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Hebrew Poetry
Poetics, Politics, Accent
Miryam Segal
A New Sound in Hebrew Poetry
Jewish Literature and Culture
Series Editor, Alvin H. Rosenfeld
A New Sound in
Hebrew Poetry
Poetics, Politics, Accent
Miryam Segal
http://iupress.indiana.edu
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Prefaceâ•… xi
Acknowledgmentsâ•… xix
A Note on Transliterationâ•… xxi
Introductionâ•… 1
ix
Preface
I n December 2001, on a visit home to the United States, and having been
deprived of easy access to American radio for over a year while living in Isr-
rael, I took advantage of the break from my research on Hebrew literature and
accent to catch up on all things American. I tuned in to a program on a local
New York satellite of National Public Radio to find no less a popular cultural
icon than the former lead singer of KISS, Gene Simmons, correcting the int-
terviewer’s Hebrew:1
Gene Simmons: Oh, thank you so much [for the introduction] and since
this is National Public Radio and it prides itself on accurate information—
most of it sounded good—I stand guilty as charged and proud to say that
I’m a mama’s boy. However, point one is you mispronounced my Hebrew
name. It’s not ±ayim, which is the sort of sniveling please-don’t-beat-me-
up Ashkenazi European wayâ•.̄â•.̄â•.̄
Leonard Lopate: Which is what I grew up inâ•.̄â•.̄â•.̄
Gene Simmons: Which is—hey, that’s why you get beaten up. I don’t. The
sefaradit way is the correct way. It’s ±ayim, emphasis on the second vowel,
like the Israelis do.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was a major figure in the language revival movement,
and one of the early (Ashkenazic) promoters of the “sefaradit way.” To further
his revivalist goals, he taught Hebrew in Jewish schools in Palestine and prom-
moted (relatively early on, in the late nineteenth century) the inculcation of a
so-called Sephardic accent. His magnum opus was a comprehensive Hebrew
dictionary, and he is known for having fashioned new words out of ancient roots
to account for phenomena of modern life and for his practice of sending his son
outside to declaim these neologisms and their definitions.2 It is harder to imagi-
ine a less likely heir to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, professional (though self-appointed)
xi
xii preface
neologist and mythical “Father of Modern Hebrew,” than the lead singer of
KISS. Yet Simmons spends the opening moments of his interview rehearsing
what are by now clichés of Modern Hebrew—a diatribe that no doubt reached
more listeners in a few moments than a year’s worth of Ben-Yehuda’s public pron-
nouncements of new words or statements in favor of the Sephardic stress system.
Simmons, a. k. a. Chaim Witz, waged one of the longest-lasting teenage rebell-
lions in American history, and made a career of rejecting the attitudes that his
short-lived Jewish education in a Brooklyn yeshiva would have tried to inculcate
in him. The rejection of what Leonard Lopate “grew up in” would have jibed
precisely with an Israeli sense of a new Jewishness, one with which Simmons
seems to identify. In matters of Hebrew diction he would have made Ben-
�Yehuda proud, for his passion if not for his expertise.
As it happens, Lopate did pronounce Simmons’s Hebrew name as an Israeli
would. In Hebrew, the word ¿ayim means “life,” and when used as an improper
noun is pronounced with the stress on the final syllable. Names, however, are
an exception to the rule—even the Israelis do not say them “like the Israelis do.”
In other words, Israelis invariably pronounce Simmons’s Hebrew name with the
stress on the penultimate syllable, in this case the first, as ±ayim, what he calls
the “please-don’t-beat-me-up Ashkenazi European way.” (For Israelis, the use of
this pronunciation is a gesture of intimacy that is associated with Yiddish and
the memory of Jewish Eastern Europe. For this reason the penultimate stress is
sometimes used even for those names most often pronounced with the stress on
the final syllable.)
As with all hypercorrections, Simmons’s compulsion with respect to the
pronunciation of his name is a sign of the status and associations of a particul-
lar mode of speech. Simmons was born in Haifa a year after the founding of
the State of Israel. When he was eight years old he immigrated with his
mother to the United States.3 Despite his ignorance of “the way Israelis do”
and do not pronounce his Hebrew name, he is in tune with a cultural phen-
nomenon that preceded the founding of the State and that was continually
reinforced with the increasing institutionalization of Hebrew as the official
national language of the pre-State Jewish settlement in Palestine and the
State of Israel. The accent system he invokes is indeed associated with a masc-
culine, nationalist Jewish persona—especially when contrasted with what
from an Israeli perspective is an outdated Ashkenazic Hebrew.
The NPR of Israel—gale tsahal or IDF Radio—offers one of the few except-
tions to the exception that is the rule for the pronunciation of names such as
±ayim. Formal Hebrew is reserved for broadcasting and official ceremony, and
favors a terminal-stress pattern even more consistently than standard spoken
Hebrew, applying the rules to proper names, for example. The radio announce-
ers who read the hourly news digests that punctuate radio programming several
times a day speak a rather stilted hypercorrect form of Israeli Hebrew and with
preface xiii
an equanimity worthy of biblical text treat proper names no differently than any
other noun. The late widow of Prime Minister Yits¿ak Rabin was commonly ref-
ferred to as Le’ah Rabin; by contrast, in the hourly national news one learned of
the death of Le’ah Rabin. Israeli radio, and now NPR, is one of the only places
where Gene Simmons would be likely to hear his Hebrew name uttered in the
“sefaradit,” the “correct” or “Israeli” way.
I came to Israel to research and write about the transition from the Ashkenazic
to the so-called Land of Israel accent in Hebrew poetry. Like other foreigners
doing research on Modern Hebrew texts, I welcomed the perquisites of working
in a Hebrew-speaking environment, the possibilities of discussing common areas
of interest with the natives, and working where my project would feel relevant. I
did indeed discover dedicated scholars and a stimulating environment in which
to familiarize myself with Hebrew and Israeli literature, but my experience both
in Tel Aviv and on my brief trips back to the United States also offered me a diff-
ferent perspective on working as something of a stranger in the homeland of Heb-
brew culture. As neither native nor citizen nor complete alien, one views the
idiosyncrasies of Israeli culture and education through a kind of de-familiarizing
lens—a viewpoint that yields some benefit for the literary and cultural critic.
A commonplace among Americans who take an interest in Hebrew culture
is that poetry occupies a more central place in the Israeli consciousness than
in our own culture. This phenomenon alone, however, does not quite acc-
count for the number of times that, after hearing me describe in one sentence
or less the subject of my research, my Israeli interlocutor has responded in
verse. To be precise, she has responded with a line or two from “To the Bird”
“↜‘El ha-tsipor”), an early poem by the national poet ±ayim Na¿man Bialik:
their analogs in many modern languages, were filled with poems, stories, and
rhymes in which talking animals served as models and companions for child-
dren on their journey to becoming literate speakers of the language. The
sing-song rhymes of the primers could satisfy pedagogic needs only at the
lowest grade-levels; beyond that point variety was called for.
The rhythmically revolutionary poetry of the 1890s with its new (to Hebrew)
accentual-syllabic musicality showed that the rhythms of poetry in other lang-
guages could be generated in Hebrew verse too—at least in Ashkenazic Hebrew.
Bialik and Tchernichovsky’s success in Ashkenazic Hebrew may have also nurt-
tured an anxiety that the new-accent poetry—verse composed in a Sephardic
stress system, with its predilection for placing the major stress on the final syllab-
ble of a word—would be hopelessly monotonous. In 1892, Bialik’s poetic pers-
sona could sing to the bird melodiously in an Ashkenazic Hebrew from the
pages of the journal ha-Pardes (The Orchard). But in the second and third dec-
cades of the twentieth century, when the new-accent bird opened her mouth,
critics feared that a monotonous squawking would issue.
The expert on birds and monotony in poetry is, of course, Edgar Allan Poe.
He takes a particular interest in their respective properties in his “The Philoso-
ophy of Composition” of 1846.8 In that essay Poe describes his method in
composing his most famous poem, “The Raven.” (Perhaps because of its
rhythmic charms, it was also one of the very first poems to be translated into
new-accent Hebrew.) After deciding on a length of about one hundred lines
as appropriate for his poem, choosing beauty as his province, a melancholic
tone, and a refrain as the optimal “pivot” for his structure, Poe settled on the
idea of a one-word refrain: “Nevermore.” But how was he to both maintain
his refrain and avoid monotony?
In observing the difficulty which I had at once found in inventing a suffic-
ciently plausible reason for its continuous repetition, I did not fail to perc-
ceive that this difficulty arose solely from the presumption that the word
was to be continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being—I did
not fail to perceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of
monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating
the word. Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creat-
ture capable of speech, and very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance,
suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven as equally capab-
ble of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone.
The word as repeatedly uttered by a human being threatens monotony; issui-
ing from the beak of the raven, however, it promises an ambiguity that is prod-
ductive and even poetic.
It was probably not much more than a half century after Poe revealed that he
had first thought to write a poem about a parrot, that Vladimir Jabotinsky—
journalist, political activist, founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement and
xvi preface
sometime poet and translator—first put pen to paper in order to translate Poe’s
“The Raven” (“ha-‘Orev”).9
,נַ ְפ ׁ ִשי שָׂ ַח ְק ִּתי- ִ ּב ְמ ִרירוּת,עיִ ן בּ וֹ ִד ַ ּב ְּק ִּתי-ט
ַ ֶמ ַ ּב
: ֹ ו ִּב ְצחוֹ ק ָא ַמ ְר ִּתי לו,ּמ ְר ֵאהו-ן ַ ַֹעל ַ ּג ֲאוַ ת גְ או
ַ ל- ַא ְך נִ ָּכר ָ ּב ְך לֶ ב,“כ ְר ָ ּבלְ ָּת ְך ִמ ְק ַצת נִ ְק ַר ַחת
,פ ַחד-ֹא ַּ
!ֹה ׁ ַּש ַחת ָ ּב ּה ַהלֵ יל שָׂ ם ִמ ְמ ׁ ָשלו-יאַ ִציר ׁ ָשחוֹ ר ִמ ֵ ּג
”ַמה ׁ ִּש ְמ ָך ִמ ְק ַצת נִ ְק ַר ַחת
”.לֹא- “לְ עוֹ לָ ם:וַ יִ ְק ָרא
mebat-¿ayin bo dibakti, bi-mrirut-nafshi sa¿akti,
¿al ga’avat ge’on-mar’ehu, u-vi-ts¿ok ‘amarti lo:
karbaltakh miktsat nikra¿at akh nikar bakh lev-lo¿-fa¿ad,
tsir sha¿or mige’-ha-sha¿at bah ha-lel sam mimshalo!
mah shimkha miktsat nikra¿at va-yikra’ “le-¿olam-lo’.”
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no
craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
This translation was one of the earliest verse compositions in the new accent,
and for several years to come the most successful: it is rhythmically captivating,
recreates the mood of Poe’s poem, and has retained an unusually long shelf life
for a translation. (It is still read and used in schools in Israel today, a century
after its composition.) In short, the Hebrew succeeds at all that Poe set out to do,
as stated in “The Philosophy of Composition”; it is as flamboyant an antidote to
fears of the monotony of the new accent as a translation could possibly be.
The publication history of this translation is a microcosm of the fate of the
new accent in Hebrew language and poetry. Jabotinsky probably decided to
compose his translations in the new accent at around the time Bialik would
have first heard children speaking new-accent Hebrew in Palestine.10 Translat-
tions, considered generically, are like children’s poetry in their tendency to
adopt features from other linguistic and literary realms—in this case spoken
Hebrew—at a quicker pace than high literature. “The Raven,” one of several of
Jabotinsky’s translations, was first published in 1914 in the Zionist youth magaz-
zine Moledet (Homeland), at a time when new-accent poetry was still primarily
for children. In 1923, when poets were starting to publish their own new-accent
compositions, the translation appeared again in book form, along with some of
his other translations.
Jabotinsky’s “The Raven” was first published for Hebrew-speaking youth—the
same generation of Hebrew speakers that inspired the regret Bialik expressed,
preface xvii
about fifteen years after his first poem was published, that his Hebrew had the
sound of the “distorted” pronunciation so common to Ashkenazic Jews (Bialik
1937, 70). He had heard the future of Hebrew and it did not sound at all like the
Hebrew of his poems. When children read his poems, they might even wonder
at Bialik’s reputation: where was the beauty, the rhythm? It is perhaps this addit-
tional context that makes sense of his poem’s current position as the paradigm
of Ashkenazic poetic Hebrew. The bird comes from Palestine and the poet
questions her throughout, asking after the inhabitants of Zion. Unlike Poe’s
eternally squawking raven, however, Bialik’s bird is silent.
But what would the bird sound like if she did respond to the speaker’s quest-
tions? In the retrospect of Bialik’s visit to Palestine in 1907, and his realization
that his own Hebrew pronunciation might very well be extinct in a few years,
one is tempted to chide the poet: if only he had let her have her say, he might
have learned a thing or two about Hebrew pronunciation. (It may be that the
poet is in fact more interested in hearing himself speak. Three-quarters of the
way through his monologue, the poet questions the bird yet again, only to
continue as if the bird had already spoken in turn: “And I, what shall I rec-
count for you, lovely bird of mine,/What do you hope to hear from my lips?”)
Even as Bialik’s Hebrew was replaced by a new pseudo-Sephardic dialect, his
poetry retained pride of place in the national poetic canon. The bird-muse
had in the meantime become the new citizen of the Hebrew-speaking nat-
tion, listening to the babble of a hopelessly exilic Jew. What was upon public-
cation an expression of the nationalism of the Jews of Russia and Eastern
Europe, of their longing for the land of their forefathers, now underscores the
difference of the Diaspora even more, offering an impression of the exilic Jew
from the bird’s-eye view of the nation.
The unuttered accent of Bialik’s bird, her role as addressee and never as interl-
locutor, is more than a mere artifact of an Ashkenazic Hebrew. It is at the heart
of Bialik’s poetics and the nationalist project of writing a modern literature in
Hebrew. The bird visits the speaker on her annual migration from Palestine and
stays for the duration of the poem, just long enough to spur a new cycle of longi-
ing for the bird’s return and for the land itself. The bird’s silence represents the
poet’s distance from the homeland and his unfulfilled nationalist desire; it mem-
morializes the desire for a Zion that is always just out of reach.
Acknowledgments
xix
xx acknowledgments
ect; to Olga Litvak for her generosity in reading the penultimate version of
the manuscript; and to Jennifer Lewin for lending her considerable talents
over the course of very many weeks at a critical stage of editing. I must also
thank Steven Meed for enabling me to start writing this book and Alison
Levin and Adele Reising for enabling me to complete it. During the trying
year in which I wrote the final sections of this book, the late Lana Schwebel
sustained me with her visits, her good sense, and her inimitable wit.
Finally, I am most indebted to my sister, to whom this book is dedicated.
T his book uses the Library of Congress Hebrew Romanization Table for
most Hebrew words and titles. Names of people and places are likewise Rom-
manized, but without the use of diacritical marks to represent the letters ¿ayin
and ’alef. Exceptions are made for proper nouns that are widely accepted in
other forms, such as Jerusalem, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and Chaim Witz (but
±ayim Na¿man Bialik); liberties are also taken in the interest of clarity.
Titles of poems composed in an Ashkenazic accent are represented no differe-
ently than the titles of other poems, articles, and books. The transliteration of
these poems themselves, however, gives some indication of the accent used: in
representing the kamats vowel, the o is preferred to the a. This marker as well as
others of the standard Lithuanian accent are supplied with the understanding
that this is one of a number of possibilities for articulating the text while pres-
serving the rhythm. In some instances, the transliteration has been modified to
more accurately represent the pronunciation as dictated by prosody.
xxi
A New Sound in Hebrew Poetry
Introduction
Is there a decent publishing house in Jaffa where I could
find work€.€.€.€do you talk to each other solely in Hebrew—
and in which accent?
˘ a new sound in hebrew poetry
±aderah, Metulah, and Har Tuv.8 If not always economic successes, these
communities were nevertheless concrete expressions of the desire to settle the
land by working it and to support themselves as farmers.
The waves of emigration from Eastern Europe to Palestine from the 1880s
through the 1920s have a mythic status in Zionist history.9 But immigration to
Palestine accounted for just a small percentage of the Jewish population leavis
ing Russia. Conditions in Palestine were poor enough that even this period of
immigration was accompanied by the steady relocation of Jews to Europe and
the United States.10
The forty years following the pogroms of 1881 were nevertheless a period of
growth for the Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Jews of the New Yishuv
made concrete if modest achievements in agriculture and, with the help of
philanthropic organizations and individuals, some of the new settlements
managed to subsist. Simultaneous with these developments, and in some
ways more impressive, were the cultural achievements of the Yishuv. The
East European immigrants saw themselves as the revivers of Jewish culture.
In promoting the project of Jewish secular culture that had begun in Eastern
Europe, they helped synthesize a modern national identity that could serve
as an alternative to traditional religious identity.
During this period of nation-building, Hebrew language and literature were
undergoing a renaissance as well. The small nations of Eastern Europe, some
of which were trying to retain their “local” languages, served as a model. An edis
itorialist writing in 1918 for ha-Po¿el ha-tsa¿ir (The Young Worker) proposed that
the Ruthenian revival serve as a model for the revival of Hebrew from the botts
tom up—for the forceful integration of the language into daily communication.
He also noted that the Hebrew revivalists whom he saw meeting in Jaffa did not
speak Hebrew to each other, their fellow language activists, even as they hoped
to influence the course of Hebrew history.11 Popular and scholarly accounts
often portray Hebrew as a dead language that a few had suddenly revived.12 In
fact, Hebrew’s domain expanded steadily in this period.
The first Hebrew-language newspapers in Palestine appeared in the 1860s but
were plagued by a variety of political and financial problems. Eliezer Ben-�Yehuda
was responsible for a good portion of the journalism of the slightly more products
tive period of the 1880s. It was also in this period that schools first attempted to
adopt Hebrew as a language of instruction, thanks in part to the efforts of Ben-
Yehuda. Then, following the arrival of large groups of immigrants from Eastern
Europe, several newspapers were established in Yiddish and Hebrew, including
ha-Po¿el ha-tsa¿ir, which was founded as a weekly of the Young Workers’ movems
ment in 1907. The Workers of Zion movement, Po¿ale Tsiyon, published its newsps
paper in Yiddish until 1910 when it started publishing the Hebrew ha-A¿dut
(Unity). Ha-±erut (Freedom), serving the Sephardic community in Jerusalem,
was founded in 1909 as a biweekly and became a daily paper in 1912.13
˘ a new sound in hebrew poetry
During their gradual adoption of Hebrew as the official language of the New
Yishuv, the leaders of the revival movement faced practical difficulties in implems
menting their plans and sometimes disagreed among themselves as to how to
proceed. They revisited repeatedly the question of what Hebrew speech ought
to sound like. The majority of nationalist Jews in the Yishuv came from Eastern
Europe and their earliest experience (and for many their almost exclusive conts
tact) with Hebrew was in an Ashkenazic accent (such as Galician or Lithuans
nian). Yet the pedagogues came to a consensus early on that some kind of
Sephardic Hebrew—considered more authentic than the Ashkenazic family of
accents—was the appropriate choice for the national language. The nationalist
leaders and pedagogues disagreed as to precisely what that Hebrew should
sound like, but their repeated resolutions about the sound of Hebrew speech are
as much an indication of the challenges they faced in implementing any variats
tion on a Sephardic Hebrew as they are of their differences. Chief among the
practical problems preventing the Yishuv from effectively adopting a Sephardic
accent was the fact of an overwhelmingly Ashkenazic population. The evidence
nevertheless indicates that when teachers began to adopt Hebrew as a language
of instruction in the 1880s, they tried to implement a Sephardicized accent. As I
will discuss in chapter 2, the teachers were to reject a truly Sephardic accent for
underlying ideological reasons.
Quite apart from but implicated in these issues was the role of poetry in prods
ducing a national accent. The so-called language revival was not so much an
attempt to bring a dead or lost language back to life as it was the adoption of an
extant language to a wider range of uses, the reformation of Hebrew as an all-
encompassing language. Rather than serving merely as the language of prayer,
poetry, and the occasional stilted conversation with Jews from foreign lands,
Hebrew would be usable and useful in all arenas of life.14 The poetry of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was composed in an Ashkenazic accs
cent, but even the early attempts to implement a Sephardic accent in the
schools seem to have been accompanied in both the pedagogic and poetic
realms by the question of whether poetry ought to be written in a Se�phardic accs
cent. The discrepancy between poetic and the spoken Hebrew of the schools
generated controversy in the second decade of the twentieth century.
ably even greater linguistic barriers to producing a viable Hebrew prose in the
manner of the great nineteenth-century European novel than there were to
writing poetry in that language.15 If one includes liturgical writings, the poes
etic tradition in Hebrew runs uninterrupted from the ninth century through
to the present day. Despite the challenges of writing modern poetry in this
not-so-modern language, there was at least a rich tradition to draw on.
Poetry was the genre most consistently interrogated and evaluated with ress
spect to nationalist criteria in Russian Jewish culture. The contentious notion
of a Jewish “national poet” that developed in the 1880s and 1890s reflects this
generic bias that seems to have defined Russian literary criticism at the time.16
No such parallel title existed for other genres.17 In the last two decades of the
nineteenth century several poets were crowned with the title of national poet:
Yehudah Leyb Gordon, who wrote epic Jewish poems and, later in his career,
more politically and socially motivated lyric; the medieval Hebrew poet Yehs
hudah Halevi whose oeuvre was retrieved for modern pedagogic purposes
and who could attest to the continuity of Jewish literary expression and nats
tional longing for the Land of Israel; Simon Frug, who composed in Russian
and was known among the non-Jewish readership as well; and Bialik, who ults
timately retained the title.18 Hebrew lyric, like Hebrew speech, was a “nationos
ometer”—both in the sense of an instrument sensitive to conflicting notions
of proper nationalist politics and as a kind of dream of Hebrew sovereignty
through literary art. The fundamental dependency of poetic effect on the
way words are pronounced may have made this genre the overdetermined
choice for nationalist expression.
The aesthetic of the lyric inherited from the Te¿iyah generation of the late
nineteenth century was very much intertwined with the rhythms of speech
and was hegemonic. Accent in the sense of stress pattern was therefore critics
cal to poetic composition. The very rhythm of an accentual-syllabic poem
composed in Ashkenazic was endangered by the terminal-stress system of
Sephardic accents. In the early years of new-accent production, editors somets
times instructed readers to read a particular poem in the new accent.19 Poems
that did not rely on the repetition of word stress at very regular intervals—
such as those composed in free rhythm—were not as threatened by recitation
in an accent or stress system other than the one in which they had been comps
posed.20 Elisheva Bi¿ovski went so far as to worry aloud, or at least in print,
that the problem of accent and poetry was encouraging poets to abandon accs
centual-syllabic verse in favor of the (increasingly popular) free-verse composs
sition that was very much foreign to Bi¿ovski’s own aesthetic.21
For these local reasons of reception in the 1920s, in what follows I will be focs
cusing on accentual-syllabic poetry to the exclusion of free verse, although the
latter constitutes its own chapter in the history of new-accent poetry.22 The polits
tics of competing prosodic systems and the use of the new accent in lyric poetry
˘ a new sound in hebrew poetry
that does not employ an accentual-syllabic meter are relevant to the question of
the modes in which Hebrew literature adopted and integrated the New Hebrew.
Free verse was an important alternative to accentual-syllabic meter in the 1920s,
as distinct from the poetry of the thirties and forties as well as from the extant
dominant poetry of the Bialik school (although Bialik himself did compose
poetry that was not accentual-syllabic). From a prosodic perspective, the
twenties are bracketed in Hebrew literary history. The moment of indecision,
when Hebrew poetry stood between the recent Ashkenazic poetic tradition
and the imperative of Hebrew language, may have been partially responsible
for the temporary shift to free rhythm. The dominant poetries that preceded
and followed this period favored accentual-syllabic verse but did so with diffs
ferent accents.23
The relationship between speech and poetry meant that the Hebrew poem
became a testing ground for national identity in a number of ways. The poetic
corpus was charged with the task of configuring and interpellating the reader as
a lyric national subject. National identity echoed in the prosodic realm as well;
lyric was obliged to produce the sound that would represent the nation. What
would the modern Hebrew sound be? How would it distinguish itself from pre-
national or pre-territorial pronunciations of Hebrew? These questions were
�answered differently at various moments and were resolved by separate mechans
nisms for the standardization of speech and for poetry.
At the turn of the century, linguists and teachers debated the minutiae of Hebs
brew speech. The future of the sound of Hebrew was uncertain and sensitive to
competing conceptions of what the Hebrew nation would or should be. In these
debates, compromises, and resolutions, one finds expressions of anxiety about
the larger problem of creating a new national identity that would claim Jews as
a nation of a particular land, language, and literature. The pedagogic and revivas
alist institutions tried to design a sound for Hebrew in Palestine and decide
whether poetic language ought to determine or be determined by the sound of
Hebrew speech. The new accent that was adopted in Palestine became one of
the more controversial issues in Hebrew language and a point of convergence
for some of the major cultural and political forces of the time: the Labor movems
ment, the Hebrew revival movement, modernist poetry, the synthesis of a stands
dard spoken Hebrew, the canonization of Hebrew literature on a European
model, the territorialization of Hebrew, the nascent school system, European-
bred Zionism, and the forging of a neobiblical national identity.
Rashi on the Talmud and the Bible that exhibit French, Andalusian, and
other admixtures are an example of early rabbinic Hebrew.26 Old Yiddish
both contributed to the Hebrew language and drew from it. Ashkenazic Hebs
brew speech varied by region but in the fourteenth century came to be charas
acterized by an accent system that was distinct from earlier ones, including
that of the pointed Masoretic texts of the Bible and the Hebrew of their conts
temporaries in other regions. Ashkenazic Jews, possibly by analogy with other
languages to which they were exposed, tended to pronounce Hebrew words
with a major stress on the penultimate syllable with the exception of monoss
syllabic words and a few other categories of words.27 By contrast, earlier varietis
ies of Hebrew contained a small minority of penultimately stressed words.28
the relatively small set of words that would be penultimately stressed even in a
Sephardic accent. Although some, such as Mikhah Yosef Lebensohn and Yehuds
dah Leyb Gordon, allowed exceptions to this rule, it was in the main strictly apps
plied.33 This meant that the vast majority of the words the poets knew to be
penultimately stressed in their own Hebrew dialect were off-limits in the final
two syllables of each line. In the realm of sound and stress, Ashkenazic Hebrew
was treated as derivative and Sephardic Hebrew was considered more correct—
a classical Hebrew like that of the biblical texts. Wesselian prosody was a concs
crete sign of the hierarchy between Sephardic and Ashkenazic pronunciations
of Hebrew in an Ashkenazic context.
This compromise with the pronunciation of their predecessors meant that
the poets of the Jewish Enlightenment created a very artificial poetic Hebrew
with prosodic restrictions that bordered on the ridiculous. There is something
comic in their predicament—a poet composing happily in his own Ashkens
nazic accent until he approaches the end of the line and notices his Italian or
Andalusian ghost-muse peering over his shoulder, waiting for a rhyme word
that is penultimately stressed even in Sephardic pronunciations. But this
compromise was also a serious attempt to satisfy the rules of the classical
poets as well as of future poets who might share their aesthetic, regardless of
how they pronounced Hebrew.
do.36 Over the course of the nineteenth century there was more and more
support for this idea and growing dissatisfaction with the sound of Wesselian
poetry as compared to the sound of Russian and German poetry. Yet in an
Ashkenazic Hebrew context the full-fledged adoption of the spoken form of
Hebrew would have conflicted with the principle of language purity that
reigned during the Haskalah. The Sephardic stress system was consistent
with grammatical patterns and was associated with the Hebrew Bible, which
was read, at least in ritual contexts, using a terminal-stress system; the Ashkens
nazic system was considered corrupt. For the time being, there remained
among this group of bilingual poets a dichotomy between Hebrew and other
literatures—what was appropriate and necessary for Russian, German, or
English did not necessarily conform to the internal system of the Hebrew
language and was therefore not applicable to its poetry.37
Implicit in this explanation is the possibility that Hebrew poets would have
gladly adopted the rules of poetry in other languages were it not for the sad fact
that the closest thing they had to a vernacular was a corrupt form of Hebrew. Of
course, that attitude is of a piece with not fully accepting the idea of a vernaculs
lar national poetry. Robert Alter has described the ways in which Hebrew writes
ers of the nineteenth century were able to imagine Hebrew as a vernacular even
before there was one. Through various artifices, such as the use of direct transls
lations of Yiddish expressions, they were able to generate a literary vernacular in
imitation of European novelistic traditions.38 A parallel imaginative faculty, or
lack thereof, partly accounts for the hesitation of one generation and the willis
ingness of the next to compose accentual-syllabic poetry.
Accentual-syllabic meter requires a poet to declare the accent or stress system
she is using. The foot of accentual-syllabic poetry, unlike the syllabic unit of
Wesselian poetry, depends on the regular appearance of the natural emphases
of Hebrew speech. The location of these stressed syllables varies greatly bets
tween Ashkenazic and Sephardic accents, so that what constitutes three feet in
one accent may become an irregular arrangement of stressed and unstressed
syllables in the other. One reason why it may have taken so long for poets to
adopt the prosody that would have been so familiar to them from European lites
erature was that they did not treat their own Hebrew accents as a vernacular;
the Sephardic stress system represented not only high Hebrew but proper Hebs
brew speech as well.
By dispensing with the closest equivalent in Hebrew to a modern national lites
erary tradition and acknowledging his use of the Ashkenazic Hebrew accent in
his poetry, Bialik and a few of his contemporaries were able to create a poetic
simulation of a vernacular. This use of Ashkenazic allowed them to write the
kind of verse in Hebrew—trochaic, amphibrachic, iambic—that Europeans
could write in their respective mother tongues. Whereas the prototypical Hasks
kalah poet was trapped between his own penultimately stressed accent and the
introduction 11
high Medieval Hebrew of the poets of Spain and Italy, Bialik used his Ashkens
nazic Hebrew unabashedly. But even as Ashkenazic was coming to be accepted
as the new vernacular for poetic Hebrew, the program to revive spoken Hebrew
maintained a bias toward purity and a terminal-stress system.
In the 1880s—before Bialik started publishing poetry—attempts to make Hebs
brew an actual and not merely a literary vernacular among Jews of European
descent in both Palestine and Europe had begun, as had debates about the
proper way to pronounce Hebrew in both poetry and life, especially in the
schools. The revivalists favored a Sephardic or terminal-stress system from the
beginning. The audial dichotomy that was to develop between the recitation
of a poem and Hebrew speech in almost every other context was the result of
the application over the course of several decades of a common conception
that the language ought to function like a European vernacular. The idea of
composing accentual-syllabic poetry in Hebrew was very much inspired by Russs
sian and German, and the movement to revive spoken Hebrew was influenced
by the role of national languages in European nations, in their literatures, and
in the political revival movements of the smaller nations.39 Poetic Hebrew
evolved more quickly than spoken Hebrew. Poets applied the new rules of
�accentual-syllabic poetry to what they legitimately saw as the default vernaculs
lar—an Ashkenazic rather than a Sephardic Hebrew. They invested in the
new technology of vernacular Hebrew early in the development of that idea.
Not unlike advanced nations who are among the first to industrialize or modes
ernize or computerize their infrastructure, these poets soon found themselves
outdated, lagging behind those teachers and revivalists who had begun the procs
cess of adopting Hebrew a bit later and therefore had access to more updated
technology in the form of the new accent. It is only with the institution of the
new accent in Hebrew poetry, their second attempt at integrating accentual-
syllabic meter, that poets satisfied both the need for a national vernacular lites
erature and the desire for a pure Hebrew.
man and French poems into new-accent Hebrew for the youth newspaper he
edited, thereby ensuring that schoolchildren would have poems to read that
correlated with the Hebrew they were being taught to speak.41
The teens were the period of highest friction between poetry and pedags
gogy. There was already a generation of new-accent Hebrew speakers in Pales
estine and it was becoming clear that their Hebrew might very well be the
language of the New Yishuv. Both ha-Safah (The Language) and ha-Tekufah
(The Epoch) published pieces on the question of accent, poetry, and pedags
gogy. The publication of new-accent poems also began in the teens, albeit at
a slow rate. The bimonthly Moledet (Homeland) published new-accent works
including Jabotinsky’s skillful translation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,”
discussed above.42 The Teachers’ Union published Moledet for young Hebrew
readers in Palestine. This too indicates the pedagogic youth orientation of
new-accent poetry. In addition to ha-Tekufah and Moledet, Hedim (Echoes),
Davar (The Word), and ha-Shiloa¿ (The Siloam) also introduced their audies
ences to new-accent poems relatively early in the twenties—often with a note
that they be read in the “correct” accent. Ha-Tekufah came out in Odessa, ha-
Shiloa¿ in Berlin; the rest were published in Palestine.
By the early 1920s some poets were publishing new-accent poetry, includis
ing a group of women who only published and had only ever published verse
using the terminal-stress system. This was the period of the rise of women’s
poetry and the appearance of poems by Elisheva Bi¿ovski, writing under the
name “Elisheva”; Ra¿el Bluvshtain, writing as “Ra¿el”; Ester Rab; Malkah
Shekhtman, writing as “Bat-±amah”; and Yokheved Zelniak, also known as
“Yokheved Bat-Miryam.”43 Of these, Bi¿ovski, Bluvshtain, and Shekhtman
composed their accentual-syllabic poetry in the new accent. Bi¿ovski, in parts
ticular, was known for her “pure” Hebrew for using a Sephardic stress system
in her poetry and speaking new-accent Hebrew. Neither she nor Bluvshtain
published any poems composed in an Ashkenazic accent. In the 1920s Bat-
Miryam was composing in Ashkenazic, and Rab used the new accent but
composed in free rhythm. That is, with the exception of Bat-Miryam, the
popular female poets of the 1920s were composing almost exclusively in the
new accent. Most of the male poets, however, were still writing in Ashkenazic
in the early part of the decade.
The women were also more likely to begin their Hebrew careers in the new
accent; their male contemporaries, such as Uri Tsevi Greenberg and Avrahs
ham Shlonsky, began in Ashkenazic and switched to the new accent in the
mid- to late 1920s. There was some correlation between their choice of accent
on the one hand and their Jewish education, the nature of their exposure to
Hebrew and, to a lesser extent, their geographic location, on the other. Of the
five most popular Hebrew “poetesses” of the early to mid-1920s, those in
Â�Palestine—Rab and Bluvshtain—were composing in the new accent.44
introduction 13
ern. This book accounts for the timing of poetry’s adoption of the new accs
cent, the lyric uses of that accent as a way of imagining the old-new Jewish
nation, and the paradoxical association of women with a Hebrew sound that
would come to symbolize a powerful masculine national identity.
Even as the future leaders tried to build a modern nation, they propagated
an idea of the people’s essential unchanging character that could be tapped
in the present as it had been in prior moments of greatness. For these purps
poses the authentic was that which remained untouched by modernity. Johs
hann Gottfried Herder, the founder of a theory of cultural nationalism,
conceived of language as a nation’s link to its authentic past and perhaps the
most important artifact and symbol of national identity.51 For Herder, the
“greatness” of a nation is to be found in its language—a kind of constant or
soul of the nation—and is often associated in nationalist writing with that
which is common and low. The upper classes are represented as corrupt, cosms
mopolitan, exposed to and affiliated with foreign, international, and modern
influences. The lower classes are conversely associated with the true national
spirit. Hebrew literary and musical culture expressed these values. Well-
known poets of the period composed in low genres like the folk song, one
manifestation of the importance of authentic (if simulated) cultural artifacts.
These works were inspired by a variety of cultures—some were simply translats
tions of Russian, Yiddish, and Arabic songs—and were sung in a variety of
Hebrew accents, but prior to its appearance in the canonical genres, the new
accent served poets and their public through the folk song, the genre consides
ered most in tune with the national spirit.
The relatively early appearance of new-accent poetry for children and the
popular reception of poetry by women in the 1920s are both telling of the nats
tionalist narrative that the new accent encapsulates. Seen as unself-conscious
natural speakers, children and women frequently serve as symbols of authenticis
ity in nationalist movements—of native culture unaffected by modernity.52 By
the second decade of the twentieth century, the non-native-born adults were fascs
cinated with their native-born offspring whose presumed mother tongue was
Hebrew. A number of anecdotes from the period accentuate the supposedly
non-Jewish or Zionist disrespect and crudeness of the Hebrew of children born
in Palestine.53 The Hebrew of juvenile speakers was perceived as more colloqs
quial and less textual. Commonness and the idiom of the folk served as Herders
rian signs of national authenticity, so that this low register was a source of pride.
The Hebrew pedagogic project in Palestine was motivated by, among other
things, the goal of creating “natives,” and the demand for new-accent children’s
poetry was an expression of the wish to create a completely authentic Hebrew
speaker. The historical and literary reasons why women were responsible for so
much of the new-accent poetry of the twenties are some of the same reasons
that women’s poetry appeared in Hebrew at all in this period.
introduction 15
On the purely practical side, well into the twentieth century European Jewis
ish men were more likely than women to have a high level of exposure to Ashks
kenazic Hebrew and Aramaic intermingled with Yiddish as part of their
religious education, while Ashkenazic women would have been taught in Yidds
dish alone or, in certain educational contexts, in non-Jewish languages. (Inds
deed, the Yiddish-Hebrew educational technique facilitated the Haskalah: in
the paradigmatic biography of the maskil, the enlightened Jewish male taught
himself German through Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Hebrew
Bible.) If women did learn Hebrew, it was more than likely that they would have
done so in a nationalist context, as speakers rather than as reciters of Yiddish
and Hebrew. This in turn meant that Ashkenazic women in nineteenth-�century
Eastern Europe would have more frequently encountered new-accent Hebrew
earlier on in their Hebrew-language education than their male counterparts,
since they were given a far smaller dose of Hebrew in religious contexts and in
primary schools.
The nationalist logic provides a complementary justification for the convergs
gence of women’s and new-accent poetry in the 1920s. A class of East European
Jewish woman in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was more cosmopolis
itan than her male counterpart. Jewish nationalism nevertheless adopted the sems
miotics in which women were equated with the authentic, ancient, and
unchanging aspects of the nation. A serendipitous moment of ideological nats
tionalist poetry-writing marked the 1920s in Hebrew culture. This happy convs
vergence, along with a symbolic equating of women with authenticity, among
other factors, allowed for the rise of women’s poetry. Some women were able to
take advantage of that symbolism and even of the history of the exclusion and
absence of women from Hebrew poetry. If women were symbols of ancient auts
thenticity they could also lend that cachet to the poetry they wrote even—or esps
pecially—if they were never completely accepted as professional writers.
show how these poets wrote implicit (and sometimes fantastic) histories of
Hebrew language and literature in their poems and how they inscribed the
new accent as an element in the proto-national identity of the New Yishuv.
This section also reconfigures new-accent history by tracing the naturalizats
tion of the New Hebrew in poetry. By looking at the reception of these poets, I
am able to reflect on the ways in which they shaped readers’ perceptions and accs
count for the choices they made in presenting New Hebrew—how they formuls
lated the new accent as the territorial, contemporary, authentic, and
representative Hebrew, as the language of the laboring immigrant-native in Pales
estine. I also imagine the context their poems invoke or might have invoked for
their contemporary readers so as to nuance my own description of the Labor,
New Yishuv, and gender politics of the new accent and new-accent poetry.
The juxtaposition of a central canonical male poet and the most popular of
the new breed of “women poets” of the twenties also necessarily brings their
differences into high contrast—in particular the very different options availas
able to men and women in writing a history of Hebrew poetry through their
poems and personae. My recreation in chapter 3 of a Bluvshtainian interprets
tation of Shlonsky’s new-accent method through the evidence of a critical essay
by Bluvshtain more subtly dramatizes the different options and limitations imps
posed on these poets.
It is perhaps counterintuitive in a book that criticizes scholars for valorizing
Shlonsky’s own presentation of himself as the new-accent poet that an entire
chapter is devoted to his new-accent poetry and poetics. As much as I object to
what I see as a distortion of Shlonsky’s role and his primacy, his sheer creativity
and poetic-linguistic manipulation of the new accent is nothing short of breathts
taking. Shlonsky was a poet-critic-translator extraordinaire, a grand homme of
Hebrew letters who for a time defined and dominated Hebrew poetry and arguas
ably influenced its course more than any other—this from the 1920s when he
was seen as the rebellious son to Bialik’s father figure until the period of Natan
Alterman’s dominance of Hebrew poetry. Although Shlonsky’s prosodic accomps
plishments are rightly celebrated, in voting for his primacy critics have somets
times inadvertently glossed over his actual accomplishments. I hope to correct
what I see as a paradoxical underappreciation of the particular, subtle, refreshis
ing, innovative, and seductive ways in which Shlonsky gave meaning to the new
sound in Hebrew poetry.
