Renovations in a Five-Story Building: Three Different Readings of Leah Goldberg’s ‘A Flat for Rent’
Keywords:
Leah Goldberg, A Flat for Rent, Canonical Children’s Literature, Israeli LiteratureAbstract
This article examines Leah Goldberg’s story A Flat for Rent as a case study in the rapid transformation of canonical children’s literature when Israel went from nation in the making to a stable national culture. Goldberg’s work was printed three times, each in a different version: during the 1948 War of Independence it appeared in Mapam’s children’s weekly, Mishmar LiYeladim with illustrations by Ruth Schloss; it was reprinted in 1959, also with Hyman’s illustrations, as part of Sifriyat Poalim’s series of children’s booklets; and in 1970, after Goldberg’s demise, it came out in hardcover with the illustrations by the painter and caricaturist Shmuel Katz. The last version was quickly declared a children’s classic in Israel, and as such has remained unaltered.
The principal differences between the three versions – the publishing contexts and visual designs – raise questions about how the readership was perceived during Israel’s transformation from a nation in the making to a stabilized national culture.
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