At the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s, relative to both the preceding years and the years that followed, and relative to their share in the population – there was a dramatic increase in the suicide rate among Jewish men aged 45 and above. (About 60 percent of this group were from Central and Eastern European countries, and were salaried practitioners of the liberal professions). The number of suicides in these years stood at 14-15 per 100,000 Jews aged 15 and above – a rise of 20 percent compared to the average of the previous decade. The increase of such incidents among European-born men accounted for most of the overall uptick. [...]
One unusual manifestation of the phenomenon in the early 1960s was family suicides. These cases occurred mainly among new-immigrant families from Central Europe. According to the weekly Ha’olam Hazeh, in the wake of these cases, “many army officers in the [neighborhoods of] Tzahala and Neveh Magen had to remove firearms from their homes in the presence of their children in order to calm them.” “Experts,” wrote editor Uri Avnery, “say that spiritual stocktaking and an analysis of the emotional life of the Israeli public are needed in order to reinforce the public’s shattered nerves.” [...]
That said, it is still possible to note several possible causes for the dramatic rise in the number of suicides in Israel of those years. The sociological explanation argues that a connection exists between rapid processes of modernization and suicide. The modern Israel of the state’s second decade, which was “over-stressed,” noisy and edgy, can be characterized as a “society in overload.” This state of affairs was often described in surveys in medical journals and other publications devoted to sociological issues. Physicians and psychologists expressed concern that high-pressured life would provoke suicide among people with that propensity, and especially in those who carried traumas from their past. [...]
The points cited so far can account for the relatively large number of suicides among those who immigrated to Israel in the 1940s and 1950s. But what is the explanation for the many suicides among native-born Israelis? We can assume that many of these victims experienced the local existential tension in Israel beginning in the 1940s: the Arab threat, the danger of a German invasion in World War II, the era of militant underground organizations, the War of Independence and the overall security tension, which lasted at least until the 1956 Sinai war. It’s possible that the relative calm that ensued when the military-security threats and the existential threats passed in the second decade, led to an increase in the suicide rate among them as well.
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