Bialik is the only poet working all but exclusively in Ashkenazic Hebrew to be
the object of more than passing attention in this book. He initiated a fair share
of innovations in the sound, prosody, and other features of Hebrew poesy, but
his status and his influence are somehow more than the sum of their parts in
the realm of accent. Over the years, Bialik’s influence has diminished far less
than Shlonsky’s. In a book that takes the nationalist uses of literature and langs
guage as phenomena of great interest, it seems a necessary pleasure to name
introduction 19
and to begin, at least, to account for the paradox of a national poet who never
fully adopted the new-accent Hebrew that had already become the de facto nats
tional language in the course of his career. He was an Ashkenazic-Hebrew poet
more than Shlonsky was, more than his contemporary Tchernichovsky, and
more than others of high stature. Yet it is Bialik who was crowned national poet.
This paradox is the subject of the brief epilogue with which the book closes, an
attempt to gather some of the threads of literary ambitions, achievements, and
ideologies with linguistic ones. It is the literary, the linguistic, and the expresss
sion of the one through the other that is the concern of this book.
Chapter One
—Max Weinreich
20
“Make your school a nation-state” 21
arship that addresses the new accent most often interprets its rise in poetry as
motivated by the Land of Israel itself. Scholars tend to assume a necessary relatk
tionship between Palestine and the new accent without accounting for the
complexity of interactions between Hebrew speech and literature or identifying
a mechanism for poetry’s adoption of the new accent. With one demographic
stroke, territory, or the Jewish presence in Palestine, is meant to resolve the
question of the relationship between spoken and poetic Hebrew and between
land and language. Baron does not rely on such assumptions to explain why
Brakhah’s parents pronounce her name differently. The narrator simply states
that Brakhah’s father was a former Hebrew teacher.
And it is here with the figure of the teacher that I choose to begin; his profk
fession is the second reason Rothstein introduces my narrative of the rise of
new-accent poetry. Instead of looking to territory or even the compositions of
a strong poet such as Avraham Shlonsky to explain the literary rise of the new
accent, as many scholars do, I locate the motivation for the shift in the institk
tutions of the nascent school system. It was the pedagogues who, over the
course of about thirty years, presided over Hebrew’s successive integration
into the classroom at all levels, from the primary school and the kindergarten
to the college and university. With this integration into ever-higher levels of
education from the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, the status of
the spoken Hebrew of the schools rose. This rise in status was responsible for
poetry’s eventual adoption of the new accent. Baron’s narrator hints at the
role of teachers, their classrooms, and the Hebrew schools more generally in
the literary history of the new accent; my narrative of the rise of the new acck
cent has a pedagogic subplot.
The teachers inculcated in the minds of the Jews of the New Yishuv the
notion that the sound of the new accent corresponded to the territory of Palek
estine. Once scholarship adopted this notion, the implicit and central questk
tion became a retrospective one: why did the integration of the new accent
into poetry take so long, between twenty-five and thirty-five years after teachek
ers first tried to adopt it in spoken Hebrew? The very first attempts to implemk
ment a new accent in the Jewish settlement began in the last two decades of
the nineteenth century, simultaneous with the first large-scale waves of Jewik
ish emigration from Eastern Europe, but poetry’s definitive switch to the new
accent is usually dated thirty years later, in the late 1920s.
For the most part, scholars resolve the so-called delay by pinpointing a momk
ment when territory was somehow activated or by naming a figure able to activk
vate the territory at a particular moment. The scholar Eliezer Kagan favors the
hypothesis that poetry switched to the new accent as a direct result of the remk
moval of the center of Hebrew literature from Russia to Palestine in the 1920s,
as does Uzi Shavit, whose work I discuss below.1 In both these narratives Hebk
brew literature “migrated” to Palestine along with the major literary figures of
22 a new sound in hebrew poetry
the period: Mordekhai Temkin who arrived in 1909 (and again in 1911), Yaakov
Rabinovits (in 1910), Yaakov Fikhman (in 1912), Yehudah Karni (in 1921), Bialik
(in 1924), and Tchernichovsky (in 1925 and again in 1931).2
In his study of Fikhman’s transition from the use of an Ashkenazic to the
new accent, Kagan invokes the landscape first as a kind of muse, a necessary
inspiration for poetry in general.3 He claims that problems arise when the
writer deserts the maternal, nurturing landscape of his childhood for another,
adopted landscape:
This transition from one climate to another, from four seasons to two, from
snow to rain alone, from a warm European sun to a blazing Israeli one,
from low temperatures to high, from rich northern foliage to sparse sub-
tropical vegetation, from one kind of clothing to another, from one man-
made landscape to another—this transition was a crisis in the life of every
artist emigrating to the Land [of Israel] from the European Diaspora.
(Kagan 1976, 45)
Migration initiates a moment of crisis. Just as being thrown into exile can lead
to national as well as personal trauma, the return trip, “the seminal experience
of exchanging exile for redemption,” can lead to great suffering, including
“pangs of withdrawal.” The artist must have time to recover (45). Like other
scholars of Hebrew literature, Kagan sees the waves of immigration of the early
twentieth century as the pivotal events in Jewish literary history.4 The several
cultural centers of the Jewish European Diaspora are replaced by the single
centralizing structure of the new settlement in Palestine. In both poetry and litek
erary history, this focus on discontinuity encourages writers to project authentk
ticity onto the territory of Palestine itself. Kagan translates these geographic
themes into linguistic ones, presenting the accent differential between Palestk
tine and Europe as a parallel trauma that may also produce “pangs of withdk
drawal.” Just as the landscape, the climate, and the foliage affect and inspire the
poet’s song, the environment determines the accent in which he composes:
In the Land of Israel the Israeli accent [mivta’], called “Sephardic,” was acck
cepted with a biblical terminal stress [hat¿amah], while the aforementioned
poets composed their poetry in the Diaspora using the Ashkenazic penultk
timate stress. (45)
The geographic return to the homeland becomes the retrieval of an older,
nobler cultural heritage. In this fantasy, the Land of Israel activates the natk
tion. There will be a delay as the poets recover and continue “for a time, out
of inertia, to use the Ashkenazic intonation.” Just as the immigrants are powek
erless to change the climate of their new environment, so too do they eventuak
ally submit to “the natural demands of the current accent [mivta’].” (45)
I am under no illusion that Kagan actually believes accent to be a natural
phenomenon, like the climate. His presentation is nevertheless telling of a lack
“Make your school a nation-state” 23
would have come from the poets’ own ideological sympathies or as a result of
the rising status of new-accent Hebrew speech. The successes of the pedagk
gogues and the expansion of Hebrew’s domain were the source of pressure on
the poets to adopt the new accent at this earlier stage.
As Weinreich suggests in the epigraph to this chapter, one sign of the overwk
whelming success of a dialect is its ceasing to be considered one. The ultimk
mate predominance of the new accent obscures from view the question of
how it came to be the standard. The underlying problem with these explanatk
tions is that they take for granted the mode of territorialization that Hebrew
underwent.11 They treat the new accent as if it were autochthonous, and take
for granted that poetry must follow speech, but do not name actual sites of intk
teraction between the two. They therefore beg several central questions:
What mechanisms made one accent predominate over the others? How and
why did the new accent become the standard for Hebrew speech in Palestine?
What about the relationship between poetic and spoken Hebrew in Palestine
determined that the former would mimic the latter? How was it that the tides
seem to have turned toward new-accent poetry in Palestine precisely during
the period of a great influx of Ashkenazic-accented talent?
full of dates, names, and mini-narratives of the institutions and events that
shaped the Hebrew language and the school system in Palestine. But Aza�r�yahu
is also an interested party in the events he narrates.
He characterizes the Hebrew school as a new and distinct phenomenon.
Like the “building of the Land” of Israel, it was inspired by a national drive
and became, in turn, “a powerful motivating force” that strengthened and
advanced the project of nation-building (Azaryahu 57). Two traits define the
new Hebrew school:
Azaryahu apologizes for his trivial definition; he cannot imagine that the
British or French school would ever be reduced to its language of instruction
(Azaryahu 57). But of course the language of instruction is precisely what
does define a national school system. The dialect that becomes the language
of the schools does not do so independently, as part of the rise and fall of variok
ous dialects, but is imposed.
The Old Yishuv offers the closest parallel to a natural and pragmatic evolution
of Hebrew dialects in modern times. Hebrew was being used as a spoken langk
guage in Safed, Tiberias, and Jerusalem, and given the relative difficulty of travel
in Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one might even
speak of the development of different dialects in these regions. There are,
however, important differences between the European paradigm for the devk
velopment of a national language and the situation of the Old Yishuv. When
the Jews of Palestine spoke Hebrew prior to or outside the institutions and domk
main of the revival, they were not speaking their mother tongues, and the Hebk
brew encounters between Jews of different linguistic backgrounds would have
been relatively frequent.15 In a non-nationalist scenario there is little motivatk
tion to make one usage replace others even if the differences serve as a pretext
for declaring one superior. In the Old Yishuv, the Asheknazic Jews continued
to use their own various (Lithuanian, Galician, German) Hebrew pronunciatk
tions in prayer and other rituals. When speaking with Sephardic Jews, they
would not have adopted a Syrian accent, for example, but would have merely
Sephardicized their own Hebrew, using a terminal-stress system and perhaps attk
tempting to mimic other features of their interlocutor’s speech. The ingredients
of this makeshift Hebrew would have varied with location. Hebrew as a lingua
franca of the Old Yishuv was still not a standardized language. Like a hybridizatk
tion of dialects that serves as a bridge between two communities, these makeshift
Hebrews allowed people with different mother tongues as well as different Hebk
brew accents to communicate minimally.
“Make your school a nation-state” 27
These two elements reinforce each other: Hebrew language tends to nationalik
ize general cultural and scientific knowledge, transforming it into Hebrew
knowledge; Hebrew is in turn transformed into a universal language inasmuch
as it becomes the conduit of all knowledge. The language of instruction in a
school system is not merely an invisible tool of pedagogy. It is what makes all of
knowledge available. In French or German or Spanish schools, science and
history are taught in those respective languages with the effect that the univk
versal is nationalized. The process by which knowledge is relayed in a given
language tends to equate that language with Culture itself.
The Hebrew pedagogues understood that part of their job was to universalik
ize Hebrew. Azaryahu writes about the insertion of
general human issues into the framework of our national culture, and creak
ating a wide and inclusive national education that has within it a full and
unified weltanschauung, Hebrew and human as one.€.€.€.€Everything they
are thinking about, learning, everything that impresses them—that is Hebk
brew for them because they are Hebrew human beings. The Pythagorean
Theorem, Archimedes’ Principle or biological phenomena in nature that
they have come to know and recognize, are to them as Hebrew as Mendk
dele’s creations are, as Bialik and Tchernichovsky by whom they have been
influenced—inasmuch as they are the impressions of their Hebrew soul
and their spiritual acquisition. (Azaryahu 58; emphasis added)
28 a new sound in hebrew poetry
Teaching history and science in Hebrew has the effect of presenting the universk
sal as national and of linking knowledge, education, class, and status to proper
Hebrew speech. Teaching Hebrew literature (or any particular national literatk
ture) as Literature itself is likewise a way of universalizing that particular natk
tional literary culture. This is one reason why the formation of a canon for the
schools is dependent upon the standardization of a national language. One can
teach about form, history, methods of literary interpretation, and what it means
to be human in a Hebrew literature class, and that too is a presentation of the
universal through the particular. A more immediate relationship, however, devk
velops between literature as a subject in the schools and language than between
other subjects and language, because literature serves as an imaginary model of
proper speech. Hebrew literature becomes a necessary tool for standardizing
the language, for making it a language in which speakers can take pride, a
hope Ahad Ha’am preserved for Hebrew speakers. The language must also be
capable of containing modern literary forms.16 This was all part of their projek
ect to imagine the new universalized national Hebrew subject.
The 1894 decision to teach Bible in Hebrew revealed a desire to naturalize
and nationalize Hebrew. In hindsight it may seem perfectly logical and rather
unremarkable, but it was, as one historian puts it, a “groundbreaking decisk
sion.”17 Yiddish was the language of instruction in the heder—the traditional
religious boys’ school in Europe and later in Palestine. Before Azaryahu and
his colleagues implemented changes, the traditional mode of Bible study was
predominant: students would recite the Hebrew original and its Yiddish translk
lation phrase by phrase. Bible was now being integrated into general educatk
tion in these schools simply by virtue of its being taught in Hebrew instead of
Yiddish. When general subjects began to be taught in Hebrew a few years
later, Bible as a subject was further departicularized, of a piece with Hebrew
education in general. In 1907, a new curriculum recommended that geograpk
phy lessons be based on the land of Israel.18 This was another one of many
pedagogic habits—and one that seems to have been adopted widely—that enck
couraged the universalizing of the particular. In this instance, the territorial
content of the course of study echoed the territorial fiction implicit in the insk
stitution of a standard language.19 The pedagogues were trying to demonsk
strate a coincidence between geography and language even as they struggled
to impose rules of pronunciation upon Hebrew speakers in Palestine.
These innovations in pedagogy at the turn of the century contributed to Hebk
brew’s rise in value, to making it the national language of this proto-nation.
The schools were gradually effecting a situation in which Hebrew would beck
come the obvious choice, where its particularity could be forgotten even beyk
yond the school walls. Self-consciousness was necessary precisely because
beyond those walls Hebrew was in an even weaker position than it was within
them. The schools were faced with a bigger problem than simply selecting
“Make your school a nation-state” 29
and perfecting one dialect or mode of speech among many related dialects,
namely the absence of native speakers of any kind of Hebrew. Pedagogues
turned to new theories of second-language acquisition to solve this problem.
They found they could teach Hebrew as if it already were the national langk
guage by adopting the natural method.
Epstein is not merely using the natural method to teach Hebrew. He is integk
grating the natural method into the nationalist cause of language revival and
breathing life into Jewish history and the Hebrew language.22 In this formulatk
tion of language learning, nature is the teacher and there is a direct parallel
between language and realia.23 This presentation is reminiscent of some of
the strategies of the primers of the period in which Hebrew is depicted as the
natural speech of the child, akin to the bird’s song and the cat’s meow.24
The natural method had been designed to teach a second language to speakek
ers of a national language. It was assumed that pupils in the primary schools of
Europe could speak the languages of their respective nations by the time they
were old enough to go to school—that the language of instruction was in fact
their mother tongue. The innovation of “¿Ivrit be-¿Ivrit” was to use the method
not to facilitate the acquisition of a foreign language, but with the national langk
guage itself as the target, so that Hebrew would in the course of a generation or
two become a mother tongue. Epstein sees this method as a solution to the problk
lem of the nation’s lack of a national language. He warns against both using
other languages in the classroom and emphasizing reading and book-learning
over speech and direct experience, in keeping with the philosophy of the naturk
ral method. Before moving from the outdoors to the classroom, he compares
the natural method to book-learning through agriculture, the favorite metapk
phoric realm of the nationalist writers of the period. The farmer who knows
how to care for his crops, Epstein reminds the reader, is in the end more useful
than the agronomist who cannot plow a field:
[Follow these prescriptions] but in an even more orderly manner, and the
language the children are learning shall be like a mother tongue to them.
Let not your pupils hear even one word of their language escape your lips,
be in their eyes as people who cannot speak their [own] language. Make
your school—during your lessons, at the very least—into a small nation-
state in which only the language of instruction is spoken; the child shall
understand that when he crosses the threshold of the school he is entering
this nation-state. (Epstein 386; emphasis added)
The Hebrew classroom or the school does not merely teach the child to be a
good citizen, as any school must do. Epstein’s classroom must serve as a subsk
stitute home in teaching a new mother tongue, and as a substitute nation-state
for a people that has neither territorial sovereignty nor, as yet, a national langk
“Make your school a nation-state” 31
The high school students speak a Hebrew in which the major stress tends to
fall on the final syllable of a word. This means that when they read the works
of the two most renowned poets of their time, those works do not sound poek
etic. This is a moment of crisis; the project of Hebrew pedagogy has been undk
dermined. As Azaryahu correctly asserts, the nation is supposed to present
universal knowledge through its own language as Hebrew knowledge, but the
students of ±azan’s essay are left to wonder how Hebrew poems are to be
read. Some may simply be convinced of the inferiority of the rhythms of their
national literature. The exposure to other national literatures would have set
expectations for how a poem can orchestrate sounds and Hebrew poetry is
failing to live up to those expectations.
When a single volume of accentual-syllabic poems talks, it tells us more
“Make your school a nation-state” 35
about the sound of Hebrew than does the essay, the short story, the scientific
text, or the nineteenth-century syllabic poetry against which Bialik and Tcher�
nichovsky reacted. ±azan encourages poets to continue to write in accentual-
syllabic meter—but in the new accent—by pointing out its usefulness. Hebrew
teachers will use such a rhythmic corpus to reinforce the sounds of the new-
accent Hebrew they are trying to inculcate in their students, and this poetry
might even help members of the older generation to shed their own accents
and adopt the new accent in Hebrew.
The pedagogues seem not to have experienced a true crisis vis-à-vis the availak
ability of new-accent poetry—perhaps because this difficulty was lost in the
more general problem of finding Hebrew-teaching aids of all kinds as well as in
the other challenges of introducing and maintaining a proper and unified Hebk
brew in the schools. Some of the poets, however, seem to have been subject to
no small anxiety about the future status of their Ashkenazic works. Accent was
controversial for them because it stood at the point of convergence between
spoken and poetic language. The schools had the ability to crown literary works
as canonical and they had clearly rejected the Ashkenazic accent. This threatek
ened the very status of the works of these Ashkenazic poets as constituting Hebk
brew culture and as the analogue to the Russian, French, or German poetry
they read. I will recount a well-documented moment of one poet’s anxiety.
Tchernichovsky published his first poem in 1892 and his first volume of
poems in 1898. Along with Bialik he introduced the Hebrew-reading public
to accentual-syllabic verse in an Ashkenazic accent. In 1912, Tchernichovsky
wrote an article for the Russian Hebrew journal ha-Safah.31 By then he was a
major figure in Jewish intellectual and literary circles and also had a considek
erable popular following. His article, which is more like a letter to the editor,
captures the temporary conflict between schools and poets, between the
teachers who were instituting one kind of Hebrew in the schools and the Hebk
brew poets who wrote in another. In the 1930s, after four decades of Ashkenk
nazic writing, this poet would go on to produce a considerable corpus of
poems in new-accent Hebrew. As early as the twenties, he had been introducik
ing Bi¿ovski at her poetry readings and praising her “pure” Hebrew. He was
to become, in short, an unequivocal supporter of the new accent. But in 1912
Tchernichovsky was still a staunch defender of Ashkenazic.
When we had only those who perused books, or even those who read them,
it was not such a great evil; but now that we are fortunate enough to have
among us people reciting their own or others’ creative work in public, it is
an entirely different matter. And it is still not a terrible thing in prose. But
when you read poetry aloud, then you see the strangeness of the thing. The
reciter doesn’t know—or if he does at that moment may not remember—
that our poems, since the days of the artist Maneh, are [accentual-syllabic],
and he forgets that the best of the poem is its ringing tone and that a poem
36 a new sound in hebrew poetry
is a musical utterance which has rhythm. And if one were to read a poem
by Maneh, for example, according to grammatical rules [i.e., with the impk
position of a terminal-stress pattern or a Sephardic accent], the meter would
be lost, as if it had never been. (CD 165)
The poet has walked into Epstein’s talking library—and he does not like
what he hears. Tchernichovsky is most concerned about the bookcase that
houses the accentual-syllabic poetry—“our poems since Maneh’s time”—
and that it continue to be included in the library.32 He fears that his poetry,
like Maneh’s, will be deconstructed, rendered prosaic by the suppression of
its meter. If students are taught to read his poems in their own new-accent
Hebrew, his success in satisfying the European aesthetic demands will be
forgotten; his integration of “European” meter into Hebrew poems unappreck
ciated. A student looking for the kind of complex and well-designed rhythms
he hears in other national literatures will find Hebrew wanting. For a Hebk
brew poet as immersed and invested in European poetry as Tchernichovsky,
this is a tragic turn of events. Even if his poems continue to be read and canok
onized by the school, they will no longer be appreciated as successful metric
compositions.
A Hebrew teacher’s response to Tchernichovsky was published in the next
issue of ha-Safah:33
I hereby confess my sins. In the early years of my teaching career I could
not read those accentual-syllabic poems written in the Ashkenazic stress
[hat¿amah] in the correct grammatical stress simply because, as TchernichovÂ�
sky put it, my ears couldn’t stand the cacophony of such a recitation.€.€.€.€durik
ing the Bible lesson as well as all the other lessons I would teach my students
to read with the grammatical stress, and during the poetry readings we
would read in a penultimate-stress pattern. But little time had passed befk
fore I realized my error. The duality of the stress systems [hat¿amah] introdk
duced confusion in the children’s minds, and they not only completely
ceased to read properly [i.e., with a terminal-stress pattern], but their recitatk
tion of poetry was also hybridized: at times they read with the grammatical
stress pattern and at other times with the wrong one [i.e., the stress pattern
that characterizes Ashkenazic Hebrew].
And so I did not accomplish the goal for which this sacrifice had been
made, and everything I had done was contrary to the rules and demands of
pedagogy—for I was destroying with one hand what I had built with the
other. (CD 168–169)
The teacher is sympathetic to the poet’s complaint. He also appreciates that
the disjunction between the stress system used in poetic language and the
one used in spoken Hebrew is a problem for the schools as much as it is for
TchernichovÂ�sky. If the poem is read in the school’s accent it is rendered “nonpk
poetic.” The teachers cannot teach Hebrew poetry as Poetry, and the pedagk
“Make your school a nation-state” 37
was small and composed mostly of Sephardic students. In order to increase enrollmk
ment, they encouraged Ashkenazic students to attend, but the Ashkenazic populk
lation could not be expected to send its children to a school in which Ladino, for
example, was the language of instruction (Ladino is the Judeo-Spanish language
of the Jews of the eastern Mediterranean). The school administration would no
doubt have responded differently had it seen the implementation of Hebrew as an
expression of nationalist sentiment, as a threat to the status of the French langk
guage, or as weakening French influence in the Yishuv in general. Instead, Hebk
brew was offered as a solution to a practical problem. In that sense, the linguistic
situation was not essentially different from that of the Old Yishuv in which Ashkenk
nazic Jews addressed Yemenite and Se�phardic Jews in Hebrew. But while the
school’s decision was based on practical concerns rather than a nationalist agenda,
it was nonetheless a decision—as Â�opposed to an unexamined consensus, as in the
Old Yishuv marketplace—Â�that reflected a belief that Hebrew was a common and
therefore unifying language.41 This may be seen as a turning point, as contributik
ing in some modest, practical, and symbolic way to the nationalization of the langk
guage. At the very least, the school briefly served as a laboratory of language
instruction for David Yellin and Yosef Meyu¿as, who replaced Ben-Yehuda.
Ben-Yehuda, however, certainly did have an ideological motivation. Throughok
out the 1870s, he had tried to persuade schools in Palestine to use Hebrew as the
language of instruction. He favored the natural method of teaching “¿Ivrit be-
¿Ivrit,” the norm for revivalist teachers, and some version of the method eventuak
ally became the standard for teaching Hebrew in all Alliance schools.42 The
elements that scholars employ to define language revival were already extant in
the 1880s and 1890s, although some consider the revival to have begun later.
The most significant difference between Ben-Yehuda’s early career and the prodk
ductive years of his junior colleagues was that in the latter period, standardizatk
tion was implemented in many areas of Yishuv life, in part as a result of the
mass migration of the Second Aliyah.43
In the late 1880s, the first rural-settlement schools began to teach certain genek
eral subjects, such as arithmetic and history, in Hebrew.44 A relatively small langk
guage war was fought in 1887–1889 between the lower-level administrators of
Baron Rothschild’s settlements who favored French and the teachers who
switched to Hebrew over the next two decades. Rothschild himself favored the
use of Hebrew. In fact, the language of instruction at the Rishon le-Tsiyon
school had been Yiddish until Rothschild requested that it be Hebrew. In contk
trast to his employees, he saw little value in implementing French as the langk
guage of the Jews in Palestine and, like many nationalists, regarded Yiddish as a
low-status language. In 1893 he visited Zikhron Yaakov and asked that there,
too, the language of instruction be Hebrew instead of Yiddish.45 Paradoxically,
this was noncontroversial both because of Hebrew’s low status and its seeming
inability to compete with French, and because of the even lower status of
40 a new sound in hebrew poetry
�
Yiddish. Even the French representatives of Rothschild who did not support
Jewish nationalism preferred Hebrew to Yiddish.
The new accent was still very controversial in the rural settlements, howek
ever, and in several schools in which Hebrew-language instruction was first
implemented, it did not survive into the twentieth century.46 In Rosh Pinah
and Rishon le-Tsiyon, for example, the schools returned to Yiddish and French,
respectively, very soon after the first implementation of Hebrew-language insk
struction, and the religious establishment in general objected strongly (and
effectively) to the use of the “holy tongue” in the schools.47 In addition to tryik
ing to influence the existing schools of Baron Rothschild and the Alliance,
pedagogues tried to open new schools in which they would have the freedom
to teach in Hebrew. In response to religious opposition to the use of the “holy
tongue” as a quotidian language, New Yishuv settlers wanted to establish
both a religious school and a secular school to replace the hybrid one in
Re¿ovot.48 Sim¿ah ±ayim Vilkomits came to that town in 1897 and taught
there briefly before moving to Rosh Pinah in the north.
While Hebraists were doing their best to institute Hebrew as a subject and
�especially as a language of instruction in the rural settlements, nationalist educk
cators in Jaffa—the urban center of the New Yishuv—were trying to find alternatk
tives to the Talmud Torah school and the heder that would be more appropriate
for a secular nationalist population. In 1889 Yisrael Belkind opened a school
whose curriculum included religious subjects as well as Hebrew language, histk
tory, and math. Hebrew was the language of instruction from the outset in all
subjects with the exception of math, which was at first taught in Yiddish (�Elboim-
Dror 131–132; Azaryahu 65–66). The school survived for three years. The Alliak
ance and ±oveve Tsiyon agreed to fund a boys’ school and a girls’ school in Jaffa
that opened in 1893 and 1894, respectively. The schools were not as zealously
Hebraist as Belkind’s had been—for example, several subjects were taught initk
tially in French—but were nevertheless dedicated to cultivating Hebrew speakek
ers and instituting Hebrew as the language of instruction. In 1902, when the
disagreement between the nationalist ±oveve Tsiyon and the non-nationalist
Alliance seemed irresolvable, they agreed to divide their common wealth. The
Alliance took charge of the boys’ school and ±oveve Tsiyon the girls’ school.
Over the next ten years, the Jaffa girls’ school became a center of Hebrew
education and activism. Azaryahu writes of the New Yishuv as centered in
the rural areas and of Hebrew education as erupting there spontaneously.
This makes it seem as if agriculture and education were mutually reinforcing
goals. In fact, the two areas competed for resources and Vilkomits, who spent
his career in the north, was one of the only pedagogues who succeeded in intk
tegrating agriculture into Hebrew education.49 The urban spirit of Hebrew
education was considered a failure of the system.50
The first Hebrew kindergarten was founded in Rishon le-Tsiyon in 1898.
“Make your school a nation-state” 41
±azan’s article in ha-Shiloa¿ appeared the same year, urging poets to write in
the new accent.51 As if to indicate that these events were not unrelated, 1898 was
also the year Shemuel Leyb Gordon started writing new-accent poetry for childk
dren.52 The founding of a Hebrew kindergarten in Rishon le-Tsiyon was an entk
tirely different enterprise than the introduction of Hebrew as a language of
instruction in the Alliance school. The decision to open the kindergarten was
not a pragmatic one, since most if not all of the inhabitants of this agricultural
settlement were native Yiddish speakers. Rishon le-Tsiyon was an unadulterated
First Aliyah product—it was founded in 1882 and its population grew thanks to
subsequent waves of Zionist immigrants. The teachers and inhabitants of Rishon
le-Tsiyon cultivated a reputation as the Hebrew-speaking settlement, and they
made a very purposeful decision to open a Hebrew kindergarten.53
The primary schools demonstrated that Hebrew was sufficiently sophisticated
to function as a “living language” by declaring it the language of instruction,
thus initiating the rise of Hebrew in the educational system. In the process of
adopting it as a language of instruction, the schools expanded Hebrew’s capabk
bilities. Hebrew’s “immaturity” caused many pedagogic crises—the lack of
teaching aids, an impoverished vocabulary, and the pedagogues’ own difficulty
speaking and teaching in Hebrew. All the other educational institutions grew
out of the primary school—the high schools directly, as the Hebrew-speaking
pupils grew up, and the kindergartens as language-preparatory schools for the
first grade.54 The first gymnasium to open, in 1905 in Jaffa, was at first populated
by future high school students who were in the first through fourth grades at the
time; it only lived up to its name when its pupils came of age a few years later
(Azaryahu 83). These were the early stages of Hebrew’s rise, but one can already
see how knowledge of New Hebrew could have accrued economic advantage
for its pupils in the form of job opportunities: young graduates of the Hebrew
high schools were hired as teachers in the growing school system (Azaryahu 63).
In the first few years of the twentieth century Hebrew may have still been sometk
thing of a specialty market. This advantage in finding work was based on the
rising status of the language; schools were expanding but only a small segment
of the population could speak Hebrew fluently. In the second decade of the
century, most speakers would have either been the first or second generation of
graduates of the school system. As the number of native Hebrew speakers grew,
so did the number of available teachers. But as the language was institutionalik
ized in other domains, such as the press and bureaucratic agencies like the
Histadrut, speakers’ economic advantages increased further.55
The founding dates of the various schools and high schools indicate that
the primary schools generated a momentum and a population that required
and expected Hebrew education, culminating in a Hebrew victory in the so-
called Language War of 1913. The teachers created a demand by educating a
critical mass of students in Hebrew in their primary school years. Eventually,
42 a new sound in hebrew poetry
the Jaffa high school was founded in 1905 although, as mentioned, several years
were to pass before its students reached high school age. A second high school
opened three years later in Jerusalem, and in 1912 the Odessa branch of ±oveve
Tsiyon opened a teachers’ seminary for women in Jaffa. Aside from the union
and its steering committee, the other major force affecting Hebrew education
and its politics in the period between the formation of the Teachers’ Union and
World War I was the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden.
its members and held a public meeting as well, announcing plans to open a
high school in Haifa to replace the Hilfsverein’s and requesting that all the
teachers conduct classes in Hebrew. But this move was made only after it beck
came clear that the masses were willing to fight this war (Elboim-Dror 316).
As Elboim-Dror’s documentation demonstrates, the teachers’ organizations
were relatively conservative, not wanting to upset the equilibrium nor alienak
ate the powerful Hilfsverein that prior to World War I was in charge of insk
structing almost half the students studying in modern schools.60 In other
words, grassroots activism characterized the outbreak of the war. The protest
against a single decision of the board of directors of the Technion soon beck
came a general attack on foreign influence in the schools and on German infk
fluence in particular. By February 1914 the Hilfsverein realized it had lost not
only Jewish popular support in Palestine but the backing of its American and
Russian philanthropists as well. The Hilfsverein was forced to allow Hebrew
to be the language of instruction.
The relationship between modernity and national language is the theme of
the Hilfsverein story. The use of Hebrew was an expression of national authentk
ticity, a symbolic link to the ancient and noble past of the nation in its homelk
land. But in the pedagogic domain Hebrew was also meant to be a sign for what
in nationalism is the yin of authenticity’s yang: modernity. Technology and sciek
ence were, therefore, of particular national importance for the European pedagk
gogues, administrators, and philanthropists who wanted to institute high-quality
science teaching, as well as for the nationalists in Palestine who had wanted Hebk
brew to prove itself as a modern and able purveyor of knowledge. The Germans,
on the other hand, had their own nationalist agenda and wanted their own langk
guage to be the medium of science teaching—an agenda the students no doubt
understood.61 German nationalist sentiment and considerable resources propk
pelled the technical college project, but its implementation coincided with risik
ing popular Hebrew nationalist sentiment.
In his book on Hebrew language revival, Jack Fellman, like Azaryahu,
makes much of this language war and its repercussions for Hebrew revival
and pedagogy. Fellman sees it as a point of no return:
In this narrative, the language is equated with the homeland and must also
be won by war. The Hebraists won their war with the German language as
the Allied Forces began their own and actual military conflict with Germany.
46 a new sound in hebrew poetry
The rise in the status of the Hebrew language paved the way for the rise of
the new accent in Hebrew poetry. Although early attempts to encourage new-
accent composition failed, it was ultimately a pedagogic initiative that was resk
sponsible for its rise. Poets were increasingly obliged to either compose in the
Hebrew of the schools or to switch to free rhythm.65 Instead of picturing sevek
eral distinct attempts at creating a new-accent poetry—the early ones failing,
the later successful thanks to the shifting geopolitics of Hebrew literature—a
more useful model situates these moments as part of the larger phenomenon
of the rise of spoken Hebrew and the schools’ increasing influence over poek
etry. As the schools’ ability to improve the status of Hebrew grew throughout
this period, and as the centralization of political and cultural life in the Secok
ond Aliyah encouraged standardization, the implicit demands on poets to
compose in the new accent grew stronger.66 At the same time, it became less
necessary for schools to make blatant demands on Hebrew poetry, even ones
as subdued as those in ±azan’s article of 1898. Once Hebrew gained importk
tance in settlement life in general, and especially when it became clear that
the language would be adopted at the highest educational institution, the
university, the new accent no longer required advocates. The Hebrew langk
guage demanded its own respect.
At the end of the nineteenth century, and as late as the second decade of
the twentieth, it was not yet obviously in the interests of the poets to write in
the Hebrew of the schools. Poetry delayed until new-accent Hebrew was the
48 a new sound in hebrew poetry
language of choice in the highest reaches of the educational system. The protk
tests against the Hilfsverein clarified for the Jewish philanthropists abroad as
well as for the Yishuv population itself that Hebrew was now the national langk
guage. If World War I disrupted settlement life and cultural activities, in the
1920s readers were rewarded with sharp increases in the publication of new-
accent poetry and started consuming it in large quantities.
chapter two
Representing a Nation
in Sound
Organic, Hybrid, and
Synthetic Hebrews
And just as the farmer rejoiced over the first crop of his land, the
fruit of his manual labor, the first flower that sprouted in
the grove he planted with his own hands—so too should the
happy one [Tsevi Shats] have rejoiced over the first four verses
he was fortunate to have been able to compose in the
New Hebrew that was alive in his mouth.
—Elisheva Bi¿ovski
49
50 a new sound in hebrew poetry
Ahad Ha’am uses the biblical phrase “a single and unified language” (safah
e¿at u-devarim a¿adim) from Genesis 11, which describes the linguistic unity
of the people of Shinar before they built the Tower of Babel and God “confu
founded” their language. Ahad Ha’am may be reminding his audience that
some things are better left alone. But now that the people have intervened in
their own fate it is necessary to improve this new status quo. The danger of
representing a nation in sound 53
variety for Ahad Ha’am has not so much to do with the proximate problem of
children understanding each other (although that is an explicit concern as
well) as with the fear that their incomprehension will make them “feel
ashamed” of their language.
In order for Hebrew to function as a language of the schools in all senses, it
must be unified. Teachers and schools must use a common vocabulary for pragmu
matic reasons—so that they can work together toward the formation of the New
Hebrew speaker, the graduate of the Hebrew school system in Palestine. But the
problem of unification is no longer merely pragmatic. There is a more abstract
value to consistency as well which Ahad Ha’am invokes here and which refu
flects both the greater ambition of making the language respectable and its
ability to compete effectively with other languages of instruction used in Paleu
estine such as German, French, and English. The school system distinguishes
and classifies students based on their speech. If the Hebrew school does its job
properly its graduates will be proud of their language. Ahad Ha’am is linking
the unification and standardization of the school’s Hebrew to its position as an
institution that grants status and inspires pride.
Ahad Ha’am’s choice of an industrial over an agricultural metaphor may stem
from his interest in standardization. A proper factory or complex of factories
produces uniform goods; the farm’s produce is naturally varied. Despite metapu
phorically identifying the factories with the schools, Ahad Ha’am has yet to find
such a factory for the production of words. Instead he finds a cottage industry
where each school, and even every teacher within a school, exercises the option
to fashion a Hebrew vocabulary. If one were to extrapolate a utopian vision from
Ahad Ha’am’s speech it would be of a school that produced a modern standardiu
ized Hebrew on an industrial model of consistency and quality. The Hebrew
speaker would have mastery over a unified and modern dialect and this mastery
would mark him as both modern and well-educated.
brew was used as a lingua franca among Jews with different mother tongues.12
The drive to unification is already an ideal, not simply a goal motivated by pragmu
matism; accentual and linguistic unifications seem to be standing in for national
unification. Since they do not yet see themselves as a powerful body capable of
imposing accents on a population, pedagogues must work around the linguistic
chaos of the environment. The stance of the Hebrew teachers was in flux and it
was only in 1903 that they started to design an accent with the intention of impu
posing it on the schools, and by extension, on the New Yishuv in general.
Yellin’s tone is entirely different than the tone of the Teachers’ Association
meeting of 1895. Yellin sees a series of concentric circles where the diasporic
communities are at the outermost ring and the Hebrew school is at the very
center of Jewish revival.
The confidence of the pedagogic institutions has increased significantly.
This extended moment in pedagogic history from 1895 to 1911 indicates that
56 a new sound in hebrew poetry
the schools’ adoption of Hebrew and the increase in manpower in the Jewish
settlement during the Second Aliyah, as well as increased confidence in the
institutions of the New Yishuv, affected the status of the Hebrew language.
These papers also indicate that calls for unification were never merely a resu
sponse—or never a commensurate response—to the concern that speakers
might not comprehend one another’s spoken Hebrew.
ral method of his own and it is his version of “¿Ivrit be-¿Ivrit” that ultimately had
the greatest impact on Hebrew pedagogy in Palestine—more so than the naturu
ral methods of Bekhar, Ben-Yehuda, and Yellin who preceded him.14
This accent was thought to resemble the ancient Hebrew accent used in
the Galilee (there is evidence that the Galileans had a distinct dialect in ancu
cient times), but Epstein himself adopted the accent from contemporary Lebau
anese and Syrian Jews. Like many of his contemporary pedagogues, Epstein
felt that it was important for Hebrew speech to parallel Hebrew writing as
much as possible so as to make it easier for children to learn to speak and
write in Hebrew. This partially accounts for his adoption of that accent, since
there is a greater distinction of letters than in other accents. The kof, tet, and
the weak kaf (khaf) were distinct from the strong kaf, the strong taf, and the
¿et respectively, which is not the case in Ashkenazic accents.
But that does not entirely explain Epstein’s choice. A salient feature of the
Galilean accent was the lack of distinction between the strong and weak bet (in
this it resembles Arabic), a distinction that did exist in Ashkenazic pronunciatu
tions and that was to be preserved in the Teachers’ Association blueprint for Hebu
brew. One possible explanation for this decision is that he preferred to leave the
two forms of bet undistinguished because one could then distinguish easily betu
tween a weak bet and a vav, which in Ashkenazic and some Sephardic pronuncu
ciations is pronounced /v/, indistinguishable from the weak bet. But the vav is
pronounced /w/ in other Sephardic pronunciations, as is the analogous letter in
Arabic. He could therefore have resolved the problem of overlap between the
vav and weak bet by pronouncing the vav as /w/, while maintaining the distinctu
tion between the two versions of the bet. In fact the Teachers’ Association propu
posed this solution and he eventually accepted it several years later.
It would seem that from 1891 until he left Palestine in 1902, Epstein’s choice
of a Hebrew accent was dictated primarily by the principle of authenticity—
adopting whole an accent that was considered to be the historic Northern
Hebrew of Palestine—and secondarily (and inasmuch as the available options
permitted), by the desire for a one-to-one correspondence between letters and
sounds. I do not believe that he was primarily interested in resolving the problu
lem of letters with overlapping sounds as much as in selecting an accent—an
authentic mode of speech—that would also be suited to contemporary pedagu
gogic and possibly national purposes.15 The pedagogic advantages may have
encouraged him to adopt the Galilean accent, but his choice is still quite distu
tinct from the mix-and-match Hebrew that Yellin and his committee were to
design. The Galilean accent had pretensions to a historical authenticity refu
flected in its name and it also had the advantage of being based on a dialect
that people were already speaking.
