Zionism in Translation: Encounters in the German-Hebrew Archive

Zionism in Translation concerns exchanges—primarily of letters but also drafts, reviews, and other ephemera—sent to or from Jerusalem in the decades around 1948. All were written in German and Hebrew by a fascinating range of literary figures, including Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Yehuda Amichai, Ludwig Strauss, Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin, Leah Goldberg, Peter Szondi, Paul Celan, and Tuvia Ruebner. The writers discussed in the book contend with the genocidal violence that brought the rich historical relation between German and Hebrew to a seeming end. They also grapple, in different ways, with the new reality in Israel/Palestine in the wake of the founding of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba. The bilingual conversation that crosses over between German and Hebrew in these letters thus centers around the question of Jewish fate in the twentieth century and is immersed in negotiations about Jewish nationalism, the Zionist movement, and the possibilities of Jewish poetry. In the space between German and Hebrew, Rokem argues, the protagonists of her story voice ambivalences and hesitancies not found elsewhere.

Na’ama Rokem is Associate Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, where she has directed the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies and chaired the department of Comparative Literature. Her first book, Prosaic Conditions: Heinrich Heine and the Spaces of Zionist Literature was published by Northwestern University Press in 2013.

Thursday, October 1, 2025 • 306 Royce Hall • 2 PM
Na’ama Rokem (University of Chicago)
Zionism in Translation: Encounters in the German-Hebrew Archive
Sady & Ludwig Kahn Book Talk in German Jewish Studies