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Baruch Kurzweil
Israeli literary critic (1907–1972) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Baruch Kurzweil (Hebrew: ברוך קורצווייל; 1907–1972) was a pioneer of Israeli literary criticism.[1]
Biography
Kurzweil was born in Brtnice, Moravia (now Czechoslovakia) in 1907, to an Orthodox Jewish family.[2][3] He studied at Solomon Breuer's yeshiva in Frankfurt and the University of Frankfurt.[4] Kurzweil emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1939.[3] Kurzweil taught at a high school in Haifa, where he mentored the poet Dahlia Ravikovitch and psychologist Amos Tversky.[5][6] He founded and headed Bar Ilan University's Department of Hebrew Literature until his death. He wrote a column for Haaretz newspaper.[3][7]
Kurzweil committed suicide in 1972.[3]
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Thought
Kurzweil saw secular modernity (including secular Zionism) as representing a tragic, fundamental break from the premodern world.[3] Where before the belief in God provided a fundamental absolute of human existence, in the modern world this pillar of human life has disappeared, leaving a "void" that moderns futilely attempt to fill by exalting the individual ego.[3] According to Kurzweil, this discontinuity is reflected in modern Hebrew literature, which lacks the religious foundation of traditional Jewish literature: “The secularism of modern Hebrew literature is a given in that it is for the most part the outgrowth of a spiritual world divested of the primordial certainty in a sacral foundation that envelops all the events of life and measures their value.”[3][8][9][10]
Kurzweil saw a writer's response to the "void" of modern existence as their most fundamental characteristic.[3] He believed S.Y. Agnon and Uri Zvi Grinberg were the greatest modern Hebrew writers.[3][11] A confrontational polemicist, Kurzweil famously wrote against Ahad Haam and Gershom Scholem, who he saw as attempting to establish secularism as the foundation of Jewish life.[3]
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Awards
- In 1962, Kurzweil was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.[12]
See also
References
Further reading
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