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Books by Shachar Pinsker
שמים נושקים לים: סיפורים ישראליים ביידיש, 2023
עם הספל: בתי קפה ותרבות יהודית מודרנית
מבוא לספר "עם הספל: בתי קפה ותרבות יהודית מודרנית" הוצאת מאגנס
The Cambridge History of Judaism: The Modern Era, vol. 8. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores presents a bilingual edition of Kleiman and Farmelant’s ... more Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores presents a bilingual edition of Kleiman and Farmelant’s work in a large range of themes, moods, and styles, translated into English for the first time by Yosefa Raz and Adriana X. Jacobs. It includes Kleiman’s poems that were collected and published in a 1947 U.S. volume and a selection from two of Farmelant’s poetry books, published in Jerusalem in 1960 and 1961. The translators have furnished the poems with copious notes, illuminating linguistic and cultural sources of the poetry and making it more accessible to contemporary readers. Pinsker introduces the volume with a background on the poets’ lives and work and a look at the state of Hebrew literature in the first half of the twentieth century. The volume also includes an unpublished essay by Anne Kleiman, addressing Hebrew poet Anda Pinkerfeld and her poetic work, which sheds an important light on the dialogue between women's Hebrew poetry written in American and in Palestine during the same period.
Readers and scholars of Jewish, American, and Hebrew literature and cultural history, as well as those interested in poetry, gender, and women’s studies will enjoy this unique bilingual edition.
Literary Passports is the first book to explore Hebrew modernist fiction in Europe in the early d... more Literary Passports is the first book to explore Hebrew modernist fiction in Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century. It not only serves as an introduction to this important body of literature, but also acts as a major revisionist statement, freeing the genre from a Zionist-nationalist narrative and viewing it through the wider lens of new comparative studies in modernism. The book's central claim is that modernist Hebrew prose fiction, as it emerged from 1900 to 1930, was shaped by the highly charged encounter of traditionally educated Jews with the revolution of European literature and culture known as modernism.
The book deals with Hebrew modernist fiction as an urban phenomenon, explores the ways in which the genre dealt with issues of sexuality and gender, and examines its depictions of the complex relations between tradition, modernity, and religion.
Papers by Shachar Pinsker
New Lines Magazine, 2024
Theodor Meron’s advice on charging Israeli and Hamas leaders comes at the end of a remarkable and... more Theodor Meron’s advice on charging Israeli and Hamas leaders comes at the end of a remarkable and revealing career
Haaretz, 2024
A new English translation of Israeli author Maya Arad's 2018 trio of novellas, 'The Hebrew Teache... more A new English translation of Israeli author Maya Arad's 2018 trio of novellas, 'The Hebrew Teacher,' is a particularly fascinating read at a moment that is not a good time for Israel-but what about Hebrew literature?
Oxford Bibliographies, 2023
Zierler reads Baron's story "Fradl" (1946) as tense and productive dialogue with two canonical no... more Zierler reads Baron's story "Fradl" (1946) as tense and productive dialogue with two canonical novels: Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Agnon's Sippur Pashut. She shows that Baron deals with themes and characters in specifically feminist and non-idyllic ways. back to top
Aeon Magazine, 2024
Is there a distinctive Jewish perspective on revenge? e question obviously bears on the contempor... more Is there a distinctive Jewish perspective on revenge? e question obviously bears on the contemporary world in pressing ways. Revenge is a complex concept about which psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and other fields offer important perspectives. But one way to answer it is to turn to the history of Jewish life, literature and culture. Here we can find a distinctive feeling and action on a matter that is as old as humanity, a human feeling in response to an injury or harm, and one closely bound to ideals of justice. e mid-20th century in particular, a formative period of Jewish and Israeli existence, has much to tell us about the relationship between violence, revenge, justice, memory and trauma in Jewish and Israeli life.
