Polish And Hebrew Literature And National Identity

The thesis explores the Polish-Jewish national identities of Marek Edelman and Julian Tuwim, both of whom grew up in the pre-World War II era. They both survived the war, the former in the Warsaw Ghetto, the latter in emigration. The thesis contends that each identified as a Polish-Jew yet the meaning was different for each of them; Edelman connected the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the Romantic uprisings of the nineteenth centuries in which Jews participated, and Tuwim sought identity in the Polish language. Their ideas are linked to the Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz and represent his vision of plurality in oneness.

The phenomenon of national identities, always a key issue in the modern history of Bohemian Jewry, was particularly complex because of the marginal differences that existed between the available choices. Considerable overlap was evident in the programs of the various national movements and it was possible to change one's national identity or even to opt for more than one such identity without necessarily experiencing any far-reaching consequences in everyday life. Based on many hitherto unknown archival sources from the Czech Republic, Israel and Austria, the author's research reveals the inner dynamic of each of the national movements and maps out the three most important constructions of national identity within Bohemian Jewry - the German-Jewish, the Czech-Jewish and the Zionist. This book provides a needed framework for understanding the rich history of German- and Czech-Jewish politics and culture in Bohemia and is a notable contribution to the historiography of Bohemian, Czechoslovak and central European Jewry.

Foremost among a recent wave of Polish books on Jewish issues, this groundbreaking work rectifies long-held misconceptions about Polish Jewish writers. Popular notion has it that Polish Jewish writers, unlike their counterparts in Western. Northern, and Central Europe, wrote solely in Yiddish or Hebrew. Yet between the two world wars Poland produced an elite group of assimilated Jews who wrote exclusively in Polish. Theirs was not an easy lot. Torn between love of Poland and its literature and their own Jewish identity, they straddled a fine line between two cultural worlds-at once advocating acculturation while prey to virulent anti-Semitism. This pioneering, award-winning volume examines the emergence and development of these writers, their personal plight, and the profound effect they had upon Polish letters and poetry. Meticulously researched, it explores the role of language as a bridge, attitudes toward Polish writing, impact of the ghetto, and the transformation of Polish into a force for its Jewish populace. Finally, it pays homage to fine literary voices silenced by the Holocaust.

"A mere forty poems, published in journals over the course of [a] decade and not yet assembled in a book, established [Bialik's] reputation in the community of Hebrew literature readers and spontaneously crowned him as the Hebrew national poet, all before he reached thirty..."--Cover.

The subject of Jewish identity is one of the most vexed and contested issues of modern religious and ethnic group history. This interdisciplinary collection draws on work in law, anthropology, history, sociology, literature, and popular culture to consider contemporary and historical responses to the question �Who and what is Jewish?� These essays are focused especially on the issues of who creates the definitions, and how, and in what social and political contexts. The ten leading authorities writing here also look at the forces, ranging from new genetic and reproductive technologies to increasingly multicultural societies, that push against established boundaries. The authors examine how Jews have imagined themselves and how definitions of Jewishness have been established, enforced, challenged, and transformed. Does being a Jew require religious belief, practice, and formal institutional affiliation? Is there a biological or physical aspect of Jewish identity? What is the status of the convert to another religion? How do definitions play out in different geographic and historical settings? What makes Boundaries of Jewish Identity distinctive is its attention to the various Jewish �epistemologies� or ways of knowing who counts as a Jew. These essays reveal that possible answers reflect the different social, intellectual, and political locations of those who are asking. This book speaks to readers concerned with Jewish life and culture and to audiences interested in religious, cultural, and ethnic studies. It provides an excellent opportunity to examine how Jews fit into an increasingly diverse America and an increasingly complicated global society.

Are the literary works of Polish Jews one unified literature in three languages: Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish, or is the literal corpus of each of these languages a separated literary and cultural phenomenon? Twenty-seven scholars from Europe, the United States, and Israel explore different aspects of the multilingual literature of Eastern European Jews, with a particular focus on the trilingual literature of Polish Jews until World War II. The work of the great Yiddish and Hebrew writer Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) represents the center of the book, though it does not concentrate solely on Peretz’s work, but, rather, discusses the oeuvre of other unique authors in the cultural space of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe generally, and in Poland particularly. The book looks at this issue from three aspects, namely the literal, cultural, and historical, and also examines the dialogue of Polish Jewish literature with other languages and cultures.

In Great Immortality, twenty scholars from considerably different cultural backgrounds explore the ways in which certain poets, writers, and artists in Europe have become major figures of cultural memory.

This book explores the life and poetry of Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934) in the context of European national literature between the French Revolution and World War I, showing how he helped create a modern Hebrew national culture, spurring the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. The author begins with Bialik’s background in the Tsarist Empire, contextualizing Jewish powerlessness in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century. As European anti-Semitism grew, Bialik emerged at the vanguard of a modern Hebrew national movement, building on ancient biblical and rabbinic tradition and speaking to Jewish concerns in neo-prophetic poems, love poems, poems for children, and folk poems. This book makes accessible a broad but representative selection of Bialik’s poetry in translation. Alongside this, a variety of national poets are considered from across Europe, including Solomos in Greece, Mickiewicz in Poland, Shevchenko in Ukraine, Njegoš in Serbia, Petőfi in Hungary, and Yeats in Ireland. Aberbach argues that Bialik as Jewish national poet cannot be understood except in the dual context of ancient Jewish nationalism and modern European nationalism, both political and cultural. Written in clear and accessible prose, this book will interest those studying modern European nationalism, Hebrew literature, Jewish history, and anti-Semitism.

Sinister tales written since the early 20th century by the foremost Hebrew authors, including S. Y. Agnon, Leah Goldberg, and Amos Oz, reveal a darkness at the foundation of Hebrew culture. The ghosts of a murdered Talmud scholar and his kidnapped bride rise from their graves for a nocturnal dance of death; a girl hidden by a count in a secret chamber of an Eastern European castle emerges to find that, unbeknownst to her, World War II ended years earlier; a man recounts the act of incest that would shape a trajectory of personal and national history. Reading these works together with central British and American gothic texts, Karen Grumberg illustrates that modern Hebrew literature has regularly appropriated key gothic ideas to help conceptualize the Jewish relationship to the past and, more broadly, to time. She explores why these authors were drawn to the gothic, originally a European mode associated with antisemitism, and how they use it to challenge assumptions about power and powerlessness, vulnerability and violence, and to shape modern Hebrew culture. Grumberg provides an original perspective on Hebrew literary engagement with history and sheds new light on the tensions that continue to characterize contemporary Israeli cultural and political rhetoric.