A Tribute To F.K.’s Final Hour

Cocooned like a soon-to-be-butterfly beneath the heavy quilt of his bed, he witnessed through a half-closed eye the large chocolate-armored metallic cockroach making its way across the rough wooden floor to an abysmal dark crack in the side of the wall. A faint smile flickered transiently across the bookkeeper’s pale, emaciated face.

F.K. shut his eyes. All he had ever asked for was anonymity…the ability to fade away like a gray shadow into the Czech urban environment. A simple ripple embossed in the dark blue Vltava surrounding Prague would signify to F.K. all he ever desired to be – alone – with his pen and paper and his numbers and his words and the woman so distant now. And Max? What about Max? He had given Brod his instructions and expected them to be carried out to the T! He listened as the bells from the city’s towers began to toll, chiming the hour, with Death whispering near him, saying, “Soon…soon F.K. we shall depart. Then you shall have what you always desired, what Life could not give you but what I can.”

Though he had never been there in his mind he had countless times made his way through the hurley-burley streets and avenues of that great metropolis in Amerika he had written about to himself. Even Max didn’t know. F.K. was growing tired, he was now so weary that the burden of breathing through his phlegm-filled lungs shook his sliver-like white body with pain. He wanted to go to a better place. A quiet spot in the country.

Max found him like that, in the room, his matchstick arm dangling out from beneath the bedcovers, pointing towards the wall where the cockroach had been swallowed up. There was a saintly look of contentment finally stretched across his friend’s dark brow. Somewhere in the near future Max could hear the echoes of the storm trooper’s jackboots hitting the cobblestone passages of the Jewish Quarter near the garret where F.K now lay in peace with the world.

On the boat towards Palestine, Max huddled in a corner beneath deck, tightly holding a small black suitcase packed with F.K.’s life – converted paper thoughts. Unknowingly, in the battered leather case, beneath a ream of F.K.’s work – a large chocolate-armored metallic cockroach was waiting to enter the promised land.

From Reich To Rex

In the fall of 1937, a young man named Otto Reich, in his early 30s, made his way into the practice of Sigmund Freud in Vienna accompanied by a guard from the Austrian state prison system. The meeting had been arranged by an influential but powerful benefactor, who unfortunately had not been able to commute the sentence of the young man for the crime he had been found guilty of. Outside the sky was overcast and on the brink of snow. The wind was rather cantankerous, tossing bits of brown leaves up into the dismal gray mantle of the Austrian metropolis.

Otto Reich began: “I swear to you Dr. Freud that what I am about to tell you is not some demented illusion created by my overly fertile mind…but the truth. I hope you will be able to deliver me from the horror I have been living till now because of it  I was raised an orphan, my parents, so I believed, having been tragically killed in a train accident two years after I was born. Obviously I remember very little from that period. I was raised by a couple who were introduced to me by the Viennese social services when I was four years old. For all intent and purposes, Mr. And Mrs. Reich raised me with all the love they had and I lacked for nothing. In fact it was only after I killed the man that the horror of what I had done caused me great anguish and I have come here hoping that you will be able to assist me in alleviating my torturous visions.”

Sigmund Freud just sat back and while chewing upon the end of his Meerschaum pipe which was carved in the likeness of a sea captain, nodded, “Go on Mr. Reich please.”

“Five years ago I met a woman, a most beautiful creature far younger looking than her age whom I fell in love with. It was almost as though from the very beginning we were meant to be. Her name was Elizabeth Recant and she was a professor specializing in Greek mythology at the University of Vienna. An aspiring writer myself, we discovered that we had many passions in common and immediately were swept up in a whirlwind romance culminating in our marriage quite soon after our initial acquaintance. Little was I to know until after the wedding that Elizabeth had been married previously for a few years to an ogre of a man – also an academic – and that from that marriage a child had been born but given up due to the burden of their professional pursuits and the lack of love in the relationship between them. Also to my dismay, Elizabeth informed me after the fact, that the man she had previously called her husband had been unable to accept her leaving him and constantly through the years been tormenting her, keeping tabs on all of her activities, threatening the people she called her friends. The day came, when the man, a gargantuan-sized brute approached me in broad daylight on the Anschlus Strasse in the middle of Vienna. He slapped me in the face and as a gentleman, I was forced to challenge him to a duel. On a grassy knoll, a week later, I took his life in a duel witnessed by our seconds and an unbiased referee known to us both. For this act I was arrested and sentenced to ten years behind bars. Before my incarceration, while looking through Elizabeth’s desk for a pen of mine which I believed she had borrowed, I inadvertently came across a document describing the date and name of the child that she and her first husband had given away. To my amazement, the child’s first name had been Otto and a small picture was attached to the document…a small picture of me as a child! So you see Dr. Freud…for whatever reason she had kept it secret…I had married my birth mother and killed my own father. Now you see my dilemma. What can I do to obtain some inner peace? I am tormented by devilish visions and nightmares. I tried to stop the visions by doing this…” With those words, Otto Reich removed a dark pair of glasses which till now had shielded his eyes from Freud. Where the young man’s eyes should have been were but two hollow dark cavities of scarred red flesh. Otto Reich concluded, “Upon hearing of the duel, my wife Elizabeth took her own life and I was apprehended a few days later by the police.”

After prescribing a powerful calmative for Reich and promising to come and visit him in the Austrian state prison, Sigmund Freud removed the Meerschaum from his fleshy lips and began to write a skeleton structure for a dissertation on the Oedipal Complex, while looking in a book on Greek mythology he reread about Oedipus Rex.

Otto Reich never recovered from his tragic life and was only to meet Freud one last time upon his death bed in prison, shortly after he had pierced his heart with a long metal spike he had smuggled to him by another inmate from the prison’s metal shop.

The Awful Dream Of Lev Davidovich Bronstein

1928: I never thought I would end up here. It came to me in a dream, the night of the heavy ice storms near Alma Ata. It was bitter cold and in my vision I saw a gleaming, steel pinpoint of light from a miniature rod dripping blood onto a hard-packed, dark brown earthen floor in some hot, dusty slum in a country far from this icy prison. Tomorrow I heard I am being deported. The nightmare I had still sends chills through my body. Where did we go wrong? Did we go wrong? I don’t believe so. Father Joseph apparently does. His hands are soaked in the blood of innocent comrades. Call me lucky.

1929: The Island Of The Princes: Büyükada. How did I end up here? Yet, I have found some peace at last. I can write and think of my next steps. It is not over yet. I’ve been here almost four years now. Somehow I feel my time in exile here is coming to an end. I will miss this island paradise with its golden shores surrounded by the comforting waters of a turquoise Bosphorus…the smell of the Orient and orange blossoms mixed with the history of Ottoman atrocities. Yet who am I to be the judge?

1939: The dream came again last night. Diego said I would be in his new painting. I told him I don’t want to be immortalized. I just want justice. Everyday since leaving my island haven I breathe the air of a people crying out for liberation and justice…just as those left behind in the wilds of Siberia and the cities still cry out for freedom. I don’t feel completely safe here but I am no longer afraid. My beautiful Nataliya says I have been working too hard. I say that Quetzalcoatl has other things destined for this little Jew from the Ukraine.

1940: I didn’t see it coming. It was so swift…just like the dream. When the ice pick pierced my brain I was still reading my young visitor’s article. I only wanted to help him. He said his name was Jacson and that he was Canadian. I immediately took a liking to him, perhaps because he too came from a cold country covered by ice and snow. I saw my blood drip to the floor of the study and knew that Father Joseph was smiling faraway.

Sam had been living in Jerusalem for nearly thirty years, so he could no longer tell how different life was there from other places. He didn’t think of Jerusalem as a single city but as fragmented into a thousand micro-societies, like one of those mirrored spheres they hang over dance floors. Circles of friends overlapped in the most unpredictable ways. You never knew whom you were going to run into at a Jerusalem gathering, but you’d always see someone you’d never guess would be there. Half the time Sam felt only tenuously or arbitrarily connected to the group he happened to be with – the one you wouldn’t expect to find there.

He’d definitely been an odd man out at a lavish wedding he’d gone to without his wife because she had another obligation. He’d known only half a dozen of the three hundred or more guests there, and those only casually – he was in the wrong micro-society. He was pleased that the groom’s parents, new neighbors whom they knew only slightly, had invited them to the wedding, though he wasn’t quite sure why they had or where they found the money to pay for such a huge event. Their son, a nineteen-year-old yeshiva student, had married a girl just out of high school.

Sam came to the obvious conclusion that since their religious principles prevented them from having sex like secular kids their age, they were rushing into marriage when they were too young to have any clear idea who they were. His own daughter had not taken the marriage route to early sexual relations, and he was glad. She’d gone through a couple of inappropriate partners, and she had lived with her boyfriend for a couple of years before they got married. That had not been the way he had entered his first marriage.

He took note of that familiar item on his mental list of the reasons why he had laid aside the strictures and beliefs of Jewish orthodoxy but still wondered why had he ever thought he might accept them. Why had his superego reached for such heavy weaponry? He had tried being “modern orthodox” for a few years, while he was between marriages and seeing orthodox women, but the woman he eventually married wasn’t orthodox, and he gave up trying to square that circle: he was modern, not orthodox. He had quite a few orthodox friends – the hi-tech world was full of them, though for some reason none of them was at this wedding. He saw how their children had chosen either to become extremely religious, like the night’s young bride and groom (assuming they weren’t just sex-starved) or to drop it all and be secular.

He stood on the edge of the crowd with a plate of hors d’oeuvres and listed anomalies to himself. Most of other guests were modern orthodox, middle-class, Ashkenazi Israelis, with a sprinkling of Sephardic Jews of the same ilk – the sort of people who lived in settlements or sent their children to live there, the ones who had worn orange ribbons to show they opposed the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

But a few of the other wedding guests were not part of the orthodox Zionist camp. Anomaly Number One: a middle-aged popular singer and television personality and his playwright wife – part of the Tel Aviv bohemian world. Sam also spotted Anomaly Number Two in this stronghold of right wing opinion: Yakov Yakovi, someone he knew from left wing political activities. Yakovi was the head of a well-endowed foundation that promoted a parochial brand of religious pluralism: mutual tolerance between orthodox and the secular Jews – hardly a left wing cause in Sam’s opinion. The groom’s father was the head of an adult Jewish studies program sponsored by Yakovi’s foundation, and the popular singer and his wife, bright people, had taken part in the program. Sam and Yakovi chatted for a few minutes until a short, young, intense religious man horned in and hijacked Yakovi’s attention, probably someone with a project that needed funding.

Sam found himself taking some breaded chicken bits from a high, round hors d’oeuvre table at the same time as the singer, and he had felt like talking to him, telling him he was a fan, which was almost true – he was so far out of touch with Israeli popular culture, that he regarded himself as a fan of any celebrity he could actually identify – but he held back. He could see in the singer’s eyes that he’d done the right thing. The singer hadn’t come to the party to be famous. In fact, he was seriously under-dressed, in sneakers and jeans, as if he had gone out to the grocery store but ended up at the wedding by mistake. He was shorter, slimmer, and older looking than Sam expected. On screen he was lively and charismatic. Obviously he’d learned the trick of turning his charisma on and off.

Of course the major anomaly was the catering hall itself: owned and run by Ramat Rachel, a secular kibbutz that had once been on the border between Israel and Jordan. This was just the sort of pluralism that Yakovi’s foundation was promoting. Once the kibbutzim were militantly anti-religious, now they were catering to kosher crowds.

“It’s good to feel bored and out of place,” he mumbled to himself as he sipped some wine. He’d driven there, so he had to be careful not to drink too much, which would have been one way of handling the boredom.

“Why is it good to feel out of place?” he challenged himself.

“Remember what the meditation teacher taught you: wherever you are, you’re still with yourself.” Sam almost started talking to himself out loud, the way he did sometimes when he was walking his dog in a park.

Although the invitation had said the ceremony would be held promptly at seven-thirty, and he’d rushed to be there at seven-fifteen, the reception went on and on, and there was no sign that the ceremony would ever be held – which was somehow normal. Sam could never figure that out. He had been to dozens of weddings, but never to one when the ceremony was actually held when they said it would be. At one wedding he had attended, years ago, the ceremony was more than two hours late, because the rabbi forgot to come, and they had to find a substitute.

Now people kept milling around in the huge hors d’oeuvre tent, overeating and trying to find something to say to one another. The bride, a sweet-looking, pale-complexioned girl, who looked like a fifteen-year-old, was camped in a corner with her high school classmates, singing boring religious songs to the accompaniment of poorly played drums, guitars, and a flute. Did the couple have any idea of what they were in for? They probably expected to be supported by their parents while they completed their educations – a return to pre-modern Eastern European customs.

