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Breathing Through Both Nostrils? Shalom Ya'akov Abramovitsh Between Hebrew and Yiddish

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

This chapter discusses Shalom Ya'akov Abramovitsh's dedication to Hebrew–Yiddish bilingualism. From the publication in 1864 of his satirical novella, Dos kleyne mentshele until his death in 1917, ... More

This chapter discusses Shalom Ya'akov Abramovitsh's dedication to Hebrew–Yiddish bilingualism. From the publication in 1864 of his satirical novella, Dos kleyne mentshele until his death in 1917, Hebrew–Yiddish bilingualism was the staple characteristic of his literary production. Moreover, he devoted more than twenty years, a third of his career, to a project that entailed two separate but mutually complementary activities: the rewriting of his major works in much enlarged and stylistically more polished versions, and, at the same time, the recasting of these works in Hebrew and Yiddish parallel versions.Less

German Jews and the Writing of Modern Life

in The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe

This chapter traces the often unexpected, frequently paradoxical, and mostly dolorous ways in which German-Jewish authors framed journalistic writing as a privileged emblem of acculturated German ... More

This chapter traces the often unexpected, frequently paradoxical, and mostly dolorous ways in which German-Jewish authors framed journalistic writing as a privileged emblem of acculturated German Jewry's spiritual plight. It examines a variety of fin-de-siècle couplings of journalism and Jewish identity, including some of the anti-Semitic texts to which Karl Kraus' “Heine and the Consequences” is frequently likened. This chapter analyzes the works of several German-Jewish authors including Adolf Jellinek, Moritz Goldstein, and Gerson Cohen.Less

The Jewish Animot: Of Jews as Animals

Jay Geller

in Jews and the Ends of Theory

This chapter addresses the famous joke on “the elephant and the Jewish question,” whose prominence is attested by its many iterations not only in collections of Jewish jokes but also in works of ... More

This chapter addresses the famous joke on “the elephant and the Jewish question,” whose prominence is attested by its many iterations not only in collections of Jewish jokes but also in works of philosophy and theory. Drawing together two seemingly unrelated terms such as Jews and elephants and pointing at their close proximity, jokes do not merely comment on the preposterous character of the “rumor about the Jews” that there is an inherent relationship between Jews and nonhuman animals. The joke also points to what escapes theory and calls out its limitations, for theory takes the Jew as well as the animal as categories, singular as they might be, that can be comprehended only vis-à-vis universals. The chapter then looks at how Jewish authors have called into question the human-nonhuman animal divide in their struggle to think through European modernity.Less

Translations from the Hebrew?

Karl Kraus

in The Third Walpurgis Night: The Complete Text

This chapter discusses the author's various encounters with language. It introduces Emanuel bin Gorion. The official commentary explains that the criticism which Bin Gorion, as a Zionist, ... More

This chapter discusses the author's various encounters with language. It introduces Emanuel bin Gorion. The official commentary explains that the criticism which Bin Gorion, as a Zionist, “consistently directed at assimilated Jewish authors, exemplifies the Jewish-racial principle.” The chapter, however, presents criticisms against Bin Gorion, arguing against his reputation as a standard-bearer in the struggle against the anti-German spirit. It also offered the author's services, however indirectly, to the authority now entrusted with policing the German language. In doing so, the chapter chronicles the author's engagements with Cologne Radio, as a means for Kraus to push through with his own linguistic agendas.Less

The Use of Arabic Between Authors and Novels

Mohamed A. H Ahmed

in Arabic in Modern Hebrew Texts: The Stylistics of Exophonic Writing

This chapter analyses the diachronic development of Arabic use. The novels are categorised into three main corpora to trace Arabic use from early to late Hebrew novels. In this chapter, the style of ... More

This chapter analyses the diachronic development of Arabic use. The novels are categorised into three main corpora to trace Arabic use from early to late Hebrew novels. In this chapter, the style of each of the three authors is also analysed independently. This means that the style of each of the three authors is investigated according to the model developed in Chapter 2, and other linguistic and literary features of each author associated with Arabic/Hebrew are also discussed.Less

Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria: An Anthology

Dagmar C. G. Lorenz (ed.)

