LITERARY PASSPORTS
The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europ,,
Shochar M Pinsker
Interview with hachar Pinsker,
Recipient of Jordan Schnitzer Book Award
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University of Michigan Associate Professor
Shachar Pinsker (Near Eastern and Judaic
Studies) has been awarded the Jordan Schnitzer
Book Award for his recent book Literary
Passports: The MakingofModernistHebrewFiction
in Europe (Stanford University Press, 2011).
The award, granted yearly by the Association
for Jewish Studies, focuses on particular areas
in Jewish studies. This year, the award honors
a book published between 2007-2011 in the
category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics.
is readable,
"Literary Passports
scholarly, and original," observed the selection
committee. Shachar Pinsker "covers vast
territory, combining dose readings with wide-
ranging commentary, breaking new ground in
modernist studies generally and in the study of
Hebrew literature in Europe." The award citation
notes, "Pinsker integrates a range of critical
perspectives and scholarly sources, engaging
scholarly work in critical geography, gender
studies, and studies of religious experience."
Indeed, as Pinsker admits, Literary Passports
is a result of years of rigorous research. "My
aim," he continues, "was to present and
explicate complex texts and ideas in a readable,
accessible style. The Jordan Schnitzer Award
confirms that this scholarly endeavor achieved
these goals and that my book is reaching its
intended audience. I am humbled and honored
to have received such a distinguished award
from the Association for Jewish Studies."
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And what
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esources did you use the research
of Literary Passports''
Researching and writing Literary Passports was
a slow and prolonged process with many stages.
The "prehistory" of the book was my PhD
dissertation, which I had written as a graduate
student at UC Berkeley under the wonderful
supervision of Professor Robert Alter, Chana
Kronfeld, and Naomi Seidman. The dissertation
was entitled "Old Wine in New Flasks: Rabbinic
Intertexts and Modernist Hebrew Fiction." The
main question that preoccupied me was: How
was modernist Hebrew fiction, written during
the early decades of the 20th century, created in a
language that was not used as a spoken language,
but a language of books, mostly religious texts.
I was engaged in a dose reading of stories,
novellas and novels by three Hebrew writers,
showing how they fashioned intricate prose by
appropriating texts from the rabbinic corpus
(Talmud and Midrash) in order to deal with the
upheavals of their own life and of life around
them in time of major revolution in the Jewish
sphere and the rest of the world in general.
After I completed my PhD and moved
to the "real world" (teaching at Harvard and
Ben-Gurion universities, and then taking
a position of Assistant Professor at the
University of Michigan), I faced the dilemma
of what to do with my dissertation. My initial
plan was to revise the dissertation into a book,
but then I realized that it was of great interest
to people in the small field of modern Hebrew
literature. I turned chapters of the dissertation
into articles, which I published in Hebrew and
English and also edited a volume on Dvorah
Baron, the first recognized Hebrew woman
writer (published in 2007). It took me some
time to grasp the fact that although most of the
literature I dealt with was created in Eastern
and Central Europe, there was no book devoted
to this subject. I understood that this is what
I need to do, and what I would like to do.
However, I didn't know how to do it, because the
topic was so vast and involved work in various
languages (Yiddish, German, Russian, etc.)
and diverse fields of academic studies, some of
which were completely new to me. But at this
point, I was already deeply invested in what was
essentially a new project. I began reading and
searching for every piece of information about
Hebrew modernism in Europe. I conducted
research in archives and libraries in America,
Europe and Israel, and have assembled a large
body of materials. It was bewildering at first
and I was afraid that I would never be able to
complete the project, but gradually everything
came together like a puzzle with many pieces.
The breakthrough came when I realized
that three major themes emerge from the
materials I researched: 1. The European cities
in which modernist Hebrew fiction was created
and the representation of the urban experience.
2. Gender and sexuality in modernist Hebrew
fiction. 3. Tradition, modernity and the
religious experience in modernist Hebrew
fiction. When this became clear, I had the new
structure of the book, and I began writing
very intensely for a period of about two years
until I had produced a draft of the entire book
manuscript. I then worked very hard to make
the manuscript as readable and accessible as
possible. I did it both because the books I value
mostly are those that are written in a lucid style
and also because I had a hunch that the book
might be of interest to scholars and readers in
many fields: Jewish history, Jewish literature,
Modernist Studies, Urban Studies, Gender
Studies, etc. This meant that I needed to write
in a way that was accessible to many people
without sacrificing the depth and breadth of
my discussion. The truth is I never thought
that the book would win an award, but I was so
thrilled when the AJS announced that Literary
Passports was the winner of the Jordan Schnitzer
Award. It made me realize that the large (and
sometime thorny) scholarly endeavor yielded a
successful result to the extent that it reached
its intended audience, and will, hopefully,
make an lasting impact in a number of fields.
What surprises did your research
yield? Did your semester as a fellow
at the Frankel Institute during the
theme year of "Jews and the City'.
influence 7.5i owe project? Are there
1., artictilar anecdotes or stories you
discovered. that you'd like
share?
One of the main.. surprises that moved my
research and writing a big step forward was a
trip that I took through European cities during
the summer of 2007. I realized that I had never
had the chance to visit some of the cities I was
writing about, and I thought I should take
the time to do it. The funny thing was that
some colleagues thought that this is a waste
of precious time. They told me, "sure, you are
going to have good time, but since everything
was ruined by the Second World War and
subsequent decades, you will not find much
there. You'd better use the time for writing."
However, they were very wrong. My trip,
which was very carefully planned (I had made
detailed maps of places where Hebrew writers
lived, worked and published, as well as maps
extracted from fictional stories and novels. I
also had local guides who were experts on the
period), gave me a most valuable perspective.
In spite of the fact that the cities have indeed
changed dramatically, I had, for the first time,
a real grasp of the urban space. The funny
thing was that I was so focused on the map
of the past that I didn't prepare myself for
the fact that I would encounter the present.
I was walking in the streets of Odessa, Lviv,
Vienna, and Berlin seeing the past and the
present scattered one on top of the other like
archeological layers, and it was fascinating.
One surprising element that became
clear to me only when I visited these cities was
the importance of the urban café as a space
of literary and cultural creativity. When I was
looking for the places where writers actually