Post-Oct. 7 Hebrew novel ‘Night Sparkles’ shows old-new resilience of Zionist women
Ayala Deckel’s latest novel brings to life the untold challenges and triumphs of early female pioneer and labor activist Hayuta Busel, through the eyes of a modern-day professor
On the verge of dozing off during a lecture on the halutzim, or early Jewish immigrants to British Mandate Palestine, BINA Secular Yeshiva head Ayala Deckel suddenly perked up when she heard the story of an arduous, unmedicated childbirth in the newly established Kibbutz Degania, told in the mother’s own words.
That moment sparked Deckel’s deep dive into the life of Hayuta Busel — a pioneering figure in Israel’s early women’s labor movement and a central character in Deckel’s latest Hebrew-language historical fiction novel, “Night Sparkles.”
Busel’s meticulous journals are preserved in Degania’s archive, yet she remains largely overlooked among Israel’s early settlers. Deckel’s novel sheds new light on Busel and how she coped with the harsh physical demands of pioneering life and profound personal struggles.
“Night Sparkles” (“Resisei Layla” in Hebrew) intertwines the lives of two women across generations. Busel, a founder of Kibbutz Degania on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, faces the challenges of finding a role in male-dominated Zionist socialism. Decades later, Ya’ara (an original character created by Deckel), a young professor, embarks on a journey of self-discovery through Busel’s journals.
“When we tell the pioneer narrative, we never tell it from the side of the women, the fact that they gave birth over there, that they lost some of their kids,” Deckel told The Times of Israel. “Usually, the [stories of pioneers] tell you about working in the field, but not what women did.”
Busel did quite a lot. Born Hayuta Gavsu in 1890, she set off from her hometown of Lyakhavichy, in today’s Belarus, for Palestine at the age of 18 with her partner and later husband, Joseph Busel. She was witness to much heartbreak, pain, and sickness in her early pioneering years. After she and Joseph married, Busel endured an excruciating labor with her daughter, followed only months later by the untimely death of her husband. But Busel did not falter, championing women’s labor rights in Israel into her old age.
The fictional main character of “Night Sparkles,” Ya’ara, is spurred by her mother’s late-stage cancer diagnosis to begin a journey to discover her long-lost father’s identity. Along the way, she accidentally comes across Busel’s journals. She finds that the key to her lost ancestry might lie in the early history of Kibbutz Degania and its Yemeni Jewish immigrant population.
Both of the women in the novel find themselves through trauma, loss, and loneliness — phenomena that Deckel understood all too keenly.
Deckel went through her own self-discovery journey as a young woman, growing up in a religious household and eventually deciding to lead a secular lifestyle while learning and teaching Talmud professionally. She became reacquainted with loneliness when her husband was called up for reserve duty on October 7 during the Hamas-led terror onslaught, and she was unable to have contact with him for long periods while he was in Gaza.
As she read through the century-old journal entries, Deckel found that she had much in common ideologically with Busel, who was committed to the Jewish nation and cultural traditions but not particularly interested in Jewish religious laws.
“I work a lot with the Jewish story. I am not an Orthodox rabbi who can claim authority via halachic credence. But I have the Jewish story behind me,” Deckel said. “We, Jews and Israelis who are not religious — our story is shorter. We need a… story that will give us strength even if we do not follow halacha [Jewish law].”
Deckel wrote much of “Night Sparkles” in the early months of the Israel-Hamas war. She hunkered down at her home in Modiin just outside her safe room, ready to gather her children at a moment’s notice in case Hamas rockets started flying. She kept an eagle-eyed watch on the Home Front Command app, and hoped to see a WhatsApp message from her husband. Deckel, like Ya’ara, found a trusted companion in Busel.
Writing the book felt like creating small slivers of light in the darkness — night sparkles. Deckel felt connected to Busel, who also used her writing to create light in times of darkness.
“Life is hard. And you can just give up… or you can look reality straight in the eyes and do what you need to do,” Deckel said. “She looked straight into the difficult reality and did not give up.”
The novel closes with a quote from “Resisei Layla,” a late-19th-century Hasidic work by Rabbi Zadok HaKohen of Lublin and the source of the book’s title: “In this world, man needs company… ‘The whole world was only created to accompany this one.’ We understand from this that he needs the company of the creations.”
“Rabbi Zadok HaKohen is saying that… a person needs others,” Deckel said. “And even God needs us as human beings in order to not be alone, and that’s why He created us. And I feel somehow I created [the novelized] Hayuta and Ya’ara in order not to be alone.”
The Times of Israel Community.