I would like to thank the organizers for this joyful opportunity to think and talk together in this symposium about the concept of diasporic Hebrew and the connection between the Hebrew in European Diaspora a hundred years ago and Hebrew in Berlin today. I thank everyone who contributed to the production of this wonderful and special event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his book Literary Passports<\/em> (2011), Schahar M. Pinsker recounts the anecdote of Gershon Shofman arriving in Vienna in 1913 without a passport, or any other form of identification other than a literary ID written by Avraham Chaim Robinson, the owner of a Jewish bookstore and publishing house in Galicia called Tahiya. In the certificate that he issued for Shofman, he wrote that the latter was „a writer and critic who writes small, miniature sketches with great artistry, […] his style is rich and multifaceted. He has a sharp eye and distinctive vision. His short stories were published in the collection by Yosef Chaim Brenner.“ When the policeman asked Shofman for identification, he took out this postcard that Pinsker called a „literary passport“. To his great fortune, the policeman accepted this postcard and allowed him to enter the city.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This anecdote describes the lives of itinerant intellectuals, authors and writers, who did not always have the necessary documents at hand but traveled in the major cities of Europe with the feeling that they dwelled in the language, and that Hebrew literature was their Heimat<\/em>, their homeland. This motif is repeated today in the Hebrew Berliner-Diaspora. I am thinking for example, of a poem written by the poet Asaf Dvori, in the Diaspora<\/em> issue of the magazine Hakivun Mizrah<\/em>, I quote from his poem Gufim<\/em>: „I who thought that the welt<\/em>literature<\/em> would become my passport without being trapped in my body and skin. But I was wrong.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n What do we, the Hebrew speakers in contemporary Berlin have to do with the Hebraist Diaspora of the last century and with gigantic intellectuals such as Micha Josef Berdyczewski, David Vogel, David Frischman, Gershon Shofman, Yaakov Fichman, Leah Goldberg, Yaakov Steinberg, Chava Shapiro, Devorah Baron and Elisheva Bichovski<\/em>? Is there a continuity between their project and ours? Seemingly you will say, we have nothing to do with that group of intellectuals who wrote in Hebrew a century ago. After all, any attempt to draw lines of continuity would lead us to a substantial rupture \u2013 there is nothing but an imagined, artificial continuity. Whereas the writers of the Hebrew revival at the Fin<\/em> de<\/em> si\u00e8cle<\/em> were pioneers, writing and transforming an ancient religious language (Leshon haKodesh<\/em>) into a modern secular one (Leshon haKhol<\/em>),[3]<\/a> we are the native speakers of an Israeli Hebrew that has developed in the past centuries \u2013 and in our fluent conversations in modernized Hebrew there is nothing pioneering, avantgarde or diasporic. What, then, connects their Hebrew and literature to ours? Do we have the power today to renew the Hebrew language as a diasporic language or to revive the literary center in the Diaspora?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Revival of Hebrew in the Diaspora in the Previous Century<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The heyday of Hebrew literature centers in Europe covers a period of about sixty years from the mid-19th century to the 1930s. The expansion of the activity of writers writing in Hebrew and the increase in readership were the result of secularization and enlightenment on the one hand and the national awakening and Zionist ideas on the other. An important factor in the establishment of these centers included the establishment of institutions: the founding of Hebrew book publishers, newspapers and literary journals and periodicals such as Ha-Me’assef<\/em> (1783, Kneisserg, Berlin and Wroclaw), Ha-Melitz<\/em> (Odessa 1860) and the Ha-Tsfira<\/em> (Warsaw 1862) and Ha-Shiloach<\/em> (Odessa, Berlin 1986). The pinnacle of Hebrew literature was written in these centers. The writers of the revival created three important and vibrant literary centers, one in Warsaw, Odessa, and Berlin.