Treading on New Hebrew Literary Ground: Hava Shapiro's "Notes from My Journey to the Land of Israel"

In 1911, Hava Shapiro (1878–1943) penned a three-part Hebrew travelogue, "Notes From My Journey to Eretz Yisrael," which provided an account of journey to Palestine that she undertook together with her mentor and occasional antagonist, David Frischmann. The first Hebrew travelogue of this kind written by a woman, Shapiro's travelogue is marked all over by an awareness of the newness of her literary-traveler's voice. The distinctive contribution of Shapiro's travelogue is made especially clear through a comparison of her triptych with Frischmann's published essays about the same journey. This comparison reveals that Frischmann may have borrowed directly from Shapiro's travelogue, an ironic revelation given his previously published denigration of female Hebraism. It also shows how Shapiro's content and prose style in the triptych serve to undermine Frischmann's misogynist pronouncements.