2010 –2011 Fellows & Project Abstracts

2010 –2011 Fellows & Project Abstracts Photos by D.C. Goings David Aaron Hebrew Union College Aaron traces the development of Jewish ethnic and religious identity during the late biblical and early rabbinic periods as they are manifest in the emergence of language consciousness and the development of Hebrew’s status as a holy language. Language consciousness and identity are shaped in response to assimilatory forces both in the Land of Israel and the Diaspora in antiquity. As the Jews’ “literature” became their ideological “homeland,” Hebrew’s ontological status in the world polity became an object for Jewish reflection. This study en- gages theories of ethnic identity, sociolinguistic theory, translation theory, and literary and cultural criticism in an attempt to decipher the significance of diglossia, translation, and identity as they pertain to Judaism’s ideology of its “holy language.” 55 Karen Auerbach University of Southampton (UK) Monique Balbuena University of Oregon Auerbach examines the role of Jews in Polish Balbuena explores the resurgence of Judeo- publishing and bookselling from the mid-19th Spanish (Ladino) in Latin America and its century through the Second World War as a use by contemporary writers and artists. She study of how shifting definitions of Polishness interrogates the use of an endangered language and Jewishness affected possibilities for Jews and culture in 21st-century cultural works. to operate in multiple languages, cultures, and She examines the construction of an ethnic social circles. Jewish involvement in Polish national identity through choice and manipu- publishing in the 19th century and interwar lation of languages and genres and, by looking Poland was intertwined with an attempt by at the popular appeal of dialectical languages the Polonized minority of Jews to reshape their and genres, she discusses changes that occurred identities into Poles of the Mosaic faith. This in national formations and in conceptions of research analyzes connections between pub- nationality. lishing activity and shifting Jewish and Polish cultural identifications. 56 David Bunis Hebrew University Andrew (Marc) Caplan Johns Hopkins University Since the Middle Ages, Jewish languages reflect Caplan focuses on five leading Yiddish modern- the popular conception of a uniquely Jewish ists active in Germany during the 1920s, taken “soul” and “heart,” often expressing deep emo- in comparison with contemporaneous figures tional sensitivity. A wealth of linguistic sources in German-language literature, film, music, and is available to Jewish-language speakers. Bunis critical theory. By focusing on Yiddish literature’s asks such questions as “How have Jews ex- critique of modernization, this comparison pressed emotion in their traditional languages? considers the belatedness of Eastern European Which linguistic sources have they drawn upon? modernity as a characteristic that serves to How do the modes of Jewish language effective anticipate the fragmentation and dislocation of expression reflect an attachment to pan-Jewish literary modernism. Because Yiddish literature tradition? How has the interaction of Jews parallels characteristics of German-language with non-Jewish neighbors come to be reflected modernism, it provides a structural model for in Jewish-language expression of affect?” understanding modernist aesthetics while par- ticipating in the constitution of a multilingual, borderless German culture — not in spite of its peripherality, but because of it. 57 Elliot Ginsburg University of Michigan Benjamin Hary Emory University By selectively analyzing representative texts Hary explores Judeo-Arabic history within the and devotional strategies drawn from different framework of the “Jewish linguistic spectrum,” periods and settings, registers, and genres, which claims that around the world, wherever Ginsburg provides a “thick description” of Jewish Jews have lived and either wished to distinguish mystical prayer life, in its verbal and non-verbal themselves from their neighbors or were dimensions. Through close readings, perfor- encouraged or forced to distinguish themselves, mance studies, and historical contextualization, they did so through clothing, food, and language Ginsburg aims for a more nuanced understand- choices: they have spoken and written some- ing of the concept of prayer. what differently from the “non-Jews” around them. The project also explores the notion of Judeo-Arabic in the 21st century. 