The Integration of Hebrew Literature in Translation in the United States: The Pre-Zionist Phase

Abstract

As shown by translation scholars in past decades, the transfer of literature across cultures is never governed only by ‘exclusively’ literary considerations, and may be strongly influenced by ideologically related factors. This paper examines the integration of Hebrew literature in translation in America during the first decades of the twentieth century with regard to the volume of translation, the selection of works for translation, their reception in the literary discourse, and the interferences of translators in the actual texts. The paper describes the mediation of Hebrew literature in America as it related to and was influenced by the major trends of thought within American Jewry towards the Yishuv in Palestine during this period, a period generally perceived as the pre-Zionist phase of American Jews.

As the paper shows, Hebrew literature as it was met by the (Jewish-)American reader during this time, especially between the 1910s and the late 1930s, did not reflect the developing Hebrew literary canon and lacked much of its national components. The volume of translation from Hebrew was much smaller than in later decades, and most works of Hebrew prose that were translated and published in the United States were anchored in the shtetl experience of Eastern Europe, whereas contemporary Hebrew literature’s preoccupation with life in Palestine was scarcely represented. Furthermore, when elements critical of the Diaspora were present in the translated works, these were sometimes subdued on their way to the (Jewish-)American reader, either in the actual translation or in reviews in newspapers. In general, Hebrew literature, a cornerstone of the growing national culture in Eretz-Israel, took on a less national and more diasporic form as it entered the American literary field.