Rhetoric and Nation: The Formation of Hebrew National Culture, 1880-1990

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments this book originated in a series of debates I had with my friends at the University of California and the Graduate Theological Seminar in Berkeley during my stay there in 1998. For their continued hospitality and intellectual stimulation, I am thankful to Amir Banbaji, Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Gil Hochberg, Shai Lavi, and Hamutal Tzamir. The argument took shape as I was writing my dissertation at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and I am grateful to my teachers and mentors there, Timothy Bahti, Carol Bardenstein, James I. Porter, and Anton Shammas. Throughout the years, many friends, colleagues and teachers have probed sections of this book and their comments proved invaluable : Michal Arbel, Louise Bethlehem, Kalman Bland, Mark Burns, Alon Confino, Eyal Dotan, Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Vigor Fröhmcke, Michael Gluzman, Bruce Lawrence, Todd Hasak-Lowy, Tammar S. Hess, Matti Huss, Erdağ Göknar, Banu Gökariksel, Chana Kronfeld, Kashia Pieprzak, Jack Kugelmass, Pei-jing Li, Barbara Mann, Ellen A. McLarney, Dan Miron, Justin Read, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Esther Romeyn, Shimon Sandbank, Arieh Bruce Saposnik, Hanna Soker-Schwager, Yigal Schwartz, Deborah Starr, Nirmala Singh, Sheila Skaff, Rebecca Stein, Marcy Wheeler, Ken Wissoker, and Yael Zerubavel. Last, I would like to thank the readers of the manuscript for Syracuse University Press, whose shrewd and insightful comments were instrumental in giving the argument in this book its final form. Two mentors and colleagues deserve special mention: Hannan Hever, who introduced me to the academic discipline of Hebrew literature and proved to be not only a strict but charitable dissertation adviser, but over the years also an extraordinarily generous x ✦ Acknowledgments interlocutor, in agreement and disagreement alike. Much of this book is in conversation with him. miriam cooke patiently read and re-read subsequent drafts of the introduction and pushed me to formulate my argument as lucidly as possible. Her continued encouragement and support throughout the past few years have likewise been crucial in helping me bring this project to completion. The manuscript of this book underwent numerous revisions. Doron Narkiss, who edited the first full version of the manuscript and commented on it, deserves special thanks. Finally, this book is indebted to my parents who played an active role in the very process of writing it. My father, Ariel Ginsburg, read and commented on my English as well as on the historical accuracy of my argument. My mother, Ruth Ginsburg, read, reread, and read yet again the manuscript in all its transformations. My discussion in this book was shaped through the numerous conversations we had on matters of theory, and my rhetoric was informed by her tireless insistence that I say what I mean in the clearest language possible. I owe more than I can say in words to Ilana, my spouse, and children , Yotam and Maya. They rendered meaningful the long, arduous process of writing this book. Credits I also gratefully acknowledge the following: An earlier version of chapter 1 appeared as “Politics and Letters: On the Rhetoric of the Nation in Pinsker and Ahad Ha-Am,” Prooftexts : A Journal of Jewish Literary History 29, no. 2 (2009): 173–205, and is reprinted with permission from Indiana University Press. An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared as “Between Language and Land: Moshe Smilansky’s ‘H ˙ awaja Nazar,’” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 20 (2006): 221–35, and is reprinted with permission. An earlier version of chapter 3 appeared as “Literature, Territory, Criticism: Brenner and the Eretz-Israeli Genre,” Te’orya u-vikoret 30 (2007): 39–70, and is reprinted with permission. Acknowledgments ✦ xi All excerpts from Moshe Shamir’s He Walked through the Fields are reprinted with permission from Haim Redelman. An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared as “Between Myth and History; Moshe Shamir’s He Walked in the Fields,” in Literature and Nation in the Middle East, eds. Yasir Suleiman and Ibrahim Muhawi (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006): 110–27, and is reprinted with permission. All excerpts from Amos Oz, Under This Blazing Light: Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), are reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. All excerpts from Past Continuous by Yaakov Shabtai, translated by Dalia Bilu, are reprinted by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Originally published in Hebrew under the title “Zikhron Devarim.” Copyright 1977 by Yaakov Shabtai. English translation copyright Tel Aviv 1983 by the Institute of Translation for Hebrew Literature. Published by the Jewish Publication...