Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making PDF
Preview Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making
Since 1948 SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Literature and Culture Ezra Cappell, editor Dan Shiffman, College Bound: The Pursuit of Education in Jewish American Literature, 1896–1944 Eric J. Sundquist, editor, Writing in Witness: A Holocaust Reader Noam Pines, The Infrahuman: Animality in Modern Jewish Literature Oded Nir, Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction Zohar Weiman-Kelman, Queer Expectations: A Genealogy of Jewish Women’s Poetry Richard J. Fein, translator, The Full Pomegranate: Poems of Avrom Sutzkever Victoria Aarons and Holli Levitsky, editors, New Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literatures: Reading and Teaching Jennifer Cazenave, An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah Ruthie Abeliovich, Possessed Voices: Aural Remains from Modernist Hebrew Theater Victoria Nesfield and Philip Smith, editors, The Struggle for Understanding: Elie Wiesel’s Literary Works Ezra Cappell and Jessica Lang, editors, Off the Derech: Leaving Orthodox Judaism Nancy E. Berg and Naomi B. Sokoloff, editors, Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making Since 1948 Israeli Literature in the Making Edited by Nancy E. Berg and Naomi B. Sokoloff Cover: The Shrine of the Book under construction 1964–65. Photo by Alfred Bernheim © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Translation of “Beterem” by Yehuda Amichai from Mishkan HaNefesh: Machzor for the Days of Awe, Yom Kippur copyright © 2015, by Central Conference of American Rabbis, under copyright protection by the Central Conference of American Rabbis and reprinted for use by permission of the CCAR. All rights reserved. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2020 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Berg, Nancy E., editor. | Sokoloff, Naomi B., editor. Title: Since 1948 : Israeli literature in the making / [edited by] Nancy E. Berg, Naomi B. Sokoloff. Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2020. | Series: SUNY series in contemporary Jewish literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020002269 (print) | LCCN 2020002270 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438480497 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438480503 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Israeli literature—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PJ5021 .S56 2020 (print) | LCC PJ5021 (ebook) | DDC 892.4006—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002269 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002270 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction Under Construction: A Kind of Festschrift for Israeli Literature 1 Nancy E. Berg and Naomi B. Sokoloff Part One: Through Time: Silences, Voices, Echoes Not One, but Five Moments of Silence: On the Poetics and Politics of Asking for Silence 27 Eran Tzelgov Sounding the Mizrachi Voice: H.afla Thematics from the Ma‘abarah to the Post-Arabic Novel 43 Michal Raizen Anthological Poetics: Reading Amichai and Halfi in Liberal Prayerbooks 59 Wendy I. Zierler Part Two: Across Language and Territory: Literature and Identity When Yiddish Was Young in Israel 83 Shachar Pinsker A Canaanite Story: Language, National Identity, and the 1948 War 103 Yael Dekel vi Contents Hebrew Unbound: Alternative Homelands in the New World 123 Melissa Weininger Part Three: Between the Lines: Rethinking Genres From Here to Elsewhere and Back in Israeli-Hebrew Children’s Literature 143 Shai Ginsburg “The pigs were my best friends”: Animals and the Holocaust in Alona Frankel’s Memoirs 163 Naomi B. Sokoloff Stalagim: At the Limits of Israeli Literature 183 Eric Zakim Part Four: Concerning Canons Disruptive Nativity: The Poetry of Rina Shani and the Sixties in Israel 207 Riki Traum Asaf Schurr and the Critique of Postmodernism in Contemporary Hebrew Literature 229 Yaron Peleg “And the Winner Is . . .”: The Economy of Literary Awards 247 Nancy E. Berg Appendix A Canaanite Story: “The Lord Be Praised” 267 Eitan Notev On Our Bookshelf 277 Contributors 279 Index 283 Illustrations Figure 1.1 Carmit Rosen, “chorus” 35 Figure 3.1 Psalm 95 and Yehuda Amichai, “Shir shel shabbat” 65 Figure 3.2 Psalm 92 and Avraham Halfi, “Tefilah” 68 Figure 3.3 S’lichot and Yehuda Amichai, “Beterem” 72 Figure 4.1 Photograph of Yung Yisroel Members (courtesy of Tzvi Eisenman) 91 Figure 4.2 Cover of the journal Yung Yisroel, December 1954 92 Figure 4.3 Cover of Mendel Mann, In a farvorloztn dorf 96 Figure 4.4 Cover of Tzvi Eisenman, Di ban: dertseylungen 97 Figure 9.1 Cover of Ivan Spasky, Stalag Stalingrad 189 Figure 9.2 Cover of Roy Adams, Stalag banot hasatan (Devil Girls Stalag) 192 vii Acknowledgments This book grew out of a conference at Washington University in St. Louis, “Enshrining the Book: Israeli Literature at 70,” that we directed in April 2018. We are grateful to all the academic units in the School of Arts and Sciences at Washington University that provided financial support: the Center for the Humanities, the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages & Cultures (now known as Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies), the Department of History, and the Programs in Com- parative Literature, Religious Studies, and International and Area Studies. The Israel Institute awarded a generous—and deeply appreciated—grant. The administrative support provided on the ground by Stephen Scordias, as well as media assistance by John Moore and accounting by Leslie C. Smith, made the conference possible; the emotional support from those individuals made the planning enjoyable. We have loved working with all of the conference participants-turned-contributors: those who were timely, receptive, and simple to edit, as well as those who struggled with deadlines, writing, and revisions. They have shaped this volume. We hope that the reader learns as much from the end product as we have learned from the process. We also want to thank Tim Huskey for his guidance. Much appre- ciation goes to our editorial team at SUNY Press, and to our anonymous readers for their comments on the manuscript. Special acknowledgment is due both to the Weiner Fund at Washington University and to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion for providing funds for reprint- ing poetry in this volume. We were both on sabbatical leave for part of the time we were pre- paring the manuscript for publication. For the freedom to complete this work, Nancy is grateful to both Washington University in St. Louis and ix
The list of books you might like