Sam saw a tall, thin Chinese man he’d met briefly at another wedding and, tired of standing around by himself, he decided to get to know him a bit better. The other wedding had been that of Sam’s second cousin’s stepson – a degree of family relationship so minor that you could barely say it existed. But Sam and his second cousin had known each other well during their childhood, because their parents had been close friends. He had also become very fond of her husband, a highly intelligent, stubbornly idiosyncratic orthodox Jewish corporate lawyer who had retired in order to devote his time and boundless intellectual energy to Jewish studies. His son’s wife was a Korean convert to Judaism, which didn’t quite explain why a Chinese convert to Judaism would be at her wedding – but there he had been, and now he was at this child-marriage. Sam introduced himself, reminded him of the other wedding, and asked him what his connection to this wedding was. It turned out that the bride’s late grandfather, a scholar of Semitic linguistics, had been the Chinese man’s doctoral dissertation advisor. As if the anomaly of an orthodox wedding at an anti-religious kibbutz, and a camouflaged television celebrity hadn’t been enough, the anomaly of a Chinese man who had taken a doctorate in Hebrew linguistics and was teaching that subject at an Israeli university, a man who had taken on such stringent Jewish orthodoxy that only a woman from the reactionary fringes of the modern orthodox community would be religious enough for him (and such a woman would never marry a convert) topped them all. The Chinese convert even threw Yiddish phrases into his Hebrew.

Sam felt dizzy, as if he were crossing a deep chasm on a rope and plank bridge. The man was clearly brilliant and out of his mind, but because he’d been cagey enough to choose a form of madness sanctioned by a substantial religious community (substantial in Israeli terms – compared to the population of China, the whole Jewish population of the world was equivalent to a minuscule statistical error), he hadn’t been committed to a psychiatric hospital.

While the Chinese convert stooped over to get closer to Sam’s ear, Sam thought of a joke he couldn’t tell him. Once a woman went to her rabbi, a man famous for his rigorous piety, and told him she was worried about her son. The young man was staying up past midnight every night to engage in mystical study; he was rising before dawn every day to pray exactly when the sun rose; he spent every waking hour studying Talmud, and he was fasting on Mondays and Thursdays. They rabbi was puzzled. “That’s pretty much what I do? So why are you concerned?” “But, rabbi,” the woman said, “You do it for a living.” Perhaps only a sense of humor could save you in a society that was such a tissue of anomalies. Sam thought that Jewish humor should be part of the conversion course. Maybe it was.

Suddenly the ceremony became imminent, saving Sam from the mad convert. The groom and his yeshiva classmates, boisterous teen-age boys, led everyone outside to the lawn, where a bridal canopy had been erected. It was early autumn, and the evening was chilly and damp. The plastic chairs that had been placed in rows were all coated with dew, so the guests who had been milling about and munching hors d’oeuvres had to stay on their feet. “Standing on ceremony,” Sam mumbled to himself.

That rabbi who performed the ceremony, the head of the yeshiva where the groom was studying, chose to speak at excruciating length about Rachel, the wife of Isaac, whose tomb, if you believed that sort of thing, was within sight, theoretically, of the bridal canopy. Merely theoretically, of course, because it was dark, and mainly the lights of the Palestinian city of Bethlehem were visible in that direction. The rabbi spoke in sweeping, mystical terms about the kind of “protection” that Rachel gave to her descendants. How could anyone take that nonsense seriously? Sam wondered. Was that the sort of thing they “learned” in the boy’s yeshiva? How could anybody in his right mind claim that God (or the Matriarch Rachel) had protected the Jewish people at any time since the victory of the Maccabees?

By the end of the ceremony, Sam was tired of wrestling with incongruities, which, he suspected, he was the only one among the celebrants who cared to notice. He took his place at the table, where he had been seated with a few people from his neighborhood who he did know. There was a salad buffet, but by ten o’clock the main course hadn’t been served. Sam decided to call it a night. He’d eaten too many hors d’oeuvres anyway. So he drove home, glad to leave an event where he barely fit in, despite the general feeling of benevolence he always felt at weddings.

Three months after that wedding, he had also gone to Professor Almog’s funeral alone. It happened to be on a Friday morning, as if to make it convenient for people like him, who didn’t work on Fridays, but his wife was busy preparing a large meal for the evening. Besides, she hadn’t ever liked Professor Almog very much. Sam had done an MA in philosophy with him right after he moved to Israel, before his divorce and before taking a course in systems analysis and acquiring a profession that had proved to be quite lucrative. Almog, who had a nasty reputation, had always liked Sam, possibly because he hadn’t gone on in academics and become a challenger. In fact he was the only former teacher that Sam kept in touch with over the years.

Almog had been a pudgy, coarse man, with a strong aggressive streak, a fierce academic politician who had made a lot of enemies during his long career. But he had been retired for a while, and when he died, even his former enemies came to the funeral. He had been more than an academic. He had used his position in the university to exert influence, serving on government commissions and regularly writing sharp, center-left Op Ed pieces. He had even appeared on television regularly as a panelist on a rough and tumble political debate show, mauling his opponents with malicious relish. His funeral was well attended, and several celebrity intellectuals gave eulogies for him.

Sam was personally acquainted with a good third of the people there – this was more like his home base than the wedding at Ramat Rachel had been – and he recognized another third. He was not the only hi-tech person there. Almog’s sons were both electronic engineers and entrepreneurs, and their friends and associates mingled with professors, television people, and journalists. Only a small minority of the people who had come to see Professor Almog off on his journey to what is called “the world of truth” in Jewish tradition belonged to the orthodox segment of society.

It was a cold but sunny winter day, Almog had not exactly died young or unexpectedly, and the people were not particularly gloomy. Many subdued and dignified greetings were exchanged, and people who hadn’t seen each other in a while used the time before the ceremony began to catch up on each other’s lives. They were having a good time.

Like the wedding, which had been held in two stages – hors d’oeuvres before the ceremony and a dinner afterward – Almog’s funeral was also held in two stages: some eulogies by a mixture of families and celebrities in the ugly, bare, cold cement shed where the body was first laid out, and then a few more celebrity speeches next to the fresh grave, a slow, fifteen minute drive from there. Sam didn’t feel like driving out to the cemetery in his own car, so he took a ride with Esther Barkai, a woman he’d known since she’d been a graduate student in the Hebrew Literature Department. She had gone on to finish a doctorate and clung doggedly to the academic world. She’d been a good-looking, impressive woman at the time, and she still carried herself with conviction, though she’d put on a lot of weight. Sam had always thought of her as an intellectual fake, latching onto whatever was fashionable and acquiring a new and up-to-date critical vocabulary every five or six years, like another face-lift. But she inhabited the same micro-society as Sam, and he was always running into her. Every time he did, he was glad once again that he had left academia, so you could say that he enjoyed her company.

Helmut, an effeminate German post-doc, who had been studying with Almog until he had been hospitalized a month or so ago, also asked Esther for a ride and sat in the back. Almog had grown up in Vienna and, always relishing difficult situations, he taken his own doctorate in Frankfurt not long after World War Two, one of the few Israelis who had been willing to set foot in Germany at the time, so he had been a good mentor for Helmut.
“Have you been to a Jewish funeral before?” Sam asked the post-doc in English.

“Oh yes. In fact I am a convert to Judaism. I came first here to Israel as a volunteer with Aktionsühnezeichen, and after that I began the conversion process. I am planning to say here.”

Neither Sam nor Esther asked Helmut to explain the German word he had used. “How’s your Hebrew?” Esther asked him in Hebrew.
“No problem,” he answered, also in Hebrew.

The conversation shifted to that language, and Sam said to Esther: “I didn’t know you were a friend of Almog’s.”
“I wasn’t really. We were once enemies. He blocked my tenure the first time around.”

“So why did you come to the funeral?”

“Out of loyalty to my social class. Anyway, we put that behind us after I did get tenure. What was your connection?”

“You remember that I did an MA with him, don’t you? That’s when we met. I was married to Jane.”

“Of course. Now I remember. That was a long time ago.”

“Over the years I saw him fairly often. In an unequal way, we were friends. I was fond of him, and I’ll miss him. I used to go over the papers he wrote directly in English as a favor to him. You couldn’t exactly say no.”

“If you did say no, he could be a real bastard. He went out of his way to put down my work in literary theory, because he was a philosopher, so to speak, and I was ‘just’ a literary scholar.”

Sam didn’t want to ask her when she had said “no” to Almog, and what that had been about, and he didn’t want to tell her that he shared Almog’s disdain for what passed for literary theory. In fact, he didn’t feel like making conversation with Esther at all and drifted off into memories of Almog, who had suffered from severe asthma all his life. Whenever Sam called to ask how he was, he would answer: “Below average.” The German philosophy student also said nothing, so Esther filled the silence with a detailed account of her battle for tenure, over the head and behind the back of the late professor Almog, to whom they had come to pay their last respects.

She parked the car on the narrow road down to the “professors’ plot” of the huge municipal cemetery, and they walked down along with the others.
“I’ll look for you when it’s over,” he said.

“Fine, your place is reserved. Yours, too,” she told Helmut and went off to hunt down an academic celebrity from Tel Aviv. Sam and Helmut exchanged a little smile of relief.

Unexpectedly, Sam’s first wife and her present husband, a disciple, colleague, and rival of Almog’s, now a professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa, appeared at the funeral. Sam hadn’t noticed them during the eulogies. He was surprised they had made the two hour drive south for the funeral and equally surprised at the surge of rage he felt when he caught sight of them, even now, after fifteen years of a happy second marriage. “Why are all these old emotions cropping up?” he mumbled. He and his ex-wife had cooperated without overt acrimony in raising their daughter, seeing her married, and, recently, sharing the joy of being grandparents. If it had been up to him, they would still be married, but she had left him for the man she was now married to – a more brilliant philosopher, certainly, but, Sam thought with some malice, a lot poorer. The company he worked for had been bought by a huge American software conglomerate, and Sam’s stock options had made him a reasonably wealthy man. Sometimes there was poetic justice in the world, despite the conceptual defects of literary theory.

He stood close to the grave while they lowered Almog’s corpse into it from the canvas stretcher that had borne it from the dark blue van that served as a hearse. By now he was used to seeing bodies buried wrapped only in shrouds, with no coffins, the Israeli custom, but it had shocked him the first time he’d witnessed it. A black-garbed, bearded member of the burial society stood in the grave, took one end of the stretcher, slid the dead man’s feet off of it, and then the men who were holding the other end of the stretcher pulled it clear, and the body slumped into the pit. Never had Sam felt so strongly that the thing they were burying was not the person who had died.

Piyyut by Gotthard Deutsch

Historical Development.

The oldest piyyuṭim are anonymous. They were written during the era of the early Geonim (c. 7th cent.) and are embodied in the prayer-book. They show an attempt at meter, and, as in some late Biblical poetical compositions, the successive lines are often alphabetically arranged. Examples of this kind are found in the Sabbath morning prayer “El Adon, ha-Kol Yoduka,” in the penitential prayers “We-Hu Raḥum” for Mondays and Thursdays, and elsewhere.

The oldest payyeṭan known by name is Jose Ben Jose (ha-Yatom); his date can be fixed only from the fact that he was known to Saadia, who quotes him; but this merely proves that he lived not later than 850. The next payyeṭan known is Yannai, who is said to have been the teacher of the most prolific and popular of the old payyeṭanim, Eleazar ben Ḳalir. The latter’s most famous successor was Saadia Gaon, in the tenth century. From that time the payyeṭanim become very numerous and are found in all larger Jewish settlements, notably in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Zunz (“Literaturgesch.”) counts over 900 names of payyeṭanim. It seems likely that they were influenced by the troubadours and the minnesingers, both in the writing of their poems and in their musical settings.

In Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.

In Germany in the eleventh century there were Moses ben Kalonymus, Meshullam ben Kalonymus, Simon ben Isaac, and Gershom ben Judah; in the twelfth century Jekuthiel ben Moses of Speyer, Menahem ben Machir of Ratisbon, Meïr ben Isaac (the ḥazzan), Kalonymus ben Judah, Eliezer ben Nathan (author of the history of the persecutions during the Crusades), Ephraim ben Isaac of Ratisbon, and Ephraim ben Jacob of Bonn; in the thirteenth century Moses ben Ḥasdai (of Tachau ?), Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, and Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi.

In France Benjamin ben Samuel of Coutances (11th cent.; Gross, “Gallia Judaica,” p. 553), YomṬob ben Isaac of Joigny (martyred at York in 1190),Rashi, and many of the tosafists, were liturgical poets, as were Moses of Coucy and Abraham and Jedaiah Bedersi.

In Spain, where Hebrew poetry reached the highest development, the best liturgical poets were Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah ha-Levi, and Abraham and Moses ibn Ezra. A large number of others whose names the famous in philosophical and Talmudic literature wrote liturgical poems, as Joseph ben Isaac ibn Abitur, Isaac Ghayyat, Judah ben Bileam, Baḥya ben Joseph ibn Paḳuda, and Isaac ben Reuben of Barcelona; even Maimonides is known as the author of a few hymns.

