Israeli writer, artist Amos Kenan dead

Amos Kenan's writing defined modern Israeli culture.

Jerusalem: Amos Kenan, a member of Israel`s founding generation whose writing and art helped define modern Israeli culture, has died in Tel Aviv. He was 82.Born in 1927 in Tel Aviv, which had been founded less than two decades earlier by Jewish pioneers, Kenan was a product of the city`s rich cultural life.

He died yesterday after suffering from Alzheimer`s disease for several years, according to longtime friend and colleague Uri Avnery, a prominent Israeli peace activist and journalist. His death made the front pages of Israeli newspapers today. Kenan was known for his newspaper columns, plays and books, many of which satirized the Israeli government and organized religion, and also as a prolific painter, sculptor and movie director. In the 1940s, Kenan was one of a number of artists and intellectuals who sought to create an Israeli identity without Judaism by rejecting Jewish history and harking back to the Biblical Canaanites, whose name the artists adopted for their group. "Amos Kenan was one of the creators of Hebrew culture -- Hebrew, not Jewish," said Avnery, who first met Kenan when the two served as soldiers in Israel`s 1948 War of Independence. Kenan saw Israelis as an entirely new creation separate from the Jewish Diaspora, Avnery said, and believed they had more in common with Palestinian Arabs. Bureau Report