A selection of the Best Writing in Israel Today
Edited by Joel Blocker, introduction by Robert Alter
The present volume of Israeli stories reassuringly illustrates the other half of a frequently asserted half-truth. Modern Hebrew literature, it is claimed, liked Yiddish literature, does not really share the large concerns of serious literary activity in the West. The Hebrew writer ordinarily does not address himself to the human situation with all of its far-reaching possibilities of tragedy of comedy, but to the Jewish situation, which is quite another thing. Consequently, Hebrew and...