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Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland by Kalman Weiser (review)

Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland by Kalman Weiser (review) 140 | religiosity may not have had as irrepressible a power in Jewish secular culture as the current crisis of secularism might suggest. There is much to value and little to criticize in Pinsker's analysis. At times, some readers may wish for more sustained intellectual history; treatments of the thinkers these writers read, from Nietzsche to Lev Shestov, sometimes feel more like a listing than an analysis. Pinsker might also be arraigned for a somewhat uncritical participation in the now widespread effort to "save" Hebrew writers from Zionism. Against the ostensible orthodoxy (which no one has held in years) that "modern Hebrew literature in the last century [was] linked exclusively with the Zionist narrative," Pinsker insists that his writers' "cultural and literary horizon was and remained European" (8). Leaving aside the obvious point that Zionism and Europeanness are not necessarily polar opposites (not least because both could mean a great many things), Pinsker's own sources remind us that the absence of straightforward Zionist tropes in this Hebrew modernism is not a sign of indifference but a literary choice standing in a complex relationship to these writers' other political and cultural commitments: as Pinsker himself notes without seeming to http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Purdue University Press

Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland by Kalman Weiser (review)

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Purdue University Press
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Copyright © Purdue University.
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1534-5165
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Abstract

140 | religiosity may not have had as irrepressible a power in Jewish secular culture as the current crisis of secularism might suggest. There is much to value and little to criticize in Pinsker's analysis. At times, some readers may wish for more sustained intellectual history; treatments of the thinkers these writers read, from Nietzsche to Lev Shestov, sometimes feel more like a listing than an analysis. Pinsker might also be arraigned for a somewhat uncritical participation in the now widespread effort to "save" Hebrew writers from Zionism. Against the ostensible orthodoxy (which no one has held in years) that "modern Hebrew literature in the last century [was] linked exclusively with the Zionist narrative," Pinsker insists that his writers' "cultural and literary horizon was and remained European" (8). Leaving aside the obvious point that Zionism and Europeanness are not necessarily polar opposites (not least because both could mean a great many things), Pinsker's own sources remind us that the absence of straightforward Zionist tropes in this Hebrew modernism is not a sign of indifference but a literary choice standing in a complex relationship to these writers' other political and cultural commitments: as Pinsker himself notes without seeming to

Journal

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies – Purdue University Press

Published: Oct 23, 2013

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