The story of Hebrew Literature is the story of a relatively young entity, which has grown and changed over the past 200 years, following its encounter with European cultures. However, it is at the same time deeply rooted in ancient traditions, and its tongue unravels traces of classical, biblical Hebrew literature. This collection contains thirty-five essays, all written in the past decade, discussing known and forgotten Hebrew authors who wrote during the 19th-21st centuries. The essays are divided into literary subjects such as the Yom Kippur war and the approach of various authors toward the Land of Israel.

How does a character speak in its tongue? What is the grammar that weaves the relationship between a character and the narrator who tells its story? How can an Israeli narrator who writes in Hebrew, guide the stream of consciousness and the ways of a strange character that speak a foreign language, which he doesn’t know? “They Spoke in Their Tongue” deals with these questions and more, while presenting an extensive research on Yehoshua Kenaz, one the greatest Israeli writers. Naama Tsal offers an index for the rare poetics of Kenaz using philosophical reading in literature, proposing to think about the absence that is imprinted in the heart of Kenaz’s perception of another person, about poetics of partial deafness, and about embedding areas of blindness inside one’s field of vision. “A sharp, original and innovative research. This is a most important and groundbreaking research that will show to be a cornerstone in every future discussion in Israeli literature.” (Prof. Hannan Hever, Yale university ) “Deserves every praise. This is undoubtedly a discussion that all future writers on Kenaz’s work will turn back to”. (Prof. Michael Glusman, Tel Aviv University ). "Brilliant […] There is a quiet beauty in Naama's analysis and conclusions that reminds us all why we chose to devote our lives to the study of literature". (Prof. Sidra DeKoven-Ezrahi, Hebrew University of Jerusalem )

This book explores a cultural project pursued by Lea Goldberg in the first decade after her immigration to Eretz-Israel. It argues that during this formative period in her literary biography, Goldberg’s writings addressed issues of cultural memory and cultural translation. The reason for this epistemic and aesthetic focus in her early work, as the book demonstrates, is to be found in Goldberg’s experience of immigration as well as in her deep sense of responsibility for the preservation of European culture endangered by the outbreak of World War II. The significance of this constitutive chapter in Goldberg’s œvre had been almost entirely overlooked by researchers to date . The book presents a first systematic account of all of the channels of Goldberg’s literary activity in the first decade, novelistic writing, poetry, publicist and essayist writings, as well as of her translations, thus offering a new understanding of Lea Goldberg not only as a poet but also as a public intellectual. Furthermore, by interpreting her writings through the comparative lens and concentrating on Goldberg’s multi-layered dialogue with Russian and German literatures, the book suggests viewing her literary work within the frame of European modernism, which she sought to translate into the space of Hebrew literature. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s view of genres as “organs of memory”, each of the chapters focuses on a different genre in Goldberg’s writing and presents it as a conscious effort to realize in her Hebrew literary works the potential of European cultural memory .

Kochvei Yitzhak, The Hebrew Journal of the Haskalah in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1845–1873), is a monograph and an annotated index, covering the literary belles lettres and scholarly articles published in that periodical. It discusses and analyzes the various authors who contributed to the journal, in the context of the times and the needs of the Jewish community in Europe, following the ideology of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) in improving Jewish education, fostering the ideals of humanism and advocating the purity of Judaism and its practices. This is the sixth book in the series of monographs and annotated indices of periodicals of the Hebrew Haskalah (Enlightenment).

Contents: ARITCLES Reuven Kiperwasser - The Bitter Fate of Elihoref and Ahiya: The Metamorphosis of a Story from the Land of Israel that Went to Babylonia Tamar Kadari - Song and Meaning:A new Look on Rabbinic Exegesis of the Song of Songs Hanan Mazeh - ' 'עיקר עיבורה של דינה זכר היה (The original conception of Dinah was as a male): The Origin and Development of an Aggadic Tradition in Rabbinic Literature Itay Marienberg-Milikowsky - ‘Bekibbutz galuyot u behikabetz betulot ’: On the Identification of the Forbidden Piyyutim in a Responsa by Rav Natronai Gaon Ophir Münz-Manor - The Payytanic Epithet and its Relations to Figurative Language in Pre-Classical Piyyut Yotam Poplker - ‘Yam Acharon’ on the Way to America: ‘Immigrants’ as a Key Story to the Work of L. A. Arieli-Orlof Itamar Drori - Return of the Author – ‘Bell and Pomegranate’ by Hayim Hazaz Dvir Tzur - The Birth of the New Jew in the New Land: On Pioneer–Native Relations in S. Yizhar's Stories, or on the Face(s) of the Native Home. Ilana Szobel - The Girl with the Billy-Goat’s Hoof: Parental Abuse, Metamorphosis and Poetics in the Poetry of Tsvia Litevsk Nancy Ezer - Bursting Out of the Center and Breaking into it in Two Literary Autobiographies: Yoram Kaniuk’s Post Mortem and Leah Aini’s Rose of Lebanon

