A Critique of the Character of the Genius and the Undermining of the Secular Image of Modern Hebrew Literature in the Writings of R. Binyamin

Abstract

This article focuses on the ways in which the author and essayist Yehoshua Radler-Feldman, also known under his pseudonym R. Binyamin (1880-1957), perceived and defined the framework of Modern Hebrew literarure. Binyamin's engagement in various literary framework crystallized are examined as a basis for understanding the cultural horizons he claimed were negated by them. Binyamin, the article suggests, constructed the term "Hebrew Literature" as one that points to a collective existance, which includes literary works that are not necessarily part of belles-lettres and are not considered part of the secular-national literature - literary works that were actually removed from the hegemonic discourses of Modern Hebrew literature - in the same cultural and literary framework alongside canonical literary works. Binyamin's various personal attributes - being a Galician observant Jew and one of the major figures in the bi-national movements in the Yishuv such as Brit-Shalom, Kedma-Mizraha, the League for Jewish-Arab Rapprochement and Ihud, which harshly criticized the Jewish secular Zionist hegemony in Palestine - contributed to the construction of a different poetic approach and crystallization af a different understanding of the term "Modern Hebrew literature". This approach was characterized by its preference of understanding literature as a vessel of a shared existence of writing rather than as the exceptional achivements of individuals.