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...