Perceptions of Time in Modern Jewish Historiography and Literature

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel examines different perspectives of time in Jewish historiography and Literature from the 18th to the 20th Century. During this period, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe had experienced social, political and cultural changes. The collapse of traditional social corporations, the rise of Haskalah, acculturation, secularization and the burgeoning of nationalism had rendered several competing epistemologies and, in particularly, models of time and perceptions of Jewish history. The models were used to endow a modern Jewish subject with an autonomous identity within a rapidly changing cultural environment and were created through negotiation between two poles: traditional historical perceptions of Jewish history and the methodology of modern historiography. For instance, alongside the basic traditional unit of measurement of 'generation' (dor), the units of ‘decade’ and ‘century’ had become frequent throughout the 19th century, even in Halachic literature. In addition, beside a traditional single and linear course of Jewish tradition (“Moshe received the Torah from Sinai, and transmitted it to Yehoshua, and Yehoshua to the Elders…” Avot 1/1), competing concepts of time had undermined the anticipation for a redemption in the future, called to focus only on the present or, alternatively, expected a throwback to a future of destruction.

The paper presented by Yuval Kremnitzer will show how Moses Mendelssohn articulated the division between theology and politics using a particular temporal conceptualization. Mendelsohn presented an approach that was significantly different from the prevailing Christian distinction between secularism and religion. Dan Tsahor will discuss about competing concepts of time in early Hebrew Encyclopedia. His papers will explore different patterns of narrating the Jewish past and locate their ideological backgrounds. Elik Elhanan’s paper offers an understanding Yaakov Steinberg's poetry as prophetical writings of a modern apocalypse. According to Steinberg's modernist vision of temporality: Zionism and Yiddishism were both viewed as fictions appeasing the crisis of modernity, in which time is empty and history is nothing but the record of decline and decay.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Thought and Theology

Chair

• Nitzan Itzhak Lebovic, Lehigh University

Individual Presentations

• The Epistemology of Time in Hebrew Encyclopedias: 1888-1914 - Dan Tsahor, New York University

• Beyond Secularization: On the Political Theological difference as a temporal one from Moses Mendelssohn to Walter Benjamin - Yuval Kremnitzer, Columbia University

• "Once Again, the Same Old Images" Time and History in Yaakov Steinberg's Poetry. - Elhanan Elazar, city college cuny