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 16: Focusing on Jewish Popular Culture and Its Afterlife

This chapter examines Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria: An Anthology, which was edited by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz. Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria is an anthology of the writings of Jewish ... More

This chapter examines Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria: An Anthology, which was edited by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz. Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria is an anthology of the writings of Jewish authors from five generations whose works have been published in recent decades. Lorenz provides a very interesting introduction to her book, sharing with the reader her profound understanding of the complexities of Austrian Jewish literary history. She introduces the problems that faced Austrian Jews after the Holocaust: that they were not invited to return from exile, and if they decided to return to their home country, they were expected to assimilate to the dominant culture. Fascinating and tragic is the fact that still, despite all adversities, some Jews do not mind living in Vienna and identify themselves with this city as the only beloved home they have ever had. The author of the anthology also broaches the subject of the dual emotional loyalties of Austrian Jews and European Jews in general: loyalty to their home country and emotional ties to Israel.Less

Middle Ground: Translation, Mediation, Correspondence

Scott Spector

in Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka's Fin de Siecle

This chapter talks about the surveyed landscape of culture produced by German-speaking Prague Jews and the keen interest in translations from Czech to German that stands out. There is no ... More

This chapter talks about the surveyed landscape of culture produced by German-speaking Prague Jews and the keen interest in translations from Czech to German that stands out. There is no correspondence, in the sense of perfect resonance or unison, among the varied encounters with the question of translation of Prague Jewish authors in the early twentieth century. It does not even seem as though Otto Pick, Rudolf Fuchs, Max Brod, and Franz Kafka set out anything like a common goal or interest as they engaged with the figure of translation, and yet, in striking contrast to the Czechs and the Bohemian Germans, they were irresistibly drawn to such an engagement. The translation project was certainly significant in European cultural history for its effects, but its impetus was never an ideology of “pluralism.” Pluralism, it has been noted, has a liberal face but remains a hegemonic device to absorb and control difference.Less

Prisca Theologia: R. Isaac Abravanel, Leone Ebreo, and R. Elijah Hayyim of Genazzano

Moshe Idel

in Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510: A Survey

This chapter focuses on the emergence of Christian Kabbalah, with its missionary goals, and how it prompted a more negative attitude toward Jewish Kabbalah among several Jewish authors. One topic ... More

This chapter focuses on the emergence of Christian Kabbalah, with its missionary goals, and how it prompted a more negative attitude toward Jewish Kabbalah among several Jewish authors. One topic central to the understanding of Kabbalah in this period, which preoccupied many Renaissance scholars, was the concept of prisca theologia, the belief in the existence of an “ancient theology” whose basic tenets manifested themselves in various religious and philosophical doctrines under different nomenclatures. This chapter analyzes several statements that reveal a concordance between Jewish and other forms of traditions, and discusses the significance of that concordance. This discussion establishes the likelihood that Jews were acquainted with Christian discussions stemming from Renaissance sources, integrated them, and adapted them to their own purposes.Less

Bearing Witness: Henryk Grynberg’s Path from Child Survivor to Artist

Joanna B. Michlic

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 20: Making Holocaust Memory

This chapter concentrates on the author Henryk Grynberg, who belongs to a group of contemporary Jewish authors who were children during the war and resumed life in Poland after it. It recounts ... More

This chapter concentrates on the author Henryk Grynberg, who belongs to a group of contemporary Jewish authors who were children during the war and resumed life in Poland after it. It recounts Grynberg's childhood and how he survived the war by hiding with his mother in the Polish countryside. It also mentions Grynberg's training in journalism and experience as an actor in the post-war Yiddish theatre, where he began to write. The chapter talks about how Grynberg found refuge in the United States in 1947 after he went under official censorship of his work. It demonstrates how Grynberg established his literary reputation with lightly fictionalized autobiography, written in Polish in the 1960s and 1970s, first of the perils of life in hiding under the German occupation and then of coming of age in the complex environment of post-war Poland.Less

Conclusion

Peter M. R. Stirk

in Twentieth-Century German Political Thought

Twentieth-century German political thought was marked by the persistence, or the recurrence, of certain concepts and by the polemical dispute about what those concepts meant. This political thought ... More

Twentieth-century German political thought was marked by the persistence, or the recurrence, of certain concepts and by the polemical dispute about what those concepts meant. This political thought took on even more vicious form in the attempt to eradicate the names of Jewish authors from the literature and discourse of the Third Reich. One of the greatest difficulties presented by German political thought in the twentieth century, apart from the obvious one of its sheer range and complexity, is the combination of tradition and modernity, continuity and discontinuity. Intellectual continuity was ensured by the enduring presence of prominent figures at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Max Weber and Georg Jellinek, as well as by the fact that the biographies of many theorists stretched across the political fractures in German political history.Less