Greek Mythology in Israeli Children's Literature

chapter 20 Greek Mythology in Israeli Children’s Literature Lisa Maurice In this paper I consider the versions of Greek mythology in juvenile literature in the Hebrew language, both original editions of Greek myth and works in Hebrew translation. Since this is a field unfamiliar to most readers, some back- ground must be given prior to tackling this issue. Thus, by way of providing context, I first consider Jewish attitudes toward the classical tradition, and its role in the modern state of Israel, in particular within the educational system; the place of Greek mythology, in particular, in modern Israeli literature and drama; Israeli attitudes toward fantasy, closely linked in the mind of the reader to Greek myth; and finally the development of Hebrew children’s literature. After such introductory discussions, the range, style, and significance of classical mythology in children’s Hebrew literature will be more readily understood. 1 Classics, Judaism, and the Classical Tradition in Israel The relationship between the Graeco-Roman and Jewish traditions has long been a complex one. Although a detailed study of this history falls beyond the scope of this paper, and has in any case been ably outlined by other scholars,1 it is worth mentioning in brief the central issues since they impact upon the question under debate here. On the one hand, the Greek language attained a status in Jewish tradition that was unparalleled, being regarded as the purest language there was with the exception of Hebrew. Thus, according to the Rab- binic sages, the two languages that should be spoken in the land of Israel are Hebrew or Greek,2 while the only language apart from Hebrew in which it was permissible for a Sefer Torah to be written, or for the Book of Esther to be read, 1 See, e.g., Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); idem, Judaism and Hellenism Reconsidered (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine; Hel- lenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1994); Lee I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998); Erich Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tra- dition (Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press, 1998). 2 Talmud Bavli, Bava Kama 82b–83a. © Lisa Maurice, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004335370_022 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Lisa Maurice - 9789004335370 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:18:20PM via free access 310 Maurice was Greek.3 In Alexandria it is possible that the reading from the Sefer Torah was done, not in Hebrew, which most Jews no longer understood, but in the more familiar Greek, and that this unfamiliarity with the holy language was the impulse behind the writing of the Septuagint.4 Greek was thought to be the language of poetry,5 and was an “adornment” for a young woman.6 More than this, Greek mythology itself was far from unknown to the Jews of the ancient world; they lived in that world, where the Hellenistic culture was predominant, and they constantly encountered Greek mythology in literature, art, and other aspects of their life. Jewish-Hellenistic authors engaged with Greek myth in different ways, and while they were often critical of the myths, it cannot be denied that they were an integral part of their social context at this time.7 On the other hand, the “Greeks,” in the form of the Hellenistic Syrian kingdom, and the Romans, as destroyers of the Second Temple and authors of the two-thousand-year exile and Diaspora, were conquerors and oppressors of the land of Israel and its people. Not only were they the physical adversaries, however; they were also the spiritual enemy of Judaism, against whose enticements and customs rabbinic tradition warned. Judaism was in many ways directly op- posed to the Greek way of life. To the Hebrew religion, with its emphasis upon purity and modesty, the Greek gods and the stress upon nudity were violently distasteful and immoral. At the same time, the Greek way of life and learning were attractive and assimilation was a problem. Thus, there are references in the Mishnah and Talmud to a decree against studying “Greek wisdom,”8 and the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, mentioned above, came to be regarded as a tragedy and is still mourned on the fast of the Tenth of Tevet. 3 Talmud Yerushalmi, Megilah 1:9; Maimonides on Mishnah Megilah 2:1. 4 See, e.g., Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, “Sather Classical Lectures” 54 (Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press, 1990), 25; Joseph Modrze- jewski, The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses ii to Emperor Hadrian (Princeton: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1997), 100. 5 Talmud Yerushalmi, Megilah 1:9. 6 Talmud Yerushalmi, Peah 1.1, 15c; Sotah 9.16, 24c. 7 See René Bloch, Moses und der Mythos: Die Auseinandersetzung mit der griechischen Mytholo- gie bei jüdisch-hellenistischen Autoren, “Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism” 145 (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2011); Folker Siegert, “Griechische Mythen im hellenistischen Ju- dentum,” in Raban von Haehling, ed., Griechische Mythologie und frühes Christentum. Die an- tiken Götter und der eine Gott (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), 132–152; Yaacov Shavit, “The Reception of Greek Mythology in Modern Hebrew Culture,” in Asher Ovadiah, ed., Hellenic and Jewish Arts (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1998), 432–438. 8 See Sotah 49b and Saul Lieberman, “The Alleged Ban on Greek Wisdom,” in his Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), 110–114. Lisa Maurice - 9789004335370 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:18:20PM via free access Greek Mythology In Israeli Children’s Literature 311 There is, even today, a general suspicion of learning Greek; it is notable that David Schaps’s introductory Greek textbook, written in Israel, opens with an introduction entitled “Is Learning Greek Permitted?” discussing this question from the standpoint of Orthodox Judaism.9 The distrust of Greek culture, when coupled with the fact that the Jewish people had their own legends and stories in the form of the Bible and of other traditional tales, meant that the ancient world was always marginal in Israel. Religious Jews, who felt no need to include the classical tradition in their education systems, emphasised only the Bible, and even secular Zionists, who rejected Rabbinic Judaism, nevertheless regarded the Bible, upon which their ideology was based, as paramount, again to the exclusion of the ancient roots of Western civilisation.10 There is none of the common heritage identification that is found in the United Kingdom for example, despite the fact that ancient Rome—and Greece in the form of the Hellenistic kingdoms—played perhaps an even more pivotal role in this geographic region than it did in the uk. 2 Classics and the Israeli Educational System: Priorities and Developments As a result of this lack of identification with ancient Greece and Rome, classical studies plays only a marginal role in the Israeli education system. This is in spite of the dreams of some of the early founders of what would become modern Israel, who established the education system with the ideology that the new state should become a “civilised,” educated place, on a par with Europe, where most of them had grown up and been educated. Thus, for instance, when the first Hebrew language high school was founded in Tel Aviv in 1905, it was modelled on the European system, and given the title of “Gymnasia.” Latin was on the curriculum as a matter of course, since the stated aim of the Gymnasia was to provide an education which was the same as at “every high school in Europe and America, Bible and Talmud; past language and its literature; languages: French, German, English, and Latin; geometry and algebra, […] physics and chemistry, zoology and botany, main geology and mineralogy; 9 David Schaps, Yofioto Shel Yafet [The beauty of Japheth] (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1996), v–vi. 10 See Yair Zakovitch, “Scripture and Israeli Secular Culture,” in Benjamin D. Sommer, ed., Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 299–316. Lisa Maurice - 9789004335370 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:18:20PM via free access 312 Maurice history, drawing, etc.”11 Similarly, when the first university, the Hebrew Univer- sity, was founded in 1925, Greek and Latin were among the first subjects taught at that institution.12 It is interesting to note, however, that the classical languages were included in the Jewish Studies Faculty (the Faculty of Humanities was only opened in 1928) and the justification for teaching classics, and especially Greek, was that these languages were necessary for the understanding of, and participation in, Bible studies. In a letter dated May 15, 1927, Max (Moshe) Schwabe outlined the state of classics in Israel at the time, and stressed the unique nature of the subject in this place because of its position as an adjunct to Jewish studies. Latin and Greek were taught at this time to provide a basic understanding of the languages in order to read texts of interest to scholars of Judaism.13 Yet only a year later the Faculty of Humanities was established, and other classical works began to be taught (Euripides’ Medea, Plato’s Theaetetus, a range of texts within the framework of courses on the History of Greek Literature, and so on).

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