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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
DEPARTMENT OF HEBREW AND SEMITIC STUDIES
Introduction to Modern Hebrew Literature
Hebrew 301
Dr. Miri Talmon-Bohm
M,W,F 1:20-2:10 PM, 6228 at Social Science Building
Office: 1342 Van Hise Hall.
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday: 12:00-1:00 PM and by appointment.
Phone: (608) 262-2968
Email: talmonbohm@wisc.edu
SYLLABUS
Fall Semester, 2008
Course Description
This course offers an encounter with Modern Hebrew Literature and the
Israeli experience through short pieces of prose fiction, poetry, songs
and essays.
Our thematic focus - childhood- will take us on a journey through
Israeli history: from the early days of this culture to the present. A
child’s perspective is a universal literary, poetic and cinematic
device which yields a fresh perception of the world. The study of
literary texts representing different literary trends in Israeli
history, genres, and generational sensibilities should open a window to
diverse aspects of Israeli culture such as: life at war, the political
conflict, the impact of the Holocaust, being a “man” and being a
“woman” in Israel, religious and secular versions of the Israeli
experience, city life, kibbutz life, life on the margins,
ethnic aspects of identity and more. Along with this cultural quest,
this course intends to teach basic tools of literary analysis, such as:
point of view, different kinds of narrators, narratives and
characterization.
Your learning experience depends on your commitment to prepare each and
every Hebrew text for class. This means you have to read it carefully,
with the help of a Hebrew-English dictionary. You have to look up and
translate each and every word you do not understand. I am going to be
very helpful and facilitating in this process, but it is first of all
your responsibility for this course.
This course aims to improve your proficiency in spoken and literary
Hebrew in its cultural context.
Required Texts
1. Course Reader
The texts for the course are compiled in a reader. The reader will be
available as class packet from the L&S copy center at the Social
Science Building. All the texts, for which full references are given in
the syllabus below, will be available in the library, on reserve. It is
vital to have a reader of your own, which you are expected to bring to
every class.
2. Hebrew-English/English- Hebrew dictionary.
The quality of your study depends on your close work with a Hebrew and
English dictionary. You can use any Hebrew and English dictionary you
already own. If you need to purchase one, I recommend THE NEW
BANTAM-MEGIDDO HEBREW&ENGLISH DICTIONARY, by Reuven Sivan and
Edward A. Levenston, published by Bantam Books.
Course Requirements
Attendance and Participation
Students are expected to attend each class, and take part in our
classroom discussions.
Attendance and participation comprise 10 % of the course grade.
Students who miss over 2 classes will lose this component of the grade.
Preparation for Every Class
Preparation for each class includes translating, with the help of a
dictionary, the Hebrew words that I will assign for every class. This
has to be in writing, and submitted at the beginning of class. Keep a
copy to use in class. You are encouraged to check and translate words
not assigned by me which you are not familiar with!
Dictionary Assignments of Preparation for every class comprise 20% of
the course grade. Each missed assignments reduces this component of
your grade.
Weekly Assignments
Your weekly assignment is to answer, in writing, in Hebrew, one question that I will assign. The weekly assignments comprise 30% of your final grade. Each one you fail to submit reduces this component of your grade.
Final Assignment
The final assignment in the course is a comparative analysis of two
texts we have studied in class. We shall discuss throughout the
course possible topics for this project. The final paper should be
submitted no later than December 17, 2008, 3:00 PM. It
comprises 30% of your final grade for the course.
Lecture and Movie Assignment
In appendix 1, at the end of this syllabus, you can find titles and descriptions of the Center for Jewish Studies lectures scheduled for this fall. These lectures will enrich your learning experience and expand your academic horizons beyond the classroom space.
Students are expected to attend at least one lecture and one film
screening out of the events detailed in appendix 1 and are encouraged
to attend as many as they can. Following the lecture and film screening
that you have attended, you need to write a one page long critique, in
English, in which you explain what you liked about it, and how it is
relevant to your own studies, interests, or personal experience.
Attending at least two events, and your critical essays, which you have
to submit in the following class, will credit you with 10% of the final
grade for the course.
Grading Scale
Attendance and participation: 10%
Dictionary assignments (preparation for every class): 20%
Weekly assignments: 30%
Lecture and movie assignment: 10%
Final paper: 30%
Class Syllabus
תכנית הקורס
1. "אלוהים מרחם על ילדי הגן" מאת יהודה עמיחי
פעלים בהווה ובזמן עתיד.
