Other and Brother: Jesus in the 20th-Century Jewish Literary Landscape

by Neta Stahl

Overview

In a groundbreaking book, Neta Stahl examines the attitudes adopted by modern Jewish writers toward the figure of Jesus. Stahl argues that twentieth-century Jewish writers reconsidered Jesus' traditional status as the Christian Other and looked to him instead as a fellow Jew, a "brother," and even as a model for the "New Jew."

Other and Brother analyzes the work of a wide array of modern Jewish writers, beginning in the early twentieth century and ending with contemporary Israeli literature. Stahl takes the reader through dramatic changes in Jewish life from the Haskalah (or Jewish Enlightenment) and Emancipation, to Zionism, the Holocaust, and the formation of the state of Israel. She shows, for example, how the emergence of quasi-messianic Zionist ideas about returning to the land of Israel, where the actual Jesus was born, helped make the figure of Jesus a source of attraction and identification for Hebrew and Yiddish writers in the first half of the twentieth century, and how the fateful events of that century brought about a major transformation in the Jewish attitude toward Jesus.

Stahl's nuanced and insightful historiography of modern Hebrew and Jewish literature will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the role of Jesus in Jewish culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199760008
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/17/2012
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Neta Stahl is an Assistant Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at the Humanities Center and the Jewish Studies Program at The Johns Hopkins University. She received her Ph.D. in Poetics & Comparative Literature from Tel Aviv University in 2005 and taught at Yale University and at the University of Chicago before joining the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins in 2008. She has published numerous articles on Modern Hebrew and Jewish Literature and the intersection of religion and literature.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: A New Jew, a New Jesus: Jesus and the Jewish National Culture in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Chapter 2: ''Cut from all of his Brothers, from his Blood'' - The Figure of Jesus in the Poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg
Chapter 3: ''The Temptation of the Cross'' - The Figure of Jesus in Israeli Literature
Chapter 4: The Father and the Son of God - Jesus in the Works of Yoel Hoffmann
Chapter 5: "I left Yeshu" - Jesus in the Poetry of Avot Yeshurun
Epilogue: The Ironic Gaze at Brother Jesus
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This fascinating study sets out to analyze the diverse roles of Jesus in twentieth-century Hebrew and Yiddish prose and poetry... Stahl's analysis is compelling, and, like the literature it discusses, the book is elegantly written. Stahl develops an overarching chronological and thematic narrative, tracking the use of Jesus against the developing of Jewish identity in relationship to the suffering of European Jewry on the one hand and the nationalist Zionist project on the other hand... The main body of the book moves through twentieth-century Hebrew and Yiddish literature in more or less chronological order. Rather than provide a synthetic overview, however, the book adopts a more selective, and more interesting structure that alternates between thematic considerations and in-depth studies of individual authors and works." —H-Net Reviews

"Neta Stahl's book is a thrill to read. Beautifully and clearly written, it takes the reader on an unexpected journey into the heart of modern Jewish culture, showing how ubiquitous and central the figure of Jesus is in the modern Jewish (and Zionist) imagination. Among its delights, central is the demonstration of the mutual ways that scholarship on Jesus—the Jewish Jesus—and other cultural production and ideology have fructified and determined each other."—Daniel Boyarin, author of The Jewish Jesus: The Story of the Jewish Christ

"Neta Stahl's fascinating and perceptive book reveals the conflicted attitude toward Jesus in twentieth-century Hebrew and Yiddish prose and poetry. Jesus was seen by Jewish authors both as the European Other, the quintessential goy, and as the Galilean brother, the quintessential sabra."—Warren Zev Harvey, Professor Emeritus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

From the Publisher