In Italy, where, according to some, Eleazar Ḳalir had his home, there were payyeṭanim from the tenth to the eighteenth century. According to Zunz, Solomon ha-Babli of the tenth century lived in Rome (“Babel” being a metonymic name for Rome). To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries belong Isaiah di Trani and Immanuel of Rome. After the fourteenth, payyeṭanim became fewer, and their productions were rarely embodied in the official liturgy. Generally their piyyuṭim were written to commemorate some local event. Thus Baruch ben Jehiel ha-Kohen wrote on the devastation wrought during the time of the Black Death (1347); Abigdor Ḳara, on the persecution in Prague (1389); Samuel Schotten, on the fire in Frankfort-on-the-Main (1711); Jacob ben Isaac, on the conquest of Posen by a hostile army (1716); and Malachi ha-Kohen, on an earthquake that threatened Leghorn (1742). The Thirty Years’ war (1618-48), also the Cossack persecutions under Chmielnicki (1648), produced an extensive literature of such piyyuṭim.

Classification.

The piyyuṭim are of various kinds, according to their theme, their place in the liturgy, or their form. The Seliḥah, the penitential prayer, occupies the foremost rank and is most likely the oldest. The “We-Hu Raḥum,” for Mondays and Thursdays, was known as early as the time of the Geonim. It was originally composed for fast-days, as were some of the older, anonymous seliḥot; the “El Melek Yosheb” and the various litanies, which are, in parts, found in Talmudic literature; the “Abinu Malkenu”; and the “Mi she-’Anah.” A common theme of the seliḥot is the sacrifice of Isaac (see ‘AḲedah). Another regular feature of the penitential prayers is the confession of sins (“widdui”), in which the initial letters of the successive lines are generally in alphabetical order. The introductory part is called the “petiḥah,” and the closing part the Pizmon, to which there is a refrain.

Special Names.

The hymns for holy days and some special Sabbaths are more specifically called “piyyuṭim,” or often, wrongly, “yoẓerot.” They are divided according to their place in the regular liturgy. Those that are inserted in the evening prayer (“‘arbit”) are called Ma’arabiyyot; those inserted in the first benediction of the morning prayer are called Yoẓer, from the benediction “Yoẓer Or”; in the second benediction, Ahabah, from the initial word of that benediction; those inserted in the benediction following the Shema’are called Zulat, from the keywords “En Elohim zulateka,” or Ge’ullah, from the benediction “Go’el Yisrael.” Other names taken from the characteristic words of the passages in which the piyyuṭim are inserted are Ofan and Me’orah. Ḳerobot (incorrectly Ḳeroboẓ, perhaps under French influence; Zunz, “S. P.” p. 65) is the name of a piyyuṭ inserted in the Tefillah proper (see Ḳerobot and Shemoneh ‘Esreh). Another name, rarely used, for the same piyyuṭ is Shib’ata, from “shib’ah” (= “seven”), because the tefillot for Sabbath and holy days consist of seven benedictions. A special class of piyyuṭim is formed by the Tokaḥah (= “reproof”), penitential discourses somewhat similar to the widdui, and the Ḳinah for the Ninth of Ab.

According to their poetical form there are to be distinguished the Sheniyah, the stanzas of which consist of two lines each; the Shelishit, consisting of three lines; the Pizmon, already mentioned; the Mostegab, in which a Biblical verse is used at the beginning of every stanza; the Shalmonit, a meter introduced by Solomon ha-Babli (Zunz, “S. P.” p. 167; idem, “Ritus,” p. 135). The poetical form was originally acrostic, according to the alphabet in proper order () or reversed () or in some artificial form (). In later times, beginning with the eleventh century, it became customary for the author to weave his name into the acrostic, sometimes adding an invocation; for instance, “May he prosper in the Law and in good deeds.”

When Piyyuṭim Are Recited.

The days on which piyyuṭim are inserted in the regular liturgy are the holy days (including Purim and the Ninth of Ab) and a number of Sabbaths which possess special significance, as the Four Parashiyyot, including the Sabbaths falling between them (“Hafsaḳot”); the Sabbaths on which New Moon falls; Ḥanukkah Sabbath; Sabbath Bereshit, when the first portion of the Torah is read; Sabbaths on which the Scriptural reading his some special significance, as when the sacrifice of Isaac (Wayera), or the Song of Moses (Beshallaḥ), or the Ten Commandments (Yitro), or the law of the Red Heifer(Ḥuḳḳat) is read; and other Sabbaths. The persecutions during the Crusades constitute the theme of the “Zulat,” on the Sabbaths intervening between Passover and Pentecost. Special events, as a circumcision on the Sabbath or a wedding during the week, are celebrated by appropriate piyyuṭim. On this point the various rites, as the Ashkenazic, the Polish, the Sephardic, the ltalian, those of Carpentras and Oran, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Worms, and Prague, and other prominent old communities, differ very greatly, as they differ also with regard to the pieces selected for the holy days. In general, however, every minhag has given preference to the works of local authors.

Philological and Dogmatic Characteristics.

The natural development of the language introduced into the piyyuṭim not only the Neo-Hebrew words which are found in the prayers of Talmudic times, such as “‘olam” in the sense of “the universe” (Biblical Hebrew, “eternity”), “merkabah” (= “the divine chariot”), “hitḳin” (= “to arrange”), but also a large number of new words formed on models and from roots found in Talmudic and midrashic literature or arbitrarily developed from such words as are met with in the works of the oldestpayyeṭanim. Thus Jose ben Jose employs “shu’at ḳeṭoret” (= “the service of the frankincense”) in his ritual for the Day of Atonement (Landshuth, “Siddur Hegyon Leb,” p. 507, Königsberg, 1875), an expression the use of which has only a weak support in the Biblical “sha’ah” (comp. Gen. iv. 5). The typical development of the mannerism of the payyeṭanim is found as early as in the works of Yannai—for instance, in his piyyuṭ for Passover eve, embodied in the Haggadah and in the Ashkenazic ritual for the Sabbath preceding Passover (“Az Rob Nissim”). He uses by preference such rare and poetical expressions as “ẓaraḥ” (=”to call”) instead of “ḳara,” and “saḥ” (=”he spoke”) for “dibber”; and such midrashic allegorical designations as “ger ẓedeḳ” for Abraham, “Patros” for Egypt; and he arbitrarily mutilates Biblical and rabbinical words (e.g., [= "the camp"] from [Greek, τάξις], the Aramaic translation of “degel” in Num. ii. 2).

The master in this line is Ḳalir, whose in the ḳerobah for Sabbath Zakor (the Sabbath preceding Purim) has become proverbial for its mannerisms (see Erter, “Ha-Ẓofeh,” Vienna, 1864). No better, as a rule, is its intrinsic worth as poetry. The piyyuṭ suffers from endless repetitions and from excessive attention to rime and the acrostic. One of the most curious, instances is afforded by the seliḥḥZah of Ephraim ben Jacob of Bonn (12th cent.), beginning “Ta shema’,” and found in the Ashkenazic ritual for the fifth day after New-Year. The author, who shows a remarkable command of the Talmudic idiom and a profound knowledge of Talmudic dialectics, argues with God, in the style of the Talmudic discourse, to prove that Israel should receive far better treatment at His hands, saying, “To every question there is an answer; only mine remains unanswered!”

There are, however, a few noble exceptions, as Judah ha-Levi’s poems, notably his famous ode on Zion, found in the liturgy for the Ninth of Ab, and Solomon ibn Gabirol’s hymns, as his wonderful penitential hymn “Shomamti be-Rob Yegoni” in the Ashkenazic ritual for the Fast of Gedaliah. Abraham ibn Ezra’s religious poetry, while noble in thought and grammatically correct, lacks the inspiration of true poetry.

Among the German and French payyeṭanim, Solomon ben Abun of France (12th cent.) and Simon ben Isaac of Worms (10th cent.) likewise may be quoted as exceptions. While both poets labor under the difficulties created by the customs of acrostic, rime, and midrashic allusion, they display deep religious sentiment and are free from that mannerism which seeks distinction in creating difficulties for the reader. Simon ben Isaac’s poem beginning “Atiti le-ḥananek,” which serves as an introduction to the ḳerobah for the Shaḥarit service of the second New-Year’s day (Ashkenazic ritual), is a noble expression of trust in God’s mercy, not unworthy of Ps. cxxxix., from which the author drew his inspiration. The pizmon “Shofeṭ Kol ha-Areẓ.,” by Solomon ben Abun (Zunz, “Literaturgesch.” pp. 311-312), found in the Ashkenazic ritual for the day preceding New-Year and for the Shaḥarit service on the Day of Atonement, expresses in profoundly religious tones the belief in divine justice.

Opposition to Piyyuṭim.

It seems, as has already been stated, that the payyeṭanim, like the troubadours, conceived their poetry as something that possessed no liturgical character in the strict sense of the word. The degree of approval with which these hymns were received, or of personal respect which the author, in many instances a local rabbi, enjoyed, decided for or against the insertion of the piyyuṭim in the Maḥzor of the congregation. Opposition to the inclusion of the piyyuṭ in the regular prayer as an unlawful interruption of divine service is found as early as the eleventh century. Rabbenu Tam (Jacob ben Meïr) defends the practise against the objections of Hananeel and Hai Gaon (“Haggahot Maimoniyyot,” in “Yad,” Tefillah, vi. 3). Jacob ben Asher disapproves of the practise, quoting the opinion of his father, Asher ben Jehiel, and of Meïr ha-Kohen. Still, in the fourteenth century the custom was so well established that Jacob Mölln (Maharil; Hilkot Yom Kippur, p. 47b, ed. Warsaw, 1874), disapproved not only of the action of his disciples, who preferred to study in the synagogue while the congregation recited the piyyuṭim, but also of any departure from local custom in the selection of the piyyuṭim and the traditional airs (Isserles, in notes on Ṭur Oraḥ Ḥayyim, 68; Shulḥan ‘Aruk, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, 619).

Other objections, from the esthetic standpoint, and on account of the obscure and often blasphemous language used, have been presented in a masterly criticism upon Ḳalir’s piyyuṭim by Abraham ibn Ezra (commentary on Eccl. v. 1). These objections, against which Heidenheim endeavored to defend Ḳalir (commentary on the ḳerobah for the Musaf of the Day of Atonement), were revived in the earliest stages of the Reform movement (see Zunz, “Ritus,” pp. 169 et seq.). Indeed, as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century dogmatic objections to the piyyuṭim were raised, chiefly in regard to addressing prayers to the angels, and to certain gross anthropomorphisms (Lampronti, “Paḥad Yiẓaḳ,” s.v. pp. 33b et seq.)—objections the force of which some of the strictest Orthodox rabbis, like Moses Sofer, recognized. (See Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathism.

The Reform movement resulted in the general disuse of the piyyuṭim even in synagogues in which otherwise the traditional ritual was maintained; but in such synagogues and even in almost all those which use the Reform ritual, some of the most popular piyyuṭim for New-Year and the Day of Atonement have been retained.

The verbal difficulties of the piyyuṭ made commentaries a necessity, so that even the authors themselves appended notes to their piyyuṭim. An exhaustive commentary by Johanan Treves was published in the Bologna (1541) edition of the Roman Maḥzor. Of the later commentators none has done more valuable, work than Wolf Heidenheim, who, however, limited himself to the Ashkenazic and to the Polish ritual. He was the first, also, to write a correct German translation of the whole Maḥzor, butneither his nor Michael Sachs’s translation succeed in the almost impossible task of remaining faithful to the original and producing at the same time a readable text in German. The same may be said of the translations in other modern languages. An exception exists in the work of Seligmann Heller, who succeeded in producing a really poetical version of some of the piyyuṭim.

Ben Gurion’s Golem and Jewish Lesbians: Subverting Hegemonic History in Two Israeli Graphic Novels by Alon Raab  

In the past decade a new wave of Israeli graphic artists has emerged, whose works address a range of issues (urban alienation, suicide, the appearance of new subcultures, class fissures, and the unrelenting violence between Israelis and Palestinians, among others). Among these developments, Eli Eshed and Uri Fink’s Hagolem: Sipuro shel comics Israeli (The Golem: The Story of an Israeli Comic) and Ilana Zeffren’s Sipur varod (Pink Story) have produced of the most accomplished and innovative graphic novels.
While one graphic novel focuses on a mythical superhero and the other on a young lesbian artist, they share a strong commitment to interrogating important Israeli historic and cultural events as well as myths, while shining their light on neglected identities and issues.
With a self-referential outlook, they employ drawings, montage, and collage to suggest that the story the novels’ tell is part of a world of outside influences, to be interpreted in a new way, forming new relationships. The Golem “plays” with the received story, the founding myths of the Israeli state and society, while Pink Story commemorates hitherto voiceless communities and offers a more intimate account of the individual’s sense of identity and belonging. United by their questioning of a variety of political icons and societal conventions, these works creatively probe the master Zionist story. That story, formulated over a century ago by politicians, educators, artists, and writers, is succinctly presented in Israel’s Declaration of Independence as an unbroken 4,000-year Jewish connection to the land and a divine claim to it, culminating in the establishment of the state and the creation of a new kind of society and individual, free from the shackles and deformities of the Diaspora. Against this narrative, both books demonstrate that Israeli history is not a single, monolithic thread with a redemptive trajectory, and that there is much that should be reconsidered. They accomplish this task with an intensely critical but ultimately affectionate approach, often accompanied by infectious humor.

