 2014 - 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0680-8301-01 | Yiddish Lirerature in the Early Modern Period, in the German | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
Modern Yiddish Literature and the ‘Being in Nature’ Experience
In this course we will examine the significance of "being in nature" in the canonical works of modern Yiddish literature. We will focus on the way in which modernity (as a worldview and historical period) has reshaped the Jewish experience of belonging in various landscapes, be they of "foreign" homelands or of the national homeland (Israel). Judaism, in its post-biblical forms, was shaped, as a religion, culture, and national identity in Diaspora. In ideologies developed by Jews in various lands, their existential posture of dwelling "abroad" (in Exile, awaiting restoration to their point of origin) implied an inherent ambivalence with regard to their home or "native" ground – which was also Galut (Exile). The unsettling consciousness of oneself as being alien to one's embracing environment is thus a root-experience of great import that is part and parcel of the Jewish experience as such. Nowhere is this more obvious than in literary descriptions of encounters with every-day, natural surroundings. It is equally and paradoxically apparent in literary treatments of "longing" for lost surroundings. Our aim is to study key literary representations of this paradox: of feeling “at home” in one’s unrealized longings for a homeland, and an alien in one’s native land. We will be reading from the works of Mendele Moykher Sforim, Yehoash, M. Kulbak, R. Korn, Y.Y. Schwartz, I. Raboi, A. Sutzkever, R. Fishman, and M. Mann.
In this course we will examine the significance of "being in nature" in the canonical works of modern Yiddish literature. We will focus on the way in which modernity (as a worldview and historical period) has reshaped the Jewish experience of belonging in various landscapes, be they of "foreign" homelands or of the national homeland (Israel). Judaism, in its post-biblical forms, was shaped, as a religion, culture, and national identity in Diaspora. In ideologies developed by Jews in various lands, their existential posture of dwelling "abroad" (in Exile, awaiting restoration to their point of origin) implied an inherent ambivalence with regard to their home or "native" ground – which was also Galut (Exile). The unsettling consciousness of oneself as being alien to one's embracing environment is thus a root-experience of great import that is part and parcel of the Jewish experience as such. Nowhere is this more obvious than in literary descriptions of encounters with every-day, natural surroundings. It is equally and paradoxically apparent in literary treatments of "longing" for lost surroundings. Our aim is to study key literary representations of this paradox: of feeling “at home” in one’s unrealized longings for a homeland, and an alien in one’s native land. We will be reading from the works of Mendele Moykher Sforim, Yehoash, M. Kulbak, R. Korn, Y.Y. Schwartz, I. Raboi, A. Sutzkever, R. Fishman, and M. Mann.