Rachel Faygenberg on the Margins of Hebrew Literature

• In Event: New Readings in Modern Hebrew Fiction

Abstract

Over the course of the 1920s, Rachel Faygenberg was a familiar name to readers of the Warsaw-based daily paper, DER MOMENT, publishing frequent columns on a wide range of literary and cultural topics as well as several Yiddish novels. Once she immigrated to Palestine (first in 1924 and permanently in 1933) she transitioned from writing in Yiddish to writing in Hebrew, translating her own Yiddish novels into Hebrew, publishing essays and fiction in Hebrew, and initiating several ambitious literary projects in Hebrew. In Melekh Ravitch’s estimation, Faygenberg was a combative personality who fought her way into male-dominated literary spheres and always kept fighting. But aside from brief entries in texts like Ravitch’s lexicon, this bilingual novelist, essayist and polemicist has essentially been forgotten by Yiddish and Hebrew readers and critics alike.

This paper will examine Faygenberg’s fiction and essays from the 1930s and 1940s and argue that her work was marginalized because it was at odds with both the stylistic and ideological sensibilities of the time. This marginalization was not due to her choice of language; Faygenberg embraced both Hebrew and Zionism, and insisted that Yiddish could only prosper in the Soviet Union. Nor was it a function of outdated themes; much of her fiction explores changing relationships between modern men and women that resonates with contemporary literature. Yet Faygenberg’s fiercely feminist and Hebraist work never found an audience in Hebrew, and she never found a place within the Hebrew literary establishment. By choice and by necessity, she identified as an outsider: a woman in a male-dominated literary environment, an immigrant in a society that valued the old-timers and native-born sons. In fact, it was her growing conviction that Hebrew literature had to serve clear ideological and cultural imperatives for women and Yiddish-speaking immigrants that further estranged her from her literary colleagues. This analysis of Faygenberg’s literary work adds a compelling female literary voice to interwar Hebrew literature as it provides insights into the margins of Hebrew literature in the Yishuv.

author

• Naomi Brenner, The Ohio State University