Epstein taught in Safed, Metulah, and, from 1899 to 1902, in Rosh Pinah.
When he left for Switzerland, Vilkomits replaced him in Rosh Pinah (having
58 a new sound in hebrew poetry
already replaced him in Metulah in 1896) and until 1918 continued and expu
panded upon Epstein’s project of disseminating the Galilean accent. Vilkomits
was known for the model country school he founded in Rosh Pinah and seems
to have used the location of the Galilee schools to the accent’s advantage. Accu
cording to Bar-Adon, he encouraged pride in both the agricultural achievemu
ments of their region as well as in their unique accent.16 Vilkomits had an
appreciation for the power of local pride as well as for the power of the two most
productive analogies of the New Yishuv. He linked the agricultural and linguistu
tic characteristics of the region to each other as the markers of Galilean identity,
much as Hebrew language revival and Hebrew labor were linked throughout
the period. These two successes in this northern part of the New Yishuv were
also seen as incarnations of ancient traditions. The Galilee was historically both
an agricultural region and a region with its own idiom attested to in ancient
sources, one whose distinct flavor was actualized by Epstein. This is typical of
the Second Aliyah period which tended to proudly identify ancient agricultural
Israel as its predecessor rather than more modern urban Jewish models of the
Diaspora.
Bar-Adon explains how the Galilean accent spread and thrived in such a
short period of time and why the Galilee, removed from the cultural center
of the Jewish community in Palestine by poor roads and negligible communu
nication systems, was the first area to have communities of native Hebrew
speakers. It was precisely because of their location at the periphery that places
like Rosh Pinah were fertile areas for the cultivation of native Hebrew speech,
and one of the reasons the teachers were able to create a distinct and relatu
tively unified Hebrew accent. Many parents did not speak Hebrew; thus the
children were exposed to one dialect. The towns’ distance from the immigratu
tion centers meant that they had a more stable population than Jaffa or Jerusu
salem, with the younger generation more uniformly educated in local
Hebrew schools where the Galilean accent reigned.
The revival of Hebrew was quicker and more successful in the Galilee at
this stage than anywhere else in Palestine. It was the only area where a predu
dominantly Ashkenazic community of Jews had completely adopted a Sephar�
dic accent (either one based on a previously occurring accent or a synthesized
accent with a terminal-stress system).17 By World War I there were adults and
young parents, themselves educated in and speakers of Hebrew in the Galilu
lean dialect, who heard their native children speaking Galilean Hebrew to
each other.
But despite the unmatched success of the Galilean accent in the New Yishuv,
it seems never to have been seriously considered by the pedagogic committees
that formulated an official Hebrew for the schools. According to Bar-Adon, the
Galilean accent was mentioned at the 1903 meeting but only in unofficial contu
texts, and more openly—but still mostly “in the corridors”—at the 1904 meeting
representing a nation in sound 59
in Gaderah. Many teachers apparently did not have a clear idea either of what
the Galilean accent was, or how completely it had saturated its “native” region.
The geographic isolation that allowed the dialect to be cultivated may have also
contributed to its dismissal by the centralizing pedagogic movement.18
The strongest objections to the Galilean accent were to the dialect’s weak bet,
which was indistinguishable from the strong bet, and pronounced /b/ rather
than /v/. One participant, himself a Sephardic Hebrew speaker from Jerusalem,
objected to the division between the central and northern regions of Palestine
caused by the Galilean bet, and other participants objected for similar reasons.
The greatest concession granted to the Galilean representative was to delay a
final decision. In the meantime the participants were expected to review Yellin’s
suggestions. His letter of 1908 and his speech of 1913, however, are practically
identical to the 1904 document in their recommendations, such that the Galilu
lean accent never acquired the support it would have needed to proliferate in
schools throughout the Jewish settlement.
It is noteworthy that the Galilean accent was never even formally presented
as a viable option for the language of the school system. Even if there were
teachers who did not know of the accent’s success or of its many advantages—
that it was an authentic Sephardic accent, that it offered distinct sounds for almu
most all the letters of the alphabet, that the Galilean schools had already proved
that it could be quickly adopted—Yellin, Ben-Yehuda, and other pedagogic
leaders surely had access to this information. Pedagogues’ underlying assumptu
tions about the New Yishuv and national identity and about how various sounds
would actualize that identity probably destined the Galilean accent to oblivion.
The school system’s rejection of the Galilean accent was overdetermined desu
spite the dialect’s obvious advantages. A nationalist movement may invoke autu
thenticity while effectively placing itself at a remove from the source of
authenticity. The Galilean brand of authenticity was idyllic, regional, and peru
ripheral. Adopting this regionalism would have too strongly countered the centu
tralizing, unifying, and modernizing urban force of Jaffa and its teachers who
were trying so hard to make a system out of disparate schools. A nationalist movemu
ment based in the cities may have benefited more from remembering an idyllic
past than from trying to relive it. And inasmuch as a school system may serve
centralization, centralization serves the system as well. Once one pictures the
grammar school as responsible for reproducing itself, it seems nonsensical for a
central and centralizing committee to institute a geographically peripheral dialu
lect. Choosing a dialect that represents the centralization of the school system,
however, would strengthen the system. It would both enact the centrality of the
dialect of the schools and effectively distance the peripheral dialects even more.
The greatest advantages the other two Hebrews had over the Galilean accu
cent, then, may have been their lesser authenticity (or their redefining of that
value) and their balancing of authenticity with the values of modernity and
60 a new sound in hebrew poetry
sounds for as many letters and vowel signs as possible. The Sephardic accents
distinguished more of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet because they had a
greater number of consonantal sounds than the Ashkenazic.
Beginning with the “scientific aspect” or historical authenticity, Ben-Â�Yehuda
presents a brief historiography of Hebrew accent only to come to the conclusu
sion that one cannot with any confidence answer the question of which accu
cent is more accurate historically, the Sephardic or Ashkenazic.21 He then
moves on to the first category of sounds, the vowels. Having just bracketed
the question of historical accuracy, Ben-Yehuda brings it back into his discussu
sion immediately, citing it as the reason for his preference for Sephardic pronu
nunciations of the vowels kamats and ¿olam:22
The basic differences between the two systems are the pronunciation of
the kamats gadol and the ¿olam. Mizra¿i Jews pronounce the kamats gadol
as a pata¿ [ä] and the ¿olam as the kamats [o] of the Ashkenazic Jews [the
“Westerners”]. And the Ashkenazic Jews pronounce the kamats gadol as
the ¿olam [o] of the Mizra¿i Jews, and the ¿olam as they themselves pronu
nounce the tsere with pursed lips. (Kim¿i 389, CD 160)
The Ashkenazic accent distinguishes between the pata¿ and kamats as well as
between the kamats and the ¿olam. The Sephardic accent distinguishes betu
tween the kamats and ¿olam but not between the kamats and pata¿. The explicit
value here is the distinction of letters and vowels with respect to their vocalizatu
tion (for pedagogic reasons), but authenticity is still in play. An Ashkenazic pronu
nunciation offers a distinct sound for each of six vowels, where Sephar�dic offers
four sounds for the lot. An oddity of Ben-Yehuda’s approach is that he chooses
the Sephardic nondistinction for one set of vowels (kamats-pata¿) and the Ashku
kenazic distinction for another (tsere-segol); that he mixes and matches when the
Ashkenazic pair that he retains preserves a small difference (that of the vowel
sound in late vs. let).23 If the members of the latter pair have a phonetically negligu
gible difference, it would be the less pedagogically useful distinction of the two
sets of vowels. The members of the former pair have quite an audible distinction
(the aw or o of the Ashkenazic kamats versus the ä of the pata¿), one with pedagu
gogic value. Even if he were to mix and match Ashkenazic and Sephardic vowel
pairs, Ben-Yehuda ought to have reversed his selection. He explains his prefereu
ence for the Ashkenazic tsere-segol distinction rather counterintuitively:
The difference between the tsere and the segol in the two accents [havarot]
is so small that there is barely a reason to reject the Sephardic pronunciatu
tion in favor of the Ashkenazic, and we can pronounce the tsere as the Ashku
kenazic Jews do. (Kim¿i 389, CD 160)
If pedagogic ease were truly his motive, the insignificance of the Ashkenazic
distinction between tsere and segol should have been reason enough to reject
62 a new sound in hebrew poetry
the Ashkenazic option in this case, once he had already chosen the Sephardic
option for the kamats-pata¿ pair which does not distinguish between the two.
The key to understanding this oddity lies in Ben-Yehuda’s unacknowledged
Ashkenazic bias. Although he is proposing that the Ashkenazic tsere-segol distu
tinction be adopted, he is not trying to mix and match accents. From his persu
spective, he is recommending a Sephardic accent and is merely tweaking it so
that it provides slightly more vocal distinction without losing its “eastern” sound.
This is an accurate characterization of his proposed Hebrew only if one adopts
a very subjective definition of Sephardic: an accent that an Ashkenazic speaker
would identify as “more Sephardic” than his own pronunciation. Sephardic is
invoked through a number of tokens and Ashkenazic is likewise denied through
particular markers. In the end a Sephardic accent is relational—its legitimacy
depends on a minimal but measurable difference from Ashkenazic. The dispariu
ity between paradigmatic Ashkenazic sounds defined through a Sephardic aestu
thetic and Ben-Yehuda’s proposed sounds is often more important than the goal
of achieving authentic Sephardic sound values. Ben-Yehuda’s rejection of the
Ashkenazic kamats that would have distinguished it from the pata¿ vowel—desu
spite his adoption of the Ashkenazic tsere-segol distinction—has more to do with
his attitude toward Ashkenazic than with the nature of the tsere-segol distinctu
tion. The sound of the Ashkenazic kamats was very closely identified with that
family of accents. It was a metonymy for Ashkenazic and would be perceived
that way even in an otherwise Sephardic accent. In nationalist Jewish discourse
exile is usually defined through the experience of Ashkenazic Jews. The paradu
digmatic sounds of their Hebrew are likewise associated with stereotypes of East
European Jewish life and ritual uses of Hebrew.24 In the context of New Yishuv
Palestine, the Ashkenazic kamats would have brought such stereotypes to mind.
Ben-Yehuda can therefore reject that distinction unequivocally, as unfit for the
Hebrew of the schools.
Ben-Yehuda closes by noting that the Old Yishuv contributed to the resolutu
tion of this problem by having Ashkenazic Jews speak in the Sephardic accent.
It is entirely fitting for him to mention the Old Yishuv. His position is relatively
noninterventionist and he proposes a Hebrew sound that one might labor to
produce if one were a Yiddish speaker instructed to speak Hebrew with a Se�
phardic stress system. In other words, his accent design is based on the same
principles as those which Ashkenazic Jews would have adopted to communicu
cate with the Sephardic Jews in the Old Yishuv. Ben-Yehuda is proposing a Se�
phardic Hebrew but it is one that is based on an Ashkenazic perception. It is
“Sephardic” only to the ears of its Ashkenazic speakers. The underlying principu
ple of the accent is that it suppresses sounds that are seen as paradigms of Ashku
kenazic and adopts some elements common to Sephardic pronunciations. The
practical demands of the Old Yishuv, in which the Ashkenazic Jews were expu
pected to meet the Sephardic Jews at least halfway, are converging with the
representing a nation in sound 63
values of the New Yishuv. In the New Yishuv the Sephardic accent symbolizes a
rejection of an inauthentic because exilic Hebrew, where exile is defined as an
Ashkenazic phenomenon. Ben-Yehuda is supporting a Hebrew that sounds Se�
phardic to him, that is Sephardic enough to be easily distinguished from Lithu�
anian and Galician pronunciations of Hebrew. The hybrid of the Old Yishuv can
stand in for Sephardic Hebrew in the predominantly Ashkenazic New Yishuv.
This talismanic use of Sephardic elements continues to characterize Ben-
Yehuda’s approach to the New Hebrew throughout the formal pedagogic discu
cussions, throughout Yellin’s revisions of his own design and consultations
with Ben-Yehuda and others. While working within Yellin’s parameters of
finding a distinct sound for each letter in the years following this address,
Ben-Yehuda nevertheless continues to support “as little change as possible
from the accepted pronunciation” (Yellin 1908).
Ben-Yehuda’s position on the taf, the tsadi, and the vav in response to Yellin’s
suggestions several year later is consistent with his approach in 1903. His resu
spect for the need to provide as many unique sounds for the letters—Yellin’s
ultimate value—is subordinate to his wish to change the so-called accepted
pronunciation as little as possible. Taken together, his choices as recorded in
Yellin’s 1908 document are best accounted for by invoking the hybrid accent
of the Old Yishuv. He is proposing what he calls a Sephardic Hebrew that is
actually merely an accent that would tend to sound Sephardic to an Ashkenu
nazic speaker—and granting it the status of the default Sephardic Hebrew.
Ben-Yehuda was one of many in these discussions, but as the supposed
founder of Modern Hebrew and an icon of language revival, the public persu
sona which he promoted is revealing of more than one immigrant’s story. In
assessing the myth of Ben-Yehuda in Hebrew culture, Ron Kuzar describes
him as a “Gramscian organic intellectual” who presented himself as a modeu
ern biblical prophet who
disseminates ideas to foster and strengthen a hegemonic discourse, working
his way up, in our case, from a minority voice to hegemony. Ben-Yehuda’s
symbolic use of family life (raising his children in Hebrew) and communu
nity life (talking only Hebrew to the people), and the publicity that his symbu
bolic acts received, constructed him in the Jewish discourse of those days
as a prophet-intellectual who did not only appeal to the minds and hearts
of his readers, but rather positioned himself as a role-model for his audieu
ence. .€.€.€Ben-Yehuda became a living example of the possibility of reviviu
ing the language. (111)
I read Ben-Yehuda’s Hebrew design proposal of 1903 as shorthand for the mode
of the modern biblical prophet who “moved to Palestine” and “devoted himself
to the revival of Hebrew” (111). The passage from Eastern Europe to Palestine is
audible in his Hebrew—that of an immigrant who is laboring to speak with a
Sephardic accent. Vilkomits and Epstein invoked the Galilean link between
64 a new sound in hebrew poetry
agriculture and Hebrew language, and among pedagogues they came closest to
cultivating crops and language in parallel. Ben-Yehuda’s hybrid cultivates Hebu
brew in a very different sense: his Hebrew does not seem natural and does not
grow fully formed. He describes not a historically authentic Hebrew but one
that might be produced by the nationalist, authenticity-seeking immigrant
trying to speak Hebrew with a Sephardic accent as if it were a totem, an autu
thentic supplement. The accepted pronunciation from which Ben-Yehuda
does not wish to deviate (and which Yellin would rather correct) is one that alru
ready contains within it a history of adjustment in which the speaker adopts
some elements of the New Hebrew but never abandons completely his prior
linguistic habits (Yellin 1908). The speaker must work hard to cultivate a new
accent without ever needing to sound fully Sephardic or Galilean. The non-
Sephardic aspects of the immigrant’s speech underscore the migration itself,
the desire to be native and authentic, of having yearned for the “Land of Israel”
and of coming to the New Yishuv in order to work hard. The authentic supplemu
ment marks him as arriving at nativeness through acquisition and adoption
rather than by accident of birth. Rather than representing natives, the speaker
represents the figure of the immigrant who “goes native.”
161). Regardless of which accent is historically correct and which one is used
abroad, the Sephardic accent will be used in Palestine if for no reason other
than that “they prefer the sound of it, and here too, a committee will have to insu
stitute standards to rid it of error” (Kim¿i 390, CD 161).
Yellin’s tolerance for different accents might seem to run counter to the desu
sire for unification implicit in much of the 1903 document and explicit in
Vilkomits’s statement that “in Russia there are different accents in three regu
gions, but through the schools the government tries to unify the accent” and
that “we must do this too” (Kim¿i 390, CD 161). In fact Yellin’s tolerance for
variety serves the goal of unification that is underlying the positions of each
of the three speakers and exposes the inherently territorial nature of unificatu
tion. Unification implies a distinction of the language from various “mere”
dialects as much as it does the standardization of that particular dialect-cum-
language. In both Anderson’s and Bourdieu’s models, the creation of a natu
tional language involves the projection of a particular dialect onto territory.
This selection and valorization of one dialect through the medium of newspu
papers, the novel, or through its adoption as the bureaucratic language
(Bourdieu’s langue officiel) adds social value and eventually economic value
to the chosen dialect, ever after referred to as “the language.” Unification of
the language means enforcing homogenization and centralization so that
one dialect is the basis for official communication, and distinguishing this
language from mere dialects that may continue to be used. In other words,
unification territorializes the language. Yellin wants a unified accent for Paleu
estine rather than a unified accent for Hebrew, and linguistic variety outside
the borders of the settlement may actually contribute to the sense of unificatu
tion within. Linguistic variety abroad could help define the particular homogu
geneous Hebrew that the teachers are trying to produce as a national language
consonant with a territory and as the standard within the New Yishuv as oppu
posed to and distinct from Hebrew outside Palestine.
Yellin’s acknowledged motivations for supporting the Sephardic accent in
1903 are first of all aesthetic: the Jews of Palestine apparently choose to speak
with a Sephardic accent because it is more pleasing. Even though the Jews of
Palestine prefer that accent, however, they do not quite succeed in producing
it properly—hence the need for a committee to “institute standards” and rid
their Hebrew of error (Kim¿i 390; CD 161). Underlying Yellin’s aesthetic prefeu
erence is the understanding that the Sephardic accent (defined in almost any
way) has status that Ashkenazic Hebrew, associated with Yiddish, lacks. The desu
sire to correct the already partially corrected Hebrew implies a need to preserve
and increase the linguistic capital that pupils gain in the schools. Yellin’s idea of
national language is territorial and integrates the notion of correction that is so
important to the distinction that schools bestow on speakers. Based on this
model, the Hebrew of the schools would be distinct from the lesser Sephardi���c�i�
66 a new sound in hebrew poetry
zation of Ashkenazic Hebrew that took place in the Old Yishuv as well as from a
Yiddish-influenced Hebrew.
At the 1904 meeting of the Teachers’ Union in Gaderah, Yellin presented the
new accent design that was to remain the official pedagogic ideal accent
throughout the Second Aliyah period.27 His first and major principle is that “we
must, as far as possible, match writing to speech and speech to writing. This is
possible only if every sign, whether it is a letter or a vowel, has its own sound”
(Yellin 1905 [1904], 5). His second and third principles, subordinate to the first,
are to “do our best to find in our alphabet the sounds of all the foreign langu
guages, since we have to borrow words from them anyway,” and “to look to the
Semitic languages, especially Arabic” (Yellin 1905 [1904], 6).
The assignment of a unique sound to each symbol, which was the organizing
principle of his lecture, continued to be Yellin’s position and became the officu
cial platform of the Teachers’ Union. In describing his method, Yellin seemed
to be offering a belated reply to Ben-Yehuda’s proposal of 1903 that must have
had popular appeal and that was probably also similar to other teachers’ expectu
tations for what the new accent would sound like. Retaining Ben-Yehuda’s 1903
distinction between the scientific and the practical, Yellin rejects the former
with its implicit and flawed idea of authenticity and essentially selects a practicu
cal method. Ben-Yehuda claimed to prefer the Sephardic accent because it had
a greater distinction of letters (Yellin uses the term to¿elet, purpose; Ben-Yehuda
speaks of ha-be¿inah ha-to¿altit, the practical aspect). Once Yellin has dismissed
authenticity outright, he has even greater freedom to multiply the advantage of
the principle of symbolic distinction. That is, he can now maximize the distinctu
tion of letters beyond the limits of any particular extant accent (which was a
limitation on Ben-Yehuda’s accent design), and thereby create a modern accent
with a novel combination of sounds.28
In 1903 Yellin expresses the desire for a distinct and territorialized Hebrew
and rejects not only the particulars of Ben-Yehuda’s claim but also the possibu
bility of declaring one accent historically authentic. By 1904 he has found a
way of following Ben-Yehuda’s other principle of pragmatism to its logical
conclusion. By privileging a form of pedagogic ease Yellin is able to synthesu
size a territorial Hebrew that in theory does not invoke authenticity.
The bulk of Yellin’s 1904 speech is dedicated to making recommendations
for thirteen problematic letters whose sounds in some pronunciations overlap
with the sounds of other letters: the alef, vav, ¿et, ¿ayin, weak kaf, tet, kof, and
tsadi, as well as the weak bet, the two forms of gimel, the weak dalet, and the
weak taf.29 For the most part, Yellin proposes sounds for undistinguished
signs—and has some radical ideas on that score—but he wants to retain those
signs for which he cannot find a unique sound. He even tries to find a way to
save the normally undifferentiated dagesh forms of certain letters. Yellin’s
most radical suggestion to change written Hebrew to match speech concerns
representing a nation in sound 67
the question of the alef which, he explains, once had a consonantal sound
but is now a silent letter, at most a placeholder for diacritical marks. This
means that one cannot predict based on the sound of a word whether it is
spelled with an alef. Yellin does not propose a new sound for the letter; he
suggests that one day spelling be modified to reflect this characteristic of spoku
ken Hebrew.
through the textual remains of Hebrew culture. The accent of his design
would produce the farthest things from a historically authentic accent but he
nevertheless co-opts the value of authenticity in a curious way such that the
value of authenticity of Ben-Yehuda and Vilkomits is replaced by a synthetic
value. The theoretical advantage of Yellin’s accent offers a parallel to authentu
ticity by appealing to the underlying origin of the twenty-nine letters (by his
count) of Hebrew. If speakers of ancient Hebrew had different accents, and if
accents are inherently unstable and susceptible to influence, it is impossible
to speak of a single authentic accent even if one were to miraculously meet
an ancient Hebrew speaker. But whatever the particular ancient pronunciatu
tions of the tet and taf, the signs no doubt represented different sounds at the
outset. If this were not the case, Yellin argues, they would never have found
themselves in the same alphabet to begin with. By returning to the idea of
the originary design of Hebrew and assuming that a letter must have justified
its presence in the original alphabet by providing a distinct sound, Yellin
maintains the coherence of the alphabet as a kind of replacement authenticiu
ity, and can all but ignore the actual history of Hebrew pronunciation.
Yellin has effectively rejected the authentic value in favor of the synthetic
value, creating a modernized, unified, and democratic alphabet. It is modern
inasmuch as it is dictated by logic rather than habit or tradition; it is unified
and democratic inasmuch as it collects sounds from a variety of linguistic
cultures that are meant to represent both the diverse Jewish populations
�returning from the countries of exile and the cultural environment of the
New Yishuv. It is the correspondence between sounds and letters that defines
Yellin’s new accent and makes it an inherently synthetic Hebrew—an accent
that must be learned by everyone, that is as yet native or natural to no one.
This language is democratic and free of sentimental feeling about the autu
thenticity or coherence of the Se�phardic or Ashkenazic accent. Yellin wishes
to move beyond the categories of Ashkenazic and Sephardic to an idea of Hebu
brew as the Jewish national language that is compatible with both European
(English, German, French) and Semitic (primarily Arabic) languages, and
that represents the diversity of the Jewish people through fragments of more
local accents.
The union of writing with speech comes to represent and replace the unificu
cation of Hebrew speakers. This is apparent in Yellin’s notes on the discussion
over the weak form of the bet:
Regarding the weak bet, all our members are also in agreement that one
should pronounce it like a German w; except for our Mr. Etan who wants it
to be pronounced in the Galilean fashion [so that the weak and strong forms
of the bet would be indistinguishable] and to destroy any basis for a unified
accent that we all—including him—want, as our member Mr. Meyu¿as has
already emphasized, so that shall not be done. (Yellin 1929 [1913], 67)
representing a nation in sound 69
The introduction of an element from the Galilean accent cannot in and of itsu
self be responsible for the charge of disunity since Yellin’s accent is itself entu
tirely patchwork. Unification has come to refer to the relationship between
letters and sounds, between text and speech, as much as to uniformity of pronu
nunciation among the speakers of New Hebrew themselves.
“Sephardic enough.” Aharon Mazya raised the possibility that Jews might no
longer be capable of uttering these Eastern sounds properly, but that explanatu
tion is dismissed by ± A. Zuta’s testimony that
those who have come to the land of Israel and heard the Mizra¿i accent
[ha-mivta’ ha-mizra¿i] are able to regain quite suddenly what had been lost
for thousands of years, and they have returned to “prophesying” with the
[distinctly Mizra¿i] ¿et and ¿ayin and tet and kof. (Yellin 1929 [1913], 67)
Pedagogic negligence is therefore to blame, rather than an inherent inability
to utter these sounds. Yellin, paraphrasing Zuta, writes that
the fault is not with the Mizra¿i accent [ba-mivta’ ha-mizra¿i] itself but
with the fact that it is not being articulated, and if our teachers would only
pronounce it properly our students would make no mistakes whatsoever. Its
nonarticulation is the result not of a lack of ability but rather primarily of
negligence. (Yellin 1929 [1913], 67) [emphasis in original]
The problem is that the teachers are not correcting their students, not following
the principles of pedagogic necessity for teaching Hebrew, and neglecting to
distinguish the ¿ayin from the ’alef. The Hebrew they spoke was perceived as
distinct from Ashkenazic Hebrew but as not sufficiently Sephardicized. The
schools succeeded in instituting a Sephardic stress system (common to all three
of the Hebrews I have discussed—Yellin’s, Ben-Yehuda’s, and Epstein’s Galilean).
But the Hebrew of the schools did not provide a larger number of distinct
sounds than the Ashkenazic accents and significantly fewer than Sephardic
accents. They did not succeed in making the accent Oriental enough to distingu
guish it from Ben-Yehuda’s Hebrew as Yellin had wanted.
The claim of Yellin and Zuta that negligence on the part of the teachers
“accounts for it not being used” seems naïve, and Yellin’s plan to institute a
new synthetic accent attributes an immense amount of power to his will
alone. Nevertheless, it is not enough to explain the failure of his accent desu
sign by insisting that an accent cannot be imposed on a population. Under
certain circumstances—such as the adoption of the Galilean accent—such
attempts can be quite successful.
Both the Galilean accent and Ben-Yehuda’s accent predate the 1903 debu
bates. According to Asa Kasher, there is no evidence that Yellin’s accent was
reproducible by an internal grammar. He addresses the issue of Yellin’s naiu
iveté with regard to the teachers’ ability to influence the sound of Hebrew
speech and the possibility for the absorption of an entirely new accent:
There is no natural language that can function as a first language, as a
child’s mother tongue, if [the children] cannot master the rules of that
language.€.€.€.€The best possible proof that a given system may be internaliu
ized is that there are people who realize that system in a language that
72 a new sound in hebrew poetry
serves as their mother tongue. But there was no extant dialect David Yellin
could have pointed to in which all the rules of pronunciation that he was
interested in came together. (Kasher 68)
Yellin’s accent may have been inherently flawed. But even if one does not take
Kasher’s position, there are other reasons that this synthetic Hebrew would
have been doomed from the start. Because it had not existed prior to the impu
plementation of Hebrew in the schools, Yellin’s synthetic Hebrew was entirely
nonintuitive for the teachers and spoken by none of them. The hybrid and
Galilean Hebrews clearly had neither a problem of coherence nor one of exempu
plification; they had already demonstrated they could be adopted by young
speakers, and there were already speakers of these accents at the time when they
were first implemented in the schools.
Because accent was defined negatively in relation to Ashkenazic, a great
variety of accents would have satisfied Ben-Yehuda’s demands. His hybrid accu
cent was relaxed and benefited from the relative ease with which Ashkenazic
speakers could approximate a Sephardic accent. The minimum requirement
of excising features that were considered totems of Ashkenazic Hebrew coincu
cided with the notion of authenticity as a process rather than a finished produu
uct. Ashkenazic teachers attempting to Sephardicize their Hebrew would
have all been speaking a hybrid with errors. It was as if the error was a part of
the accent itself. In that sense Ben-Yehuda’s hybrid had more or less already
begun to be implemented in the non-Galilean schools prior to the 1903 intervu
vention and it benefited from centralization in becoming the de facto langu
guage of the schools.
In practice the competition for the role of national language was between
Ben-Yehuda’s and the Galilean accents. Pedagogues continued to consider the
New Hebrew of the schools as not quite correct and not quite Sephardic
enough. As it gained ascendancy in other domains, however, the Hebrew of the
schools came to represent the authenticity that would have more logically been
attributed to the Galilean accent, and the story of the Ashkenazic immigrant
to Palestine stood in for the native in Palestine. As it was integrated into the
poetry of the 1920s, the Hebrew of the schools served as a symbolic link betu
tween ancient sovereignty and the modern Jewish presence in Mandatory Paleu
estine. As the new-accent poetry featured in the next two chapters will
exemplify, it was precisely this accent that revealed the rites of passage of the
paradigmatic figures of contemporary Jewish life which came to be represu
sented as the authentic organic Hebrew of the land itself.
chapter three
73
74 a new sound in hebrew poetry
Yet their reception was markedly different from that of the men; critics for the
most part naturalized women’s early contribution to the literary new accent.
The crowning of Shlonsky and Bi¿ovski as the two new-accent poets is telling
of that bifurcated reception. Both the response each garnered on account of
new-accent usage and the quality of Bi¿ovski’s work compared to that of other
women working in the new accent are indicative of the implicit limits within
which women’s poetry could be read. Bi¿ovski’s poetry was formally conservat-
tive and she was praised most of all for the purity of her speech rather than for
the quality of her poetry. Rab and Bluvshtain should have been the candidates
for the role of new-accent poetess although since Rab composed free rhythmic
poems her use of the new accent would have been less apparent to her contemp-
porary readers—and less dramatic. Among the male writers of the era, then, it
was Shlonsky, thought to be the most rhythmically skillful and innovative, who
was credited with composing in final-stress Hebrew—and who in the course of
his career earned a reputation as a symbol of New Hebrew literature and the
rebel-heir to Bialik’s poetics with its distinctly Ashkenazic rhythm. Among the
women, it was the poet most associated with the miracle of the revival of Heb-
brew speech and the one whose biography was that of the ultimate Modern Heb-
brew speaker whose use of the new accent garnered the most attention, rather
than the poet who was most able to do things with words or rhythm. The new
accent signified differently for male and female poets. As I will demonstrate,
this difference was consistent with the reception of women’s poetry and with
the gendering of authenticity itself.
The gendered politics of new-accent poetry that still play a role in contempor-
rary scholarship derive in part from a number of prior assumptions about femin-
ninity and language. In Hebrew culture the new accent was a metonymy for
contemporary spoken Hebrew and was associated with women who, in the critic-
cism of the period, were most often perceived as verbally rather than textually
expressive. Nationalist culture also associated women with the natural or mothe-
er’s method of learning Hebrew—although the majority of Hebrew schoolteache-
ers in this period were men—whereas traditional Jewish textual learning was a
male arena.3 In the orientalizing logic of nationalist culture women’s spoken
Hebrew was more natural. This assumption encouraged critics to read the
poems by women as songs they spoke or sang and discouraged them from seei-
ing what was daring and new in their writing. Both Bi¿ovski and Bluvshtain
were received more as speakers, as signs of some stage of national development,
than as artists carefully crafting their work. Women’s new-accent poetic compos-
sition was both symbolically important, the sign of great progress toward a mode-
ern and authentic national identity, and regarded as natural, as nothing more
than what was to be expected.
At the same time, these linguistic and literary assumptions about women,
which limited sharply their reception as poets, may have also facilitated the rise
“listening to her is torture” 75
through the narrative arc of the biography of the nationalist Jewish immigrant.
Yellin’s synthetic Hebrew told a slightly different national story of the ingathe-
ering of the exiles. His alphabet was meant to represent a plethora of lang-
guages and to create combinations of sound that had never before existed in
spoken Hebrew. It was a snapshot of the nation at a moment when unity was
triumphing over diversity.
Galilean Hebrew told no such stories of nationalist longing or national red-
demption—another possible reason it was disqualified as a candidate for stand-
dard Hebrew—and in this it resembled the simultaneous valorization and
dismissal of the Hebrew poetess. Galilean Hebrew was always already authent-
tic. At least in theory, it neither retained a trace of the native languages of immig-
grants from all over the world as Yellin’s accent did, nor represented the
increasing authenticity of the Jewish immigrant in Palestine as the hybrid Heb-
brew of Ben-Yehuda did. More than anything, Galilean Hebrew encapsulated
the feminine role in the nationalist symbolic which was perceived as inherently
authentic and as almost mystically connected to the ancient roots of Judaism.
The twenties marked the last moment of insecurity for the new accent in poe-
etry and this linguistic uncertainty proved to be an opportunity for women. Nat-
tionalism attributed to women qualities such as authenticity, which were also
projected onto the new accent, and which were essential ingredients of national
identity. The very idea of a national literature in Palestine was predicated on an
idealization of the ancient past and its incarnation in the present, and on a
causal relationship between place and authenticity. The symbolic potential of
the new accent, as both ancient and modern, and the symbolic potential of
women’s poetry were each seen in relation to authenticity and the re-incarnation
of an ancient past. In this moment of tension and insecurity women were
uniquely positioned to fill an important if naturalized role as speakers or singers
of a Hebrew that was regarded as both new and derived from the ancient past.
Female authorship was desirable precisely because it was seen as distinct from
male authorship and because it implied direct access to an ancient past that was
a marker of unadulterated national identity. Women could take advantage of
the association of authenticity with both femininity and the new accent to crea-
ate feminine poetic personae that satisfied a nationalist desire for a national aut-
thentic old-new identity.
Bi¿ovski came to be seen as the paradigmatic new-accent poetess because
she embodied the natural Galilean mode of authenticity. In an autobiographi-
ical essay that appeared in the journal Ketuvim (Writings) in 1926, Bi¿ovski
portrays herself as a partisan of the new accent in poetry:
As a Hebrew poet I can declare for my creation just one purpose: to serve
as much as possible the development of Hebrew poetry in the New Hebrew
language that we speak in the Sephardic stress [havarah] every day.€.€.€.€I
myself treasure not the “spirit” or “Zionism” in my poetry, nor the “Slavic”
“listening to her is torture” 77
nor the “woman’s spirit” that I brought into Hebrew poetry, but the few
lines in which I succeeded, in my opinion, in discovering some small part
of these possibilities.4
It is tempting to read these words as if they describe her experience and vision
of her work throughout her career. But I do not believe that the recognition of
Bi¿ovski as the new-accent poetess derived from her attempts to convince
poets to write in new accent, nor that she even necessarily saw this as the
“purpose” of her literary creation when she first started writing.
Bi¿ovski was born to an Irish mother and Russian father. Because she was
not Jewish she had a much higher ratio of new-accent to Ashkenazic Hebrew
exposure than the other East European Jewish poets at the time: she had not
grown up hearing Yiddish and Ashkenazic Hebrew at home or in her comm-
munity, and when she studied Hebrew as an adult it was in the new accent.
The fact that she first learned Hebrew with a teacher who, as she puts it, used
a “Land of Israel” accent no doubt helped to determine the non-Ashkenazic
sound of her poetry.5 But it was the story of her acquisition of Hebrew as a
Russian outsider that resonated with readers and critics in Eastern Europe
and Palestine, and made her an ideal candidate for the role of new-accent poe-
etess. This much is apparent from the appreciations of her that appeared in
Elisheva: A Collection of Essays on the Poet Elisheva (hereafter Elisheva), first
published in 1927. The essays return again and again to a limited number of
themes: Bi¿ovski as the first national (as opposed to religious) convert, as a
universal rather than national Jew, and as a native Hebrew woman. Her fore-
eignness and femininity constitute her authenticity, her identity as a Zionist
symbol and as the ultimate national subject.
Bi¿ovski’s non-Jewish identity made her the quintessential Jewish female.
Her familiarity with traditional Jewish text and learning was far less even
than that of a poorly educated East European Jewish woman whose religious
education took place in Yiddish. In that sense her foreignness reinforced her
femininity by detaching her completely from the traditional Jewish learning
and textuality that were associated with the Diaspora. Four of the essays in
Elisheva compare her to the biblical figure of Ruth, the Moabite who foll-
lowed Naomi back to Judea and was the ancestor of David the King.6 The
critics think that Bi¿ovski’s new-accent Hebrew is beautiful because they see
her as free from all that is undesirable in exilic Jewishness. The figure of Ruth
incorporates the paradox of her simultaneous freedom from Judaism and her
representation of the Jewish nation.7
Readers and critics project a Galilean-style authenticity onto this poet.
Bi¿ovski’s pronunciation may not have been the least bit Galilean but “Elisheva”
the cultural symbol represented a similar authenticity. Critical writing on Heb-
brew culture in the 1920s also offered an analogue to the accent design of Ben-
Yehuda in the realm of arts and literature. Three essays in particular—by Tsevi
78 a new sound in hebrew poetry
Shats, Yehudah Karni, and Ra¿el Bluvshtain—provide a model for male authent-
ticity in Hebrew language and literature.
Shats’s “The Exile of Our Classical Poetry” (“Galut shiratenu ha-klasit”) was
first published in 1919 and deals explicitly with the paucity of new-accent poe-
etry.8 Neither Karni’s “Artists in the Homeland” (“ha-’Omanim ba-moledet”) of
1922 nor Bluvshtain’s “On the Sign of the Time” (“¿Al ’ot ha-zeman”) of 1927 add-
dresses the question of accent directly, but the commentaries and prescriptions
of each have ramifications for the use of the new accent and the perceived need
for a poetry that would integrate it.9 The essays of both Shats and Karni tell the
story of a literary-linguistic process that parallels the metamorphosis of the ster-
reotypically weak diasporan Jew into a strong, physically productive worker.
The earlier two essays were written in an extended moment of expectancy vis-à-
vis the new accent, and both are concerned with listening and with absorbing
from the environment as acts constitutive of a native national literature.
Â�Bluvshtain’s essay appeared after the initial reception of women’s poetry when
the new accent was well on its way to being established as the poetic norm. It
describes artistic inspiration as far less environmental than the other two essays
do. But Bluvshtain also describes a male model of authenticity and seems to app-
prove implicitly of Shlonsky’s accentual hybridity. She embodies a tension bet-
tween theorizing poetry for men and practicing poetry as a woman, a tension
that is nicely illustrated by the different personae she adopted. Her review essay
is signed R. Sela, a genderless first initial and a “masculine” last name—the
Hebraized version of their patronym Bluvshtain that her brother Yaakov ado-
opted. She signed her poems simply “Ra¿el” or “Ra¿el the Poet,” and in them
one sees a very different practice than Shlonsky’s. In her poetic and personal
statements about Bat-Miryam, Bluvshtain alternated between enforcing femin-
ninity in her colleague and envisioning herself in the male role vis-à-vis Bat-
Miryam’s feminine persona.
brew, is rent from the language of the people, or Sephardic Hebrew. Shats inv-
vokes two moments in literary history, one stemming from the classical, the
other from the biblical milieu which boasted a coherent literary language. He
claims for each of these moments a union of speech and literary art and a
convergence of the respective languages of working men and men of letters.
Homer appears at the beginning of the essay in the role of wandering poet of
his people before there was any “division between the language of the people
and the language of the book” (106). Near the end of his essay Shats invokes the
Hebrew Bible, the “classical” tradition of the Jews. He does not, however,
choose to cite the biblical heroes or prophets of the Land of Israel, but “our anc-
cestors,” a far more homely collective who tell part of their story in Psalm 137.
These ancient Israelites experienced the Babylonian exile but lived to see Zion
again with the rise of the Persian Empire. They are therefore figures in whom
Shats would have seen a correspondence with his own generation who immig-
grated to the Land of Israel: “How shall we sing the song of God on foreign
soil?” they ask (Psalms 137:4). In Shats’s fanciful history, subsequent exiled gene-
erations were unable to keep that implicit vow of silence. Feeling an urgent
need to express their sorrows and “longings for the homeland” but no longer fam-
miliar with “the strings of the ancient harp” after years of exile, the descendants
of the speakers in Psalm 137—who were to experience perhaps more painful
and certainly longer-lasting exiles—adopted the artistic media and styles of the
various states and empires in which they lived. Thus poetry was sent into exile.
Contemporary poets must reverse course, Shats writes, and undo the poetic and
musical exile (112). Shats is describing a mode of authenticity that is gendered
male. Unlike the always already brand of authenticity that was projected onto
women, this is a process, a formula for becoming a native.
