DOCSLIB.ORG

In Modern Hebrew Literary Discourse

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Life of the Non-Living: Nationalization, Language and the Narrative of “Revival” in Modern Hebrew Literary Discourse Roni Henig Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Roni Henig All rights reserved ABSTRACT Life of the Non-Living: Nationalization, Language and the Narrative of “Revival” in Modern Hebrew Literary Discourse Roni Henig This dissertation critically examines the question of language revival in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Hebrew literature. Focusing on major texts that participate in the political and aesthetic endeavor of reviving Hebrew as an exclusive national language, this study traces the narrative of revival and explores the changes and iterations it underwent in the course of several decades, from the 1890s to the early 1920s. Informed by a wide range of critical literary theory, I analyze the primary tropes used to articulate the process whereby Hebrew came to inhabit new discursive roles. Building on close readings of canonical texts by authors ranging from Ahad Ha’am and Mikha Yosef Berdichevsky to Hayim Nahman Bialik, Rachel Katznelson, and Yosef Hayim Brenner, I argue that while modern Hebrew literature largely rejected the philological assumption that Hebrew was a dead language, it nevertheless produced a discourse around the notion of “revival,” in a manner that deferred the possibility of perceiving Hebrew as fully living. My readings show that while many of these texts contemplate linguistic transformation in terms of revitalization or birth, the national mission of language revival is in fact entwined with mourning, and ultimately produces the object of revival as neither dead nor fully alive. Dwelling on the ambivalence and suspension of that moment, and examining a range of nuances in its articulation, I explore the roles that Hebrew language and literature play in nationalization, Zionism, and the constitution of a new Hebrew subjectivity. Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………..iii Introduction: Life of the Non-Living…………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 1: The Birth of a Lifeless Creature – Ahad Ha’am and M.Y. Berdichevsky Between Revival and Mourning………………………………………………………………………….21 1.1 The Dispute over Ha-shiloah………………………………………………………26 1.2 “Artificial Creations Made to Move by an External, Mechanical Push”: Ahad Ha’am Against Aestheticization……………………………………………………………33 1.3 Killing the Beast: Berdichevsky’s Response……………………………………….45 1.4 The Tear in the Heart, The Song of the Dead………………………………………52 1.5 The Split Language: A Monstrous Horizon………………………………………...61 Chapter 2: Pregnant Hebrew – Hayim Nahman Bialik and the Uncontrollable Body of Language ……………………………………………………………………………………….................75 2.1 The Birth of a New Hebrew Self: A Prophecy of National Poetics………………..79 2.2 Bialik’s Philosophy of Language and the Paradox of Language Pangs……………90 2.3 From an Inanimate Object to a Living Creature……………………………………99 2.4 The Ingathering Dictionary: Knowing Language from Within…………………...109 2.5 A Refusal to Give Birth……………………………………………………….......120 Chapter 3: Abandoning the Good Mother – Rachel Katznelson Between Yiddish and Hebrew ………………………………………………………………………………………………...128 3.1 Multilingualism and Language Wars…………………………………………......133 3.2 Hebrew as a Foreign Language…………………………………………………...138 3.3 “Would We Abandon What Was Natural and Choose What Was Artificial?” On Language Wanderings……………………………………………………………144 3.4 Revolution of the Dead Mother…………………………………………………...154 3.5 The Dangers of Not Knowing…………………………………………………….168 i Chapter 4: Stammering Hebrew – Y.H. Brenner’s Deferred Beginnings……………………..181 4.1 The Chains of Hebrew Speech: Early Responses to “Hebrew in Hebrew”……….188 4.2 Brenner’s Tongue and the Question of Spoken Hebrew………………………….192 4.3 From the Beginning: “Youngsters with No Language At All”…………………...197 4.4 The Split Narrator: Brenner’s Poetics of Stammering…………………………….210 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….221 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..225 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation could not have been written without the help, support, and advice of many mentors, teachers and colleagues, as well as friends and family, whom I wish to thank. I am deeply grateful to my advisor Dan Miron, who has guided this project from its inception with trust and persistence, and generously shared with me his insights, his encyclopedic knowledge, and his love of the subject matter. Dan knowingly directed me to some of the most exciting texts I had ever laid eyes upon, and was incredibly open-minded to my readings and choices. I feel particularly lucky to have had the chance to