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Warsaw in 1900 was a bustling place for Hebrew writers and Yiddishists such as Uri Nissan Gnessin, Nahum Sokolow, Brenner, \u1e24ayyim Selig Slonimski, David Frischmann, Isaac Leib Peretz and others. These writers and activists met in the cafes where there were newspapers in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, and Russian. Chava Shapiro, known by the pseudonym „Em kol Chai“ (the mother of all that lives), became an integral part of this community and participated in the emerging intellectual and literary life. David Frischmann, who was a friend of her parents, encouraged her to continue writing and opened the Hebrew Writers‘ Circle in Warsaw to her, where she met the writer Isaac Leib Peretz, who became her teacher and a mentor and whom she especially admired.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Shapiro managed to penetrate the men’s club at the heart of the Warsaw literary center\u2013 something that maskilic women rarely achieved.<\/a>[6]<\/a> Shapiro’s critique of this male circle of writers was also a feminist critique of modern Hebrew literature. The Hebrew writers themselves considered it as a bastion of „masculinity“ and in fact ideologically excluded women from participating in the spiritual life and the emerging Hebrew literature.<\/a>[7]<\/a> In Frischman’s correspondence with Shapiro, he wrote to her in 1887: „(The) Hebrew language – […] is a man’s tool, and there shall not be a man’s tool for a woman.“ Furthermore, „I never thought that learning Hebrew is [a task] for the beautiful sex, but rather for the useful sex“, and it is true that Frischman retracted his unfortunate statement on that very occasion saying: „I was wrong! If only our sisters would rise up and learn the Hebrew language, because then we would have established our literature and then there would be hope for us too!“ (Letters on Literature: First letter, 1887 Petersburg). <\/a>[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Elhanan Reiner, writes of Shapiro: „It seems that it has never been said in the past that Hebrew literature would be lacking without the presence of women writers in it.“<\/a>[9]<\/a> Chava Shapiro sought to revolutionize the Hebrew literature of the century and to include women as partners in shaping and designing Hebrew literature. She believed that „as long as women are not included, our literature will be depleted“. Shapiro, is probably the first to critically describe the Hebrew language as a male language, foreign to the Jewish woman who does not study Torah and does not hear the language in Talmud-Torah, as opposed to Yiddish, the everyday language, the mother tongue, the feminine language (Maamaloshen<\/em>).<\/a>[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Chava Shapiro, fed up with the literary circle in Warsaw, moved to Berlin in the years before the First World War and then continued to Odessa on the advice of Bialik, who assured her that she would find an ever-growing group of writers and a growing literary circle.<\/a>[11]<\/a> Ahad Ha’am, Haim Nachman Bialik, Shaul Tchernichovsky, Mendele Mocher Sforim, Yehudah Steinberg<\/em>, Yaakov Fichman <\/em>and others lived in Odessa.<\/a>[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the attempts to establish a Hebrew center in Odessa ended due to the decrees of the Yevsektsiya, a Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party and the actions of the Bolsheviks to ban and suppress Hebrew in 1919. The Bolsheviks saw Hebrew as a language associated with Zionism and as such as a danger to their project and banned it along with all Zionist activity. Periodicals were confiscated from the libraries, and the teaching of Hebrew and the publication of all Hebrew books were stopped. [13]<\/a> After the destruction of the center in Odessa, Hebrew writers such as Bialik and Asher Barash moved to Berlin and tried to establish the new center there. A large number of publishing houses, such as „Moriya“ and „Dvir“ were founded in Berlin at that time, and the magazines Magid<\/em> and Ha-Shilohach<\/em> moved to Berlin to avoid Russian censorship. Many prominent Jewish intellectuals of the time were concentrated in Berlin, such as: Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Leah Goldberg, Chava Shapiro, Shaul Tschernihovsky, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, Else Lasker-Sch\u00fcler and others. In 1922 the Histadrut of Yiddish and Hebrew Writers and Journalists<\/em> was founded in Berlin.