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

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.

 

 

Conference: AJS Program Book now online (Boston, Dec 13-15, 2015)

The 47th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies will take place in Boston, December 13-15, 2015.

The full program is now available on the AJS website: http://www.ajsnet.org/conference-menu.htm

You may also download the program here: PDF

 

 

New Article: Stahl, Theomorphism and Modern Hebrew Literature’s Search for the Divine: Brenner and Shlonsky

Stahl, Neta. “Theomorphism and Modern Hebrew Literature’s Search for the Divine: Brenner and Shlonsky as a Case Study.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 22.1 (2015): 62-85.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mohr/jsq/2015/00000022/00000001/art00003

 

 

 

New Article: Bassan, Y.H. Brenner and the Weak Rethinking of the Politics of Hebrew Literature

Bassan, Eyal. “Affirmative Weakening: Y.H. Brenner and the Weak Rethinking of the Politics of Hebrew Literature.” Rethinking History 19.1 (2015): 41-60.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13642529.2014.913940

 

Abstract

If nihilism is a largely misunderstood concept, it is on account of both its ambivalence and its affirmative horizon. Drawing on these aspects, this article reactivates the concept of nihilism in rereading one of the most influential moments in the history of modern Hebrew literature: Y.H. Brenner’s novel From Here and There and his subsequent essay on ‘the genre of Eretz Israel.’ Indeed, in a central episode in the novel the limits of legitimate political critique are traced along the lines of nihilism; but, as Nietzschean-inspired theories of nihilism emphasize, nihilism, taken to the point of its own overcoming, can be completed into a moment of creative affirmation. Following the philosophy of ‘weak thought,’ I read this moment in Brenner as a moment of weak affirmation. Through it, I argue, Brenner proposes a weak political and literary paradigm as an affirmative continuation of the nihilistic, post-Zionist critique. Surprisingly, then, Brenner, one of the central figures in Zionist history, turns out to be a weak thinker: he thus allows for a rethinking of the relations between nationalism, literature, and historiography. Or, in other words, for a weakening of national politics, literature, and literary historiography.

New Article: Katz, Niagara, Primitivism, and the Hebrew Literary Imagination

Katz, Stephen. “Power and Powerlessness: Niagara, Primitivism, and the Hebrew Literary Imagination.” Modern Judaism 34.2 (2014): 233-56.

URL: http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/2/233

 

Excerpt

Despite the impression of having attained tranquility and a stable existence, the Jews in Semel’s novel have not found their proper rest, not even on their IsraIsland by the Niagara River. The Falls, just a hop-skip-and-jump downstream, issue forth a foreboding mushroom-like pillar of vapor that rises into the air taking the form that evokes a nuclear explosion (pp. 80, 176, 203, 225–26), a force that threatens to annihilate all of humanity. The metaphor stands as a constant reminder of the violence lurking behind human affairs, from the destruction of Native American culture to the events of September 11, 2001. In addition, it is a threat to Jewish existence as its relatively pristine homogeneous culture gives rise to an Americanized hybridity, as is the life of all who reside in this place.

The image of the Falls resembling the mushroom-shaped aftermath of a nuclear explosion resembles an analogous image frequently applied to Israel. As opposed to life on the precipice of a torrential waterfall, Israel’s condition has often been likened to existence on the edge of a volcano. Nava Semel merely substitutes water for fire. The Falls, it turns out, become a harbinger for the devastations of September 11 as a mark of the end of things, and perhaps some new beginnings.

[…]

At the time when Jews migrating to Eretz Israel were occupied with learning the lay of the land (yedi‘at ha’aretz, knowledge of the land), Hebrew writers in America were also making the acquaintance of the Golden Land. Assimilation into America—whether by those dwelling in America literally, or figuratively for those Hebraists demonstrating their worldliness by writing of vistas other than their own—was also a process of yedi‘at ha’aretz for America’s Hebraists. Their writings testify to an act of inscribing America, of acculturation and internationalization, an adoption of the New World, its environment and myths. In this process, Niagara was but one of many sites of intersection, of American places introduced to the Hebrew reader. As we see, more than a few works in prose or verse were preoccupied with this project, either directly or as an incidental setting of the plot in a new milieu. In so doing, these poems and tales were making the American landscape part of the Jewish experience, fixing it within the reader’s conscience, as a “coming out” of Hebrew literature from the cocoon of self-absorption to an exploration and adaptation to the world.

We might even detect in these American-centered vistas a legacy of the haskalah, when Hebrew writing was praised for the attention devoted to the intricacies of nature and the natural world or was criticized for not doing so. In their fixation on Niagara, writers were inevitably challenged to add their own powers of observation, replication, and metaphorizing, when needed, to broaden it for the host of uses in the Hebrew literary canon.

Cite: Stahl, Jesus as the New Jew

Stahl, Neta. "Jesus as the New Jew: Zionism and the Literary Representation of Jesus." Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 11.1 (2012): 1-23.

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725886.2012.646693

 

Abstract

This article deals with Modern Hebrew writers’ attempt to present Jesus as part of the national project of Zionism. It argues that Jesus functions in these works in different and sometimes opposite ways and that the Zionist project was eager to distinguish itself from the world of traditional Judaism by embracing its ultimate Other. In this sense, the reclamation of Jesus by Zionist writers can be understood as an attempt to mark the boundaries of the new Jewish self vis-à-vis traditional Judaism. But Jesus’s Otherness functioned as more than that––it provided a kind of mirror that reflected to Zionist writers their own communal identities. In order to find themselves in this mirror, they had to distinguish between the Jesus of Christianity and the historical, “authentic” Jewish Jesus.