Linguistic Limbo: Writing and Rewriting in Hebrew and Yiddish

Abstract

This dissertation offers new modes of understanding Hebrew-Yiddish literary bilingualism by redefining ‘where’, ‘by whom’ and, most importantly, ‘how’ Jewish bilingualism was created. Focusing on three writers who wrote extensively in both Yiddish and Hebrew—Hirsch Dovid Nomberg, Aharon Reuveni, and Zalman Shneour—this project offers an account of bilingual writing in an age of monolingualization, expanding the gallery of bilingual writers, the modalities of Jewish bilingualism and its temporality. In the inclusion of these diverse bilingual practices this dissertation focuses on translation and self-translation as central practices in the ongoing production of Hebrew-Yiddish literature. The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of Zionism, the two World Wars, the dismantling of Jewish communities across Europe, and the rapid spread of secularism. My work uncovers the changing bilingualism of these times, in comparing prose by three relatively marginalized writers who shared a proclivity for writing in both Hebrew and Yiddish, but who diverged in terms of geographic location, ideology, and poetics. Each chapter is devoted to a writer and a major work of prose: Eretz yisroel eindruken un bilder (The Land of Israel – Impressions and Pictures) by Nomberg, Ad Yerushalayim (To Jerusalem) by Reuveni and Shklover yidn/Anshe Shklov (The Jews/People of Shklov) by Shneour. Each chapter delineates the bilingual aspects of the work and contextualizes it within the oeuvre of that writer. These three writers worked against cultural trends, changing their bilingual poetics, covertly and overtly, to offer a complex vision of literature as more translingual, innovative, and more malleable than monolingualism allowed. My dissertation argues that these bilingualisms lasted much longer than previous scholarship has contended, not ending around the fin de siècle as previously thought, but rather decades later, if at all. In this expansion, I find that these texts, despite their variety of form, share the use of bilingualism as a self-conscious theme and not only as an invisible method of composition. Thus, my research pushes back against the notion of the death of bilingualism. The fact that the ideological pressures to conform to a regime of monolingualism were so strong enabled hidden forms of bilingualism to develop, with each writer modifying his poetics idiosyncratically. Thus, the unique cultural circumstances of Jewish modernity recreated bilingual writing.