Religion

Yiddish in Abramovitsh's Literary Revival of Hebrew

Ken Frieden — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 06:26:01 PDT

Innovation by Translation: Yiddish and Hasidic Hebrew in Literary History

Ken Frieden — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 06:20:47 PDT

Intertextual and Interlinguistic Approaches to Agnon's Writing

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:46:39 PDT

While previous critics have raised the question of outside
influences upon Agnon, his fiction has seldom been read in
connection with contemporary views of intertextuality. Agnon
specialists might learn from the theories of Harold Bloom, for
example, as they are set forth in The Anxiety of Influence
and A Map of Misreading. This article will provide
specific examples of intertextual and interlinguistic reading,
applied to Agnon's "Panim Aherot" and ul'Veit Abba", and suggest
the broader significance of these approaches.

I.B. Singer's Monologues of Demons

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:41:45 PDT

Hebrew Poetry Written with a Gothic Script

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:41:44 PDT

Review of Else Lasker-Schueler's work A Study in German-Jewish Literature.

Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. Freud's Mosses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable.

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:36:00 PDT

Review of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi's work Freud's Mosses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable.

Freud, Women, and Jews: Viennese Jokes and Judaic Dream Interpretation

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:35:58 PDT

Excerpt from Fishke the Lame

Mendele Moykher Sforim — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:31:27 PDT

Translated by Ken Frieden, Syracuse University

The Father of Modern Yiddish Literature

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:31:26 PDT

Review of Ruth R. Wisse's works, I.L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture, and The I.L. Peretz Reader.

The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:31:24 PDT

Book review of Allan Nadler's work The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture.

Yekhezkel Kotik. Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:25:46 PDT

Review of Yekhezkel Kotik's work Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel. Edited by David Assaf and Translated by Margaret Birstein.

Dream Interpreters in Exile: Joseph, Daniel, and Sigmund (Solomon)

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:25:45 PDT

The biblical Joseph and Daniel have much in common with Sigmund
Freud, for all three experienced the powerlessness of exile
and later attained the power they lacked by interpreting dreams. Unable
to control historical destiny, exilic Jews have characteristically
reinterpreted events, texts, and dreams; the interpretive successes of
Joseph, Daniel, and Sigmund at once reflect and defy the Jewish condition.
Although Freud made every effort to distance himself from his
ancient forerunners, The Interpretation of Dreams indirectly responds to
them.
While many adepts at dream interpretation appear in the Bible,
in the Talmud, in the Sifer Chassidim, and in other Judaic sources,
Joseph, Daniel, and Sigmund have special significance. Joseph is sold
into slavery by his jealous brothers, and yet saves them and theJewish
people after he gains authority in Egypt. In the Book of Daniel,
Nebuchadnf"zzar exiles the Jews to Babylonia, and yet Daniel
achieves such importance that he can influence both individual lives
and Israel's collective future. Finally Sigmund Freud , also known by
his Hebrew name Shlomo (or Solomon), emerges from obscurity to
create an international movement. Beneath the subtle manipulation
of signs and symbols, this triumvirate re veals an underlying relationship
between power and interpretation.

The Displacement of Jewish Identity in Stefan Zweig's "Buchmendel"

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:25:44 PDT

IN THE STORY "BUCHMENDEL" ( 1929), Stefan Zweig represents Jewish identity
in Vienna as it is displaced. eclipsed, and then destroyed. Yet the narrator.
a man of the world much like Zweig himself. does not mourn this process of
ethnic effacement. Instead, he bemoans the associated destruction of literary
culture at !arge and seems unconcerned about the implications for Jews in
Vienna or elsewhere. Like other residents of Vienna during the First World
War, the urbane postwar narrator even shows a measure of unexamined xenophobia, which is surprising in light of the nesh-and-blood author's Jewish ethnicity and cosmopolitanism. Because the Judaic subtext of "Buchmendel" is
subordinated to a universal drama, ethnicity is a suppressed theme.

A Daughter of the Mother Tongue

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:10:50 PDT

Review of Irena Klepfisz works, A Few Words in the Mother Tongue: Poems Selected and New, and Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes

Job's Encounters with the Adversary

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:20:49 PDT

Although Job has been universally admired, his encounters with evil have met with diverse and often contradictory interpretations. In contrast to the tradition that exalts "patient Job," recent scholars have focused attention on the
"impatient Job" who questions divine justice. I will suggest that
Job is essentially a book about questions and assertions, a book
that leads us to consider the significance of theological questioning.

The Language of Demonic Possession: A Key-Word Analysis

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:20:48 PDT

Yael S. Feldman. Modernism and Culture Transfer: Gabriel Preil and the Tradition of Jewish Literacy Bilingualism

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:15:54 PDT

Review of Yael S. Feldman's work Modernism and Cultural Transfer: Gabriel Preil and the Tradition of Jewish Literary Bilingualism.

Psychological Depth in I. L. Peretz' Familiar Scenes: On the 75th Anniversary of His Death

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:15:53 PDT

Sholem Aleichem: Monologues of Mastery

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:05:57 PDT

Sigmund Freud's Passover Dream Responds to Theodor Herzl's Zionist Dream

Ken Frieden — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:01:03 PDT