Modern Hebrews Word from: Alieza

Yesterday I attended the Fourteenth Annual Congress of Jewish Studies . I heard 14 presenters rattle off 40 minute papers like Israeli commandos. In one session, Gershon Shaked, an Israeli lit critic, spoke about Jewish Literature written in languages other than Hebrew. Shaked argued that the one common denominator of Jewish writing is that the authors are torn between running away from their Jewish roots and being confronted by them. (I guess he's never read Beryl Wine.) Interestingly, Hebrew is so central in his mind, that a secular Israeli romance novel has a reserved place within the Jewish cannon, while Shaked needs to argue for the inclusion Kafka, Erica Jong, and Saul Bellow, whose Jewish themes are buried or subconscious. To him, writing in English is a sign that we are struggling with a torn identity.

On the other hand, I was recently reading an article in Azure by Assaf Inbari who discounts Hebrew as a measure of Jewish writing. Using the term "Hebrew Literature" to refer back to the Ancient Hebrews, he creates a model for Hebrew literature based soley on Biblical narrative structure. He thinks that true Hebrew literature is linear, deed based and national, which he claims ended with Agnon. By the end of the article, I was left a little skeptical about his true motivations for criticizing modern Israeli writing; I think he dislikes Israeli pessimism as well as their moral and emotional alienation; he probably simply disagrees with Israeli leftist values. His view of biblical lit as more uplifting and certain than Israeli lit also falls apart, in my eyes, because I think he underestimates the depressing and morally ambiguous ending of many biblical stories. But as a writer I, enjoyed his analysis of the structural elements of biblical narrative for the purpose of a model for modern lit.

Lastly to respond to Jake's post: I value people's analysis and subjective reactions to art. Also I agree with Jake that the blog is a particularly interesting mix of the living moment and timeless ideas. If a writer refers to a movie title in a short story, then the story has a short shelf life because in 10 years that image won't evoke anything. Blogs let you invoke the present without worrying about how it will sound in a couple years. At the Congress, one presenter showed how a poem by Aharon Shabtai, published in Haaretz, drew from newspaper stories from the month before it was published. Its references to the news, coupled with its visual position on the news page, made it more active and political- a poem of the moment. But how long will it speak to the people without the academic addendum? We can embrace the fleeting.