Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 361-394). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis--University of Paris. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [509]-572).

Issued also as Thesis--Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--ha-Universiṭah ha-ʻIvrit, Yerushalayim, 1980. / Abstract in English. Title on added t.p.: Yiddish and Yiddish literature in Eretz Israel, 1907-1948. Includes index. Bibliography: p. [396]-410.

This dissertation examines the life and work of the Jewish writer Uri-Nisn Gnesin (1879-1913). Living in Russia, using Yiddish in his daily life, and writing prose in Hebrew, Gnesin was part of a multicultural and multilingual generation, which was too assimilated to live the traditional life of its fathers, and yet, not able to break with it completely. For many Russian Jews, this dual identity, rarely recognized in modern scholarly discourse on Hebrew literature, resulted in psychological discomfort, feelings of guilt, and other traumas. Addressing this identity crisis, I show how the worldview of an assimilated Russian Jew is reflected in Gnesin’s Hebrew fiction. I offer an alternative view of Gnesin as a Jewish-Russian writer whose dual identity played a more complex role in his literary work and whose influence transcended a simple knowledge of languages or classic texts. It was not merely a language or a book, but the unique Jewish-Slavic atmosphere of small Eastern European towns that provided Gnesin with all the models necessary for thinking, feeling, and writing. In my study, I consider theories of canonization to demonstrate the reason why Gnesin has first and foremost been categorized as a Hebrew writer. Contemporary scholars of modern Hebrew fiction generally agree that Gnesin’s fiction is secular due to the non-Jewish associative infrastructure of his work. By exploring the historical and spiritual conditions of Gnesin’s generation, I attempt to overcome the limitations of such a view, which overemphasizes the role of language in his development as a writer. A functional analysis of Gnesin’s literary language maintains that although he found his best form of expression in literary Hebrew, it appeared mostly in the final stages of his writing. I propose that Gnesin and that whole generation of modern Hebrew writers used a special “hyper-language” consisting of three integral parts: a natively spoken language, a commonly spoken non-Jewish national language, and a written literary language. Ultimately, Gnesin appears to be a fin de siècle writer who used Hebrew language as a sophisticated tool to propagate his troubled Jewish-Russian experience. / text

This thesis is intended to demonstrate the existence of a vibrant cultural and literary life among the survivors of the Holocaust during their time as Displaced Persons (DPs) in Germany, Austria and Italy. It delineates their historical background, presents theoretical problems with which they may have been confronted, and explains the lack of previous academic research into their creative production. It then analyzes three representative literary journals from the period 1946 to 1949, when the DP population was at its peak: In Gang: khoydesh-zhurnal far literatur un kunst / khoydesh-zhurnal far literatur, kultur un gezelshaftlekhe problemen (In Progress: Monthly Journal of Literature and Art / Monthly Journal of Literature, Culture and Societal Problems), published in Rome between March 1947 and February 1949; Fun letstn khurbn: tsaytshrift far geshikhte fun yidishn lebn beysn natsi-rezhim (From the Last Extermination: Journal for the History of the Jewish People During the Nazi Regime), published in Munich between August 1946 and December 1948; and Shriftn far literatur, kunst un gezelshaftlekhe fragn (Writings for Literature, Art and Societal Questions), published in Kassel, Germany in January 1948. These journals were chosen because their editorial material reflected strong commitments to dealing with the political and especially the cultural issues of the day. These included the on-going examination of the possibility of Jewish cultural continuity, the drive for a Jewish state, and the attempt to come to terms with the immensity and horrors of the Holocaust. The thesis also includes an annotated bibliography of the contents of these three journals which is intended to improve their accessibility for future study.

No description available.

This dissertation argues that the richness and distinctiveness of modern Yiddish travel literature—with its emphasis on arriving rather than departing—reflects the complexity of such East European Jewish notions as home, homelessness, and wandering. It examines the ways in which the experience of travel affected the search for identity, home, and belonging by Yiddish writers from the first secularized and westernized generation of East European Jews. Yiddish travelogues written in the first four decades of the twentieth century show a curious trend with respect to the search for identity and the destinations that are their subject. These destinations fall into two categories: those with specific Jewish connotations and those without. For writers addressing the latter destination category, even though motivated by the search for a Jewish identity, locales beyond the Jewish map engender the greatest sense of empowerment. Even when their ostensible motivations and emphases are diametrically opposed, they arrive at the same conclusion, that Jews belong simultaneously nowhere and everywhere. Peretz Hirschbein and Melech Ravitch are exemplary illustrations of this tendency: the former laments the countless roads on which Jews have traveled and many borders that separate them; he longs for universal brotherhood and closeness to nature, and as such rejects the diversity of the Jewish experience; the latter, on the contrary, celebrates diversity. How can we explain this trend? It is born of the contradictory set of ideological and artistic aims and interests of a generation that rejected the traditional beliefs and lifestyle of their parents, and that aimed to create a body of modern literature in Yiddish that would equal major European literatures, and that internalized a number of European cultural (primarily literary) tropes. Moreover, this literature was the product of a generation of writers who yearned for an organic connection to Jewish past, present, and future and at the same time saw problems with every existing ideology. The Introduction situates the study within the context of Jewish cultural and literary history and addresses questions of scope and methodology. Chapter 1 analyzes Yiddish travel writers’ fascination with exotic destinations lacking specifically Jewish connotations and its role in these writers’ struggles to define their cultural identity. Chapter 2 analyzes the work of Peretz Hirschbein and argues that his longing for universal brotherhood and closeness to nature reflected both a reluctance to celebrate the diversity of the Jewish experience and an impulse to embrace its global proportions. Chapter 3 focuses on the life and work of Melech Ravitch and contrasts his passion for diversity with the opposite approach of Peretz Hirschbein. Chapter 4 explores Yiddish writers’ travel to Mandate Palestine and to Soviet Russia and focuses on the parallels between travelogues about these two politically charged destinations. Chapter 5 examines the development of Yiddish travel literature after World War II, focusing both on works that describe travel back to Eastern Europe and are dominated by the themes of mourning and preservation, and on later works, filled with the urge to affirm a worldwide Jewish presence. The Conclusion recapitulates the dissertation’s main points and stresses the uniqueness of the Yiddish travelogue and its importance in Jewish studies and beyond.

