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Assaf Inbari’s essay, “Towards a Hebrew Literature,” builds its argument on a new definition of “Hebrew literature,” one that is contrived and demagogic.
The common use of the term, obviously, refers to language: “Hebrew literature” is usually taken to refer to works written in the Hebrew language, whether or not they were written by Jews, and regardless of their content. The Jewish literature in Ladino, Yiddish, English, Arabic, French and other languages is called “Jewish literature,” and religious literature is usually known as “Tora literature,” “halachic literature,” or some similar term.
Inbari is not satisfied with the simple meaning of these terms, however. “All of these definitions ignore the unique literary qualities that form the heart of the Hebrew literary tradition,” he maintains. “Hebrew literature, for my purposes, refers to literature that employs a particular kind of poetics—that is, a certain artistic strategy for writing—of which the biblical narrative constitutes the first, but by no means only, example.”
Arguments about the poetics of Hebrew literature through the ages are legitimate, and can be fascinating. But why change the accepted terms? In order to make the case that authors should write in the spirit of biblical poetics, there is no need to claim that any other writing is not “Hebrew.” The Greeks created the tragedy and the comedy—but neither Shakespeare’s tragedies nor Moliere’s comedies can plausibly be called “Greek literature.” Similarly, if Greek authors were to begin writing poetry in the spirit of haiku, readers would pick up on the literary influence, but who would say it was not Greek literature? As opposed to instrumental music and visual art, which are defined purely in terms of their style, literature has a language, which profoundly influences the way its works are disseminated and by whom they are read. Inbari plays down this seemingly technical point, redefining the terms in order to build his case for a “Hebrew poetics.” Whoever does not accept its rules presumably takes the name of Hebrew literature in vain.
The first realization of Hebrew poetics, according to Inbari, is the Bible. Most of the Bible consists of “historical, national, deed-based narrative prose: “Historical,” in that it depicts a sequence of events causally linked, “national,” in that it describes the history of a people, incorporating the people’s most important, unique figures; and “deed-based narrative prose,” in that it offers a clear plot and emphasizes actions rather than description. This genre, according to Inbari, was chosen because it is the most appropriate for delivering the monotheistic message of the Bible. And indeed, two-thirds of the Bible does comprise the sort of prose Inbari is describing. Almost all these passages of prose depict episodes in the history of the people of Israel; and perhaps this is the most appropriate genre for a monotheistic message.
Yet the Bible possesses other qualities which Inbari ignores. Monotheism, for example. “Historical, national, deed-based narrative prose” is a literary quality, while monotheism is part of the book’s actual content—an intellectual quality. Inbari maintains that the literary form was selected as part of the monotheistic revolution since it best corresponded to the message of the latter; ultimately, however, Inbari seems to care much more about the means than the monotheistic ends. To him, the most important thing about Hebrew literature, including the Bible, is its poetics, not its ideas.
Along with the idea of one God, of whom no sculptured image may be made, other ideas also are central to the Bible, and could have plausibly gone into the definition of “Hebrew literature”: God’s hand in history; his authority over man; man’s obligation to heed him; the covenant with the Jewish people (not just any ordinary national historical development), and God’s special relationship with them throughout history; revelation as a possible element in the relationship between man and God; reward and punishment; free will, and with it man’s ability to fall and rise, to move away from God and to return to him. These ideas are a recurring theme throughout the books of the Bible—in its prose as well as its poetry.
Apparently, Hebrew ideas may be expressed in several ways. As is well known, the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve Minor Prophets, written almost exclusively as poetry, all deliver an unabashedly monotheistic message. Theoretical writing is also capable of delivering such a message, as was the case in both the medieval and modern periods of Jewish philosophy. Even the halachic literature, with its complex legal formulations, delivers these ideas, which are at its very foundation. Anyone who reads Agnon’s “non-Hebrew” books, the Jewish ballads of Saul Tchernichowsky, a considerable amount of the poetry and prose of Haim Nahman Bialik, the comic and tragicomic works of Sholom Aleichem, and many more works of that period, none of which are “Hebrew” according to Inbari, and then reads Haim Sabato’s new novel Adjustment of Sights will discover that psychological literature, like many other genres, can deliver a message infused with monotheism in particular, and with Jewish and Hebrew culture in general.
One should, of course, mourn the passing of the Jewish-Hebrew uniqueness of Hebrew literature, apparently due to the paucity of Jewish education and a decline in Jewish motivation, but the poetics of a “historical, national, deed-based narrative prose” is but a single detail in the entire picture, and not necessarily the most important detail.
Why does Inbari go to such lengths to divorce the term “Hebrew literature” from its simple meaning? Why does he seek to give center stage to the Bible’s poetics, while leaving its content aside?
The answer may lie in Inbari’s understanding of the nature of Jewish identity. According to him, “The nature of Hebrew literature is not simply an academic matter, as its implications reach to the heart of Jewish cultural and national identity. For the essence of Jewish identity is not ethnic, religious, or lingual—but literary.” Our identity is not ethnic, because, according to the biblical account, the Jewish people was made of a number of ethnic streams. It is not religious, because the Jewish religion is nothing but a mass of disagreements. It is not linguistic, because so much of its important literature was written in languages other than Hebrew. Only Hebrew poetics can constitute the basis of our culture, Inbari argues. Yet he ignores the fact that this poetics was abandoned by most of Jewish literature throughout the ages. This includes one-third of the Bible (written as poetry), the codes of Jewish law, the responsa literature, the liturgical poetry of different periods, the poetry of the Middle Ages, modern Hebrew poetry, and the treatises of modern and medieval Jewish philosophy. Even the Mishna and the Talmud, including their narrative sections, do not meet the rigorous demands that Inbari himself imposed when he defined the “historical, national, deed-based narrative prose.” The definition of cultural identity along literary lines, no matter how absurd in the case of the Jews, underlies Inbari’s entire essay.
It is not unreasonable to look at the Bible as the foundation of Hebrew literary culture. Modern Hebrew literature, especially at its early stages, drew much of its richness and depth from the influence of the Bible. This influence is on the wane, and Inbari wants to reverse the deterioration of Israeli literature, offering a literary ideal that draws upon the biblical tradition. But this tradition is infused with entirely religious ideas. Perhaps Inbari has difficulty identifying with this element: Like the young writers upon whom he turns his wrath, Inbari does not feel at home with the religious element of the biblical tradition. He therefore focuses primarily on the Bible’s form, while all but ignoring its content. It would seem that for Inbari, “Hebrew” prose that is based on Christian or pagan elements is somehow more“Hebrew” than the description-intensive Tevyeh the Milkman, or the poetry of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Job.
Truth be told, anyone who cannot accept the entirety of Jewish sources, with the intellectual and spiritual world they entail, but at the same time is unwilling to cast them off, has the option of attempting to understand even those parts he rejects, and then internalizing only that which is meaningful to him. Such selectiveness may dilute the spirit of a culture, but it still maintains a measure of authenticity. Inbari’s solution, however—to choose one poetic element, give it center stage and ignore the rest—is not a reasonable one, for it requires too much in the way of disingenuous acrobatics.
Ruth Landau
Jerusalem
