Traditions of Translation in Hebrew Literature

The centrality of translation in the history of Hebrew literature cannot be overstated. Scholars of Hebrew translation history often attribute the fact that Hebrew writers have steadily relied on translation for enriching and sustaining the Hebrew literary canon to Hebrew’s long-standing existence in a state of diglossia or multiglossia: a condition in which a community habitually uses two or more languages or several forms of the same language for different purposes. Jewish communities from antiquity to the present have generally used Hebrew alongside other tongues, even after Hebrew’s reinvention as a modern vernacular, its so-called revival, in the 20th century. It is possible that Hebrew served as a vernacular in antiquity, but sufficient proof of this possibility has never surfaced. Nevertheless, in late-19th-century Eastern Europe, Jewish thinkers and lexicographers began promoting the idea of resuscitating Hebrew. They often articulated this goal through the metaphor and practice of translation, borrowing from European cultures the notion that every modern nation is defined by a shared vernacular, while also translating into Hebrew a cornucopia of texts—scientific, poetic, journalistic, and philosophical. This enabled those late-19th- and early-20th-century Jewish thinkers to enrich, expand, and test the limits of Hebrew in a modern context. If the modern Hebrew literary canon includes the Hebrew Bible, as many Hebrew writers and scholars believe, then it consists of the most frequently translated and widely circulated text in the world. Yet Biblical Hebrew differs from later formations of the language, and traditions of biblical translation in and outside the Jewish world call for separate bibliographies. The following bibliography focuses on central theoretical questions relating to traditions of translation in Hebrew literature, foregrounding the intensifying debates on Hebrew’s spiritual and national status from the 19th century onward. Translation has often served as a unique arena for such debates, acting as a vehicle for transforming Hebrew literature from within, while allowing for its venturing out. It has frequently allowed its practitioners to define the imaginary boundaries of Hebrew literature and delineate the contours of Hebrew culture as primarily Jewish-national.

Hebrew Literature Outside of Israel Since 1948

Hebrew literature, defined expansively, has existed outside of the land of Israel since at least the first millennium of the Common Era. Hebrew religious, liturgical, and poetic works were composed in Europe, the Middle East, and North America for a thousand years before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The presence of vocabulary, grammar, and genres that were adapted from non-Jewish-dominant cultures are a testament to the long imbrication of Hebrew in the Diaspora, the areas of Jewish dispersion outside the land of Israel. Hebrew literature in its modern form originated in the cities of Europe in the 19th century, drawing on European languages and literatures, historical layers of the Hebrew textual tradition, and Yiddish for inspiration. In the early 20th century, the Tarbut Ivrit (Hebrew Culture) movement, a deeply Zionist group made up of American Hebraists, most of whom had immigrated from the Russian Empire and been influenced by Ahad Ha’am’s idea of a national Hebrew culture, created another center of Hebrew literary production in the United States. At the same time, the center of Hebrew culture was shifting from Europe to Palestine, and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Palestine rapidly became the main center of Hebrew literary production. Nonetheless, even since 1948, there has always been a small but significant amount of Hebrew literature written outside of Israel, whether by translingual Hebraists or Israeli expatriates. While most of the American Hebraist movement had died out by the 1960s, a few writers continued to produce Hebrew literature in America until the 1990s. And since that time, Israeli expatriate writers in the United States and Europe have begun to create a contemporary Hebrew literature outside of Israel, with its own idioms and ideologies. Unlike the American Hebraists of the Tarbut Ivrit movement, these writers often see Hebrew in apolitical terms or are explicitly anti-Zionist in their use of Hebrew in the Diaspora. This contemporary Diaspora Hebrew literature has also been accompanied by the rise of multilingual Israeli literature, often with overt references to Hebrew but written in other languages. These Hebrew and multilingual literary cultures are also strongly tied to art in other forms and media, which are essential to understanding contemporary Hebrew culture in a global context.

No Sabras in the Fields?

