Reading Hebrew Literature

Modern Hebrew Literature explores the many ways Israeli literature is read in the US. In it, eighteen pre-eminent Hebrew literature scholars in the US and Israel offer commentary--traditional, historicist, feminist, post-modern--on one of six seminal texts. The texts, printed here in both English and Hebrew, are either short stories or poems, and range from "old" classics by the best-known writers in Hebrew of the first decades of the 20th century, such as M.Y. Berdichevsky, S. Tchernichovsky, and S.Y. Agnon to an interwar poem by Uri Zvi Greenberg to the contemporary, modernist work of two women authors, Amalia Cahana-Karmon and Dalia Ravikovitch. Alan Mintz's general introduction explains the genesis and development of modern Hebrew literature, its reception in US universities, and the rationale for selecting this particular group of texts. Contributors -- Robert Alter, University of California, Berkeley Arnold J. Band, University of California, Los Angeles Nancy Berg, Washington University, St. Louis William Cutter, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles Aminadav Dykman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Lewis Glinert, Dartmouth College Nili Gold, University of Pennsylvania Anne Golomb Hoffman, Fordham University Hannan Hever, Tel Aviv University Avner Holtzman, Tel Aviv University Chana Kronfeld, University of California, Berkeley Dan Laor, Tel Aviv University Barbara Mann, Princeton University Alan Mintz, Jewish Theological Seminary Gilead Morahg, University of Wisconsin, Madison Hannah Naveh, Tel Aviv University David Roskies, Jewish Theological Seminary Naomi Sokoloff, University of Washington