Hebrew literature

By the early eighteenth century, Jewish literature was still dominated by Sephardic authors, often writing in Judeo-Arabic. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto's allegorical drama "La-Yesharim Tehillah" (1743) may be regarded as the first product of modern Hebrew literature. It has been referred to as "a poem that in its classic perfection of style is second only to the Bible."[5] Luzzatto's pupil in Amsterdam, David Franco Mendes (1713–92), in his imitations of Jean Racine ("Gemul 'Atalyah") and of Metastasio ("Yehudit"), continued his master's work, though his works are not as respected as were Luzzatto's.[5]

Later in the eighteenth century, the Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) movement worked to achieve political emancipation for Jews in Europe, and European Jews gradually began to produce more literature in the mould of earlier Middle Eastern Jewish authors. Moses Mendelssohn's translation of the Hebrew Bible into German inspired interest in the Hebrew language that led to the founding of a quarterly review written in Hebrew. Other periodicals followed. Poetry by Naphtali Hirz Wessely such as "Shire Tif'eret," or "Mosiade," made Wessely, so to speak, poet laureate of the period.[5]

In nineteenth-century Galicia, poets, scholars, and popular writers who contributed to the dissemination of Hebrew and to the emancipation of the Jews of Galicia included:

• Joseph Perl (1773–1839), writer and educator who, in 1819, published Revealer of Secrets, the first Hebrew novel.[6]
• Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840), a philosopher, theologian, and historian.
• Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport (1790–1867), a rabbi, poet, and biographer
• Isaac Erter (1792–1841), a satirical poet whose collection of essays, "Ha-Tzofeh le-Bet Yisrael," is one of the purest works of modern Hebrew literature, attacking Hasidic superstitions and prejudices in a vigorous and classical style.
• Meir Halevy Letteris (1800–1871), a lyric poet also known for his adaption of Goethe's Faust into Hebrew.

In Amsterdam, a circle of Hebrew-language literary artists emerged in the nineteenth century, including the poet Samuel Molder (1789–1862). Prague became an active center for the Haskalah in the nineteenth century, and the best known among the Haskalah writers there was Jehudah Loeb Jeiteles (1773–1838), author of witty epigrams ("Bene ha-Ne'urim") and of works directed against Hasidism and against superstition. In Hungary, Hebrew-language authors included Solomon Lewison of Moor (1789–1822), author of "Melitzat Yeshurun"; Gabriel Südfeld, a poet who was the father of Max Nordau; and the poet Simon Bacher.[7] A notable Jewish author in Romania during the nineteenth century was the physician and writer Julius Barasch.[8]

Italian Jews of the nineteenth-century who wrote in Hebrew included I. S. Reggio (1784–1854), Joseph Almanzi, Hayyim Salomon, Samuel Vita Lolli (1788–1843). Another figure of note was Rachel Morpurgo (1790–1860), who was one of the few female writers in the Haskalah movement, and whose poems have been described as characterized by "religious piety and a mystic faith in Israel's future."[7] The best known Italian writer was Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–65) was the first modern writer to introduce religious romanticism into Hebrew and to attack northern rationalism in the name of religious and national feeling.[7]

Prominent Hebrew writers in the Russian empire in the nineteenth century included:

• the poet and mathematician Jacob Eichenbaum (1796–1861)
• the Haskalah leader Isaac Baer Levinsohn
• Kalman Schulman (1826–1900), who introduced the romantic form into Hebrew
• the romantic poet Micah Joseph Lebensohn (1828–52)
• the Lithuanian author Mordecai Aaron Ginzburg, known as "the father of prose"
• Lithuanian poet Abraham Baer Lebensohn, known as the "father of poetry," whose poems "Shire Sefat Kodesh" were extraordinarily successful.
• Abraham Mapu (1808–67), the creator of the Hebrew novel, whose historical romance "Ahabat Tziyyon" exercised an important influence on the development of Hebrew.

The poet Judah Leib Gordon, also known as "Leon Gordon" (1831–1892), was a well-known satirical poet who has been characterized as "an implacable enemy of the Rabbis."[7]

As Zionist settlement in Palestine intensified at the start of the twentieth century, Hebrew became the shared language of the various Jewish immigrant communities along with native Palestinian Jews of the Old Yishuv, who continued the literary traditions of earlier Sephardic and Arab-Jewish writers such as Maimonedes (Moshe ibn Maimoun) and al-Harizi. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in particular worked to adapt Hebrew to the needs of the modern world, turning to Hebrew sources from all periods and locales to develop a language that went beyond the sacred and poetic and was capable of articulating the modern experience.

With the rise of the Zionist movement amongst Jews in Europe, Ashkenazi Jews embraced Hebrew literature and began to dominate it for the first time. The foundations of modern Israeli writing were laid by a group of literary pioneers from the Second Aliyah including Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Moshe Smilansky, Yosef Haim Brenner, David Shimoni and Jacob Fichman. Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873–1934) was one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poets and came to be recognized as Israel's national poet. Bialik contributed significantly to the revival of the Hebrew language, which before his days existed primarily as an ancient, scholarly, or poetic tongue. Bialik, like other great literary figures from the early part of the 20th century such as Ahad Ha-Am and Tchernichovsky, spent his last years in Tel Aviv, and exerted a great influence on younger Hebrew writers; the impact of his work is evident throughout modern Hebrew literature.[9]

In parallel, a number of Palestinian and Levantine Jewish writers were influenced by the resurgence of Hebrew literature, and adopted Hebrew for their writings. In contrast to the experiences of pioneers such as Bialik, who were Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe, the Levantine Jewish writers were educated in Arabic literary traditions, and thus they incorporated many Arabic, Sephardic, and vernacular Palestinian themes and linguistic elements in their writing. Novelist Yehuda Burla, born in Jerusalem in 1886, served in the Ottoman army, and later taught Hebrew and Arabic in Damascus. In 1961, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for literature.[10] The novelist Yitzhaq Shami was a Palestinian Jewish native of Hebron, and his work—which was written from the perspective of both Arabic-speaking Jews and Muslim Palestinians—incorporated diverse Arabic, Sephardic, and Middle Eastern themes. Shami holds a relatively unique place in Hebrew literature, since his writing is also recognized as Palestinian literature; in 2004 Shami was recognized by the Palestinian Academic Society as one of the important Palestinian writers.

In 1966, Agnon won the Nobel Prize for Literature for novels and short stories that employ a unique blend of biblical, Talmudic and modern Hebrew. Literary translators into Modern Hebrew, most notably Leah Goldberg among others, also contributed a great deal to Israeli-Hebrew literature through bringing international literature and literary figures into Hebrew circles through translation. Goldberg herself was also noted for being a prolific writer and pioneer of Israeli children's literature as well.