The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv has always presented itself as the first repertory theater in the Yishuv that represented the sabras, creating the impression that its actors and artists were themselves mainly sabras and Hebrew their native language. However, this image, based chiefly on the successful performance of the play He Walked through the Fields, does not reflect reality. The article questions the myth by exploring the actual number of sabra theater artists and actors in the troupe, their place and measure of influence. Exposing this image sheds light on The Cameri Theatre at its beginning as well as on the creation of the image of the sabra, as presented by the character of Uri, and embraced by Hebrew culture.

far east

A little more than one and a half centuries ago, far eastern provinces became a part of Russia. A short but rich biography of this area remains poorly studied both by historians and theorists of architecture and urbanism. The capital of the Jewish autonomous region, Birobidzhan is a unique example of how to create a “promised land” for the Yiddish culture. As this culture vanishes, being replaced by the Hebrew culture around the world, Birobidzhan becomes more and more significant for the history of architecture. The article by A. Ivanova and A. Kovalevsky opens up the topic of vanishing cultural tradition of the Jewish people of the “late stage of the displacement period”.Such large cities of the region as Khabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk, Ussuriysk, Vladivostok are the topic for the articles based on field studies by M. Bazilevich and N. Kradin. Architecture of these Far Eastern cities reflects their wonderful history, a mixture of processes of industrialization of the area, mass migration and intersection of Western and Eastern cultures.

Introduction

The introduction lays out both the key variables of the entire book and the overlapping themes that stem from them—the nationalization of the theological in Hebrew culture, secularism, Zionist biblocentrism, the Zionist commitment to Westernness, Arab Jews and the socioethnic hierarchy of Zionism, Zionist historiography, and the gradual resurfacing of Jewish diasporic cultures. In lieu of the constructs that have conditioned the study of Israeli art and culture, the book opts for synchronous narratives that unfold in ways that are constantly unsystematic, nondifferential, and afflicted with various degrees of governmentality. This assemblage moves beyond musical exoticism or identitarian paradigms that often promote territorial nationalism uncritically.

Non-biblical Tonalities

Chapter 1 revolves around Josef Tal’s 1955 opera Saul at Ein-Dor, whose libretto is word-for-word the narrative given in 1 Samuel 28. Through this opera the chapter examines the actualization of the Bible in Hebrew culture and its promotion of territorial nationalism, as well as the artistic formulations that contested the literalist way Zionists had selectively appropriated the Bible. Under the purview of what Anita Shapira terms “biblical literalism” and Jean-Christophe Attias calls “Zionist biblocentrism,” the literal reading of selected texts facilitated a national allegory that actualized tropes of return, of redemption, and of territorial expansionism. To understand the cultural networks activated by such readings, the chapter studies the works of Ben-Haim, Orgad, Boskovich, and additional works by Tal. A parallel discussion on the portrayals of King Saul in modern Hebrew poetry complements the entire narrative, and a thorough analysis of the post-tonal devices in Tal’s opera concludes the chapter.

Theological Stains

Theological Stains traces the growth of art music in Israel from the mid-twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first. In a riveting and provocative account, Assaf Shelleg explores the theological grammar of Zionism and its impact on the art music written by emigrant and native composers grappling with biblical redemptive promises and diasporic patrimonies. Unveiling the network that bred territorial nationalism and Hebrew culture, Shelleg shows how this mechanism infiltrated composers’ work as much as it triggered less desirable responses from composers who sought to realize to the nonterritorial diasporic options Zionism has renounced. In the process, compositional aesthetics was stained by the state’s nationalization of the theological, by diasporism that refused redemption, and by Jewish musical traditions that permeated inaudibly into compositions written throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Accompanying this rich and dramatic story are equivalent developments in modern Hebrew literature and poetry alongside vast and previously unstudied archival sources. The book is also lavishly illuminated with 135 music examples that render it an incisive guide to fundamental chapters in modern and late modern art music.

