A Humorous View of Jewish and Arab Life in Palestine: Ya'akov Hurgin's Stories

38 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 A HUMOROUS VIEW OF JEWISH AND ARAB LIFE IN PALESTINE: YA'AKOV HURGIN'S STORIES by Hamutal Bar-Yosef Hamutal Bar-Yosef is Assistant Professor and Chairman of the Department ofHebrew Language and Literature at BenGurion University, Beer-Sheva. Her publications include the three books (in Hebrew): U. N. Gnessin's Figurative Language (1987); On tbe Poetry ofZelda (1988); and The Genre of "Notes" as a Mediator Between Realism and Symbolism in Hebrew Literature (1989); as well as many articles on the influence of European (especially Russian) decadence and symbolism on modern Hebrew literature. She has also published five books of poetry and has translated poems and short stories into Hebrew from English, French, and Russian. 1. Hebrew literature, from biblical times to our day, is not overflowing with humor. Moving from one geographical center to another, Hebrew writing was, until the end of the eighteenth century, either religious in nature or literature written on secular themes by religious authors. There are many sparks of humor in the miniature tales ofthe Midrash, in the Maqama and in Hebrew poetry and drama written in Italy of the Renaissance and baroque. But these examples of humorous literature are exceptional. Modern Hebrew literature was born in Europe as social didactic satire, expressing the fight for progress and Enlightenment against the religious establishment. It was Mendele Moicher Sfoirim who introduced humor into modern Hebrew literature in the second half of the nineteenth century. Mendele, who began as a Yiddish writer, adopted Gogol's Ya'akov Hurgin's Stories 39 techniques of humor, as did Sholem Aleikhem, the "classic" humorist of Yiddish literature. Humor in Hebrew literature at the turn of the century was pan of the effon to create "national" literature, a concept which included (according to romantic poetics) a humorous tone as a pan offoUdoristic atmosphere. This is the main function of humor in the poetry of Bialik, the Hebrew National Poet, and in the idylls of Shaul Tchernichovsky. In the stories of Uri Nissan Gnessin a very interesting mixture of impressionism, modernism , and humor-sometimes grotesque-is to be found. It will be difficult, however, to name a "classic" Hebrew humorist in the period of Hatkbia who could be compared with Moliere in French or with Gogol in Russian, or even with Sholem Aleikhem in Yiddish. After the First World War the center of Hebrew literature moved to Palestine. literature which was written in Bretz Yisrael in the years 1920-1950 reflects the highly ideological atmosphere in which new Hebrew life was being created. Also characteristic of this period was the strong sense that, in this unique historical opponunity, victory or failure would be of a critical imponance. Agnon's subtle irony made his writing close to Israeli prose writers Avrahm B. Jehoshua, Amos Oz, and Aharon Appelfeld. Bitter irony and grotesque, not "pure," humor, are the main forms of the comic also in works ofIsraeli poetry writers. "Black humor" is the domain ofthe dramas and stories of Hanoch Levin. Still, humor without bitter criticism is very rare in Israeli "canonical" literature. 2. Against this background I would like to present a writer whose best works ,were published in Palestine from the 1920s into the 1940s. He was almost unknown until about ten years ago, but recently he was "discovered " by critics and researchers. Of all the haloes with which he has been crowned, he is most wonhy of the halo of Humor. Ya'akov Hurgin was born in Jaffa in 1898 and died in 1990. This fact is already of note, because most Hebrew writers in the Palestine period were born and educated in Europe. As a child Hurgin had Arab friends, from whom he learned the Arabic language. Hurgin began writing poetry at the age of eleven, and it was Brenner, who y.ras a neighbor of the Hurgins and an object of general admiration, who was his first literary judge. Hurgin's first published poem was written under the influence of Arab pogroms of 1921, during which Brenner was 40 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 murdered. Throughout his whole life, Hurgin has remained skeptical of the socialist Zionist dream...