For Shats, the salvation of literature is to be found in labor, which will
strengthen the literary muscle of the nation. The workers’ limbs have grown
strong since returning to their homeland and to manual labor so that they
may now “once again stretch and reinforce the harp strings as in the days of
yore” (112). But Shats goes even further, putting labor at the center of literary
achievement: “The only language in which the true classic poetry can be
sung is the language of the working people” (106). Poetry continues to bear
the mark of exile because it is composed in Ashkenazic Hebrew instead of
the Hebrew of Jewish workers in Palestine who adopt a Se�phardic stress syst-
tem upon their arrival. Poetry may redeem itself by absorbing that language
of labor. In other words, the choice to be a laborer and the choice to speak
new-accent Hebrew are equally expressive of a Labor Zionist ideology.
Shats invokes labor and language as the twin signs of authenticity. And his
excursion into classical Jewish literature seems to make the workers’ choice of
Sephardic Hebrew consonant with ancient poetic language, while he speaks of
Ashkenazic Hebrew as the “foreign accent” of contemporary poets. As in anc-
80 a new sound in hebrew poetry
cient times, contemporary foreign influence now prevents poetry from adopting
and absorbing the old-new Hebrew. “With all its beauty,” writes Shats,
[Ashkenazic Hebrew] does not strike our hearts, for it is not carved from
the rough sods of our life, nor from the tones of our difficult or joyful exist-
tence, which vibrates on our lips daily. Its value is that of anything written
in a foreign language. (107)
Yet Shats does not leave the poets in utter submission to the language of
labor. The process of language formation is not yet complete, not only bec-
cause the poets have yet to produce a poetry that favors a Sephardic sound,
but because their doing so will in turn effect changes in the spoken language.
The divide between poetic language and the worker’s language, a divide
Shats describes solely in terms of accent, is one that has yet to be closed. He
wants the poets to close the divide not merely by adopting the worker’s acc-
cent, but by building a Hebrew with a Sephardic base that also draws on Ashk-
kenazic and Yemenite Hebrews. The Hebrew Shats envisions, one that allows
for Ashkenazic sounds, is in fact a variation on Ben-Yehuda’s design. And the
give-and-take between poets and workers provides a formula for the relations-
ship between literature and the Labor movement that is just shy of A. D. Gord-
don’s formula in which literature at its best and truest may be nothing more
than the transcribed words of the worker.11 Shats provides a fairly convincing
historical explanation, before the fact, for the integration of the new accent
into high poetry through Labor literature just after—or in the case of BluvÂ�
shtain’s Labor poetry, simultaneous with the advent of—women’s poetry. He
tells a story that Labor poets, and not only Bluvshtain, could retell in their poe-
etry and one that could justify and even valorize their departure from the poe-
etic norm of Hebrew sound up to that point. But above all, “The Exile of Our
Classical Poetry” is a call to poets to end the exile of Hebrew poetry just as
they have begun to put an end to the exile of the Jewish people.
What then is the first step in this process? What is the solution to the probl-
lem of the “exile of our classical poetry”? How does one assure its “return” to
the homeland? Shats’s answer is simply to listen. He sees Jabotinsky’s translat-
tion of “The Raven” into new-accent Hebrew as the “first swallow.” This
omen, however, has yet to be followed by other birds. It is almost as if poems
exist not as texts but as sentient sound waves whose murmur will clarify and
strengthen if people are listening. Tchernichovsky expressed anxiety about
the future of Hebrew poetry, but that, Shats writes, is only one part of the
tragedy. The other and greater part of this tragedy strikes the readers thems-
selves, those who long to hear and whose careful listening for the poetry of
the homeland will not bring them fame. But Shats is hopeful that one day
the sounds of a reinvigorated national literature will reward their listening.
This self-same listening is also a stage in the creative cycle: the artist’s “holy
“listening to her is torture” 81
need to receive” inspires his poetry (109). When the great poets come to “the
Land” they will adjust to their new surroundings, but it will not be necessary
to start from scratch as others suggest (110). The temporary silence in the mom-
ment it takes to listen will, on the contrary, inspire a new classical literature
as writers work toward creating a native literature and help poetry rejoin its
people in the homeland.
Then he will feel the need to express, to let out a great cry. And that cry,
Karni asserts, will be the new poetry of the homeland.13
The “sign of the time” does not refer (or does not refer only) to poetic subject
matter but to a mode of expression—one that is direct, unmediated, and emot-
tive. It relates to “our daily lives” inasmuch as it may “accompany us€.€.€.€and
suddenly sing within us” (201). The source for this song seems to be internal, a
genealogy of poetry that concords with those of her poems that are most explici-
itly ars poetica. But how does the song enter the artist to begin with? Bluvshtain
supports her claim that simplicity is the sign of the time with examples from
foreign literatures: this kind of expression marks “the majority of the poetic crea-
ations of our times,” including the poetry of Aleksander Blok, Anna Akhmatova,
“listening to her is torture” 83
and Sergei Yesenin as well as the French poet Francis Jammes, whom she cites
in a poem and whom she both wrote about and whose work she translated for
Hedim (201).16 If this sort of expression is truly a sign of their epoch there must
also be some influence from without. At the very least, the freedom that allows
one to express oneself so directly is made possible by the current literary
environment.
Bluvshtain portrays Shlonsky’s To Papa-Mama as the embodiment in Heb-
brew poetry of this kind of simplicity of expression. In the 1920s and 1930s,
Shlonsky was indeed a very important figure in Hebrew literary politics, but
his poetic persona was as an innovator and a rebel. He was credited with int-
troducing new European schools to Hebrew poetry, with showing poets how
they could write in Hebrew as they did in Russian, and with replacing Bialik
and his school. His poetry was not known for its simplicity, at least not in the
sense that Bluvshtain portrayed her own poetic language as simple.17
Bluvshtain suspects that some readers might find her representation of Shlons-
sky counterintuitive. She all but apologizes for his seeming lack of simplicity,
advising her readers, “it is proper to ‘forgive’ Shlonsky his illusions, because of
his ability to be so much a man of his time” (201). But the question remains:
How can she attribute simplicity of expression to poems replete with metaphor?
For metaphors can, indeed, be€.€.€.€an unmediated effect of a poetic view of
the world, that is to say: the eye is set in this way and no other, and emotion
peeps out of the womb in this attire, like a privileged child born fully
clothed. (201–202)
Simple expression is something that grows naturally, as a fetus in the womb. At
the same time, the fetus is not au naturel. Having already utilized festive silk att-
tire and gold ornaments to represent unnaturalness or literariness in poetry,
Bluvshtain’s answer—that the emotions expressed in Shlonsky’s poems are born
dressed—may seem somewhat forced, a hyperextension of the metaphor. She
tries to naturalize his adornments by claiming that metaphor is actually the natu-
ural and immediate mode of expression for this particular poet.
In her own poetry Bluvshtain tended more toward the natural, internal, spont-
taneous side of simplicity rather than toward the rhetoric of a dressed newborn.
The essay ends with an allusion to the biblical Jacob’s surprise upon awaking
from his dream-prophecy by God’s presence in the place he had stopped for the
night. “The realization of its rightness comes to us unmediated, with a cry of
surprise like that of Jacob our forefather: ‘For there is a new glory of expression
in this place and I did not know it!’” (202).18 Jacob’s realization of a divine exp-
pression itself arrives in a direct, seemingly unmediated way. He did not know
it; the revelation came as a surprise. Bluvshtain may have a similar reason for
admiring the poetry of Francis Jammes in her poem “I” (“’Ani”).19 The speaker
both is simple and likes simplicity in others, and these two qualities are identif-
84 a new sound in hebrew poetry
fied with one another. The speaker in “I” was once more of a Romantic, becomi-
ing one with the eagles’ cries; now she is quiet like the waters of a lake. She is
consistent with her environment as well as with her feelings.
The book under consideration, Shlonsky’s To Papa-Mama, is a bridge in two
senses: it closes the divide in his own work between Ashkenazic and the new acc-
cent; it treats themes of immigrants in the Holy Land only recently arrived and
still in the midst of a great transition. Shlonsky’s idiosyncratic use of accent to
express the themes of his book sheds light on Bluvshtain’s praise of the poet’s
simplicity and the multiple sources for simplicity, internal and environmental.
cent by inviting the Ashkenazic sound into this volume when the Diaspora is
invoked.
To Papa-Mama is Shlonsky’s attempt to present his poetry as relatively colloq-
quial and as rooted in the lullaby rather than the prophetic tradition such that
Bluvshtain’s praise may very well be genuine. Through accent the book signals
the personal as well as a more global cultural and national transition that is its
major theme. It is therefore compatible with Bluvshtain’s poetics as she presents
them in her review. He uses and integrates the new accent when appropriate to
the themes of the poem themselves.
That “The Sign of the Time” sees something worth complimenting in
Temkin’s poetry is also consistent with a reading of the essay that takes accent
into consideration. Temkin does not use the new accent but some of his
poems come close to Bluvshtain’s prescription for immediate expression, such
as “I Was Not Gifted” (“Lo’ ne¿anti”), in which the speaker, implicitly identif-
fied as a poet, ends by expressing the land’s pain.
: ִּכי אֹזֶ ן לִ י ַק ׁשו ָּבה,ַא ְך לֹא יֵ ַדע ִא ׁיש
ְּכסוּס נֶ ֱא ָמן
פ ְר ָסאוֹ ת ֶא ְצנוֹ ף-י ַ ִמ ְ ּב ַעד ֶמ ְר ֲח ֵּק
ְ ּב ִה ָּת ַקע מוֹ טוֹ ת ְמגֻ ָּונִ ים
:ַעל ֲא ָד ָמה עוֹ ְט ָ ּיה וַ ֲעצו ָּבה
.ְ ּבבוֹ ָא ּה ִ ּב ְב ִרית מוֹ לָ ֶדת
But nobody knows that my ear is cocked:
Like a loyal horse
From a distance of parasangs I neigh
As the colorful poles are pounded
Into the earth, mournful and sad:
As she enters into a covenant of the homeland.
(Temkin 1927, 25)
If a Jewish male enters the covenant through circumcision, the land (femin-
nine in Hebrew) enters the covenant of the homeland through the pain of
poles being pounded into her, and through the many violent acts that are req-
quired to build the homeland. The pain does not emanate from the poet’s
body but the speaker empathizes with the land as if she were a sentient being.
In an act of loyal sympathy and ventriloquism, the speaker neighs like a horse
with each pounding of a pole into the earth. He expresses the land’s experie-
ence as an animal’s cry—the sound of sincere uncultivated expression.
Channeling Authenticity
Karni and Shats instruct artists to be silent in order to reach the respective
goals described in their essays: becoming a Hebrew writer and not merely one
88 a new sound in hebrew poetry
who writes in Hebrew, and redeeming classical poetry. The spontaneous side
of simplicity (more than the rhetoric of the newborn), as well as the silences
that Karni and Shats recommend, leave their mark on Bluvshtain’s poetry. In
many of her poems, Bluvshtain forges a link between the present and the dist-
tant past at the expense of a problematic middle that for the most part is not
represented in her poems. In the poem “Rachel,” for example, the biblical
matriarch Rachel inhabits the poem’s speaker.
ָר ֵחל
,ֵהן דָּ ָמ ּה ְ ּב ָד ִמי זוֹ ֵרם
–ֵהן קוֹ לָ ּה ִ ּבי ָרן
,ָר ֵחל ָהרוֹ ָעה צאֹן לָ ָבן
.ל–אם ָה ֵאם ֵ ָר ֵח
וְ ַעל ֵּכן ַה ַ ּביִ ת לִ י ַצר
,וְ ָה ִעיר–זָ ָרה
ִּכי ָהיָ ה ִמ ְתנוֹ ֵפף סו ָּד ָר ּה
;לְ רוּחוֹ ת ַה ִּמ ְד ָ ּבר
וְ ַעל ֵּכן ֶאת דַּ ְר ִּכי א ַֹחז
,ְ ּב ִב ְט ָחה ָּכזׂאת
ִּכי ׁ ְשמו ִּרים ְ ּב ַרגְ לַ י זִ כְ רוֹ נוֹ ת
! ִּמנִ י ָאז,ִמ ִּני ָאז
Rachel
Behold her blood flows in my blood,
Behold her voice within me sings—
Rachel the herder of Laban’s sheep,
Rachel—mother of mother.
And so the house constrains me
and the city—is alien,
For her cloak would flutter
In the desert winds;
And so I shall stick to my path
With that same confidence,
For memories are preserved in my legs
From then, from then!
(Bluvshtain 1927, 36)
Bluvshtain does not invoke a folk or literary intertext to link herself to the mat-
triarch. The poem both alludes to biblical intertexts and at the same time
seems to devalue literary allusion. Physical traces replace intertexts. Memor-
ries or traces of experience of ancient figures are to be found in the legs of the
“listening to her is torture” 89
speaker; the matriarch’s blood flows within her. If the matriarch once stood
in the desert, her cloak blowing freely in the wind, the speaker has inherited
some of that experience so that she feels constrained and alienated by city
life. The two Rachels share an ontology and have shared sensory experience
as if they were conjoined twins born in different millennia.26 Despite the poe-
em’s efforts to create an entirely physical and even mystical connection, the
key that unlocks the meaning in the poem is that the poet and the matriarch
have the same name. The title’s referent is therefore ambiguous: it may refer
to the matriarch, the poetess, or the being who is both one and the other—
who lives in Mandatory Palestine and contains within her the spirit, voice,
and blood of the ancient matriarch.
In her poem “Aftergrowth” (“Safia¿”), which I have analyzed at greater length
elsewhere, Bluvshtain similarly connects ancient and present in a way that is
physical and linguistic.27 The speaker tells us that even though she has not
worked the land, grain has spontaneously arisen. Furthermore, it is not a paltry
aftergrowth, but a “sun-blessed” grain:
, גַ ם לֹא זָ ַר ְע ִּתי,ֵהן לֹא ָח ַר ׁ ְש ִּתי
.לֹא ִה ְת ּ ַפ ַּללְ ִּתי ַעל ַה ָּמ ָטר
ְר ֵאה נָ א! שְׂ דוֹ ַתי ִה ְצ ִמיח ּו,ו ֶּפ ַתע
.דָּ גָ ן ְ ּברו ְּך ׁ ֶש ֶמ ׁש ִ ּב ְמקוֹ ם דַּ ְר ָדר
,יח ְּתנוּבוֹ ת ִמ ֶּק ֶדםַ ַה ִאם הוּא ְס ִפ
? ְקצו ִּרים ֵמ ָאז,ִח ּ ֵטי ֶח ְדוָ ה ֵהם
ֵ ֲא ׁ ֶשר ּ ְפ ָקדוּנִ י ִב
,ימי ָהעֹנִ י
.ָ ּב ְקע ּו ָעל ּו ִבי ְ ּבא ַֹרח ָרז
Behold I have not plowed nor have I planted,
I have not prayed for the rain.
And suddenly, see! my fields have grown
Sun-blessed grain instead of thistle.
Is it the aftergrowth of ancient produce,
Grains of joy, cut then?
That have remembered me in hard times,
Burst forth rose up in me in a mysterious way.28
Something extraordinary has happened. Seeds that ought to have been
planted millennia ago—dropped from the grain harvested by the hands of
ancient Israelites—have suddenly sprouted in the Labor Zionist setting of
twentieth-century Palestine. The speaker is identified through the poem as
both a female laborer and as the land herself, feminine in the Hebrew, so that
the address to the field in the final stanza may be understood to be words the
laborer knows and that the land herself remembers having heard once upon a
time:
90 a new sound in hebrew poetry
Hebrew revival that I have extrapolated from her poems tells the story of an
abrupt linguistic and cultural blossoming and diverges sharply both from the
formulation of revival implicit in Ben-Yehuda’s accent design and from Shats’s
instructions for absorbing the new accent. Her ancient authentic artifacts app-
pear suddenly and effortlessly; ancients speak through her. Her poems promote
an idea of contemporary Hebrew in Palestine as an authentic and pure sound,
the all-but-unmediated expression of the land or the ancients. In the moment
that she composes the poems, however, Bluvshtain is integrating the Hebrew of
the schools rather than critiquing it, all the while maintaining the pretense of a
perfectly realized authentic Hebrew. Bluvshtain’s language is the Hebrew of
Ben-Yehuda, the flawed speech of Ashkenazic Jews that must be corrected and
perfected, but she treats that hybrid new-accent Hebrew as if it were pure and
wholly authentic. She herself experienced something like the process of becomi-
ing a Hebrew poet that Shats and Karni describe—arriving in Palestine and
learning Hebrew as an adult. But her poems disguise the hybridity of the immig-
grant behind the mask of a native and portray the linguistic and edible products
of the New Yishuv as finally determined by higher forces.
However underappreciated Bluvshtain was as an accent pioneer, she was a
successful new-accent poet in two senses. She created a new-accent sound in
her poetry, and through her poetry provided an ideologically useful account of
Hebrew in Palestine. She inscribed a history of Hebrew language and poetry
that made sense of and naturalized the appearance of a new and Hebrew sound
in poetry in the Land of Israel.
Bluvshtain’s poetry is associated with orality twice over. Critics received her as
one of the group of women writing poetry in Palestine but she was also a labor
poet. Labor poets toyed with the fiction that poems were on a continuum with
the unliterary scrawls of a laborer describing the life of labor just as women’s poe-
etry was associated with speech. This relationship to orality helps explain how
and why labor poetry was the first canonical poetry to finally adopt the new acc-
cent. The ideological demands on labor poetry, the expectation of the Labor
movement that high poetry must speak for the workers or as workers, and the
imaginative linking of classical and contemporary Jewish life through agricult-
ture provided an overdetermined poetic justification for the new accent.
I have interpreted her essay as incorporating her thoughts on the new accent
for men; her poetry may tell us more about her thoughts on how women’s poetry
ought to integrate the new accent. For Bluvshtain as well as for Karni and Shats,
silence and attention to one’s environment help shape the true Hebrew artist of
his time. Men must listen and integrate, move through a hybrid stage of poetic
language. Shlonsky’s expression of his environment, or its effect on his own
speaking, singing, poetry-writing self is indeed the sign of the time. In the fiction
of her poems though not in her life, silence is important less for the fact that it all-
lows her to hear the surrounding native sounds than for allowing her to embody
92 a new sound in hebrew poetry
and speak some old-new sound. The speaker need not learn Hebrew, nor correct
it, nor strive for authenticity just as she need not labor to make the crop grow—
she must simply serve as the conduit for an ancient voice. Bluvshtain enacts aut-
thenticity in her writing as immediate and fully formed. Her reception of
Bat-Miryam—as a charming new immigrant and muse, on the one hand, and as
a cacophonous poet on the other—indicates that she expects other women to do
the same in their own poetry.
described in the letter, Bluvshtain hosted a soiree in honor of the newly arrived
poet. Even if Bat-Miryam did carry an Ashkenazic burden or poem with her
from the Diaspora, that alone does not explain Bluvshtain’s irritation especially
in light of her praise of Shlonsky in print not long before this incident. The rec-
ception and affiliation of each of the three poets involved, however, explains
more. Shlonsky did not belong to the group of four or five women with which
Bluvshtain was affiliated, whereas Bat-Miryam, whose persona was at odds with
Bluvshtain’s vision for women’s poetry, is now part of that group. Bluvshtain
wants to maintain an association between Hebrew dialect and women’s writing.
Bat-Miryam’s accent undoes that association and threatens an idea of women’s
poetry to which Bluvshtain adheres, and which she may see as constitutive of her
persona among her readers. Bat-Miryam upsets Bluvshtain’s paradigm for wome-
en’s poetry as authentic and territorial.
Just before her unkind remark about the homeliness of Bat-Miryam’s accent,
Bluvshtain describes the poet’s physical beauty. She compares Bat-Miryam to the
“tents of Kedar” of the Song of Songs, utilizing biblically inscribed beauty as a
kind of literary antidote to all exilic sounds and personae.33 Bluvshtain’s irritation
with her colleague’s Hebrew was not aired publicly, as far as I can tell. But her imp-
pression of Bat-Miryam as an exotic beauty and her association of the poet with
the Song of Songs did receive public expression about six years later in the poem
“Hebrew Woman” (“¿Ivriyah”).34 The poem has both a dedication “to Y. Bat-
Miryam” and an epigraph from the Song of Songs (1:5), “I am black and beautif-
ful,” so that it opens by associating Bat-Miryam with the female speaker in that
biblical work.35 Once the poem begins, however, Bat-Miryam or her image vac-
cates the speaking position. The beautiful Hebrew woman is the subject and add-
dressee rather than the speaker in this poem that is marked by nineteenth-century
European notions of authenticity and femininity—while the speaker plays a typic-
cally male role. Bluvshtain has transformed Bat-Miryam from a poet into a muse.
ִע ְב ִריָ ה
מרים- בת.לי
)ׁ ְשחוֹ ָרה ֲאנִ י וְ נָ אוָ ה (שיר השירים
This poem departs from the poet’s usual methods. Bluvshtain regularly inv-
vokes biblical figures as elements of an authentic, national past in order to make
a claim of authenticity for contemporary Jewish life in Palestine, and sometimes
adapts the trope of the woman as land, or embeds her speaker with traces of anc-
“listening to her is torture” 95
cient authenticity. In “Hebrew Woman” the addressee rather than the speaker or
the land is the vehicle for authenticity and the poem situates her in metonymic
rather than metaphoric relation to the land. The speaker gazes at her, stunned
by a beauty that brings to mind an ancient Israelite woman. The second stanza
remains focused on her appearance and person: the woman looks as if she might
have stepped out of the pages of the Bible and indeed a bridge suspended from
this beautiful woman leads to the land of the Hebrews. By her very appearance
the Hebrew woman sends the speaker on a journey to ancient Israel.36
In the third stanza the speaker seems to turn away from the spectacle of
the Hebrew woman to consider her own biography. The maleness of the
speaker (or the masculine associations of her biography) becomes more exp-
plicit in the third and fourth stanzas when she invokes the trope of the wand-
derer, or perhaps the prodigal son, returning to the national homeland.
,ְ ּבנוֹ ף נֵ כָ ר ָהלוֹ ְך וָ נו ַּע
)?(דְּ ָרכִ ים בּ וֹ ִמי יִ ְס ּפֹר
ֲאנִ י ֵה ַמ ְר ִּתי ׁ ְשחוֹ ר וְ לַ ַהט
.ְ ּב ְתכֵ לֶ ת ו ִּבנְ הוֹ ר
,ַא ְך ִאם ָמ ַעלְ ִּתי—לֹא לָ נֶ ַצח
.ִּכ ַח ׁ ְש ִּתי—לֹא ַעד ּתֹם
וְ ׁ ַש ְב ִּתי ׁ ּשוּב ְּכ ׁשוּב ַה ֵהלֶ ְך
.ֶֹאל ְּכ ַפר מוֹ לַ ְד ּתו
Wandering in a foreign vista
(Who can count the paths?)
I traded the black and blazing
For the blue and for the light.
But if I have been faithless—not forever,
If I have deceived—then not completely.
For I will return again as the wanderer returns
To the village where he was born.
Unlike the addressee, imagined as untainted by modernity and foreignness,
the speaker has wandered outside the village that represents the homeland.
The biblical epigraph has already set up a rural-urban divide. The blackness
of the beautiful woman in the Song of Songs signals her rural environment—
the sun does not darken the women of the city. The speaker-wanderer is more
cosmopolitan than the addressee and has also circulated and been exposed to
foreign influence. She has compromised the purity she once had and that the
addressee retains. Bluvshtain’s speaker has traded the “black and blazing”—
words that have already been used to describe the beautiful woman—for “the
blue and for the light” (lines 11–12). The poem’s vocabulary hints at a deep off-
fense the wanderer has committed. The word I have translated as “I traded,”
96 a new sound in hebrew poetry
shtain as a critic of men’s poetry, the new accent is a sign of having followed
Karni’s advice and listened to the land. The new accent signifies something
else entirely in women’s poetry, however, because for Bluvshtain the female
poet emerges from the trope of the muse. Bat-Miryam’s severe Ashkenazic acc-
cent undermines or deconstructs that distinction between the muse who
sometimes sings her own poems and the “artists in the homeland” who, after
listening for a time, begin to relearn the language of that land. Bat-Miryam’s
exotic appearance makes the fact of her wholly inauthentic speech stand out
starkly. The man may commune with, learn from, and address the land; the
woman must enact authenticity. The man may learn how to become more
authentic but the woman must always �already be so.
It is this internal contradiction, rather than Bat-Miryam’s enunciation of
Ashkenazic sounds per se, that engenders suffering. The exotic woman has
articulated a masculine hybridity instead of taking this opportunity to speak
in a feminine voice—either as the land or simply as an authentic speaker.
When a man fails to adopt the new accent he speaks Ashkenazic, but when
the muse-like woman recites her poems in Ashkenazic it is cacophony. In
“Hebrew Woman,” Bluvshtain transforms the speaker of the Song of Songs
into the mute addressee of the poem who is both a muse and a metonymy for
the land. The letter describing her encounter with Bat-Miryam tells us that
Bluvshtain believes that the way to be a poetess is to be a kind of muse. If a
muse in the Land of Israel were ever to compose her own song, she would
certainly sing it in new-accent Hebrew.
Bluvshtain’s reaction to Bat-Miryam’s accent hints at her notions of feminine
poetic personae but is also revealing of the expectations of her larger cultural
context. The symbolic importance for women within Hebrew culture in Palest-
tine of being authentic over and against becoming authentic is reflected in the
reception of Bi¿ovski. Perhaps more than that of any other Hebrew poet, her car-
reer was predicated on the possibility of becoming, but her persona was as aut-
thentic as the Hebrew woman of Bluvshtain’s poem.
not a Jew of Spanish origin, for example. But for Klausner and others Bi¿ovski
was more authentically Jewish than Ashkenazic Jews.
This idea that the non-Jewish woman can be more authentically connected
to Jewish identity is reminiscent of Karni’s essay “The Singer Nation,” in which
the Arab worker has more in him of the patriarch Abraham than the Jews of Tel
Aviv do. Klausner crowns Bi¿ovski poetess extraordinaire, the one who expresses
the essence of the Jewish soul, and says that she is in a sense the only female
poet. Bi¿ovski is authentic both because she is not Jewish and because she is fem-
male. She is therefore doubly free of Ashkenazic Diaspora identity.
In addition to their alacrity in adopting the new accent, both Bi¿ovski and
Bluvshtain deviated from the male poetic biography in another significant
and related way: they seem to have entirely skipped the Ashkenazic stage of
composition of their male contemporaries and with it the question of how to
stage their switch, and whether to transpose their early poetry after switching
to the new accent. Yet it is unlikely that either poet found it entirely natural at
first to write in the new accent. Bi¿ovski admits to feeling haunted by the
sound of Bialik’s Ashkenazic poetry, saying that her initial instinct was to
write in Ashkenazic because that was the sound of Hebrew poetry she knew.
In the late twenties she writes:
In 1920 I tried, for the first time, to compose original poetry in Hebrew. I
wrote my first poems in the Ashkenazic accent [havarah] despite the fact that
from the beginning of my studies the Sephardic accent was the only one I
knew and used (by chance my Hebrew teacher in the Hebrew language
classes sponsored by ±oveve Tsiyon was from the Land of Israel). But the inf-
fluence of my reading in the Hebrew language—which was until then only
in the Ashkenazic accent—was so great, that at the beginning I could not
imagine a Hebrew poem being written in another mode. My first attempt did
not satisfy me. The second attempt to create original Hebrew poetry in that
same accent that I was used to [i.e., in the new accent] was a success and led
me to the writing of Hebrew poems in general. (Elisheva 5)
Thanks to her unusual biography Bi¿ovski was freer of Ashkenazic Hebrew
than any other Russian Hebrew poet of her generation. Yet even she was not imm-
mune to the influence of Bialik’s poetry. Bluvshtain does not draw attention to
the challenge of writing in the new accent in the early twenties, but she too had
to contend at the start of her brief career with a paucity of models for new-�accent
composition, and was no doubt haunted by the Ashkenazic sound of canonical
Hebrew poetry at the time. Critics and writers saw the poetic corpus and the
Hebrew language as engaged in a parallel process of renewal, but poetry by
women was excluded from that model. An assumption of naturalness for wome-
en’s spoken Hebrew, as well as an expectation that women’s poetic composition
was closer to speech, meant that these poets had no literary history to overcome.
They were writers without precedent.
“listening to her is torture” 99
The independent-minded Ezra Zusman was one of the few critics of the per-
riod to treat Bluvshtain’s work as art rather than as a phenomenon of unmediated
national expression. He was also unusual in seeing that the shift in accent was a
challenge that would have affected women as well as men, and in acknowledgi-
ing Bluvshtain’s use of the new accent as making her one of the “pioneers of the
correct accent, among the wounded pioneers of this transition” from the Ashken-
nazic to the new accent.37 He writes of her as a poet who has to find a new way of
writing in Hebrew within a strong Ashkenazic poetic tradition instead of merely
as a woman who, ignorant of Hebrew tradition, speaks rather than writes her poe-
etry and therefore does not have to contend with shifting literary conventions.
Bluvshtain never published poems composed in an Ashkenazic Hebrew. The
fact that neither Bi¿ovski nor Bluvshtain dramatized a struggle with the new acc-
cent in their poems or made a semi-official switch from one accent to another
does not mean that they did not experience their own adoption and adaptation
of new-accent Hebrew as a challenge. They also had to overcome anxieties of inf-
fluence, but the gender politics of Hebrew poetry obscured those anxieties from
view. Even though Bi¿ovski made no claim to a genetically Jewish or Israelite
identity, her lack of connection to the devalued Ashkenazic Jewish identity rend-
ders her authentic. Shlonsky, Bluvshtain, Bialik, Karni, Shats, Temkin, and
Bi¿ovski were all listening to the Hebrew being spoken in Palestine. Men were
able to dramatize that listening and that evolution in their poetry. The model for
the male new-accent poet was a Hebrew that required correction and was def-
fined less by arrival than by a continual asymptotic striving toward an authentici-
ity they would never quite reach. The women, even as they may have struggled
to overcome the influence of Ashkenazic poetic language, were expected to dram-
matize personae that were always already authentic.
chapter four
100
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 101
umes of new-accent poetry. At this point Shlonsky was still publishing poems in
Ashkenazic as well.
Imprecise claims of Avraham Shlonsky’s primacy in new-accent poetry obfusc-
cate the nature of his considerable contribution. Shlonsky’s reputation in this
realm is in part an extension of his general reception as an innovator and as a
rebel, and his persona as the leader of a generation of Hebrew poets. Thanks to
this reputation, critics tended to see him as the newest addition to a genealogy of
great Hebrew writers. But these perceptions are also an expression of Shlonsky’s
actual and substantial contribution to new-accent poetry that have been either
displaced or distorted. Shlonsky was a great innovator capable of breathtaking
literary-linguistic feats: he integrated the new accent into his poetry while res-
sponding to the demands of contemporary conceptions of literary history. This
chapter focuses on Shlonsky’s innovative integration of the new accent into
both the Hebrew poetic corpus and his own poetic persona. Shlonsky used his
canonical and noncanonical poetry explicitly to allay fears associated with the
introduction of the new accent into canonical Hebrew poetry. He resolved
questions about the possibility and viability of new-accent poetry, questions that
were untouchable by women’s poetry because of the terms of its reception.
Shlonsky’s first new-accent compositions in the early to mid-twenties were in
subcanonical genres—folk songs, translations, and occasional verse. He did not
begin to publish new-accent poems in any genre until 1926 when “Train”
(“Rakevet”) appeared in Davar.2 He had composed “Train” a few years earlier
and first performed it at his work settlement in the spring of 1923. As with Bluv�
shtain, Shlonsky’s brief stint as a laborer (briefer, even, than Bluvshtain’s) cont-
tinued to be a major inspiration for his poetry for several years.3 Some scholars
attribute Shlonsky’s switch to the new accent in the 1920s to the year he spent in
Palestine as a teenager, but his participation in a labor settlement may very well
have been the more significant factor in his adoption of the new accent.4 The
first extant new-accent composition by Shlonsky is dated winter 1922 (January–
March), and was written during his four-month stay at En ±arod, a settlement
that pitched its tents in the Jezreel Valley in 1920.
Shlonsky wrote “A Panorama of En ±arod” for a celebration that he and his
fellow laborers staged there. The occasional poem was set to music.5 The first
new-accent poem Shlonsky is known to have written, it contains between
fourteen and twenty-four lines, depending on the version, and was clearly int-
tended for insiders. Each stanza mocks a different member of the group, so it
is unlikely that “A Panorama of En ±arod” would have circulated beyond
Â�Shlonsky’s colleagues, family, and friends. Five years would pass before ShlonÂ�
sky published a book containing any new-accent poems (To Papa-Mama [le-
’Aba-’ima], in 1927) and another few years before he published a book entirely
in the new accent (In These Days [be-’Eleh ha-yamim], 1929–1930), at which
point the accent revolution was, by most definitions, over.6
102 a new sound in hebrew poetry
The work settlements were relatively small, isolated, and ideologically mot-
tivated and were therefore a friendly environment for the cultivation of a new
accent, as the schools in the Galilee had been. The small audience consisted
of people with whom Shlonsky worked and who communicated in new-�accent
Hebrew as best they could (and when they managed not to speak Russian or
Yiddish). It is possible that Shlonsky decided to compose “A Panorama of En
±arod” in the new accent because the workers of En ±arod favored it or simp-
ply because of the nonliterary context in which the song was performed. Like
the settlements themselves, the low genres had explicit ideological motivat-
tions. Hebrew lacked folk songs and work songs. Writers would compose verse
in these genres (which would often be disseminated without attribution), and
would translate Russian and Yiddish verse into Hebrew. The nationalist need
for folk literature as well as the intense ideological sentiment and idealism
that characterized the work settlement, where work songs would have been in
high demand, together explain why the folk song became the literary entry
point of the new accent.
Despite its necessarily limited impact, “A Panorama of En ±arod” is imp-
portant because in it one can already see some of the strategies Shlonsky was
to develop in his precious few published new-accent folk songs. A few of the
lines are composed in Ashkenazic although this limited usage is thematized
or otherwise accounted for by its context and so does not render the work a
hybrid composition in the usual sense. His use of Russian and Yiddish rhymes
no doubt mimicked his fellow immigrants’ reliance on their mother tongues,
but is also a technique that he adopts in “Doesn’t Matter” (“Lo ’ikhpat”), alb-
beit in a more refined form. “Doesn’t Matter” is a chastushka, a folk rhyme in
Russian and Ukrainian. Shlonsky’s use of this form and of Ukrainian sounds
in the refrain is also significant because the chastushka refuses narrative dev-
velopment and can therefore be seen as a distinct alternative to the Yiddish
and Hebrew poems of the period.7
Several new-accent poems in a similar vein followed—“In the Tent” and
“Doesn’t Matter” were written as folk songs and described the life of pioneers in
an agricultural setting; “Train” took a more urban laboring lifestyle as its backd-
drop.8 All of these disseminated beyond the point of their initial performances
and some were put to music, becoming part of the culture of the new settlement.
The first of Shlonsky’s lyric new-accent poems to appear in print was “Tishre,”
in September 1926 in the journal Ketuvim (Writings).9 “Tishre” is the opening
poem of To Papa-Mama and appears in the collection In the Cycle as well as in
all subsequent collections of Shlonsky’s poetry. One approach to writing a hist-
tory of new-accent poetry would be to begin with “Tishre” because it was a can-
nonical poem composed by an authoritative poet who defined a generation of
Hebrew literature. Scholarship attends to Shlonsky’s new-accent poetry in large
part because it was canonical—as opposed to poetry for children, folk songs, occ-
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 103
casional poetry, and even poetry by women. Shlonsky encouraged such a readi-
ing of his poetry as the continuation—however eccentric and individualist—of
a national narrative.10 But this authoritative poet began his own new-accent
composition in a low genre and this was to help effect his particular reception
as a new-accent poet.11
Poetry by women held a different, more ambiguous position than children’s
poetry and may have challenged Hebrew poetry in general to adopt the new acc-
cent. The works of Rab and Bluvshtain may have also prepared poets and the
reading public for the more complete adoption of the new accent by the Heb-
brew poetry that followed. Folk songs, however, played a more obvious role in
the adoption of the new accent by canonical poets in the 1920s. In Shlonsky’s
own oeuvre, folk songs provided him with a laboratory in which to experim-
ment with new-accent rhythms and prepare himself for writing in those
genres as well.12 His folk songs paved the way for the introduction of the new
accent into all parts of his oeuvre and resolved anxieties about its debut in lyric
poetry. Despite the generic divide between lyric poetry and folk song, the latter
facilitated the standardization of the new accent in the higher genres and not
only in the more colloquial ones.
The challenge at this moment in new-accent history was to write poems that
could be integrated into the brief but lofty and by now very well respected Mode-
ern Hebrew poetic tradition. Shlonsky was in a good position to meet this chall-
lenge. Critics and readers already perceived him as the central poetic figure of
the new generation, as the inheritor of Bialik’s role if not of his precise poetics.13
In part because of this perception of him as engaged in an oedipal struggle with
Bialik, Shlonsky was able to break with the tradition on the question of accent
while maintaining continuity with it in other ways. His position as dominant
poet and as rebel made it possible for him to enact a shift to the new accent in a
way that other, less central poets could not have done.
Shlonsky operates in two modes in his poetry. At times he is a welder, maki-
ing the new accent continuous with Hebrew literary history; at other times he
uses the new accent to make a clean break with the old sound and to define a
culture of the Land of Israel that is distinct from East European Jewish cult-
ture. Through these two modes Shlonsky is able to resolve the problem of
preserving the young tradition of national poetry that had already become so
important to national identity and, with the help of his prosodic technique,
to resolve the prejudice against the new-accent sound.
From the 1890s to the 1920s, pedagogues, revivalists, and even poets called
on writers to compose new-accent verse so as to close the infamous gap bet-
tween spoken and poetic uses of Hebrew. Poets as authoritative as Bialik and
Tchernichovsky felt anxious about this gap, aware that the new accent threate-
ened the continued popularity and relevance of their poetry. ±ayim Leyb
±azan’s 1898 article spoke on behalf of the teachers, asking poets to “lighten
104 a new sound in hebrew poetry
tion. The bisyllabic word as pronounced in the new accent is most often an
iamb itself—one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. (A simil-
lar problem arises with the anapest, whose foot is composed of two unstressed
syllables followed by one stressed syllable.) Kalvari cites three lines of poetry
to illustrate. The first is a line from Bi¿ovski in iambic tetrameter; the second
and third are iambic hexameter taken from Shlonsky:
Each word (or in one case a phrase composed of two monosyllabic words) is
composed of exactly one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
The inevitable coincidence of each iambic foot with exactly one bisyllabic word
or two monosyllabic words makes for monotony.20 My translation of Bi¿ovski’s
line above echoes her meter: “The poem is locked inside the heart.” This coincid-
dence is sometimes tolerated and even desirable. Children’s verse is often sings-
song, such as Dr. Seuss’s iambic tetrameter, “I do not like green eggs and ham.”21
Ashkenazic suffers from the converse problem, if to a lesser extent. An accent-
tual-syllabic line of poetry that ends with an unstressed syllable threatens mon-
notony in an Ashkenazic pronunciation whose words also end with an
unstressed syllable. The trochee, a foot consisting of one stressed followed by
one unstressed syllable, is the Ashkenazic analog to the new accent–iambic
combination. (The line “Mirror mirror on the wall” begins with two trochees.)
One way to mitigate this monotony is to vary the distribution of words across
the metric feet by selecting words with a varying number of syllables. (Consider
line 4 of Shakespeare’s “Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,” in
which the stress of one of the bisyllabic words has a penultimate stress: Thou
dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.)22 The difficulties that the respect-
tive accents encounter, however, are not entirely symmetrical because the Ashk-
kenazic stress system has enough words that are pronounced with the stress on
the final syllable to allow for variety.23 The poet writing in the Se�phardic stress
will find it harder to inject his verse with penultimate variation.24
Shlonsky’s “Doesn’t Matter,” whose first stanza and refrain Kalvari quotes,
serves as an example of a poet’s success in overcoming this problem.25 Shlonsky
uses a variety of methods—penultimately stressed words of two or four syllables,
106 a new sound in hebrew poetry
monosyllabic words, trisyllabic words in which the stress falls on the third syllab-
ble, penultimately stressed bisyllabic words with a prefix (such as the definite art-
ticle and the conjunction “and,” both monosyllabic prefixes), and placing
three- or four-syllable, penultimately stressed words at the end of every second
line—in order to prevent a neat and constant coincidence of the end of the foot
with the end of a word. In his brief review of these few lines by Shlonsky, Kalv-
vari does not do justice to Shlonsky’s talent for integrating unconventional
sounds into his poetry. In this mostly trochaic poem, Shlonsky manages to
gather an impressive variety of words—including segholates (’orez), assonance-
based noun paradigms (kada¿at), conjugated verbs with archaic endings (’alin-
nah), declined nouns (artsenu), and loan words (nafka minah)—that carry their
stress on the penultimate syllable even in the new accent.
