Zionism in Translation deals with the exchange of letters—primarily, but also drafts, revisions, and other ephemeral materials—sent to and from Jerusalem in the decades after 1948. All were written in German and Hebrew by an elite group of literary luminaries, including Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Yehuda Amichai, Ludwig Strauss, Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin, and Leah Goldberg, Peter Zondi, Paul Celan, and Tuvia Rubner. Grace Rochem highlights the complexities that ariseWith the mixing of the two languages in this exceptional correspondence network.
The writers Rokem examines here address the genocidal violence that ostensibly ended the rich historical relationship between German and Hebrew. They also grapple, in different ways, with the new reality in Israel/Palestine in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba. Thus, the bilingual dialogue intersecting between German and Hebrew in these letters revolves around the question of the fate of the Jews in the twentieth century, and is immersed in discussions of Jewish nationalism,The Zionist movement, and the possibilities of Jewish poetry. In the space between German and Hebrew, Rokem argues, the heroes of her story express contradictory feelings and hesitations that we find nowhere else.
The book “Zionism in Translation” joins a growing body of studies that reveal the complex patterns of belonging and resistance that emerged in the Zionist movement during the twentieth century. It will interest all readers interested in modern Jewish intellectual, cultural, and literary history, the history of Zionism, and the writings ofWriters such as Arendt and Celan.