The Golem

In their mockumentary The Golem, Eshed and Fink’s conceit is the purported rediscovery of the most popular Israeli comics series of the past seventy years. With the musculature of the typical superhero and a featureless, bucket-shaped head with a Star of David on his brow, the Golem never fails to come to the rescue of his people whenever danger lurks, battling everyone from Yasser Arafat to space invaders. Created by a character named Uriel Reshef (continued posthumously by his three sons), the series, the reader is told, entertained and informed generations of Israeli children. Eshed and Fink, ardent fans, rescue it from oblivion, and in their history describe Reshef’s life and prolific output — both entirely fictional — as well as the Israel his series was created in and ultimately helped shape

Eli Eshed a detective of culture

Eli Eshed, self-described “cultural detective,” and Uri Fink, an artist and teacher, are highly regarded bastions of the Israeli comics scene. In newspaper articles, radio talks, and his books Tarzan beeretz hakodesh: gilgulav shel melach hakofeem basafa haivrit (Tarzan in the Holy Land: The Transformations of the King of the Apes in the Hebrew Language) and Metarzan vead Zbeng: Hasipur shel hasifrut hapopularit haivrit (From “Tarzan” to “Zbeng”: The Story of the Popular Literature in Israel), Eshed illuminates biblical mysteries, dime-store novels, and Hebrew science fiction.

Uri Fink

The prolific Uri Fink created his first comic series, Sabraman, at the age of fifteen and is best known for his book Zbeng, which is popular among Israeli youth and was made into a TV series and a long line of successful commercial products.

He is also the creator of such characters as Super Schlumper and Fink! and the daily political strip Shabtai.

The Golem is a loving homage to the power and influence of comics, part of a recent examination of the form that includes the works of Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem. One hundred and twenty-eight small squares on the book’s front and back covers provide a glimpse of the metamorphoses of the hero and his society, offering a taste of the stories and characters populating its pages: from a young and robust Ben Gurion ordering the Golem on a secret mission deep behind enemy lines to a contemporary Golem waving the two appendages of every self-respecting modern Israeli, a laptop and a cell phone. In the middle of the cover stands the Golem, a solid block ready to leap into action.

The book begins with Eshed’s fictitious statement revealing how he first encountered the series and how, like most Israelis who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies, he grew up on it, eagerly awaiting its weekly appearance so he could rush to buy it from the neighborhood stationery shop. Now as an adult, he finds old copies in a second-hand bookstore and is enthralled all over again, even as he is struck by the shortcomings of both the series and its creator.

The Golem is constructed as a chronological record, closely following the development of the series, the lives of its various editors and writers, and its reception. Interviews commenting on the work are included alongside photographs of the characters, line drawings, and reproductions of panels from the series. The book successfully blends historical events and people with the imaginary. Eshed adroitly presents the writing and speaking patterns, phrases, and styles of the various characters, and Fink has perfect pitch in creating the visual tone of each era, including early Zionist iconography, 1940s-style socialist realism, 1960s psychedelia, and contemporary advertising.

Fink re-creates the newspapers and journals of Israel across the decades, each with its unique style of graphic representation — primitive designs and fonts included — while interpolating characters into actual historical photos and paintings in a way that would make the best Stalinist artists proud. Eshed and Fink take images familiar to most Israelis and play with them. The authors’ success in mimicry can be seen in the fact that well-known literary critic Menachem Ben was fooled into believing that the series and its creator existed. An example of their technique is their use of the traditional Jewish New Year card, sold in street stands, that features religious or patriotic symbols. Here, a 1959 card displays the military’s Independence Day parade, tanks roaring, with a male paratrooper and gun-toting female soldier proudly marching beneath a large Israeli flag. Into this scene Fink interjects the Golem, an integral part of the action and of the new state.

The name “golem” naturally evokes the rich history of the many creatures that preceded this one. First appearing in Psalms 139:16 as golami, the word has been translated as “my unformed limbs” or “embryo.” In the Talmud, assembled in the fourth century CE, the word denotes “unshaped matter” or “unfinished creation.” We are told that “Rava b’ra gavra” (Rava created a man). The sage sent him to Rav Zeira, who tried to engage him in conversation, but this golem was unable to speak or show signs of thought. Rav Zeira then commanded him to return to dust. According to the eleventh-century biblical and Talmudic scholar Rashi, the golem was created by combining the letters of God’s name as revealed in the Sefer Yetzira (Book of Creation), a seminal kabbalistic text written between the third and sixth centuries CE. Throughout Jewish lore, the golem has drawn comparisons to humans, as in a well-known passage from the Pirkei Avot: “Seven things apply to a golem and seven to a wise person. A wise person does not speak before one who is greater than he in wisdom or years; he does not interrupt his fellow; he is not rushed to respond; he asks relevant questions; he answers accurately; he discusses first things first and last things last; on what he did not hear, he says ‘I did not hear’ and he admits the truth. The opposite is true of the golem.” This designation of the creature as a boor is still retained in Yiddish as leymener geylem (a clay golem) and in modern Hebrew, where the word refers to someone stupid and clumsy.

The figure of the Golem has inspired tales, works of art, films, plays, and musical compositions, the most famous centering on the Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Yehuda Loew, who in sixteenth-century Prague created a protector for the city’s Jews. In the past decade, several Israeli artists have added their interpretations of the myth. These include Ido Shemi, whose art exhibition Shomrey Israel (Guardians of Israel) brings the creature together with a soccer fan; Rami Dotan and Yasmin Even, who created musical tributes; and Sarha Blau, whose Shomer lev haadama (Guardian of the Earth’s Heart) envisions two golems, one created by an orthodox woman in contemporary Tel Aviv and the other by her grandmother in the Warsaw Ghetto. The grandmother invokes a golem to fight the Nazis, while the young heroine hopes her Golem will satisfy her sexual needs, which are unmet by Israeli men.

Eshed and Fink’s golem, like the title character in Woody Allen’s classic film Zelig, has the knack of appearing at important events in his nation’s history. These include the many conflicts, starting with the riots of 1936-39 and continuing with the revolt against the British, the war of 1948, and other bloodletting culminating in the second Intifada

For example, on a tattered page of a “1940 issue,” printed in black and poorly registered blue, a group of young Israeli hikers exploring their ancestral homeland are stopped at gunpoint by a British soldier, in Khaki and handlebar mustache, and his Arab ally, broadly drawn with a hooked nose and dagger unsheathed. Suddenly the Golem appears, shielding the innocent teens from the enemy’s fire and chasing the attackers away. The Golem proclaims that wherever there is inequality and a threat to Jews, there he will be.

An ostensibly 1960 issue portrays (this time in full color), a terrorist siege at the state’s nuclear reactor. One of the hostages, a young man exposed to radiation, metamorphoses into the Golem, raising the prospect that in an extraordinary situation anyone could become the Golem. The page is filled with dynamic close-ups, and the compositions contrast each character’s vantage point. The dominant colors are yellow and brown, but the heroic blue of the young man’s shirt has foreshadowed his transformation into the Golem. Throughout the series, indelible portraits of Israeli society are conveyed through the inclusion of particular politicians, cultural figures and media stars — richly emblematic of their times. David Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, and Ariel Sharon all get their due. Always accompanied by the Golem, they are summarized in a few lines, their defining actions those that were supported at the time by most Israelis, actions that are still described in textbooks.

On a cover representing 1966, the Golem and Ariel Sharon burst into action. Sharon, cradling an Uzi with the Golem behind him, charges forward with a raised fist. The issue’s title, Hagolem eem Arik basela Haadom (The Golem with Arik at the Red Rock), is emblazoned in a starburst at the bottom of the page. The background is a low-resolution image of Petra, a Nabataen city in southern Jordan carved into the rock, which until the Six-Day War attracted young Israeli men, as reaching it was viewed as proof of one’s courage and manhood. Sharon’s head is bandaged dashingly, an allusion to the famous photograph of him, taken seven years later during the Yom Kippur War, when his head was grazed by an Egyptian bullet.

Events in the series are often carried to fantastic extremes. In Hagolem matzil et Megilat Haatzmaoot (The Golem Saves the Declaration of Independence Scroll), the hero single-handedly stops gangs of Arab marauders aided by a djinn, who are trying to break into the gathering of Jewish leaders at Tel Aviv and prevent Ben Gurion from declaring the birth of the new state. On the cover, the Golem unveils the nation’s new flag, posed with hand on hip, his arms the size of tree-trunks (plate 8). The colors of his cape correspond with those of the flag. Behind him we see the well-known photograph of the middle-aged and elderly leaders gathered on the podium. Their rigidity and formal attire contrast with his bursting energy and vitality. As a creature of fantasy, the Golem interjects into Israeli history a sense of playfulness and a powerful note of wish-fulfillment. Later, the Golem receives the first prime minister’s thanks and is invited to add his signature to those of the founders of the nation. When asked who he really is, he replies, “I am every Hebrew youth fighting for our ancestors’ home, every fighter risking his life for the independence of the nation.”

More often than not, Eshed and Fink do tend to ignore controversial actions. Thus Sharon is praised for his leadership of commando Unit 101 — but the Sabra and Shatila massacres go unmentioned. Similarly, the authors mostly ignore unsavory personality traits. So while Sharon’s courage in battle is lauded, the qualities that inspired the title of Uzi Benziman’s Lo otser beadom (The Man Who Does Not Stop at the Red Light), an Israeli biography, are nowhere to be found. (This exclusion of negative traits does not, however, extend to Rabin’s rumored fondness for alcohol which the authors gleefully portray). In addition to the Israeli prime ministers and generals, we find other public figures, including Isser Harel, who led the Secret Service and received respect and adulation for commanding Adolf Eichmann’s capture. Here Harel, a supposed neighbor of Reshef, is gently mocked, drawn as a big-eared and drab bureaucrat who blesses the Golem’s plan to find King Achav’s lost scrolls, who is friendly to children but delights in spying on his neighbors. This portrayal is in accord with recent revelations of Harel’s use of extra-legal measures to spy on political opponents of the Ben Gurion government as well as on average Israeli citizens.

Throughout the book we also encounter well-known literary and cultural personalities, some appearing under their own names, others disguised. Among the former are Israel Weisler (also known as “Puchu”) — a beloved children’s author who embodied the spirit and values of the Palmach generation, with their emphasis on courage, sacrifice for the good of the collective, and mischief. Other writers mentioned include Leah Goldberg, Avraham Even Shoshan, David Grossman, and Doron Rosenblaum.

Among the disguised personalities are Yakov Churgin, the prolific writer who appears here as Yaakov Moked, the editor of a magazine for which Reshef briefly works. Churgin is today a forgotten figure, but in the early years of the state his historical works for children, many set during ancient Jewish revolts, enjoyed critical and popular success, as they evoked a heroic past. Most cultural figures are referenced in the text only, except for Pinchas Sadeh, a writer of the artist’s struggle against society and a re-teller of Chassidic tales who for many years, as “Amatzya Yariv,” earned his living writing comics and pulp fiction, and who is shown in a passport photo. We see also photos, taken perhaps from historical archives, that express through clothes and activities the spirit of the period, without connection to the men and women mentioned.

One exception is David Tidhar, known as the first Hebrew detective, an immensely popular recounter of his own adventures and a compiler of pioneer biographies. Several issues are devoted to Tidhar, who is drawn in the tradition of the American private eye, as a figure lurking in a city alley, gun in hand.
Politicians are sometimes drawn looking pensive, like Zeev Jabotinsky, leader of the pre-state right-wing bloc, but mostly strike dynamic poses, like general and politician Moshe Dayan. On an August 1967 cover, Dayan flies through the air to pound Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, his cape evoking Superman.
Another disguised writer in the book is the “creator” of The Golem, Uriel Reshef. According to Eshed, the name Reshef is the Hebrew equivalent of the German word Fink but no one served as a direct model.

