Rina Ben-Menahem

Sara Rina Ben-Menahem (; 26 June 1935 – 12 June 2004) was an Israeli writer, author of the first Hebrew language book to describe the homosexual and lesbian scene in Israel, "הדווקאים", published in 1960, and the first Hebrew lesbian novel, "הצלע", published in 1961.

Biography Ben-Menahem was born and raised in Bnei Brak, the eldest of three children. Her mother was born in Tel Aviv and her father in Slonim, Belarus. Her sister, Tami, is married to the Israeli journalist, Nahum Barnea. She volunteered to Zahal at the age of 17, and served in the Air Force as a sports instructor.

After her discharge from the army, Ben-Menahem returned to Jerusalem, and made a living from jewel making and writing pulp fiction stories. At the age of 20, she added the second name Rina to her birth name Sara, typically of her doing things her own way. It was during this period that she self-published her three books. Ben-Menahem moved to Ein Hod in the middle of the 1960s, where she lived with a woman in domestic partnership, continued to make jewelry and also painted and exhibited her paintings at a local gallery. She died in Amsterdam in 2004. In October 2018, all three books were re-published in a single volume by Am Oved, by the initiative of her brother in law, Barnea. The book's name means "The Spiteful Doers", and is derived from the multi-faceted Yiddish and Hebrew word "davka" (Hebrew: דווקא).

The book consists of anecdotal stories in which the protagonist, a young woman named Yael, tells about her recognition of her lesbian sexuality and her coming out of the closet. as part of that issue's sensational back cover story, titled "Special Report: The Lesbian Problem in Israel (Hebrew: "דו״ח מיוחד: הבעיה הלסבית בישראל"), in which it included a few nit-picked erotic paragraphs from the book. The result, in the young and puritan State of Israel, was a storming of the book stores, with the first edition selling out within days. This book's protagonist, Hava, is a fictional Sephardi Jew, from the margins of society, who suffers triple discrimination – as a Sephardi, as a woman and as a lesbian. She only discovers her lesbian tendency after her marriage.

The book is written as a chronological diary, spanning 20 years of Hava's life, beginning in her adolescence in 1938, up to 1958, when she is a mother, dying of cancer. The biographical details are interspersed with descriptions and thoughts about real historical events of that period.