Articles Dina Stein - Rabbinic Tales in the Israel Folktale Archives: Holy Men and Tricksters Osnat Sharon - Elephant, Leviathan and Nineveh the Great City: Sibbuv Rabbi Petachia and Midrash Yonah, Printed Side by Side Nina Pinto-Abecasis - The Piropo as a Bridge between Cultures in Tetuan (Northern Morocco) Adam Ratzon - Al ma yismash kbiru , ya alt tadbiru [Whoever would not listen to elders will not manage in life]: A Literary-Cultural Reading of the Proverbs and Personal Narratives of an Egyptian-Israeli Woman Jacqueline Laznow - ‘I didn’t know I wanted to be a rabbi, there was no name for what I wanted to be’: Life Stories of Women Rabbis Living in Israel Towards a History of Folklore Meir Nizri - Israel and the Sabbath as Bride and Groom in Various Sabbath Hymns

Two Plays by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: The Bathes of Algeria The Great Sultana Dona Catalina de Oviedo A bilingual book in Spanish and Hebrew. Full symmetry of meter and Rhyme of both languages.

In the volume Kabbalah, Mysticism and Poetry: A Journey to the End of Vision , top researchers from a variety of disciplines generate a thrilling encounter between Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts, drawing on poetic, religious and mystical interpretation tools in an interdisciplinary feast of aesthetics, literature and poetics on the one hand, and mysticism and theology on the other. In this fascinating, complex, and entangled journey to the end of vision we meet some of the leading authors who made a crucial contribution to human world culture, and who were deeply interested in Kabbalah and mysticism, such as the Zohar Kabbalists, Israel Najara, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Paul Celan, Jorge Luis Borges, Julia Kristeva, Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Dante, Cervantes, John Donne, and Marcel Proust.

Perspectives. Revue de l’Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem (auparavant HSLA, édition française), paraît une fois l’an. La Rédaction accepte des articles ayant trait aux sciences humaines et plus particulièrement à la littérature, la stylistique littéraire, les arts et l’histoire. Toute correspondance doit être adressée à la Rédaction de Perspectives, Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem, Mont Scopus, 91905 Jérusalem, Israël. La Rédaction se réserve le droit d’apporter de légères modifications aux mss. acceptés pour la publication. Perspectives. Revue de l’Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem ne publie pas de comptes rendus. L’ensemble des articles réunis dans ce 22e volume de Perspectives rendent hommage à Claude Vigée, à son œuvre poétique comme à sa pensée. Toutes deux traversent le siècle et lui laissent leur marque indélébile. C’est ce dont témoignent tous les auteurs qui ont accepté de participer à ce numéro.

The Latin Iliad is a concise adaptation of the Homeric Iliad. The identity of its author remains uncertain but the work is attributed to Baebius Italicus, a Roman dignitary of the second half of the first century CE. The Hebrew translation of this short epic retains the unique poetic language of the original as well as its meter.

The didactic emphasis on Nietzsche's presence in the life and work of Yoseph Hayim Brenner in unprecedented scope and depth aims to stress Brenner's Hebraism. What has been his utmost concern is the typical existentialist question, free of any national boundaries and religions: "Who is a Man? Brenner is the most important modern Hebrew writer who wished to create his own personal authenticity. He did not believe that secularization will lead to disintegration or to assimilation but to the creation of a new type of an authentic Hebrew, who will be able to write for himself, mainly by his own resources, his own unique book of life. Brennner's 'secret sweetness' is nurtured by three central 'burning fires' (as is the Yiddish meaning of his name): 1. His personal and immediate direct relation to God of Abraham, Yitzhak and Yaacov, and not to the rabbinical rites and lore. 2. His burning desire to foster a vibrant modern Hebrew literature. 3. His longing for a genuine authentic Mensch that will replace the unattainable Nietzschean ideal of the Übermensch. Hence one of the main tenets of this research is that we cannot explain or understand Brenner solely by using the Nietzschean prism. Brenner's ultimate effort to write in a half-dead language (Hebrew) to a half-alive people (the Jewish people) is his "why of life" that helped him accept almost "any how". Brenner used Nietzsche to overcome his attraction to prevalent political-cultural ideologies that ended with an 'ism', such as communism, socialism, anarchism, or Bundism. Thus he used Nietzsche in a Nietzschean way to overcome his initially strong attachment to the "Herald of Zarathustra" (the fictive literary personification of the authentic hero). Brenner gladly embraced Zarathustra's bid to his pupils: "Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you".