Sharaga Gafni

Writer Shraga Gafni is a model for the Golem creator. However, it is impossible not to think of Shraga Gafni. Better known by his pen names Avner Carmeli and On Sarig, Gafni was one of the most popular writers for youth during the first four decades of the state of Israel. His many book series include tales of the invisible boy Dani Din, , and the star soccer players Alon Levi and Rafi Givon from Hasportaeem hatzeereem (The Young Athletes). The characters often risk their lives in the service of the nation, and the books contain many of Gafni’s extreme nationalistic ideas, commented on recently by critics. As noted earlier, following Reshef’s death, his three sons take over the publishing franchise, but, bickering over ideology and finances, they run it into the ground. The sons are clearly representative of pivotal figures of Israeli society: the hot-headed settler, the glib advertising macher (mover and shaker), and the tortured artist.

In conversation, Fink alerted me to their real-life models. Michael, the fanatical settler, was inspired by Michael Netzer. Born in the United States to a Jewish mother and Arab father as Mike Nassar, Netzer moved to Israel and created the comic-book character Uri On (the name means “my light and strength”), who excelled at fighting any Arab or Jew who dared to stand in the path of rebuilding the Third Temple. The second son, Erez, is a fast talker who clearly resembles Erez Tal, star of Israeli fluff radio and television shows modeled on American hits.

Yirmi Pinkus

The third son is Yirmi, an avant-garde artist modeled on the graphic designer and comic-book creator Yirmi Pinkus.

Each son creates a competing version of the Golem according to his own interests and values. Michael produces Hagolem neged mezimat Oslo (The Golem Against the Oslo Plot), in which Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is described as traitor intent on destroying the state, and readers are urged to deal with him by any means necessary. The Golem is drawn ready to pounce on Rabin, shown wild-haired and holding a bottle and a half-empty glass. After taking care of the Israeli leader, the Golem attacks a giant djinn and a timid-looking dove carrying an olive branch in its beak. (This episode contrasts sharply with an earlier issue in which Rabin, a young commander of the 1948 war, is saved from Arab fighters’ bullets by the quick intervention of his jeep driver–the Golem).

Along with Israel’s many wars and skirmishes, we encounter societal conflicts such as the hostility between the Israeli political right and left, which stretches back to the pre-state days, as in an issue from the late 1930s, where the moderate leadership of the Yishuv is attacked for not taking a militant stand against the British occupiers. Such allusions are sometimes achieved by direct mention of the “traitors” in the text and sometimes by drawings. In an April 1939 issue, the plot unfolds during the days of the Second Temple. A young fighter is ready to blow himself up with a mysterious powder as long as he can take with him some Roman soldiers and their “traitorous” Jewish supporters. Israel-Diaspora relations are also portrayed. In a story from the 1950s, the days of mass immigration and “the ingathering of the tribes of Israel,” the Golem travels to the far corners of the Earth in search of the lost Jewish communities. In Japan he finds the tribe of Naftali, and in Kazakhstan, the sons and daughters of Asher, who help him obtain secrets of the Soviet space program. After overcoming agents sent by Nasser, and anti-Semites in many locales, he leads the lost tribes to the promised land. Each tribe possesses a powerful treasure, including the Ark of the Covenant, King Solomon’s chair, and Moses’ staff, and gladly returns them to their true owner — the new state of Israel.

In one story, the Golem is forced to fight “Mau-Mau,” who is depicted as a black, spear-wielding savage with a large bone stuck through his hair. Elsewhere, he battles a giant and succeeds in snatching his medallion, a large Star of David. At that, a heavenly voice announces that the spirit of King Solomon is contained within, having waited 3,000 years for a Jewish hero to release it and unify the twelve tribes.

Throughout the evolution of the series and the many adventures of the Golem, we experience changing Israeli attitudes and values. The first comics, set in the 1930s, featured Yoska Tractor, a precursor to the Golem. By day the hero works on a kibbutz and at night fights marauding Arabs. In later ones, created by Reshef’s son Yirmi, the hero is dressed in suit and tie, wears fashionable sunglasses, and occupies a condominium in one of Tel Aviv’s new glass-and-steel towers. His place is furnished with a couch, an abstract expressionist painting, and a houseplant. Tired of fighting for his people, this yuppie Golem has artistic aspirations and talks of his need for expressing his “inner self” but is interrupted by the crass calls of commerce and the need to create catchy advertising jingles to make a living. He sleeps with a beautiful woman and is surrounded by gadgets, but sex and money fail to fill the emptiness at the heart of his existence.

These developments artfully mirror tectonic shifts in Israeli society. In the pre-state years, the ideal was the New Hebrew, a pioneer, often a kibbutznik, who milked cows during the day, guarded the settlement at night, and still managed to dance around the fire and sing shirey moledet (songs of love to the land). In the materialistic and individualistic present, the hero to emulate is the start-up entrepreneur, the star athlete, or the fashion model. The changes of values, attitudes, and behaviors are reflected in all aspects of life, whether the world of sports, culture, or politics. A succinct manifestation of these changes in values is exemplified by the actions of Israeli General Staff chief Dan Chalutz (his name means “pioneer”) on July 12, 2006. After three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by the Hizzbaleh, an event that served as the pretext for the second Lebanon war, Chalutz still made time to call his broker and instruct him to sell stocks.

It must be noted that while The Golem does an excellent job of re-creating historical figures and events, it does so through stereotypical portrayals of women, Sephardic Jews, and especially Palestinians. (This is hardly surprising as, until the last decade, women were underrepresented as artists in Israeli comics, and when they appeared as characters it was often along fairly predictable lines.) Examples include descriptions of Reshef’s wife, Mira Bloom, as a “homely woman” (oddly the two accompanying photographs show her as a handsome woman) and the character Juliette Chanoch, the “man-hating” feminist illustrator who works on the comic for a brief time and dabbles in witchcraft. The main female character in the book is Lilith, who serves as the hero’s sidekick, and her portrayal is more complex. In Jewish lore, Lilith occupies a special place as queen of the demons, snatcher of babies, and seductress of men. Here, with her exaggerated breasts and buttocks, she is a femme fatale and a fighter.

Lilith also serves as an extension of the myth of the brave and beautiful gun-toting Israeli woman soldier, which is so popular in the literature of the state of Israel as a symbol of the new state and a statement about female liberation. The reality, however, was different, as most women served in the military as secretaries or parachute folders, and their entry into border patrol units and the ranks of pilots is a very recent one, preceded by court battles to ensure equality and counter the pervasive atmosphere of sexual discrimination and harassment.

As for Sephardic Jews, this group was long ignored or marginalized in Israeli children’s literature, especially in canonic stories such as Hasamba, Yigal Mosenzon’s multivolume series starring a group of youngsters fighting internal and external enemies under the command of blond-haired and blue-eyed Yaron Zehavi, while the Sephardic kids are relegated to minor roles or doomed to die. Regrettably The Golem, preserves this traditional marginalization. As for Palestinians (and all other Arabs), though portrayed with some frequency, they also do not fare well. One of the eternal enemies is the evil Djinn, raised from the lamp in which he dwells by a series of murderous leaders and fighters, starting with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. In another issue, Nasser vechanit hagoral (Nasser and the Lance of Fate), the Egyptian leader is holding a pitchfork in hell, declaring himself Hitler’s heir and vowing to destroy the Golem with black magic. Arafat, with his trademark sunglasses and beard stubble, also appears, one arm strangling the terrified Lilith, the other aiming a cutlass at her exposed breast. Other Arabs are presented as dangerous enemies intent on the murder of all Israelis, and are drawn as caricatures with hooked noses and hateful eyes. This echoes the portrayal of Arabs in Israeli works for children in the early years of the state. In light of the many literary works that suggest new models for Jewish-Arab interaction, this stereotypical portrayal is disappointing.

The book’s whirlwind tour through the Israeli political and cultural landscape raises questions about its politics and its stand on the issues that divide the country. Eshed and Fink’s planned weekly Web strip about the Golem and Lilith is aimed at educating Jewish teenagers in Israel and abroad whose knowledge of Israeli history and Judaism is limited. According to Eshed, “The series will be an exaggerated and ironic version, mythic if you wish, of the state of Israel.” Does the book, too, share this goal? Is there a clearly thought-out political agenda? Or is it, as sociologist and cultural historian Oz Almog wrote about Fink’s earlier comic Zbeng, a work that is ideologically hard to pin down, open to various interpretations?
According to Fink, “The main role of my comic series Zbeng was to entertain, but there were also many political messages, including being pro-peace, pro the Oslo peace agreements, pro openness to the world, and also against religious control and against all attempts to compel people to be other than they are.” The show’s line of merchandise included a school diary which contained imaginary holidays and memorial days, such as “a day of mourning to mark Netanyahu’s rise to power.” The progressive ideas and jibes, as well as an openly gay character, elicited letters of protest from religious and nationalistic readers.
On the other hand, Fink’s later work Sabraman neged haSatan (Sabraman Against Satan) led to accusations from leftist readers that he was flirting with fascism and glorifying power. These divergent readings inevitably result from the fact that Zbeng, as Almog has noted, mocks sacred cows of all political stripes (including the character of a “politically correct” peace protester ready to go on strike at the flimsiest excuse) and expresses an anti-ideological attitude prevalent among secular Israeli youth, who view cultural battles and grand political declamations with cynicism and suspicion. The Golem reinforces this attitude.
It is interesting to compare the approach to Israeli history in The Golem with that of two recent American graphic novels of diametrically opposed viewpoints, Joe Sacco’s Palestine and Marv Wolfman and Mario Ruiz’ Homeland: The Illustrated History of the State of Israel. Sacco based his stories on what he heard during his sojourn among the Palestinians of Gaza. The few Israelis that Sacco included are one-dimensional, highly negative figures. In contrast, in Homeland, authors Wolfman and Ruiz, president of the evangelical Christian Valor Comics, depict the Jewish right to the Land of Israel – from God granting the land of Canaan to Abraham until the present day – as a paean to classic Zionist historiography. The two American books wear their political sentiments on their sleeves, and there can be no mistaking their agendas;
in contrast, The Golem is far more ambiguous. It contains political elements and critical observations, but goes beyond the old political divisions and ideological certainties. In simplifying and banalizing momentous historical events such as the creation of the state and figures such as Hitler, The Golem opens these topics for re-interpretation and a more conscious look from our new vantage point. The way Eshed and Fink manufacture the cultural fabric of each era helps awaken the reader to his or her own contemporary perspective. “Our goal with the book was to present various mythologies of the state but not necessarily to smash them,” Eshed has stated. At times it is difficult to determine what the authors think of divisive issues such as relations between secular and religious Jews, the growing economic inequality in Israeli society, or the question of the occupied territories. They seem to enjoy the process of discovery and sharing their enthusiasm with readers, wishing to entertain and present comics as a normative cultural creation, albeit one that canonic culture has until recently viewed as inferior.
Where there is criticism, it is presented with irony, allowing the reader to reach his or her own conclusions. This open-ended quality and lack of dogmatic judgment are perhaps what is most sophisticated about The Golem, considering the highly polarized society (culturally and politically) that inspired it.

Between 1977, the year of the political mahapach (overturn) that ended the Labor movement’s hegemony and brought to power the political right, and 1993, the year the Oslo agreements were signed and the prospect of peace with the Palestinians seemed a reality, well-known literary scholar Gershon Shaked produced his voluminous survey of Hebrew literature. Taking 1880 as his departure point and continuing to 1980, he presented the vast body of literature as a Zionist project, an ideologically-coherent literature, which mostly followed the Zionist metanarrative. While there were always writers and works outside the national norms, it is in the past decade that voices countering the accepted story have proliferated and gained popularity. The Golem and Pink Story are two such voices. Their heroes belong to the new Israeli reality. The Golem began as the model of Zionist manhood, the ultimate sabra committed to his nation, risking his life for its survival. But at the end of his journey, he is not willing to risk his materialistic existence for any ideal. While he lives the hedonistic life of a Tel Aviv professional, he might as well be living anywhere in the world. Zeffren’s personal story and that of the Israeli gay and lesbian community are of individuals who until recently were mostly viewed as sick, ostracized from any historical account worth preserving and telling. Now, however, these individuals are moving steadily into acceptance by the new Israeli society, which more willingly pays attention to various lifestyles, personal choices, and perspectives.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Israeli Wax Museum served as an accurate barometer of the status of Israel’s cultural heroes. Located in the country’s tallest building, the Shalom Tower in Tel Aviv, the museum’s pantheon re-created well-known personages and scenes from the peoples’ life. Side by side they dwelled: Herzl on his Basel hotel balcony during the first Zionist conference, uttering his dictum (about creating a Jewish state) “If you will it, it is not a dream,” and Tzvika Pik, Israel’s first glam rock star, androgynous in his look and high-pitched singing; General Dayan, triumphantly entering the Lion’s Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City, and footballer Mordechai Spiegler, scoring with one of his legendary “banana” kicks. The museum is now closed, its wax figures languishing in a dusty warehouse or perhaps, like the original Golem, returned to their elements. Eshed, Fink, and Zeffren would have approved of the colliding images of these icons and their stories, and their importance in expressing and shaping the nation’s consciousness of itself. In its place, Israeli graphic novels like The Golem and Pink Story journey through Israeli history and society, meshing high culture with popular culture, reconciling army leaders and drag queens. Along the way, they create new and exciting perspectives on a turbulent country.

