Mr. Kenan, who fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war but also belonged to the anti-Zionist and anti-religious Canaanite movement, consistently roiled Israel’s political and cultural waters as a columnist, novelist, playwright, painter, sculptor, screenwriter and filmmaker. Somehow he maintained a career as a restaurant critic as well.
Quite a Renaissance man.
He was a scathing critic of Israeli religious leaders, and when the mood suited, extended his range beyond Judaism. His play “Friends Talk About Jesus” was banned from the stage by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1972 for being unacceptably contemptuous of religion.
As the struggle for Israeli statehood gathered momentum, he joined the Lehi, referred to by the British as the Stern Gang, the most extreme of the underground paramilitary organizations in Palestine.
At the same time, influenced by the poet Yonatan Ratosh, he joined the Canaanites, a small but influential group of artists and writers who hoped to build a Hebrew rather than a Jewish state in the biblical land of Canaan that would embrace both Arabs and Jews. It regarded Judaism and Islam as retrograde, and dissociated itself from the Jewish Diaspora. He was a founder of the group’s magazine, Alef.
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