“God Has Mercy on
Kindergarten Children” by Yehuda Amichai. in: Esther Raizen (tr.and
ed.) NO RATTLING OF SABERS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ISRAELI WAR POETRY, Austin:
University of Texas, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1995: 36-37
2. "ההר הירוק תמיד" מאת יורם טהר לב
ציור של נחום גוטמן: בדרך להר מירון
פעלים בזמן עבר; שם הפעולה: לנשום, לשכב, לראות.
בתוך: שיר ישראלי: ארץ ישראל בצליל וצבע. עורך: יורם טהר לב ציורים: נחום
גוטמן, משרד הבטחון, מורג וסטימצקי, הוצאה לאור, 2005: 180-181.
“The Evergreen
Mountain” (song) in: Yoram Tehar-Lev, ed. AN ISRAELI SONG. Tel-Aviv:
Morag and Steimatzki with Ministry of Defense, 2005: 180-181.
3. פרק מה, בתוך: סיפור על אהבה וחושך, מאת עמוס עוז
ירושלים: כתר, 2002: עמ 399-405.
Chapter 45 in: A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS, by Amos Oz, 2002,
Jerusalem: Keter Publishing: 399-405
4.
"חולות הזהב" מאת: בנימין תמוז. (פורסם לראשונה: 1958, ספרית פועלים).
בתוך: עיר-סיפורים תל-אביביים .
עורכת: עליזה ציגלר. תל-אביב: הוצאת משכל- ידיעות אחרונות וספרי חמד, סדרת
פרוזה, 1999: עמודים 90-95.
“Golden Sands” in: A CITY: TEL AVIV STORIES. Ed. Aliza Ziegler.
Tel-Aviv: Miskal Publishing (Yediot Acharonot and Hemed), 1999: 90-95
5 . "ענתרה אבן שדאד", מאת: אלי עמיר. בתוך: כשמדלין סטו בוכה סיפורים קצרים על קולנוע עורך: גיא ליכטנשטיין. בנימינה: גלורי, 2007: עמ' 62-73.
“Antara Iben Shadad” by Eli Amir, in: WHEN MADLEINE STOWE IS CRYING, editor: Guy Lischtenstein, Binyamina: Glory publishing, 2007: 62-73.
6. "אומרים עכשיו התור שלך, אייר", מאת: אורי אלון. בתוך:
אוטוטו. עורך: אסף גברון, תל-אביב: זמורה-ביתן, 1999: 72-76.
“They say it’s your
turn now, Iyar”, by Ori Elon. in: OTOTO, editor: Assaf Gavron,
Tel-Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, Publishers. 1999: 72-76.
7. "זיוה" מאת: סייעד קשוע. בתוך: אוטוטו. עורך: אסף
גברון, תל-אביב: זמורה-ביתן, 1999: עמ' 67-71.
“Ziva”, by Sayed
Kashua, in: OTOTO, Assaf Gavron, ed. Zmora-Bitan, Publishers. 1999:
67-71.
8. "רבין מת", מאת: אתגר קרת בתוך: אוטוטו, עורך: אסף
גברון. תל-אביב: זמורה-ביתן, 1999: 7-8.
“Rabin is Dead” in:
by Etgar Keret, in: OTOTO, Assaf Gavron, ed. Zmora-Bitan, Publishers.
1999: 7-8.
9. "אסקימו לח", בתוך: שבעה, מאת: אברהם בלבן, ,
תל-אביב: הקיבוץ המאוחד, 2000: עמ' 78-81.
“A Wet Popsicle”, by
Avraham Balaban. In: MOURNING. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2000:
78-81.
10. "אדושם". מאת: יעקב שבתאי. (פורסם לראשונה: הדוד
פרץ ממריא, ספרית פועלים, 1972) בתוך: עיר-סיפורים תל-אביביים עורכת:
עליזה ציגלר. תל-אביב: ידיעות אחרונות וספרי חמד, סדרת פרוזה, 1999:
22-35.
“Adosem”, by Ya’akov
Shabtai. in: A CITY: TEL AVIV STORIES. Ed. Aliza Ziegler.
Tel-Aviv: Miskal Publishing (Yediot Acharonot and Hemed), 1999: 22-35
11. "בר
מצווה". מאת: יאיר לפיד. בתוך: עומדים בטור, תל-אביב: הוצאת
משכל-ידיעות אחרונות וספרי חמד, 2005: עמ 128-129
דקדוק: צורת צווי
“Bar Mitzva”, by Yair Lapid. In: STANDING IN A COLUMN. Tel-Aviv: Miskal
Publishing (Yediot Ahronot Books and Hemed Books), 2005: 128-129.
