Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature

Marina Zilbergerts is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Literature and Thought at the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This is her first book.

• Note on TransliterationAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Men of Letters2. How the Word Became Flesh3. Texts on Trial4. Literary Apostasy5. Readers' Paradise6. The Talmudic PassionEpilogue: Reflections on the Value of LiteratureBibliographyIndex

Zilbergerts's readings of modern Hebrew pioneers like Lilienblum and Bialik are as elegant as some of the modern Hebrew texts she analyzes. Her writing is clear and concise, and the book is never bogged down by polemics with secondary literature or unnecessary references to primary sources.(Jewish Review of Books) Marina Zilbergerts's The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature undertakes an ambitious task: to chart anew the emergence of modern He- brew literature in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. Hebrew literature was informed, the author suggests, by three main forces: the Jewish Haskalah; Russian intellectual trends of the time; and elite rabbinic culture.