Since 1948

Description

Toward the end of the twentieth century, an unprecedented surge of writing altered the Israeli literary scene in profound ways. As fresh creative voices and multiple languages vied for recognition, diversity replaced consensus. Genres once accorded lower status—such as the graphic novel and science fiction—gained readership and positive critical notice. These trends ushered in not only the discovery and recovery of literary works but also a major rethinking of literary history. In Since 1948, scholars consider how recent voices have succeeded older ones and reverberated in concert with them; how linguistic and geographical boundaries have blurred; how genres have shifted; and how canon and competition have shaped Israeli culture. Charting surprising trajectories of a vibrant, challenging, and dynamic literature, the contributors analyze texts composed in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Arabic; by Jews and non-Jews; and by Israelis abroad as well as writers in Israel. What emerges is a portrait of Israeli literature as neither minor nor regional, but rather as transnational, multilingual, and worthy of international attention.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Under Construction: A Kind of Festschrift for Israeli Literature
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
Eran Tzelgov

Sounding the Mizrachi Voice: Hafla Thematics from the Ma'abarah to the Post‑Arabic Novel
Michal Raizen

Anthological Poetics: Reading Amichai and Halfi in Liberal Prayerbooks
Wendy I. Zierler

Part Two: Across Language and Territory: Literature and Identity

When Yiddish Was Young in IsraelShachar PinskerA Canaanite Story: Language, National Identity, and the 1948 War
Yael Dekel

Hebrew Unbound: Alternative Homelands in the New World
Melissa Weininger

Part Three: Between the Lines: Rethinking Genres

From Here to Elsewhere and Back in Israeli‑Hebrew Children's Literature
Shai Ginsburg

"The pigs were my best friends": Animals and the Holocaust in Alona Frankel's Memoirs
Naomi B. Sokoloff

Stalagim: At the Limits of Israeli Literature
Eric Zakim

Part Four: Concerning Canons

Disruptive Nativity: The Poetry of Rina Shani and the Sixties in Israel
Riki Traum

Asaf Schurr and the Critique of Postmodernism in Contemporary Hebrew Literature
Yaron Peleg

"And the Winner Is . . .": The Economy of Literary Awards
Nancy E. Berg

Appendix: A Canaanite Story: "The Lord Be Praised"
Eitan Notev

On Our Bookshelf
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Middle East

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438480503
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

S INCE 1948
SUNY SERIES IN C ONTEMPORARY J EWISH L ITERATURE AND C ULTURE
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
S INCE 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
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Under Construction: A Kind of Festschrift for Israeli Literature
Nancy E. Berg and Naomi B. Sokoloff
P ART O NE :
T HROUGH T IME : S ILENCES , V OICES , E CHOES
Not One, but Five Moments of Silence: On the Poetics and Politics of Asking for Silence
Eran Tzelgov
Sounding the Mizrachi Voice: Ḥ afla Thematics from the Ma‘abarah to the Post-Arabic Novel
Michal Raizen
Anthological Poetics: Reading Amichai and Halfi in Liberal Prayerbooks
Wendy I. Zierler
P ART T WO :
A CROSS L ANGUAGE AND T ERRITORY : L ITERATURE AND I DENTITY
When Yiddish Was Young in Israel
Shachar Pinsker
A Canaanite Story: Language, National Identity, and the 1948 War
Yael Dekel
Hebrew Unbound: Alternative Homelands in the New World
Melissa Weininger
P ART T HREE :
B ETWEEN THE L INES : R ETHINKING G ENRES
From Here to Elsewhere and Back in Israeli-Hebrew Children’s Literature
Shai Ginsburg
“The pigs were my best friends”: Animals and the Holocaust in Alona Frankel’s Memoirs
Naomi B. Sokoloff
Stalagim: At the Limits of Israeli Literature
Eric Zakim
P ART F OUR : C ONCERNING C ANONS
Disruptive Nativity: The Poetry of Rina Shani and the Sixties in Israel
Riki Traum
Asaf Schurr and the Critique of Postmodernism in Contemporary Hebrew Literature
Yaron Peleg
“And the Winner Is …”: The Economy of Literary Awards
Nancy E. Berg
Appendix
A Canaanite Story: “The Lord Be Praised”
Eitan Notev
On Our Bookshelf
Contributors
Index
Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Carmit Rosen, “chorus”
Figure 3.1 Psalm 95 and Yehuda Amichai, “ Shir shel shabbat ”
Figure 3.2 Psalm 92 and Avraham Halfi, “ Tefilah ”
Figure 3.3 S’lichot and Yehuda Amichai, “ Beterem ”
Figure 4.1 Photograph of Yung Yisroel Members (courtesy of Tzvi Eisenman)
Figure 4.2 Cover of the journal Yung Yisroel , December 1954
Figure 4.3 Cover of Mendel Mann, In a farvorloztn dorf
Figure 4.4 Cover of Tzvi Eisenman, Di ban: dertseylungen
Figure 9.1 Cover of Ivan Spasky, Stalag Stalingrad
Figure 9.2 Cover of Roy Adams, Stalag banot hasatan (Devil Girls Stalag)
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 Comparative 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 appreciation 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 reprinting poetry in this volume.
We were both on sabbatical leave for part of the time we were preparing the manuscript for publication. For the freedom to complete this work, Nancy is grateful to both Washington University in St. Louis and the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; Naomi thanks the University of Washington and, in particular, Professor Selim Kuru and Patrick Gibbs in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization for their support.
As always, love and gratitude to Stan and Doug.
Acknowledgment is made for permission to include the following material:
Yehuda Amichai, “Beterem” [“Before”]; from Mishkan HaNefesh: Machzor for the Days of Awe, Yom Kippur (2015), Copyright by Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Yehuda Amichai, “Shir leil Shabbat,” in Wendy Zierler’s English translation, by permission of Hana Amichai.
Haim Gouri, “Ani vehasheket,” by permission of Hakibbutz Hameuchad-Sifriat Poalim Publishing House.
Avraham Halfi, “Tefilah,” copyright by Avraham Halfi—ACUM—Israel.
Tehila Hakimi, “T’nu li yom echad,” copyright by Tangier Publishing, Israel.
Eitan Notev [Shraga Gafni], “Praised Be the Lord,” translation by Yael Dekel of “Hashevach le’elohim.” By permission of Avner Gafni.
Carmit Rosen, “Chorus,” by permission of Hakibbutz Hameuchad-Sifriat Poalim Publishing House.
Rina Shani, “Alibi,” “Ani ratsiti et ha’ir zarah,” “Perach zar,” “Shalom le’adoni hamelekh,” and “Zeh Shavuot,” from Mivchar shirim , ed. Riki Traum (2019), copyright by Hakibbutz Hameuchad-Sifriat Poalim.
Yona Wallach, “Tishlach li sheket,” by permission of Eikhut Publishing,
Natan Zach, “Rega‘ echad,” Shirim Shonim , copyright by Natan Zach—ACUM—Israel.
Introduction
Under Construction
A Kind of Festschrift for Israeli Literature
N ANCY E. B ERG AND N AOMI B. S OKOLOFF
Festschriften persist and multiply. Why? Because they are not just retrospective, but prospective. That is to say the Festschrift is a Beruf, a call to further work, effort, and energy, a call to the improve