Paper short abstract:

The popularity of Jewish anthologies at the beginning of the 20th century along with the rise of Zionist utopias point to their common role in the configuration of the imagined national future of Israel.The presentation will examine the main roles of the anthology in light of the contemporary utopia

Paper long abstract:

The manifest popularity of Jewish anthologies of various Jewish traditions at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, along with the rise of Zionist utopias, suggest their common role in the configuration of the imagined national future of Israel.

The presentation will be dedicated to the main roles and characteristics of the Jewish anthology in light of the contemporary utopia. Particularly, their shared ideological goals, their common use of space images, their detached and fragmented representations of the past and their symbolic discourse as well as their comprehensive and closed nature, their influence on literary canons and affinity to modern preservation forms as the encyclopedia and the national archive. The differences between the two genres of the anthology and the utopia will be discussed as well, while focusing on the immanent tensions of the anthology as a collection of different traditions and its pluralistic nature, and on the unique place of the compiler as a medium for transmitting memories.

The main questions which will be raised on this background will be: what were the common heritage representations on which national Jewish anthologies of the time were based on? And, what were the representations they rejected? How did their editing influence Jewish thinking patterns? And what were the main tensions they preserved and how?