Melekhet Maḥashevet: Teḥiyyat Haʾumah: Hasifrut Haʾivrit LenokhaḤ Haʾomanut Haplastit [Aesthetics and National Revival: Hebrew Literature Against the Visual Arts] (review)

Hebrew Studies 43 (2002) 332 Reviews MELEKHET MAHASHEVET: TEHIYYAT HA'UMAH: HASIFRUT HA'IVRIT LENOKHAH HA'OMANUT HAPLASTIT (AESTHETICS AND NATIONAL REVIVAL: HEBREW LITERATURE AGAINST THE VISUAL ARTS]. [Hebrew]. By Avner Holtzman. Pp. 352. Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan; Haifa University Press, 1999. Cloth. The period of 1890-1914 is generally viewed as the beginning of a new era in the development of Hebrew literature. The prominent writers of this period, often referred to as dor hetehiyyah (the generation of the revival), shifted Hebrew writing away from the values and aesthetic norms of the Haskalah and produced a more sophisticated literature that has stood the test of time to a much greater degree than has Haskalah literature. This mono graph by Avner Holtzman examines an important feature of that period: a significantly increased interest among Hebrew writers in the visual arts and a growing role for the visual arts in Hebrew fiction and poetry. Holtzman traces this new development from its genesis in European Hebrew culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through its persistent presence in Hebrew literature during the remainder of the twentieth century. While Holtzman is not the first to write about the intersection of Hebrew literature and the visual arts, this study is without doubt the most comprehen sive consideration of this important phenomenon in the history of modern Hebrew literature. His analysis of its development throughout the twentieth century is a scholarly tour de force and provides us with a much deeper un derstanding of a dimension of modern Hebrew literature that has not received adequate attention until now. Given the long standing opposition of traditional Judaism to the visual arts, based on the prohibition against the making of graven images in the Ten Commandments, how did Hebrew writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries succeed in liberating themselves and their readers from this opposition? Not surprisingly, as Holtzman notes, this positive reevaluation of the visual arts by Hebrew writers was slow in coming. Although significant numbers of Central and Eastern European Jews began to play an increasing role as painters and sculptors in Europe during the second half of the nine teenth century, Hebrew writers of that period almost completely ignored this phenomenon. Holtzman attributes this lack of interest on the part of Haskalah writers in part to a residual loyalty to the traditional Jewish opposition to the visual arts. Perhaps even more significant is Holtzman's suggestion that the emerging art by Jews in the second half of the nineteenth century did not serve the programmatic needs of the Haskalah. For the most part, the Jewish artists of the time did not see Jewish identity issues as central to their art, and thus they had little to contribute to the central Maskilic concerns of reforming Jewish ...