12 . "אסור לי ללבוש כלום", מאת: זהר וגנר, בתוך: כשמדלין סטו בוכה -סיפורים קצרים על קולנוע. עורך: גיא ליכטנשטיין. בנימינה: הוצאת גלורי, 2007: עמ' 137-140.
“I Can’t Wear Anything”, by Zohar Wagner, in: WHEN MADLEINE STOWE IS CRYING, editor: Guy Lischtenstein, Binyamina: Glory publishing, 2007: 137-140.
13. "בית קטן בערבה" , מאת: גפי אמיר. מתוך: עד גיל 21 תגיע לירח. ירושלים: כתר, סדרת כותרים, 1997: 119-129
“A Small House in the Prairie” by Gafi Amir. In: BY AGE 21 YOU REACH THE MOON. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing, 1997: 119-129.
Appendix 1: CJS Lectures and Screenings Fall 2008
Below are titles and descriptions of the Center for Jewish Studies
lectures scheduled for this fall. These lectures will enrich your
learning experience and expand your academic horizons beyond the
classroom space.
Students are expected to attend at least one lecture and one film
screening out of the events detailed in appendix 1 and are encouraged
to attend as many as they can. Following the lecture and film screening
that you have attended, you need to write a one page long critique, in
English, in which you explain what you liked about it, and how it is
relevant to your own studies, interests, or personal experience.
Attending at least two events, and your critical essays, which you have
to submit in the following class, will credit you with 10% of the final
grade for the course
Fall 2008 Jewish Heritage Lecture Series
UW Lectures Committee
“The Great Code: Greek Bible and the Humanities”
Professor Peter Gentry
Monday, September 22nd – 7:30 pm – Grainger Hall
Screening of “Chosen Towns: The Story of Jews in Wisconsin's
Small Communities”
Producer: Brad Lichtenstein
Tuesday, September 23rd - 7:30 pm - Memorial Union’s Play Circle
Screening of “Built on Scrap”
Producer: Jonathan Pollack
Wednesday, September 24th - 7 pm - Pyle Center
The Paul J. Schrag Lecture
"Biography, Fathers and Exile: German and Jewish Tensions and the
Writing of History"
Professor Steven E. Aschheim
Wednesday, October 22nd - 4 pm - Pyle Center
The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and
Law
An Interdisciplinary Conference
October 24th-26th - Pyle Center
The Harry and Marjorie Tobias Lecture
"The Melting Pot: A Centennial Look Back at Israel Zangwill's
Play"
Professor Meri-Jane Rochelson
Wednesday, November 12th - 4 pm - Pyle Center
For additional information, please call Anita at (608) 265-4763.
For more complete and up-to-date information,
please visit the Center’s new website at:
<jewishstudies.wisc.edu>
Jewish Heritage Lecture Series
UW Lectures Committee
“The Great Code: Greek Bible and the Humanities”
Professor Peter Gentry
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Monday, September 22nd - 7:30 pm - Grainger Hall, 975 University
Avenue
This lecture will discuss how in 1982, the eminent literary critic
Northrop Frye argued that the Bible was the "Great Code" - a foundation
for interpreting and understanding the literature of the Western world.
In a similar way it can be argued that the Greek Bible, in particular
the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, being the channel
through which the Bible reached Christianity, encodes data,
disciplines, and issues important and relevant to the humanities and in
many cases lying at their foundation.
Professor Gentry is a prominent scholar of the Septuagint. This is
the ancient Jewish translation of the Bible into Greek that became the
Bible of Christianity for many centuries and is still the form used by
the Orthodox Church.
This lecture is sponsored by University Lectures Committee, Department
of Hebrew & Semitic Studies with the support of the Ettinger Family
Foundation, and the Religious Studies Program.
For more information please contact the
Department of Hebrew & Semitic Studies at 608-262-3204
or <hebrew@mailplus.wisc.edu>
Jewish Heritage Lecture Series
Screening of
“Chosen Towns: The Story of Jews in Wisconsin's Small Communities”
Tuesday, September 23rd - 7:30 pm - Memorial Union Play Circle, 800 Langdon Street
Executive Producers: Brad Lichtenstein and Alison Farmer
Producers: Susan Bence, Alicia Boll, Nicole Brown, Terry Caddell, Gary
Donaldson, Andrew Kazlauskas, Joe Sacco, and Meghan Stroebel, with
production help from Kati Conner
Edited by Nicole Brown with the help of Terry Caddell
Andrew Muchin, Director of the Wisconsin Small Jewish Communities
History Project,
a program of the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, Inc.
