Avraham Yoffe Papers M2085
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NAOMI BRENNER Associate Professor of Hebrew and Israeli
NAOMI BRENNER Associate Professor of Hebrew and Israeli Culture Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures ♦ The Ohio State University 300 Hagerty Hall ♦ 1775 College Road ♦ Columbus, OH 43210 ♦ (614) 292-8953 ______________________________________________________________________________ EDUCATION University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, May 2008. Dissertation: Authorial Fictions: Literary and Public Personas in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature Specialization in Modern Hebrew, Yiddish and Arabic literature. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor B.A., May 1998. Highest honors in History, Comparative Literature and Hebrew and Jewish Cultural Studies. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Assistant Professor, September 2008-2015 Associate Professor, 2015 – current Member, Melton Center for Jewish Studies Affiliated Faculty, Germanic Languages and Literatures Mills College, Oakland, CA Lecturer, Spring 2008 University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA Instructor, Departments of Comparative Literature, German and Near Eastern Studies, 2002-2006 PUBLICATIONS & WORKS IN PROGRESS Books Lingering Bilingualism: Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures in Contact. Syracuse University Press, 2016. Refereed Journal Articles “David Bergelson in Hebrew: Translation as Literary Memorialization.” Prooftexts In Press (2019). “Translation as Testimony: Hebrew Translations of Yiddish Literature in the 1940s.” East European Jewish Affairs In Press (2018). “Haven’t You Ever Heard of Bialik? The Specter of H.N. Bialik in Hebrew Literature.” Prooftexts 35:2-3 (2015): 211-249. “Milgroym, Rimon and Interwar Jewish Bilingualism.” Journal of Jewish Identities 7:1 (2014): 23-48. “Gendering Hebrew Modernism: Rahel Bluvstein and Avraham Shlonsky on the Pages of Musaf Davar.” Jewish Quarterly Review 101:3 (2011): 383-405. “Slippery Selves: The Minimalist Poetics of Rachel Bluvstein and Anna Margolin.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender 19 (2010): 100-133. -
Leah Goldberg's Lady of the Castle and Shulamith
Discourses of Mourning and Rebirth in Post- Holocaust Israeli Literature: Leah Goldberg’s Lady Of The Castle and Shulamith Hareven’s “The Witness”* Rachel Feldhay Brenner The University of Wisconsin-Madison Abstract Both Godberg’s play and Hareven’s short story illustrate the failure of the Israeli to come to terms with the Holocaust catastrophe. In Goldberg’s play the characterization of the protagonist runs against the popular myth of the Holocaust victim gratefully embracing the hope of a new future embodied in the heroically idealistic Israeli. Hareven’s story rules out the possibility of a mutually accepted coexistence between the Israeli and the Holocaust survivor. Both works present the treatment of the outsider as a reflection of the emotional insecurity of the majority group, since the arrival of the survivor undermines the Zionist ideological tenets of the “negation of the Diaspora” and the creation of the “new” Jew in Eretz Israel. The events of the Holocaust effected a complicated discourse in Israeli literature. This literature, which had long been preoccupied with the themes of Israeli nation building, was suddenly compelled to search for proper modes of response to the Diaspora destruction. The difficulty of approaching the unspeakable was compounded from the outset by the Yishuv’s powerfully promoted notion of “a new beginning” which posited “an ideological divide” between the Diaspora Jews and the Israeli born sabras (Yudkin 1984: 1-2). In many of their programmatic statements, leading politicians and writers of the Yishuv manifested a tendency to subsume the catastrophe into the triumphant process of Jewish rebirth. Avraham Shlonsky, for instance, “claimed that the most significant act of defiance that the inhabitants of the Yishuv could engage in would be to carry on business as usual and to show that in at least one corner of the world Jews were thriving” (Ezrahi 1985-1986:252). -
Palestinian and Israeli Literature.Pdf
Palestinian and Israeli Literature Prepared by: Michelle Ramadan, Pingree School This document has been made available online for educational purposes only. Use of any part of this document must be accompanied by appropriate citation. Parties interested in publishing any part of this document must received permission from the author. If you have any recommendations or suggestions for this unit, please do not hesitate to contact Michelle Ramadan at [email protected]. Overview: For many audiences, understanding of the PalestinianIsraeli conflict comes mainly from the media news of violence and of political friction dominate the airwaves, and we sometimes forget about the ordinary Palestinian and Israeli citizens involved. To get at the human element of the PalestinianIsraeli conflict, students will read, discuss, and reflect on stories from and/or about Palestine and Israel. Units are designed by theme/topic, and each unit contains readings from both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives on each theme/topic.This curriculum was designed for a grade 12 course. Timing: Suggested class periods: 21+. This curriculum may, of course, be shortened or lengthened depending on schedule, students, etc. This curriculum may also be developed into a semester long course. How to Read this Document: This Palestinian & Israeli Literature Unit has been divided into 9 miniunits. Under each miniunit, you will find suggested class times, background information or context, suggested readings, and suggested class lessons/activities. At the end of the document, you will find sample writing assignments and further information about the suggested readings. Most readings are available online, and links have been provided. -