<\/a>[14]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Berlin, Hebrew writers met in artists\u2019 caf\u00e9s, including the famous Romanisches Caf\u00e9 on Kurf\u00fcrstendamm in Charlottenburg.<\/a>[15]<\/a> In 1930, when Lea Goldberg was in her early 20s, she moved to Berlin to continue her academic studies for two years. Her novel Mikhtavim Minesia\u2019ah Medumah <\/em>(Letters from an Imagined Journey, 1936\/7)<\/a>[16]<\/a> is set in the last years of the caf\u00e9 culture during the Weimar Republic, just before the Nazis came to power.<\/a>[17]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The third chapter of her novel is called A Letter About Caf\u00e9s and E.T.A. Hoffman.[18]<\/a> In it, Ruth, a fictional character, roams Berlins caf\u00e9s on her own, recounts her encounters with the poet Else Lasker Sch\u00fcler at the Caf\u00e9 des Westens<\/em> on Kurf\u00fcrstendamm and with the National Socialists at the „“Luther Wagner“ wine bar and „Kwik“ a cafe where \u201cour fellow Israelites still go\u201d.<\/a>[19]<\/a> At one of her travels to Berlin, Ruth reports to her lover Emanulino:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere were three (men) sitting in the next (train) cabin. I went out into the corridor. I heard: they talked about women – one with hatred, the other with irony and contempt, the third licked his lips – that’s how I felt. It’s strange, how many times I’ve noticed – you men when you’re among yourselves, you can’t overcome this strange need to talk about women – as anti-Semites (speak) about Jews.\u201d[20]<\/a> In this daring words Ruth might have said what Lea Goldberg would not have said. Women Authors and poets, imprinted their voices, their protest and Gender sensibilities on the revival of the Hebrew literature.[21]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n But the revival of Hebrew in Berlin was a temporary episode. Even before the political circumstances led to the abolishment of the center, by the mid 1920\u2019s the economic conditions were making it difficult: the circle of readers and buyers was relatively small and did not allow the center to continue. „Bialik was wrong,“ argued Zohar Shavit, the Hebrew readership that was supposed to exist in Berlin „was never created and did not exist“ \u2013 it was nothing more than an illusion, accompanied by bitter disillusionment, or as Simon Rawidowicz described it: it was an elite culture since very few of the local readership even knew Hebrew. By 1924 Bialik realized that there was no future for the renewal of the center in Berlin and that the renewal of Hebrew literature could only take place in Eretz Israel\/Palestine.<\/a>[22]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Revival of Hebrew in the Diaspora Today<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But Bialik was wrong again! What he could not have foreseen was a third revival of Hebrew in 21st<\/sup> century Berlin. Much has been written about the return of Israelis to the capital of a country deeply implacared in the Nazi Holocaust and the Shoa.