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Bialik and the Sephardim: The Ethnic Encoding of Modern Hebrew Literature

Lital Levy

in Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine

This chapter reexamines the history and indeed the idea of Modern Hebrew literature through the tension between its dominant narrative, associated with Ashkenazi Jews, and the suppressed perspectives ... More

This chapter reexamines the history and indeed the idea of Modern Hebrew literature through the tension between its dominant narrative, associated with Ashkenazi Jews, and the suppressed perspectives that emerge from the literary and scholarly activities of Arab Jews and Mizraḥim both before and after the founding of the state. It illustrates this history through the saga of a multigenerational affair: the passionate and conflicted romance of the so-called Sephardim (Sephardi, Mizraḥi, and Arab Jews) with Modern Hebrew literature's leading persona, Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik. Their story takes us from the 1920s to 1930s Levant—Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Cairo—to present-day Israel/Palestine, with the spirit of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) accompanying us all along the way.Less

Vertical and Horizontal Continuities and Discontinuities

in From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

This chapter discusses the Hebrew and Yiddish meta-literary thinking of literary scholars and historians between the end of World War I and the first years of Israeli independence. This meta-literary ... More

This chapter discusses the Hebrew and Yiddish meta-literary thinking of literary scholars and historians between the end of World War I and the first years of Israeli independence. This meta-literary thinking organized itself along two axes, a vertical and a horizontal one. Those with a proclivity for thinking vertically were intrigued by the questions of whether and how the literature retained a unifying common denominator as it evolved throughout the epochs and eras predicated upon one or another paradigm of periodization. They were mostly Hebrew scholars who studied the development of Hebrew literature. Those whose thinking gravitated toward the horizontal axis, mostly non-Hebraic scholars, with Yiddishists at their head, tended to think in spatial terms and look for patterns of significant simultaneity in Jewish writing. The scholar who more than anybody attempted to conflate the two axes was Sadan, whose vast scholarly project was divided between the canonical new Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, and at the same time also between canonical literatures and their sub-canonical extensions, such as writing that belonged in the space between literature and folklore, historiography and linguistics.Less

Hebrew Knights in a New Land

in Sanctuary in the Wilderness: A Critical Introduction to American Hebrew Poetry

This chapter begins with two brief collective portraits of the American Hebraists from two different periods to introduce the subject of this study. The first comes from the pen of Zalman Shazar, a ... More

This chapter begins with two brief collective portraits of the American Hebraists from two different periods to introduce the subject of this study. The first comes from the pen of Zalman Shazar, a historian and man of letters who became Israel's third president; the second involves the author's former instructor, Boston Hebrew Teachers College president Eisig Silberschlag. The chapter then discusses Hebrew in America by situating it in reference to Christian Hebraism, which was responsible for the knowledge of Hebrew becoming a necessary attainment for the elite of Protestant clergy in the colonial period. It also examines the origins of the revival of Hebrew as a modern, spoken tongue and the development of American Hebrew literature, in particular Hebrew poetry.Less

The “Old” Jewish Literary Discourse and the Illusion of Israeli Cultural Normalcy

in From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

This chapter analyzes Jewish literary discourse in the twentieth century. It argues that the theoretical study of the Jewish literatures was not born in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem in the 1960s but rather ... More

This chapter analyzes Jewish literary discourse in the twentieth century. It argues that the theoretical study of the Jewish literatures was not born in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem in the 1960s but rather in Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, and even in New York or at Harvard University (where the first formal history of the new Yiddish literature was written in the late 1890s by the Slavicist Leo Wiener, the father of Norbert who was to establish the science of cybernetics). It discusses how critics and literary scholars of the first half of the twentieth century turned away from was the discourse of official Slovesnost or Literaturwissenschaft only to focus on another, which bore more directly on concerns and issues that were of paramount significance in their eyes.Less

Modern Jewish Literary Thinking, The Enlightenment, and the Advent of Nationalism

in From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

This chapter discusses the emergence of the new Hebrew literature beginning in the late eighteenth century. The new literature was to promulgate the ideas of humanism throughout European Jewry, to ... More

This chapter discusses the emergence of the new Hebrew literature beginning in the late eighteenth century. The new literature was to promulgate the ideas of humanism throughout European Jewry, to encourage rationalist thinking, to militate for changes in the structure and contents of Jewish education, and develop new sensibilities through emotive writing and educate aesthetically through belles-lettres based on current European models and focusing on human experience and emotions. The new literature also involved secularization of Hebrew and of the Bible not only in the sense of removing them from the enclave of synagogal ritual and religious study and projecting them into modern reality as living forces, but also in the sense of understanding them as realizable national assets that could be invested in new national projects.Less

The Inter-Bellum Decades: Hebrew

in From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

This chapter discusses the war years and the shattered foundations of the Hebrew–Yiddish renaissance. Hebrew literature suffered more than its Yiddish counterpart because its readers were ... More