“Mordechai Is Riding a Horse”: Political Performances
Chapter 5 “Mordechai is Riding a Horse”: Political Performances Political-Cultural Performance These next two chapters will analyze the cultural performances of bib- lical figures in the carnival. The term “cultural performance” refers to non-verbal expressions, via the body, objects, and sounds, which include rites, rituals, songs, dances, theatre, and other expressions in one analytical category. For the anthropologist Milton Singer, who coined the term, the analysis of processes of cultural transformation through cultural performance seemed somewhat corrective of inter- pretive manipulations by cultural agents. In this sense they are unlike mere “high” ideological texts, and hence more observable.1 Victor Turner further developed the term as a general approach to the study of culture, but unlike Singer, Turner emphasized the liminality of cul- tural performance, in which common social rules are suspended in favor of an enhanced reflectivity, which enables (though does not necessitate) for the social system a degree of self-criticism.2 Thus, the analysis of cultural performance and its transformations over time can reveal, or extract, implicit ideological motifs. In this chapter, I will explore symbolic and mythical dimensions of Zionist power, which proved crucial in the creation of the Zionist sphere of civil society and identity construction. In accordance with Alexander, “power” is understood here as “also a medium of commu- nication, not simply a goal of interested action or a means of coercion. It has a symbolic code, not only a material base.”3 The very symbolic 1 See: Singer 1972: 64–65, 71. 2 See: Turner 1987: 21–32. According to Kertzer (1988: 9), this reflexivity is the core definition of the ritual. -
Choosing Yiddish New Frontiers of Language and Culture
Choosing Yiddish new frontiers of language and culture Edited by Lara Rabinovitch, Shiri Goren, and Hannah S. Pressman Wayne State University PressDetroit © 2013 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. 17 16 15 14 135 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Choosing Yiddish : new frontiers of language and culture / edited by Lara Rabinovitch, Shiri Goren, and Hannah S. Pressman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8143-3444-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-8143-3799-8 (ebook) 1. Yiddish language—Social aspects.2. Yiddish literature—History and criticism.I. Rabinovitch, Lara, 1979–II. Goren, Shiri, 1976– III. Pressman, Hannah S., 1979– PJ5113.C46 2012 439′.1—dc23 2012015788 Hebrew Remembers Yiddish Avot Yeshurun’s Poetics of Translation adriana x. jacobs A few days aft er his death, the New York Times published a short obituary in honor of the Israeli poet Avot Yeshurun (1904–1992).1 The laconic headline “Poet in Unusual Idiom” accurately summed up a career that spanned most of twentieth century modern Hebrew and Israeli writing, one that encom- passed and articulated the various subjects, themes, questions, and polemics that preoccupied modern Hebrew poetry throughout the twentieth century, particularly with regard to language politics.2 Like many writers of his gen- eration, Yeshurun was not a native Hebrew speaker, and his poetry, like theirs, maps not only the linguistic shift s and transformations that occurred within modern Hebrew itself but also the long-standing tension between a “revived” Hebrew vernacular and native, diasporic languages, Yiddish in particular. -
Theology and Economy in Modern Jewish Literature Roy Greenwald Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Made in the Pauper’s Image: Theology and Economy in Modern Jewish Literature Roy Greenwald Ben-Gurion University of the Negev abstract: The article examines the relations between economic thought and Jewish theological discourse in modern Jewish literature in Yiddish and Hebrew from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s. Treating capitalism and Jewish theology as two parallel orders of representation, the article claims that the abstract reasoning char- acteristic of the capitalist economy provided modern Jewish literature bold complex concepts with which to articulate the relations between the earthly and the heavenly and between history and its messianic end. n this article i examine the relations between economic thought and Jewish theo- logical discourse in modern Jewish literature in Yiddish and Hebrew from the late nine- teenth century through the 1930s. These relations, especially those between economic Idiscourse and eschatology, are evident in biblical Hebrew. The examples are many. Thus, for -designates one who buys back a property that was sold by his rel (גואל) instance, the word go’el ative to pay a debt (Leviticus 25:25). Yet the word is also commonly used to refer to God as the redeemer of his creations.1 The use of the same vocabulary to designate both economic and theological concepts is bound to forge an ideational analogy between them. Thus, God is represented as the owner of history in its very materiality and as the one who encompasses the metaphysical riches by which History will be redeemed. This ideational analogy creates a discursive bond by which a mutation in one discourse might affect the other. -