<\/a>[23]<\/a> The fact is that Bialik could never have imagined the emergence of a new Hebrew republic in the Diaspora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the representatives of the project for the revival of Hebrew in the contemporary Diaspora, I would like to examine the activities of three prominent intellectuals who are active in Berlin: Tal Hever-Chybowski, Mati Shemoelof and Dori Manor. The Diasporic Hebrew Project is a polemical project, that seeks to expropriate Hebrew from its safe haven in Israel, and to restore, as it were, the crown to its former glory or in other words, to reclaim its „return“ from homeland to exile, abroad \u2013 beyond the borders of Eretz Israel, and especially in the cities of Europe, where modern Hebrew was resurrected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two issues of Israeli journals have recently been devoted to the subject of Hebrew creativity in the Diaspora, one being issue 25 of the journal Ho!<\/em> edited by Dori Manor and the second, issue 43 of Hakivun Mizrach<\/em> edited by Mati Shemoelof. Both examine and challenge the possibility of establishing Hebrew literary centers in the Diaspora as opposed to the hegemonic center in Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shemoelof wonders, „does the eastern Diaspora allow utopian ideas to sprout precisely because it exists outside the borders of Zionist nationalism?“ He also explores the possibility of establishing a Jewish-Arab peace alliance between Mizrahim and Palestinians, and by extension between Jews and Muslims, outside of Israel.<\/a>[24]<\/a> Dori Menor’s position also embraces Israeli Hebrew without denying it, and even seeks to participate in the Israeli political discourse, specifically in Hebrew and precisely outside the borders of its own country or state.<\/a>[25]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The most radical attempt so far, however, is that of Tal Hever-Chibowski, the founder of the diasporic journal Mikan<\/em> Ve’eylakh<\/em>, who dreams of renewing Hebrew as a diasporic language \u2013 according to him, „a language without a state, army, police or bureaucracy. A language without a defined territory.“<\/a>[26]<\/a> Following the footsteps of Simon Rawidowicz, Hever- Chibowski wishes to continue his legacy and that of Daniel Boyarin.<\/a>[27]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In a poignant and sympathetic review of the first issue of Mikan<\/em> Ve\u2019eylakh Fania Oz-Salzberger wrote in the Shiloh periodical, in 2016, that she reminds the diasporic Hebraism group in Berlin that „the project of renewing \u2018maskilic Hebrew\u2019“ attempts to forget that its historical origins were with Zionist Hebrew“. She challenges the diasporic and anti-Zionist Hebrew and calls for an inclusive Ivrit Olamit, in her words „Hebrew in all its places“ and to this she adds: „Kinderlach, why either or if you can have both.“<\/a>[28]<\/a> It seems to me that this is one of the key questions today. Must the Diaspora exclude the Hebrew center in Israel or can Israel remain one of the many centers of Jewish life. In other words, must the affirmation of Diaspora be an ideology of diasporism? I do not have an answer to this question but I do see a difference between the early revival of Hebrew in the Diaspora, which did not yet benefit from a national center, where Hebrew was spoken in everyday situations, by a diverse group of immigrants and the current arrival of Hebrew in the Diaspora, which is promoted mainly by Israelis who were brought up in a culture of everyday Hebrew that was not limited to the elite and who chose to cultivate their language in a diasporic environment. There is a difference between Hebrew which grew up homeless, so to speak, and Hebrew which grew up at home and cannot easily shed its roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yitzhak Laor echoes this criticism and claims \u201cEverything, in this journal (Mikan<\/em> Ve’eylakh), is written in Israeli Hebrew. They have no other center. There is no other Hebrew to write in, certainly not in this journal. The center of Hebrew is, for the time being, Israel for. Even the writers who are not connected to Israel in any way (for example, Boyarin) are translated into \u2018our\u2019 Hebrew and not into some \u2018diasporic\u2019 Hebrew as part of the success story of the \u2018revival of the language\u2019„.<\/a>[29]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n And while Israeli intellectuals were highly critical of the exclusion of Israeli Hebrew from the World Hebrew Project, Diaspora <\/a>[jb1]<\/a> intellectuals sharply criticized the exclusion of writers who write in Hebrew, from being nominated to the Israeli Sapir Prize because they live outside of Israel.