Prooftexts, 2020
This article focuses on the role of the coffeehouse in the Haskalah and its literatures. Scholars... more This article focuses on the role of the coffeehouse in the Haskalah and its literatures. Scholars of modern Jewish literature have not paid enough attention to the coffeehouse and to its important role as a new kind of Jewish space, one that enabled and fostered novel forms of journalism and literature. This is especially true for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the period associated mostly with the Haskalah. Thinking about Haskalah culture in spatial terms usually relies on a dichotomy between the synagogue and secular institutions, the idea that religion constituted the single moral authority and was exclusively associated with the synagogue, the house of study, and other traditional Jewish spaces. This article focuses on the importance of the café as a thirdspace, in Edward Soja's terms, one that does not fit comfortably in the dichotomy between religious and secular spaces (or other dichotomies such as public and private, inside and outside). The café was crucial for the creation of modern Jewish culture, and it helps us to identify and understand the contiguities of the modern Jewish literary complex. W hat point marks the beginning of modern Jewish literature? Is there a fixed line dividing the old from the modern in Jewish writing? Is modern Jewish literature anything written in a Jewish language such as Hebrew or Yiddish, or by Jews in any language? Early twentieth-century scholars and critics used to debate these questions endlessly. Dan Miron has recently proposed to salvage them, and to theorize what he calls "the modern Jewish literary complex." He suggests that we should look for "contiguities" rather than "continuity," that
The article gives a general overview of Hebrew literary life in Warsaw, and provides new perspect... more The article gives a general overview of Hebrew literary life in Warsaw, and provides new perspectives on Hebrew fi ction written in and about the city in the period of 1880−1920. The study results from the need to understand Hebrew literature within the inherently multilingual, transnational nature of the Jewish literary activity in the city and is based on a large corpus of Hebrew fi ctional texts that scholars did not consider earlier. It describes Hebrew literary life in Warsaw, as well as the different ways in which Warsaw's cityscape and the urban experience are represented in Hebrew stories and novels written between 1880 and 1920.
This article examines the complex role of the urban café in Leah Goldberg's poetic texts and Gold... more This article examines the complex role of the urban café in Leah Goldberg's poetic texts and Goldberg's place as a woman writer in Jewish café culture. The café appears as a real and imaginary " thirdspace " in both her poetry and her prose and as part of her activity as a writer, editor, essayist, and cultural and literary critic. The article investigates all these aspects of coffeehouse culture through three decades of Goldberg's career in Europe and in the Yishuv and Israel (especially in Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem), shedding new light on Goldberg's life and work and her unique place in modern Jewish culture.
In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, Aug 26, 2015
שמים נושקים לים: סיפורים ישראליים ביידיש, 2023
עם הספל: בתי קפה ותרבות יהודית מודרנית
מבוא לספר "עם הספל: בתי קפה ותרבות יהודית מודרנית" הוצאת מאגנס
The Cambridge History of Judaism: The Modern Era, vol. 8. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores presents a bilingual edition of Kleiman and Farmelant’s ... more Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores presents a bilingual edition of Kleiman and Farmelant’s work in a large range of themes, moods, and styles, translated into English for the first time by Yosefa Raz and Adriana X. Jacobs. It includes Kleiman’s poems that were collected and published in a 1947 U.S. volume and a selection from two of Farmelant’s poetry books, published in Jerusalem in 1960 and 1961. The translators have furnished the poems with copious notes, illuminating linguistic and cultural sources of the poetry and making it more accessible to contemporary readers. Pinsker introduces the volume with a background on the poets’ lives and work and a look at the state of Hebrew literature in the first half of the twentieth century. The volume also includes an unpublished essay by Anne Kleiman, addressing Hebrew poet Anda Pinkerfeld and her poetic work, which sheds an important light on the dialogue between women's Hebrew poetry written in American and in Palestine during the same period.
Readers and scholars of Jewish, American, and Hebrew literature and cultural history, as well as those interested in poetry, gender, and women’s studies will enjoy this unique bilingual edition.
Literary Passports is the first book to explore Hebrew modernist fiction in Europe in the early d... more Literary Passports is the first book to explore Hebrew modernist fiction in Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century. It not only serves as an introduction to this important body of literature, but also acts as a major revisionist statement, freeing the genre from a Zionist-nationalist narrative and viewing it through the wider lens of new comparative studies in modernism. The book's central claim is that modernist Hebrew prose fiction, as it emerged from 1900 to 1930, was shaped by the highly charged encounter of traditionally educated Jews with the revolution of European literature and culture known as modernism.
The book deals with Hebrew modernist fiction as an urban phenomenon, explores the ways in which the genre dealt with issues of sexuality and gender, and examines its depictions of the complex relations between tradition, modernity, and religion.
New Lines Magazine, 2024
Theodor Meron’s advice on charging Israeli and Hamas leaders comes at the end of a remarkable and... more Theodor Meron’s advice on charging Israeli and Hamas leaders comes at the end of a remarkable and revealing career
Haaretz, 2024
A new English translation of Israeli author Maya Arad's 2018 trio of novellas, 'The Hebrew Teache... more A new English translation of Israeli author Maya Arad's 2018 trio of novellas, 'The Hebrew Teacher,' is a particularly fascinating read at a moment that is not a good time for Israel-but what about Hebrew literature?
