Jewish Literature

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. How do poetry and song convey Jewish meaning? Does Jewish poetry have to be liturgical? At the turn of the century, Ahad Ha’am challenged the early Zionist movement to conceive of the Jewish nation as a home for the Jewish […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. Through its countless runs on the Broadway stage and in an award-winning film, Fiddler on the Roof made Tevye the dairyman the most iconic Old World Jew in the American imagination. But before he burst into song on stage and […]

Does Hebrew literature have a character of its own? And is modern Israeli prose the worthy successor to a more ancient tradition? In “Towards a Hebrew Literature,” published in Azure in 2000, Assaf Inbari analyzes the history of the ancient world in order to bring the Hebrew Bible’s unique form into stark relief. In doing so, he shows that […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. Using the essay “Innovation and Redemption: What Literature Means,” Ruth Wisse joins Eric Cohen to discuss the insights of famed literary critic, Cynthia Ozick. They ask if literature has a moral purpose, and observe how different approaches to the past […]