what is the literature of Israel?
This is one of those hard cases, in which antiquity overflows the rim, finding no place in the narrow frontiers of the contemporary country called Israel. The literature of Jews is suspended between the Hebrew origins and the present-day Israeli cultural reality. Also, many languages overlap in this territory: Hebrew, of course, ancient, medieval, and modern, but also Aramaic, Greek and Koiné of the Gospels, Arabic, as well as late acquisitions such as Yiddish.
Evidently, at the centre of this ancient literature is the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), a whole literature compiled, since it contains a collection of canonical texts, the Torah (the Pentateuch, i.e. the five books of Moses), the Nevi'im (books of the remaining Prophets), and the Ketuvim (the "Writings" or "Hagiographa"). Its oldest part derives from the oral teachings of Abraham, sometime around 2000 BC. The youngest texts are contemporary to the Roman Empire, when the teachings of a great spiritual master, Jesus of Nazareth, find expression not only in Aramaic, but also in Greek and Latin. On the other hand, the Hebrew Bible lives on its own spiritual and textual life in the Talmud, the collection of texts that is central to Rabbinic Judaism. It has two major compounds: the Mishnah (the written text derived from the oral Torah) and the Gemara. The Mishna, the rabbinic codification of the religious law, was written down around 200 CE in so-called Mishnaic Hebrew, while the commentary on it, the Gemara, was written in Aramaic. Once again in Hebrew, there is the expansive tradition of midrash, i.e. the exegesis of the Bible.
During the Middle Ages, Hebrew literature expands from Israel to a vast area reaching North Africa and Islamic Spain. It deals not only with religion but also with a wide range of philosophical topics, just like in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. On the other hand, Jews start to write in Arabic, or a specific language designed as Judeo-Arabic. Especially medieval Jewish poetry is under the strong influence of the powerful Arabic tradition. Only in Palestine, the liturgic poetry (the piyyutim) remains faithful to Hebrew as the tongue of expression.
The modern Hebrew literature starts in the 18th century, although the Sephardic authors still write predominantly in Judeo-Arabic. It is connected to European locations and cultural influence, as it develops in places like Amsterdam. It brings about the Haskalah, the movement of Jewish emancipation in Europe. In the 19th century, apart from Amsterdam, this new Hebrew literature develops in Prague, and all across Eastern Europe, in Hungary, Romania, Austro-Hungarian Galicia, and the Russian Empire.
Meanwhile, the Jews gain another language with literary aspirations, Yiddish. It is a tongue of the Ashkenazic Jews, related to Middle High German. Old Yiddish literature is dated roughly to 1300-1780. The next stage is often designed as Hasidic literature (1780-1890), rich in mystical parables created by such figures as Baal Shem Tov. Finally, there is also modern Yiddish literature, intertwined with the currents of European modernity.
Finally, in the 20th century the Zionist movement brought those dispersed literary legacies back to one geographical location. The new forms of Hebrew writing appear with the emergence of the state of Israel in 1948.
Evidently, at the centre of this ancient literature is the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), a whole literature compiled, since it contains a collection of canonical texts, the Torah (the Pentateuch, i.e. the five books of Moses), the Nevi'im (books of the remaining Prophets), and the Ketuvim (the "Writings" or "Hagiographa"). Its oldest part derives from the oral teachings of Abraham, sometime around 2000 BC. The youngest texts are contemporary to the Roman Empire, when the teachings of a great spiritual master, Jesus of Nazareth, find expression not only in Aramaic, but also in Greek and Latin. On the other hand, the Hebrew Bible lives on its own spiritual and textual life in the Talmud, the collection of texts that is central to Rabbinic Judaism. It has two major compounds: the Mishnah (the written text derived from the oral Torah) and the Gemara. The Mishna, the rabbinic codification of the religious law, was written down around 200 CE in so-called Mishnaic Hebrew, while the commentary on it, the Gemara, was written in Aramaic. Once again in Hebrew, there is the expansive tradition of midrash, i.e. the exegesis of the Bible.
During the Middle Ages, Hebrew literature expands from Israel to a vast area reaching North Africa and Islamic Spain. It deals not only with religion but also with a wide range of philosophical topics, just like in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. On the other hand, Jews start to write in Arabic, or a specific language designed as Judeo-Arabic. Especially medieval Jewish poetry is under the strong influence of the powerful Arabic tradition. Only in Palestine, the liturgic poetry (the piyyutim) remains faithful to Hebrew as the tongue of expression.
The modern Hebrew literature starts in the 18th century, although the Sephardic authors still write predominantly in Judeo-Arabic. It is connected to European locations and cultural influence, as it develops in places like Amsterdam. It brings about the Haskalah, the movement of Jewish emancipation in Europe. In the 19th century, apart from Amsterdam, this new Hebrew literature develops in Prague, and all across Eastern Europe, in Hungary, Romania, Austro-Hungarian Galicia, and the Russian Empire.
