers from eating carrots, and with these powers battles the British and the Arabs. In comics in the 1960s “Yoav Ben Halav” [“Yoav Milk”] was a boy who got his powers from drinking milk, and used these powers to fight criminals, terrorists, an evil wizard, and even reached another planet and fought with its inhabitants. Other comics described the discovery of the lost tribes of Israel in remote lands in Asia and Africa, and of ancient cities from the Biblical period that miraculously survived in the Land of Israel and still sacrificed humans to the Canaanite gods. Other stories told of travels of Israeli youths to other planets.
Artist Dani Plant in 1959 wrote and draw a comics story “HaMabul HaSheni” [“The Second Flood”] about an invasion of aliens from Venus, with their army of robots; the defenders destroy them using bacteria. Plant published original comics about “Tarzan of the Jungle”. In the 1960s he wrote a comics series about the travels of a boy to various prehistoric periods, which appeared as a book in 1972, illustrated by the author.
Writer Pinhcas Sadeh, one of the most gifted Israeli authors, was – under a pseudonym — one of the best and most productive comics writers. Many of his comics had science fiction content. In 1960 he wrote the story “Taglitoh HaGoralit shel Dr. Yosef K.” [“The Fateful Discovery of Dr. Yosef K.”] about a scientist at the atomic reactor in Dimona who discovers ants that have grown to a giant size as a result of exposure to the reactor’s radioactivity, and a cure for cancer which can be made from the flesh of these ants. Using this cure he persuades the leaders of the great powers, Kennedy and Khrushchev, to agree to peace between them, and even Egyptian leader Nasser agrees to sign a peace treaty with Israel. (The story today seems unbelievably naïve.)
In 1964 Sadeh wrote a story “El HaYareah b’Chadur Poreah” [“To the Moon in a Balloon”] (illustrated by Elisheva Nadel) based on a science fiction story by Edgar Allan Poe, which continued the tale of a Dutchman who travels to the moon in a balloon, where he encounters an advanced civilization of midgets, descendants of escapees from Atlantis, who are served by giant spiders.
More about Pinchas Sade :

The most talented comics artist in Israel in the 1960s was Asher Dickstein, who wrote and illustrated two excellent SF comics. “Hallalit HaZman” [“Time Ship”] (1964) was about a crew of scientists and two teenagers who travel to a prehistoric period where they meet a two-headed alien. “Meistarei HaYabeshet HaAvuda” [“Mysteries of the Lost Continent”] (1965) was about the discovery of the remains of the continent of Atlantis under the sea by a crew of Israeli researchers (and twoteenagers as well). There a beautiful princess falls in love with a brave Israeli researcher who fights evil among the people of Atlantis.

The most talented comics artist in Israel in the 1970s was Giora Rotman, who brought realistic comics adventures to their peak. One of his longest and best-known comics (50 pages) was “Melisalda”, whose story was written by Pinhas Sadeh. This story, which was serialized in 1971-1972, described the travels of a boy to Venus, looking for a Venusian girl who has fallen in love with him. He has adventures on various planets as he aids the Venusians in their battles against their enemies. His adventures continue on Earth where he uses devices given to him by the Venusians to fight criminals on Earth. In many ways this is the first “Graphic Novel” to appear in Hebrew.
Rotman continued to write and illustrate comics stories with SF elements. “Malkodet b’Mtzulot” [“Underwater Trap”] (1974) in which an Israeli mission discovers an undersea base of Martians. “HaEmek HaKadum” [“The Ancient Valley”] (1991) about the discovery in Africa of a lost city founded by Jewish fighters from the Great Revolt against the Romans that battles another city of evil Romans. This story put an end to a genre that for a while was very popular in Israeli comics: the discovery of lost Jewish cities. In every respect Rotman is the best adventure comics artist in Israel.
Another excellent SF comics series is the book by the artist Dudu Geva, Rav Sha’anan Neged B’no shel Godzilla [Mighty Sha’anan Against the Son of Godzilla] (Ma’ariv, 1993). This wildly humorous comic book tells of the battle of an unfit Israeli superhero against a family of dinosaurs that threatens to destroy the Earth after they took over a nuclear base on another planet. This is one of the classics of Israeli comics.

More about Israeli comics and superheroes :

SF IN THE 80S

Three SF books for adults published in the 80s evoked great critical interest because of the eminence of their authors and their provocative political subject matter
The first very successful SF book was "HaDerech L'Ein Harod" [The Road to Ein Harod] by  Amos Kenan (19840. It is a dystopian story about Israel in the near future ruled by a military regime. It was also made into a movie starring Alessandra Mussolini(today a neo- fascist political leader in Italy ). It was also translated into English.
kenan is a very well known writer and journalist who, among other things, wrote original Hebrew   Tarzan stories in the 50s. some of which were science fictional .
The other two were "Pundako shel Yirmiyahu" [Jeremiah's Inn] by Binyamin Tammuz (1984), and "HaMalachim Baim" [The Angels are Coming] by Yitzhak ben Ner (1987), both dystopias about a future, in which Ultra-Orthodox Jewish fanatics have taken complete control (a common fear in Israel).

