Israeli Salvage Poetics

Israeli Salvage Poetics explores how Israeli authors from Eastern Europe or of Eastern European descent incorporate pre-Holocaust Eastern European culture into their own sense of Israeliness or Jewishness, engaging in salvage poetics to right the wrongs of the past and reconcile their conflict of identity.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 242 pages
Publication date: 31 October 2023
Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Through a meticulous examination of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Israeli literature, Israeli Salvage Poetics delves into the notion of negating the diaspora as explored in Hebrew-language literature written by renowned and lesser-known Israeli authors from the eve of the Holocaust to the present day. Author Sheila E. Jelen explores how Israeli writers from Eastern Europe or with Eastern European descent incorporate pre-Holocaust Eastern European culture into their own understanding of Israeliness or Jewishness. Many Israelis who are interested in their Eastern European heritage live with a consciousness of their nation's role in repressing that legacy, ranging from the elevation of Hebrew over Yiddish to the ridicule and resentment directed at culture, text, and folk traditions from Eastern Europe. To rectify the wrongs of the past and reconcile this identity conflict, the Israeli authors discussed in this book engage in what Jelen calls salvage poetics. They read Yiddish literature, travel to Eastern Europe, and write about their personal and generational relationships with Ashkenazi culture. Israeli literary representations of Eastern European Jewry strive, sometimes successfully, to reclaim Eastern European Jewish pre-Holocaust culture for the benefit of an audience that may feel accountable for the silencing and extinction of that culture.

Weight: 386g
Dimension: 152 x 228 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780814348963