study with him before his retirement. Being his last doctoral advisee at Columbia is a unique honor, which I accept with gratitude. I am indebted to Judith Butler in ways I cannot begin to express. Her scholarship, her teaching, and our ongoing dialogue have left a profound impact on my work, and completely transformed the way I think, read, and write. Her kind invitation to visit Berkeley has given me the oppritunity to broaden my intellectual network and initate many conversations from which I still learn and enjoy. I wish to thank Judith for her interest in this project, her insightful readings and stimulating questions, and her consistent encouragement and support. Gil Anidjar meticulously read and commented on my work in different stages and repeatedly challenged me to question and rethink my most basic premises. He suggested unexpected comparative and theoretical perspectives that have helped shape the tone of this project. I am particularly grateful to him for encouraging me to speak provocatively. Chana Kronfeld “adopted” me as an informal student when I was a visiting scholar at Berkeley and responded to my work with the utmost generosity even before officially joining my dissertation committee. Our dialogue has been a continuous driving force in my final year of writing, and I am deeply grateful to her for her attentive, instructive, and scrupulous feedback. Gil Hochberg iii kindly agreed to serve on my committee in her first year at Columbia. I thank her for her advice, her perceptive feedback, and her fierce presence. In my final year at Tel Aviv University I had the privilege of studying with Galili Shahar, whose work substantially affected my thinking, and who has been a mentor and constant interlocutor ever since. I thank him for his continuous support from afar and for the inspiring conversations we had during my visits to Israel. Yitzhak Lewis walked me through the challenges and intricacies of dissertation writing and provided patient and generous guidance. I am deeply grateful to him for his day-to-day mentorship, his moral support, and his friendship. Numerous scholars and colleagues read and commented on chapters and/or discussed with me the issues at stake. I thank Mamadou Diouf, Timothy Mitchell, and Sheldon Pollock from the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia for reading and commenting on different drafts. The late Alan Mintz gave me incredibly helpful feedback on the fourth chapter. I have benefited greatly from conversations with Michal Arbell, Maya Barzilai, Michael Gluzman, Hannan Hever, Lital Levy, Orly Lubin, Adam Zachary Newton, and Hamutal Tsamir. It was in Robert Young’s seminar on Marxist Philosophies of Language at NYU that I first began to develop my work on stammer. Friends and colleagues, many of them fellow graduate students who shared the journey of dissertation writing, provided most helpful feedback and advice, as well as invaluable emotional support. Neta Alexander, Hila Amit, Guy Erlich, Ilan Gonen, Naama Harel, Yaakov Hershkovitz, Wendel Marsh, and David Tal lent an attentive ear, made themselves available to me, and patiently answered even my most random questions in all hours of the day and night. Throughout my years as a graduate student I also had fascinating dialogues with Daniel Behar, Eyal Bassan, Danielle Drori, Elik Elhanan, Ghassan Fawzi, Jessica Kirzane, Yuval Kremnitzer, iv Agi Legutko, Yael Segalovitch, Samuel Spinner, Sahar Ullah, and Saul Zaritt. Yoav Ronel walked me through M.Y. Berdichevsky’s melancholic Eros. Neta Alexander commented on my introduction. Sunny Yuddkoff offered her advice and edited my translations in the first chapter. Allen Durgin helped me extensively with my dissertation prospectus, and returned to the project three years later to offer his incisive comments on the introduction and the conclusion. Diana Clarke patiently proofread the dissertation. I thank all of the brilliant consultants at the Writing Center at Columbia, the MESAAS Post-MPhil Dissertation Colloquium, and the members of the dissertation workshop at the department of Comparative Literature at Berkeley. My dissertation was made possible with funding from the department of MESAAS and grants from the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life at Columbia. I have received administrative support and much-needed encouragement from Jessica Rechtschaffer and Michael Fishman of MESAAS, Catherine Lasota, Kelly Lemons, and Sarah Monks of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and Dana Kresel and Annela Levitov of the IIJS. I am thankful beyond words to my family, who patiently accepted my long absences: my parents, Rachel and Moshe Henig, my in-laws, Tali, Doron, and Yuval Vilner-Zahavi,
Recommended publications
  • Credit Hour Explanation Program Learning Goals

