Studies in Modern Jewish Literature

by Band, Arnold J.

• ISBN13: 9780827607620
• ISBN10: 0827607628
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: Jewish Pubn Society

Summary

This outstanding volume of 26 essays represents a cross-section of the writings of Arnold Band on Jewish literature. Band, a renowned Jewish studies and humanities scholar, writes on such topics as: literature in historic context, interpretations of Hasidic tales and other traditional texts, Zionism, S.Y. Agnon and other important Israeli writers, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Jewish studies, and the Jewish community. Scholars and students of Jewish studies and literature -- particularly Jewish literature -- won't want to miss this remarkable collection.

Author Biography

Arnold J. Band is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Preface	xvii
Acknowledgments	xix
Introduction	1	(2)
Confluent Myths: Two Lives	3	(18)
Literature in its Historical Contexts	21	(64)
Back to Moses: Reflections on Reflections on Freud's Reflections on Jewish History	23	(10)
The Beilis Trial in Literature: Notes on History and Fiction	33	(18)
A Crusades Triptych in Modern Hebrew Literature	51	(14)
Kafka: The Margins of Assimilation	65	(20)
Interpretation of Traditional Texts	85	(56)
Swallowing Jonah: The Eclipse of Parody	87	(22)
The Politics of Scripture: The Hasidic Tale	109	(20)
Folklore, Literature, and Scripture: The Bratslav Tale	129	(12)
Israel and Zionism	141	(54)
From Diaspora to Homeland: The Transfer of the Hebrew Literary Center to Eretz Yisrael	143	(14)
The New Diasporism and the Old Diaspora	157	(10)
Adumbrations of the Israeli ``Identity Crisis'' in Hebrew Literature of the 1960s	167	(10)
The Impact of Statehood on the Israeli Literary Imagination	177	(18)
Modern Hebrew Literature	195	(56)
A Jewish Existentialist Hero: Agnon's ``A Whole Loaf''	197	(16)
The Evolving Masks of S.J. Agnon	213	(14)
The Author, His Code, and His Reader: The Kafka-Agnon Polarities	227	(14)
Agnon Encounters Freud	241	(10)
Other Hebrew Writers	251	(64)
The Beginnings of Modern Hebrew Literature: Perspectives on ``Modernity''	253	(24)
The Ahad Ha-Am-Berdyczewski Polarity	277	(12)
The Sacralization of Language in Bialik's Essays	289	(10)
The Archaeology of Self Deception: A. B. Yehoshua's Mar Mani	299	(16)
Anti-Semitism and Holocaust	315	(36)
Refractions of the Blood Libel in Jewish Literature	317	(22)
Scholarship as Lamentation: Shalom Spiegel on ``The Binding of Isaac''	339	(12)
Jewish Studies and the Community	351	(2)
Our ``She'ela Nikhbada:'' Whose Hebrew Is It?	353	(16)
Jewish Literature in the University	369	(20)
Jewish Studies in American Liberal Arts Colleges and Universities	389	(20)
Popular Fiction and the Shaping of Jewish Identity	409