Shabtai, Yaakov (1934–1981)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shai Ginsburg
Keyword(s):  
Heart Failure ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Original Publication ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
Literary Achievement ◽  
Modern Hebrew

An Israeli Hebrew author, playwright, lyricist, and translator, Yaakov Shabtai was born in Tel Aviv in 1934 (Wikipectia …). Shabtai began translating plays and writing lyrics and original plays following his military service, when he lived in a kibbutz. In 1967, he moved back to Tel Aviv to dedicate himself to writing. In 1972, a collection of his short stories was published. Both his plays and short fiction received mixed reviews at the time of their original publication. In 1977, Shabtai published his first novel, ZikhronDvarim [Past Continuous], which was immediately recognized as a unique literary achievement and as one of the most significant works of modern Hebrew literature. Shabtai died in 1981 of heart failure. His second novel, SofDavar [Past Perfect], edited jointly by his widow, Edna Shabtai, and by the literary critic Dan Miron, was published posthumously in 1984 to great critical acclaim.

Gnessin, Uri Nissan (1879–1913)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naama Harel
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Modern Hebrew

Uri Nissan Gnessin was a Russian Jewish author, who is recognized as one of the founders of Modern Hebrew literature. He was born in Starodub, a small town in the Ukraine, as a son of a Hasidic rabbi. Attracted to the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment movement), Gnessin immersed himself in the study of foreign languages, as well as other secular subjects, and was especially influenced by Russian literature. At the age of 14 he began to publish short stories, novellas, poems, literary criticism, and translations in various leading Hebrew periodicals. His first collection of short stories, Tsilele Ha’ḥayim (The Shadows of Life) was published in 1904 in Warsaw, where he also co-founded the Hebrew publishing house Nisyonot (Attempts) in 1906.

Shlonsky, Abraham (1900–1973)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Ofengenden
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Modernist Poetry ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
Literary Magazine ◽  
Modern Hebrew ◽  
Unique Style

Abraham Shlonsky can be regarded as the main architect of modern Hebrew poetry. He was born in 1900 to a socialist revolutionary mother and a Chassidic father in Kryukovo (East Ukraine) and emigrated to Palestine in 1922. Shlonsky first worked in agriculture as a pioneer at the kibbutz Ein Harod. He later moved to Tel Aviv to become a journalist, editor and translator. Early on Shlonsky rebelled against the romantic nationalism of Hayim Nahman Bialik and created a modernist symbolist style of poetry that was hegemonic in Israel from the 1930s until the early 1960s. Shlonsky’s poetry has had a decisive impact on Hebrew literature; more than any other poet, he is responsible for the transition from romantic to modernist poetry. The unique style that he developed became prevalent in Hebrew poetry from the 1930s until the early 1960s. More recently (2005), this style has experienced a renaissance via an influential group of young poets associated with the literary magazine Ho.

Neglected Origins of Modern Hebrew Prose: Hasidic and Maskilic Travel Narratives

AJS Review ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Frieden
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Travel Narratives ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Straight Line ◽  
Modern Hebrew

The emergence of modern Hebrew literature has too often been represented as a straight line from Enlightenment authors' meliẓa to “Mendele's nusaḥ” in S. Y. Abramovitsh's fiction. If we are to move beyond this one-dimensional geometry, we must add additional lines of development: from traditional rabbinic writing in postmishnaic Hebrew, branching out to hasidic narratives and parodies of hasidic Hebrew, and gradually leading toward a more vernacular Hebrew style. Once we have recognized the inadequacy of the older model, which culminates in hyperbolic claims for Abramovitsh's short stories (1886–96), we can better appreciate the contributions of diverse authors such as R. Nathan (Nosn) Sternharz (1780–1845), Mendel Lefin (1749–1826), and their successors.

The Drama of Narration: Y. H. Brenner's In Winter

AJS Review ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Fleck
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Modern Hebrew ◽  
Human Psyche ◽  
Twentieth Century Fiction ◽  
Do So

In her book, Transparent Minds, Dorrit Cohn reminds us that one of the special powers of fiction lies in its ability to reveal the normally hidden inner life of people other than ourselves. Writers of fiction can, if it fits their purposes, place before our scrutiny the most intimate and private thoughts, feelings, motives, fears, and passions of their imagined characters, and can do so with a variety of techniques which, especially in twentieth-century fiction, take account of the complex, overdetermined, and largely unconscious processes of the human psyche. In modern Hebrew literature, no novelist has exploited this aspect of fiction with more passion and technical inventiveness than Y. H. Brenner. From the very outset of his career, Brenner's ability to make transparent the minds of his characters drew special attention and praise. Responding to his first collection of short stories, M. Y. Berdyczewski, for example, marveled that Brenner's characters had only to speak and they “stand before us naked, revealing all that is within.” And even Bialik, who was troubled by Brenner's fiction on other grounds, had to admit his impatience with literary theories when, as he put it, he was able to “see a living soul.”

Castel-Bloom, Orly (1960--)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Grumberg
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
City Centre ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
Literary Prizes ◽  
The City ◽  
Contemporary Author

Born in Tel Aviv to Egyptian Jewish parents, the Hebrew author Orly Castel-Bloom studied film at the prestigious Beit-Zvi Institute and at Tel Aviv University before publishing her first collection of short stories, Lo rahok mi-merkaz ha-ir (Not Far from the City Centre) in 1987. Her stories and novels have been translated into 11 languages and have won critical acclaim in Israel and abroad. She has been awarded several domestic and international literary prizes, including the Prime Minister's Prize (1994, 2001, and 2011) and the French WIZO Prize (2005). From the beginning of her literary career, her writing excited the admiration and the ire of Israeli readers and literary critics, prompting a debate between those who considered her sparse, colloquial, and at times slangy Hebrew as fresh and true to life, and those who derided it as superficial and inadequately literary. The latter critics even coined a phrase to describe her use of language, 'ivrit raza' ('thin Hebrew'), situating her squarely against the predominantly male torchbearers of Hebrew literature and their 'rich Hebrew'. Her reputation as a leading contemporary author was established with the publication of her notorious second novel, Doli siti (Dolly City, 1992).

Cyclopedia of Modern Hebrew Literature, Vol. I

1967 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Abraham I. Katsh ◽  
G. Kressel
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Modern Hebrew
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