    Credit Hour Explanation Program Learning Goals

    Status: PENDING PROGRAM REQUEST Last Updated: Williams,Valarie Lucille Turkish Minor 06/16/2011 Fiscal Unit/Academic Org Near Eastern Languages/Culture - D0554 Administering College/Academic Group Humanities Co-adminstering College/Academic Group Semester Conversion Designation Re-envisioned with significant changes to program goals and/or curricular requirements (e.g., degree/major name changes, changes in program goals, changes in core requirements, structural changes to tracks/options/courses) Current Program/Plan Name Turkish Minor Proposed Program/Plan Name Turkish Minor Program/Plan Code Abbreviation TURKISH-MN Current Degree Title Credit Hour Explanation Program credit hour requirements A) Number of credit hours B) Calculated result for C) Number of credit hours D) Change in credit hours in current program (Quarter 2/3rds of current (Semester required for proposed credit hours) credit hours) program (Semester credit hours) Total minimum credit hours required for completion of program 20 13.3 15 1.7 Required credit hours offered by the unit Minimum 20 13.3 15 1.7 Maximum 20 13.3 15 1.7 Required credit hours offered outside of the unit Minimum 0 0.0 0 0.0 Maximum 0 0.0 0 0.0 Required prerequisite credit hours not included above Minimum 20 13.3 15 1.7 Maximum 20 13.3 15 1.7 Program Learning Goals Note: these are required for all undergraduate degree programs and majors now, and will be required for all graduate and professional degree programs in 2012. Nonetheless, all programs are encouraged to complete these now. Program Learning Goals • Students achieve beginning language proficiency (reading, speaking, writing).
  • Aliyah and Settlement Process?

    Aliyah and Settlement Process?

    Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel HBI SERIES ON JEWISH WOMEN Shulamit Reinharz, General Editor Joyce Antler, Associate Editor Sylvia Barack Fishman, Associate Editor The HBI Series on Jewish Women, created by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, pub- lishes a wide range of books by and about Jewish women in diverse contexts and time periods. Of interest to scholars and the educated public, the HBI Series on Jewish Women fills major gaps in Jewish Studies and in Women and Gender Studies as well as their intersection. For the complete list of books that are available in this series, please see www.upne.com and www.upne.com/series/BSJW.html. Ruth Kark, Margalit Shilo, and Galit Hasan-Rokem, editors, Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel: Life History, Politics, and Culture Tova Hartman, Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation Anne Lapidus Lerner, Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry Margalit Shilo, Princess or Prisoner? Jewish Women in Jerusalem, 1840–1914 Marcia Falk, translator, The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible Sylvia Barack Fishman, Double or Nothing? Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe Iris Parush, Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society Shulamit Reinharz and Mark A. Raider, editors, American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise Tamar Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism Farideh Goldin, Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman Elizabeth Wyner Mark, editor, The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite Rochelle L.
  • A Hebrew Maiden, Yet Acting Alien

    A Hebrew Maiden, Yet Acting Alien

    Parush’s Reading Jewish Women page i Reading Jewish Women Parush’s Reading Jewish Women page ii blank Parush’s Reading Jewish Women page iii Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Reading Jewish Society Jewish Women IRIS PARUSH Translated by Saadya Sternberg Brandeis University Press Waltham, Massachusetts Published by University Press of New England Hanover and London Parush’s Reading Jewish Women page iv Brandeis University Press Published by University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766 www.upne.com © 2004 by Brandeis University Press Printed in the United States of America 54321 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or me- chanical means, including storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Members of educational institutions and organizations wishing to photocopy any of the work for classroom use, or authors and publishers who would like to obtain permission for any of the material in the work, should contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766. Originally published in Hebrew as Nashim Korot: Yitronah Shel Shuliyut by Am Oved Publishers Ltd., Tel Aviv, 2001. This book was published with the generous support of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, Inc., Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry through the support of the Valya and Robert Shapiro Endowment of Brandeis University, and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute through the support of the Donna Sudarsky Memorial Fund.
  • Nomos and Narrative Before Nomos and Narrative