Oxford Bibliographies, 2023
Zierler reads Baron's story "Fradl" (1946) as tense and productive dialogue with two canonical no... more Zierler reads Baron's story "Fradl" (1946) as tense and productive dialogue with two canonical novels: Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Agnon's Sippur Pashut. She shows that Baron deals with themes and characters in specifically feminist and non-idyllic ways. back to top
Aeon Magazine, 2024
Is there a distinctive Jewish perspective on revenge? e question obviously bears on the contempor... more Is there a distinctive Jewish perspective on revenge? e question obviously bears on the contemporary world in pressing ways. Revenge is a complex concept about which psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and other fields offer important perspectives. But one way to answer it is to turn to the history of Jewish life, literature and culture. Here we can find a distinctive feeling and action on a matter that is as old as humanity, a human feeling in response to an injury or harm, and one closely bound to ideals of justice. e mid-20th century in particular, a formative period of Jewish and Israeli existence, has much to tell us about the relationship between violence, revenge, justice, memory and trauma in Jewish and Israeli life.
Prooftexts, 2020
This article focuses on the role of the coffeehouse in the Haskalah and its literatures. Scholars... more This article focuses on the role of the coffeehouse in the Haskalah and its literatures. Scholars of modern Jewish literature have not paid enough attention to the coffeehouse and to its important role as a new kind of Jewish space, one that enabled and fostered novel forms of journalism and literature. This is especially true for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the period associated mostly with the Haskalah. Thinking about Haskalah culture in spatial terms usually relies on a dichotomy between the synagogue and secular institutions, the idea that religion constituted the single moral authority and was exclusively associated with the synagogue, the house of study, and other traditional Jewish spaces. This article focuses on the importance of the café as a thirdspace, in Edward Soja's terms, one that does not fit comfortably in the dichotomy between religious and secular spaces (or other dichotomies such as public and private, inside and outside). The café was crucial for the creation of modern Jewish culture, and it helps us to identify and understand the contiguities of the modern Jewish literary complex. W hat point marks the beginning of modern Jewish literature? Is there a fixed line dividing the old from the modern in Jewish writing? Is modern Jewish literature anything written in a Jewish language such as Hebrew or Yiddish, or by Jews in any language? Early twentieth-century scholars and critics used to debate these questions endlessly. Dan Miron has recently proposed to salvage them, and to theorize what he calls "the modern Jewish literary complex." He suggests that we should look for "contiguities" rather than "continuity," that
The article gives a general overview of Hebrew literary life in Warsaw, and provides new perspect... more The article gives a general overview of Hebrew literary life in Warsaw, and provides new perspectives on Hebrew fi ction written in and about the city in the period of 1880−1920. The study results from the need to understand Hebrew literature within the inherently multilingual, transnational nature of the Jewish literary activity in the city and is based on a large corpus of Hebrew fi ctional texts that scholars did not consider earlier. It describes Hebrew literary life in Warsaw, as well as the different ways in which Warsaw's cityscape and the urban experience are represented in Hebrew stories and novels written between 1880 and 1920.
This article examines the complex role of the urban café in Leah Goldberg's poetic texts and Gold... more This article examines the complex role of the urban café in Leah Goldberg's poetic texts and Goldberg's place as a woman writer in Jewish café culture. The café appears as a real and imaginary " thirdspace " in both her poetry and her prose and as part of her activity as a writer, editor, essayist, and cultural and literary critic. The article investigates all these aspects of coffeehouse culture through three decades of Goldberg's career in Europe and in the Yishuv and Israel (especially in Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem), shedding new light on Goldberg's life and work and her unique place in modern Jewish culture.
In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, Aug 26, 2015
Poetics Today 35:3, 2014
This essay examines the ways in which Yiddish—as a language, a set of literary traditions and pr... more This essay examines the ways in which Yiddish—as a language, a set of
literary traditions and practices, and a “postvernacular”—operates within the context
of Israeli, Hebrew-dominated literature. After establishing the subject’s poetic, historical,
and political framework, I present two examples of how Yiddish exerted a (largely
unacknowledged) influence on Israeli literature. The first concerns the striking similarities
and intersections between two literary groups active in Israel during the 1950s:
a famous Hebrew group (Likrat) and a little-known Yiddish group (Yung Yisroel). The
second example consists in the parallels and intertwined literary histories of two writers,
Yossl Birshtein (who was a member of Yung Yisroel) and the Hebrew writer Ya’acov
Shabtai, in order to demonstrate the presence of Yiddish in Shabtai’s poetic work and
to discover an untold story in the history of modern Hebrew literature.
Frankel Institute Annual , 2014
The Thinking Space: The Cafe as a Cultural Institution in Paris, Italy, and Vienna, 2013
American Jewish History, Apr 2013
Choosing Yiddish New Frontiers of Language and Culture
Jewish History Matters, 2018
Shachar Pinsker discusses his book "A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture" and the... more Shachar Pinsker discusses his book "A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture" and the ways in which cafes provide a window into understanding modern Jewish culture and modernity: What it means for cafes to be sites of the production of Jewish culture, how cafes sold not just coffee but also a concept of modernity, and the transformation of cafes and Jewish culture.