This chapter discusses the war years and the shattered foundations of the Hebrew–Yiddish renaissance. Hebrew literature suffered more than its Yiddish counterpart because its readers were concentrated in places that were distant from its centers of production (the editorial offices of periodicals and newspapers, the main publishing houses, the printers' shops). Whereas most of the production work took place in Warsaw, the Hebrew reading public resided in Lithuania, Byelorussia, the northwestern Ukraine, Palestine, and the United States. After Warsaw was occupied by the Germans, who also quickly penetrated southern Ukraine, and eventually occupied Odessa as well, the connecting lines that had tied production to readers broke one after another. But the exposure of writers to devastating dislocations and horrendous scenes of battles, pogroms, and homelessness appeared to sharpen rather than dull the edge of both old and new literary debates; and as soon as an opportunity made it possible, these debates found vigorous expression, no matter how irregular and discontinuous.Less

Prologue: Old Questions; Do They Deserve New Answers?

in From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

This chapter begins by considering several questions about Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, which have been ignored by literary scholars in the second half of the twentieth century. It then addresses ... More

This chapter begins by considering several questions about Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, which have been ignored by literary scholars in the second half of the twentieth century. It then addresses the question of whether the issues that occupied Hebrew and Yiddish literary scholars before the Israeli era deserve to be salvaged from oblivion, and rendered once again an integral part of the Hebrew and Jewish theoretical literary agenda of the twenty-first century.Less

Afterword

in Sanctuary in the Wilderness: A Critical Introduction to American Hebrew Poetry

This chapter presents some final thoughts from the author. This book has shown that the phenomenon of American Hebrew poetry was neither slight nor trivial, but that, despite America being the only ... More

This chapter presents some final thoughts from the author. This book has shown that the phenomenon of American Hebrew poetry was neither slight nor trivial, but that, despite America being the only major Hebrew literary center outside of Palestine/Israel, the existence of American Hebrew poetry was all but erased from accounts of Hebrew literature in the twentieth century. It is argued that there is no justification for perpetuating this exclusion, and that Hebrew plays a vital role in America, even if it lies in the domain of serious cultural literacy rather than of creative literature.Less

Modern Jewish Literature in the Tsarist Empire and Galicia

Antony Polonsky

in Jews in Poland and Russia: 1881-1914 v. 2

This chapter describes how the emergence of a modern Jewish literature in Yiddish, Hebrew, and to a lesser extent in German, Polish, and Russian, was a development linked with the modernization of ... More

This chapter describes how the emergence of a modern Jewish literature in Yiddish, Hebrew, and to a lesser extent in German, Polish, and Russian, was a development linked with the modernization of the Jewish communities in the lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was only in the 1860s that a word for literature—sifrut (sifrus in the Ashkenazi pronunciation)—became current among the Jews of this area. The development of a literature of this type among the Jews, as among other nations in Europe, was linked to secularization, the waning of the power of religion and of traditional ways of life, and the growth of a consciousness of individual identity. Indeed, much of the literature written by Jews in the nineteenth century is concerned with the discovery of self. This was a new phenomenon in the Jewish world.Less

Berlin: Between the Scheunenviertel and the Romanisches Café

in Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe

This chapter explores the emergence of modernist Hebrew literature in Berlin. Between 1920 and 1925, Berlin was a major center of Hebrew literary activity. A very distinguished group of East European ... More

This chapter explores the emergence of modernist Hebrew literature in Berlin. Between 1920 and 1925, Berlin was a major center of Hebrew literary activity. A very distinguished group of East European Hebrew and Yiddish writers immigrated to Berlin, where they lived, wrote, and published their works. The chapter considers the role of the city in a number of different contexts: Berlin as historical center of Hebrew literature; Berlin as a locus for Hebrew and Yiddish publishing enterprise; and Berlin as a center for a distinctive German-Jewish culture.Less

Text, Intertext, Context: Babel, Bialik, and Others

Efraim Sicher

in The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context

This chapter contextualizes Babel's writings in the contemporary Yiddish and Hebrew literature, drawing attention to another instance of Babel's “double bookkeeping”: the subtexts in his writings ... More

This chapter contextualizes Babel's writings in the contemporary Yiddish and Hebrew literature, drawing attention to another instance of Babel's “double bookkeeping”: the subtexts in his writings that could only be appreciated by a certain trilingual segment of his audience, namely, those who were conversant in all the three languages in use by the Jews of the Russian empire: Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew.Less

The Soul of the Nomian

Jonathan Garb

in Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah

This concluding chapter reflects on the wider cultural implications of ideas of the soul developed in modern Kabbalah and their place within Jewish religiosity as a whole. The nomian and legal ... More