    Nomos and Narrative Before Nomos and Narrative

    Nomos and Narrative Before Nomos and Narrative Steven D. Fraade* I imagine that when Robert Cover's Nomos and Narrative essay' first reached the editors of the Harvard Law Review, their befuddlement derived not so much from Cover's framing of his review of the 1982 Supreme Court term with a philosophically opaque discussion of the interdependence of law and narrative, but from the illustrations that he drew from biblical and rabbinic texts of ancient and medieval times. For Cover, both intellectually and as a matter of personal commitment, these ancient texts evoke a "nomian world," rooted more in communally shared stories of legal origins and utopian ends than in the brutalities of institutional enforcement, one from which modem legal theory and practice have much to learn and to emulate. Since my own head is buried most often in such ancient texts, rather than in modem courts, I thought it appropriate to reflect, by way of offering more such texts for our consideration, on the long-standing preoccupation with the intersection and interdependency of the discursive modes of law and narrative in Hebrew biblical and rabbinic literature, without, I hope, romanticizing them. Indeed, I wish to demonstrate that what we might think of as a particularly modem tendency to separate law from narrative, has itself an ancient history, and to show how that tendency, while recurrent, was as recurrently resisted from within Jewish tradition. In particular, at those cultural turning points in which laws are extracted or codified from previous narrative settings, I hope to show that they are also renarrativized (or remythologized) so as to address, both ideologically and rhetorically, changed socio-historical settings.2 I will do so through admittedly * Steven D.
  • Hayyim Nahman Bialik's Meditation on the Silence of the Divine In

    Hayyim Nahman Bialik's Meditation on the Silence of the Divine In

    Is There a God in the Heavens? Hayyim Nahman Bialik’s Meditation on the Silence of the Divine in ‘On the Slaughter’ Dvir Abramovich Introduction Regarded as the greatest Hebrew poet of modern times, Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934) was instrumental in the revival of the Hebrew language and in expressing the Jewish people’s pain and yearnings in a time of great change.1 Translated into more than thirty languages, formally, Bialik’s corpus can be divided into verse articulating the national revival, interior poetry guyed in the personal, and songs of nature. But still today, the bard towers above all others as the artist who, more than anyone else, embodied in his work the spirit and mood of Jewish nationalism in the twentieth century. Never before had a poet developed such a cult of followers and evoked such popularity and admiration as Bialik did, setting his unique imprimatur on an entire generation. It is worth quoting at length Sara Feinstein, author of a literary biography on Bialik, who elucidates the esteem in which Bialik is held in Israel and in the Jewish world: Anyone somewhat familiar with Modern Hebrew literature recognises the name Hayyim-Nahman Bialik … a special phenomenon … reflecting the shock waves of his own generation and serving as a bridge of transition between old-world attitudes and modernity, between powerless victimization and vigorous self-determination … one of the most powerful influences in the transformation of Jewish culture during the first three decades of the twentieth century … Despite his long periods of silence, Bialik’s supremacy Dvir Abramovich is Director of the Program in Jewish Culture & Society at The University of Melbourne.
  • Labor Movement Co-Operative in Mandatory Palestine

    Labor Movement Co-Operative in Mandatory Palestine

    THE TIKVAH CENTER FOR LAW & JEWISH CIVILIZATION Professor J.H.H. Weiler Director of The Tikvah Center Tikvah Working Paper 03/10 Avital Margalit Labor Movement Co-operatives in Mandatory Palestine: Legal Transplants and Cultural Implants NYU School of Law New York, NY 10011 The Tikvah Center Working Paper Series can be found at http://www.nyutikvah.org/publications.html All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author. ISSN 2160‐8229 (print) ISSN 2160‐8253 (online) Copy Editor: Danielle Leeds Kim © Avital Margalit 2010 New York University School of Law New York, NY 10011 USA Publications in the Series should be cited as: AUTHOR, TITLE, TIKVAH CENTER WORKING PAPER NO./YEAR [URL] LABOR MOVEMENT CO-OPERATIVES IN MANDATORY PALESTINE: LEGAL TRANSPLANTS AND CULTURAL IMPLANTS By Avital Margalit Abstract The paper tells the story of the formative years of the General Federation of Hebrew Workers in Palestine and the process of shaping the corporate structure of the economic organizations related to it. The main argument made in the paper is that while the formal legal structure of the cooperatives belonging to the labor movement was an outcome of the convergence in time and space of legal transplantation (the British Mandate legislation) and the implant of the culture of Jewish cooperatives in Eastern-Europe, it was the cooperative culture as developed by the Federation that prevailed in constituting the practices and understandings of the cooperatives and their members. Lecturer, Sapir College of Law and Bar Ilan Faculty of Law. I would like to express my gratitude to The Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization and to its fellows for the opportunity to explore the issues raised in this paper in such welcoming social and academic atmosphere, and to Ron Zweig for his helpful comments.
  • Jon Silkin As Anthologist, Editor, and Translator

