Scripture and Modern Israeli Literature 283In the fi rst volume of this eminently valuable work, Shaked collects over
fi ve hundred annotated poems, spanning from the Hebrew Enlightenment
of the 19th century through contemporary Israeli poetry. In the work’s no
less substantial interpretative second volume, Shaked documents, catego-
rizes, and sheds light on the complex relationship between the Bible and its
people in modern times. Th is complex relationship — a palpable movement
from attitudes of adoration and fascination to altercation and subversion
— surfaces mainly upon reading volume 2. In this discursive tome, the au-
thor analyses a select number of poems from each section of the anthology
(volume 1). Since the poems are presented mostly in chronological order,
the discussion lends itself to a developmental interpretation. Yet it is not
the history of modern imaginative rewriting of the Bible that is the organiz-
ing principle of the anthology itself. Rather, volume 1 principally follows
the order of the biblical narrative, from Genesis through Writings (Ketu-
vim), and in each section the poems are arranged thematically rather than
chronologically. As such, this anthology, although limited to poetry, may
off er a useful bird’s-eye view of the distribution of biblical themes and per-
sonalities in Hebrew literature of the past two centuries. Th e internal orga-
nization of volume 2, however, whose sections interestingly sport a diff er-
ent set of headings, adds a valuable insight not only into the modalities and
twists of this corpus but also into the biases inherent in the contemporary
interpreting community of this corpus.
Th e Genesis section of volume 2 is teasingly titled Bereshit Ah.eret — lit-
erally, “A Diff erent Beginning” but also “A Diff erent (Book of ) Genesis,”
since the Hebrew word bereshit is also the Hebrew title for the fi rst book
of the Bible. Th is title transparently invokes the subversive potential of this
modern dialogue. Th e diff erent beginning is followed by the anticipated
sibling rivalry (Abel and Cain), Noah and the Flood, and so on. Th e title of
the section devoted to the patriarchs again hints at the contemporary inter-
pretation that has colored the rereading of Genesis in recent years: “Fathers
and Sons.” As we shall see, the patriarchal narrative of Genesis has recently
become Hebrew culture’s treasure house for archetypal tropes for intergen-
erational confl ict in the style of Freud and modern psychoanalysis. Even
more predictably, a focal point of the discussion of the patriarchs is “the
aqedah” (the Binding of Isaac) — a cue for another “bias” of Israeli Hebrew
literature to be picked up later in this chapter. Th e list continues with sec-
tions devoted to “Leaders” (mostly Moses and the Judges), Kings, Prophets,
and on to themes from Writings, with the Psalms occupying center stage.