58 Richard Kalmin Jewish Theological Seminary Joshua L. Miller University of Michigan Rabbinic literature and society underwent Miller’s project extends earlier work on U.S. important changes during and following the language politics and literary modernism in 4th century ce, a time when rabbinic Babylonia his first book, Accented America, to a trans- became increasingly receptive to traditions national study of the distinctive features of and modes of behavior deriving from Palestine Jewish language politics, which could also and other eastern provinces of the Roman be phrased as the politics of identifying a Empire. Traditions recorded in Philo, Origen, language as “Jewish.” From the perspective of Epiphanius, and many other provincial Romans contemporary linguistics, no speech form have close parallels in the Bavli, suggesting belongs to only one social group exclusively that late antique Jewish Babylonia, to a far and transhistorically. What does it mean to greater degree than has heretofore been imag- classify Hebrew or Ladino as “Jewish languages,” ined, formed part of the Mediterranean world but not Spanish or Chinese? What ideological of late antiquity, and that there is evidence for or representational crises are present when the emergence of this shared culture in the Arabic or German are or are not considered to pages of the Bavli in the form of the 4th-century be Jewish languages? He is currently research- “Palestinianization” or eastern provincial ing the aesthetics and politics of code-switching Romanization of Babylonian rabbis and their and language-mixing narrative techniques literature. in a diverse array of 20th-century Jewish immi- grant narratives. 59 Avraham Novershtern Hebrew University Anita Norich University of Michigan Novershtern analyzes the different concepts This year Anita Norich was completing a book and images of Yiddish language and literature, tentatively titled Speaking in Tongues: Yiddish which can be traced in the American Yiddish Translation in the Twentieth Century. Considering literary discourse over nearly a century — the some of the most famous texts of Yiddish lifespan of Yiddish literature in the United literature, she asks why they have been trans- States. Spanning three literary generations, lated multiple times and what these transla- and especially after the Holocaust, the literary tions reveal about changes in Jewish American models and ways of thinking about the lan- culture, in the status and role of Yiddish, and guage itself have shifted dramatically, reflect- in translation theory. At the same time, she ing sociolinguistic and cultural developments began a translation project of her own. She as well as the changes in the status of Yiddish is translating Kadya Molodovsky’s novel Fun as a minority language in an open society. lublin biz nyu-york [From Lublin to New York]. The novel, written in the form of a diary and published in 1942, has never been translated. It reflects on the refugee status of its protago- nist, on acculturation, on the fantasies of a young woman severed from her family and language, and, most profoundly, on reactions to the unfolding horror left behind. 60 Na’ama Rokem University of Chicago Dan Shapira Bar Ilan University “The Divided Horizon” is a study of German- Shapira focuses his study on the Eastern Hebrew bilingualism in the 20th century. It fills European Karaites, Turkic-speaking adherents a lacuna that has been created by the divisions of an offshoot of Judaism, by examining and between the fields of German-Jewish and editing a Karaim translation of Nehemia copied Modern Hebrew studies, and provides a new in 1632–1634. This text, written in archaic perspective on the cultural aftermath of the Karaim in the Crimea, was printed in the Turkic Holocaust as well as on the cultural landscape Bible edited in 1841 by M. Tirishqan and was that preceded it. The dominant paradigms in claimed to be in “the archaic Crimean Karaim both fields privilege the figure of the mono- dialect,” a dialect that never existed. In Shapira’s lingual German or Hebrew speaker; this study view, “an edition of this Karaim translation reveals cracks in both portraits by describing to Nehemia would be the greatest service to and analyzing a broad range of cases in which the scientific study of the older strata of the the languages are mixed both before and after Karaim language since the pioneering work the Holocaust. of Tadeusz Kowalski.” 61 Ruth Tsoffar University of Michigan Yaron Tsur Tel Aviv University Tsoffar continues a longstanding focus on re- Tsur’s project examines digitization technology sisting hegemonic cultures through alternative and optical character recognition as it relates modes of reading and writing. She approaches to creating a searchable archive of the Jewish contemporary Hebrew literature and culture, press. The archive, now a live website (www. a product of life in “a land flowing with milk jpress.org.il / view-english.asp), includes more and honey,” as ideological feeding institutions. than 400,000 pages; during the next

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