Introduction The Object Matter of Modern Jewish Literature

Abstract

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the materiality of Jewish literature. Classical Jewish texts have always possessed a material dimension, deriving from both their tendency to serve as markers for lost spaces and their connection to a sacred tradition. Texts such as the Torah scroll or prayer book were handled with respect and sensitivity, as befitting holy objects. Due to the specific historical conditions in which modern Jewish literature emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one can more clearly identify the rise of secularism and the consequent pressure upon cultural forms to retain some evidence of “aura.” The chapter explains that the book suggests how the particulars of twentieth-century Jewish experience—its mass migrations as well as physical and psychological traumas—have shaped materiality's emergent role in literary forms by Jewish authors.