Yeshiva and Traditional Education in the Literature of the Hebrew Enlightenment Period (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 380 Reviews Were they to lift their heads and emerge, they would take our lives and all that we have; In truth, my soul, in truth. soon I would be like them, the sleepers below. Tova Rosen's book is a valuable introduction to secular Hebrew poetry in the Middle Ages and is highly recommended. It is a pity that she omits the works of Judah AI-J:Iarizi and Immanuel of Rome, and the Karaites Moses Dar'r and Caleb Afendopolo, although for the author's purpose the work is sufficiently representative as is. Leon J. Weinberger The University ofAlabama Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 Iweinber@woodsquad.as.ua.edu YESHIVA AND TRADITIONAL EDUCATION IN THE LIT· ERATURE OF THE HEBREW ENLIGHTENMENT PERIOD. By Moshe Avital. pp. 256. Tel Aviv: Reshafim, 1996. Paper. Moshe Avital's Hebrew-language study, based on his Yeshiva University doctoral dissertation, treats the often inimical relationship between the world of the European Yeshiva and the writers of the Hebrew literary renaissance . This relationship calls out for discussion. The writers of the Haskalah and the Tehiya emerged from, and then rejected Yeshiva orthodoxy ; yet they could not free themselves from it completely. Many of their stories. novels, and poems both condemned and yearned for the traditional schools they attended before striking out into the literary world. Lamentably few modem critics are familiar with both the Yeshiva world and Modem Hebrew literary history, and the subject of Avital's monograph has not received the rich treatment it deserves. Though this is a much-needed study, it is ultimately disappointing. While Avital is one of those rare critics conversant with both tradition and modernity. his study is marred by an apologetic tone and ideological bias. He makes note of Hebrew writers' recurrent negative depiction of Heder and Yeshiva education but sees these almost universally expressed criticisms as unwarranted: "Most of the writers exaggerated the ills of traditional education and many of them had false hopes as to the salvation of enlightenment" (p. 2). As far as I can see, Avital himself exaggerates the nostalgia that the radical maskilim felt for their Yeshiva past: "Some of the writers during this period spoke of the Yeshiva with glowing emotions, picturing it as the finest type of seminary the Jews had" (p. 3). The emo- Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 381 Reviews tions these writers displayed were often powerful, but the sum total of their assessment of the Yeshiva was not glowing. While Avital writes with erudition and confidence about the early Hebrew writers, quoting them extensively and offering some analysis, he demonstrates no awareness of Israeli or American literary criticism about these writers. There is no mention of Gershon Shaked's Hebrew Narrative Fiction 1880-1980; or Dan Miron's A Portrait ofHebrew Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century; or of the work of American critics that builds on that body of well-informed Israeli scholarship. In fact, Avital's bibliography is curiously antiquated. The Israeli literary histories that he mentions are from two or three scholarly generations back; the most recent work of criticism cited is over thirty years old-Avraham Shaanan's 1967 multivolume history of Hebrew literature. It is especially striking that Avital does not seem aware of, (or chooses not to cite), Alan Mintz's important 1989 work, Banished from Their Father 's Table: Loss of Faith and Hebrew Autobiography. Mintz focuses his discussion on Feierberg, Berdichevsky, and Brenner-three authors who are quoted constantly in Avital's study. Mintz's chapter on "Berdichevsky and Erotic Shame" could serve as a model for Avital's larger project, but alas, there is no mention of it. For the erotic has been virtually banished from Avital's discussion-it is not religiously correct. Not that the author eschews modernity; he often makes the claim that Yeshiva Orthodoxy anticipated developments in modem thought. Thus he presents the Mussar Movement, a potent force in the European Yeshiva world, as "first and foremost a psychoanalytic approach, one that penetrates to the deepest experiences of the student" (p. 74). This is surely an original presentation of the Mussar Movement-but not one that could withstand rigorous scrutiny. While...