ֵּתה וְ א ֶֹרז יֵ ׁש ְ ּב ִסין
.ֶא ֶרץ ַה ִּנדַּ ַחת
ו ְּב ַא ְר ֵצנ ּו יֵ ׁש ַח ְמ ִסין
.ָּכל ִמינֵ י ַקדַּ ַחת
!לֹא ִאכְ ּ ַפת! לֹא ִאכְ ּ ַפת
!ַ ּב ְּכ ָפ ִרים ָאלִ ינָ ה
Â�Â� ֵאין לִ י ּ ַפת,יֵ ׁש לִ י ּ ַפת
?לְ ִמי נָ ְפ ָקא ִמ ַּינ ּה
teh ve-’orez yesh be-sin
’erets ha-nida¿at,
u-ve-’artsenu yesh ¿amsin
kol mine kada¿at.
lo ’ikhpat! lo ’ikhpat!
ba-kefarim ’alinah!
yesh li pat, ’en li pat
le-mi naf ka minah.
China has its tea and rice,
Remotest of all lands
And our land has sirocco
Malaria of all kinds.
Doesn’t matter! Doesn’t matter!
In villages I’ll lay me down!
I have some bread, I have no bread—
Who could give a darn?
This subcanonical faux folk song, which became a popular song in the Yis-
shuv and remained popular into the statehood years, demonstrates Shlonsky’s
unique facility and creativity with Hebrew sounds. He created a new sound
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 107
in Hebrew poetry whose echoes can be heard in the work of many subsequent
poets including, most famously, in the poetry of his so-called student Natan
Alterman.26
Inertia is a powerful prosodic force, and even Shlonsky was subject to its eff-
fects. The problem of abandoning the Ashkenazic sound was not merely technic-
cal, though the lack of words with a stress on the penultimate syllable did pose a
challenge to the literary new accent. The success of the recent Ashkenazic Heb-
brew literary tradition also encouraged resistance to the new accent in poetry in
a number of ways. The Te¿iyah poets of the late nineteenth century had set a
precedent. It was difficult to imagine one’s poetry departing so radically from
this revered corpus. But imagining such a departure may have fostered another
anxiety within Hebrew culture. Poets may have feared the loss of the recent trad-
dition that served as a literary precedent. If they abandoned the Ashkenazic acc-
cent (along with their own Ashkenazic oeuvres), the achievements of the
Te¿iyah generation would be lost to them. Shlonsky contributed greatly to the
literary new accent by finding ways to deal with both problems of technique
and the weight of tradition.
As mentioned, his most successful folk song, “Doesn’t Matter,” was composed
as a chastushka with disconnected stanzas valorizing sound over sense. Shlon�
sky’s version of this genre represented formally the unbridgeable emotional
divide typical of the pioneer’s experience. It resonated so completely with
contemporary notions of the figure of the pioneer that it was almost immedia-
ately absorbed by popular culture as an anonymous folk song.27
I shall elaborate these characteristics of Shlonsky’s folk songs because they
help to account for the contrast between their own accentual history and that of
his canonical lyric poetry, and give us a sense of the openness of the folk song in
general to new-accent innovation in Hebrew culture. All three folk songs that
Shlonksy composed in the early twenties and published in the mid-twenties—inc-
cluding “Train,” which does not resemble a chastushka—presume or enact a sharp
break that is dramatized by their formal qualities. Shlonsky uses the nonnarrat-
tive and antinarrative forms to express existential divides. There is a gap between
the expressions of hope and an internal anguish, and a divide between the here-
and-now of the pioneer-immigrant experience and the elsewhere of the living
“parents of orphans.”28 Both divides were typical of the pioneer-immigrant exper-
rience of the Third Aliyah, or at least of that generation’s self-image which they
saw reflected in literature. Scholars have already noted Shlonsky’s attempt to crea-
ate a different, new-accent folk song for life in Palestine.29 I would like to extend
and elaborate these claims. On a metapoetic level these songs reflect themes of
alienation, and this too is relevant to Shlonsky’s particular use of the new accent.
The poems seem to refuse the option of continuing or contributing to the Jewish
East European folk-song tradition; that in and of itself constitutes a particular
method for absorbing the new accent into Hebrew culture and identity.
tends to be more playful and mocking in “Doesn’t Matter,” which avoids the
deep unrelieved melancholy of “In the Tent.”
י—�Â�Âה ִ ּצ ָידה!
�-Âב ְרזֶ ל ֲ€אנִ ַ
ְרכ ּוב ַ ּ
ם�—Â�Âה ִ ּג ָידה!
ַ ִמי ּ ֹ
€פה ָ€אב€וָ ֵא
ּ ֵפן ַ€א ׁ ְש ִמ ָידה.
ַא ֲא ִב ָידה.
ֵהי ַ€ה ִצ ָדה!
וְ ַא ַחר:
ע ּוף ָ€עיַ ְפ ִּתי.
€שן חוֹ ֶר ֶקת וְ ׁשוֹ ֶק ֶקת: ַא ְך€נוֹ ֶש ֶפת ָ€ה ַר ֶּכ ֶבתֵ ׁ ,
€ש ֶקט! €ש ֶקט! ָהלְ ָאה ֶ ָהלְ ָאה ֶ
�-Âתא! Â�-תא ָּ ו ְּמ ׁ ַש ְק ֶש ֶקת€ָּ :תא ָּ
את!אט ָ €ט ֵ וְ טוֹ ְר ִדים ּ ַ€פ ִסיםֻ :
וְ טוֹ ְר ִדים ּ ַ€פ ִסים€ִּ :ת ְע ַּת ְע ָּת!
וְ טוֹ ְר ִדים ּ ַ€פ ִסים€:לְ ַמ ּ ָטה,
ַרק€לְ ַמ ּ ָטה,
ַא ְּת€ַ ,א ָּתה!
ית?ָמהָ :ט ִע ָ
ית: ְּתעוֹ ת ָּ€ת ִע ָּ
דֶּ ֶר ְך€רו ְּסיָ ה€ּ ,פוֹ לִ ין ,לִ ָ
יטא.
€טעוּ.
€ט ִעיְ . €ט ֵעהְ . ָּתאְ .
וְ ַע ָּתה?
And afterwards:
I’m weary-bleary.
But the train is blowing-breathing,
The cowcatcher—grinding-grunting, hustle-bustle:
Yonder silence! Yonder silence!
And rumbling-grumbling: Cabin-car-car-car!
And rails are nagging: You were swept away!
And rails are nagging: You led astray!
And rails are nagging: Down below,
Always below,
You—you too!
*In the original, “err” appears here in three different forms of the imperative: mascul-
line, femine, and plural.
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 115
one essay Shlonsky advocates “free love” for words of different registers and
sources in Hebrew, which is reminiscent of Marinetti’s discourse of “free
words.”34 The “sssssssiii ssiissii ssiisssssiiii” of Marinetti’s “Zang Tumb Tumb” of
1912 is a precursor to Shlonsky’s train. Marinetti’s “ssii” sounds in a description of
a train ride in Sicily and is both an onomatopoeia for the whistling train and a
vote of confidence for his futurist aesthetic (si is “yes” in Italian).
Marinetti despises both the tired, outdated, irrelevant art and the attitude tow-
ward art represented by the museum and its contents. The constant motion of
Shlonsky’s train, among other characteristics, keeps it and the poem from bec-
coming a stagnant museum of the dead. Although meaning and syntax in
“Train” do not disintegrate to the extent that Marinetti encourages, this poem
has often been treated as if it did, as if it were a collection of audial tricks lacki-
ing any deeper meaning.35 The Hebrew language is harnessed to the poem’s
train such that public performances of the poem (which preceded its publicat-
tion by about three years) were seen as celebrations of the possibilities opened
up by new-accent Hebrew, much as the appearance of the train that arrived in
Palestine in 1904 was supposed to pull the Ottoman Empire into the twentieth
century.36 Jews in Palestine also interpreted the construction of the railroad as
their ticket to the modern world and in retrospect the railroad may be seen as a
kind of symbol for the linguistic goals of the revivalists of the Second Aliyah.37
The poem’s new-accent credentials are impeccable. Shlonsky’s project here
forms an unexpected parallel to the more artificial challenge that Jewish
�Enlightenment poets had set for themselves only a few decades earlier. In fact
Shlonsky’s position resembles both that of the Haskalah poets—the quest for
words that have a penultimate stress even according to the rules of the Sephardic
stress system—and that of Bialik—composing unabashedly in the accent of spok-
ken, as opposed to literary, Hebrew. But whereas Wesselian verse was mocked for
its repetition of the same old rhyme words that satisfied its rather odd requirem-
ments, Shlonsky’s quest was far more fruitful and “Train” is less dependent on
foreign words than his homespun “En ±arod” is. Words like ’ayin, ¿ayin, kayin,
¿adayin, ha-tsidah, hagidah, ’ashmidah, ’a’avidah, ¿ayafti, shokeket, sheket, le-
matah, patua¿, rua¿, ta¿ita, Lita’, tabitah, ’ashkitah, ’anua¿, and karua¿, which
appear in the poem, all carry their major stress on the penultimate syllable in all
pronunciations of Hebrew. The oft-repeated ta sound also indicates that Shlons-
sky has surrendered his Ashkenazic accent. The consonantal sound is sometimes
generated by the letter tet, sometimes by the strong taf, and sometimes by the
weak taf, which would be pronounced as /s/ (like samekh or sin) rather than as /t/
(like tet or the strong taf) in Ashkenazic Hebrew. By rhyming a weak taf with a
tet instead of with one of the sibilant letters, Shlonsky marks the poem as new-
�accent and instructs the reader or listener in this New Hebrew.
For all his flexing of new-accent muscle, Shlonsky has a rather different
motive than the Haskalah poets. He wishes to demonstrate that accentual-
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 117
syllabic new-accent poetry can be flexible and rhythmic and that New Heb-
brew is the appropriate medium for Jewish modernity and literary modernism.
Shlonsky is replacing Bialik and his revolution inasmuch as he is proclaiming
the rise of a new poetic sound based on a prosaic, colloquial, quotidian Heb-
brew. Bialik and his contemporaries had accomplished as much in the late
nineteenth century for Ashkenazic Hebrew. But in the meantime, with the
rise of spoken Hebrew in the schools, Bialik’s spoken Hebrew had been rend-
dered a literary language, and Ashkenazic Hebrew was now being cond-
demned to the museum of the Hebrew language.
The futurist mode of violence functions here as well at the same time that
the poem valorizes sound over sense as low genres such as children’s poetry do.
ת ִּתי€ַּ לֹא€ִמא ּום
נָ ַת ָּת€לֹא
נָ ַתנּ ּו€לֹא
לֹא נָ ַת ְּת
אתָּ אט ֵ ט€ ֻ ְס ָתם
ת ְע ַּת ְע ָּת€ִּ ְס ָתם
לְ ַמ ּ ָטה€ְס ָתם
לְ ַמ ּ ָטה€ַרק
גָ ַמ ְע ִּתי€כּ ֹל
מ ָּת€ַ ַמ ִּתי
מ ֶּתם€ּ ַ ַמ ְתנו
ֵמת ּו
.ָמת
mi’um lo’ tati
lo’ natata
lo’ natanu
lo’ natat
stam tu’te’ta
stam ti¿ta¿ta
stam le-matah
rak le-matah
kol gama¿ti
mati mata
matnu matem
metu
mat.
I gave not a thing
You did not give
We did not give
You did not give
You were simply swept up
118 a new sound in hebrew poetry
!—ה ִ ּצ ָידהÂ�Â�
ַ אנִ י€ֲ ב ְרזֶ ל-Â�
ּ ַ ְרכ ּוב
!—ה ִ ּג ָידהÂ�Â�ם
ַ ֹ ּ ִמי
וָ ֵא€אב€ָ פה€
.א ׁ ְש ִמ ָידה€ַ ּ ֵפן
.ַא ֲא ִב ָידה
Iron-rider am I—step aside!
Who-here is a mother or father?—do tell me!
Lest I quell thee—
Homicide!
(Shlonsky 1965, 226)
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 119
The parents and the past are so irrelevant to the high-speed present that
the dangerous and threatening iron-rider can afford to warn them to move
aside. Despite the poem’s sharp rejection of the recent past, the speaker’s viol-
lent aggression seems directed less at the actual figures of the other generat-
tion than at specters of the past that haunt the present. The biblical Cain,
with whom the speaker shares a name (“so what if my name is Cain”), was a
fratricide, not a patricide. The older generation itself is not held responsible
for the stagnation of society, art, and language; Cain’s conservative tight-
lipped contemporaries who hold on to the outdated past are responsible. The
human victims of the first eighteen lines of the poem seem to be the speaker’s
contemporaries rather than the irrelevant and harmless parents who may
have even once been the futurists of their own generation.39
Although the effort of inscribing the future has exhausted the speaker, the
noise and motion of the train continue. In the next stanza the train seems to be
breathing noisily and its tooth, referring to the train’s cowcatcher, both recalls
Cain’s violent potential and links the stanza to the next part of the poem, which
describes the past and future as mouths, the one closed, the other open:
.קמוּץ€ָ פה€ֶ ּ ָה ֶאתמוֹ ל
.פתו ַּח€ָ ּ פה€ֶ ּ ַה ָּמ ָחר
:רו ַּח€וְ ִעם€פ ּ ִסים€ַ ּ עם€ִ גלְ ַ ּגלִ ים€ּ ַ וְ טוֹ ְר ִדים
.ת ֲחנוֹ ת€ַּ אין€ֵ ,ת ֲחנוֹ ת€ַּ ֵאין
.הכָ נוֹ ת€ֲ רק€ַ ה ָּנה€ֵ ַה ַּת ֲחנוֹ ת
.הכָ נוֹ ת€ֲ ַרק
!?ָמה
The yesterday—a pursèd mouth.
The tomorrow—an open mouth
And the wheels nag with the rails and the wind:
There are no stations, there are no stations.
These stations are only preparations.
Only preparations.
What?!
(Shlonsky 1965, 226–228)
Patua¿ is the obvious word choice for “open,” but for “closed” Shlonsky prefers
the rare kamuts to the more prosaic sagur. Kamuts connotes a pursed or clenched
mouth rather than one that is merely and incidentally closed. The distinction
here between an open mouth and a pursed or clenched one is not unlike the
distinction in French between la gueule and la bouche. La gueule, a loose or
wide-open mouth, has both masculine and lower-class associations; la bouche is
a pinched mouth, and is associated with femininity, proper behavior, and midd-
dle- or upper-class speech.40 Indeed, the very articulation of the word kamuts
purses the lips, and the word patua¿ begins and ends with open syllables. This
120 a new sound in hebrew poetry
classification of open and pursed mouths, whether through the French or ano-
other source, functions in Shlonsky’s idiolect, and the metaphoric language of
this poem recalls Shlonsky’s 1922 essay “Eternal Hunchback” (“±atoteret
¿olam”) in which he proposes that culture rises up from the bottom ranks of soc-
ciety.41 The articulated and open mouth in the poem is the speaking mouth “of
the morrow,” as are the masses and the culture that rise to the top in his essay.
The pursed, proper mouth produces subtle, roundabout, and quiet speech—if it
is able to articulate at all—and is redundant and outdated.
The choice of kamuts for the pursed mouth of the past also invokes the new
prosodic stage in Shlonsky’s career that this poem inaugurates. The associations
of the open mouth with the masses and the morrow are transposed onto the new
accent. The pursed mouth, associated with the rarefied, outdated, and redund-
dant, represents the impeded Ashkenazic accent (as well as the speech and cult-
ture of Jewish Eastern Europe more generally) that is itself symbolic of an
enervated culture whose Hebrew is mute and bound to texts. The secondary
meaning of kamuts, after “clenched,” is “vocalized with the kamats vowel”; in add-
dition to “open,” patua¿ means “vocalized with the pata¿ vowel.” One major
difference between the vowel systems of the two competing groups of accents
during the period of Hebrew revival was the relationship between the kamats
and pata¿ vowels in each. Ashkenazic pronunciations tended to make a distinct-
tion between the two while the new accent (in keeping with most Sephardic pron-
nunciations) assigned the more open /ä/ sound of the pata¿ to both vowels.42 The
more pursed sound of the Ashkenazic kamats (o or aw) was considered represent-
tative of that accent, a metonymy for the Ashkenazic pronunciation. The violent
futurism haunting the poem suggests that precisely because the shut Ashken-
nazic mouth or accent is a thing of the past it is undesirable, to be pushed
aside or destroyed. An open mouth or the new accent belongs to the future,
and the mouth of the train progressing through space clears a path for Heb-
brew literary culture entering an age when poems may actually open their
mouths and speak freely. The train is giving voice to Hebrew poetry, presenting
it as vocal rather than (merely) textual.
The poem associates the language of the masses with the new accent, and
the nation collects artifacts of popular or low culture in order to produce a
national literary culture. One meta-poetic ramification of this interpretation
is that the new accent is upwardly mobile. The generic and self-congratulat-
tory implication is that something of this open-mouthed popular song—its
new-accent aesthetic, its rhythm—will be integrated into the higher genres so
that they too will speak.
I have already mentioned some of the clever ways in which the poem uses
the sounds of syllables and words as a certificate of its new-accent credentials,
but that does not begin to account for the poem’s breathtaking onomatopoeia
and sonic originality. The novel combinations of sound account for the poem’s
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 121
popularity at readings in the early 1920s (a recital of “Train” would have been
more of a performance than a reading) and it remains one of the more mesm-
merizing and audially captivating poems in Hebrew. “Train” appropriately
serves as a star example of onomatopoeia in Benjamin Harshav’s classic article
on sound and meaning in poetry.43 Harshav writes of the three groups of
sounds in Shlonsky’s poem:
הנה יפרוץ וירוץ. בעלותו במעלות יקרא בקולי קולות.זוחל הקטר עקלקלות
הגלגלים- ולמשק. וגלגליו ישתקשקו. והנה יתנדנד לעתו,ארך כמה פרסות
:נים בלבו של משקה המתחפש-לא-המתון יתקשרו ויתפרדו הרהורי נים
!חת-—סע–נסעת
! מטה—תרי,—מטה
!תא-תא-תא! תא-תא-—תא
!—איש אתה! איש אתה
122 a new sound in hebrew poetry
The first three lines above contain many words whose stress falls on the penu-
ultimate syllable. Those in the first line are present-tense singular verbs gene-
erated by the feminine subject, the train (rakevet). The fourth line introduces
the first of many “ta”s in the stanza, and is composed of words that carry their
major stress on the final syllable. The repeating “ta” acts as a marker of the
rhythm. Although there are no words in this segment of the stanza that have
a penultimate stress, the variation in number of syllables between one “ta”
and another creates the effect of a switch between one stress and the other.
This switch (which I have marked with an asterisk in my example below) capt-
tures the experience of the passenger lulled by the sound the wheels of the
train make as they pick up speed and move out of the station. One sound
marks the beginning of a cycle of sounds. A second, less pronounced sound
occurs many more times and fills the gaps between one marker and the next
(think of the major and minor heartbeats). Suppose the more noticeable
sound, the marker, sounded something like “dum” and the quieter filler like
“da.” A passenger who had just settled into her seat as the train started to pull
out of the station might hear something like this:
da da dum
da da dum
da da dum
da da dum
But as the train picks up speed, the rhythm changes even as the passenger
continues to hear the same da da dum da da dum .€.€.
da da / dum da da*
dum da da
dum . . .
The passenger hears the same number of sounds in the same order and with
the same frequency. All that changes is the point at which the listener marks
the beginning of a rhythmic unit, or whether she hears the marker, the beat,
at the beginning of the phrase or the end.
The stanza from “Train” is more complicated but follows this same basic
pattern if the sixth and eighth lines are read more slowly than the fifth and
seventh. A switch takes place between the fifth line (al tita¿! lo’ ¿et ¿atah) and
the sixth (ta¿! ta¿! ta¿! ki ¿et ¿atah). The major “ta” sound stays in place but the
minor sounds mutate to wonderful effect. Whereas the train was forbidding
the addressee of the poem to plant (“now is not the time”), it now orders the
addressee to plant (“for now is the time”), perhaps invoking memories of the
pioneers’ confused and miserable attempts to work the land.
In the first stanza containing the ta-ta-ta onomatopoeia, Shlonsky rhymes—
or fails to rhyme—le-matah and ’atah (down and you). The rhyme is impoveri-
124 a new sound in hebrew poetry
ished by the difference in the stress of each word, as he pairs feminine with
masculine endings. Le-matah, a word that has a penultimate stress universally
(i.e., in the new accent as well), comes to represent the Ashkenazic accent in
contrast to the ’atah that is attempting to rhyme with it. However the reader
articulates ’atah—correctly, with the stress on the final syllable (’atah), or so
as to create a proper rhyme with le-matah (’atah), or by maintaining a tension
between these two options—one gets a sense of disjunction, of the shifting
beat of the train as it picks up speed, or of a larger cultural poetic transformat-
tion from the Ashkenazic to the new.
Shlonsky is addressing a particular concern about the new accent and the
possibility of new-accent poetry. While poets and critics may have appreciated
the need for children’s poetry in new-accent Hebrew and even acknowledged
the existence of some very good new-accent poems for children, they claimed
that rhythmically interesting poetry could not be written in such a monotonous
dialect. This poem calls the Ashkenazic bluff. With his runaway Hebrew train
Shlonsky seemed to demonstrate that rhythmically, new-accent Hebrew could
do everything Ashkenazic Hebrew could do.
The dramatization of the new-accent shift in this poem has two ramifications
that partially resolve the larger historiographic and genealogical questions. Ina-
asmuch as “Train” is one of Shlonsky’s early new-accent compositions and the
very first new-accent poem he published (and one that received a lot of attent-
tion thanks to its sonic innovations), this poem inaugurates the poet’s own adopt-
tion of the new accent in poetry. Shlonsky followed his publication of “Train”
with folk songs and lyric poems in the new accent. The poem itself also alludes
to the futurist notion that the populace and low culture are the sources of litera-
ary and artistic creativity in general. Shlonsky’s publication history following
“Train” and the metapoetic implications of the poem itself both serve to portray
“Train” as Shlonsky’s inaugural new-accent poem in all genres, high and low.
The poem enacts Shlonsky’s own shift in his choice of poetic dialect, and
the rhythmic switches such as the one illustrated above enact the historic
shift within Hebrew language and literature from Ashkenazic to the new acc-
cent, linking that literary-linguistic shift to the technological progress and
growth of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. By enacting, or reenacting, the
shift in poetic accent in Hebrew poetry in his own inaugural new-accent
poem, Shlonsky is himself writing the history of new-accent poetry as if it
paralleled or were identical to the development of his own poetic language.
“Train” confuses Shlonsky’s own poetic development with the history of Heb-
brew poetry and his own official and dramatized switch from one accent to
another with that of the proto-national literature.48
In a similar way, Shlonsky plants the new accent in the territory that the
poem identifies with the future, the new Jewish settlement in Palestine:
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 125
?יתָ ָט ִע:ָמה
:ית ָּ ת ִע€ָּ ְּתעוֹ ת
ָ ִ ל,פוֹ לִ ין€ּ ,רו ְּסיָ ה€דֶּ ֶר ְך
.יטא
.ּטעו€
ְ .ט ִעי€ ְ .ט ֵעה€ ְ .ָּתא
?וְ ַע ָּתה
There is no explicit destination, but the implication is that the train is the fut-
ture or is headed for the territory upon which the future is mapped and that
the stations as well as the East European Ashkenazic exile are peripheral and
outdated. The open-mouthed future starts today, in the now of the poem, and
these other places are remnants of the past. In spatial terms they are detours
and delays, territories exiled from the future of the new Hebrew nation.
In dramatizing and pinpointing his shift from an Ashkenazic to a new acc-
cent in a poem that clarifies the distance between Palestine—the destination
of the Jezreel Valley railway—and Europe and puts Poland and Russia at the
periphery, Shlonsky is also enacting this switch for the Palestinian Hebrew
corpus as a whole. He makes Palestine the home of the new-accent poetics of
the future. This is in keeping with his other popular poems in the new accent
that in various ways replace, reject, or break with the popular and folk Yidd-
dish genres of Eastern Europe rather than conversing with that corpus or
even attacking it oedipally.
Shlonsky had many roles in new Hebrew culture. He is probably second
only to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in the number of Hebrew neologisms he coined;
he integrated modernist poetic revolutions into Hebrew poetry and encoura-
aged and influenced a generation or two of modernist Hebrew poets to follow
suit; he revised his own aesthetic and poetic persona a number of times and,
as Leah Goldberg said of him, taught his fellow Russian immigrants how to
write poetry in Hebrew.49 It is therefore overdetermined that he should have
come to represent Hebrew poetry, that his biography should be identified
with the Hebrew literary history of the early twentieth century, and that the
shift to the new accent should be attributed to him. With “Train,” Shlonsky
takes advantage of his status, equating his own oeuvre with Hebrew poetry
and inscribing himself as the inventor of the new-accent poem for Hebrew
culture in Palestine. Shlonsky’s self-presentation in this poem is one of the
sources of his reputation as the new-accent poet.
126 a new sound in hebrew poetry
All four poems (“Tishre,” “Oh Boy Boy” [“Hah yeled yeled”], “Return” [“Shiv-
vah”], “Up to This Point” [“¿Ad halom”]) refer to the speaker as a poet—with the
title paytan, which evokes the medieval liturgical poets, or by reference to one
of Shlonsky’s earlier works (Devai, Gilboa¿)—in a moment of crisis or transition.
These early canonical new-accent poems attempt to integrate the New Hebrew
and the pioneer experience in general into a preexisting context, into East Eur-
ropean “pre-history.” I will be reading these poems both as individual works and
also in the context of their appearance in To Papa-Mama, a book that opens
with “Tishre” and that contains both Ashkenazic and new-accent poems. I do
this not only because it facilitates my analysis of several simultaneous new-
�accent events (the appearance of each individual poem and of the collection),
nor simply because it is plausible given the denseness of the dates of publication
(all within half a year). I believe that the appearance of To Papa-Mama encomp-
passes a series of phenomena beginning with the integration of the new and the
old within individual poems and peaking with the appearance of a book that is
not so much Shlonsky’s first new-accent book as it is his first book to contain
and account for the appearance of new-accent poems.
The design and structure of To Papa-Mama supports my hypothesis that
Shlon�sky inscribed the new accent in his lyric poetry in a way that was distinct
from his integration of the new accent into his popular songs. The book is organ-
nized around a model of integration rather than the model of interruption and
suppression that characterized “Train” and “Doesn’t Matter.” The collection rei-
inforces attitudes to the Yiddish tradition and the Old World beyond the strictly
linguistic realm that are expressed in the individual poems.52 Shlonsky does this
through his selection and ordering of the poems.
One of the predominant tropes of popular Yiddish poetry is the baby goat of
the lullaby who is a metonymy for the child in the song’s narrative.53 In the parad-
digm, the animal stands under the cradle and stands in for the boy, and the
song is composed as if sung by a mother to her baby boy. She sings of his growi-
ing up and going out into the world or of the kid’s forays to the market for rais-
sins. In both the Yiddish and Hebrew uses of this trope the kid or the boy’s
imagined trips to the market are symbolic of his pious future. Shlonsky is not
unique among Hebrew poets in utilizing these themes and tropes from the Yidd-
dish lullaby, but the range and density of his applications are remarkable.54 The
kid symbolizes the impossibility of truly disposing of one’s heritage. The pred-
dominance of Yiddish folk elements in Shlonsky’s poems only makes the abs-
sence of these tropes from his noncanonical poetry more noteworthy.
In my reading of “Tishre” in the previous chapter, I underscored the poem’s
antiromantic elements and its explicit parting of ways with Bialikian poetics.
But in the context of Shlonsky’s Hebrew version of the Yiddish tate-mame
(namely his collection To Papa-Mama), this poem must also be read as a melanc-
cholic yearning, a nostalgia for tropes of Yiddish poetry that overlap with rom-
128 a new sound in hebrew poetry
manticism in Hebrew poetry and other literatures. The Yiddish kid has followed
tate-mame to this volume of Hebrew poems, appearing in “Tishre” as well as in
several others including “Oh Boy Boy” and “Up to This Point.”
The son of the Yiddish lullaby, like his alter ego and sometime companion
the kid, is destined to wander away from home. And so he does in the openi-
ing stanza of “Tishre”:
לָ כֵ ן ָּכל ַּכ ְך ָעצוּב. ֲאנִ י ּ ַפיְ ָטן,ָאכֵ ן
.ימה ְּ ֹׁ ִש ִירי ָה ַא ֲחרו
ָ ן–כ ִמיָ ִמים יָ ִמ
ַה ֵ ּבן רוֹ ֶצה לָ ׁשוּב,)?ַה ֵ ּבן ָהלַ ך (לְ ָאן
.א ָּמא-א
ִ ַא ָ ּב,ֶׂאל ׁ ִשיר ָה ֶע ֶרש
Indeed I am a poet [paytan]. And so my final poem
Is so very sad—as in years gone by.
The son has gone (where?), the son wants to return
To the lullaby, papa-mama.
(Shlonsky, To Papa-Mama, 1927)
Time passes in the course of the poem and by its end “Tishre,” the first month
of autumn and the beginning of the year, is also drawing to a close as the seco-
ond autumn month approaches.
ַה ֵ ּבן ְּכ ָבר לֹא יָ ׁשוּב.ְּכ ָבר ִמ ְת ַ ּד ּ ֵפק ֶח ׁ ְשוָ ן
!א ָּמא-א
ִ ַא ָ ּב,לִ י-ּלו-לִ י-ֶאל ַאי
לָ כֵ ן ָּכל ַּכ ְך ָעצוּב. ֲאנִ י ּ ַפיְ ָטן,ָאכֵ ן
.ימה ָ ן–כמוֹ ִמיָ ִמים יָ ִמ ְּ ֹׁ ִש ִירי ָה ַא ֲחרו
±eshvan’s already knocking. The son will not return
To aye-li-lu-li, papa-mama!
And so I am a poet. And so my final poem
It is so very sad—just as in years gone by.
(Shlonsky, To Papa-Mama, 1927)
The son will not return home to his parents after all. Neither will he return to
the lullaby and the way things were in his childhood. Still, he longs for home.
This is quite a different pretense than forgetting one’s past or condemning it as
irrelevant, or valorizing the present as altogether new and inherently better.
Each of the three lyric new-accent compositions that complete the volu-
ume—“Oh Boy Boy,” “Return,” and “Up to This Point”—bring together elem-
ments from the pioneering life in Palestine and from the Old World. And in
each, one can see the two domains in relation to each other and in relation to
the speaker-immigrant. “Oh Boy Boy” is structured as a conversation between
an unidentified “us” and a somewhat alienated poet:
–ַהכּ ֹל ָ ּברוּר ָּכל ַּכ ְך ֲעלֵ י ֵת ֵבל ַר ָ ּבה
!?ִמי עוֹ ד יְ ַקו ַה ּיוֹ ם לְ ֶפלֶ א
,ּפֹה ׁ ְש ַּתיִ ם ּ ַפ ַעם ׁ ְש ַּתיִ ם ְ ּב ִד ּיוּק ַא ְר ַ ּבע
.ּת–א ֶּולֶ ת
ִ וְ כָ ל ִה ׁ ְש ּתוֹ ְממו
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 129
The speaker has caught sight of the kid of his childhood and hears its confus-
sion (“what and what?”), words that mimic the sound of bleating (meh u-mah).
The poet’s arrival in the rational scientific world is now identified with his exo-
odus from the insular and familiar realm of religious knowledge and superstit-
tion, where a draw is merely a victory postponed until semi-divine intercession
at the end of days.55 The poet in the New World has managed to hold on to
remnants of his now romanticized childhood. That same boy who was once
addressed by his mother’s lullaby, the boy with his childish-pious notions of
the Old World, still survives within the confused and alienated man, as the
goat in the valley.56
“Return” collects a variety of linguistic and literary forms, inverting and conf-
flating the tropes of the lullaby and labor poetry. The first stanza has much in
common with other Yiddish and Hebrew poems from this period: it is written
in epistolary form and refers to the piety of that prior life.57 But in addressing his
“dear mother,” the speaker, identified later in the poem as the author of Distress
(Devai, the title of Shlonsky’s first book of poetry), who has embarked on a
mythical journey, inverts the lullaby even as he tries to comfort both of them.
In the third of four addresses to the mother, the speaker says:
! ִא ָּמא יְ ָק ָרה,ָה ּה
–,ְ ּבכִ י ָ ּבכוֹ לַ ֶ ּילֶ ד
.ִה ְתעוּה ּו לִ ְבלִ י ׁשוּב דְּ ָרכָ יו ַהנְ לוֹ זוֹ ת
Oh, dear mother!
Do cry indeed for the boy,—
His crooked paths led him astray, and there is no way back.
(Shlonsky, To Papa-Mama, 1927)
The figure of the mother is itself complex and brings together the East Europ-
pean past with the labor ideology and daily pressures of the pioneering present.
,ִא ָּמא יְ ָק ָרה
.ַּרק ִצ ּ ָפ ִרים לָ עוּף יַ גְ ִ ּביהו
: ֹאוּלַ י גַ ם ַס ָ ּבא זַ ”ל ְ ּב ַפלְ לו
—ֶא ָח ָ– ָ–ד
Dear Mother,
Only flying birds rise high
Perhaps grandfather too, of blessed memory while praying:
Ooone—
(Shlonsky, To Papa-Mama, 1927)
In this opening stanza he recalls his grandfather reciting a prayer. The grandfat-
ther’s piety is evoked in part through a careful and prolonged utterance, as dict-
tated by custom and ritual law, of the Hebrew word for one (e¿od or e¿awd in
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 131
Ashkenazic) in the phrase “God is one.” Shlonsky represents the second prol-
longed syllable by placing two kamats vowels after the first and necessary one
that accompanies the ¿et. Not unlike the clever inclusion in “Train” of the
sounds of both the new and Ashkenazic accents within a new-accent prosody,
this poem manages with its typographical stutter to signal an Ashkenazic readi-
ing within an otherwise new-accent poem. Although throughout new-accent
poems the Â�kamats is presumably pronounced as the pata¿ vowel, the repeated
kamats vowel in this poem is meant to communicate what has become the Old
World sound of a Jew reciting the prayer “Hear, O Israel.” The grandfather’s Heb-
brew is the holy tongue, and by uttering this prayer proclaiming the unity of
God the mythical grandfather rises to the heavens like a bird. In contrast to the
pious Old-World grandfather, the poet is required by his new environment to
think only of his most basic physical and unholy needs.
.ם–ת ִפילָ ה ַעל ּ ַפת ְּ ַֹ ּביו
ימ ָּנה ְּ ַָ ּב ּ ַליְ ל
ֶ ה–ת ִה
. ְּכ ִר ֲבבוֹ ת ַּתנִ ים,סוּפוֹ ת מוֹ לֶ ֶדת ּפֹה
By day—a prayer for bread.
At night—the storms
Of homeland rage here, like multitudes of jackals.58
(Shlonsky, To Papa-Mama, 1927)
But this stanza also implicitly compares the earlier pious utterance of the
grandfather with a very different use of Hebrew that draws the holy tongue
even farther from the recitation of the “Hear, O Israel” than the “prayer for
bread” does:
:ֲאנִ י ׁשוֹ ֵמ ַע קוֹ ל קוֹ ֵרא ֵאלַ י
!ֹּבא ֵה ָּנה
!ַא ָּתה ַה ָּׁשר ַעל ְדוָ י
!ּ ַפיְ ָטן ֵ ּבין ּ ַפיְ ָטנִ ים
I hear a voice calling to me:
Come here!
You who sing about misery!
Poet among poets!
(Shlonsky, To Papa-Mama, 1927)
The poet in Palestine can only speak of hunger and misery; misery or “Distress”
is also the title of Shlonsky’s long poem published in 1923. The Hebrew of the
Diaspora was sanctified, and the poet seems to long for that very holiness bel-
longing to the home and mother he has sacrificed in order to come to the Holy
Land. Shlonsky’s early books of poetry published in Palestine were Ashkenazic
compositions. New-accent Hebrew is nevertheless implicitly associated with Pale-
estine inasmuch as its adoption is part of a longer process of acclimating to life
132 a new sound in hebrew poetry
in the Yishuv. By using this language to express the misery of life in the settlem-
ment, rather than uttering Hebrew as the holy tongue of religious devotion, the
speaker further acclimates himself to the New Hebrew.
In the course of the poem the figure of the mother acquires quite a differe-
ent denotation than she had in the opening address. By the end she bears a
strong resemblance to the motherland of Bluvshtain’s poems.59
,ִא ָּמא יְ ָק ָרה
—!ה–אנִ י יוֹ ֵד ַע ֲ ַָא ְּת ֲענִ י
.יָ ֵד ְך ַח ָּמה- וְ כַ ף,ַא ְך זֶ ה ִק ֵּנ ְך ָּת ִמים
, ׁ ְשחוֹ ַח וְ יָ גֵ ַע,ֲאנִ י ָאבֹא ֵאלַ יִ ְך
.לִ ְטבּ וֹ ל ְ ּב ִד ְמ ָע ֵתך ֶאת ּ ַפת ַה ֶּנ ָח ָמה
Mother dear,
You are poor—I know!—
But your nest is safe and sound, and your hand is warm.
I will come to you, worn and weary,
To dip the bread of comfort in your tears.
(Shlonsky, To Papa-Mama, 1927)
The pioneer’s destination and the “return” of the title are ambiguous. The motherÂ�
land is described in harsh and unhomey terms and the speaker as one who has
lost his way. In the second-to-last stanza the speaker addresses the land explicitly
and says he will go to her. But he also addresses his mother and speaks of paths
leading back to her, the source of comfort, as if she were the faraway destination.
Amid this confusion, Shlonsky seems to be translating and transposing two diff-
ferent languages. When uttered from the discomfort of Palestine, the language
of yearning that is a trope of the Old World becomes a yearning for home and
mother instead of the homeland and motherland. But the last three stanzas of
the poem, in which the speaker intersperses his addresses to “mother dear” with
one to the “homeland,” also allow for the possibility that the speaker is maintaini-
ing the Old World trope of desire for the Homeland precisely by losing his way.
This allows him to continue his search for the (true) Homeland, to recapture
some of the unjaded desire for the Land of Israel that is now muted by hunger.
“Up to This Point” also introduces elements from both the motherland and
the mother’s land, but juxtaposes them and their respective linguistic and
musical associations. Invoking Jewish mystical legend, Shlonsky finds ano-
other way of underscoring the significance of the signifier and the holy
tongue, using it as a symbol of the divide between the speaker’s experience in
Palestine and that of his parents and his past in Europe.
?נָ ַעל-יך ַא ִּתיר שְׂ רוֹ ְךְ אתי ַעד ֲהלוֹ ם–וְ ֵא ִ ָ ּב
—?ֵאיך ֶאנְ ַער ֵמ ֶרגֶ ל זְ ַהב ַה ִּמ ׁ ְשעוֹ לִ ים
ֶּכ ֶבד ַמ ָּזלוֹ ת יָ ַרד ָעלַ י ִמ ַּמ ַעל
.ֶאל ִֹהים גְ דוֹ לִ ים
the runaway train and the yiddish kid 133
I have come all the way here—and how can I untie my shoelace?
How can I shake the gold dust of the paths from my foot?—
The weight of the stars descended upon me from above
Great God.
(Shlonsky, To Papa-Mama, 1927)
The poem begins with a declaration that the poet has gotten all the way to
the promised land and is overwhelmed by the holiness of his journey as much
it seems as by his actual sojourn in Palestine. The stanzas that follow make
clear that his new environment and life parallel and perhaps replace his prior
experience in the Diaspora and—through musical and mystical allusions—
emphasize verbal expression over experience.
Each stanza invokes a word, a song, or a letter that encapsulates the beauty
and holiness of the Land of Israel or nostalgia for the Old World. The poem
itself plays the same melody, working in tandem with the theme of absorbing
the new while treasuring the old. Most of the poem is composed in trochaic
hexameter (which the translation echoes). With a stress on the first of its two
syllables, the trochee pushes against the new accent with its terminal stress.
