282 Yael S. Feldman
the literary/linguistic canonization over the religious canonization, in an
attempt to harvest the Bible’s literary riches while combating its doctrine.
Ruth Kartun-Blum, by contrast, labeled the result of the “modern dialogue
between Hebrew literature and the Bible” as Profane Scriptures,9 while Ne-
hama Aschkenasy reversed the perspective, giving the process, like Alter, a
more positive twist: a recent volume on the topic she edited is titled “Re-
creating the Canon.”10 David Jacobson on the other hand had named the
retelling of all traditional Jewish narratives by 20th-century Hebrew writ-
ers as Modern Midrash,11 whereas the late Gershon Shaked limited this la-
bel to the modern rewriting of the Bible per se: “Modern Hebrew literature,
by giving a secular (and sometimes subversive) interpretation of the Bible,
becomes a modern midrash.”12
Signifi cantly, Shaked’s defi nition points to a major characteristic of the
phenomenon — the simultaneous continuity and discontinuity (“subver-
sion”) in the retelling of any ancient myth or symbol. Not unlike the rabbis
of old, contemporary Jewish authors, Israelis not excluded, are engaged in
“making sense” of received scripture, in adjusting it to their own reality,
hence the term midrash; unlike the rabbis, however, many of them have
been doing this under the aegis of secularism, hence the qualifying adjec-
tive modern.
As I have recently argued, however, this defi nition lacks a crucial as-
pect of the modern phase of the spectrum under scrutiny here: in many
cases, the presence of the Bible in modern Hebrew literature (and prob-
ably in other literatures — Jewish or not — as well) is mediated through the
premodern rewritings of the Bible, from Rabbinic and Christian “midrash,”
through kabbalah and medieval liturgy, to medieval and premodern quasi
historical “Chronicles.” From this perspective, modern literature not only
wrestles with scripture; it oft en reads and rewrites it through an altercation
with and subversion of the midrashic retellings of previous generations, far
and near.13 Th at this characteristic is not well recognized is a testimony not
only to the towering authority of the Bible throughout the generations but
also to the workings of Zionist ideology that has for the longest time privi-
leged the Bible as the canonic text, naturally at the expense of postbiblical
literary expressions.
While this preference has been attenuated in recent years, its impact still
abounds. A major example is a recent comprehensive Hebrew anthology, I
Will Play You Forever, subtitled Th e Bible in Modern Hebrew Poetry, which
was edited by the Israeli poet, educator, and literary critic Malka Shaked.14