Hebrew Zionism and Yiddish Communism in the Works of Ayalti

I discuss the first Yiddish novel, “Bum” un keytn, (“Boom” and Chains, 1936), by bi-lingual Yiddish-Hebrew writer Khonen Klenbort (1910-1988), who authored it under his penname Ayalti. The work’s significance lies in the unfiltered light it sheds on the realities of pre-state Palestine and on the practices of the Zionist movement, in particular in its kibbutz form. Many of the issues raised in the novel pertain to our present time: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nationalism, struggles over land and migration, the essence of progressive politics, etc. Anyone interested in the history of Israel-Palestine would find interest in this sharp and gripping novel. I will show the evolution of Ayalti, comparing this Yiddish effort to his earlier Hebrew novel Ba-mehilot (In The Burrows, 1934), which showed a much more sympathetic view towards Zionism than did the later Yiddish novel. My project fits into the wider enterprise of Yiddish-Hebrew literary scholarship by adding a critical counter narrative to the prevailing one, as Yiddish literature often does. Like Yiddish works from the American Yiddish radical Lower East Side immigration narratives, it offers an honest, unromantic immigration story free of shmaltz. I plan to show the evolution of both the writer and of his characters from "good Zionist pioneers" to resistors of the settlement project.