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152 SHOFAR Spring 1998 Vol. 16, No.3 amount ofHolocaust scholarship has provided us with the general outlines ofthis story, but Elberg's fiction grounds it in the details of particularity. In this sense, the novel cannot help but remind us of Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, although Elberg's vision is neither as dark nor is his style as riveting. But what Ship of the Hunted may lack on these fronts, it more than makes up for in the life-affirming (survival, even triumph, is as much a part ofhis fictional landscape as defeat and death) and the sheer power of humanity. In short, Elberg's novels are welcome additions to Syracuse University Press's list of books that, taken together, can only be called very essential reading. Sanford Pinsker Shadek Professor of Humanities Franklin and Marshall College Theatralia Judaica Vol. II: Nach der Shoah. Israelisch-deutsche Theaterbeziehungen seit 1949, edited by Hans-Peter Bayerdorfer. Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1996. 256 pp. Theatralia Judaica is a two-volume collection of essays in the Niemeyer series Theatron: Studien zur Geschichte und Theorie der dramatischen Kiinste. Together the two volumes present a history ofJewish and Hebrew theater in the context of and/or in relation to European theater, specifically the dramatic arts of German-speaking countries, during the last two centuries. Volume One, subtitled "Emanzipation und Antiserriitismus als Momente der Theatergeschichte: Von der Lessing-Zeit bis zur Shoah" appeared in 1992. It explores the evolution of regional Jewish dramatic art and Jewish dramatic artists into major components and participants of European theater from the Enlightenment to the Shoah by concentrating on the emancipation of Jewish theater and antisemitic reaction as the driving forces of this process. Volume II, the subject of this review, continues where its predecessor leaves off. Subtitled "Nach der Shoah: Israelisch-deutsche Theaterbeziehungen seit 1949," it contains fifteen essays presented at a 1994 symposium at Bad Homburg, Germany, which investigated the nature of the survival of European-Jewish theater and the significance ofthat survival in the political and cultural life of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, Austria, and Israel in the decades following World War II and the Shoah. As the editor points out, international Jewish theater has found its center in the development of a post-war national theater in Israel; therefore, Israeli theater serves as the primary point ofreference for the relation between post-war JewishlHebrew and German-language drama as well. Conversely, because theater is the most public and political of the performing arts, "it goes without saying Book Reviews 153 that because of historical conditions and ongoing political realities everything concerning National Socialism and the Holocaust appearing or failing to appear on the German and Austrian stage is of immediate concern to Israel and world Jewry." This historically and politically charged ambience, according to the editor, will continue to create resonances and controversies assuring dynamic theater relations between Germany, Austria, and to a lesser degree Switzerland, and Israel for decades to come. The judiciously chosen, well-arranged essays constitute an informative, thoughtprovoking study addressing a host of important political and cultural issues that attend its stated purpose. The first two, the editor's "Avant propos: Theatergeschichte im Schatten der Shoah" and Shimon Levy's "The Development ofIsraeli Theatre-A Brief Overview," trace post-war stage developments in the countries of the erstwhile perpetrators of the Shoah, and in Israel, the main heir of the Jewish theater that did survive the Holocaust. By discussing the impact of the Holocaust on the political and cultural life ofthese countries in general terms, Bayersdorfer's and Levy's essays also provide a logical framework for the particular issues relevant to these developments fleshed out in the essays that follow: performances of German plays involving Jewish characters, Nazism, or the Holocaust on Israeli stages and vice versa; the work of individual actors, playwrights, and directors like Ernst Deutsch, Fritz Kortner, or George Tabori; the staging and reception of specific plays in both Israel and the German-speaking countries under discussion, such as a variety of Nathan and Diary of Anne Frank productions, Joshua Sobol's Ghetto, Motti Lerner's Kastner, David Ma'ayan's "Arbeit machtfret...

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