The Feuilleton & Modern Jewish Cultures

This experimental workshop convened a small groups of scholars interested in the feuilleton, looking at, in particular, their linguistic, geographic, cultural, social and political contexts in which feuilletons appeared. Rather than formal presentations, participants convened for the workshop to engage in a round-table discussions and workshop-oriented sessions. Each participant provided a feuilleton (or feuilleton adjacent) text in the original language, some translated sections of the text, and presented a short commentary on the text and/or its context.

May 19, 2019

Participants and texts included:

• Naomi Brenner: “Faith and Love” by Yeshayahu Gelbhaus (1874, translation of Grace Aguilar, The Vale of Cedars or, The Martyr, 1851)
• Shachar Pinsker: “Flying Letters” by David Frishman (1886)
• Tamir Karkason: “The End of the Century” by Barukh Mitrani (1891)
• Eli Rosenblatt: “A Bundle of Tehkhines” by Hirshe Shloyme Rases (1911)
• Elizabeth Loentz: “Courage” by Clementine Krämer (1916)
• Matthew Handelman: “The Incursion of Journalists into Posterity” Joseph Roth (1925)
• Michal Peles-Almagor: “October” by Ada Grant (1938)
• Roy Holler: “The Refugees” by Dahn Ben-Amotz (1956)

“When journalists write books, they almost need an excuse. How did they come to write books? Do the mayflies, who live but a day, want to climb into the ranks of the higher insects? Do they, who belong to the day, want to enter eternity? Professors and critics line the path that leads to posterity. Poets anointed at birth often want to draw a clear border between journalism and literature and introduce a numerus clausus for ‘daily authors’ in the empire of posterity.”

— Translation from Joseph Roth “The Incursion of Journalists into Posterity” in Frankfurter Zeitung, vol. 70, nr. 945, December 19, 1925, evening edition.