Meanwhile, the Jews gain another language with literary aspirations, Yiddish. It is a tongue of the Ashkenazic Jews, related to Middle High German. Old Yiddish literature is dated roughly to 1300-1780. The next stage is often designed as Hasidic literature (1780-1890), rich in mystical parables created by such figures as Baal Shem Tov. Finally, there is also modern Yiddish literature, intertwined with the currents of European modernity.
Finally, in the 20th century the Zionist movement brought those dispersed literary legacies back to one geographical location. The new forms of Hebrew writing appear with the emergence of the state of Israel in 1948.
I have readAmos Oz, How to Cure a Fanatic (2006), Soumchi (1978)
The Gospel of Mark in the Polish translation of Czesław Miłosz (c. 66-74 AD) |
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a silver pencil sharpener
(when hope was still possible)
For a long time, I had in my Polyglot Library two books of Amos Oz, very dissimilar ones, yet secretly connected. The first one was Soumchi, a nice example of juvenile literature, about the discovery of love, or rather about the discovery of change, exchange, changing fortune, essential instability of life. Soumchi is a Jewish boy at the time of British mandate, when the children are advised to keep away from soldiers. As a gift, he receives a bicycle, and he dreams to discover with it the sources of the Zambezi river; this is how this Jewish childhood under the unwanted protectorate participates, unwillingly, in the grandiose imagination of the British empire. He goes with his bike to visit a richer colleague, who has no bike, for his parents are too worried about his progress in playing violin. This is how Soumchi makes his first contract: that of exchanging the bike against an expensive electric train toy; still enough to depart for an imaginary travel to the sources of the Zambezi river and to Ubangi-Shari (which was a part of French Equatorial Africa, today Central African Republic and Chad, not really close to Zambezi, but maybe Soumichi did not see it very clearly on his mental map). But as a consequence of an unpleasant encounter, he is forced to exchange the train for a dog, and a dog ends up running away. As a consolation, nonetheless, he finds a luck-bringing pencil sharpener, that will lead him that night to the house and the bedroom of his beloved Esti. And he conquests her love, even if it is only for a few weeks. Shortly speaking, this is the essence of Jewish life, its constant ups and downs, profits and losses. Its essential impermanence.
How to Cure a Fanatic is quite a different kind of book, a series of lectures given at a prestigious university in the post-11 September United States. But both things are intimately connected, because the writer confesses that he was himself a fanatic, at the age of Soumchi, a Jewish boy ready to throw stones at British soldiers in the streets of Jerusalem. And he tried to explain how he grew out of his illness of fanaticism developing his powers of imagination, of imagining the other. The cure of a fanatic consisted thus, essentially, in literature as a way of exploring the otherness, the destinies that are not ours. Literature as the exercise of making sense of other peoples' lives.
He hoped to take coffee with his colleagues, those other Palestinian writers; he missed and regretted Europe, and hoped that Israel and Palestine would make it quicker, that their economic union would take shorter time to be built. He believed that the Jews were always the greatest bridge-builders.
He died many years later, in 2018. The only thing that actually took shorter time than in Europe to be built was the wall, a new, fabulous, concrete wall that makes taking any coffee less probable than ever. This is how intellectuals die; after speaking at many prestigious universities, they always fall short of their dreams.
Amos Oz, Soumchi. A Tale of Love and Adventure, [1978].
Amos Oz, How to Cure a Fanatic, Princeton University Press, 2006.
Kraków, 2.08.2021.
How to Cure a Fanatic is quite a different kind of book, a series of lectures given at a prestigious university in the post-11 September United States. But both things are intimately connected, because the writer confesses that he was himself a fanatic, at the age of Soumchi, a Jewish boy ready to throw stones at British soldiers in the streets of Jerusalem. And he tried to explain how he grew out of his illness of fanaticism developing his powers of imagination, of imagining the other. The cure of a fanatic consisted thus, essentially, in literature as a way of exploring the otherness, the destinies that are not ours. Literature as the exercise of making sense of other peoples' lives.
He hoped to take coffee with his colleagues, those other Palestinian writers; he missed and regretted Europe, and hoped that Israel and Palestine would make it quicker, that their economic union would take shorter time to be built. He believed that the Jews were always the greatest bridge-builders.
He died many years later, in 2018. The only thing that actually took shorter time than in Europe to be built was the wall, a new, fabulous, concrete wall that makes taking any coffee less probable than ever. This is how intellectuals die; after speaking at many prestigious universities, they always fall short of their dreams.
Amos Oz, Soumchi. A Tale of Love and Adventure, [1978].
Amos Oz, How to Cure a Fanatic, Princeton University Press, 2006.
Kraków, 2.08.2021.