SF AND FANTASY IN THEATER
Israeli theater rarely puts on plays with a science fiction or fantasy character. This is despite the fact that the first and most famous plays presented by the National Israeli Theater “HaBima” in the 1920s were fantasies: (1) HaDibbuk [The Possessing Spirit], a translation from Yiddish of a play by Sh. Ansky. (The translation was done by famous Hebrew poet Haim Nahman Bialik.) The story tells of a woman who is possessed by the spirit of a dead person. (2) HaGolem [The Golem], a translation from Yiddish of a play by H. P. Livik about an artificial being created by the Rabbi of Prague in the 16th century. These two plays have been
repeatedly performed on the Israeli stage since then. In 1965 a science fiction play by the best known Hebrew poet of that time, Nathan Alterman, Mishpat Pitagoras [Pythagoras’ Theorem], was staged. This play tells of an intelligent computer, which tries to understand human beings, without success. However, Alterman’s SF play failed, and it remained an almost completely isolated event in the field of original Israeli stage productions.

Children’s Theater
In Israeli children’s theater, on the contrary, it has been customary for many years to present not only plays based on classic fairy tales for children but also fantasy plays. The most famous and longest running of these is the play by the well-known poet Avraham Shlonski Utz Li Gutz Li [Rumpelstiltskin] (1966) based on the folk tale about the miller’s daughter who is ordered to spin flax into gold, and the strange dwarf who helps her on certain conditions. The play has been performed many many times, and will be performed on stage again this year.
Numerous successful plays since the 1960s have been based on the hundreds of children’s books by Tamar Borenstein Lazar about the talking monkeys Kofiko.

Similarly, plays have been based on Shraga Gafni’s many books about the invisible boy, Dani Din. In the 1980s there was a very successful science fiction play Planitor Haver miCochav Aher [Planitor, a Friend from Another Planet] in which actor Hanoch Rosen starred as a cheerful alien.

Uri Paster
The most successful fantasy plays for children were the works of director and playwright Uri Paster. In 1988 he created a fantasy play based on James Barrie’s Peter Pan which was so successful it was even performed in Germany. It was reproduced in 1997 in an even more successful version, filled with special effects, and much farther from the original Peter Pan than was the 1988 version.
The greatest success of Paster and the Israeli Children’s Theater was in 1994, with the play HaKosem! [The Wizard!], based on L. Frank Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz, written and directed by Paster, and starring the actors from the Israeli TV Children’s Channel. The play was a phenomenal success, and entered the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of performances in one day (five times a day, 37 times a week). The play was performed 182 times with 430,000 viewers (an enormous number for Israel), and ran until August 1995. The play was imitated by a wave of children’s plays with fantastic effects. So successful was this play that it became the basis for a book, an album, and a television series on the Children’s Channel. The play was revived in 1999 in a high tech version, HaKosem 2000! [Wizard 2000!], which Paster wrote and directed. In this high tech version Tin Man became Computer Man, for example.
Paster wrote another play for children, HaKol Agada [It’s all Fairy Tales] (1997), which links several classic fairy tales into one continuous story. Based on this play, he filmed a 26 episode series for the “Fox” network in the United States. In 1999 Paster published the texts of his three most successful plays (Keter).

Other plays
The play Sefer HaJoongel [The Jungle Book] (1996), directed by Hanoch Rosen, was written by Ephraim Sidon, a well-known writer of comics and humor. It is based on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book about a boy who grows up among wolves. The jungle boy was played by child actor Tom Avni, who became a big star in Israel, with a fan club. Avni appeared in a film with SF elements, Super Boy b’1998 [The Magic Kid], written and directed by Hanoch Rosen, about a boy who receives super powers and fights evil. Sefer HaJoongel will be performed on stage again this year.

Uniquely Israeli SF?
————————-
Can it be said that there is original Israeli SF in the sense that it could have been written only in Israel and nowhere else? Unfortunately,for many years there was very little. Most works of Israeli SF were slavish imitations of American models. Only two sub-genres were exceptions:
1) Political SF books such as those mentioned above (by Kenan, and by Tammuz), which presented unpleasant scenarios of the future of Israel, and
2) Novels which took their inspiration from the Jewish past (mostly biblical) and presented it in SF terms resembling those of Erich von Deniken. Most of these books (many of them are for children) are very bad, but there are few, such as "Tikkun" [Correction] by Gil Ilutovich (1994), and "HaKof HaPatp'tan" [The Babbling Monkey] by Ami Dvir (1995), which present world and Jewish history as a result of alien experiments. These are at least passable and sometimes even more than that, and in a sense close the circle begun by the Enoch apocryphal books by presenting the secrets of the universe and the history of the Earth and of mankind as the work of a slowly revealed alien intelligence.
Howewer today in t the 2000s this situation is changing.There are today far more original and thought provoking SF stories than there ever were, as can be seen in the other parts of this series.

more links :

   . more about science fiction in Israel  :

A BRIEF HISTORY 

About Israeli science fiction at the end of the 20 century :

Hebrew science fiction and fantasy and related fiields at the beginning of the 21 century : part 1

part 2

History of Hebrew comics

Guide to Israeli sf

SF in very small countries  

Israeli alternate histories

 The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature 

Modern Israeli Literature in general:

AND ANOTHER ONE

Modern Hebrew poetry