This concluding chapter reflects on the wider cultural implications of ideas of the soul developed in modern Kabbalah and their place within Jewish religiosity as a whole. The nomian and legal aspects of these ideas are outlined, with a special emphasis on the psychology of textual study, examined in comparative context. Ideas of the Sabbath as soul time and the ritual of Tefilin as granting a new soul are explored. Here the central model of soul making through human activity is both supported and elaborated. Nineteenth century Kabbalah is given special attention, including North African texts and the better known teachings and tales of Nahman of Bratzlav. In the latter context, the influence of Kabbalah on Modern Hebrew literature is considered. Chapter 7 concludes with a poetic reflection on the archetypal psychology of social justice.Less

Naomi Seidman: A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish

Esther Frank

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 14: Focusing on Jews in the Polish Borderlands

This chapter examines Naomi Seidman's A Marriage Made in Heaven, the first book-length study of the importance of issues of gender to modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and to cultural processes. ... More

This chapter examines Naomi Seidman's A Marriage Made in Heaven, the first book-length study of the importance of issues of gender to modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and to cultural processes. The perspective of the study is comparative. As such it provides new insights into interrelations of gender and Jewish literature and expands our understanding of Jewish cultural development in important ways. Ties between language and gender in Jewish languages have already been noted by Jewish critics such as Shmuel Niger and Max Weinreich. Seidman's study, however, is the first to show how these connections corresponded to and reinforced the culture's social division along sexual lines. It demonstrates how the sexual linguistic system worked in Hebrew and Yiddish literature in the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century, and emphasizes how specific intersections between linguistic and gender structures eventually connected language ideologies to ideals of modern nation-building in later decades of the twentieth century.Less

Hebrew Poetry in Poland between the Two World Wars

David Weinfeld (ed.)

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 13: Focusing on the Holocaust and its Aftermath

This chapter addresses David Weinfeld's anthology Hebrew Poetry in Poland between the Two World Wars (1997). This anthology includes two dozen Hebrew poets and is valuable if only from a historical ... More

This chapter addresses David Weinfeld's anthology Hebrew Poetry in Poland between the Two World Wars (1997). This anthology includes two dozen Hebrew poets and is valuable if only from a historical viewpoint as most of these poets are forgotten and their works are mostly unavailable. Weinfeld includes biographical details on each writer and a ninety-two-page introduction to the social and historical background, with sections on the most important of the poets, Yitzhak Katznelson (better known as a Yiddish poet), Matityahu Shoham, and especially Berl Pomerantz. However, most of the poems, Weinfeld concedes, are of limited artistic interest. This poetry is inadvertently a tombstone for Polish Hebrew literature and, indeed, for Polish Jewry. About half the poets died in the Holocaust.Less

Introduction Literature and Nation in the Middle East: An Overview

Yasir Suleiman

in Literature and Nation in the Middle East

This book examines the role literature played in constructing, articulating or challenging interpretations of national identities in the Middle East, and most of its chapters are hence devoted to ... More

This book examines the role literature played in constructing, articulating or challenging interpretations of national identities in the Middle East, and most of its chapters are hence devoted to Arabic literature. The remaining chapters look into Hebrew literature, Arabic literature in translation and Arab literature in its trans-national mode as expressed in a language other than Arabic, in this case English. In terms of genre, the book covers poetry and the novel in their capacity as the prime examples of high culture, as well as oral or ‘folk literature’ in the modern period as an expression of the localisation of the lived socio-political experience of a national group. In terms of provenance, some chapters deal with the literary expression of Palestinian nationalism as the enunciation of a ‘stateless’ or ‘refugee’ nation, while others cover the construction of national identity in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon and Israel. These analyses provide an array of geographies and sociopolitical contexts that can add to the better understanding of the interaction between literature and the nation in the Middle East. Drama is not dealt with in the book because of its marginal position in the national cultures of the region. Furthermore, the book does not cover the short story or North Africa due to the limitations of space.Less

Binder or Slaughterer? The Rise and Fall of “Abraham”

in Glory and Agony: Isaac's Sacrifice and National Narrative

Hebrew literature of the 1940s and '50s overturned historical cultural processes that in late antiquity had slowly shifted both the burden and the merit of the aqedah from the biblical Abraham to the ... More

Hebrew literature of the 1940s and '50s overturned historical cultural processes that in late antiquity had slowly shifted both the burden and the merit of the aqedah from the biblical Abraham to the post-biblical Isaac. Abraham was returned to his role as the sacrificing father by the generation that fought for and paid the price for the establishment of the State of Israel. This chapter explores the complex and anguished aqedah story told by this generation. It questions not only the widely accepted reversal hinted in the epigraph to the Interlude, but also its timing: the anchoring of the father–son rupture in 1973, the year that seems to divide Israeli time into a “before” and “after.” The Israeli narratives of the aqedah examined—prose fiction, drama, poetry, critical writings, and historical studies—reveal that the golden age of “the-name-of- the-father” was first undermined not in the wake of the Yom Kippur War (1973), but rather decades before it; certainly before the Six-Day War (1967), and even earlier.Less