Language:
English
Year of publication:
1992
Titel der Quelle:
Philosophy and Literature
Angaben zur Quelle:
16,1 (1992) 88-105
Keywords:
Leivick, H.,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
Abstract:
A revised version of a paper delivered at the University of Minnesota, March 1989. Analyzes a speech entitled "Der Yid - der yihud" given by the Yiddish poet H. Leivick in Jerusalem in 1957, which addressed intense debates at that time regarding Orthodox vs. secular Jewry and the significance of Israel vs. Galut. Leivick related the traumatic events of one day in his childhood which indelibly influenced his life and writing - an antisemitic attack on his way to "heder" (he was beaten up by a Gentile), the "heder" lesson on the binding of Isaac, Leivick's bursting into tears because the angel might have come too late to save Isaac, and Leivick's tongue having bled after licking a frozen iron bar. He omitted to relate that he witnessed his little sister's accidental death by scalding that day. All this ties into his view of the murdered Jews in the Holocaust as victims of an antisemitic attack in which the angel came too late to save them, and the unjust suffering which is the Jews' lot. Contrasts Leivick's criticism of God with Levinas' more sophisticated view that what died in Auschwitz was not God but humanism.
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