Disseminating Jewish Literatures Disseminating Jewish Literatures Knowledge, Research, Curricula Edited by Susanne Zepp, Ruth Fine, Natasha Gordinsky, Kader Konuk, Claudia Olk and Galili Shahar ISBN 978-3-11-061899-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061900-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-061907-2 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. For details go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020908027 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Susanne Zepp, Ruth Fine, Natasha Gordinsky, Kader Konuk, Claudia Olk and Galili Shahar published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: FinnBrandt / E+ / Getty Images Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Introduction This volume is dedicated to the rich multilingualism and polyphonyofJewish literarywriting.Itoffers an interdisciplinary array of suggestions on issues of re- search and teachingrelated to further promotingthe integration of modern Jew- ish literary studies into the different philological disciplines. It collects the pro- ceedings of the Gentner Symposium fundedbythe Minerva Foundation, which was held at the Freie Universität Berlin from June 27 to 29,2018. During this three-daysymposium at the Max Planck Society’sHarnack House, more than fifty scholars from awide rangeofdisciplines in modern philologydiscussed the integration of Jewish literature into research and teaching. Among the partic- ipants werespecialists in American, Arabic, German, Hebrew,Hungarian, Ro- mance and LatinAmerican,Slavic, Turkish, and Yiddish literature as well as comparative literature. The symposium was conceivedand carried out in coop- eration between the Freie Universität Berlin,the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, TelAvivUniversity,the University of Haifa, and the University of Duisburg-Essen. One point of departure for the joint initiative resulting in the publication of this volume was aconversation about the fact that there is no permanent chair for Hebrew literature in Germany. While Hebrew literature is asubjectatuniver- sities worldwide, it surprisingly seems to be somewhat neglected in Germany. When we conducted asample examination of the course catalogues from the last ten semesters at the fifteen largest German universities in German,Slavic, American, Romance, and comparative literarystudies, we discovered thatJewish literatures werenot adequatelyrepresented in academicteaching. As aresult, studentsare neither giventhe chance to study key texts of world literature nor the literary works in which manyofthe challenges of our present moment are negotiated. Further discussion with European colleagues made it evident that this is not aphenomenonrestricted to Germany:major modern Jewishtexts writ- ten in Arabic, French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, and Yiddish do not form an integralpart of their respective national philologies in Germany, Europe, Israel, Latin America,orthe United States.A third issue under discussion was the state of diasporic literatures in courses on Hebrew literature in Israel. More generally, we observed that in our current BA and MA courses,the focus on teachingthe basic gist of relevant understudied texts leavesvery little room to introduce our studentstoafuller rangeofworld literature. Similarly, our day-to-day teachingroutine sometimes neglects more profound methodological reflections. Thus, the editors of this volume have joined forces with scholars from different philological disciplines drawing on dif- ferent historical focuses and methodological approachesinorder to develop con- OpenAccess. ©2020, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110619003-001 VI Introduction creteproposals on how to address this lacuna, basedoncase studies from var- ious languagecultures. Despite its inherent transnationality,much of the researchinto Jewish liter- atures continues to unfold within anational framework—an approach thatis also traceable in hyphenated terms such as “Jewish-American” or “German-Jew- ish”.Inaddition, the significance of analyzingand comparingwhat constitutes “Jewishness” in aGerman or Turkish, Christian or Muslim, literarycontext must be taken into account.The fact thatIslam has now become the second largest religious community in Europe shifts the discourse on Jewishliteratures in un- precedented ways.Wemust react to this.The process of modernization that Ju- daism has undergone, and which can be traced in its literaryhistory,offers ample opportunitytoconnect with the challenges that Muslim cultures are fac- ing.Preciselybecause our