Modern Hebrew Literature by Richard Gottheil

Modern Hebrew literature (1743-1904), in distinction to that form of Neo-Hebraic literature known as rabbinical literature (see Literature, Hebrew), which is distinctly religious in character, presents itself under a twofold aspect: (1) humanistic, relating to the emancipation of the language by a return to the classical models of the Bible, leading to the subsequent development of modern Hebrew; (2) humanitarian, dealing with the secularization of the language with a view to the religious and social emancipation of the Jews of the ghetto. These two tendencies are expressed by the word Haskalah, a term denoting the movement which predominated in Hebrew literature from the second half of the eighteenth century down to the death of Smolenskin in 1885.

Period of Transition in Italy.

Beginning with the seventeenth century, many attempts were made to emancipate Hebrew from the forms and ideas of the Middle Ages. Italy, with critics and poets like Azariah dei Rossi, Leon of Modena, Francis, etc., who were inspired by the Italian Renaissance, led in this period of transition in Hebrew literature. But it was not until the appearance of Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto that Hebrew poetry shook off the medieval fetters which hindered its free development. His allegorical drama “La-Yesharim Tehillah” (1743), which may be regarded as the first product of modern Hebrew literature, is a poem that in its classic perfection of style is second only to the Bible. In the less advanced countries especially it has contributed to the regeneration of Hebrew and has stimulated a host of imitators among writers removed from modern literary centers.At Amsterdam, Luzzatto’s pupil, David Franco Mendes (1713-92), in his imitations of Racine (“Gemul ‘Atalyah”) and of Metastasio (“Yehudit”), continued his master’s work, without, however, equaling Luzzatto’s poetic inspiration and originality. In Germany, where, in consequence of the ideas promulgated by the encyclopedists, the Jews developed more normally, and where, moreover, in the middle of the eighteenth century, Hebrew was still almost the only literary language accessible to the masses, another successor of Luzzatto, Naphtali Hartwig Wessely (1725-1805), inaugurated the haskalah movement. His “Shire Tif’eret,” or “Mosiade,” which, though falling short of poetic inspiration, is written in a pure, oratorical style and is marked by a lofty, moral tone, made him, so to speak, poet laureate of the period.

First German Maskilim.

Under the stimulus of Mendelssohn, literary societies were formed by the Maskilim in the large communities, which undertook to propagate modern ideas among the Jews and to familiarize them with modern secular life. Two schools or parties, which were more or less distinct, undertook this work: (1) the Biurists, a group of commentators and translators of the Bible who, under the leadership of Mendelssohn, desired to replace the Judæo-German dialect with pure German and to provide a more rational interpretation of the sacred text; (2) the Me’assefim, scholars connected with the first literary collection in Hebrew, “Ha-Me’assef,” which was established in 1785 at Breslau by Isaac Eichel and B. Lindau, and which became the organ of the haskalah and a bond of union among the Hebraists.

Wessely may be regarded as the spiritual leader of the Me’assefim. Although a devout believer himself, he did not hesitate to meet the objections which the Orthodox rabbis of Austria and Germany opposed to all educational and civic reforms advocated by the government of Joseph II. In his eight messages (1784), “Dibre Shalom we-Emet,” he emphasized the necessity, even from the standpoint of the Talmud, of these reforms as well as of secular studies, especially the study of modern languages and classical Hebrew and of manual training. Despite the opposition of the Orthodox rabbis of Germany and Austria, the aid of the liberal Italian rabbis enabled him to arouse public opinion in favor of the haskalah, and thus to prepare the way for the Me’assefim. “Ha-Me’assef” was discontinued after an existence of seven years, the French Revolution and the downfall of the old order of things destroying the interest in the Hebrew language, which was the only relic left to the emancipated Maskilim. The literary and scientific value of “Ha-Me’assef” is very doubtful. In their instinctive aversion to everything medieval and rabbinic, the Me’assefim went to the other extreme and adopted the affected style of the “meliẓah,” which was cultivated by their successors, and which often ended in mere artificial juggling with words. As regards their content most of the pieces in the collection have only a slight interest, being merely puerile imitations of German pseudo-romanticism. Having broken with the Messianic ideal of traditional Judaism, and being unable to replace it with another ideal more in conformity with modern ideas, the Me’assefim ended in advocating assimilation with the surrounding people. But the importance of this first secular periodical in Hebrew was such that it imposed its name upon the entire literary movement of the second half of the eighteenth century, which is called “the period of the Me’assefim.”

Among the Me’assefim, I. Eichel is noteworthy for his uncompromising attitude, unusual at that time, toward rabbinism, and Baruch Lindau is known for his works on the subject of natural science and written in Hebrew. The most influential, however, was the rabbi Solomon Pappenheim (1776-1814), an eminent philologist, whose sentimental elegy, “Arba’ Kosot,” was the book of the day and contributed much to the dissemination of the meliẓah. The most valuable contributors to “Ha-Me’assef” were, perhaps, the Me’assefim of Polish origin, especially the grammarian and stylist S. Dubno; S. Maimon, the commentator of Maimonides; the eccentric but gifted Isaac Satanow, author of the maxims “Mishle Asaf”; and the grammarian Judah Ben-Zeeb (Bensew) of Cracow.

Influence of the Me’assefim.

In short, although the Me’assefim lacked originality, they accomplished the double task which they had set themselves. Hebrew, which had been almost entirely neglected in the Slavic countries, was again studied, giving rise to a literature more or less worthy the name and producing the Maskilim, a class of secular scholars who were active during the following century in awakening the masses from their medieval slumbers and in disputing, in the name of science and modern life, the authority of the Rabbis over the people (see Haskalah).

The nineteenth century did not open auspiciously for Hebrew literature, especially in western Europe. Hebrew disappeared more and more as a living language among the emancipated Jews, who had broken with their national ideals and were ambitious of assimilating themselves entirely with their neighbors. It is true that the Napoleonic wars gave birth to a whole literature of odes and hymns, many of which were sung in the synagogue, the most poetical and characteristic being Elie Ḥalfan Halévy’s “Ha-Shalom” (Paris, 1804); but the few rabbis who continued to use Hebrew did not influence the masses. In Italy, however, there was still an ardent band of Hebrew scholars, among them the poet E. Luzzatto. About this time the center of literary activity was definitively transferred to the Slavic countries, where was witnessed a remarkable revival of Hebrew letters. The lead which Austria, followed by Italy, took in the movement at the beginning of the nineteenth century was later yielded to Russia; and that country has maintained its leadership down to the present time.

Poland and Austria.

At the close of the eighteenth century Polish Judaism, which for a long time had been politically isolated and had devoted itself entirely to pious observance and to the study of the Talmudic law, came in contact with modern ideas, and awakened from its centuries of slumber. Galicia became a center for the haskalah. The “Me’assef,”which had been edited in a new series in Germany by Solomon ha-Kohen (Dessau, 1809-11), but without much success, was revived at Vienna and later in Galicia, and succeeded, first under the title of “Bikkure ha-’Ittim” (1820-31), and then under that of “Kerem Ḥemed” (1833-42), in gathering together many writers, the larger proportion of whom were Polish. In Poland, however, where the Jewish population lived apart, and could not even aspire to the dreams of equality and liberty of the German writers, the Maskilim were confronted with very complicated problems. On the one hand, political upheavals, modern instruction, and military service had paved the way for the mysticism of the Ḥasidim, which seized the masses despite the efforts of the liberal rabbis aided by writers like D. Samoscz and Tobias Feder.

On the other hand, light literature and romantic imitations could not satisfy scholars saturated with Talmudic study. In order to meet these needs Hebrew literature descended from its heights to devote its attention to the necessities of daily life. Joseph Perl, a Mæcenas and himself a scholar, encouraged this movement, and published the parody “Megalleh Ṭemirin,” directed against the superstitions and the cult of the Ḥasidic ẓaddiḳim. Solomon Judah Rapoport (1790-1867), who began by translating Racine and Schiller, now turned to the critical study of the past. By his able reconstruction of the lives and the scientific work of the masters of the Middle Ages, by his careful critical method, and by his devotion to the Law and the Jewish spirit, Rapoport created the Science of Judaism.

Nachman Krochmal (1785-1840).

But this science, which was warmly received especially by the cultivated minds of western Europe, could not satisfy the poor Polish scholars, living in entirely Jewish surroundings, and, no longer contented with the reasons advanced by the medieval masters, anxiously questioning the wherefore of the present and future existence of Israel. Then a master mind arose, to give an answer at once ingenious and adapted to the time. Nachman Krochmal, teaching gratuitously in his obscure corner of Poland, succeeded in uniting the propositions of modern critics with the principles of Judaism by the bond of nationalism, as it were, thus creating a Jewish philosophy in conformity with modern thought. Starting with Hegel’s axiom of real and of absolute reason, Krochmal sets forth in his essays and in his ingenious Biblical and philosophic studies that the Jewish people is a concrete national organism, a separate unity, whose existence is justified, as the existence of all other nationalities is justified. But, at the same time, as the people of the Prophets, it has in addition a spiritual reason for its existence, which transcends national boundaries, and will join the entire human race in one bond.

Many poets, scholars, and popular writers besides Rapoport and Krochmal contributed to the dissemination of Hebrew and to the emancipation of the Jews of Galicia. The satirical poet Isaac Erter (1792-1841), whose collection of essays, “Ha-Ẓofeh le-Bet Yisrael,” is one of the purest works of modern Hebrew literature, attacked Ḥasidic superstitions and prejudices in a vigorous and classical style, marked by bright fancy and a cutting sarcasm which heaped ridicule upon the rabbi and satire upon the ẓaddiḳ.

The Galician School.

Meïr Halevy Letteris acquired merited renown and was for a long time considered poet laureate of the period by reason of his numerous translations, both in prose and in poetry, including “Faust” and works by Racine and Byron, and also on account of original lyric poetry, his song “Yonah Homiyyah” being a masterpiece. The popularizer of Galician history and geography, Samson Bloch, also won a reputation, although his insipid and prolix style does not warrant the success achieved by his works. The Galician scholar Judah Mises is noted especially for his violent attacks on rabbinical tradition and for his extreme radicalism, his work being continued by I. A. Schorr, the daring editor of “HeḤaluẓ.”

Decadence of the School.

Outside of Galicia, where the scholars issued their works, and where periodicals multiplied, some of which were published at Vienna, as “Kokebe Yiẓḥaḳ” (ed. Stern), “Oẓar Neḥmad” (ed. Blumenfeld), Kerem Ḥemed, etc., groups of Maskilim or individual scholars were to be found toward the middle of the century in all the countries of Europe. In Germany the campaign for and against religious reform gave opportunity to certain scholars and rabbis to conduct their polemics in Hebrew. Zunz, Geiger, Z. Frankel, Jellinek, Carmoly, Fürst, J. Schwarz, and others, also published part of their works in Hebrew. Moses Mendelssohn of Hamburg, a pupil of Wessely and author of the maḳamat “Pene Tebel” (Amsterdam, 1872), may be considered as the epigone of the Me’assefim. In the Netherlands, especially at Amsterdam, there was also a circle of epigones, including the poet Samuel Molder (1789-1862). In Austria, Vienna was the depot for publishing Hebrew books and periodicals, and Prague became an active center for the haskalah. The best known among the Maskilim here is J. L. Jeiteles (1773-1838), author of witty epigrams (“Bene ha-Ne’urim”) and of works directed against the Ḥasidim and against superstition, and director of the “Bikkure ha-’Ittim.” There were scholars in Hungary also, the most gifted among them being Solomon Lewison of Moor (1789-1822), a remarkable stylist, whose classical “Meliẓat Yeshurun” places him above all the poets of the period. Gabriel Südfeld, father of Max Nordau, and Simon Bacher, may also be mentioned. The reflex of this movement was felt even in Rumania (J. Barasch, etc.). Galicia, however, the center of the haskalah, finally succumbed to Ḥasidism, while the moderns gave up Hebrew, and ended by more or less openly advocating assimilation. A few circles of Maskilim barely succeeded in perpetuating the Hebrew tradition, but had no influence on the masses.

Italy: Luzzatto.