<\/a>[30]<\/a> In 2015 the Sapir Prize, the largest and most prestigious of the literary prizes awarded in Israel to Hebrew writers, updated its regulations to include „a citizen or permanent resident whose center of life is in Israel“. In response to this heated debate, Shemoelof wrote the novel „The Prize“, which is a kind of parody of the Sapir Prize. In his novel, Shemoelof introduces us to a so-called „twin“ prized awarded by the German government to Hebrew writers around the world (outside of Israel).<\/a>[31]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In December 2023, the Hebrew magazine in Berlin Spitz and its establisher and main editor Tal Alon published an announcement that recently a Hebrew book publishing house called Altneuland <\/em>had recently been founded in Berlin by the writers Moshe Sakal and Dori Menor. This is the first time since the center\u2019s destruction that a Hebrew publishing house has been opened in Berlin. In addition, Manor and Sakal established the David Fogel Prize, which is intended to be \u201ca cosmopolitan alternative to the Sapir Prize“, according to Sakal, „open to all Hebrew writers around the world<\/a>[32]<\/a> .“<\/p>\n\n\n\n What, after all, connects the diasporic Hebrew of the great poets and writers of the last century with our own? Perhaps nothing at all, some will say, nothing but a fantasy, an attempt to create a myth of continuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Zohar Shavit, the migration of Hebrew centers in the last century culminated with the migration of Bialik and the ‚Dvir‘ group to the Land of Israel. Here in Berlin, however, about a century later, attempts are being made to renew the Hebrew literary center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The contemporary Hebrew literary republic of Berlin is a center \u2013 perhaps like Warsaw and Odessa it is a traveling center. Will the Hebrew Literary Center in Berlin last? Or will the Hebrew center continue to travel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I believe that the ambition to establish a literary republic and to be citizens of this Hebrew-speaking republic whose language is a territory for its nomadic writers, is and has been the longing and goal of Hebrew writers and readers in the Diaspora. As such we can anticipate a decentered Hebrew Republic. <\/a>Who its active citizens will be, and whether Hebrew will become a language truly at home in the Diaspora, or even evolve as diasporic language remains to be seen. Or as Natan Alterman wrote to the Kennanites in his poem Merivat Kaitz<\/em> (Summer Struggle)<\/a>[33]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u05e9\u05d5\u05dc\u05de\u05d9\u05ea \u05e9\u05dc \u05de\u05d7\u05e8 \u05d1\u05d7\u05d3\u05e8\u05d4 \u05de\u05ea\u05dc\u05d1\u05e9\u05ea \u05d5\u05d0\u05e1\u05d5\u05e8 \u05dc\u05d4\u05d1\u05d9\u05d8 \u05d3\u05e8\u05da \u05d7\u05d5\u05e8 \u05d4\u05de\u05e0\u05e2\u05d5\u05dc<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Shulamit of tomorrow is getting dressed in her room, and it is not appropriate to look through the Keyhole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/a> Schachar M. Pinsker, Literary Passports<\/em>, Califirnia: Stanford University Press, 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> Mati Shemoelof (ed.), Lanua Betoch Safa: Kavim Lidemuta she HaDiaspora Hamizrachit, HaKivun Mizrach<\/em> 43<\/em> <\/em>(2024): 62.