Overview

With an approach both personal and symbolic, this volume leads us through the imagined worlds, delusions, discoveries, questions, hopes, ambivalences, anxieties, and historical, cultural and psychological dynamics of six German-Jewish writers and intellectuals who arrived in Palestine between the 1920s and 1930s. Hugo Bergmann, Gershom Scholem, Gabriele Tergit, Else Lasker–Schüler, Arnold Zweig, and Paul Mühsam witnessed the gap between dream and reality from their own perspectives, representing it at many levels: intellectual, cultural, historical, psychological, and literary. As these six figures arrived in Palestine, this ancient land long imagined by diaspora generations with life-long nostalgia was new and open to different interpretations, outcomes, and realities. This book explores the difficulties and challenges that these figures had to face as they returned to the land of their fathers, a return shadowed by a historical, symbolic and metaphysical exile. It tells the story of a culture suspended and balanced between many worlds— a story of exile and return that is still unfolding under our eyes today.

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9781498540308

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Borne by elevated dreams, collective and personal, Central European Jewish intellectuals immigrated to the land of Israel. With the lyrical pen of a poet, Claudia Sonino evokes the inner world of six men and women whose dreams clashed with the harsh politically and socially unyielding realities they encountered. -- Paul Mendes-Flohr, University of Chicago Divinity School, professor emeritus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem An excellent book, well-researched with a lucid, nuanced, knowledgeable vision about an important chapter in the history of German-Jewish intellectuality, Zionism, Israel, and anti-Semitism. Also potentially a quite valid comparison with the current issue of migration and its disturbing details of exile, adaptation, renewal, and identity. A fascinating narrative and an acute analytical search for meaning. -- Norman Manea, author of The Hooligan's Return

"Borne by elevated dreams, collective and personal, Central European Jewish intellectuals immigrated to the land of Israel. With the lyrical pen of a poet, Claudia Sonino evokes the inner world of six men and women whose dreams clashed with the harsh politically and socially unyielding realities they encountered. -- Paul Mendes-Flohr, University of Chicago Divinity School, professor emeritus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem An excellent book, well-researched with a lucid, nuanced, knowledgeable vision about an important chapter in the history of German-Jewish intellectuality, Zionism, Israel, and anti-Semitism. Also potentially a quite valid comparison with the current issue of migration and its disturbing details of exile, adaptation, renewal, and identity. A fascinating narrative and an acute analytical search for meaning. -- Norman Manea, author of ""The Hooligan’s Return"""

Author Information

Claudia Sonino teaches modern and contemporary German literature at the University of Pavia.

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