The Italian school exercised a more pronounced influence. I. S. Reggio (1784-1854) endeavored in his “Ha-Torah weha-Filosofiah” to reconcile modern thought with the Jewish law, while in his numerous writings and publications he openly sided with the German religious reformers. Joseph Almanzi,Ḥayyim Salomon, S. Lolli, and others wrote poems on the grandeur of the Law and the glory of Israel; these contained, however, not a spark of originality. More interesting perhaps is the only poetess of the period, Rachel Morpurgo (1790-1860), whose poems evince religious piety and a mystic faith in Israel’s future. The most original and gifted Italian writer of the period is Samuel David Luzzatto (SHeDaL, 1800-65), whose influence reached beyond Italy and beyond his time. Gifted with an encyclopedic mind, Luzzatto did good work alike in poetry (“Kinnor Na’im”), in philology (“Bet ha-Oẓar” and “Betulat Bat Yehudah”), in philosophy, and in general literature. At the same time Luzzatto was the first modern writer to introduce religious romanticism into Hebrew and to attack northern rationalism in the name of religious and national feeling. “True Jewish science is founded on faith. . . . Faith is the only arbiter of supreme morality which gives us true happiness. The happiness of the Jewish people, the people of morality, does not depend on its political emancipation, but on faith and on morality. . . .” These ideas led Luzzatto into polemics with his northern friends, but they also helped to familiarize the believers in Russia with modern literature. Luzzatto thus found the key to the heart of the masses; and it was due to him that the work of the Maskilim, which had failed of permanent results in the West, in the East led to the development of a national literature. But in Italy also Hebrew declined more and more, even among scholars; and by the second half of the century it was almost entirely forgotten in the civilized countries of Europe.

Russia.

The large bodies of Jews in the Polish districts annexed to Russia were entirely removed from all political and social life, and vegetated in a kind of profound resignation or in mystical piety. At the Europeanized city of Odessa, however, Galician Jews formed a circle of Maskilim, which, though active, was restricted in its influence. Here in the middle of the century were the scholars S. Pinsker and S. Stern, who were soon joined by the Karaite Firkovich and by the poet Jacob Eichenbaum. The acknowledged leader of these Maskilim of southern Russia was Isaac Bär Levinsohn, the apostle of humanism in Russia, whose influence penetrated even into government circles, but whose literary work has been overestimated. His personal endeavors, as well as his books (“Te’udah be-Yisrael” and “Bet Yehudah”), in which he recommends to the Orthodox the study of the sciences and the pursuit of manual employments, contributed to general emancipation rather than to that of Hebrew literature in particular. Lithuania, an eminently Jewish country, was more favored by circumstances; and here the haskalah was destined to lead to the unfolding of a literature. At Shklov, the first city to come in contact with the outside world, a group of humanists arose as early as the beginning of the century. But it was at Wilna, the capital of the country, abandoned by its native population and entirely removed from outside influence, that the Hebrew language flourished to an extraordinary degree. It was due to the enlightened tolerance of the gaon Elijah Wilna and the zeal of his pupils that Wilna became, toward the end of the eighteenth century, the home of excellent grammarians and stylists. About 1820 or 1830 a circle of Maskilim, called “Berliner,” and evidently inspired by the writers of Germany, was formed, which assiduously cultivated modern Hebrew literature. Two eminent scholars lent special luster to this new literary movement. M. A. Günzburg well deserves his title “the father of prose,” which he won for himself through his numerous translations, histories, and scientific compilations, his picturesque narration of the ritual murder at Damascus, his realistic autobiography “Abi’ezer” (a glowing criticism of customs of the past), and especially through his style, which is at once temperate, realistic, and modern.

A. Bär Lebensohn.

At the same time Abraham Bär Lebensohn, called “the father of poetry,” lent new radiance and vigor to Hebrew verse. The touching lyric quality of some of his poems, the profound pessimism, the plaint over life, and the fear of death, which betray the feelings of the Jew tried by the ordeal of ghetto life, all stamp him as the veritable poet of the ghetto. The simplicity of his ideas, his rabbinical dialectic and even his frequent prolixity only added to his popularity. His poems “Shire Sefat Ḳodesh” were extraordinarily successful; and his elegant, limpid, and often energetic style is still justly admired.

It was due to these two masters that modern Hebrew literature was widely disseminated throughout Lithuania, circles devoted to the haskalah being formed nearly everywhere. Hebrew became the language of daily life, the literary language, and, what is still more characteristic, the language of folk-lore. In fact, the list of popular Hebrew poems by known or unknown authors is too long to be noted here. The unhappy political situation of the Russian Jews under Nicholas I.—a period of persecutions of all kinds and of terror—had particularly contributed to produce this state of mind in the harassed people; and while Ḥasidism completed its work of producing intellectual obscurantism and hopeless resignation in the province of Poland and in southern Russia, mysticism found in Lithuania a redoubtable enemy in the sentimentality of the unfolding Hebrew literature.

Popular and Literary Romanticism.

The diffusion of the affected style of the meliẓah and the return to the language of the past awakened among this unhappy people a regret for the glorious Biblical times and a romanticism that was to bear rich fruit. Popular Hebrew poetry had become fundamentally Zionistic, as is evident from the anonymous poems then written (“Shoshannah, Ẓiyyon, Ẓiyyon,” etc.). Literary romanticism soon followed upon this romantic tendency. The Lithuanian writers, sharing the life and patriotic thoughts of the people, and encouraged by the example of S. D. Luzzatto, who united modern culture with ardent patriotism, turned to romanticism. The prolific popularizer Kalman Schulman (1826-1900) inaugurated romantic fiction and introduced the romantic form into Hebrew through his Hebrew version of “Les Mystèresde Paris” (“Mistere Paris”); and he became one of the civilizers of the ghetto through his numerous popular scientific works and especially through his studies of the Jewish past. His pure, flowing, meliẓah style, his extreme sentimentalism as well as his naive romanticism in all matters touching Judaism, won for him great influence. For fully half a century he, in spite of his lack of originality, ranked as a master. The young and gifted writer Micah Joseph Lebensohn (1828-52), the first true artist and romantic poet in Hebrew, has left poems that are perfect in style, including an admirable translation of the “Æneid,” lyrics of love, of nature, and of sorrow. But his masterpieces are romantic poems (“Moses,” “Judah ha-Levi”) dealing with Israel’s glorious past.

The creator of the Hebrew novel was Abraham Mapu (1808-67), whose historical romance “Ahabat Ẓiyyon” exercised an important influence on the development of Hebrew. This novel, which deals with the golden age of Judah, that of Isaiah, and is couched in the very language of that prophet, is rather a succession of poetic pictures reconstructing the civilization of ancient Judea than a connected story. Simple and primitive in his thoughts, Mapu was so imbued with the spirit of the Bible that, although unconsciously, he was translated to ancient times, and, guided by a marvelous intuition, he succeeded in reconstructing the free, agricultural life of ancient Judah, in the land of the prophets, of justice, and of truth, the land of love and of the joy of life. This past, to renew which was the ambition of scholars and people, superimposed itself upon the present, and it was due to Mapu’s novel that an entire people came forth from its long lethargy, to be reborn. Another novel (“Ashmat Shomeron”) by Mapu served to increase his popularity.

Many imitators of these leaders of Hebrew romanticism appeared, and at a time when the political outlook checked all hopes of a better life: the Maskilim demanded, in the name of the prophetic past, the rights of civilization and progress. Many persons, also, were won over to the reading of secular literature. When in 1856 Silbermann founded at Lyck the first political journal in Hebrew, “Ha-Maggid,” he met with unexpected success and had many imitators. In Austria, Russia, and even in Palestine, periodicals, more or less successful, appeared, furthering the cause both of Hebrew and of emancipation. Among these journals were “Ha-Karmel,” founded by the scholar Samuel Joseph Fuenn; “Ha-Ẓefirah,” founded by the popularizer of science C. Z. Slonimsky; and “Ha-Meliẓ,” founded by A. Zederbaum.

Official Liberalism and Radicalism.

The accession of Alexander II. radically changed the condition of the Russian Jews. A wave of liberty and radicalism swept through the empire, and for the first time the Russian Jews could hope for a lot similar to that of their western coreligionists. Awakened from their century-long sleep, the backward people of the ghetto began to shake off religious and other fetters, becoming imbued with modern ideas and adopting modern modes of life. In the large centers there was no serious opposition to emancipation, and the Jews flocked in masses to the schools and sought secular employments. The scholars themselves, encouraged by the government and by the notables of the great cities, decided to attack all the “domains of darkness” of the past, and to occupy themselves with the affairs of the day; and when the small provinces, less disturbed by the economic and moral upheavals, bitterly opposed this social emancipation—which led to forgetfulness of the Law and endangered the faith—the Maskilim knew no limits to their fury against the fanatics of the ghetto. Hebrew literature, at first realistic, attacking customs and superstitions in the name of utility and the reality of things, became more and more anti-rabbinical as it opposed religious tradition. Mapu led the way in his novel “‘Ayiṭ Ẓabua’,” which, though a failure from a literary point of view, depicts the backward types of the ghetto, the Tartuffes, and the enemies to progress, with a realism intentionally exaggerated. Abramowitsch, then a young man, described in his novel “Ha-Abot we-ha-Banim” the customs of the Ḥasidim and the struggles of their progressive sons. The aged poet Abraham Bär Lebensohn published his drama, “Emet we-Emunah” (written twenty-five years previously), in which he satirized cabalistic hypocrisy and mysticism. The number of popularizers of science, critics of belated customs, and belittlers of the religious past became legion.

Leon Gordon (1830-92).

The most distinguished among these writers was the poet Leon Gordon, an implacable enemy of the Rabbis, who personified in himself this realistic epoch. He began by writing romantic poems in imitation of the two Lebensohns. But when the horizon widened for the Russian Jews, he was filled with pity for the deplorable state of the Orthodox masses, to whom he addressed his “Haḳiẓah ‘Ammi”—”Awake, my people, to a better life,” i. e., “to the life of those about you.” Of a mettlesome spirit, he unmercifully attacked the rabbinical law, the dead letter, the religious yoke weighing upon the masses. He regarded rabbinism as the greatest misfortune of the Jewish people, which killed the nation by delivering it up to the more secular Romans, and which hindered its participation in the realities of modern life. Gordon’s activity covered all branches of literature. He ranks foremost in Hebrew literature as a satirical poet and critic of manners; and as a writer of fables he has no equal. But in spite of his apparent severity and his extreme skepticism, he remained at heart a patriot; and when he criticizes he does so in order to elevate the social life of the Jews, while grieving for the misery of the Messianic nation. Even in his historical poems, “Ẓidḳiyahu be-Bet ha-Peḳudot” and “Bi-Meẓulot Yam,” he displays all his love for his people, which became more pronounced during the years of persecution and misery in Russia. But even then he believed that rabbinism was the enemy which prevented a national renascence. Gordon was among the first successfully to introduce Talmudisms into poetry.

The hopes of the Maskilim were not realized: Russia did not continue its radical reforms; and areaction began between 1865 and 1870. Disappointed in their dreams of equality, writers now bent all their energies to the work of the emancipation of individuals from among the masses, by disseminating instruction and by advocating the pursuit of trades as being necessary to fit the Jews to deal with the exigencies of life and to take part in the battle for subsistence incident to the economic changes of the time.

Utilitarianism.

In Galicia a circle of scholars, under the leadership of Schorr, director of “He-Ḥaluẓ,” and A. Krochmal, advocated religious reforms, boldly attacking tradition and even the law of Moses. But in Russia, especially in Lithuania, the scholars did not go so far. The ideology of the Maskilim was not accepted by the scholars who came in closer contact with the masses; and instead of attacking principles, they advocated practical reforms and changes in conformity with the needs of daily life. Utilitarianism succeeded to the ideology of the earlier scholars. Abraham Kowner in his pamphlet “Ḥeḳer Dabar,” etc. (1867) attacked the masters of Hebrew for being idealists, and the press because it ministered neither to the strict necessities of daily life nor to the material well-being of the masses. Paperna and others were also pronounced realists. Moses Lilienblum inaugurated a campaign in favor of the union of life and faith—an endeavor perilous to its author and his emulators, but noteworthy as being the last attempt of rabbinic Judaism to adapt itself to the needs of modern life without giving up its minute observances. In his instructive volume “Ḥaṭṭot Ne’urim,” Lilienblum has left a curious document describing the inner conflicts of a young Talmudist of the ghetto who has passed through all the stages between the simple life of an Orthodox believer and that of a skeptical freethinker. Viewing the life of the modern Jew, emancipated and indifferent to all that is Jewish, he is shaken in his highest convictions and cries out, “The Law will never go hand in hand with life.” Lilienblum himself at last became a utilitarian, seeking in Jewish life nothing but individual material well-being, and testifying regretfully to the downfall of the haskalah by reason of an excess of ideology. “Young men must think and work for their own lives only.” This became the watchword of the last Maskilim toward 1870.