Russian Translation and Hebrew Foundations
Prior to the collapse of the Russian Empire, a sizable percentage of world Jewry lived in its western borderlands. Although the vast ma- jority did not live in ethnic Russian territory, many East European Jews developed a strong connection to Russian high culture. They tried to maintain this connection even after migrat- ing from Eastern Europe, or staying behind in lands that ceased to be part of the empire. One example of this is the Hebrew transla- tion of an iconic work of Russian literature, Eugene Onegin. Despite all the energy that such Russian Translation a project expended on non-Jewish literature, the Hebrew-language version of Eugene Onegin and Hebrew served as an achievement of, rather than a distraction from, the project of developing a Foundations new and modern Hebrew culture. The author of this verse novel, Alex- Sara Feldman ander Pushkin (1799–1837), is a figure whose stature might be compared to that of Shake- speare, but whose iconicity in Russian culture as an artist and character has no parallel in English-language literature. Many East Euro- pean Jews understood Pushkin, and some could recite his works by heart. Eugene Onegin represented Pushkin and, by proxy, Russian literature and modern culture. East European Jewish writers absorbed the Russian concept of a “national poet.” Whether they admired Pushkin or wished to avoid being compared to him, a number of them aspired to become Jewish national poets in Russian (Semion Frug), Hebrew (H. N. Bialik), and, arguably, Yiddish (A. Layvick). Jewish writers who embraced literary modernism did not abandon this concept— or Pushkin— right away. -
Where Community Happens. the Kibbutz and the Philosophy Of
WHERE COMMUNITY HAPPENS WHERE COMMUNITY HAPPENS In reaction to the spread of globalization, recent years have seen considerable growth in the number of intentional communities established across the world. In this collection of articles and lectures, many of them previously unpublished in English, the author analyzes various aspects of the philosophy of the kibbutz W THE KIBBUTZ AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNALISM and draws parallels with other societies and philosophical trends, in the hope that a close look at the ways of thought of the kibbutz – arguably the best- HERE established communalist society – may help other communalists crystallize their own social philosophies. Utopian thought and communal experience are brought to life through the extensive use of the voices of some of the most influential thinkers and kibbutz members of the past hundred years, including CO Martin Buber and David Ben Gurion. “Henry Near has spent a lifetime studying utopianism and intentional MMUNIT communities, with a special focus on the kibbutzim of Israel, of which he is the leading historian. This book brings together his thoughtful reflections on the kibbutzim and related topics. It will long be a benchmark in its field.” Tim Miller, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Kansas “As a distinguished scholar and long-time kibbutznik, communal historian and Y H philosopher Henry Near offers that all too rare combination of passion and balance, vision and realism. This timely book is an invaluable case study of the kibbutz in a broader, comparative perspective including Christian monasteries, APPENS Hutterite colonies, and New Age communes. It offers a goldmine of new evidence and mature wisdom, of value to historians, social scientists, humanists, and partisans of gender equality, youth empowerment, and cooperative alternatives for the twenty-first century. -
The Image of the 'Living-Dead' in Nathan Alterman's Poetry: From
Israel Affairs, 2014 Vol. 20, No. 2, 182 194, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2014.889886 The image of the ‘living-dead’ in Nathan Alterman’s poetry: from archetype to national symbol Ortsion Bartana* Department for Israel’s Heritage, Ariel University, Israel This article traces the motif of the living dead in Nathan Alterman’s poetry, beginning with Stars Outside and through Ten Plagues of Egypt to The City of the Dove, indicating the way in which Alterman’s literary symbolic structure was gradually replaced by a historical literary one that reflects the influence of historical events the two world wars, the Holocaust, and the War of Independence. With the wiping out of Jewish existence and literature, the Jewish hero became the Jewish victim and national symbol who in sacrificing himself ensured the life of the nation. Keywords: Israel; poetry; Nathan Alterman; Israeli poetry; Haim Nahman Bialik; Shalom Aleichem; living dead; national symbol On revisiting Nathan Alterman’s first volume of poems (Stars Outside) with an eye to the young poet’s independence, one is struck by the double meanings with which they are imbued. Alongside their symbolic, jeu-de-mots character marked by dualistic, oxymoronic, dichotomous paradoxes they also reflect a system of idealized romantic values. This type of reading being precisely that which facilitates the writing of symbolic literature, its appearance should come as no surprise. While this is not the romanticism of Haim Nahman Bialik the romanticism of ‘By Flickering Sundown’, ‘Radiance’, or ‘Take Me Under Your Wing’ its presence places Alterman, rather unexpectedly, far closer to Bialik than to Avraham Shlonsky. -