This poem adopts the new accent even as it alludes aurally to the Ashkenazic
sound of his parents’ speech, Sabbath songs, and Yiddish folk songs.
The speaker remembers his childhood, the early lessons with his father, and
perhaps even mystical experiences with the Creator. He remembers learning
the alphabet that Hebrew and Yiddish share and evokes the distinctly homey
assocations of these early exposures to Yiddish and Ashkenazic Hebrew
sounds.61 Alef is the name of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet but is also
a verb meaning “to train”; the word I have translated as “teaches me” can also
be read as “alefs me.” As a boy the speaker is taught to read the first two letters
of the alphabet, pointed to sound like the word for “father,” ’aba (translated
above as “pa-pa”). The sounds of the word also evoke the primers from which
boys learned to read Hebrew. His father or God, the “father in the heavens,”
teaches him how to address his father and teaches him how to read. Througho-
out his life the letters have remained constant—whether they are the letters
of Yiddish, of the holy tongue, or of his life in Modern Hebrew. In closing,
the speaker promises that with all the changes in the meaning of his lang-
guage, in his life and circumstances,
turning to the new accent, Hebrew culture would lose the admired, even valor-
rized, recent tradition of poetry in Ashkenazic Hebrew. Would all the literary
gains of the past thirty years be lost? Would poets have to start from scratch to
create a respectable poetic corpus?
In one mode, in poems such as “Doesn’t Matter” and “Train,” Shlonsky repr-
resents new-accent poetry as a definitive break with the past. He marks the new
accent as an ingredient of a Hebrew poetry native to Palestine and distinct from
the Diaspora, which admits of no precedent and is composed solely of native
realia—the ascetic pioneer, manual labor, the diseases of settlement life, and
other hardships suffered by Jews in Palestine of the 1920s. With his introduction
of the new accent into his poetry Shlonsky made a claim for a Hebrew literature
of and for the Land of Israel that would be independent of the Hebrew literary
tradition that was born in Eastern Europe. This mode of inscription resembles
Yellin’s synthetic accent design inasmuch as it is territorialized and divorced
from any continuous tradition. Shlonsky also uses this territorializing mode to
create a niche for himself within the Hebrew poetic tradition. He is the poet of
the new generation that is maturing self-consciously as residents of the Land of
Israel, the generation of the immigrant-pioneer.
But Shlonsky’s poems also go a long way to resolving anxiety about the lack of
continuity in Hebrew poetry and the potential loss that that implies. In his seco-
ond mode of operation, employed in To Papa-Mama, Shlonsky formulates new-
accent poetry as continuous with the recent past. The new poetry is destined to
depart from some accepted norms but will not disrupt the accumulation of laye-
ers of meaning and of a national literary corpus. In his lyric poems, Shlonsky
maps a journey for the speaker in which he simply veers onto new branches of a
path he has been on all along, a path that emerges from the recent past of folk
and lyric composition—and of life in Eastern Europe. This mode parallels the
hybrid accent design of Ben-Yehuda which incorporates the diasporan past
into the New Hebrew. Shlonsky’s immigrant speaker is slowly acclimating; the
New World is in dialogue with the old.
For the most part Shlonsky employed the second mode in his lyric poetry (and
in “In the Tent”). Yet even in “Train,” Shlonsky utilized the fact that he was one
of those poets caught between two dialects in order to proclaim that the literary
tradition would survive this change. In both modes he had his Ashkenazic past
working for him. In contrast to the always already authenticity of Bluvshtain’s
new-accent usage, “Train” represented a transition, however abrupt and violent
that transition might have seemed. Bluvshtain and Bi¿ovski had no Ashkenazic
corpus; their entire poetic output was linguistically current. Shlonsky on the
other hand had an Ashkenazic past and a new-accent future. He could contain
the history of Hebrew prosody in his own oeuvre, and enact a powerful analogy
between his own career and the entirety of the post-Haskalah Modern Hebrew
poetic corpus precisely because he had begun his poetic journey in Ashkenazic.
138 a new sound in hebrew poetry
He could mark himself as having traveled the journey that the (Ashkenazic) nat-
tion as a whole needed to take—integrating the new accent into their poems,
their conversation, their songs—and thereby make of himself the paradigm of
the Hebrew poet and the New Jew. Within the time of “Train,” Shlonsky also
makes an analogy between his own accent shift and the larger shift in literary acc-
cent so that when seen from the outside, as an entry in Shlonsky’s extensive biblio-
ography, “Train” is making a claim about Hebrew poetry itself. If “Train”
demonstrated that Shlonsky could play all his tricks in new-accent Hebrew as
well as he did in Ashkenazic, that he could survive the sudden leap into the prese-
ent of Hebrew speech and the future of Hebrew poetry, and that he could do so
while maintaining connections in his canonical poems to the great literary
past—then it was also by analogy making that claim for the rest of Hebrew poe-
etry as well.
Shlonsky was far from the first poet to commit to the new accent in print, but
his belatedness did not damage his reputation as an avant-garde. Instead, Shlons-
sky’s dramatized switch from one accent to another reinforced his symbolic
identity as the Hebrew Poet and identified his own oeuvre with Modern Heb-
brew Poetry itself. His lyric new-accent poetry, with its integrative model for the
role of East European culture in New Hebrew culture, and his first new-accent
book, with a majority of poems in Ashkenazic, served as the calling card of the
laboring Jew in Palestine. The Jewish immigrant was undergoing a traumatic
displacement at the same time as Hebrew culture itself was struggling to plant
roots in Palestine. Shlonsky’s various modes for identifying his oeuvre with the
larger tradition and, paradoxically, his tardiness in publishing his new-accent
poetry were part of what made him an essential enabler of this literary accent
shift and made him seem so ahead of his time.
Epilogue
The Conundrum of the
National Poet
139
140 a new sound in hebrew poetry
practice Bialik was the less cooperative of the two. In the course of his career
he composed only a small number of accentual-syllabic new-accent poems, a
neglect of the new accent perhaps attributable to the difficulty of retraining
his ear to its rhythm.4 Bialik nevertheless continually reinvented himself pros-
sodically. After having been one of the first poets (and the most influential
among them) to compose accentual-syllabic verse in Hebrew in the 1890s, Bia-
alik moved on to his own version of free verse. He first began composing in
his biblical free rhythm in 1904 and continued to work in this mode alongside
others for the rest of his career.5
This rhythm was based on stress patterns but without a strict adherence to the
foot as a unit. Biblical free rhythm was forgiving and allowed him to write poe-
etry that was, accentually speaking, up-to-date—or at least not obviously outd-
dated—without having to perfect his new accent the way one would in a strictly
metered poetry of the kind he first innovated in Hebrew.6 For all his prosodic
variation, Bialik never truly adopted the new accent. By contrast and despite
his initial outspoken opposition, Tchernichovsky began using the new accent
in accentual-syllabic poetry in 1933 and about 20 percent of his collected lyric
poems are identifiably new-accent.7 The fact that Tchernichovsky cooperated
with new-accent demands underscores Bialik’s failure to do so and the incong-
gruity between this neglect of the new sound of the national language and his
status as the national poet.
The wide circulation of the written word can facilitate some form of standardi-
ization so that one dialect is anointed a language that supersedes other (mere) dia-
alects. It can also encourage readers in the belief that the sound of their speech is
represented by the text, effecting a sense that other far-flung citizens speak the
same way they do—that all readers share a common tongue.8 In the case of turn-
of-the-century Hebrew literature, poetry actually offered the possibility of a more
direct intervention in speech than either the newspaper or the novel, two genres
often associated with vernaculars and nationalism in the nineteenth and twentie-
eth centuries. Bialik took advantage of that possibility and was able to interpell-
late a nation through poetry. The themes he chose and the personae he projected
through his writing were two factors. A third was his early use of accentual-syll-
labic meter with an Ashkenazic accent.
I would like to propose a way of understanding the apparent contradiction
between Bialik’s role as the national poet and the history of his literary lang-
guage by looking very briefly at his first published poem.9 Many before me
have written fine studies of “To the Bird.”10 Here I wish simply to illustrate a
telling parallel between Bialik’s failure to adopt the new accent and the them-
matic structure that characterizes his oeuvre. “To the Bird” creates a sense of
national simultaneity and unity through the title figure who arrives at the
speaker’s window during the annual migration and serves as a substitute for
the absent land.11 The entirety of the sixteen-stanza poem addresses a bird
142 a new sound in hebrew poetry
but even though she is present throughout, the bird is in some ways as distant
from Bialik as Palestine is from Russia. The speaker urges her to share news
of the “warm and beautiful land,” then poses a series of questions about the
land itself, its flora and fauna, and its (Jewish) inhabitants, which constitute
the bulk of the poem. Although he asks for news of the Holy Land repeatedly
and in the final lines urges her to take up her own song, the bird does not res-
spond—or does not respond during the recorded time of the poem.
If she never sings a note, the bird’s infrequent but regular appearances
never�theless mark the passage of time, and are a reminder that as the speaker
lives his life in the Diaspora his Jewish brethren are in the meantime buildi-
ing a new life in the Land of Israel.
, ִצ ּפוֹ רי יְ ָק ָרה, ַס ּ ֵפ ִרי,זַ ְמ ִרי
,ֵמ ֶא ֶרץ ַמ ְר ֲח ִּקים נִ ְפלָ אוֹ ת
, ַה ָ ּי ָפה,ֲהגַ ם ׁ ָשם ָ ּב ָא ֶרץ ַה ַח ָּמה
; ַה ְּתלָ אוֹ ת,ִּת ְר ֶ ּבינָ ה ָה ָרעוֹ ת
,ש ִאי לִ י ׁ ָשלוֹ ם ֵמ ַא ַחי ְ ּב ִציוֹ ן ׂ ְ ֲה ִת
?ֵמ ַא ַחי ָה ְרחוֹ ִקים ַה ְּקרוֹ ִבים
הוֹ י ְמ ֻא ׁ ָש ִרים! ֲהיֵ ְדע ּו יָ דוֹ ַע
? הוֹ י ֶא ְסבּ ֹל ַמכְ אוֹ ִבים,ִּכי ֶא ְסבּ וֹ ל
,ַהיֵ ְדע ּו יָ דוֹ ַע ָמה ַרבּ ּו פֹה שׂ וֹ ְטנַ י
? הוֹ י ַר ִ ּבים לִ י ָק ִמים,ָמה ַר ִ ּבים
, נִ ְפלָ אוֹ ת ֵמ ֶא ֶרץ, ִצ ּפוֹ ִרי,זַ ְּמ ִרי
.ָה ָא ִביב ָ ּב ּה יִ נְ וֶ ה עוֹ לָ ִמים
,ֲה ִתשְׂ ִאי לִ י ׁ ָשלוֹ ם ִמ ִּז ְמ ַרת ָה ָא ֶרץ
? ֵמרֹאש ָה ִרים, ֵמגַ יְ א,ֵמ ֶע ֶמק
,ציוֹ ן-ת
ִ יָ ֶא-ְ ֲהנִ ַחם י,ֲה ִר ַחם
?אוֹ עוֹ ָד ּה ֲעזו ָּבה לַ ְּק ָב ִרים
Sing and recount, dear bird of mine,
From a faraway land of wonders,
There too, in that warm and beautiful land,
Do the troubles, the evil, increase?
Do you bring greetings from my brothers in Zion,
From my close brothers so far away?
O fortunate ones! Do they truly know?
That I suffer, o suffer, great pains?
Do they know indeed how my foes have increased,
How many, so many, attack me?
Sing, bird of mine, the wonders of a land,
Where springtime resides everlasting.
epilogue 143
Pausal forms appear several times in the poem (kholsoh becomes kholosoh
in line 3, for example), helping to set the reader’s ear to a “penultimate”
rhythm.14 A number of lines begin with words that universally carry a penultim-
mate stress (e.g., lines 6, 7, 8). Poems of this kind retain a partial memory of
their composers’ accent; the prosodic organization in toto pushes the late-
nineteenth-century reader to realize the Ashkenazic stress fully—and perhaps
even to exaggerate it. Once they did so readers would have been rewarded by the
regularity of the poem’s rhythm. For the first time writers were acknowledging
the pronunciations of Ashkenazic Jews and a vernacular Hebrew literature was
born in the Diaspora. Hebrew readers could now do something new: generate a
perfectly regular accentual-syllabic rhythm in their own Ashkenazic accents.
The accentual-syllabic poems in Ashkenazic were the first to facilitate simultan-
neity in Hebrew, providing the proto-nation with poems that Ashkenazic Jews
could read together in rhythmic parallel in their minds’ ear.
146 a new sound in hebrew poetry
request is rhetorical and folds in on itself. The speaker has said enough, and
sends the bird on her way:
! ִמ ְד ָ ּב ֵר ְך,ה ֵר ְך-לָ ֶא, ִצ ּפוֹ ִרי,נו ִּדי
;א ֳהלִ י-ת ָ ִּכי ָעזַ ְב ְּת ֶא,ֻא ׁ ּ ַש ְר ְּת
, ְּכנַ ְף ְרנָ נִ ים,א ְּת-ם ַ ַל ּו ִע ִּמי ׁ ָשכַ נְ ְּת ג
. ַמר ָ ּבכִ ית לְ גוֹ ָרלִ י,ָ ּבכִ ית
Away, my bird, to your mountain, your desert!
Happy for having left my tent;
If you had stayed with me, winged song,
You’d have sobbed, sobbed bitterly at my fate.
(stanza 14)
The bird must depart. If she were to stay she would only suffer in sympathy with
him. The bird’s departure is also necessary in order to renew the cycle. She will
eventually return to the poet’s window. But in the meantime the speaker will
return to his usual state of missing her, of yearning for the land through the figu-
ure of the absent bird.
The speaker in “To the Bird” was the first in a series of semi-autobiographical
figures in Bialik’s poetry. He is the miserable Jew stuck in exile who yearns for
the Land of Israel and a new Jewish identity. It is telling that true to its name this
poem apostrophizes the visitor who has flown in from Palestine but never add-
dresses the reader. The reader is interpellated as the diasporan Jew who yearns
for the land just as the speaker does. Bialik’s readers are interpellated as members
of a nation that longs for its homeland and that, like the speaker in his poem,
awaits the sound of the national poetry that emanates from the Land of Israel,
which is itself both a continuation of and a response to the Hebrew poetry of
Eastern Europe.
, ִצ ּפוֹ ִרי יְ ָק ָרה,—שלןם ָרב ׁשו ֵּבך ָׁ
ְ
!אַת קולֵ ך וָ רׁנִ י
ְּ ַצ ֲהלִ י
A very peaceful return, my dear bird,
Exult with your voice and sing!16
(stanza 16; lines 63–64)
Bialik’s trope of unfulfilled desire finally helps make sense of the paradox of a
national poet whose early poetry is heavily marked by a sound that the nation
was to reject. The figure of Bialik is up the road, at the beginning of a journey
that is literary and linguistic but also inevitably political. By looking back over
its shoulder at the national poet, the nation is able to take measure of how much
progress it has made. Tchernichovsky represents the fulfillment of a dream of
Jewish identity that is European and Classical. He completes the journey to the
homeland and to the national language. Bialik died in 1934 with only a few
148 a new sound in hebrew poetry
new-accent poems to his name a year after Tchernichovsky started over in the
new accent. Would Bialik have adopted the new accent too, had he lived a few
years longer?17 Given his long-standing theoretical openness to the new accent,
it seems unlikely that his practice would have ever changed radically. The nat-
tional poet reminds the nation of the desire that is never quite fulfilled. His failu-
ure to adopt the new accent was in part the result of historical accident, but that
failure resonates with Bialik’s insistence on a poetic persona that preserves a
memory of exile. The national poet did not cover the distance between exile
and homeland so much as dedicate himself to that distance. The proto-Israeli
accent, the Hebrew of Ben-Yehuda’s design, even the Hebrew that the poets
spoke in Palestine in the 1920s was a Hebrew-in-the-making, one that required
correction and left something to be desired. It was a language that demons-
strated the speaker’s dedication through its imperfections. “To the Bird” enacts
a stage that is the beginning of that process: the longing to hear, to listen, and to
arrive on the other side of the world and start to go native imperfectly.
In describing the composition of “The Raven,” Poe wrote that “the death
then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the
world,” and that he chose the raven because it was emblematic of “mournful
and never-ending remembrance.”18 Poe’s raven is an appropriate interlocutor for
Bialik’s speaker because the only word he utters, over and over—nevermore—
communicates to the bereaved lover that he will never attain his desired object.
Even in “the distant Aidenn” he will never “clasp a sainted maiden whom the
angels named Lenore.”19 Bialik’s “To the Bird” relates to the Land of Israel as to
the absent, desired object, and the Hebrew sound he inscribed in the mouth of
his speaker would come to represent the almost unbridgeable distance between
the Diaspora and the Land of Israel. Just as Poe set himself the challenge of
crafting contexts and questions that would make sense of the raven’s eerie one-
word declamation, poets after Bialik would search for and find news ways to
recreate the lack that allows for longing and desire.
Appendix 1. Interview with Gene
Simmons by leonard lopate*
*Leonard Lopate, New York and Company, WNYC Radio, December 12, 2001
149
*]Appendix 2. “rakevet” [train
דָּ י!
ֵאיÂ�ִ -מי ָ€ע ַקד ַ€על ַ ּ€ג ֵ ּבי ַ€ה ּ ַפ ּ ִסים —
ֶאת ַ€הכּ ֹל.
ּארים ַ€ר ִּכיםְ ,מ ֻר ְט ָפ ׁ ִשים ַצוָ ִ
ַעל ַ€ה ּ ַפ ּ ִסים — —
ִמי€חוֹ ֵרז ּ€פֹה,
ִמי€כּ וֹ ֵרז ּ€פֹה:
“שכוֹ ל!” ְׁ
�-Âב ְרזֶ ל —
יח — ְרכוּב ַ ּ ִה ֵּנה ָ€אגִ ַ
ֲא ַפ ְרזֵ ל
ֶא ְדלֹק
ו ְּב ַמ ּ ַסע�-Âקו ְּריָ ר ֶ€א ֱערֹף,
ֶא ְמלֹק —
ֶאת ַ€הכּ ֹל.
וְ ַא ַחר —
ּף—עיַ ְפ ִּתי:
עו ָ
ּף—עיַ ְפ ִּתי.
ע ּוו ָ
עוּף — —
151
152 appendix 2
ית?
€ט ִע ָ
ית? ְטעוֹ ת ָ ָמהָּ ,ת ִע ָ
יטא — דֶּ ֶר ְך€רו ְּסיָ ה€ּ ,פוֹ לִ ין ,לִ ָ
י-טע ּו —
ה-ת ִע ְא-ט ֵע ְּ ָּת ְ
…•âוְ ַע ָּתה?
€ט ַר ְפ ִּתי !
ַאל ִּ€ת ּ ַטע—.וַ ֲאנִ י ָ
ַאל ִּ€ת ּ ַטע—.וַ ֲאנִ י ָ€ע ַר ְפ ִּתי !
ַאל ִּ€ת ּ ַטע—.וַ ֲאנִ י ָ€עיַ ְפ ִּתי !
…•âוְ ַהלֵ ב ִ ּ€בי:
€טע!€טע! ַ ַטע! ַ
ְמאוּם
לֹא ַ€ת ִּתי
לֹא€נָ ַת ָּת
לֹא€נָ ַתנ ּו
לֹא נָ ַת ְּת
ְס ָתם
את אט ָ ֻט ֵ
ְס ָתם
ִּת ְע ַּת ְע ָּת
ְס ָתם
לְ ַמ ּ ָטה
ַרק€לְ ַמ ּ ָטה
כּ ֹל€גָ ַמ ְע ָּת
ַמ ִּתי — ַ€מ ָּת
ַמ ְתנוַּ Â�Â�€מ ֶּתם
ֵמת ּו —
ַמ ְּת.
ּף—עיַ ְפ ִּתי — — —
ע ּוו ָ
154 appendix 2
Enough!
Hey who bound all—
Onto the rails.
Soft necks tromped
On the tracks——
Who here is rhyming,
Who here is declaring:
“Grief!”
And afterwards—
I’m weary—bleary:
Weeary—bleary.
Weary——
I gave
Not a thing
You did not give
We did not give
You did not give
You were simply
156 appendix 2
Swept up
You simply
Deceived
Simply
Below
Always below
I swallowed all
I died—you died
We died—you all died
They died—
He died.
Weeary— Bleary———
Notes
Preface
1. New York and Company, WNYC, December 12, 2001. For a longer excerpt, see
Appendix 1.
2. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Milon ha-lashon ha-¿Ivrit ha-yeshanah ve-ha-¿adashah
[Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew] (Jerusalem and Berlin: Langenscheidt,
1908–1959).
3. Gene Simmons, KISS and Make-up (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 6, 23–24.
4. ±ayim Na¿man Bialik, Shirim 659–694 [Poems 1899–1934], ed. Dan Miron,
Zivah Shamir et al. (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1990), 129. This version is the one appearing in
the 1933 edition and most subsequent editions of Bialik’s poems. Translations from the
Hebrew here and throughout are my own.
5. In biblical Hebrew takhlit means end or completeness. The Yiddish takhles
means “result” or “practical purpose.” In Modern Hebrew, when the stress falls on the
final syllable of takhlit the word is defined as “purpose,” in keeping with the meaning
the Hebrew word accrued in the medieval period. When used in modern Israeli He-
brew but with the stress on the penultimate (i.e., first) syllable and with the final letter
pronounced /s/ (characteristic of Yiddish and of Ashkenazic Hebrews), it means “in
practice.” The word retains meanings it had in older Hebrews, but when uttered in an
Ashkenazic accent it has the texture of slang and invokes a sense inspired by the
Yiddish.
6. Conversely, I have seen instances of Israeli native Hebrew speakers attempting
to adopt an Ashkenazic accent for ritual uses of Hebrew.
7. ’Igrot ±ayim Na¿man Biyalik [Letters of ±ayim Na¿man Bialik], ed. Yeru¿am
Fishel La¿over (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1937–1939), 70.
8. Edgar Allan Poe, The Philosophy of Composition (Philadelphia: G. R. Graham,
1846).
9. Jabotinsky even used a trochaic meter as Poe did. The trochaic foot consists of two
syllables with the stress falling on the first—a nonintuitive choice for someone self-con-
sciously employing the new accent. Most bisyllabic words would form a trochee in an
Ashkenazic pronunciation, but an iamb (a bisyllabic foot where the stress falls on the
second syllable) in Sephardic and new-accent pronunciations. In the updated version of
his translation of Poe’s “The Raven,” Jabotinsky notes that he changed the refrain, his
157
158 notes to pages xvi–3
Introduction
The epigraph is from ’Igrot Y[osef] ±[ayim] Brener [The Letters of Y(osef) ±(ayim)
Brenner] (Tel Aviv: Davar, 1941), 261. Mena¿em Gnessin was in the first Hebrew pro-
duction of Karl Gutzkow’s play Uriel Acosta. It was staged by the Lovers of Dramatic
Art in Jaffa in 1904. See Mendel Kohansky, The Hebrew Theatre in its First Fifty Years
(New York: Ketav, 1969), 13.
1. Martin Sicker, Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Man-
date, 1831–1922 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), 5–6.
2. In 1839 Moses Montefiore began negotiations with Egyptian leaders. This failed
attempt was followed by others initiated by Western European parties, especially Britain.
See Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Schocken Books, 1989), 42–46 and
Sicker, 15–16.
3. These included Moses Montefiore and members of the Rothschild family.
4. Ha-Levanon was founded in 1863; ±avatselet in 1870 after a short run in 1863.
Several more papers followed in the mid- to late 1870s. See Galyah Yardeni, ha-¿Itonut
ha-¿Ivrit be-’Erets Yisra’el ba-shanim 1863–1904 [The Hebrew Press in the Land of Is-
rael in the Years 1863 to 1904] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts ha-Meu¿ad, 1969), 17–81, 420.
5. Laqueur 74–83.
6. In 1884 these groups were centralized (Laqueur 76–77).
7. “Zionism,” Encyclopedia Judaica 16 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), 1039. Population
statistics in Palestine are, however, highly contested. According to a demographic
study of Palestine by Justin McCarthy who returns to Ottoman sources, the Jewish
population was far smaller. He reports that in 1880 there were 7,000 Jews representing
3 percent of the almost 240,000 people living in Palestine. By this tally, in 1912 23,000
Jews constituted 6.5 percent of the total population (The Population of Palestine: Popu-
lation History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate [New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990]).
8. Laqueur 76.
9. The word aliyah is used to describe these later waves of immigration as well.
Contemporary scholarship adopts the term unself-consciously.
10. Raphael Patai, “Immigration to Palestine and Israel,” Encyclopedia of Zionism
and Israel (New York: Herzl Press and McGraw-Hill), vol. 1, 535, 538. McCarthy esti-
mates that of the 44,000 Jewish immigrants to Palestine between 1895 and 1914, ap-
proximately 33,000 remained (McCarthy 23).
11. “The Ruthenian people in Galicia did not start with legions or universities or
notes to pages 3–5 159
any other such fancy things. The Ruthenian nation held onto its land and did not ne-
glect its language. (I was an eye-witness to a not very well-established Ruthenian [of-
fering to] increase the bill he received from the storekeeper by a number of krones on
the condition that [the bill be composed] in Ruthenian.)” “’Im sefatenu ’itanu (si¿ah),”
ha-Po¿el ha-tsa¿ir (November 22, 1918): 24.
12. The grossest exaggerations seem to be connected to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s role
in the language revival. See Shalom Spiegel, Hebrew Reborn (Cleveland: Meridian
Books, 1930); William Chomsky, Hebrew: The Eternal Language (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1978); and Jack Fellman, The Revival of a Classical Tongue:
Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1973).
For a critique of this scholarship, see Ron Kuzar, Hebrew and Zionism: A Discourse
Analytic Cultural Study (New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2001).
13. “Cultural Life (State of Israel),” Encyclopedia Judaica 9 (Jerusalem: Keter,
1971), 1015. On Ben-Yehuda’s early journalistic activity in Palestine, see Galyah
Yardeni, ha-¿Itonut ha-¿Ivrit be-’Erets Yisra’el ba-shanim 1863–1904 [The Hebrew Press
in the Land of Israel in the Years 1863–1904] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts ha-Meu¿ad, 1969),
107–119.
14. Uzi Ornan’s phrase “all-encompassing language” allows one to speak of the
stages of Modern Hebrew’s development without the teleological implications of the
term revival. See my chapter 1 and his “Hebrew in Palestine before and after 1822,” The
Journal of Semitic Studies 29, no. 2 (Autumn 1984): 225–254.
15. See Robert Alter, The Invention of Hebrew Prose, especially chapter 3, “Realism
without Vernacular” (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988). Alter shows how
literary prose was particularly handicapped by the absence of a vernacular Hebrew.
The aesthetic of the modern novel demanded a language flexible enough to record
fictional conversations. Writers faced a greater challenge in trying to create a collo-
quial illusion in Hebrew than in Yiddish, Russian, or other European vernaculars,
since Hebrew did not exist as a mother tongue. Speakers’ own actual conversations
often sounded stilted and awkward.
16. Judith Bar-El, “The National Poet in Hebrew Literary Criticism (1885–1905),”
Prooftexts 6, no. 3 (1986): 205–220.
17. Despite the increasing centrality of prose fiction this asymmetry persists. There
is no ambiguity as to Bialik’s status as the national poet. Shemuel Yosef Agnon, whose
productive period overlapped with Bialik’s and whose stature is unmatched among
writers of Hebrew prose fiction, is never referred to as the “national novelist,” although
it is hard to think of another who could bear the weight of that title.
18. Bar-El, 208–211, 215–216.
19. This was the case intermittently in Hedim, Davar, and ha-Tekufah. For exam-
ple, Avraham Shlonsky’s “Rakevet” and Elisheva Bi¿ovski’s early poetry were thus
marked.
20. See Shaul Tchernichovsky, “bi-Devar ha-mishkal he-¿aluv” [On the Matter of
the Wretched Meter], in Hed Lita’ 2, no. 1 (26): 11–14; no. 2 (27): 11–12; no. 3 (28): 13–14
(1924–1925); and his “li-She’elat ha-mivta’ ve-ha-neginah” [On the Question of Ac-
cent and Rhythm], in ha-Safah 1, no. 1 (1912): 27–29, reprinted in Leket te¿udot: le-Â�
toledot va¿ad ha-lashon ve-ha-’akademiyah la-lashon ha-¿Ivrit, 5650–5730 [Collected
Documents: Toward a History of the Language Committee and the Hebrew Lan-
guage Academy, 1890–1970] (Jerusalem: The Hebrew Language Academy, 1970),
164–166.
21. Elisheva Bi¿ovski, “li-She’elat ha-havarah ba-shirah ha-¿Ivrit” [On the Question
of Accent in Hebrew Poetry], ¿En ha-kore’ 1 (Winter 1923): 170–172.
160 notes to pages 5–9
22. Both Ester Rab and Avraham Ben-Yits¿ak wrote in free verse. In his correspon-
dence with Ben-Yits¿ak, Eliezer Lifshits encourages the poet to improve his Hebrew
and his Hebrew accent. See his letter of November 18, 1902, in which he suggests that the
poet tutor his student in the “Sephardic accent and Hebrew speech.” He goes on to in-
struct Ben-Yits¿ak to try to “disseminate knowledge of the language. This is the most
important national labor. A language that is not spoken is not a language, and a nation
that has no language is not a nation” (The Zionist Archive A165/26, first page).
23. See Uzi Shavit, “ha-Shir ha-parua¿â†œ” [The Wild Poem], Me¿karim be-sifrut ¿Ivrit
[Studies in Hebrew Literature] (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1986).
24. Linguists date the birth of Hebrew to around 2000 bce with the arrival of Abra-
ham in Canaan and the subsequent fusion of his Mesopotamian with the local Canaan
dialect of Common Semitic. See Jack Fellman, “A Sociolinguistic Perspective on the
History of Hebrew,” Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages, ed. Joshua Fishman
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 27–34 (especially 27); and Chaim Rabin, A Short History of the
Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: The Jewish Agency, 1974), cited there. For analyses of an-
cient Hebrew see Aba Bendavid, Leshon mikra’ u-leshon ¿akhamim [Biblical Language
and Rabbinic Language] (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1967–1971); and Alexander Sperber, A Histori-
cal Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966).
25. Bernard Spolsky, “Jewish Multilingualism in the First Century: An Essay in
Historical Sociolinguistics,” Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages, ed. Joshua
Fishman (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 35–50.
26. See Yehudah Ben Shemuel he-±asid, Sefer ha-±asidim (Jerusalem: Makhon
Â�Rishonim, 1992); and the annotated edition of Rashi’s commentary on the Bible, Perushe
Rashi ¿al ha-Torah (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1983).
27. Segholate nouns are one subset of words penultimately stressed in their base form in
all pronuncations (except, perhaps, in the hypercorrect Israeli Hebrew of foreigners). Verbs
are a more complex case. Suffixes tend not to affect the placement of stress; the conjugated
verb is often penultimately stressed even in non-Ashkenazic Hebrew (e.g., halakh hu, “he
went” in biblical Hebrew, but halakhti ani, “I went,” and halakhnu anu, “we went”).
It should be noted that Ashkenazic Jews employed a variety of accent systems de-
pending on the occasion. Even the choice of accent for religious purposes varied with
the ritual. Cantor and congregant would have favored a penultimate stress for the He-
brew of prayer, but in ritual readings of the Bible a terminal-stress system would have
been preferred. No such variety of stress systems exists for most contemporary Israeli
Hebrew speakers.
28. See Benjamin Harshav [then Hrushovski], “Prosody, Hebrew,” Encyclopedia
Judaica, vol. 13 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), 1195–1239; and his briefer “Note on the Sys-
tems of Hebrew Versification,” The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited and trans-
lated by T. Carmi (London: Penguin Books, 1981), 57–72.
29. Naftali Herts Wessely (Weisel), Shire tif ’eret [Songs of Splendor] (Berlin: ±evrat
±inukh Ne¿arim, 1789–1802).
30. Harshav 1971, 1225–1226.
31. Harshav writes that the “19th-century Haskalah poets were strongly influenced by
late Italian Hebrew poetry, but having a different pronunciation (Ashkenazi as opposed
to Italian ‘Sephardi’), they could not feel this underlying iambic meter╯.╯.╯.╯they inter-
preted this [medieval tonal syllabic] verse as purely syllabic” (Harshav 1971, 1223–1224).
32. Uzi Shavit, ba-¿Alot ha-sha¿ar: shirat ha-Haskalah: mifgash ¿im moderniyut [At
Dawn: The Poetry of the Haskalah: A Meeting with Modernity] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts
ha-Meu¿ad, 1996), 43 and Harshav 1971, 1225.
33. Harshav writes that even in Gordon’s later less restrictive poetry, “a group of
notes to pages 9–13 161
words constituting 8% of the normal language continuum was used in 90% of his
rhymes” (Harshav 1971, 1226).
34. For histories of Bialik’s prosodic development, see Yits¿ak Bakon, ha-Prozodiyah
shel shirat Biyalik [The Prosody of Bialik’s Poetry] (Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University,
1983); and Uzi Shavit, ±evele nigun [Rhythmic Bonds] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts ha-Meu¿ad,
Makhon Kats, 1988). On the prosodic “revolution” initiated by Bialik’s Ashkenazic accen-
tual-syllabic poetry, see Uzi Shavit, ha-Mahapekhah ha-ritmit [The Rhythmic Revolu-
tion] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts a-Meu¿ad, 1982–1983). Luriya was a minor poet who composed
only thirteen poems in accentual-syllabic meter—the earliest of these in the late 1870s.
(See Shavit 1982–1983, 57–60.) Both Bialik and Tchernichovsky started composing in
�accentual-syllabic meter in the 1890s, although Bialik used it more consistently at first.
35. Avraham Ber Gottlober raised the possibility as early as 1865 (Shavit 1982–1983,
18). Shavit writes that “[t]he same dichotomy or discrepancy between theoretical knowl-
edge on the one hand and poetic practice on the other that is so apparent in Gottlober
is to a certain extent characteristic of other poets of the Haskalah period as well, who
were very familiar with the principles of the accentual-syllabic method practiced in the
various European literatures, but did not make any attempt to adapt them for Hebrew”
(22). Te¿iyah poetry refers to that which began to be published in the 1890s—most
prominently the work of Bialik and Tchernichovsky—and that broke with Haskalah
poetry, instituting new generic, stylistic, and thematic norms.
36. Avraham Ber Gottlober, “’Igeret bikoret: peles u-ma’ozne mishkal ha-shirah ha-
¿Ivrit be-artsot ha-Germanim ve-ha-Slavim” [Critical Epistle: Scales and Measures of
Hebrew Poetry in German and Slavic Lands], published in ha-Kokhavim 1 (Vilna,
1865), 11–50, especially p. 27; quoted in Shavit 1982–1983, 18–20.
37. Uzi Shavit 1982–1983, 28.
38. Alter, chapter 3.
39. See note 11 to this chapter. There is a logic to choosing Russian as a literary in-
fluence and Ruthenian as a model for language revival: the Hebrew revivalists of the
late nineteenth century looked forward to the development of a great national litera-
ture in Hebrew such as existed in German, Russian, French, and English, and at the
same time saw themselves in a dramatic struggle to invigorate and modernize their
national language similar to that of the smaller nations.
40. In fact there were experiments in this vein in the Haskalah period as well. See
Mordekhai Hak, “Nitsane ha-mishkal ha-toni ba-shirah ha-¿Ivrit” [The Budding of
Accentual-Syllabic Meter in Hebrew Poetry], Tarbits 11, no. 1 (1940): 91–109.
41. Shavit 1988, 73–78.
42. See the Preface and note 9 there. Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, better known for
his Labor Revisionist politics, published his translations separately in 1923; he com-
posed them in 1908. See Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Tirgumim, which included translations of
Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven.”
43. See the title essay in Dan Miron, ’Imahot meyasdot, a¿ayot ¿orgot [Founding
Mothers, Stepsisters] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts a-Meu¿ad, 1991).
44. Although “poetess” is a derogatory term in English, the Hebrew equivalent, meshor-
eret, is the standard term for women who write poetry. The women mentioned here were
almost immediately perceived as a distinct group. I will sometimes use the term “poet-
esses” to capture this aspect of their reception and to invoke the sense of women’s poetry in
the 1920s as a distinct cultural phenomenon. The Hebrew rendering of this phrase is re-
dundant, since meshorerot already indicates a feminine plural noun; Dan Miron uses the
redundant “meshorerot nashim” as a way of invoking this critical discourse.
45. See Benjamin Harshav, Ritmus ha-ra¿avut: halakhah u-ma¿ase be-shirato ha-
162 notes to pages 13–14
’ekspresyonistit shel Uri Tsevi Grinberg [The Wide Rhythm: Theory and Practice in
the Expressionist Poetry of Uri Tsevi Greenberg] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts ha-Meu¿ad,
1978). On the issue of switching from one accent to another, see the introductions to
individual poets in Harshav 2000; and Eliezer Kagan, “¿Al ha-saf (¿iyun be-ma¿avar
mi-mivta’ le-mivta’)” [On the Threshold (An Investigation of the Transition from One
Accent to Another)], ¿Arugot: kovets le-zikhro shel Yaakov Fikhman [Garden Beds: A
Collection in Memory of Yaakov Fikhman], ed. Nurit Govrin (Tel Aviv: The World
Council of Bessarabian Jews, 1976).
46. Fogel eventually composed two poems in the new accent and recomposed
some of his Ashkenazic poems in the new accent. See David Fogel, Kol ha-shirim
[Collected Poems], ed. Aharon Komem (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts ha-Meu¿ad, 1998).
Rabinovits emigrated to Palestine in 1910 and eventually became the editor of
Hedim, which published Shlonsky, Lamdan, Bluvshtain, and others who were com-
posing in the new accent in the twenties.
Shimoni taught Bible and Hebrew literature at Hertseliah high school in Tel
Aviv. Despite his pedagogic context, he favored the Ashkenazic accent in his own po-
etry; with a few possible exceptions, he continued to compose in Ashkenazic through-
out his career. See Benjamin Harshav, Shirat ha-Te¿iyah ha-¿Ivrit: antologiyah
historit-bikortit [The Poetry of the Hebrew Revival: A Historical-Critical Anthology]
(Jerusalem: Mosad Biyalik, 2000), 229.
Shtainberg moved to Palestine in his late twenties. “Although he settled in Pal-
estine during the period of the revival of spoken Hebrew and the blossoming of He-
brew literature there, Shtainberg preserved the Ashkenazic accent in his poetry all
those years. In this sense he was the only poet in Palestine who did not betray the
musical basis of Hebrew poetry of the Te¿iya period, as his contemporaries tried to do:
Shaul Tchernichovsky, Yaakov Kahan, Yaakov Fikhman, Yehudah Karni, Shimon
Halkin, and others” (Harshav 2000, 362).
47. Tchernichovsky nevertheless continued to compose poems in Ashkenazic even
after switching to the new accent.
48. Shavit 1988, 72–73.
49. Harshav 2000, vol. 1, 547, 569; vol. 2, 457. Harshav notes that this tactic worked
best when the poet transformed his Ashkenazic metered poetry into less strictly me-
tered or free-rhythmic verse.
50. Theories of nationalism that treat the formation of national identity as an at-
tempt to create a modern analogue to ancient kinship bonds and/or religious identity
inform this study. See Joshua A. Fishman, Language and Nationalism: Two Integrative
Essays (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1972); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Com-
munities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York:
Verso, 1991); and the introduction to Nationalism in Europe, 1815 to the Present: A
Reader, ed. Stuart Woolf (London: Routledge, 1996).
51. Johann Gottfried Herder, On the Origin of Language, trans. John H. Moran
and Alexander Gode (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
52. Women, like the folk, typically serve as a nationalist symbol of authenticity as
opposed to the leaders of nationalist movements who are often the least “authentic”
segment of the population. These symbolic values are unstable, the constant being
the role of women as symbols of national pride whether that takes the form of ancient
authenticity or the successful industrialization and modernization of the state. See
Hamutal Tsamir’s doctoral dissertation, “Israeli Statehood Generation and Women’s
Poetry in the Fifties and Sixties: Poetry, Gender, and the Nation State” (Ph.D. diss.,
Graduate Theological Union and University of California, Berkeley, 2000), 115–116; and
notes to page 14 163
Deniz Kandiyoti, “Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation,” Colonial Dis-
course and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 376–391.