And in collaboration with Wisconsin Public Television
A merchant considers the fate of his family-owned clothing store that has graced Viroqua’s downtown for 101 years. A son and his elderly father struggle to keep open the lone synagogue in Sheboygan, a city once called “Little Jerusalem” for its devout community of 1,000 Jews. Urban Jews reflect on how their small-town upbringings strongly influenced their life choices. Their stories and those of other Jews who molded and were molded by small-town Wisconsin are told in “Chosen Towns: The Story of Jews in Wisconsin’s Small Communities.” The hour-long film is a production of docUWM in partnership with the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, Inc.
Central to the story is the age-old tension between the urge to express Jewish identity and the need to assimilate into mainstream life. Today’s small town Jews face challenges similar to those of the past 160 years: fledgling Jewish populations, the struggle to support Jewish institutions, the need to balance Jewish identity and mainstream participation. At the same time, many Jews refuse to give up the quality of life they’ve come to love in a small town, the economic opportunity and sense of security they have found and, in some cases, their mission to maintain Jewish life in their town. In every age, there are immigrant stories passed from generation to generation, but rarely do they travel beyond such intimate circles. “Chosen Towns” tells the Jewish small-town story in Wisconsin to a wide-ranging audience.
Presented by docUWM and the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, Inc., "Chosen Towns" will air on Wisconsin Public TV and Milwaukee Public TV on Wednesday, October 15th at 7 pm. Please check your local listings for further details.
Jewish Heritage Lecture Series
Screening of
“Built on Scrap”
Producer: Jonathan Pollack
Wednesday, September 24th - 7 pm - Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street
This documentary reveals a history of Jewish entrepreneurs in the scrap-materials business (mostly scrap metals, but also paper and hides/skins) that focuses on two Jewish-owned yards in southern Wisconsin: the Heifetz yard, which operated on South Park Street in Madison from 1923 to 1994, and the Lorman yard, which operated in several locations in Fort Atkinson between 1913 and 1987. The film highlights a Jewish business niche that is largely forgotten, but that for most of the 20th century was a heavily Jewish business. (Length: 20 minutes)
Question and answer period will follow the screening, led by the
film’s producer, Jonathan Pollack and members of the Heifetz and
Lorman families.
This screening is co-sponsored by the Hillel Foundation of UW-Madison.
Jewish Heritage Lecture Series
The Paul J. Schrag Lecture
“Biography, Fathers and Exile: German and Jewish Tensions and the Writing of History”
Professor Steven E. Aschheim
Wednesday, October 22nd - 4 pm - Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street
This talk will examine the ways in which German and German-Jewish history were fashioned after the defeat of Nazism. It will examine the reasons (and tensions) behind the tendency of post-war German historians to emphasize social history, while German-Jewish emigres (such as George Mosse - the famed University of Wisconsin historian - Peter Gay, Walter Laqueur and Fritz Stern) constructed cultural histories to account for the same phenomena: the "special" course of German history, the rise of Nazism and the fate of German Jewry. We will examine how personal and generational experience gave rise to their historical narratives and assess both the strengths and limits of these influences.
Steven E. Aschheim holds the Vigevani Chair of European Studies and is the Director of the Franz Rosenzweig Research Centre for German Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem where he has taught Cultural and Intellectual History in the Department of History since 1982. He has spent sabbaticals in Berkeley, the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton and in 2002-3 was the first Mosse Exchange Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. During September-October 2005 he taught at Columbia University as the Max Kade Visiting Scholar of German Studies. He has also taught at the University of Maryland, Reed College, the Free University Berlin and the Central European University in Budapest. He will teach at the University of Toronto in 0ctober 2008. He is married and has three children (and two grand-daughters!).
He is the author of Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German-Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982); The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) which has been translated into German and Hebrew; Culture and Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontations with National Socialism and Other Crises (New York: New York University Press, 1996); In Times of Crisis: Essays on European Culture, Germans and Jews (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001); Scholem, Arendt, Klemperer: Intimate Chronicles in Turbulent Times (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), which has also appeared in Italian. He is the editor of the conference volume, Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), also translated into Hebrew. His new book, which appeared in 2007, is entitled Beyond the Border: The German-Jewish Intellectual Legacy Abroad (Princeton University Press).