    Jon Silkin As Anthologist, Editor, and Translator

    This is a repository copy of Jon Silkin as Anthologist, Editor, and Translator. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/92139/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Munday, JS (2016) Jon Silkin as Anthologist, Editor, and Translator. Translation and Literature, 25 (1). pp. 84-106. ISSN 0968-1361 https://doi.org/10.3366/tal.2016.0238 Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ 1 Jon Silkin as Anthologist, Editor, and Translator Jeremy Munday In his seminal book Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, André Lefevere makes the claim that ‘the same basic process of rewriting is at work in translation, historiography, anthologization, criticism, and editing’,
  • Reflections ';ON Bell KA TZNELSON

    Reflections ';ON Bell KA TZNELSON

    , \ .' Page Three ThW'Sday, August l!7, 1964 Thursday, Aughst 1118& TH:g JEWISH POST 1 _ ) .~ ., .~ :n, Page Two THE .TEWISH. POST Chief Rabbis Call For Support Fro... t"~ Editor 98 BeMA Why The Split? One Partner's' View [With the announced-split be-five' from Herzlia as well as three Shaarey Zedek origin, were pre· POST tween the partners who for 'the from the Welfare Fund who sat ex- vented by the intervening of Rabbi. ,.-o! - past year were administering the Iii th Milton Aron, spiritual leader of REFLECTiONS ';ON BElL KATZNELSON The Oldest Anglo-Jewish Weekly inWestem CaMdo Ramah School in Winnipeg's south o'cio wi out a vote. At the start, Shaarey Zedek congregation. [Five thousand persons attended ceremonies this and that we must adjust our political thinking (Is8ued weekl,. in the interests of Jewish Community actlvitiee end, there has been some confu-' the president of the Welfare Fund in Winnipeg and Wmtem Canada) "Also, to the dismay of the Herzlia month on the shores of Lake Kineret commemorating accordingly. sion concerning the plans of part- served as chairman. We would the 20th anniversary of the death of Berl Katznelson, Berl was a teacher. He would certainly object Member of the Jewish Tej.egraphic Agency ners for the immediate future • •• stress that the members of the board members on the Ramah School the famed philosOpher of the Zionist labor movement to the title of leader. Not just out of modesty, and a lack of information con- w 0 r ked together harmoniously. Board, all the teachers - with few and late editor of Davar, the Histadrut daily.] Published every Thunda,.
  • Chana Kronfeld's CV

    Chana Kronfeld's CV

    1 Kronfeld/CV CURRICULUM VITAE CHANA KRONFELD Professor of Modern Hebrew, Yiddish and Comparative Literature Department of Near Eastern Studies, Department of Comparative Literature and the Designated Emphasis in Jewish Studies 250 Barrows Hall University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 #1940 Home phone & fax (510) 845-8022; cell (510) 388-5714 [email protected] EDUCATION: Ph.D. 1983 University of California, Berkeley, Comparative Literature, Dissertation: “Aspects of Poetic Metaphor” MA 1977 University of California, Berkeley, Comparative Literature (with distinction) BA 1971 Tel Aviv University, Poetics and Comparative Literature; English (Summa cum laude) PRINCIPAL ACADEMIC INTERESTS: Modernism in Hebrew, Yiddish and English poetry, intertextuality, translation studies, theory of metaphor, literary historiography, stylistics and ideology, gender studies, political poetry, marginality and minor literatures, literature & linguistics, negotiating theory and close reading. HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS: § 2016 – Finalist, Northern California Book Award (for The Full Severity of Compassion: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai) § 2015 - Diller Grant for Summer Research, Center for Jewish Studies, University of California, Berkeley § 2014-15 Mellon Project Grant, University of California, Berkeley § 2014 - “The Berkeley School of Jewish Literature: Conference in Honor of Chana Kronfeld,” Graduate Theological Union and UC Berkeley, March 9, 2014 and Festschrift: The Journal of Jewish Identities, special issue: The Berkeley School of Jewish
  • The Beruriah Incident : Tradition of Exclusion As a Presence of Ethical

