“A Self-Portrait in Books” — Reflections on the Aphoristic Library of Elazar Benyoëtz

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on trans-linguistic relationships between the German aphoristic writings of Israeli, Hebrew poet, and rabbi Elazar Benyoëtz (*1937) and his personal library, which is one of the last and largest private book collections in Israel to contain the German-Jewish literary canon. By reading traces from the library’s marginalia and paraphernalia, analyzed here for the first time, the article presents five case studies that sketch Benyoëtz’s transformation during the 1960s and 1970s from a Hebrew poet into the most influential contemporary writer of aphorisms in German. The article also presents points of departure for future research into the development of the Archiv Bibliographia Judaica, the largest encyclopedia of Jewish authors in the German language.