studentshavediverse backgrounds,weneed to em- phasize the numerous connections in ahistoricizing perspective rather thanes- sentializingculturaldifferences. Seeking to redefine and explore the sociological and culturalconditions of different migrant experiences, diasporastudies has unfolded new perspectives across disciplines in recent decades,and yet, asystematic inclusion into the re- spective philological disciplines in Germany and Israel remains a desideratum. The volume at hand aims to develop ideas and concepts for bringing together different epistemological and textual approaches into the curricula and research programs of the corresponding departments of literary studies in Europe, Israel, and the States.Jewishliteraturesfrom their ancient traditions to modernity— from the Bible, Mishna and Talmud, Kabbalah and Hasidism and beyond—chal- lengeour very notion of literature. Even works by authorsofJewish belongingin modernism alone—from Marcel Proust to Osip Mandelstam, from Bruno Schulz to Bernardo Kucinski, from Natalia GinzburgtoHélène Cixous, from Paul Celan to Dan Pagis—not to mention contemporaryHebrew,Russian, and Pales- tinian writing in Israel, challengescholars to transcend the strict confines of na- tional philologies and theirrespective disciplines. In his book From Continuity to Contiguity,Dan Miron acknowledgesthe fact that most authorsinthe history of Jewish literary thinking came from multilin- gual environments and were deeplyimmersed in the respective lingua franca in the literatures and cultures of their time.Such an observation is not without sig- nificance.Miron suggests the mappingofa“modernJewish literarycomplex” which is “vast,disorderly,and somewhat diffuse”,and which is “characterized by dualities,parallelisms, occasional intersections, marginal overlapping, hy- brids, similarities within dissimilarities, mobility, changeability” and more. While we share Miron’spoly-perspectival conception of Jewish literatures, which challenges amonolithic, national understanding of what Jewish literature Introduction VII means, we alsoneed to movebeyond Eurocentric definitions of what Jewish lit- eratures wereand still are.Menachem Brinker’sstudy Hebrew Literature as Euro- pean Literature once again demonstrated the close ties between Hebrew litera- ture and the European literaryworld. And yetBrinker,like Miron, Gershon Shaked, and manyothers, considers neither the liturgical traditions of Judaism nor the dialogues of Jewishauthors with the traditions of Islam.Toaddress these gaps,the 2018 Gentner Symposium proposed are-orientation in our fields of studies, acknowledging the multilingual, post-national, ambiguous, and dif- fuse nature of Jewishliteratures, the nature of which also challenges the binaries of Western experience and the conceptions of the East (the Orient), the dichoto- mies of modernism and tradition, critiqueand prayer,subjectivity and commu- nal being.Questions of canonisation and curricula need to undergo arenewed discussion, as do our methodsand practices of reading. This volume contains essays with very different approaches.Such abroad conception of Jewish literatures, which is to take into account not onlyWestern European and Latin Americanliteratures, but alsothe modernJewish cultural production in the East,inHebrew as wellasinother Jewish and non-Jewish lan- guages (Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, Classical Arabic, Turkish, Persian),seems the intellectual alternative thatwehavetodevelop against isolating,essentialist perspectives. The volume offers cross-cultural perspectivesinadynamic, multi- lingual setting,encouragingapost-essentialist engagementwith belonginginlit- erary texts,unrestrained by anational canon. Forthis reason, we do not consider this volume to be yetanother contribu- tion to the definition of what might be understood as Jewish literature; instead, it focuses on the literary representation of different constructions of Jewish belong- ing.Inliterary studies, we insist on linking the concept of Jewish belongingto the statusofthe literary text,not the biographyofthe author.Nevertheless, we keep witnessing in our respective fields repeatedattempts to identify and sol- idify essentialist understandingsofJewish literature and culture. As recentlyas 2001, Michael P. Kramer, for example, sought to applythe concept of race to de- termine what should and should not be regarded as Jewish literatures. The de- bate that followed is documented in the journal Prooftexts. Kramer’spolemic criticized pluralist understandingsofbelongingasanevasive strategysoasto avoid the necessity of facing the consequences