Jewish Heritage Lecture Series
The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and
Law
An Interdisciplinary Conference
October 24th-26th - Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street
For more complete information, please visit their website at <http://law.wisc.edu/ils/weimarconference.html>
This event will bring together leading academics, authors and intellectuals to examine the Weimar period in European history, culture, and law and to trace the continuity of Weimar thinkers and their impact on the continued viability of liberal democracy in today’s world.
Sessions will run all day Friday and Saturday, plus Sunday morning
at the Pyle Center. There also will be a public lecture by Professor
Hent de Vries on Friday evening (sponsored by the Center for the
Humanities). More details are located at the program website.
The conference is free and open to UW faculty, students and staff and
others with an academic interest in this topic. To register, provide
your name and institutional affiliation in an email message to Pam
Hollenhorst, Associate Director, Institute for Legal Studies,
<pshollen@wisc.edu>.
For your convenience, the Conference Website has links to
* Conference Overview
* Draft Program
* Participant Bio Statements
Hosted by: Leonard V. Kaplan, Mortimer Jackson Professor of Law and Director of the Project for Law and the Humanities, University of Wisconsin Law School; Rudy J. Koshar, George L. Mosse WARF Professor of History and Religious Studies; and Ulrich Rosenhagen, Assistant Director, Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, and Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin.
Sponsored by: The Project for Law and the Humanities, UW Law School,
Institute for Legal Studies, Lubar Institute for the Study of the
Abrahamic Religions (LISAR), Department of History, Global Legal
Studies Center, Center for the Humanities, and the Mosse/Weinstein
Center For Jewish Studies, with additional support from the University
Bookstore, the Brittingham Fund, and the German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD).
Jewish Heritage Lecture Series
The Harry and Marjorie Tobias Lecture
"The Melting Pot: A Centennial Look Back at Israel Zangwill's Play"
Professor Meri-Jane Rochelson
Wednesday, November 12th - 4 pm - Pyle Center, 702 Langdon
Most Americans are familiar with the phrase “the melting pot,” a metaphor that envisions our society as a great cauldron into which people from a multiplicity of origins and ethnicities enter to be transformed into that new, unique entity, the American. The term has been contested for the last hundred years, but few know the play that brought it into the American lexicon in 1908, when its opening night performance was cheered by President Theodore Roosevelt. The story of a young Jewish refugee from the 1903 Kishinev massacre who falls in love with the exiled Russian daughter of the massacre’s instigator brought both praise and criticism from Jewish audiences, on the one hand proud to see their people onstage and their adopted country praised as a beacon of freedom, on the other hand, dismayed by The Melting Pot’s representations of intermarriage, cultural assimilation, and the decline in religious observance under emancipation. What viewers then and readers later understood little, however, were the ways in which The Melting Pot conveyed Zangwill’s emerging ideas about race and nation, ideas that would culminate in plays and lectures excoriating the Europe as a “cockpit” of ethnic rivalry in contrast to the American crucible, and how such ideas would additionally inform the territorialist ideology that led Zangwill to seek a homeland for the Jews wherever such land might be found. While the phrase “the melting pot” eventually became a freestanding touchstone for arguments about ethnicity in America--as the metaphor itself was countered with others of salad bowls and mosaics--the play first performed one hundred years ago has much to tell us about ethnicity, Jews, and the world situation in the period immediately preceding the first world war and coinciding with the origins of modern Zionism.
Meri-Jane Rochelson is Professor of English at Florida International
University, and affiliated with the programs in Jewish Studies,
Sephardic and Oriental Studies, Religious Studies, and Women’s
Studies. A graduate of Barnard College majoring in political
science, she received her PhD in English literature from the University
of Chicago. A chance mention in a graduate school class led her
to Israel Zangwill’s 1892 novel Children of the Ghetto and a
master’s essay on this then little-known Anglo-Jewish writer.
After completing her dissertation on the novels of George Eliot, Dr.
Rochelson realized she was not yet finished with her intriguing earlier
subject, and she embarked on research that led to a new edition of Children
of the Ghetto (1998), as well as A Jew in the Public Arena:
The Career of Israel Zangwill, published this season by Wayne
State University Press. Meri-Jane Rochelson is also co-editor of Transforming
Genres: New Approaches to British Fiction of the 1890s (St.
Martin’s/Macmillan, 1994) and numerous articles on Victorian and
Anglo-Jewish literature and culture.