The Russian Roots of Modern Hebrew Literature

My talk examines the influences upon Russian-born Hebrew authors of outstanding Russian writers and poets of the nineteenth and twentieth century. These Hebrew authors lived in Russia, were familiar with its literature, respected its writers, and in some cases even began their writing career in the Russian language and imitated Russian literature. They are particularly important because of their role in laying the foundations of Hebrew literature for future generations. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the independent development of these Hebrew authors. For example, Tolstoy’s trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, inspired the Hebrew writer Berkowitz, who both translated Tolstoy’s novel into Hebrew and wrote his own novel, Childhood Memories—In Father’s House, in the spirit of Tolstoy`s novel. Nevertheless, Berkowitz gave his novel a Jewish coloration, by choosing a point-of-view characteristic of a traditionally religious Jewish child. Thus, instead of the Russian Orthodox milieu of Tolstoy’s novel one finds description of Jewish Yiddishe Stetl.

There are those cases in which the Russian influences upon Hebrew writers find expression, not by means of imitation, but via satire and parody. This is particularly characteristic in the case of Soviet literature. For example, Hayyim Hazaz’s novel A Flowing River describes the militant thrust of the young Soviet regime in an absurd and grotesque manner, mocking that described in Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don.

Russian influences were a major factor in forming the nature and spirit of classic Hebrew literature of the modern period, and, in practice greatly influenced the shaping of Israeli culture.