The Yeshiva That Incubated Modern Hebrew Literature

Even before the Zionist movement began in the 1880s, a handful of East European Jews started a Hebrew literary renaissance. Quite a few of these pioneering writers, figures like Hayyim Nahman Bialik and Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, had studied at the Volozhin yeshiva, which, during its relatively short lifespan, became the archetypal talmudic academy. The first generations of readers of this new Hebrew genre, moreover, were likely largely made up of Volozhin students and alumni. In conversation with J.J. Kimche, Marina Zilbergerts explains what made this institution unique, and its complex relationship with a literary movement that set itself up in opposition to tradition. (Audio, 59 minutes.)