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Reviewed by:
  • Poetics and Ideology in Modern Hebrew Literature: For Menachem Brinker Edited by Irish Parush, Hamutal Tsamir, and Hanna Soker-Schwager
  • Tamar S. Drukker
ברינקר, ביובלו ״הספרות והחיים״׃ פואטיקה ואידיאולוגיה בספרות העברית החדשה׃ למנחם (Poetics and Ideology in Modern Hebrew Literature: For Menachem Brinker). Edited by Irish Parush, Hamutal Tsamir, and Hanna Soker-Schwager. Pp. 641. Jerusalem: Carmel, 2011. Cloth.

In 2004 Menachem Brinker was awarded the Israel Prize for Hebrew and general literary research. Among the reasons cited by the judging panel of this prestigious prize, were Brinker’s interdisciplinary approach to literary studies, using philosophy, hermeneutics, and exegesis in his readings, and his long career as a teacher, editor, mentor, and social activist, which gained him the title of “an involved intellectual” by the judges. Brinker’s widespread intellectual and academic work finds expression in this impressive collection of essays published in his honor, but there is little recognition of his work as a translator, editor, publicist, or a humanist with a social agenda.

The festschrift stems from two academic conferences held to mark Brinker’s contribution to Hebrew letters over the course of his lifetime. One conference was organized by the department of Hebrew literature at Ben Gurion University and one at the University of Chicago, where Brinker established and chaired the graduate program in Modern Hebrew studies, with speakers from both Israel and the United States. The volume includes over twenty articles on a variety of topics, but all looking at changes in ideologies and poetics in literary works, and their context, or as the Hebrew title of this [End Page 472] volume suggests, they all relate to “the literature and the life.” The three editors are among the contributors, as are some of Brinker’s contemporaries, such as Robert Alter, Arnold Band, Moshe Pelli, and others. Alongside well-established academics in the field, there are also contributions from the younger generation of researchers of Israeli literature such as Matan Hermoni, Yahil Zaban, and Rotem Prager-Wagner.

The volume is divided into two sections, one of theory and the other looking closely at Hebrew literature. The first, entitled “Literature, Thought, and Philosophy” with essays on hermeneutics, language, cognition, and Sartre. These essays are in direct dialogue with Brinker and his work, and some appear to be no more than a written version of a conference paper. The intimacy and immediacy of a dialogue that is often achieved in academic conferences is present here in Anat Wiesman’s opening essay and Ziva Ben Porat’s response to Brinker’s own thoughts on verisimilitude. These opening essays give Brinker a presence within this volume edited in his honor, as do the opening pages of this book. The title page is accompanied by a photo (uncredited) of Menachem Brinker in his study, and a reprint of a poem by Natan Zach dedicated to Brinker, on friendship, love, dreams, and poetry.

A personal impression of the young Menachem Brinker is found in a short memoir by Haim Beer, on his first meeting, or rather sighting, of the young Menachem Brinker outside a Jerusalem synagogue on the eve of Yom Kippur 1953. This short piece is intended to give the readers a glimpse into Brinker’s childhood, his family, and his early rebellious years, but in fact it tells us much more about Haim Beer and his own family. The young Brinker remains as allusive and enigmatic as he was to the young Haim Beer at the time.

The greater part of the book is made up of four sections devoted to poetic and ideological changes in Hebrew literature from the haskalah to the literature of revival. The first section, on haskalah literature, looks both at the responses to this literature, its study, and the questions and issues brought forth by it, as well as some close readings of Hebrew writing of the period. In her article, Iris Parush looks at the social history of Hebrew literacy among the Jews in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, in a detailed article that looks at the status of and references to written Hebrew as compared to the spoken language, offering a new insight into the lives and works of the main figures of haskalah literature. This study is followed by one of Parush...

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