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Baruch Kurzweil

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Israeli literary critic (1907–1972)
Baruch Kurzweil
Born1907 (1907)
Brtnice, Moravia
Died1972(1972-00-00) (aged 64–65)
OccupationLiterary critic

Baruch Kurzweil (1907–1972) (Hebrew: ברוך קורצווייל) was a pioneer of Israeli literary criticism.

Biography

Kurzweil was born in Brtnice, Moravia (now Czechoslovakia) in 1907, to an Orthodox Jewish family. He studied at Solomon Breuer's yeshiva in Frankfurt and the University of Frankfurt. Kurzweil emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1939. Kurzweil taught at a high school in Haifa, where he mentored the poet Dahlia Ravikovitch and psychologist Amos Tversky. He founded and headed Bar Ilan University's Department of Hebrew Literature until his death. He wrote a column for Haaretz newspaper.

Kurzweil committed suicide in 1972.

Thought

Kurzweil saw secular modernity (including secular Zionism) as representing a tragic, fundamental break from the premodern world. Where before the belief in God provided a fundamental absolute of human existence, in the modern world this pillar of human life has disappeared, leaving a "void" that moderns futilely attempt to fill by exalting the individual ego. According to Kurzweil, this discontinuity is reflected in modern Hebrew literature, which lacks the religious foundation of traditional Jewish literature: “The secularism of modern Hebrew literature is a given in that it is for the most part the outgrowth of a spiritual world divested of the primordial certainty in a sacral foundation that envelops all the events of life and measures their value.”

Kurzweil saw a writer's response to the "void" of modern existence as their most fundamental characteristic. He believed S.Y. Agnon and Uri Zvi Grinberg were the greatest modern Hebrew writers. A confrontational polemicist, Kurzweil famously wrote against Ahad Haam and Gershom Scholem, who he saw as attempting to establish secularism as the foundation of Jewish life.

Awards

See also

References

  1. David, Anthony, The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959, p. 296
  2. Myers, David N. Resisting history: historicism and its discontents in German-Jewish thought. Princeton University Press. 2003. p. 225.
  3. ^ Singer, David (August–September 1990). "The Orthodox Jew as Intellectual Crank". First Things. Archived from the original on 2011-06-10.
  4. Myers 155
  5. Bloch, Chana; Chana Kronfeld (2009). "Introduction". Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch. W.W. Norton & Co. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-393-06524-4.
  6. Lewis, Michael (2017). The Undoing Project. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 90. ISBN 978-0-393-35610-6.
  7. Orr, Akiva. The unJewish state: the politics of Jewish identity in Israel. p. 194
  8. Shaked, G.; Budick, E.M. (2000). Modern Hebrew Fiction. Indiana University Press. p. 160. ISBN 9780253337115. Retrieved 2014-10-08.
  9. Patterson, D.; Abramson, G.; Parfitt, T. (1994). Jewish Education and Learning: Published in Honour of Dr. David Patterson on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Harwood Academic Publishers. p. 130. ISBN 9783718653249. Retrieved 2014-10-08.
  10. Crowsly, Marcus (2006). Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography. Stanford University Press. p. 35.
  11. Roskies, David G. (1993). "Modern Jewish Literature". In Jack Wertheimer (ed.). The Modern Jewish Experience: a Reader's Guide. NYU Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-0-8147-9262-9.
  12. "List of Bialik Prize recipients 1933-2004 (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv Municipality website" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-12-17.

Further reading

Diamond, James S. Barukh Kurzweil and modern Hebrew literature. Chico, Calif. Scholars Pr. Brown Judaic Studies. 1983.

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