53. This applies to the first two of the following three examples in which the native
boys are portrayed as rascals; both reveal a perverse pleasure in children’s rudeness or use
of naughty words, which is taken as evidence of the naturalness of their Hebrew. The
third features young girls. A large part of the fascination with Hebrew-speaking children
in all three is that children born of Yiddish-speaking parents seem native to Palestine.
The first two anecdotes appear in Itamar Even-Zohar, “ha-Tsemi¿ah ve-ha-hitgab-
shut shel tarbut ¿Ivrit mekomit vi-yelidit be-’Erets Yisra’el, 1882–1948” [The Growth and
Solidification of Local and Native Hebrew Culture in Palestine, 1882–1948], Cathedra 16
(July 1980): 165–189. See also his shorter English version, “The Emergence of a Native
Hebrew Culture in Palestine, 1882–1948,” Studies in Zionism 4 (Autumn 1981): 167–184.
1. Tel aviv. Hertsl Street.
Boys and girls poured out of the Hertselia high school after class. At that very
moment, two of the most well-known Yiddishists who had come to see Pales-
tine arrived. The older of the two said to his friend:
“The Zionists brag that Hebrew has become second nature for the chil-
dren of the Land of Israel. Now you will see how they lie and deceive. I will
shriek in a boy’s ear and I can assure you that he won’t cry ‘ima!’ in Hebrew
but ‘mame!’ in Yiddish.”
He did as he said. He approached a boy from behind and screamed in his
ear. The boy spun around and cried:
“±amor!╯.╯.╯.” [ass]
The famous Yiddishist replied to his friend:
“It would seem that they were indeed right.”
(Alter Druyanov, Sefer ha-bedi¿ah ve-ha-¿idud [The Book of Jokes and Wit] (Tel Aviv:
Devir, 1963), vol. 3, Item no. 2636, translation mine; also quoted in Even-Zohar 1980,
183 and Even-Zohar 1981, 179):
2. One of the bunch complained that the Tel Aviv kids are bad╯.╯.╯.╯wild—and that
they grow up without any manners, fear of God or good Jewish values.╯.╯.╯.╯All
his life, he says, he would comfort himself with the dream that our children in
the Land of Israel would greet every passerby with a shalom,╯.╯.╯.╯and in the
end, he says, we hear from them a different blessing: “Ass!”╯.╯.╯.╯Now, he says,
he himself has a story to tell: This morning he walked innocently down a city
street and without intending to he kicked some stones, which little schoolchil-
dren had arranged for a game on the sidewalk. One of them, an orphan who
couldn’t have been even five years old, yelled bloody murder: “May your name
be wiped out, Mister!”—and was shaking all over╯.╯.╯.╯
â•… The second one responded: “And your mind is still not at peace?”
â•… “On the contrary,” he says, “let’s be grateful that they speak Hebrew so
naturally! Did you ever in your life expect,” he says, “when you were there in
the Diaspora—did you ever even dream that a young child of five would
‘bless’ you to your face with such an acrid and juicy mother-tongue Hebrew:
‘may your name be wiped out, Mister?’”
(From Yits¿ak Dov Berkovits, Mena¿em-Mendl be-’erets yisra’el (Mena¿em Mendl in
the Land of Israel), Tel Aviv: Devir, 1936, 156–157; quoted in Even-Zohar 1980, 183)
3. They (fem.) speak Hebrew, they sing Hebrew. In the evening, in the evening
164 notes to pages 15–17
I see them walking and strolling and I hear them speaking and singing He-
brew. One is about five and the other about four╯.╯.╯.╯and I shorten my steps
and follow them both.
“One two,” the older one says; “wa too,” replies the younger one, and the big
girl walks along counting her steps and the little one follows her and I follow
them both . . .
“Where did you learn such a nice song, my pretty girl?” I ask the great
poetess.
And in such a sweet voice, a voice that pulls at the heart strings, she an-
swers: “in nursery school.”
“Sing me a song,” I ask her, and in the pleasantness of her ringing voice
she starts to sing:
“The hand takes, the hand gives, the hand, the hand, the hand.”
“What is my hand doing?” I ask her, holding out an apple.
“Your hand is giving,” she answers.
“And your hand?” I continue to question her.
“Taking,” she answers, snatching the apple and running away.
And from time to time, when I pass by the kindergarten and Hebrew chit-chat
reaches my ears, Hebrew songs ring in my ears, I see small Hebrew boys and
girls walking in the garden and singing Hebrew songs together with the birds.
(Y. Kantrovits, “¿Ivrim ve-¿Ivriyot,” Hashkafah 7 (1904); quoted in Grintsvaig 1997, 411)
This is no doubt a variation on the song Leah Mazyah taught in her kindergarten in
1901. See David Shapira and Shimon Rubenshtain, “ha-±ipus a¿ar milim ¿Ivriyot
¿adashot ¿avur gan ha-yeladim ha-¿Ivri ha-rishon be-Yafo” [The Search for New He-
brew Words for the First Hebrew Kindergarten in Jaffa], Kivunim 38 (1990): 67–73.
54. Eliezer Kagan, “¿Iyun ba-fonetikah shel Shlonski” [An Analysis of Shlonsky’s
Phonetics], Avraham Shlonski: miv¿ar ma’amare bikoret ¿al yetsirato [Avraham Shlon-
sky: A Selection of Critical Essays on His Work], ed. Aviezer Vais (Tel Aviv: Am Oved,
1975); Uzi Shavit 1986; Uzi Shavit 1988; Avraham Hagorni-Green, Shlonski ba-¿avotot
Byalik [Shlonsky in the Bonds of Bialik] (Israel: Or Am, 1985); Harshav 1978, 28–29;
and Harshav 2000.
55. The demand for unambiguous heroes in the history of the New Yishuv is not
limited to belles lettres. Ben-Yehuda’s fathering of a Modern Hebrew is a dramatic
example of this sort of mythmaking. See Kuzar, 84–136.
56. See Kagan 1976, 45.
57. For a theory of why it was precisely this cultural milieu in which women’s po-
etry appeared, see Hamutal Tsamir, “ha-Korban ha-¿alutsi: ha-’arets ha-kedoshah ve-
hofa¿atah shel shirat ha-nashim bi-shenot ha-¿esrim” [The Pioneer’s Sacrifice: The
Holy Land and the Appearance of Women’s Poetry in the Nineteen-Twenties] in Rega¿
shel huledet: me¿karim be-sifrut ¿Ivrit u-ve-sifrut Yidish li-khevod Dan Miron [Moment
of Birth: Studies in Hebrew Literature and Yiddish Literature in Honor of Dan Miron],
ed. Hannan Hever (Jerusalem: Mosad Biyalik, 2007).
58. Tsevi Shats, “Galut shiratenu ha-klasit” [The Exile of Our Classical Poetry], ¿Al
gevul ha-demamah: ketavim [On the Edge of Silence: Writings] (Tel Aviv: Davar,
1929). The article was written in 1919 and appeared the following year in ’Ohel.
59. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1993), and John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Canon
Formation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
notes to pages 21–25 165
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), chapter 2, especially 87–97. Guillory’s analy-
sis of the category of English literature first made me aware of the relevance of
Bourdieu’s sociology of language to the history of Hebrew language and literature.
13. Ra¿el Elboim-Dror, ha-±inukh ha-¿Ivri be-’Erets Yisrael [Hebrew Education in
Palestine] (Jerusalem: Yad Yits¿ak Ben-Tsevi, 1986), vol. 1, 219. This is the authoritative
contemporary work of scholarship on Hebrew education and one of the few books on
Hebrew education that is not based on Azaryahu.
14. Yosef Azaryahu, “ha-±inukh ha-¿Ivri be-’Erets-Yisra’el” [Hebrew Education in
the Land of Israel], in Sefer ha-yovel shel histadrut ha-morim, 5763–5788 [The Jubilee of
the Teachers’ Organization, 1903–1928], ed. Dov Kim¿i (Jerusalem: Merkaz histadrut
ha-morim bi-Yerushalayim, 1929), 57–112. On Hebrew education in Palestine, also see
Aharon Berman, Toledot ha-¿inukh be-Yisra’el u-va-¿amim [The History of Education in
Israel and among the Nations] (Tel Aviv: Yehoshua Tchechik, 1960), 139–153; A. Arnon,
“Shishim shenot bet ha-sefer ha-¿Ivri ba-’Arets” [Sixty Years of the Hebrew School in
Palestine], Hed ha-¿inukh 9 (Fall 1947): 8–40; Jack Fellman, The Revival of a Classical
Tongue: Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language (The Hague: Mouton,
1973); and “±inukh u-me¿kar: toledot ha-¿inukh ha-’Ivri he-¿adash” [Education and
Research: The History of the New Hebrew Education], in ha-’Entsiklopediyah ha-¿Ivrit
[The Hebrew Encyclopedia] 6 (Jerusalem: ±evrah le-Hotsa’at ’Entsiklopediyot, 1956–
57), 983–996, all of which to some extent rely on Azaryahu as well.
15. Jews of different ethnicities lived in close proximity in the Old Yishuv. Even
though the Sephardic communities were more established, Ashkenazic Jews did not
abandon their own pronunciations of Hebrew. Bourdieu’s account of the intermingling
of dialects in a nonnationalist context describes aptly the Hebrew language dynamic in
the Old Yishuv in which there is “no question of making one usage the norm for another
(despite the fact that the differences perceived may well serve as pretexts for declaring
one superior to the other)” (Bourdieu 46). Also see Bourdieu, chapters 1 and 2.
16. Recall the “impossibility” of writing accentual-syllabic poetry in Hebrew until
Bialik and Tchernichovsky started doing just that. There were also challenges that
were more strictly linguistic, such as the creation of a literary vernacular in which to
write modern prose genres. See Alter, especially chapter 2.
17. Arnon, 16.
18. “Hatsa¿ah le-tokhnit ha-limudim shel bate-ha-sefer ha-¿amamiyim be-’Erets
Yisra’el” [Proposal for a Curriculum for the Primary Schools in the Land of Israel],
cited in Azaryahu (73).
19. In Bourdieu’s model, the map of dialects is
never entirely superimposable [on the territory in an absolute way] and only
ever corresponds to religious or administrative boundaries through rare coin-
cidence.╯.╯.╯.╯Only by transposing the representation of the national language
is one led to think that regional dialects exist, themselves divided into sub-
dialects—an idea flatly contradicted by the study of dialectics.╯.╯.╯.╯A nd it is
no accident that nationalism almost always succumbs to this illusion since,
once it triumphs, it inevitably reproduces the process of unification whose
effects it denounced. (258)
As I will show in the next chapter, the language revivalists whittled down the choices
and excluded the Galilean accent from consideration although its implementation
had been one of the most successful experiments of the language revivalists in turn-
of-the-century Palestine.
notes to pages 29–31 167
20 See Arnon 1947, 10; and “Language Teaching” in the Oxford Companion to the
English Language, ed. Tom McArthur (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
21. See Yehudah Grazovski’s “ha-Shitah ha-tiv¿it be-limud sefatenu ’o ¿Ivrit be-¿Ivrit”
[The Natural Method in our Language or Hebrew in Hebrew], published in ha-Tsevi in
1885 and reprinted in 1896, and Yits¿ak Epstein’s “¿Ivrit be-¿Ivrit: ha-shitah ha-tiv¿it be-
reshit limud sefat ¿Ever” [Hebrew in Hebrew: The Natural Method in the First Years of
Hebrew Language Acquisition], ha-Shiloa¿ 4, no. 5 (1898): 385–396. See also the introduc-
tion to David Yellin, le-Fi ha-taf [The Mouth of the Children] (Warsaw: Tushiyah, 1903).
22. The use of an ancient heritage that has been forgotten or lost is typical of national-
ist movements in their early stages (Anderson 1991, chapters 2 and 3). In just such a vein,
Hebrew was often described as a dead language that needed to be brought back to life. See
above, note 14 to the Introduction, on Ornan, who has an alternative periodization based
on his concept of an “all-encompassing” language. For other approaches to the problem-
atic term revival see Ornan, Rabin, and Kuzar. See also Shelomoh Morag, “ha-¿Ivrit ha-
¿adashah be-hitgabshutah: lashon be-’aspaklariya’ shel ¿evrah” [The New Hebrew in Its
Formation: Language in the Mirror of Society], Cathedra 56 (June 1990): 70–92.
23. Note that this excursion takes place when “we teach the early writings of the
land” (Epstein 385). The relationship between language and writing is developed fur-
ther below (see my discussion of Epstein).
24. See the poems in Ze’ev Yavits, Tal yaldut [Childhood Dew] (Jerusalem, 1891;
Vilna, 1898). See also the onomatopoeic play and the parallels between animals’
sounds and children’s Hebrew speech in Yehudah Grazovski and Shemuel Leyb Gor-
don, ha-Keri’ah ve-ha-ketivah [Reading and Writing] (Warsaw: Tushiyah, 1907). The
many human characters in the book bear names that are also animals in Hebrew, and
the Hebrew sounds of children are constantly compared to the “natural” sounds of
animals and even sounds associated with inanimate objects. See p. 93 in which the
girls are pretty like the animals who vocalize and are also poets who can imitate the
sound of a bell. Poetry is most often presented in the book as a character’s speech (pp.
100, 101, 108, 132). The lesson of many of the stories in this book seems to be that the
Hebrew-speaking child is yet another species of animal. The child is not identical to
any other animal—and he should certainly not bark—but his Hebrew verbal instincts
are as natural to him as the bark is to the dog. Yehudah Grazovski’s Bet sefer ¿Ivri [He-
brew School] (Jerusalem: Hatsevi, 1895) presents a much more belligerent habitat
where animals constantly play tricks, steal, or kill one another. They live by their wits
and pose a danger to human beings (see, for example, pp. 15–16, 21, 28–29, 39, 54–56,
and 58–59). The theme of this reader published in Palestine is the home and protect-
ing it from danger (see especially pp. 63–64 which narrates a mini-history of the home
from ancient times to the present). Many of the stories, about children and animals
alike, involve building, finding, or returning to one’s home (pp. 31, 32, 34 [poem]).
Many passages taken from Jewish history are about the national home in some sense,
including stories on the return to Israel from Babylon and on Jewish struggles against
the Greek and Roman Empires (pp. 35, 37, 49–50, 53, 58–59, 60–63). According to
Eliyahu Hacohen’s Matayim shenot ha-mikra’ah ha-¿Ivrit [Two Hundred Years of the
Hebrew Reader] (Tel Aviv: Mikhlelet Levinski, 1988), this popular primer “almost cer-
tainly [remains to this day] the most widespread book in Hebrew in the world, aside
from Scripture.”
25. This trope is repeated in the Hebrew primers. See for example, Yehudah Gra-
zovski and Shemuel Leyb Gordon, ’Otsar ha-limud ha-¿Ivri [The Treasure of Hebrew
Learning] (Warsaw, 1904), 124. The poem there describes the “small free land” of the
school that will be a miniature “Land of Israel,” a true Hebrew Garden of Eden.
168 notes to pages 32–38
sity could not be successfully established until after the Jaffa high school had produced
“Hebrew” graduates.
41. It is difficult to know exactly what kind of sociolinguistic environment existed
in the school as a result of this decision. See Berman, 140. Ben-Yehuda was not ob-
sessed with errors as the later revivalists were. Such precision was afforded by the stan-
dardization implemented during the Second Aliyah (Kuzar 132).
42. Berman, 140.
43. Kuzar, 130–136.
44. As Fellman writes, “The first teaching of arithmetic in Hebrew took place in 1887,
and in 1888, all general subjects, including history, geography and nature-study were
taught in Hebrew [by David Yudelovits and his colleagues in Rishon le-Tsiyon]” (Fell-
man 97). The principal Mordekhai Lubman, as well as Ben-Yehuda, Yudelovits, and
other teachers wrote the Hebrew textbooks themselves.
45. Elboim-Dror, 156.
46. See Elboim-Dror, 156–157 on the exclusion of Ashkenazic schoolboys who were
taught to speak with a “Sephardic” accent from reading the Bible aloud in ritual
contexts.
47. That is, their idea of sacred language was in some sense premodern. Hebrew
was seen as distinct from other languages much as the biblical period was perceived as
discontinuous with historical time. See Anderson, 69–73.
48. Elboim-Dror, 165.
49. See Elboim Dror, 134 on the competition between the two in the ±oveve Â�Tsiyon
budget.
50. Reshef and Dror, 4–8.
51. That year ha-Shiloa¿ also published Epstein’s essay on the natural method in
which he wrote that Hebrew pedagogy required a literature that could serve as a model
for proper speech (see my discussion above in this chapter).
52. The first collection of new-accent poems to be published was also for children—
Liboshitski’s Dimyonot ve-’agadot: shirim ¿adashim [Fantasies and Fables: New Poems]
(Warsaw: Tushiyah, 1902). Page 4 in its entirety reads: “kol shire ha-kovets ha-zeh ketuvim
ba-neginah ha-’amitit u-ve-ketsev ’Erope’i.” [All the poems of this collection are written
in the proper rhythm (i.e., a Sephardic stress system) and in a European meter.]
53. Although the settlement showed patience in allowing itself to slowly adopt He-
brew as the official language, it was quite zealous in protecting this reputation. See
Yosef Lang, “Te¿iyat ha-lashon ha-¿Ivrit be-Rishon le-Tsiyon, 1882–1914” [The Revival
of the Hebrew Language in Rishon le-Tsiyon, 1882–1914], Cathedra 103 (2002): 85–131.
54. The first Hebrew preparatory preschool opened in Rishon le-Tsiyon in the 1880s
(see Azaryahu 67 and his note there).
55. See Zohar Shavit, “Hitmasdut ha-merkaz ha-tarbuti be-’Erets Yisra’el” [The
Establishment of the Cultural Center in Palestine], in Toledot ha-yishuv ha-Yehudi be-
’Erets Yisra’el [The History of the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine], ed. Moshe Liski (Jerusa-
lem: Mosad Biyalik, 1998), vol. 1, 123–262 and her ha-±ayim ha-sifrutiyim be-’Erets
Yisra’el: 1910–1933 [Literary Life in the Land of Israel: 1910–1933] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts
ha-Meu¿ad, 1983).
56. “From the history of Hebrew education in Palestine we know that the Hebrew
school is the fruit of the labor and spirit of the Hebrew teacher╯.╯.╯.╯alone. He founded
and tended and fortified it until it was a perfect and inseparable part of the national
life in Palestine . . .” (Azaryahu 58).
57. Woolf, 23–24.
58. On the meetings of the various incarnations of the Teachers’ Association, see
170 notes to pages 43–50
Shelomoh Karmi, Telamim rishonim ba-¿inukh ha-¿Ivri: asefat ha-morim ha-¿Ivrim be-
’erets Yisra’el u-mekomah be-toledot ha-¿inukh, 5652–5656 [First Furrows in Hebrew Edu-
cation: The Hebrew Teachers’ Association in Palestine and Its Place in the History of
Education 1891–1896] (Jerusalem: Reuven Mas, 1986); CD; and Kim¿i 1929.
59. See the brief discussions on the “Sephardic” accents in the minutes of the sev-
enth and eighth meetings of the teachers [’asefat ha-morim] (Karmi 112–120); and se-
lections from the minutes of the founding of the histadrut ha-morim in 1903 (CD
160–161).
60. See Elboim-Dror 1, 312. They ran schools in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, and Safed,
and supported schools in Rehovot and Gaderah as well as Talmud Torah schools in
Jerusalem and Hebron.
61. In a work of historical fiction the Hilfsverein representative goes so far as to say
to the workers at the site of the future college that they were “treading on German
soil.” See Noa¿ Tamir, Seminaristim be-ma’avak ¿am [Teachers’ College Students in a
National Struggle] (Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1963), 67–68; quoted in Elboim-Dror 1, 315.
62. Kuzar devotes two chapters to Ben-Yehuda, in which he critiques the scholar-
ship and demonstrates the self-mythification in Ben-Yehuda’s own writings. One trend
in Ben-Yehuda’s writing is to narrate his life story such that his love of the Hebrew
language is a constant throughout his political, religious, and intellectual experimen-
tation, although the evidence shows that Hebrew was not a central concern in his
early thought. See especially 42–67.
63. “±inukh u-me¿kar: toledot ha-¿inukh ha-¿Ivri he-¿adash” [Education and Re-
search: The History of the New Hebrew Education], in ha-’Entsiklopediya ha-¿Ivrit
[The Hebrew Encyclopedia] 6 (Jerusalem: ±evrah le-hotsa’at ’Entsiklopediyot, 1956–
1957), 983–996.
64. Reshef and Dror, 6.
65. See the introduction to Harshav, Shirat ha-te¿iyah, 2000.
66. Some poets published new-accent poems for children even as they continued to
compose canonical poetry in Ashkenazic (Uzi Shavit 1988, 72–82). In the meantime
the schools continued to teach Bialik, Tchernichovsky, and Lebensohn for lack of
new-accent poetry (Kim¿i 1929, 260–261).
or the Yemenite [one] which is also considered a Sephardic accent?” (Kim¿i 387). The
fact that a Yemenite accent is in this context “also considered” Sephardic is an additional
indication that stress pattern is the feature that for their purposes organized the divide
between Sephardic and Ashkenazic.
20. Lewis Glinert, The Grammar of Modern Hebrew (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1989), quoted in Kuzar, 133. See also Kuzar, 136 on “the difference be-
tween the early revival and second aliyah that fortified political and organizational
power” and that contributed to the standardization of the language.
21. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, ha-Mivta’ ba-lashon ha-¿Ivri [Accent in the Hebrew Lan-
guage] (New York: Histadrut ha-¿Ivrit be-’Amerikah, 1917).
22. “In the two aforementioned vowels there are those who favor the Sephardic
pronunciation for a variety of reasons: 1) the Hebrew names that appear in Greek and
Latin translations are written in the Sephardic pronunciation: Adam, Babel, Abraham
rather than Odom, Bobel, Abrohom, etc. 2) The spelling of names in the antiquities of
the ruins of Gezer that were discovered in these our times, also demonstrate that the
Sephardic pronunciation is more accurate. 3) In many places in the Talmud as well, it
is evident that we write the sound O with a ¿olam and the letter vav like our contem-
porary Sephardic pronunciation, as in ‘pedagog,’ ‘apotropos’ etc.” (CD, 160). Ben-Yehuda
claims to leave the academic scientific question unresolved but in practice he at�tributes
authenticity to the Sephardic accent.
23. The kamats katan (the “small” or infrequent kamats, as opposed to the more com-
mon kamats gadol) is a distinctly Sephardic variation on the kamats in which it is pro-
nounced as a ¿olam under certain circumstances (when it appears in an unaccented
syllable after an open syllable); the kamats gadol is far more common. The same symbol
is generally used for the two versions of the kamats. Ashkenazic speakers would have to
learn the special rules of kamats katan to determine when the kamats should be pro-
nounced as a ¿olam in Sephardic Hebrew. The Ashkenazic accents, in which the kamats
symbol has a stable value (but varies by region), preserve the relationship of one symbol
per sound in this case. The kamats katan should therefore constitute another mark
against adopting the Sephardic kamats since the vocal distinction of the kamats katan is
not accompanied by a written distinction.
24. There is an interesting suppression here of the Sephardic identity of such clas-
sic Jewish expressions of yearning for the homeland as Yehudah Halevi’s “My heart is
in the East and I am at the westernmost [edge of the world].”
25. “The best means at our disposal for spreading [whichever] is accepted as the cor-
rect accent is, of course, the school, for only the school can╯.╯.╯.╯establish it and only via
the school will it be possible for the next generation to speak Hebrew in our land, the
center of our nation’s revival, in a single accent that can serve as a model for our brethren
in all the countries of their dispersion. Therefore I think that this, the meeting of the
teachers of the Land of Israel, is the place best suited for determining the details of the
accent and for coming to a final agreement immediately or in the near future” (Yellin 1905
[1904], 3).
26. He did not pose open-ended questions. Rather, he provided two options for
each undecided trait which conformed to the principles of his accent design—spelling
conformed to speech in one and speech conformed to spelling in the other.
27. In the same session at which he discussed the new accent, Yellin also lectured
on the standardization of spelling. His formal remarks on accent were from this point
on always accompanied by separate statements on spelling.
28. In contrast to Yellin in 1904, Ben-Yehuda values authenticity, at least in theory,
and conceives of the new national language (in 1903) as an existing and more or less
174 notes to pages 66–70
31. “It is not simply that in the minds of Christians, Muslims or Hindus the cities of
Rome, Mecca, or Benares were the centres of sacred geographies, but that their central-
ity was experienced and realized by the constant flow of pilgrims towards them from re-
mote and otherwise unrelated localities.╯.╯.╯.╯The Berber encountering the Malay before
the Kaaba must, as it were, ask himself: ‘why is this man doing what I am doing, uttering
the same words that I am uttering, even though we cannot talk to one another?’ There is
only one answer, once one has learnt it: ‘Because we╯.╯.╯.╯are Muslims.’” (Anderson 53–54;
emphasis in the original.)
10. See William Wordsworth’s prefaces in Lyrical Ballads: The Text of the 1789 Edi-
tion with the Additional 1800 Poems and the Prefaces (London: Routledge, 1988).
11. See A. D. Gordon’s speech of 1918, “ha-Soferim ve-ha-¿ovedim” [The Writers
and the Workers], Kitve A[haron] D[avid] Gordon [The Writings of A. D. Gordon] (Tel
Aviv: ha-Po¿el ha-Tsa¿ir, 1922), vol. 1, especially pp. 317–318; and Berel Katzenelson,
“’El ha-shotekim” [To the Silent Ones], Davar (September 17, 1925): 5.
12. Yehudah Karni, “ha-¿Am ha-zamar” [The Singer Nation], Hedim 2 (Spring
1923): 44–47.
13. Karni at least seems to have followed his own advice. He published She¿arim
[Gates], a book of poems ruled by the Ashkenazic stress system, in 1923, two years after
his arrival in Palestine. Twelve years passed between the appearance of Gates and his
next book, which introduced his new new-accent poems.
14. Avraham Shlonsky, le-’Aba-’ima [To Papa-Mama] (Jerusalem: Ketuvim, 1927);
Mordekhai Temkin, Netafim [Drops] (Jerusalem: Ketuvim, 1927); Shemuel Bas, Adam
[Man] (Tel Aviv: Hedim, 1927).
15. See his poems published in Hedim between 1922 and 1928: vol. 1, no. 4; vol. 2,
nos. 8, 9; vol. 3, nos. 1, 2; vol. 4, nos. 1, 3; vol. 6, no. 3. Uzi Shavit writes that “about half
of the poems [in Bas’s book] are in the ‘Land of Israel’ [’Erets-Yisra’eli] accent . . .”
(Shavit 1988, 186).
16. See “Tefilah” [Prayer], in Hedim 1 (1922): 34, and her essay on Francis Jammes
on the following page.
17. Shlonsky was certainly perceived as integrating colloquial Hebrew into poetry,
but in a way that diverged sharply from Bluvstein’s poetic practice. Almost twenty years
later Leah Goldberg spoke of the influence of Shlonsky’s colloquialism: “[Those] of us
who were educated, if you will, on the knees of Shlonsky’s poetry remember all that—
that complete integration of technical and prosaic terminology—already from the end of
the twenties and from the mid-thirties, from the start of Shlonsky’s composition, and that
is what gave such rise to the possibility of expressing our time in Hebrew” (Leah Gold-
berg, ha-’Omets la-¿ulin [The Courage for the Quotidian] (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po¿alim,
1976), 160).
18. The verse alluded to is: “And Jacob awoke from his sleep and said: For God is
present in this place and I did not know it” (Gen. 28:16).
19. See her poem “’Ani” [I] (Bluvshtain 1927), her essay on Francis Jammes (Hedim 1
[1922]: 35; reprinted in Bluvshtain 1939, 213), and her translations of his poetry (in Hedim 1
[1922]: 34 reprinted, along with two other poems of his, in Bluvshtain 1939, 181–185).
20. On the trope of the poet as prophet in Bialik’s poetry, see Dan Miron, H. N.
Bialik and the Prophetic Mode in Modern Hebrew Poetry (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse
University Press, 2006).
21. “Revelation” appears in To Papa-Mama but is presented differently. In In the
Cycle, the poem does not receive pride of place and is part of a cycle of two poems, the
second of which develops the theme of human communication with God but with a
greater distance and ambivalence. This second poem (which does not accompany
“Revelation” in To Papa-Mama) is iambic and is also composed in Ashkenazic but the
rhyme is more consistent when read in new-accent Hebrew.
22. Inasmuch as some people continue to speak Hebrew with an Ashkenazic ac-
cent once the new accent has come to be associated with Palestine, they reveal that
they are not natives and that they were not educated in the New Hebrew of Palestine.
The new accent becomes the immediate direct expression of the territory of the Land
of Israel whether the speaker learned that Hebrew in Palestine or, as Bi¿ovski did, in
Russia.
notes to pages 86–92 177
29. Not all of Jewish history before ancient and modern times is excised. In most
scenarios the Jewish culture of medieval Spain is neither silenced nor dismissed. For a
reading of the exclusion of the middle of Jewish history in Israeli culture, see Yael
Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National
Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
30. Bluvshtain 1985, 90.
31. On Bluvshtain’s ambivalence toward the notion that the generation of the Sec-
ond Aliyah had sacrificed itself, see “Korbanot?” [Sacrifices?], in Bluvshtain 1985,
328–329. See also her poem “be-Vet ¿olim 1” [In the Hospital 1], Bluvshtain 1927, 15.
32. Shlonsky’s poem “Halbishini ’ima’ kesherah” [Dress Me, Good Mother] uses
both ¿amal for hard labor and sevel for suffering or burden. As Hever has pointed out, this
poem moves toward a normalization of the experience of the pioneers—most of whom
arrived alone—by placing this pioneer in the bosom of his nuclear family. The father is
in Palestine too, like his son. But if the poem focuses on the son going off to work in the
morning and uses ¿amal to describe his working day, the father is the focus only as the
poem moves into the evening when “Father returns from his burdens [sivlotav, from
sevel].” Father comes home from his suffering or his burdens. The word is perhaps a re-
minder of the burden that he has brought with him from the Diaspora and the fact that
he is less native to the land than his son is.
178 notes to pages 93–100
33. “I am black and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the
pavilions of Solomon” (Song of Songs 1:5).
34. Ra¿el Bluvshtain, “¿Ivriyah” [Hebrew Woman], published in the posthumous
Nevo [Nebo] (1932); reprinted in S¿irat Ra¿el, 138.
35. The speaker in the biblical text looks different from the women of the city who
are not blackened by the sun as she is. A better translation of the verse from which the
epigram is taken might be “I am black but beautiful.” The ambiguity of the Hebrew
works well, for the woman’s blackness is what signifies her authenticity and is therefore
part of what makes her beautiful in the context of the poem.
36. This is a common trope with which Bluvshtain would have been familiar from
a number of sources. See for example Charles Baudelaire’s “Invitation au voyage.”
“Hebrew Woman” employs these tropes of wandering rather heavy-handedly, how-
ever, and is one of Bluvshtain’s weaker poems.
37. Ezra Zusman’s “Sefer shirat Ra¿el” [Rachel’s Book of Poetry], in Ra¿el ve-shira-
tah [Rachel and Her Poetry], ed. Mordekhai Kushnir (Tel Aviv: Davar, 1946), 119.
1926 Davar publishes “Train” (Tevet 22, 5686), Shlonsky’s first poem in the
accent of the Land of Israel, and more poems in this accent follow in its foot-
steps in Ketuvim, and in ha-Po¿el ha-tsa¿ir╯.╯.╯.╯while from the publication of
In the Cycle in the summer of 5687 [1927], Shlonsky writes all his poems
solely in this accent. This is also the case with U[ri] Ts[evi] Greenberg whose
transition in poetry from one accent to the other apparently takes place in
1928. (Shavit 1986, 170)
Shlonsky does n0t stand out in sharp contrast to the others in Shavit’s article as he
does in the book, in part because Shavit links Shlonsky to Greenberg who published his
first new-accent book at the end of 1928 (this may also explain why he speaks in his book
of the years 1927–1928), and partly because he does not place Shlonsky on the same plane
as the “pioneers” (he and Greenberg are the “leaders of the pack”; literally, “the lions
among them”; 170). Shavit lists the pioneers but dismisses them in favor of describing in
detail the rise of new-accent poetry within Shlonsky’s corpus. The question of why 1927
is the critical year is answered by referring to Shlonsky, whose most important new-�
accent moment spanned the years 1926, 1927, and 1928. The passages from Shavit dem-
onstrate that the years 1926–1928 are indeed an important period of change and
development for Shlonsky’s own use of the new accent in his poetry and to a lesser extent
in Hebrew poetry as a whole, which in these years passed a point of no return. What is
not clear is why Shlonsky’s transition is treated as a paradigm.
Avraham Hagorni-Green’s literary biography of Shlonsky is less concerned with
an exact dating of the accent “revolution” and more inclined to take it for granted that
Shlonsky was responsible for that revolution. In a section on Shlonsky’s teenage years,
most of which were spent in Russia, Hagorni-Green writes that Shlonsky’s yearlong
stay in Palestine in 1913 when he was thirteen years old and studied at the Hebrew-
speaking Hertseliyah high school
introduced him to its scenery and to the Hebrew language as spoken by the
people of the land. In the Sephardic accent [havarah], of course—thanks to
the war waged by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his colleagues. This would later
make it easier for him to stage the great revolution in our poetry: the transi-
tion [ma¿avar] from the Ashkenazic pronunciation [havarah] to the correct
pronunciation, as it was called then—i.e., the Sephardic or Israeli one.
(Hagorni-Green 18)
Although he does not say it in so many words, Hagorni-Green is dealing with a pecu-
liarity of literary history—that a poet from Russia should have been the one to stage a
revolution that to a great extent was seen as a victory of the Hebrew culture of Palestine
over the dominance that Russian poets had maintained in the realm of Hebrew poetry
in the first two decades of the century. Shlonsky’s year spent in Palestine appears as an
implicit response to a question which the author does not actually articulate: How is it
possible that a Russian could have been a more successful poet of Hebrew and advocate
for the language as spoken in Palestine than the poets who had been exposed in their
formative years, some from birth, to the “scenery [of Palestine] and the Hebrew lan-
guage”? (18).
Also implicit in this account is an idea that was expressed by many in the 1920s—
that some poets whose first extended exposure to Hebrew had been “Ashkenazic” were
simply unable to switch to a new accent midway through their careers. (Such is the man-
ner in which Bialik’s “silence” is sometimes understood, for example. See David Shi-
monovits, “Kavim” in Moznayim 2 (1934): 466, quoted in Shavit 1988, 72.) The implication
180 notes to page 100
is that this switch was easier for Shlonsky than for others because he had been exposed to
Hebrew in Palestine (if only for one year) at a formative age. That may be so. But Hagorni-
Green betrays a teleological approach to new-accent poetry by neglecting to explain
why—if Shlonsky’s trip to Palestine in 1913 accounts for his ability to stage an accent revo-
lution no less than thirteen years later—the poet waited quite so long. In this sense,
Hagorni-Green seems to be telling a story a little too similar to Shlonsky’s denial much
later in his career that he had ever written anything other than new-accent poetry. (See
Benjamin Harshav’s anecdote on the topic in Language in Time of Revolution [Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993], 102.) In addition, Hagorni-Green seems to be adopt-
ing an ideology of “nativeness” with regard to one’s ability to write a national literature
that, if it has some linguistic justification by the 1950s, is less convincing in the 1920s. He
also effectively if inadvertently reduces the significance of Shlonsky’s talent: had there
been a high school that accepted Jewish students that was not a religious school, in or
near his hometown of Yekaterinoslav, Shlonsky would not have gone to Palestine to study
at Hertseliyah and might never have waged the rebellion he did. (See Hagorni-Green 17
on his mother’s wish that he study in a gymnasium.)
At one point, Hagorni-Green refers prematurely to the “Israeli” accent rather
than the accent of the “Land of Israel,” and evokes all the respective stereotypes of the
Ashkenazic and new accents (17). Ashkenazic Hebrew is diasporic, outdated, and liter-
ary; Sephardic Hebrew is masculine, alive, vernacular, new and—paradoxically—Eu-
ropean (39). Hagorni-Green’s comment that at “a time of polemics among the veteran
poets for and against the ‘correct accent,’ the poets saw in Shlonsky a ‘masculine’ poet,
who inserted into our poetry the sound of a living, European language” implies that
Shlonsky was the pioneer of the new accent in poetry (Hagorni-Green 39). One pic-
tures the young and brave Shlonsky taking charge while the veteran Hebrew poets
stand at the periphery in fear and possibly awe. By comparing him to the older poets
and describing him in virile terms, Hagorni-Green gives the impression that Shlonsky
was the first to dare to use the new accent in Hebrew poetry, an impression com-
pounded by the fact that no other new-accent poets are mentioned. By both claiming
that Shlonsky staged the revolution in accent and showing how “Train”—the first new-
accent poem by Shlonsky to be published—benefited from the transition to the new
accent, Hagorni-Green seems to have made a paradox of Shlonsky—he is both the
chicken and the egg of the literary new accent.
If these accounts tend to conflate Shlonsky with Hebrew poetry, Shlonsky’s own
self-portrayal is partly responsible for that. The problem with relying on received wisdom
is that Shlonsky’s actual and concrete contributions are obscured. Eliezer Kagan’s article
on Shlonsky’s phonetics provides a refreshing departure from accounts that tend to con-
flate Shlonsky with Hebrew poetry (“¿Iyun ba-fonetikah shel Shlonski” [An Analysis of
Shlonsky’s Phonetics] in Avraham Shlonski: mivhar ma’amarim al yetsirato [Avraham
�Shlonsky: A Selection of Critical Essays on His Work], ed. Aviezer Vais [Tel Aviv: Am
Oved, 1975], 130–149). Kagan provides a basis for comparison and a context in which to
appreciate some of Shlonsky’s contributions by presenting him with other poets in the
same awkward prosodic position—Jews from Poland, Ukraine, and Russia whose He-
brew careers were marked by the transition from one accent to another. (He is also,
however, prone to taking Shlonsky at face value. For example, he relies on Shlonsky’s
own edition of his collected works of 1958 to determine the chronology of the poems’
compositions. See Kagan 1975, 131, note 5; Kagan 1975, 139.)
Kagan observes that over the course of several years of new-accent composition,
Shlonsky seems to have come to conclusions about the contexts in which, for example,
the problematic mobile sheva should be pronounced as a full syllable and when it
notes to pages 101–104 181
should be treated as a quiescent sheva. His own decisions coincide with the norms that
developed for spoken Hebrew. He was either influential or in touch with the tenden-
cies and preferences of a Hebrew-speaking public in the process of accepting a stan-
dard. Kagan’s findings are intriguing and may even contribute by way of analogy to
our understanding of Bialik’s role in prosodic adjustments earlier in the century. At
the very least, the results of his research motivate one to consider how the reception of
Hebrew poems may have been determined by their audial success more so than con-
temporary poetry in other languages precisely because a Modern Hebrew and later
Israeli sound were developing simultaneously with the poetry.
Nevertheless, this is only part of the story of Shlonsky and the new accent. The
process Kagan describes—Shlonsky revising his prosodic rules in response to contem-
porary Hebrew speech—was only solidified in the 1930s. But the tendency to perceive
Shlonsky as the new-accent poet precedes this; Hagorni-Green’s version of events, how-
ever reductive it may be, reminds us that the perception of a poet’s innovation can be
a function of his overall reception.
2. “Train” was published in the literary supplement to Davar 1, no. 15 (January 8,
1926): 1.
3. This was a phase in each of their lives that provided a disproportionately large
amount of images for their respective poems. As ±agit Halperin points out in her book
me-¿Agvaniyah ¿ad simfoniyah [From Tomato to Symphony] (Tel Aviv: University of Tel
Aviv, 1997), Shlonsky’s poetry speaks of the laborer—the road-paver, the agricultural
worker—but he was a garbage collector. He also worked as a Hebrew teacher for the
“real” workers (31).
4. Hagorni-Green, 18.
5. Halperin, 35.
6. Avraham Shlonsky, le-’Aba-’ima [To Papa-Mama] (Tel Aviv: Ketuvim, 1927); be-
’Eleh ha-yamim [In These the Days] (Tel Aviv: Ketuvim, 1930).
7. As Halperin points out, the stanzas may be reordered without drastically chang-
ing the song (35). Such is the case for “Doesn’t Matter” and “In the Tent.” “Train” re-
fuses narrative development in a more subtle way.
