Abstract: This article begins with a discussion of the influence of Victor Hugo’s monumental novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, on Shmu ʾ el Yosef Agnon’s story “ ʿ Ovadyah ba ʿ al mum.” It then proceeds to deal with a motif that runs like a scarlet thread throughout the story, that of Ovadiah’s crutch, which Red Reuven, a modern incarnation of the biblical Esau, fails to break and thus throws into the furnace to burn. The eternal, archetypal struggle between Jacob and Esau is embodied in the form of the burned crutch, as well as through Ovadiah’s name, which points us to the Torah portion of Vayishlaḥ and the Haftarah for this portion: the single chapter that comprises the biblical book of Obadiah, which speaks of the fire from the house of Jacob that will consume the house of Esau. The article suggests an optimistic ending to the story, which seems on the surface open-ended and ironic, with no potential remedy. The optimistic reading draws support, among other things, from the Torah portion of Nitsavim and an episode from 1 Kings. Additional support comes once again from Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

Abstract: This paper examines Philip Roth's most Holocaust-haunted novel: The Plot Against America . Through a comparative intertextual study of Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo (published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz ), Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl , and Roth's Plot —and through an analysis of the other references to Frank and Levi in Roth's writing—this article argues that The Plot Against America should be read considering the profound impact of these works on Roth. It further argues that Plot is not merely Roth's counterfactual novel about what America would have looked like in the early 1940s had a president who sympathized with the Third Reich assumed control of the United States government. It is Roth's imagined Holocaust memoir, the one which the contingencies of history spared him from having to write as an actual witness, but which he nonetheless chose to write after having been profoundly impacted by his friendship with (and profound esteem and empathy for the works of) Primo Levi.

Abstract: To this very day Dan Pagis’s poetry is shrouded in the secret of his biography. His first given name was discovered only years after he died, and he seems to have told nobody about what befell him during the Holocaust years. In his poetry, Pagis refers to the mystery of his name, dropping hints that he then takes back. Why did Pagis avoid divulging his first name? What did that name stand for, in Pagis’s experience? Or maybe we should ask it this way: Who is the figure hiding behind this name? This article seeks to explore how the poems momentarily show us the boy he was, his outline and traces, only to conceal them quickly, to remove his features from the face of the earth and from the text. He acts as a self-killer—a murderer, but one who keeps returning to the site of the crime, leaving his traces. The article argues that he moves through a chain of changing identities: victim, murderer, detective. As a result, he gets bogged down in a never-ending chase between them. As this article shows, these games eventually expose the at times terrifying commutations between the former child and the signifier “Holocaust.”

Dance is a crucial yet largely unrecognized motif in I. J. Singer’s Yiddish-language family epic Di brider Ashkenazi (The Brothers Ashkenazi), which chronicles Jewish life in Łódź. In his famous article, “Mayufes: A Window on Polish-Jewish Relations,” Chone Shmeruk recounts how a Polish officer orders the brothers Max and Yakub Ashkenazi to dance a humiliating mayufes—Yakub resists, and the officer shoots him. Shmeruk claims Singer’s rendition is “perhaps the most poignant mayufes of all.” While this scene of forced dancing is arguably the best-known scene in the novel, this article approaches it in connection with an earlier transgressive mixed-sex wedding dance and demonstrates how dancing scenes in the novel juxtapose late nineteenth-century dreams of embourgeoisement with the reality of early twentieth-century antisemitism. As such, the dance floor both challenges and reifies power structures in the novel. What is more, these dance scenes take place at crucial moments in the plot, emphasizing the moments of rupture and reconciliation between the eponymous brothers and highlighting the physical contrast between cerebral striver Max and lusty, good-natured Yakub. By examining these seemingly disparate dance scenes, it is possible to gain a deeper perspective into the ways acculturation and antisemitism operate on the Polish-Jewish body.

For many years Natan Alterman, the main poetic voice of the Jewish community in Palestine before and after the establishment of the state of Israel, published a regular poetic column in major Hebrew dailies. His major body of journalistic verse—"Hatur hasheviʿi" ("The Seventh Column") published in Davar from the 1940s through the 1960s—enjoyed unprecedented popularity and influence and, in effect, earned him the title of national poet. In "Hatur hasheviʿi" Alterman provided a resonant poetic response to all the tragic and dramatic events in the history of the Jewish people in the twentieth century, culminating in World War II, the Holocaust, and the bitter struggle for Israel's independence. He continued this in the early years of the state. One of the challenges facing the new state was absorbing the massive waves of immigration streaming to its gates. This challenge was compounded when dealing with immigrants from Asian and North African countries (Mizrahi, or "Oriental"), whose cultural background was very different from that of the veteran absorbing population, which was mainly of European origin (Ashkenazi). In his journalistic poetry Alterman evinces a consistent pro-Mizrahi stance. He sides with them in all their struggles, empathizes with their pain and hardship, idolizes their toil and trouble. At the same time, his poems dealing with the Mizrahi aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) are strewn with extreme Orientalist images and motifs. This article exposes and analyzes Alterman's Orientalist discourse but also tries to provide a reading that might bridge the gap between this discourse and his political stance.

Isaac Bashevis Singer's work has often been identified with demons, but his use of the Yeytser-hore as narrator may be more than a simple preoccupation with the realm of evil. Rather than merely portraying evil in literature, Singer was working within a mystical tradition that harnessed what it saw as the powers of evil to do good in the world. This aspect of Singer's work has been largely underdiscussed and underresearched. A fuller consideration involves delving into the sources of his inspiration—especially religious and kabbalistic works—to grasp not only the images or motifs he was pulling from but also the spiritual understandings that he found and applied to his literary practice. This article explores Singer's spiritual framework, discussing his use of demons in light of a handwritten note found in the Singer Papers in Austin, Texas. This note prompts an investigation into some of the ways in which his spiritual understandings influenced the themes, strategies, and images found in his stories.

This article seeks to rectify two omissions with regard to the poetry of Yona Wallach—the discussion of her later poetry in particular and the discussion of theology in her poems in general—by reading these two aspects side by side. I argue that the most significant change between Wallach's early and later poetry involves a prosodic turn. While the early poems are short and many of them portray surrealistic figures and colorful images, the later poems are characterized either by extreme directness, or by their length. In terms of theology, although there are extensive discussions of mysticism in Wallach's poetry, they often contribute to the building of an "author's name" rather than a specific understanding of her poetry and its poetics. Consequently, I propose a comprehensive look at her later poetry and discuss how form and content are integrated in these works. I will also examine how the approach of this central poet in Israeli culture to questions of secularization and religiosity illuminates the processes of secularization versus increased religiosity in Israel.