In Literary Research: Jesus and Uri-Tzvi Greenberg

From the review by Adele Reinhartz (University of Ottawa) of Neta Stahl's "Other and Brother: Jesus in the 20th-Century Jewish Literary Landscape" which, by the way, has the infamous graphic of a Uri Tzvi Greenberg poem on the cover:

"Infamous" in that an order for his arrest was issued in Warsaw causing him to flee to Berlin.

This is was Rheinhaltz writes:

Chapter 2, "Cut off from all of his Brothers, from his Blood," turns to the poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896-1981). Stahl argues that Greenberg uses the figure of Jesus to reflect his own biography and sense of self, including his experiences in the Austria-Hungarian army during World War I, the 1918 pogrom, immigration to Palestine 1923, and most important, the Holocaust. Greenberg's poetry reflects both alienation from and kinship with Jesus, who is both indifferent to and symbolic of the suffering of European Jewry. Greenberg's poetry incorporates Christian imagery not only verbally but also typographically, a point brilliantly illustrated in his poem "Uri Zvi in front of the Cross INRI" that is used to great effect on the cover of Stahl's book. In the poignant poem "God and his Gentiles," the Christian God descends from heaven, travels through Europe, laments the absence of his Jews, and is himself destined for slaughter due to his Jewish appearance. Whereas in other works the figure of Jesus is differentiated from his Christian interpretations, these poems suggest a bifurcation within the figure of Jesus himself, as both "Other" and "Brother."  This chapter provides several illustrations of Stahl's incisive and beautifully written analyses of poetry.

And from the source:

Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896–1981) was one of the most prominent figures in twentieth century Jewish poetry. In Greenberg's poetry perhaps more than in the work of any other modern Jewish writer, the figure of Jesus reflects his own personal, literary and ideological biography, and his sense of selfhood. Greenberg's characterization of Jesus is profoundly ambivalent. His poetry merges elements of rejection and aversion, rooted in traditional Judaism, with a depiction of Jesus as a character of great charm and mystery who rebels against the social and religious conventions of his time. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section focuses on the different literary devices Greenberg uses to express the tension between Jesus' human aspect, linked to his Jewish character, and his godly aspect, connected to his idolatrous representation within the Christian Church. The second section demonstrates how this tension becomes an actual division between two personas: the Christian Jesus is referenced by the Slavic name “Yezus,” while the “authentic” Jewish Jesus is called “Yeshu.” The third section discusses the tensions between Greenberg's divergent representations of Jesus as Exilic Jew, Zionist pioneer, and even national Messiah.

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Now It's Poetry Being Studied

You never know what can be an academic research subject:-

Beyond Political Messianism: The Poetry of Second Generation Religious Zionist Settlers by David C. Jacobson

In recent decades, a group of second generation religious Zionist West Bank settlers have turned away from the collectivist political messianic ideology of the first generation of settlers and have begun to explore poetry as a mode of individual self expression. Based on interviews of eight key figures in this new trend and an analysis of fifty works by these poets, Beyond Political Messianism: The Poetry of Second Generation Religious Zionist Settlers tells the story of how they revolutionized the religious Zionist settler culture by moving poetry writing into the mainstream of that culture, and how they introduced into the world of secular Israeli literature images and language styles drawn from their lives as religiously observant Jews. Among the themes central to these poets concerns are: the formation of a religious identity based on faith and ritual observance, the relationship of the contemporary Jew to the Bible and to traditional Jewish texts, appropriate ways to write about erotic experience, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

$69?!

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Do You Like Hebrew Poetry?

From medieval Spain?

Go here.

Like Poetry?

From a book review of THE DREAM OF THE POEM, Hebrew Poetry From Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, Translated, edited and introduced by Peter Cole, 548 pp. Princeton University Press:-

One day in 10th-century Baghdad a visiting foreign student named Dunash Ben Labrat showed his teacher, the revered scholar Sa’adia Gaon, a poem he had composed in a novel style. Sa’adia handed the poem back with the comment “Nothing like it has ever been seen in Israel.” This dubious compliment, which all teachers of creative writing might wish to employ, failed to discourage Dunash. He took himself, and his new poetry, back home to Muslim Spain. There, despite the dismay his mediocre verses prompted in other aspiring Hebrew poets, his style caught on. Within a few decades, from these unpromising origins, a brilliant and original body of Hebrew verse began to take shape. Virtually stagnant since late Biblical times, Hebrew poetry and the language itself would be transformed by a succession of poets of genius and their imitators. In Peter Cole’s rich new anthology, the extent of their astonishing achievement is fully revealed for the first time in English.

Dunash’s innovation was strikingly simple. He adapted the meters of classical Arabic poetry to Hebrew. This was more radical than it might seem. Arabic is a quantitative language, like ancient Greek; long and short vowels are scrupulously marked, and this imparts a subtly variable music to the lines. Biblical poetry, by contrast, emphasized stress. It took ingenuity, as well as artistry, to force Hebrew into this unaccustomed pattern.

Only 13 of Dunash’s poems survive, along with one by his wife (whose name is lost), and it seems improbable that out of such feeble stuff — Sa’adia was right to be noncommital — a poetic renaissance might take flight. But the history of Hebrew poetry in Spain, as Cole makes clear in his witty and erudite notes, thrived on happy accidents. One of its greatest poets, Shmu’el Hanagid, the 11th-century general and sometime vizier to the Muslim ruler of Granada who was also a distinguished Talmudist in his spare time, composed more than 2,000 poems, the manuscript of which lay undiscovered until 1924, when it “was found by chance in a crate.” The work of Shelomo Ibn Gabirol, Shmu’el’s cranky contemporary (and poetic equal), was snatched from a fireplace in Iraq “where it was about to become fuel for the week’s laundry.” Many other poets’ works were discovered in the Cairo Geniza, that brimming storeroom in the Ben Ezra Synagogue where much of medieval Jewish history lay in tattered bundles until the late 19th century.

Hebrew poetry in Spain begins with Dunash around 950, but for almost two centuries, Arab poets there had been refining a body of literature unsurpassed for allusiveness and wit. So seductive were its melodies that Jewish poets living under Muslim rule were inspired not simply to imitate it in Hebrew but to rival and, at times, surpass it, taking not only meters from their Arab models but also themes, tropes and entire genres. When Yehuda Halevi wishes to evoke a male friend’s charms, he says, “My heart is pure, but not my eyes.” The sentiment may be “Platonic,” as Cole claims, but there is a delicate, and very Andalusian, uncertainty to the verse; it manages to be at once chaste and erotic. In another poem Yehuda enjoins his soul “to seek the Lord and His thresholds” and “offer your songs like incense.” Austere poems praising God alternate with sensuous evocations of a lovely girl’s — or boy’s — cheek or curls.

More here.