Culture in the Histadrut, 1930-1945

The Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine was dominated by the Hebrew national culture. Culture was an important and sometimes definitive element in securing the dominance of the Zionist Labor Movement during the Mandate era. The construction and shaping of a new Hebrew culture was a central principle in the movement’s creedal, political, and educational approach. The General Federation of Jewish Labor in Palestine, known as the Histadrut, which was the main institutional player in the shaping of cultural endeavor in Yishuv society, hewed to the spirit of the Socialist Zionist worldview. During this period, the Histadrut emerged as the most progressive, authentic and current cultural agent working to shape the Jewish-Zionist atmosphere and every-day life in Palestine. In the 1930s, the leading figure in the Histadrut’s cultural endeavor was Jacob Sandbank, who operated as part of the Cultural Center established in 1935. According to Sandbank, culture, in the sense of kultura, cannot be ‘manufactured’. Instead, he claimed that it materializes in various spheres of life, and its vital and spiritual elements come about inadvertently – without prior intent, without setting goals, and without dictating things ab initio.

Finally, Militarism Is a Legitimate Term

David Greenblum, From the Heroism of the Spirit to the Sanctification of Power: Power and Heroism in Religious Zionism between 1948 and 1968 (Tel Aviv: Open University, 2016). Uri S. Cohen, The Security Style and the Hebrew Culture of War (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2017). Dan Arev, Dying to Watch: War, Memory, and Television in Israel 1967–1991 (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2017). Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, Tel Aviv Was Also Once an Arab Village: The Normalization of the Territories in Israeli Discourse, 1967 (Cambridge, MA: Israel Academic Press, 2017). Nitza Ben-Dov, The Life of War: On the Military, Revenge, Loss, and War Consciousness in Israeli Prose (Jerusalem: Schocken Books, 2016). Haya Milo, Songs Through the Barrel of the Gun: Israeli Soldiers’ Folk Songs (Tel Aviv: Open University, 2017).

Space in Modern Hebrew Literature

The complex relationship between space and modern Hebrew literature proceeds from key spatial paradigms of the Hebrew Bible: Egypt, the desert, and Zion. Over centuries, Jews dispersed around the globe used Hebrew to express different modes of spatial engagement: rabbis considered the places and placelessness of God; medieval Andalusian poets longed for Zion; communist Jews in Baghdad and Jewish polyglots in Odessa used Hebrew to narrate their relationship to places their families inhabited for generations; Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians, in an era when Hebrew is no longer the sole purview of Jews, share Hebrew to reflect on homeland and diaspora in poetry and prose. Though “space” is by no means a novel phenomenon, the “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences offered scholars of Hebrew culture conceptual and theoretical tools for addressing the diverse spatial configurations they encountered. The theorization of space and place in literature emphasized their active role in social relations and called for new conceptualizations of the construction and subversion of identities. Works by Gaston Bachelard, Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, Edward Said, Edward Soja, and Yi-Fu Tuan, among others, have undergirded investigations of space and place in modern Hebrew literature. Because most of the critical work on space in Hebrew literature addresses Hebrew texts from the 20th century, this entry focuses on this period, though it also provides citations of scholarship analyzing biblical, rabbinic, Andalusian, and Haskalah texts. The citations mostly refer to literary texts but also include spatial analyses in cultural studies and history contexts. While many of the texts cited address the nation and territory or, alternatively, spatial paradigms that coalesce in resistance to the national, others investigate spatial paradigms in Hebrew that circumvent the national to consider fluid spatialities such as diaspora, migration, transnationalism, and travel, as well as historical spatial configurations that exist as memories, dreams, or specters. The preponderance of concrete investigations of specific places such as the city, the desert, and the kibbutz indicates the materiality of much of Hebrew literary spatiality. As the final section on modernity demonstrates, the spatial has opened fruitful avenues of inquiry within the existing historical discourse on Hebrew culture. There is, inevitably, some overlap in these categories: entries under The City, for example, might feel at home under Modernism and Place, while the line demarcating Borders and Beyond is appropriately penetrable, bleeding into Spatialities of Center and Margins. Finally, this entry should by no means be taken to represent all the scholarship on space in modern Hebrew literature, but rather to provide a sense of significant contributions and recent research.