A partir dos contos da literatura ídiche clássica que foram traduzidos para o português, Sabá de Shólem Yákov Abramóvitsh, A leitora de Itzhok Leibusch Peretz e O relógio de Scholem Rabinovitch, este trabalho pretende investigar a representação do Shabat no contexto de uma literatura característica do alvorecer da modernidade judaica. O estudo individual de cada conto aprofundar-se-á na análise dos modos de representação de um evento religioso que cada conto apresenta. Para tanto, o conhecimento da biografia de seus autores foi de vital importância para o exame das obras, pois estes imprimiram em seus textos literários os ideais da Haskalá, por meio de seus narradores fidedignos, termo proposto por Wayne C. Booth, na obra A retórica da Ficção (1980), o qual revela a posição ideológica de seus autores implícitos nos contos. Esses autores implícitos uniram com maestria o dicotômico conceito tradição versus modernidade com o propósito de iluminar, a partir de dentro da comunidade do shtetl, o pensamento do judeu simples, visando transformá-lo em um homem moderno. Cientes de sua função social, Abramóvitsh, Peretz e Rabinovitch utilizaram a língua ídiche e a cultura do judeu do Leste europeu para instaurar um novo momento da literatura e cultura ídiche. / Departing from three Classical Yiddish short stories that have been translated to Portuguese - Mendele Moikher Seforim\'s Sabbath, Itzhok Leibusch Peretz\'s The Reader and Scholem Aleichem\'s The clock - this dissertation aims to investigate the impact of modernity on literary representations of the Sabbath. The analysis of these writings will be conducted by comparing them to each other, highlight the differences in modes of representation on a same religious event. The biographies of these authors were extremely relevant to understand their work, since they expressed the ideals of Haskalah in their literary texts, through their reliable narrators. These authors have masterfully included in their production the dichotomized concept of tradition versus modernity in their texts, in order to illuminate the life of the shtetl community from within, and to portray the ways of thought of the simple Jew, while aiming at turning him into a modern man. Aware of their social roles, Abramóvitsh, Rabinovitch and Peretz have used Yiddish language and the culture of the Eastern European Jewish to establish a new era for the Yiddish culture and literature.

A partir dos contos da literatura ídiche clássica que foram traduzidos para o português, Sabá de Shólem Yákov Abramóvitsh, A leitora de Itzhok Leibusch Peretz e O relógio de Scholem Rabinovitch, este trabalho pretende investigar a representação do Shabat no contexto de uma literatura característica do alvorecer da modernidade judaica. O estudo individual de cada conto aprofundar-se-á na análise dos modos de representação de um evento religioso que cada conto apresenta. Para tanto, o conhecimento da biografia de seus autores foi de vital importância para o exame das obras, pois estes imprimiram em seus textos literários os ideais da Haskalá, por meio de seus narradores fidedignos, termo proposto por Wayne C. Booth, na obra A retórica da Ficção (1980), o qual revela a posição ideológica de seus autores implícitos nos contos. Esses autores implícitos uniram com maestria o dicotômico conceito tradição versus modernidade com o propósito de iluminar, a partir de dentro da comunidade do shtetl, o pensamento do judeu simples, visando transformá-lo em um homem moderno. Cientes de sua função social, Abramóvitsh, Peretz e Rabinovitch utilizaram a língua ídiche e a cultura do judeu do Leste europeu para instaurar um novo momento da literatura e cultura ídiche. / Departing from three Classical Yiddish short stories that have been translated to Portuguese - Mendele Moikher Seforim\'s Sabbath, Itzhok Leibusch Peretz\'s The Reader and Scholem Aleichem\'s The clock - this dissertation aims to investigate the impact of modernity on literary representations of the Sabbath. The analysis of these writings will be conducted by comparing them to each other, highlight the differences in modes of representation on a same religious event. The biographies of these authors were extremely relevant to understand their work, since they expressed the ideals of Haskalah in their literary texts, through their reliable narrators. These authors have masterfully included in their production the dichotomized concept of tradition versus modernity in their texts, in order to illuminate the life of the shtetl community from within, and to portray the ways of thought of the simple Jew, while aiming at turning him into a modern man. Aware of their social roles, Abramóvitsh, Rabinovitch and Peretz have used Yiddish language and the culture of the Eastern European Jewish to establish a new era for the Yiddish culture and literature.