New Article: Troen, Secular Judaism in Israel

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Aryeh

Troen, Ilan. “Secular Judaism in Israel.” Society (early view; online first).

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12115-016-9991-x

Abstract

Secularity among Israel’s Jews retains many elements associated with traditional Judaism. Comprising 80 % of Israel’s Jews, they define themselves as secular but nevertheless “do Judaism” by performing rituals and hold to traditional religious worldviews and values. Such behavior is comprehended in Eisenstadt’s “multiple modernities” as well as Berger’s multiple “altars” and “coexistence.” Such behavior may be explained in a new balance between the traditional triad of Peoplehood/Torah[The Law]/and the Land of Israel that has characterized Judaism through the ages and found expression by a Hebrew-speaking people who imported new and diverse modern concepts and sources of authority in the return to their homeland where they constructed a “Jewish” state of ambiguous meanings.

New Article: Szobel, Prostitution, Power and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Aryeh

Szobel, Ilana. “‘Lights in the Darkness’: Prostitution, Power and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature.” Prooftexts 34.2 (2015): 170-206.

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/prooftexts/v034/34.2.szobel.html

Abstract

This article explores the juxtaposition of prostitution, masculinity, and nationalism in the works of Hebrew writers at the beginning of the twentieth century. By discussing the psycho-poetical elements that underlie David Vogel’s depiction of prostitution and the ideological elements in Gershon Shofman’s work, and by exposing their dialogue with Hayim Nahman Bialik, this project explores power, vulnerability, gender, sexuality, and nationalism in Hebrew literature of the first half of the twentieth century.

My study argues that the trope of the prostitute enables writers of early Hebrew literature to negotiate questions of strength and weakness in the Jewish world. Although Bialik’s option of sovereign masculinity became the norm for the Zionist discourse, Shofman, Vogel, Brenner, Reuveni and others expressed different perceptions of gender and power. Hence, in order to understand the intensity of the poetic, national, and gendered dilemmas and struggles of this generation, this study offers to listen not only to their concepts of revival, renewal and empowerment, but also to their expressions of weakness, frustration, loss, anger and aggression.

Reviews: Levy, Poetic Trespass

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Aryeh

Levy, Lital. Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Reviews

Irving, Sarah. “Can literature disrupt Israel’s identity?” Electronic Intifada, May 19, 2015.
Stern, Ramon. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.3 (2015): 605-607.

New Article: Ben-Yehuda, Between Bialik and Himself

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Aryeh

Ben-Yehuda, Omri. “Between Bialik and Himself: Acting Hyperbole Out.” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 27 (2014): 155ff (in Hebrew).

Abstract

The article examines some of Bialik’s major narrative works – mainly Big Harry, Behind the Fence, In the City of Slaughter and A Fattened Bull and a Green Meal – through a careful close-reading that seeks to unpack major textual allusions between them. Using some of Bakhtin’s holistic concepts, which outline the relations of prose and ideology, the article explores Bialik’s poetics and defines him as a ‘hyperbolic storyteller’ who seeks expansion both in his phrases and in the world they depict. By using trauma theory, the article examines these textual links as repetitive acting out of events, both biographical and national.

בן-יהודה, עמרי. “היפרבולות והפגן: על כמה אלוזיות של ביאליק לעצמו”. מחקרי ירושלים בספרות עברית כז (2014): 155 ואילך.

New Book: Levy, Poetic Trespass. Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Aryeh

Levy, Lital. Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

URL: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10389.html

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A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. In Poetic Trespass, Lital Levy brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine.

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Table of Contents

Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xv

Introduction: The No-Man’s-Land of Language 1

PART I. HISTORICAL VISIONS AND ELISIONS
Chapter 1. From the “Hebrew Bedouin” to “Israeli Arabic”: Arabic, Hebrew, and the Creation of Israeli Culture 21
Chapter 2. Bialik and the Sephardim: The Ethnic Encoding of Modern Hebrew Literature 60

PART II. BILINGUAL ENTANGLEMENTS
Chapter 3. Exchanging Words: Arabic Writing in Israel and the Poetics of Misunderstanding 105
Chapter 4. Palestinian Midrash: Toward a Postnational Poetics of Hebrew Verse 141

PART III. AFTERLIVES OF LANGUAGE
Chapter 5. “Along Came the Knife of Hebrew and Cut Us in Two”: Language in Mizrahi Fiction, 1964-2010 189
Chapter 6. “So You Won’t Understand a Word”: Secret Languages, Pseudo-languages, and the Presence of Absence 238
Conclusion. Bloody Hope: The Intertextual Afterword of Salman Masalha and Saul Tchernichowsky 285

Bibliography 299
Index 329

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