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Chapter 16
Scripture and Modern Israeli Literature
Yael S. Feldman
Th e fascinating autobiography of Max Brod off ers a witty insight into the
role of the Hebrew Bible in the cultural life of the Yishuv, the prestate Jew-
ish community in Palestine. Culled from his long experience (1939 – 68) as
the dramaturge of Habima — Israel’s national theater — Brod’s humorous
quip critiques the overabundance of unsolicited biblical dramatic scripts
sent to him in the 1940s: “Aft er rejecting fi ve plays named ‘Moses,’ ten ‘King
Ahabs,’ and a dozen ‘Ezras,’ I felt like hanging on my door a note explain-
ing that it is preferable to read the Bible in the original rather than getting
excited over its staged versions.”1
Brod’s recollection illustrates not only the popularity of the Bible in the
literary production of the prestate Yishuv but also the tension he perceived
between the “original,” the biblical text itself, and its rewritten versions,
whether on stage or on the page. Th is tension was not new, however: it has
in fact accompanied the more than century-long bond between the Bible
and modern Hebrew literature, as it had done throughout Jewish history
in diff erent fashions. Nevertheless, the Bible had a particularly important
role in molding the modern, presumably secular, Jewish national identity,
which emerged in eastern Europe in the 19th century and began to fl our-
ish in the Land of Israel in the early 20th century. A literary repository
of ancient Israel, the biblical corpus now functioned as a nation-building
text, precisely like other ethnic myths that had been recovered and dis-
seminated under the banner of European romanticism and nationalism. As
such, it aff ected all aspects of the Hebrew national renaissance, impacting
its language and letters, psychology and ideology, aesthetics and ethics.
Recently, however, contemporary critics have contested modern na-
tional identities on the grounds that they are cultural “constructs,” “prod-