Selected Works in Hebrew/Israeli Literature Compiled by the Center for Israel Education
Selected Works in Hebrew/Israeli Literature Compiled by the Center for Israel Education Tens of thousands of Hebrew literary works were published since the late 18th century. This list of Hebrew literature works that have appeared in English are suggestive and highly limited. For example poetry is virtually absent from this compilation. Great Hebrew writers such as Asher Barash, Yosef Haim Brenner, M.Z. Feierberg, Yitzhak Leib Peretz, Saul Tchnerichovsky, and many many others, and every major and minor wrter who focused exclusively on Zionism is not in this list below. The best basic introductory anthology of Hebrew Literature is is Robert Alter’s Modern Hebrew Literature, Behrman House, 1972. He includes writing examples of the authors not found in our list. Alter’s introduction to his book is as good as one can find on the topic. Ken Stein, December 2014 (Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970): S.Y. Agnon, or Shai, immigrated to Israel in 1907. A prolific Hebrew writer whose works depict the decline of Galician Jewry and the pioneers of Israel, Agnon received the 1966 Noble Prize in Literature, becoming Israel’s first Nobel laureate. Suggested works: A Book that Was Lost and Other Stories A Guest for the Night Nathan Alterman (1910-1970): Alterman was a playwright, poet, and journalist whose influence on Labor Zionism and socialist Jewish policies left him remembered for contributions to politics, despite never holding office. After the Six Day War, he was one of the founders of the Movement for Greater Israel which advocated keeping the newly conquered territories and settling them with Jewish population. -
Lea Goldberg’S Lyrical Conversation with Avraham Sonne
DOI 10.1515/naha-2013-0004 Naharaim 2013; 7(1–2): 75–110 Natasha Gordinsky Crossing the Spectrum of Solitudes: Lea Goldberg’s Lyrical Conversation with Avraham Sonne Abstract: This essay explores the as yet undiscovered lyrical conversation con- ducted by Lea Goldberg with Avraham Sonne. It traces the different stages in Goldberg’s writing on him, through a close reading of all poems in which she addressed Sonne over many years. The first section of the essay concentrates on the construction of Sonne as a poet figure. The second section discusses the internalization of Avraham Ben Yitzhak as a superaddresse within the cycle “Al Ha-Priha.” The final section reflects Goldberg’s attempt to address Sonne not as a poet but as a private individual. Natasha Gordinsky, E-Mail: [email protected] Eleven years separate the first reference to Avraham Sonne in Lea Goldberg’s diary and the note she wrote on June 10, 1950 in her diary: “On my birthday, on May 29, Sonne died. Since then, there is actually no importance to anything else apart from this fact.”1 Goldberg had met Sonne, one of the most enigmatic modern Hebrew poets, in 1938, shortly after his arrival to Mandatory Palestine. In the first months after Sonne’s death, Goldberg wrote only a few short notes in her diary, did not write poems, as she herself testifies, and barely saw people. It was during these months that she finished her monumental project of translat- ing War and Peace. Goldberg’s diaries do not tell us when exactly in this early stage of mourning she decided to dedicate a memoir to Sonne, but an entry from the beginning of August reveals her determination to start writing about him: “I am still not able to approach writing about him [A. -
The First Jewish- Arab Literary Encounter in Israel Somekh, Sasson
"Reconciling Two Great Loves": The First Jewish- Arab Literary Encounter in Israel Somekh, Sasson . Israel Studies ; Bloomington Vol. 4, Iss. 1, (Mar 31, 1999): 1. ProQuest document link ABSTRACT (ABSTRACT) The three journalists together with Rashid Hussayn conceived of the idea of setting up a meeting between Arabic and Hebrew writers. After lengthy discussions (during which the novelist Aharon Megged, literary editor for Lamerhav, Ahdut HaAvodah's daily, and the poet Haim Gouri were introduced to the proposal), the time, place and list of participants were decided upon. At first Tammuz and his colleagues refused to allow writers affiliated with MAKI to be invited to the meeting; but they quickly realized that, without MAKI, the most influential Arab writers in Israel would be absent. Furthermore, all the Arab writers whom [Rashid] represented throughout the discussions were members of "The Union of Arab Writers and Intellectuals." Eventually, both communist and non-communist writers who were members of the Union received invitations. The list of participants did not include [Emil Habiby], a Knesset member representing MAKI, either because he was a political personality of too high a profile or because of his own reluctance to attend. It seems fair to say that Habiby's literary endeavors were rather low on his agenda at this point in his career, and he had not yet come to regard himself as a "novelist." Other Arab writers, such as [Michel Haddad], who was supposedly closely identified with the "Establishment" were also not invited. What