M. Pines.

The ghetto, however, had not yet spoken its final word. Within the confines of traditional Judaism itself the modernization of Hebrew and of the religious spirit was accentuated, leading to a compromise between faith and life. Orthodox journals were beginning to be the mouthpieces of a conservative party more in touch with modern ideas. Side by side with the realistic press—”Ha-Meliẓ,” the organ of the realists; “Ha-Ẓefirah,” a popular scientific journal; “He-Ḥaluẓ,” an antireligious paper; and others—there were “Ha-Maggid” and “Ha-Lebanon,” in which Orthodox rabbis enthusiastically advocated the cultivation of Hebrew and boldly offered plans for its rejuvenation as well as for the colonization of Palestine. Michel Pines, the antagonist of Lilienblum, published in 1872 his “Yalde Ruḥi,” a treatise displaying deep faith, and in which he bravely defends traditional Judaism, insisting that ritual and religious observances are necessary to a maintenance of the harmony of faith, which influences the mind as well as the morals. Reforms are unnecessary, because believers do not feel the need of them, and freethinkers no longer cherish any beliefs. Like the mass of believers, Pines does not share the pessimism of the realists, but he firmly believes in the national renascence of Judaism. Any understanding between the two parties seemed impossible, the realists no longer believing in the future of Judaism, and the conservatives refusing all attempts at religious reform. Even skeptics like Gordon were alarmed to see “the young people leave without returning.” Then, once again, a man arose to undertake the work of mingling the humanistic and the romantic currents and of leading the haskalah back to the living sources of national Judaism.

P. Smolenskin (1842-85).

This was Perez Smolenskin, the initiator of the progressive national movement. He, also, began his career, in 1867, with a critical article of pronounced realism, “Biḳḳoret Teḥiyyah.” But, disheartened by the fanaticism of the ancients and by the indifference and narrowness of the moderns, he left Russia and traveled first through Austria and later through the other western countries, sorrowfully noting the decadence of Judaism and of his patriotic ideal. At Vienna he issued in 1868 “Ha-Shaḥar,” whose object it was to attack medieval obscurantism and modern indifference. For eighteen years Smolenskin continued this laborious campaign. In his “‘Am ‘Olam” (1872) he appears as the champion of the national preservation of Israel and of the realization of the rabbinical ideal freed from all mysticism. This secularization of an ideal which had constituted Israel’s power of resistance had important results. In the first place it restored to Judaism and to Hebrew the best among the young men, who, while still profoundly attached to Judaism and to the life of the masses, had no longer any faith. This prepared the way for Zionism. But this was not all. Smolenskin recognized that one of the chief factors in the process of assimilation was the idea set forth by Mendelssohn and especially by his disciples (Geiger and others) that Judaism does not constitute a nation but a religious confession, an idea which would naturally induce the assimilation of the freethinkers. Smolenskin attacked this idea in a series of articles, which, though violent and often unjust, were yet needed to point out the priority of the national factor over the religious factor in the conservation of Judaism.

“Ha-Shaḥar.”

For eighteen years “Ha-Shaḥar” was the rallying-point for daring ideas and campaigns against the obscurantists and the moderns. It was especially noted for the realistic novels of Smolenskin, which, despite their technical shortcomings, take a high place in Hebrew literature. Side by side with character sketches of the ghetto and violent attacks on obscurantism appear a profound love for the masses and an ardent faith in Israel’s future and in the apotheosis of young scholars endowed with the soul of prophecy, veritable dreamers of theghetto. For the first time the Hebrew language, as modernized by Smolenskin, took immense strides. “Ha-Shaḥar” published only original work; and through the support and influence of its editor there arose a whole school of realists who wrote in Hebrew. In addition to Gordon and Lilienblum, there were Brandstädter (the clever creator of the short story in Hebrew), S. Mandelkern, J. L. Levin, Ben Ẓebi, M. Cohn, Silberbusch, Mandelstam, and others. Science was represented by S. Rubin, D. Kohan, Heller, D. Müller, etc.

The influence of “Ha-Shaḥar” was felt throughout Hebrew literature. The popular poet and scholar of the south, A. B. Gottlober, founded his review “Ha-Boḳer Or” (1876) for the purpose of defending Mendelssohn and the haskalah. Gottlober himself contributed character sketches of the Ḥasidim, while the gifted writer R. A. Braudes began in its pages his novel “Ha-Dat weha-Ḥayyim,” in which he depicts with masterly hand the struggle for the union of life and faith. Even America boasted a Hebrew journal, “Ha-Ẓofeh be-Ereẓ Nod,” published by Sobel. A converted Jew, Salkinson, produced an admirable Hebrew translation of Shakespeare and of Milton, and the socialist Freiman published a review in Hebrew entitled “Ha-Emet” (1878). More important, however, was the great work by I. H. Weiss, “Dor Dor we-Dorshaw,” dealing with the evolution of religious tradition. The sciences were taken up by H. Rabbinowitz, Pories, S. Sachs, Reifman, Harkavy, Gurland, J. Halevy, A. Epstein, Zweifel, Popirna, Buber, etc. Even the style was modernized, although the meliẓah did not disappear, as is seen by the writings of Schulman, Friedberg, and others.

Smolenskin’s ideas bore fruit. With the return of the national ideal, Hebrew as the national language was again revived. Leon Gordon’s literary jubilee was enthusiastically celebrated in St. Petersburg, and after his return from a journey through Russia in 1880, he was everywhere received as the national author, even by the students of the capitals. The appearance of anti-Semitism, the renewed persecutions, and the terrible years 1881 and 1882 finally destroyed the ideals of the haskalah, whose last Hebrew followers were forced to admit that Smolenskin was right.

When the first colonies in Palestine had been founded, and there existed no longer a belief in the possibility of religious reform without an upheaval of Judaism as a whole, it was commonly admitted that the work of Israel’s national rebirth should be encouraged. The Hebrew press undertook especially to support the “Ḥobebe Ẓiyyon” (Chovevei Zion), as the Zionists were then called. Hebrew modern literature, which for a century had been progressive and secularizing, now became the instrument of patriotic propaganda. Often those who had formerly advocated reforms now urged the abandonment of modern ideas in order to conciliate the masses. Smolenskin alone did not abandon his civilizing mission, and remained a progressive realist. He finally succumbed to overwork and died in 1885. On his death “Ha-Shaḥar” ceased publication, just one century after the appearance of “Ha-Me’assef” (1785). This was the end of the haskalah. It now gave place to Zionism, which was at first hesitating, but gradually arose to the realization and assertion of its full strength.

Contemporary Literature (1885-1904).

The changing attitude in the profession of faith among Hebrew scholars and the young men who had returned to the national ideal and to the prophetic dreams was of advantage to Hebrew, which now came to be considered as the national language of the Jewish people and the tie uniting the Jews of all countries. While E. Ben-Judah at Jerusalem, through personal example and through propaganda in his journal “Ha-Ẓebi,” restored Hebrew as a living language in Palestine, there was an increasing demand for Hebrew books in Russia, and the modernized Jews became ambitious to cultivate the national language. The success of the great literary collection “Ha-Asif” (edited by the writer N. Sokolow), which succeeded “Ha-Shaḥar,” soon called forth other publications, noteworthy among which was the Zionistic work “Keneset Yisrael” by the historian S. P. Rabbinowitz, and the more scientific “Oẓar ha-Sifrut.”

Daily Press.

In 1886 L. Kantor began the publication of “Ha-Yom,” the first Hebrew daily paper; and soon after “Ha-Meliẓ” and “Ha-Ẓefirah” were changed into dailies. A political press, also, was established, and contributed largely to the propagation of Zionism and to the modernization of Hebrew style. The founding of two large publishing-houses (the “Aḥiasaf” and “Tushiyyah”), through the efforts of Ben-Avigdor, finally regulated the conditions for the progress of Hebrew, and created a class of paid writers. Journals, more than other forms of literature, are multiplying, and there are a number even in America.

Literary activity was resumed after a short interval, now on an entirely national basis and in agreement with the many needs of a nationalist group. All the branches of letters, science, and art were assiduously cultivated, without neglecting the renascence of the Jewish people in the land of their fathers. In the field of poetry, besides Mandelkern and Gottlober, both converted to Zionism, are to be found Dolitzky, author of Zionistic songs describing the miseries of the Russian Jews; the two Zionist poets Isaac Rabinowitz and Sarah Shapira, and the gifted lyric poet M. H. Mané, who died at an early age. Perhaps the most noteworthy was C. A. Shapira, an eminent lyric poet, who, embittered by indignation, introduced a new note into Hebrew poetry—hatred of persecution. There is, finally, N. H. Imber, the poet of renascent Palestine and the author of popular songs. Bialik is a lyric poet of much vigor, an incomparable stylist, and a romanticist of note, while his younger contemporary Saul Tschernichowsky is proceeding along new lines, introducing pure estheticism, the cult of beauty and of love, in the language of the Prophets. The most gifted among the younger poets are S. L. Gordon, N. Pinés, A. Lubochitzky, Kaplan, Lipschütz, and A. Cohan.

In the field of belles-lettres Ben-Avigdor is the creator of the new realistic movement; this he expoundsin his psychologic stories and especially in his “Menaḥem ha-Sofer,” in which he attacks, in the name of modern life, national chauvinism. Braudes became prominent as a romanticist. The aged A. J. Abramowitsch, who has returned to Hebrew, delights his readers by his artistic satires. I. L. Perez has in his songs, as in his poetry, a tendency toward symbolism. M. J. Berdyczewski attempts to introduce Nietzschian individualism into his stories and articles. Feierberg expresses the sufferings of a young scholar seeking truth. Goldin is a pleasing but sentimental writer of stories. Bershadsky is an outspoken realist and close observer. Others deserving mention are: J. Rabinovitz; Turov; A. S. Rabinovitz; Epstein; Asch; J. Steinberg; Goldberg; Brener; the Galicians Silberbusch and Samueli; the poet and prose-writer David Frischman, the translator of “Cain”; J. Ch. Tawjew, who is a distinguished feuilletonist and writer on pedagogics; A. L. Levinsky, the story-teller, author of a Zionist Utopia (“Travels in Palestine in 5800″); and J. L. Landau, the only dramatic poet. As Landau is a poet rather than a psychologist, his “Herod” and other plays are not intended for the theater. The Orientalist Joseph Halévy has published a volume of patriotic poems.

The reaction of 1890 in the work of colonizing Palestine and the evident necessity of taking some steps to meet such a reaction produced the work of “Aḥad ha-’Am” (Asher Ginzberg). He is notably a critic of manners; and in the name of pure ideology he attacked first actual colonization and then political Zionism. Judaism before everything, and not the Jews; a moral and spiritual, not an economic and a political center; a national ideal taking the place of faith—such, in the rough, is the idea of this acute and paradoxical publicist. A number of young men, influenced by his collection “Ha-Pardes” and the review “Ha-Shiloaḥ,” founded by him and continued by Klausner, have followed in his lead. Quite opposite in tendencies is Zeeb Ya’beẓ, the editor of “Ha-Mizraḥ,” a remarkable stylist and religious romanticist. L. Rabinovitz, the director of “Ha-Meliẓ,” in his articles “Ha-Yerushshah weha-Ḥinnuk” also shows himself to be a defender of Jewish tradition, while Ben-Judah, the author of “Hashḳafah” (Jerusalem), constantly opposes obscurantism. N. Sokolow, by the power of his genius, forces Hebrew and modern ideas even upon the Ḥasidim. The critic Reuben Brainin is a close observer, an admirable stylist, and a charming story-teller. The historian S. Bernfeld is a scholarly popularizer of Jewish science.

Pedagogics and juvenile literature also have their periodicals and worthy representatives. Among these are: Lerner, S. L. Gordon, Madame Ben-Judah, Yellin, Grosovsky, and Berman. Many scholars have devoted themselves to science, as the late philosopher F. Misés; the grammarian J. Steinberg, who is an admirable writer; the anatomist, archeologist, and author of popular stories Katzenelenson; Neimark; and Hurvitz. There are, in addition, many translators and compilers who have rendered into Hebrew Longfellow, Mark Twain, Zola, and even De Maupassant; and this work is being actively carried forward. There is a steady increase in the number of daily and weekly journals, all of which, though Zionistic, are none the less progressive. With the emigration of the Russian Jews to foreign countries, Hebrew is finding new centers. In 1904 a course in modern Hebrew literature was instituted at the Sorbonne. Palestine is in a fair way to become the home of Hebrew as a living language, and in America and in England there are numerous publications in Hebrew. Even in the Far East, Hebrew books and periodicals are to be found in increasing numbers, stimulating national and social regeneration. But it must be remembered that the future of Hebrew is intimately connected with Zionism, which is accepted by the masses only by reason of the ideal of national renascence. Faithful to its Biblical mission, the Hebrew language alone is able to revive moral vigor and prophetic idealism, which have never failed where the sacred language has been preserved.