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Yosef Haim Brenner: A Life

Online ISBN:
9780804793131
Print ISBN:
9780804785273
Publisher:
Stanford University Press
Book

Yosef Haim Brenner: A Life

Published online:
21 May 2015
Published in print:
17 December 2014
Online ISBN:
9780804793131
Print ISBN:
9780804785273
Publisher:
Stanford University Press

Abstract

This book follows the life story of the writer, critic, and intellectual Yosef Haim Brenner, one of the leading figures of the Hebrew renaissance at the turn of the nineteenth century. It describes Brenner as a representative of the generation of young Jews who were exposed to modernity, underwent an identity crisis, and embraced Jewish nationalism as their way of coping with the "death of God" and their deep attachment to the Jewish people, Jewish culture and its languages. The clashes between religious Jews and apostates, Zionists and non-Zionists, Yiddishists and Hebraists, are illuminated against the background of tsarist oppression, emigration, and the emergence of Jewish socialism. The richness of the cultural creation of this period is presented through the networks of writers, poets, and intellectuals, that interacted, published journals, anthologies, and novels that brought the great discussions of this epoch to the attention of the broader public and thus inculcated it with the ideas, Weltanschauung, and cultural and political norms prevalent among the cultural elite. The relationships between parents and children and between men and women in the Pale of Settlement, London, Lvov, and Palestine are revealed through the life trajectory of Brenner and his creative works, which encompass six novels, two novellas, scores of short stories, two plays, and hundreds of articles and literary criticism. The myth of Brenner, created during his lifetime but immensely expanded after his murder, gives the reader an understanding of how and why a myth is created.

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