    The Beruriah Incident : Tradition of Exclusion As a Presence of Ethical

    The Beruriah Incident: Tradition of Exclusion as a Presence of Ethical Principles by Itamar Drori * Zusammenfassung Die Geschichte, die als Beruria-Geschehnis bekannt ist und sich in Rashi’s Kommentar zu bAvodah Zarah 18b (dem ATU Typus 920A* und 823A* ähnlich) findet, beschreibt das Scheitern und tragische Ende von R. Meir und seiner Ehefrau Beruria – beide gelten als tannaitische Identifikationsfiguren. In diesem Artikel wird die Authentizität dieser Geschichte untersucht. Dabei wird die Spur ihrer Verbreitung innerhalb der traditionellen jüdischen Gesellschaft vor der Moderne verfolgt. Weiterhin werden ein- zelne Bestandteile der Geschichte mit rabbinischer und internationaler volkstümlicher Literatur verglichen. Abstract The story known as the Beruriah Incident, which appears in Rashi’s commentary on bAvodah Zarah 18b (related to ATU types 920A* and 823A*), describes the failure and tragic end of R. Meir and his wife Beruriah, two tannaic role-models. This article exam- ines the authenticity of the story by tracking the method of distribution in traditional Jewish society before the modern era, and comparing the story’s components with rabbinic literature and international folklore. * Formal aspects of the genealogy of this story reviewed by: Itamar Drori, ‘The Beruriah Incident,’ Encyclopedia of the Jewish Story: Sippur Okev Sippur (Eds. Y. Elstein and A. Lipsker), vol. III (Ramat-Gan, 2013), pp. 115–154 (forthcoming). 100 IItama DItam Introduction R. Meir arose, fled, and came to Babylonia; there are those who say due to this incident, and others who say due to the incident of Beruriah. bAvodah Zarah 18b One time she [Beruriah] mocked that which the sages said: Women are light minded.
  • The Yiddish Sources of the Hebrew Imagism of Gabriel Preil

    The Yiddish Sources of the Hebrew Imagism of Gabriel Preil

    BILINGUALISM AND POETIC MODERNISM: THE YIDDISH SOURCES OF THE HEBREW IMAGISM OF GABRIEL PREIL by YAEL SAGIV-FELDMAN I. A Hebrew Modernist in America No poetry, of course, is ever exactly the same as speech that the poet talks and hears: but it has to be in such a relation to speech of his time that the listener or reader can say "that is how I should talk if I could talk poetry." T S. Eliot: "The Music of Poetry" There is something of the ironic in the attempt to render into English the unique effects of the Hebrew poetry of Gabriel Preil. Indeed, it is hardly possible. The fact is that Preil's artistic achievements, as well as his poetic charm, stem-at least in part-from his surprising mastery of the new Israeli vernacular. And surprising it is indeed, because geographically speaking, the American resident Gabriel Preil was twice removed from Israeli soil. Born in Estonia in 1911 and having spent his childhood in Lithuania, he escaped postwar Europe with his mother and migrated to the United States in 1922. New York has been his home ever since, and New England, his favorite rural landscape. It was only in 1968 that Preil visited Israel for the first time, but by then he had already published four volumes of verse,' and 1. Nof shemesh u-khefor (New York, 1944); Ner mul kokhavim (Jerusalem, 1954); Mappat erev (Tel Aviv, 1961); Ha-'esh ve-ha-demamah (Tel Aviv, 1968). In addition, he had also pub- lished by then a collection of his Yiddish poems, Lider (New York, 1966).
  • Multi-Dimensional Jews Transforming Our Discourse? One Way Is by As a Jewish Militant in Brooklyn

    Multi-Dimensional Jews Transforming Our Discourse? One Way Is by As a Jewish Militant in Brooklyn

    A Letter to Friends on the Right /// Yossi Klein Halevi not the descendants, literally or spiritually, varied wanderings? More profoundly, can we of Amalek. While Amalek was motivated by learn to internalize each other’s indispensible pure hatred of the Jews, our war with the insights? Palestinians, bitter as it is, is the result of We are all afraid for Israel – but we call our counter-claims and narratives. fears by different, sometimes contradictory, The clash over competing Jewish values names. Our shared fear is that our return is particularly acute in Hebron. There are few to this land is conditional, that we can once places in the Land of Israel that I feel more again forfeit our hold here – because of a lack deeply connected to than the City of the of sufficient love for the land, because of a lack Patriarchs and Matriarchs. And I resonate of sufficient sensitivity to the stranger among with the arguments of Hebron’s settlers: what us; because of the hedonism of Tel Aviv, because Yossi Klein Halevi people would voluntarily cede control over of the fanaticism of Bnai Brak. In a sense all is a writer, political its birthplace, of its most ancient pantheon? our arguments are about the same question: commentator, and And yes, the presence of settlers in Hebron what is the fateful “sin” that may unravel the fellow at the Shalom helps ensure relatively safe Jewish access to return of the Jews home? Hartman Institute. A the Tomb of the Patriarchs. And yet: consider Yet even as I respect the passion of those contributing editor the price of maintaining a Jewish presence in who ask that question, I fear their answers.