8. See Shlonsky, “Lo ’ikhpat” [Doesn’t Matter], first published in Ketuvim 2, no. 9:
1; see also “Setav ba-’ohel” [Autumn in the Tent], in Mo¿adim: ¿overet le-sifrut ve-
’omanut [Festivals: A Pamphlet of Literature and Art], published in Tel Aviv in Au-
tumn 1927 in honor of the Feast of Tabernacles.
9. “Tishre” was published on September 8, 1926 in Ketuvim 1 (no. 7): 2.
10. I do not mean to imply that this combination of his acceptance as a central poet
and strategic differentiation from prior and contemporary poets is counterintuitive.
Indeed, Shlonsky’s eccentricity and his poetic signature are part of what made him
such an important writer in the emerging canon of Hebrew literature.
11. See Hever 1994, 234–248 on a similar use of the “light” genres in the late 1920s as
an early site of political poetry prior to the publication of political poetry in the canonical
genres.
12. Halperin, 11–28.
13. See Leah Goldberg’s examples of his influence and dominance as early as the
1920s, in her speech given in 1956 in honor of the Shlonsky Prize ceremony, reprinted
in ha-’Omets la-¿ulin [Courage for the Quotidian] (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po¿alim, 1976),
159–162.
14. See Tchernichovsky’s articles in Hed Lita’ in 1924–25, and the subsequent articles
in Hed Lita’ voicing strong opposition: Y. Y. Galas, “ha-Mishkal he-¿aluv” [The Wretched
Rhythm], no. 12 (June 18, 1924); no. 13 (July 2, 1924): 14–15; N. Lidesky, “bi-Devar ha-
182 notes to pages 104–105
mishkal he-¿aluv” [On the Matter of the Wretched Rhythm], no. 16 (August 13, 1924): 12–
13; vol. 2, no. 5(30) (March 11, 1925): 15; and vol. 2, no. 6(31) (March 29, 1925): 23–24; Y. L.
Barukh, “Mishkal pagum u-mishkal metukan” [Defective Rhythm and Proper Rhythm],
vol. 2, no. 7(32) (April 29, 1925): 9–10; vol. 2, no. 8(33) (May 20, 1925): 8–9.
15. See the letter to the editor, entitled “¿Al ha-shirah ve-ha-mishkal” [On Poetry
and Rhythm], ha-±ayim 1, no. 1 (April 9, 1922): 12.
16. See “li-She’elat ha-havarah ba-shirah ha-¿Ivrit” [On Poetry and Rhythm in He-
brew Poetry], ¿En ha-kore’ 1 (Winter 1923): 170–172.
17. By 1923 Bi¿ovski had already published her own new-accent poems. See ha-
Tekufah 13 (Fall 1921: 396–401). Other poets had addressed the problem publicly, in-
cluding Tche�rnichovsky who was at first very resistant to the idea of new-accent poetry.
See Tchernichovsky, “li-She’elat ha-mivta’ ve-ha-neginah” [On the Question of Ac-
cent and Rhythm] ha-Safah 1, no. 1 (1912): 27–29, excerpted in CD (164–166), discussed
above in chapter 1, in which he expresses dismay that his poems are being read in the
new accent. Twelve years later, in a series of articles appearing in Hed Lita’, Tcher-
nichovsky is still far from enthusiastic but his position has necessarily shifted and ac-
quired more nuance. See “bi-Devar ha-mishkal he-¿aluv” [On the Matter of the
Wretched Rhythm] published in three parts in Hed Lita’ 2, nos. 1(26): 11–14; 2(27), 11–
12; 3(28), 13–14; (1924–1925). In the 1930s, he began to write poems in the new accent.
18. Moshe Kalvari, “ha-Mishkal ve-ha-shirah” [Meter and Verse], Hedim 4, no. 5–6
(1927): 96–104.
19. See the section on Hedim in Zohar Shavit, ha-±ayim ha-sifrutiyim be-’Erets
Yisrael 1910–1933 [Literary Life in the Land of Israel, 1910–1933] (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibbuts
ha-Meu¿ad, 1983), and especially 76–77, where Shavit describes the literary journal as
the mouthpiece of Hebrew modernism in Palestine. Kalvari quotes a line from
Bi¿ovski’s poem “’Omerim li╯.╯.╯.” [“They tell me╯.╯.╯.”], that also appeared in Hedim in
1927 (vol. 5, no. 2: 250), not long after Kalvari’s article.
Kalvari’s use of the work of selected poets to exemplify various prosodic phenom-
ena provides evidence for poets’ contemporary reception. The mere selection of certain
oeuvres to illustrate methods for dealing with the problem of monotony gives one an indi-
cation of who were considered new-accent players and hints at the gendered reception of
new-accent poetry in the twenties. He brings one example each from Shemuel Bas (“Tse-
fat” [Safed]; see Bas 1927, 112), Yits¿ak Lamdan, and from Jabotinsky’s translation of
Dante. The bulk of his examples are from Shlonsky. He quotes from three different Bialik
poems composed in Ashkenazic Hebrew, but the third excerpt is quoted twice—tran-
scribed as it is recited “in most of our schools” and transcribed again as it was composed
with a penultimately stressed accent system (Kalvari 103). Bialik is cited as the main
source of Ashkenazic poetry (and Tchernichovsky is discussed in this context as well, al-
though his poetry is not quoted). The Shlonsky-Bi¿ovski dyad appears as well: Shlonsky
is the primary source of new-accent poetry for the article with Bi¿ovski a far second.
His inclusion of a translation by Jabotinsky and a folk song by Shlonsky also re-
flects the meandering path new-accent poetry took and the tendency of some linguistic
innovations to enter high genres in Hebrew poetry through the low. The sample of poets
reveals not so much who was writing new-accent or even accentual-syllabic new-accent
poetry as much as which poets were associated with this kind of composition. Although
Bas was writing new-accent poetry in this period, the line of Bas that Kalvari quotes as
an example of new-accent composition is from a poem composed in Ashkenazic.
20. For Kalvari’s purposes this category of iambic words includes the word-pairs
composed of a monosyllabic Hebrew word—such as on (¿al), if (’im), so that (kede), or
the direct object definite marker ’et—and the following word with which it is linked.
notes to pages 105–113 183
21. Theodore S. Geisel, Green Eggs and Ham (New York: Random House, 1960),
12.
22. William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. Stephen Booth (New Haven,
Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 6–7.
23. See also Tchernichovsky’s remarks on the variation of stress in Ashkenazic
words in the first installment of his article “bi-Devar ha-miskal he-¿aluv” [On the Mat-
ter of the Wretched Rhythm], in Hed Lita’ 2, no. 1(26) (1924): 11–14. He writes:
[In] our “corrupted” accent [there are words] that carry the stress on the
third-to-last syllable (for example, na¿arah) that are dactylic, and words that
have a penultimate stress (bayit) and [words] that have a stress on the final
syllable (¿asah). In other words, the placement of the stress is not predeter-
mined and these serve as a basis for [the Ashkenazic] use of the rich and var-
iegated combinations of the accentual-syllabic rhythm. (12)
24. Kalvari complicates his position yet again when he claims that the Sephardic
stress system is not entirely compatible with the trochee either, because of the chal-
lenge of finding words to begin the line. This would mitigate the “handedness” of the
problem, making the challenge to the Sephardic stress system all but parallel to the
problem that composers of Ashkenazic verse face when trying to reconcile their stress
system with iambic feet (99–100).
25. Kalvari’s quotation of lines from Jabotinsky’s translation of Dante introduces
segholates, a category of nouns that carries the stress on the first of its two syllables in
all stress systems. Kalvari takes his first example of a non-monotonous new-accent
iambic line from Shlonsky’s “Tishre,” which includes conjugated verbs and a verb
with an archaic ending that pushes the stress back to the word’s penultimate syllable.
26. See Shelomoh Tsema¿’s “¿Al ha-hashva’ah” [On the Comparison], Masah u-
vikoret [Essay and Criticism] (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1954), 140–144, which criticizes both
Alterman’s and Shlonsky’s metaphoric style.
27. Halperin, 17.
28. See “In the Tent,” cited below, in the next section of this chapter.
29. See Halperin’s Introduction.
30. Halperin, 46–49.
31. Even the motherland in the second stanza is associated with parentlessness by
the comparison of her autumn with the orphan: “Only the motherland’s autumn cries
like this, / Only a fatherless son cries like this” (lines 7–8).
32. Trains have their own particular history of representation within the Jewish lit-
erature of Eastern Europe in this period—most prominently in the stories of S. Y.
Abramovits and Sholom Alekhem. Inasmuch as Shlonsky’s train relates to their works,
I believe his is meant to replace the other trains not unlike the way “In the Tent” was
meant to replace the Yiddish folk song. This futurist, violent train is at best an alterna-
tive to depictions of the train in those Yiddish and Hebrew stories in which the interi-
ors are sealed-off microcosms of the shtetl and their occupants are immune to the
thrills of speed. The train may very well have represented progress and technology in
the Jewish literature that preceded Shlonsky’s poem, but the train itself, with its
sounds, body, and motion, seems almost irrelevant to these stories. The trains of He-
brew prose provide stories with a suspended moment; the journey is a narrative frame
in which the characters have never really left home. Shlonsky rewrites the microcos-
mic train of East European literature as Hebrew poetry and prosody itself and as the
modernist poetics of a new Jewish territorial consciousness.
33. The version published in Davar is slightly longer, repeating the second half of
184 notes to pages 116–121
what is here the sixth stanza and the second line of the fifth stanza. See Appendix 2. I
have reproduced here the version from his Collected Poems (Shirim [Tel Aviv: ha-Po¿el
Mizra¿i, 1954], 226–228), in which he made relatively minor revisions including sev-
eral changes in punctuation.
34. See Shlonsky’s “ha-Melitsah” [Phraseology], in Hedim 2 (Spring 1923): 189–190,
and Marinetti’s “Destruction of Syntax—Untrammeled Imagination—Words-in-Free-
dom,” in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Critical Writings, ed. Günter Berghaus, trans.
Doug Thompson (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006), 120–131.
35. See Hagorni-Green, 39, cited in note 1 of this chapter, and my discussion of Har-
shav below (pp. 121–122 and note 43 to this chapter). Shlonsky himself spoke of the poem
as a laboratory for the new accent, although he also claimed that the poem was about
his own wanderings and those of the Jewish people (quoted in Halperin 59).
36. On Shlonsky’s performance of the poem, see Halperin, 61.
37. See Pin¿as Pik, “Maizner pe¿ah: ¿aluts ha-rakavot be-’Erets Yisra’el u-vi-Â�
shekhenoteha” [Meisner Pasha: Railroad Pioneer in the Land of Israel and Its Envi-
rons], in Cathedra, no. 10 (1979): 102–128. “Zionist onlookers followed Meisner’s
activities in the Land of Israel with special interest, for in their eyes the work of this
German engineer had not only pragmatic but symbolic importance: the building of
railroad tracks meant progress, and the integration of the neglected holy land into the
development of the modern world” (105).
The semiotics of the railroad in the New Yishuv are strikingly parallel to the cul-
tural symbolism that inaugurated the language war with the Hilfsverein. The railroad
was a product of German technology and engineering but Eastern labor. The language
revivalists wanted to construct a Hebrew that was literally as technologically advanced as
the German language—a Hebrew in which one could conduct courses at a technology
institute—but was native and “Eastern” as well. The difference between the warm re-
ception of the Jezreel Valley Railway and the grassroots rebellion in response to the
Hilfsverein’s announcement eight years later that German would be the language of the
new technical college measures the change in the Yishuv’s sense of itself vis-à-vis Euro-
pean (and Jewish) culture. By the end of the Second Aliyah the New Yishuv saw its own
skills and resources as sufficient to replace European philanthropy. They were no longer
grateful for the kind of foreign intervention that had provided economic relief and a
sense of hope as recently as the begining of the Second Aliyah.
38. This conjugation of death hints that language development is a serious matter
and not merely the domain of the schoolmaster and children. The root kof, tet, lamed
(K-T-L), which means “to kill,” is a regular verb in all tenses and forms and is used as a
paradigm of verb formation in biblical Hebrew pedagogy.
39. Similarly, the true target of Shlonsky’s supposed rebellion against Bialik may be
the younger poets who maintain Bialikian poetics.
40. For the sociolinguistic ramifications of this distinction, see Bourdieu, 86–87.
41. Compare, for example, the limping, hunchbacked [giben], and bald yesterday
of the poem with the opening line of Shlonsky’s essay which speaks of “the yesterday”
as a hump [¿atoteret] “on our back” that cannot be fixed (Hedim 1, no. 4 [1922]).
42. Among the many different Sephardic pronunciations, only one distinguishes
between the two—and in a different manner than the Ashkenazic ones do.
43. Benjamin Harshav [Binyamin Hrushovski], “ha-’Im yesh la-tselil mashma¿ut?
li-ve-¿ayat ha-’ekspresiviyut shel tavniyot ha-tselil ba-shirah” [Do Sounds Have Mean-
ing? The Problem of the Expressiveness of Sound Patterns in Poetry], in ha-Sifrut 1
(1968–69): 410–420.
In a slightly updated version of the essay, Harshav adds that the ta-ta-ta corre-
notes to pages 121–126 185
sponds to the rattle of the wheels, and elaborates on the type of onomatopoeia in Shlon-
sky’s poem: “The chugging of the train is heard throughout the text╯.╯.╯.╯the sounds of the
words are not directly mimicking the sounds of the train, but the ta-ta-ta is an accepted
way of indicating the sound of a train, that is, a mimicking of an onomatopeia. By induct-
ing a plethora of words╯.╯.╯.╯the poet brings us beyond the train to the perversities of the
modern world” (’Omanut ha-shirah [The Art of Poetry], vol. 2 [Jerusalem and Tel Aviv:
Carmel and Tel Aviv University, 2000], 66).
44. I am indebted to Uzi Shavit for bringing Lerner’s poem to my attention. See Yaa-
kov Lerner, “Pia¿-pia¿” [Soot-Soot], ha-Tekufah 1 (1918): 443–452; see also Dan Miron,
“ha-Masa¿ ’el ha-¿oshekh: he¿arot le-‘Pia¿-pia¿’ me’et Ya¿akov Lerner” [Journey to the
Darkness: A Note on Yaakov Lerner’s “Soot-Soot”], in Gazit 17, nos. 7–12 (December
1959–March 1960): 104–107.
45. See Aleksandr Sergeevich Neverov, Tashkent: gorod khlebnyi: povest’ (Moscow:
Gudok, 1923); the translation of the novel into Yiddish, Ezra Fininberg, tr., Tashkent:
di Broyt Shtat (Moscow: Shul un Buch, 1924); and Shlonsky’s translation, Tashkent: ¿ir
ha-le¿em [Tashkent: City of Bread] (Tel Aviv: Mitspeh, 1932).
46. This is my very loose translation of Shlonsky’s Hebrew translation from the
Russian.
47. “But the train—is blowing-breathing, / The cowcatcher—grinding-grunting,
hustle-bustle: / Yonder silence! Yonder silence! / Rumbling-grumbling: / Do not plant!
/ Do not plant! The time t’isn’t now. / Plant! Plant! Plant! For the time is now. / Do not
plant! / Plant! Plant! Plant! / Plant!”
48. One critic writes of Shlonsky’s “confusion” of his biography and twentieth-cen-
tury Hebrew literary history: “In his poetry, Shlonsky himself attributes a symbolic,
fateful importance to the fact that he was born in 1900. His life begins at the start of
the twentieth century and he is the poet of the twentieth century. At least in the early
stages of his poetry he passionately curses this fact . . .” (Yisrael Levine, Ben gedi va-
sa¿ar: ¿iyunim be-shirat Shlonski [Between a Goat and a Gale: Reflections on Shlon-
sky’s Poetry] (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po¿alim, 1960), 15.
49. For Shlonsky’s neologisms, see Yaakov Kenaani’s Milon ¿idushe Shlonski [Dic-
tionary of Shlonsky’s Neologisms] (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po¿alim, 1989).
Poet Leah Goldberg, speaking in 1956 on Shlonsky’s influence on her genera-
tion in the 1920s and 1930s and his continued influence on contemporary poets, said:
[The] very young poet today╯.╯.╯.╯has, of course, the feeling that he is innovating
entirely, that nobody has done this prior to him, and that one must read the
American cummings or a contemporary British poet to find these prosaisms,
[while] those of us who were educated, if you will, on the knees of Shlonsky’s
poetry remember all that—that the complete integration of technical and pro-
saic terminology—already from the end of the twenties and from the mid-thir-
ties, from the start of Shlonsky’s composition, and that is what gave such rise to
the possibility of expressing our time in Hebrew. (Leah Goldberg, ha-’Omets
la-¿ulin [The Courage for the Quotidian] [Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po¿alim], 160)
50. The publication of “Train” in Davar was followed by the publication of “Tishre”
in Ketuvim, also published as the first poem in To Papa-Mama, Shlonsky’s first book to
include new-accent poems.
51. “Tishre” appeared in Ketuvim 1, no. 7 (September 8, 1926): 2; “Hah yeled yeled”
[Oh Boy Boy] appeared in Davar’s literary supplement, vol. 2, no. 4 (1927): 1; “Shivah”
[Return] appeared in Ketuvim, no. 27 (1927): 1; “¿Ad halom” [Up to This Point] appeared
in Moledet 9, no. 2 (1927). The book To Papa-Mama was published in spring 1927.
186 notes to pages 127–140
52. Even the appearance in the collection of “In the Tent” is presented in such a
way as to minimize the power of its disruptive poetics. The book’s integrative struc-
ture is maintained inasmuch as the poem appears as a kind of artifact.
53. See Menasheh Gefen, mi-Ta¿at la-¿arisah ¿omedet gediyah [Under the Cradle
Stands a Kid] (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po¿alim, 1986).
54. “Among the Hebrew poets, there is no one who devoted such a large place in his
poetry to the motifs of our lullaby and who exhausted the possibilities for all its ele-
ments╯.╯.╯.╯as Shlonsky did. It would seem that he does not even have competitors
within Yiddish poetry” (Geffen 61).
55. The “draw” is my translation of teku, a talmudic acronym for “[Elijah the] Tish-
bite will resolve queries and conundra.” It implies that the authority and legal reason-
ing of each side of a debate is sound and asserts that the question cannot be resolved
definitively until the arrival of Elijah in the eschatological future.
56. The meh both represents the baby goat’s natural expression and, in the context of
the boy’s confusion, takes on another meaning—the boy’s alienation in his new context.
In both “Up to This Point” and “Return” the retrieval of the past is similarly linked up to
the memory of an utterance or the inscription of a familiar and personally meaningful
Hebrew phoneme. Attention is paid to the utterance that still echoes or the letters that
are still visible in his mind’s eye.
57. See Yehudit Tsevik, Toledot ha-’igronim ha-¿Ivriyim [The Hebrew Brievensteller]
(Tel Aviv: Papyrus, 1990).
58. The rabbinic-sounding phrase “tefilah ¿al pat,” “a prayer for bread,” is ambigu-
ous. It may refer to the prayers a pious Jew says before and/or after eating bread, or may
refer to a hungry man’s prayer or wish for something to eat. These connotations under-
score in another way the terrible divide between the grandfather’s prayer and life—and
his own.
59. See, for example, Bluvshtain’s “’El artsi” [To My Land] (Bluvshtain 1927, 42).
60. Also called “Mah yafim ha-lelot bi-Khena¿an” [How Beautiful Are the Nights
in Canaan], composed in 1925 by Yits¿ak Katzenelson, based on an Arabic song. Re-
corded in The Nights in Canaan: First Songs (1882–1946) [ha-Lelot bi-Khena¿an: shire
rishonim (1882–1946)], ed. Yaakov Mazur, vol. 13 of the Anthology of Music Traditions
in Israel (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1999).
61. Parents or teachers would encourage study by dropping coins or sweets on the
open book and telling the child it was a gift from Elijah the Prophet. The poem is re-
plete with biblical phrases and alludes to a story in the Talmud in which God floods
the world in the time of Noah by pulling stars from the heavens. See Babylonian Tal-
mud, Tractate Bera¿ot, 58b–59a.
62. The source of the golem legend is the ancient Book of Creation [Sefer yetsirah],
which deals with the magical creative power of the Hebrew letters and language. See
Itamar Gruenvald, “A Preliminary Critical Edition of Sefer Yetsirah,” Israel Oriental
Studies 1 (1971): 132–177 and Sefer yetsirah ha-meyu¿as le-Avraham avinu ¿alav ha-sha-
lom [The Book of Creation Attributed to Our Patriarch Abraham, Peace Upon Him]
(Jerusalem: ha-±ayim ve-ha-shalom, 1990).
Epilogue
1. It was not a foregone conclusion that Bialik would be the national poet. In 1899,
the critic Shimon Bernfeld wrote in praise of Bialik, but with some ambivalence: “Re-
cently, a new star has risen in [lyric poetry], namely the poet ±. N. Bialik, who has all
notes to pages 140–145 187
the gifts.╯.╯.╯.╯His feelings and thoughts are as one, which is the ultimate sign of a true
lyric poet.╯.╯.╯.╯Mr. Shapira of Petersburg is also a lyric poet, and his poems have the
advantage of being national in the full sense of the word.” Shimon Bernfeld, ±eshbo-
nah shel sifrutenu: has¿kafah ¿al devar hitpat¿ut sefatenu ve-sifrutenu [The Measure
of Our Literature: A Perspective on the Development of Our Language and Our Lit-
erature] (Warsaw: A¿i’asaf, 1899), 22.
2. ±ayim Na¿man Bialik, Shirim [Poems] (Warsaw: Tushiyah, 1901; Shaul Tcher-
nichovsky, ±ezyonot u-manginot: shirim [Visions and Melodies: Poems] (Warsaw: Tushi-
yah, 1898–1901).
3. See my discussion of Tchernichovsky’s letter of 1912 above, chapter 1, in the sec-
tion on “Poets and Pedagogues at Odds,” pp. 33–37.
4. On Bialik’s silence and accent see Shimonovits, 466, and Shavit 1988, 72.
5. See Uzi Shavit’s book on Bialik’s prosody and his prosodic renovations (Shavit
1988). Shavit sees this as evidence that as early as 1903–1904, Bialik was trying to deal
with the problem of the probable or inevitable rendering of Ashkenazic Hebrew.
6. It also imposed constraints that Bialik was not always able to overcome. As its name
implies, biblical rhythm relied in large part on symmetric phrasing to achieve structural
coherence. At times, these poems were weighed down by repetition and reiteration.
7. This estimate does not take into account his long poems [po’emot] and idylls for
which he was well known, and very few of which were composed in new-accent Hebrew.
Only two poems, one from the ¿Ama di-dahava [Nation of Gold] cycle, appear in his col-
lected works with instructions that they be read with the “Sephardic” stress. See the
two-volume Kitve Sha’ul Tsherni¿ovski [The Writings of Shaul Tchernichovsky] (Tel
Aviv: Devir, 1966).
8. See Anderson chapters 2–3, especially pp. 34–36, 41–46.
9. Ahad Ha’am suggested that Bialik reduce the length of the poem and send it to
Yehoshua Ravnitsky. Bialik eliminated a long section in which the speaker tells of his
hard life and enumerates the tragedies he has suffered, including his wife’s death in
childbirth. Ravnitsky was enthusiastic about “To the Bird” and, with some minor
changes, he published the poem in spring 1892. For the complicated history of the
composition and publication of the poem, see Bialik 1990, vol. 1, 135–136.
10. In an essay of this length, I cannot begin to account for the poem’s complex of in-
tertextual allusion to both biblical text and lyric poetry. The bird as a trope for poetry
and/or the poet would have been familiar to Bialik from a wealth of sources, as would the
golden peacock of Yiddish folk culture. See David Yosef Bornstein, “li-Mekorot ’el ha-
tsipor” [On the Sources of “To the Bird”], in Biyalik: yetsirato le-sugeha bi-re’i ha-biko-
ret [Bialik: Critical Essays on His Works], ed. Gershon Shaked (Jerusalem: Bialik
Institute, 1974), 85–106; Moshe Ungerfeld, “’Or ¿adash ¿al reshit yetsirato shel ±[ayim]
N[a¿man] Bialik: shemonim shanah le-’el ha-tsipor” [A New Light on the Early Work
of ±. N. Bialik: Eighty Years after “To the Bird”], in ha-Sifrut 2 (1969–1971): 842–855.
11. Anderson sees the potential for national imagining in the simultaneity gener-
ated by the shifting focus of a novel or the adjacent articles in a newspaper that share
nothing other than their currency. Bialik enlivens this potential in the lyric.
12. See stanzas 3–4.
13. See Anderson, chapter 2, esp. pp. 34–36.
14. The pausal form, common in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, tends to
shift the grammatical stress back one syllable, so that words that would ordinarily bear
the major stress on the final syllable in non-Ashkenazic accents become penultimately
stressed words (even in non-Ashkenazic accents) when appearing at the end of a sen-
tence or phrase. See also “lo¿oshu” in line 38 and “tishmo¿i’” in line 47.
188 notes to pages 146–148
15. For both David Yellin’s synthetic Hebrew alphabet and Yits¿ak Epstein on the
roles of text and speech in Hebrew pedagogy, see chapter 2.
16. Taken from the 1908 version.
17. One of Bialik’s few new-accent compositions was a poem for children, “Mekhonit”
[Automobile], which foregrounded sound and was published in three periodicals between
1932 and 1933. It was the only poem to be collected in his canonical works as well as in his
volume for children, both published in 1933. See Shirim u-fizmonot li-yeladim [Poems and
Songs for Children] (Tel Aviv-Devir, 1933), 400.
18. Poe 1846.
19. Poe 1845, stanza 16.
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199
200 index
72, 75–76; Bluvshtain, 96–97; Shats, 79; Bible, Hebrew, 15, 28; as classical literature
Shlonsky, 107–10, 111, 123 of the Jews, 32, 79; and national
Ashkenazic Jewry, 7; adopting Sephardic identity, 5, 16; pedagogy, 28, 36, 37
accent, 26, 58, 60, 67, 70–72 biblical Hebrew, 60; history of, 7; pronun-
authenticity, 14, 49–50, 51, 56; and ciation of, and terminal stress system, 8,
Ben-Yehuda’s accent design, 61, 64, 72, 10, 22, 54, 90, 157n59
75; feminine and masculine notions of, Bi¿ovski, Elisheva, 12–13, 17, 49, 75, 92,
13–14, 15, 52, 75, 76, 77–78, 79, 91–92, 99, 105; biography, 77, 98; as new-
93–98; and Galilean, 56, 57–59, 72, 75, accent poet, 12–13, 73, 74, 75, 76–78,
76, 77; labor as sign of, 79, 81; and 98, 137, 182n19; as promoter of
Yellin’s synthetic accent design, 69 accentual-syllabic and new-accent
Azaryahu, Yosef, 25, 28, 43, 45; curriculum, poetry, 5, 76–77, 104; in relation to
25, 43; ±inukh ¿Ivri be-’Erets Yisra’el, Bialik, 98; as symbol of authenticity, 74,
25–27, 34, 38, 40, 42 76–77, 97–98, 99
Bluvshtain, Ra¿el, 12, 17, 18, 73, 74, 75;
Bar-Adon, Aharon, 58 absence of Ashkenazic composition, 12,
Baron, Devorah, 20–21; The Exiles, 20–21 98, 137; and Ashkenazic accent, 75,
Bas, Shemuel, 82, 86, 182n19 92–93, 96–97, 98; compared to Bi¿ovski,
Bat-±amah. See Shekhtman, Malkah 98; and Labor poetry, 80, 91; on
(Bat-±amah) Mordekhai Temkin, 87; on orality and
Bat-Miryam, Yokheved (Yokheved poetry, 85–86, 90–92, 93; as pioneer of
Zelniak): as muse, 92, 97; reception by new accent, 12, 16, 73, 74, 75, 91, 98, 99;
Bluvshtain, 73, 75, 78, 92–94, 96, 97; poems of, in relation to Ben-Yehuda’s
using Ashkenazic accent, 12–13, 73, 75 hybrid Hebrew, 91; pseudonyms of, 12,
Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer: and address to the 78; reception of, 74–75, 99, 137; in
Teachers’ Association in 1903, 60–64; relation to Bat-Miryam, 73, 75, 92–94, 96,
on Galilean accent, 59; and Hebrew 97; in relation to Bialik, 73, 86, 98; in
revival, xi, 39, 45–46; as journalist, 3, relation to Shlonsky, 18, 73, 78, 82, 83, 84,
51; and the natural method, 3, 38, 39, 85–87, 91; on Shemuel Bas, 86; writings—
43, 57; as neologist, xi–xii, 125; as ”¿Al ’ot ha-zeman” [On the Sign of the
promoter of Sephardic stress system, xi, Time], 18, 78, 82–87, 91; “’Ani” [I], 83–84;
38, 60, 61, 63; as teacher, xi, 38, 39, 43; “¿Ivriyah” [Hebrew Woman], 93–96, 97;
on unification of language, 51–52 “Ra¿el” [Rachel], 88–89, 177n26;
Ben-Yehuda’s hybrid Hebrew accent design, “Safia¿” [Aftergrowth], 89–90
60–64, 91, 148; and authenticity, 75; Bourdieu, Pierre, 65, 116n15
and Bluvshtain’s poetry, 91; and
Galilean accent, 59, 71–72; as language children, as Hebrew speakers and readers:
of labor, 80; as portrait of the immi- as authentic, 14, 167n24; and Ben-
grant, 63–64; and women’s poetry, 75, Yehuda, 63; in Galilean accent, 58; of
91; and Yellin, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69–70 new accent, xvii, 12, 13, 34, 35, 36, 145;
Ben-Yits¿ak, Avraham, 160n22 as novelty, xvi, 41, 163n3; primers for
Bialik, ±ayim Na¿man, 16, 18, 22, 27, 73, 86; (see Hebrew primers); in school, 29–31,
and accentual-syllabic poetry, xiv, 6, 9, 33, 34, 35, 36, 41, 47, 52–53, 54, 55, 57
10–11, 34–35, 146; and Ashkenazic children’s poetry, 13, 105, 121, 188n17;
accent, xiv, xv, xvii, 10–11, 13, 18, 19, 140, demand for, xv, 12, 14, 33, 34, 35–36,
182n19; “Birkat ¿Am” [Nation’s Blessing], 103–104; as early new-accent poetry,
34; “’El ha-tsipor” [To the Bird], xiii, xiv, xvi, 11–12, 13, 14, 23, 41, 102–103,
xv, xvii, 33–34, 139, 140, 141–48, 187n9; as 165n7; in new accent, 13, 14; resem-
national poet, xiii, 5, 19, 139–40, 141, 144, blance to, xiv, xvi, 110, 117–18, 124, 127
147–48, 151n17, 186n1; relation to new
accent, xvi, xvii, 19, 103, 140, 141, 148, 179; Eastern Europe, Jewish communities in, 2,
in relation to Yellin’s talking library, 146 20
index 201
Lisitski, Efrayim: “’El ha-katar” [To the 100–101; and children’s poetry, xvi,
Caboose], 121 11–12, 14, 23, 41; and fear of monotony,
lullaby, 84, 87, 127–28, 130, 134; “Afn 104, 124, 136; and gender, 12–13, 14–15,
boydm shloft der dakh” [The Roof Is 18, 73–74, 97; and geography, 12–13, 15,
Sleeping on the Attic], 108, 127 16, 21–24, 73; pronunciation of, 12;
Luriya, Shelomoh Zalman, 9 reasons for rise of, 25; scholarship on,
15–16, 74; and women’s poetry, 12–13,
Maneh, Mordekhai Tsevi, 35–36, 37 14, 16, 17, 73–74
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 115–16
Mendele. See Abramovits, Shalom Yaakov Palestine: Ashkenazic Jews of, 1, 2; as exile,
(Mendele) 20; as homeland, 22; Jewish community
Mendelssohn, Moses, 15 of, nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
Meyu¿as, Yosef, 39, 43, 68 1–6, 46; Jewish population of, 2, 158n7;
migration: from Palestine, xvii; to Sephardic Jews of, 1, 2, 3, 38
Palestine, 2, 3, 20, 21–24; to Poland, 7; penultimate stress pattern: in Ashkenazic,
of poets, 21–24; role in appearance of xiii–xiv, 8, 9, 10, 11, 22, 36, 54, 86, 140,
new-accent poetry, 22–24; and 145; in non-Ashkenazic accents (see
standardization of Hebrew, 39, 41 terminal-stress pattern, penultimately
Miron, Dan, 161n44 stressed words in)
monotony: anxiety about, in new accent, pioneer. See Ashkenazic immigrant
xv, xvi, 124, 136; in poetry, xv, 104–105 pioneer, figure of, and writings of
Montefiore, Moses, 158n2 piyut, 7
Poe, Edgar Allan, xv, 12; “The Philosophy
national identity, 3, 6, 14, 49–50, 86, 96; as of Composition,” xv, xvi, 148, 157n9;
Ashkenazic, 49; and gender, 13–14, 17, “The Raven,” xv–xvi, xvii, 12, 80, 148,
74, 76–77, 96, 98, 99; and language, 16, 157n9
17, 18, 47, 144–45; and the newspaper, poetry in Hebrew: of the Haskalah, 8–9; in
141, 144–45; and poetry, 4, 5, 6, 103, Israeli culture, xiii; and nationalism, 5;
144, 147; as represented by Hebrew in nineteenth century, 4, 9–10; relation
accent, xiv, 14, 59, 69–70, 75–76, 100, to spoken Hebrew, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14,
140; and simultaneity, 141–44; and 23, 25, 33–37, 47, 78, 80, 103, 104, 117,
territory, 20. See also authenticity 140, 145; of the Te¿iyah, 9–11; tradition
national poet, 5, 19. See also under Bialik, of, 5; in the United States, 24
±ayim Na¿man pronunciation of Hebrew, xi–xii, xvii, 1, 4,
nationalism, Jewish, xvii, 1, 2, 6, 11, 13, 49; 10, 20; among Ashkenazic Jews, xiv, 8,
cultural, 14; in Eastern Europe, 2, 3; 20, 160n27, 171n9; consonants, 57, 59,
and language, 14, 18, 40, 50, 141 61, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 116; debates over,
Neverov, Aleksandr: Tashkent: City of 4, 6, 33; formal, xii–xiii; names, xi–xiii;
Bread, 121–22 and national identity, xvii, 4, 6, 14, 16,
new-accent Hebrew: adoption in Palestine, 17, 18, 49–50, 51, 52–53, 53–55, 56–72;
6, 12, 16, 17, 21, 23, 24, 102; character- and need for correction, 70–71, 91; in
izations of, 13, 17, 23, 86, 91; and the Old Yishuv, 62, 65–66, 166n15,
gender, 13, 14–15, 16, 17; scholarship 171n10, 172n12; of vowels, 61, 67
on, 21–24, 100–101, 178n1; and schools, pronunciation of new-accent poems,
17, 21, 33–37, 47, 70–72, 102; territorial- instructions for, 12, 159n19, 169n52,
ization of, 21–24, 65, 66, 86–87, 118, 187n7
124–26, 131, 137, 176n22 prosody: history of Hebrew, 6, 8; politics of
new-accent Hebrew as language of labor. Hebrew, 5; Wesselian, 8–10, 116
See under labor movement
new-accent poetry, xv, xvi, 5; anxiety about, Rab, Ester, 12, 73, 74, 103, 175n1; and free
xv, 17, 80, 103; appearance of, 11–14, 15, rhythm, 74, 160n22
16, 17, 18, 21, 24–25, 47–48, 80, Rabinovits, Yaakov, 13, 22, 24, 162n46
204 index
126, 130, 136, 137–38; “Shivah” Galilean accent, 56, 57–58, 63–64, 68,
[Return], 127, 128, 130–32, 134, 136, 75, 172nn15,16
177n25; “Tishre,” 84–85, 102, 105,
127–28 Weinreich, Max, 20, 25
Shneour, Zalman, 16 Wessely (Weisel), Naftali Herts, 8; Shire
Shtainberg, Yaakov, 13, 162n46 tif ’eret, 8. See also prosody, Wesselian
Simmons, Gene (Chaim Witz): and women, 52, 148; as Hebrew speakers, 74,
Hebrew pronunciation, xi–xii, xiii; and 76, 175n3; poetry by (see women’s
Jewish identity, xi poetry); as symbols of authenticity,
14–15, 17, 76, 79, 90, 92, 93, 94–96, 97,
Tchernichovsky, Shaul, 16, 22, 27, 34, 37, 98, 99, 162n52; as symbols of national
73; adoption of new accent, 13, 140, 141, identity, 17, 76–78, 90, 96, 98
147–48, 162n47; and anxiety about women’s poetry, 17, 18, 73–78, 80, 83–84,
new-accent poetry, xv, 35–36, 80, 103; 88–89, 92–93, 101, 103; and accent,
attitude toward new accent, 13, 97, 140, 12–13, 14–15, 16, 17, 73, 75, 97, 98–99,
182n17; and Bi¿ovski, 35, 97; compared 175n2; association of, with speech, 74,
to Bialik, 19, 140–41, 145, 147–48; as 76, 91–92, 93, 98–99; history of, 16; in
defender of Ashkenazic Hebrew, 35–37, relation to Bialik, 73, 98, 99; and lack of
140; and prosodic innovation, xiv, 9, 35, Ashkenazic transition, 98, 137; and
140, 141, 145, 168n32; publication of meter, 175n2; as new-accent poetry,
first poem, 35; published exchange with 73–75, 80, 93, 98–99; reception of, 16,
teacher, 33, 35–36, 140; reception as 18, 74–75, 76–77, 78, 91, 98–99, 101,
“Classical” poet, 140, 147 103
teacher. See under Hebrew teacher
Teachers’ Association, 25, 50, 52; founding Yellin, David: on accent, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64;
of, 43 and correspondence of letters and
Teachers’ Meeting, 43, 50 sounds, 63, 66, 67, 68–69, 70; as
teachers’ organizations, 38, 43, 45, 50; Hebrew teacher, 39, 43; on language
meetings—of 1895, 53, 54, 55; of 1903, revival in the schools, 55, 59, 70–71; and
55, 58, 60–64; of 1904, 58–59; and the natural method, 57
Yellin, 64–67 Yellin’s synthetic accent design, 57, 60,
Teacher’s Union, 12, 43, 44, 45, 46, 64 64–70, 86, 146, 174n29; and authentic-
Te¿iyah poetry, 5, 9, 107, 161n35, 162n46 ity, 66, 68, 75; compared with Ben-
Temkin, Mordekhai, 22, 24, 99; “Lo’ Yehuda’s and the Galilean accent,
ne¿anti” [I Was Not Gifted], 87; 69–70, 75; and Epstein’s talking library,
Netafim [Drops], 82, 87 146; failure of, 70–72; as ingathering of
terminal-stress pattern, xii, xv, 5, 10, 11, 12, exiles, 68, 69–70, 76; and Shlonsky’s
16, 22, 23, 26, 33–34, 36, 74, 79, 90, poetic break with the past, 137
104, 105; adoption by workers, 23, 79, Yemenite: pronunciations of Hebrew, 75,
102; penultimately stressed words in, 78, 80, 173n19; Jews in Palestine, 39, 81
xii, xiii, 9, 105–106, 110, 116, 118, 124, Yiddish, 10, 15, 86, 90; association with
160n27, 187n14. See also Sephardic Ashkenazic Hebrew accent, xii, xiv,
accents 65–66, 86, 90, 135; in Hebrew poetry,
86, 90, 102, 130, 135, 136, 183n32,
Unification (and unity of Hebrew), 17, 35, 187n10; influences on Hebrew
37, 39, 49–55, 56, 145; and tolerance for language, xiv, 7, 8, 10; as language of
variety, 64–65, 68 instruction, 28, 39–40, 77; newspapers,
Usishkin, Mena¿em, 43 3; Old, 8; pronunciation of, xiv,
158nn5,10; speakers in Palestine, 41, 62,
va¿ad ha-lashon. See Language Committee 102, 163n3. See also Yiddish folk song;
(va¿ad ha-lashon) Yiddish poetry
Vilkomits, Sim¿ah ±ayim, 40; and Yiddish folk song, 14, 102, 133, 136;
206 index
lullabies, 108, 110, 127–30; trope of the Zelniak, Yokheved. See Bat-Miryam,
kid, 126, 127, 134; uses of, in Hebrew Yokheved (Yokheved Zelniak)
poetry, 108–109, 110, 126, 127, 133, 136 Zionism, 6, 13, 52, 76. See also national-
Yiddish poetry, 127, 130 ism, Jewish
Yudelovits, David, 42, 169n44, 171n8 Zionist Congress, 43
MIRYAM SEGAL is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical, Middle
Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures at Queens College, The City Uni-
versity of New York.