Toward the end of the twentieth century, an unprecedented surge of writing altered the Israeli literary scene in profound ways. As fresh creative voices and multiple languages vied for recognition, diversity replaced consensus. Genres once accorded lower status--such as the graphic novel and science fiction--gained readership and positive critical notice. These trends ushered in not only the discovery and recovery of literary works but also a major rethinking of literary history. In Since 1948, scholars consider how recent voices have succeeded older ones and reverberated in concert with them; how linguistic and geographical boundaries have blurred; how genres have shifted; and how canon and competition have shaped Israeli culture. Charting surprising trajectories of a vibrant, challenging, and dynamic literature, the contributors analyze texts composed in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Arabic; by Jews and non-Jews; and by Israelis abroad as well as writers in Israel. What emerges is a portrait of Israeli literature as neither minor nor regional, but rather as transnational, multilingual, and worthy of international attention.
Author(s): Nancy E. Berg (editor), Naomi B. Sokoloff (editor)
Series: (SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Literature and Culture)
Edition: 1
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 306
Tags: Israeli Literature, Jewish Literature, Literary Criticism
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction Under Construction: A Kind of Festschrift for Israeli Literature
Building and Being Built
1977—Building a Canon
Moment Two: The Canon in the Mirror
Moment Three: Dueling Canons
To Be Determined
Notes
Part One: Through Time: Silences, Voices, Echoes
Not One, but Five Moments of Silence: On the Poetics and Politics of Asking for Silence
Introduction
Natan Zach’s One Moment of Silence
One Moment
Haim Gouri and the Silence
The Silence and I
Yona Wallach’s Explicit Sheket
Send Me Silence
Carmit Rosen: Old Kings and a New Queen?
Tehila Hakimi—The Time Has Come to Say Shut Up
Notes
Sounding the Mizrachi Voice: Ḥafla Thematics from the Ma‘abarah to the Post‑Arabic Novel
Eli Amir’s Iraq Trilogy and the Melancholia of No Return
A Bilingualism of Hebrew and Silence: Almog Behar’s Tchachla veH. ezkel
Conclusion
Notes
Anthological Poetics: Reading Amichai and Halfi in Liberal Prayerbooks
Rereading the Siddur with Amichai and Halfi
Amichai in American Reform Liturgy
Conclusion
Notes
Part Two: Across Language and Territory: Literature and Identity
When Yiddish Was Young in Israel
Notes
A Canaanite Story: Language, National Identity, and the 1948 War
Canaanite Ideology, Canaanite Fiction
“Everything as it was a long time ago”— Language and Translation
“Now the yahud were here”
Re-Territorializing the Hebrew Language
Notes
Hebrew Unbound: Alternative Homelands in the New World
Notes
Part Three: Between the Lines: Rethinking Genres
From Here to Elsewhere and Back in Israeli-Hebrew Children’s Literature
1
2
3
4
5
Notes
“The pigs were my best friends”: Animals and the Holocaust in Alona Frankel’s Memoirs
“They were always with me. The lice, my lice. . . .”
From Animal Fable to “How Could Such Things Happen?”
Wounded Crows and “Prisoners of Zion”
Notes
Stalagim: At the Limits of Israeli Literature
Notes
Part Four: Concerning Canons
Disruptive Nativity: The Poetry of Rina Shani and the Sixties in Israel
Committed and Nomadic: The Counterculture of the 1960s
Planted-Twice and Non-Planted: Leah Goldberg and Rina Shani
Conclusion
Notes
Asaf Schurr and the Critique of Postmodernism in Contemporary Hebrew Literature
Notes
“And the Winner Is . . .”: The Economy of Literary Awards
Literary Prizes
Case Study: The Care and Feeding of a Literary Award
Conclusion
Notes
Appendix A Canaanite Story: “The Lord Be Praised”
On Our Bookshelf
Contributors
Index
