Hebrew literature

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Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the

Literature in Hebrew begins with the

The

Only one Hebrew poem by a woman is attested for the medieval period (and is both the first and the last for some centuries): composed by the wife of Dunash ben Labrat, it laments Dunash's departure into exile.^[4]

Modern era

In addition to writing traditional rabbinic literature in Hebrew, modern Jews developed new forms of fiction, poetry, and essay-writing, which are typically called "Modern Hebrew Literature".

18th century

By the early eighteenth century, Jewish literature was still dominated by Sephardic authors, often writing in

Later in the eighteenth century, the Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) movement worked to achieve political emancipation for Jews in Europe, and European Jews gradually began to produce more literature in the mould of earlier Middle Eastern Jewish authors. Moses Mendelssohn's translation of the Hebrew Bible into German inspired interest in the Hebrew language that led to the founding of a quarterly review written in Hebrew. Other periodicals followed. Poetry by Naphtali Hirz Wessely such as "Shire Tif'eret," or "Mosiade," made Wessely, so to speak, poet laureate of the period.^[5]

19th century

In nineteenth-century Galicia, poets, scholars, and popular writers who contributed to the dissemination of Hebrew and to the emancipation of the Jews of Galicia included:

• Joseph Perl (1773–1839), writer and educator who, in 1819, published Revealer of Secrets, the first Hebrew novel.^[6]
• Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840), a philosopher, theologian, and historian.
• Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport (1790–1867), a rabbi, poet, and biographer
• Hasidic
  superstitions and prejudices in a vigorous and classical style.
• Goethe's Faust
  into Hebrew.

In 19th century Amsterdam, Hebrew-language authors included the poet Samuel Molder (1789–1862).

Italian Jews of the nineteenth-century who wrote in Hebrew included I. S. Reggio (1784–1854), Joseph Almanzi, Hayyim Salomon, Samuel Vita Lolli (1788–1843). Another figure of note was Rachel Morpurgo (1790–1860), who was one of the few female writers in the Haskalah movement, and whose poems have been described as characterized by "religious piety and a mystic faith in Israel's future".^[7] The best known Italian writer was Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–65) was the first modern writer to introduce religious romanticism into Hebrew and to attack northern rationalism in the name of religious and national feeling.^[7]

Prominent Hebrew writers in the

• the poet and mathematician Jacob Eichenbaum (1796–1861)
• the Haskalah leader Isaac Baer Levinsohn
• Kalman Schulman (1826–1900), who introduced the romantic form into Hebrew
• the romantic poet Micah Joseph Lebensohn (1828–52)
• the Lithuanian author Mordecai Aaron Ginzburg, known as "the father of prose"
• Lithuanian poet
  Abraham Baer Lebensohn
  , known as the "father of poetry", whose poems "Shire Sefat Kodesh" were extraordinarily successful.
• Abraham Mapu (1808–67), the creator of the Hebrew novel, whose historical romance "Ahabat Tziyyon" exercised an important influence on the development of Hebrew.

The poet

As Zionist settlement in Palestine intensified at the start of the twentieth century, Hebrew became the shared language of the various Jewish immigrant communities along with native Palestinian Jews of the Old Yishuv, who continued the literary traditions of earlier Sephardic and Arab-Jewish writers such as Maimonedes (Moshe ibn Maimoun) and al-Harizi. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in particular worked to adapt Hebrew to the needs of the modern world, turning to Hebrew sources from all periods and locales to develop a language that went beyond the sacred and poetic and was capable of articulating the modern experience.

With the rise of the Zionist movement amongst Jews in Europe, Ashkenazi Jews embraced Hebrew literature and began to dominate it for the first time. The foundations of modern

In parallel, a number of Palestinian and Levantine Jewish writers were influenced by the resurgence of Hebrew literature, and adopted Hebrew for their writings. In contrast to the experiences of pioneers such as Bialik, who were Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe, the Levantine Jewish writers were educated in Arabic literary traditions, and thus they incorporated many Arabic, Sephardic, and vernacular Palestinian themes and linguistic elements in their writing. Novelist Yehuda Burla, born in Jerusalem in 1886, served in the Ottoman army, and later taught Hebrew and Arabic in Damascus. In 1961, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for literature.^[10] The novelist Yitzhaq Shami was a Palestinian Jewish native of Hebron, and his work—which was written from the perspective of both Arabic-speaking Jews and Muslim Palestinians—incorporated diverse Arabic, Sephardic, and Middle Eastern themes. Shami holds a relatively unique place in Hebrew literature, since his writing is also recognized as Palestinian literature; in 2004 Shami was recognized by the Palestinian Academic Society as one of the important Palestinian writers.

In 1966,

A new generation of Hebrew writers emerged with the establishment of the

Bibliography

• Shea, William H. (2000). "Chronology of the Old Testament". In Freedman, David Noel; Myers, Allen C. (eds.). Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Eerdmans.
  ISBN 9789053565032
  .
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Richard Gottheil, N. Slouschz (1901–1906). "LITERATURE, MODERN HEBREW". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

External links

• Works related to Hebrew language and literature at Wikisource