The Development of Hebrew Culture and the Pioneering Ethos

1. The Development of Hebrew Culture and the Pioneering Ethos SIS 150: Lecture 3 Noam Pianko

2. Origins of Zionism • Historical Roots • Jewish experience • European ideologies • Ideological Tensions • Inevitable?

3. What Defines a Nation?

4. National Characteristics • Founding Myth/Heroes • National Values/Characteristics • Language and Literature • Political Independence • Homeland • Public Ceremonies/Civic Religion

5. Where Do Nations Come From?

6. The Invention of Tradition • “Modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed namely human communities so natural as to require no definition other than self-assertion. Whatever the historic or other continuities embedded in the modern concept of ‘France’ and ‘the French’—and which nobody would seek to deny—these very concepts themselves must include a constructed of ‘invented’ component.” (Eric Hobsbawm, The Nation as Invented Tradition)

7. National Hebrew Culture • The New Jew • National Politics • Revival of Hebrew Language • Literature • Pioneers and Return to the Land

8. The New (Hebrew) Jew

9. Jewry of Muscle, Max Nordau (1903) • “We must think of creating once again a Jewry of muscles.” • Why “once again”? What happened? • What does the new Jew do?

11. Hebrew Religion of Work/Labor Masculine Connection to Land Young Yiddish Dependant Feminine Religious Weak New Jew/Galut Jew

12. Zionist Congress

13. “Ha-Tikvah”byNaftali Herz Imber(1856-1909)

14. As long as deep in the heart, The soul of a Jew yearns, And forward to the East To Zion, an eye looks Our hope will not be lost, The hope of two thousand years, To be a free nation in our land, The land of Zion and Jerusalem. Ha-Tikva - “The Hope”

15. Language • Herder: “Men hold nothing more dear than the speech of their fathers” • But, what language?

16. Yiddish Birobidjaner Stern: A Yiddish Newspaper from the Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birobidjan, Soviet Union:

17. Torah Scroll

18. Hebrew was never a dead language • text-centered traditions in Jewish life • modern, secular Hebrew literature builds from 1700s on (Haskalah) • the Hebrew Renaissance (1890-1920) • Yiddish as fusion language • Need for lingua franca Rebirth Through the Written Language

19. Hebrew Revival • Haskalah-Jewish Enlightenment • Secular Expression • 1853-Mapu-First Hebrew Novel • Diaspora Centers of Hebraism • Berlin, Warsaw • Shift to Palestine in Interwar Period • What about speaking?

20. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda(1858-1922)

21.  born in Russia: Eliezer Yizhak Perlman immigrated to Ottoman-ruled Palestine in 1881 worked on Hebrew newspapers, prepared a multi-language dictionary, taught ivrit b’ivrit, raised “the first Hebrew child” Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858-1922)

22. Hebrew Literature • Schlegel: “Every important and indepdent nation has the right of possessing a literature unique to itself • Challenges? • Secular versus religious • Fictional World • Relationship to Western Civilization

23. Avraham Shlonsky • Born in Ukraine; religious and secular education • Aliya 1913 • WWI – back in Russia • In the Yishuv – 1922, farmer and road builder Hebrew Poet, 1900-1973

24. ToilAvraham Shlonsky, 19??

25. Toil By Abraham Shlonsky(Lea Goldberg translation) Dress me, good mother, in a splenderous coat of many colors And with dawn lead me to toil. My land wraps in light like a prayer shawl, Houses stand like phylacteries, And like bands of phylacteries glide hand-laid asphalt roads. Thus a beautiful city offers her morning prayer to her creator. And among the creators, your son Abraham, Poet-roadbuilder in Israel. And toward evening, at dusk, father returns from his labors And like prayer whispers with pleasure: A dear son of mine is Abraham: Skin, sinew, and bones. Hallelujah! Dress me, good mother, in a splenderous coat of many colors And at dawn lead me to toil.

26. Dress me, good mother, in a glorious robe of many colors, and at dawn lead me to [my] toil. My land is wrapped in light as in a prayer shawl. The houses stand forth like frontlets; and the roads paved by hand, stream down like phylactery straps. Here the lovely city says the morning prayer to its Creator. And among the creators is your son Abraham, a road-building bard of Israel. And in the evening twilight, father will return from his travails, and, like a prayer, will whisper joyfully: ‘My dear son Abraham, skin, sinews and bones- hallelujah.’ Dress me, good mother, in a glorious robe of many colors, and at dawn lead me to toil. Toil By Abraham Shlonsky(T. Carmi translation)

27. Tallit

28. Tefillin

29. Translation of Classics and Romantic Literature • David Frishman (1859-1922) • George Elliot, Pushkin, Byron, Nietzsche • Saul Tchernichowsky (1875-1943) • “Before Statue of Apollo” • Shakespeare, Homer, Longfellow

30. Return to the Land

31. Chalutzim(“Pioneers”) Chalutzim in the Galilee, 1912

32. Chalutzim farming in the Galilee, 1913

33. Armed Chalutzim, Galilee, 1915

34. More Armed Chalutzim, Galilee, 1915

35. A Group of Pioneers in Training Chalutzim at Work in Palestine

36. The Cannanites,“Nimrod”

37. Genesis 10:7-10 • These are the lines of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah: sons were born to them after the Flood. …[goes through Japheth descendents]…The descendants of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan. The descendants of cush; Seba, Havilah, Sabah, Raamah, and Sabteca. The descendants of Raamah; Sheba and Dedan. • Cush also begot Nimrod, who was the first man of might on earth. He was a mighty hunter by the grace of the Lord; hence the saying, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter by the grace of the Lord.”

38. Hebrew Culture • Particular and Universal • Ancient Texts and Modern Ideologies • Return, Revival, Ingathering • Invention of New Jew • Rejection of Diaspora/Aliyah