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> Rachel Elior, \u201cLeshon Hakodesh u Leshon Hakhol,\u201d Kivunim Chadashim<\/em> 31\/32 2014. See also: https:\/\/benyehuda.org\/read\/21770<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/a> Zohar Shavit, \u201cAliyatam veNefilatam shel haMerkazim haSifrutiim beEropa uveAmerika veHakamat Hamerkaz beEretz Israel,\u201d Iyunim biTkumat Israel 6<\/em> (Jerusalem:Keter, 1994), 422<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/a> Hila Shlomit Kinel-Limoni, Aliens and Rebels \u2013 Female Fiction in the Hebrew \u2018Revival\u2019 Literature: Hava Shapiro, Dvora Baron and Elisheva Zirkova-Bichovsky<\/em> (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2016), 21-94<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/a> Cohen, T., & Feiner, S. Voice of a Hebrew Maiden (eds.), Women`s Writings of the 19th Century Haskalah Movement<\/em>. (Hakibbutz Hameuchad – Sifriat Poalim Publishing group, 2006), 9-16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [7]<\/a> Kinel-Limoni, Aliens and Rebels<\/em>, 30-32<\/p>\n\n\n\n [8]<\/a> https:\/\/benyehuda.org\/read\/19014<\/p>\n\n\n\n [9]<\/a> Elchanan Reiner, Hava Shapiro: Em Kol Chai, Et-Mol: Iton le-Toldot Eretz Israel ve-Am Israel 190 (2006): 30-31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [10]<\/a> Kinel-Limoni, Aliens and Rebels<\/em>, 44-54<\/p>\n\n\n\n [11]<\/a> Kinel-Limoni, Aliens and Rebels<\/em>, 42<\/p>\n\n\n\n [12]<\/a> Shavit, \u201cAliyatam veNefilatam, 426<\/p>\n\n\n\n [13]<\/a> Dan Miron, \u201cHaIvrit ve leshonot HaYehudim,\u201d in Zman Yehudi Chadash<\/em> Vol. II (Jerusalem: Keter 2008), 305<\/p>\n\n\n\n [14]<\/a> Shavit, \u201cAliyatam veNefilatam, 447 .<\/p>\n\n\n\n [15]<\/a> Schachar M. Pinsker, A Rich Brew: How Caf\u00e9s Created Modern Jewish Culture<\/em> (NYU Press, 2018)<\/p>\n\n\n\n [16]<\/a> Lea Goldberg, Letters from an Imagined Journey, (1936)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n [17]<\/a> Shachar Pinsker, \u201cA Modern (Jewish) Woman in a Caf\u00e9: Leah Goldberg and the Poetic Space of the Coffeehouse.\u201d Jewish Social Studies<\/em> 21, no. 1 (2015): 1\u201348. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2979\/jewisocistud.21.1.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [18]<\/a> Goldberg, Letters, <\/em>21-28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [19]<\/a> Shachar Pinsker, Haaretz Sfarim (May 23, 2008). See also: https:\/\/www.haaretz.co.il\/literature\/2008-05-23\/ty-article\/0000017f-ecbe-d3be-ad7f-febf985e0000<\/p>\n\n\n\n [20]<\/a> Goldberg, Letters, <\/em>40.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [21]<\/a> See also: Dan Miron, Founding Mothers, Stepsisters: The Advent of Hebrew Women\u2019s Poetry &Other Essays (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2004), 51-85.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [22]<\/a> Shavit, \u201cAliyatam veNefilatam, 455<\/p>\n\n\n\n [23]<\/a> Fania Oz-Salzberger, Israelis in Berlin<\/em> (Juedischer Verlag, 2016)<\/p>\n\n\n\n [24]<\/a> Mati Shemoelof (ed.), Lanua Betoch Safa: Kavim Lidemuta she HaDiaspora Hamizrachit, HaKivun Mizrach<\/em> 43<\/em> <\/em>(2024): 11-16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [25]<\/a> Dori Menor (ed.), Ho! \u2013 Literary Magazin 25 (2023)<\/p>\n\n\n\n [26]<\/a> See interview of Hever-Chibowski with Gadi Goldberg from 2016 in Spitz<\/em>, the Hebrew Magazin in Berlin: https:\/\/spitzmag.de\/magazine\/mikanve-interview\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [27]<\/a> Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin. \u201cDiaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity.\u201d Critical Inquiry<\/em> 19, no. 4 (1993): 693\u2013725. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1343903.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [28]<\/a> Fania Oz-Salzberger, Kinderlach, you can have both (Ha-Shiloach 1, Jerusalem 2016), 163-169. See also: https:\/\/hashiloach.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/hashiloach-1-pnim_1409_print-smaller.pdf<\/p>\n\n\n\n [29]<\/a> Yitzhak Laor, \u201cMikan Ve\u2019eylakh\u201d: The Guardians of the Hebrew Language in Berlin. Haaretz, 5 January 2017. See also: https:\/\/www.haaretz.co.il\/literature\/study\/2017-01-05\/ty-article\/.premium\/0000017f-dbc3-db5a-a57f-dbeb07e40000<\/p>\n\n\n\n [30]<\/a> Gili Izikovich, \u201cWho is Hebrew.\u201d Haaretz, 27 May, 2015. See also: https:\/\/www.haaretz.co.il\/gallery\/literature\/2015-05-27\/ty-article\/.premium\/0000017f-f59c-ddde-abff-fdfd0f770000<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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