Observation
September 30, 2015
Nothing Like It in 3,000 Years of Jewish Literature
By Hillel HalkinThe second Hebrew novelist was the first to imagine the pageantry and passion of life in ancient Israel—and thereby excited the dreams of emergent Zionists.
This essay is the second in a series of fresh looks by Hillel Halkin at East European Zionist or proto-Zionist writers and intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The first, on the Galician Hebrew writer Joseph Perl, is available here.
I.
Avraham Mapu (1808-1867): the first Hebrew novelist.