articles by Dynes Ofer
EJJS, 2026
This paper reconstructs the emotive-semantic transmutation of the Hebrew verb ' .h.v. [ א. ה.... more This paper reconstructs the emotive-semantic transmutation of the Hebrew verb ' .h.v. [ א. ה. ב. , 'to love'] in maskilic Hebrew, set against the political transformation of the Russian Empire during the first half of the nineteenth century. It focuses on romantic love and love for the ruler and the state, inquiring how these two concepts of love converged and impacted each other in the maskilic imagination. The final section of the article identifies a critique regarding how Jewish maskilic discourse blurred the boundaries between romantic and patriotic love. It focuses on Israel Axenfeld's Yiddish play The First Jewish Recruit in Russia […] or The Story of a Supposed Wedding (ca. 1830). The First Jewish Recruit, I argue, sheds light on the inherent cost of using romantic imagery to describe the relationship between Jews and the Russian government.
Full article: https://brill.com/view/journals/ejjs/aop/article-10.1163-1872471x-bja10101/article-10.1163-1872471x-bja10101.xml
This article has two goals: first, it aims to solve a mystery in Yiddish studies by identifying t... more This article has two goals: first, it aims to solve a mystery in Yiddish studies by identifying the previously unknown author of one of the earliest Eastern European modern literary texts in Yiddish, and reconstructing the historical context in which he wrote the text. Second, it will show how this archival-biographical discovery sheds new light on the history of Eastern European Jews during the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) as well as on the rise of Haskalah literature. Finally, as the title of this article suggests, I will argue that there was a direct link between narration and denunciation, between the Austrian imperial interest in collecting insider information about the Jews and the turn to writing literature in Jewish languages.
Band argues that the essence of the tales was "the elaborate system of the se rot" (divine emanat... more Band argues that the essence of the tales was "the elaborate system of the se rot" (divine emanations). The reference to state apparatuses and governmental systems were thus lumped together with other folkloric motifs. For example, according to Ora Wiskind-Elper, the protagonists of the tales, the "beautiful princess, clever son, evil king, (and) loyal servant," are all symbolic representations of theological concepts: "the Shekhinah, . . . the Messiah, the true [t]zaddik, or the King of Kings." 6 In Naḥman's tales, Arthur Green concludes succinctly, "the king is always God." 7 As a result, interest in the nontheological aspects of the tales was con ned almost exclusively to an examination of their relationship to folklore. Simkha Petrushka, Avinadav Lipsker, Mordekhai Mantel, Chone Shmeruk, and Bella Kolomakina, among others, sought to locate a speci c "original" folktale, or a folkloric motif that, according to them, inspired Naḥman. These general theories aside, the rapidly burgeoning scholarship dedicated to Bratslav literature has revealed that, in the case of "The King who Decreed Conversion," the interpretive model does not fully align with the allegorical structure of the tale. Scholars of Hasidism generally agree that in "The King who Decreed Conversion" one cannot apply the aforementioned formula that "the king is always God." The tale centers on a royal dynasty: a king who issued a harsh decree for the Jewish population to convert or leave the country and his three successors. Throughout the tale, it is clear from the way in which the king who decreed conversion operates that this is a reference to a esh-and-blood monarch. Wiskind-Elper associates the kings with biblical monarchs, while Aryeh Kaplan links them with European absolutist monarchs. 9 David Roskies and Yizhak Lewis, in turn, place the political events in the tale in the context of the early nineteenth-century Russian Empire. Be that as it may, there is scholarly consensus that the king who decreed conversion is a king and not God, and that the folktale-like narrative allegorizes political events rather than kabbalistic notions. The idea that there is a political dimension to the production of meaning in "The King who Decreed Conversion," I argue, is not an exception but the rule. The interpretive model I offer extends to most of Naḥman's canonical tales and accounts for the borrowing from folklore, the political dimension, and the theological dimension. Drawing on the extensive body of scholarship that has mined the af nity between Naḥman's tales and folklore, I wish to direct the scholarly [64]
Self-fashioning always involves some experience of threat, some effacement or undermining, some l... more Self-fashioning always involves some experience of threat, some effacement or undermining, some loss of self. , Renaissance Self-Fashioning 1 A curious experiment was conducted at the University of Massachusetts Extension School in the early s. Abraham Aaron Roback, a professor of psychology, presented portraits of seemingly random people to his class and asked his students to determine their nationality. Roback, who was then writing a biography of Yitskhok Leybush Peretz (-), invented this imaginative experiment in order to examine whether, as many have suggested, Peretz passed as a Gentile, a non-Jew. With great satisfaction Roback reports that 'In . . . classes comprising a few hundred students, only two . . . identified Peretz's appearance as Jewish . . . all of the students . . . have taken him for a Russian, German, Englishman, Austrian, Frenchman, Irishman or Italian.' 2 Roback's findings were very much in line with the materials he was using for his biography. The rich memoir literature on Peretz is replete with comments on Peretz's Polish looks, Polish manners, and perfect mastery of the Polish language. The following piece, taken from Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk's memoirs, is a case in point. Trunk recounts an anecdote concerning the This essay was first presented as a paper at the th International Conference in Polish Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, - October . I would like to thank
"דער טויט פון אָטאָ וויינינגער: פילאָזאָפישער שונד ראָמאַן" – אַ פאַרגעסן בשותפותדיק ווערק פון אהרן צייטלין און יצחק באַשעוויס־זינגער
Reviews and Other Publications by Dynes Ofer
Experimental Fantasticality on Stage – in Search of an Interactional Text of the Modernist Jewish Fable
In Geveb, 2024
The story of The Great Dictionary of Yiddish Language has often been unjustly minimized: A group ... more The story of The Great Dictionary of Yiddish Language has often been unjustly minimized: A group of Yiddish scholars convene to write a dictionary. They fight, and the project collapses before they are able to publish anything beyond four volumes of words beginning with the letter aleph. The history of the project and the ideological tensions it occasioned has only recently
"אחד מאותם דברים פלאיים ספורים, אשר מתרחשים רק פעם בחיים, ואולי אפילו רק אחת לכמה תריסרי חיים"
Avram Kantor, To the Lizards
The return of nudnik and klafte
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articles by Dynes Ofer
Full article: https://brill.com/view/journals/ejjs/aop/article-10.1163-1872471x-bja10101/article-10.1163-1872471x-bja10101.xml
Reviews and Other Publications by Dynes Ofer