Skip to Main Content

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

Online ISBN:
9780199979561
Print ISBN:
9780199760008
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

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

Neta Stahl
Neta Stahl

Assistant Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature

Johns Hopkins University
Find on
Published online:
24 January 2013
Published in print:
17 December 2012
Online ISBN:
9780199979561
Print ISBN:
9780199760008
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This work explores the striking metamorphosis of the figure of Jesus from Other to brother in 20th century Hebrew and Yiddish literature and culture. Jesus and Christianity function in this book as the window through which the author presents and examines major shifts in Jewish self-perception. This historical journey follows changes in Jewish life before and after the Holocaust and Israeli statehood. Zionist writers of the 1920s and 1930s associated Christian symbols and places mentioned in the New Testament like Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee with the enthusiasm and the hardships of redeeming the Holy Land. Post-Israeli statehood poets exhibit attraction to Jesus as the absolute Other. The new generation of poets, free from personal experience of living under the cross, identified with Jesus whom they associated with European culture and aesthetics in an attempt to transcend the actual and imagined borders of their parochial lives in Israel. Twentieth century Jewish writers redeem Jesus from his traditional status as the Other, from the Christian Church, and even from his exile in Europe, reconstructing through this contradictory figure their own new selves. The book provides a panoramic overview of Twentieth Century Jewish Literature and its towering figures—U.Z. Greenberg, Abraham Shlonsky, Zalman Shneor, Scholem Asch, S.Y. Agnon, Avot Yeshurun, Yona Wollach, Yoel Hoffman, and Yitzhak Laor—from a unique and unconventional angle.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close