The Façade of Hebraism: Aharon Reuveni and the Search for Monolingualism

Abstract:This article examines Aharon Reuveni's practice of self-translation between Yiddish and Hebrew in his World War I trilogy Ad Yerushalayim (To Jerusalem, 1919–25), arguing that it poignantly reveals the multilingual reality of pre-state Palestine. Drawing on current work in translation studies, this article demonstrates how Reuveni's novels, first written in Yiddish and immediately translated into Hebrew, can be read as double texts, rendering the final Hebrew trilogy multilingual and joining other Hebrew novels in a de facto critique of monolingualism. In this, multilingualism enters the contemplation of what has previously been considered a Hebrew text through and through, foregrounding, even enabling, a discussion of language tensions both thematically as well as in the process of composition and translation of the trilogy.