I Am Your Dust: Representations of the Israeli Experience in Yiddish Prose, 1948-1967

by Gali Drucker Bar-Am, Natalie Melzer (Translator)

Overview

Israel's cultural space is frequently studied as if it were synonymous with the Hebrew-Israeli one. But within the borders of Israel, a fascinating culture was (and continues to be) created in many languages other than Hebrew, reflecting its reality from angles that the makers of Hebrew-Israeli culture did not know and all too often lacked the tools to express.

I Am Your Dust: Representations of the Israeli Experience in Yiddish Prose, 1948–1967 expands the boundaries of current studies of Israel's cultural history by presenting and analyzing Yiddish-Israeli prose written during the country's first two decades as an independent state. It offers a comprehensive study of that unique, and hitherto little understood, literature, a detailed historical documentation of the contexts of its production, and an eye-opening comparison of its themes to the more familiar outputs of Hebrew-Israeli prose.

I Am Your Dust is the first socioliterary investigation of Yiddish-Israeli culture, and it explores how Yiddish-Israeli writers played a vital role in shaping the country's cultural identity in its early years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253071538
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	11/05/2024
Series:	Olamot Series in Humanities and Social Sciences
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	394
File size:	10 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gali Drucker Bar-Am is a scholar of modern Yiddish culture, studying its contribution to the formation of modern and post–World War II Jewish and Israeli (subjective and collective) identities. Her work closely interacts with wider studies of the modern experience, most notably studies of migration and exile cultures, of genocide and trauma, and of the emergence of modern ideologies and political movements and their influence on the collective ethos of place, space, tradition, and memory. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies at the Open University of Israel.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Yiddish in Israel: A Cultural History, 1948–1967
1. Tel Aviv After the Holocaust: A Yiddish Metropolis?
2. May the Place Comfort You: Memory, Space, and Consolidation of National Identity in the Yiddish Press
Part II: The Israeli Experience in Yiddish Prose, 1948–1967
3. The Nostalgic Paradox of Yiddish Prose
4. Israeli Spaces in Yiddish Prose
Conclusion: The End of Yiddish Culture and the Invention of an Israeli-Jewish Identity
Appendix A: Biographical Details of Yiddish Writers and Journalists in Israel
Appendix B: Global Centers of Yiddish Culture, 1948–1967
Notes
Bibliography
Index