Na'ama Rokem Publishes Second Book: Zionism in Translation
The Department of Middle Eastern Studies is pleased to celebrate the publication of Professor Na'ama Rokem's second book, Zionism in Translation.
Examining a rich network of correspondence between prominent Jewish intellectual and literary figures, including Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Yehuda Amichai, and Paul Celan, Zionism in Translation explores the complex relationship between German and Hebrew in the decades following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Through letters, drafts, reviews, and other archival materials, Rokem illuminates how exchanges between these two languages created space for nuanced conversations about Jewish identity, nationalism, and the Zionist movement. Situating these discussions within the historical contexts of the Holocaust, the founding of Israel, and the Palestinian Nakba, the book reveals expressions of ambivalence, resistance, and belonging that complicate conventional narratives of twentieth-century Jewish intellectual and cultural history.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Rokem on this exciting scholarly achievement!
A version of this article was originally published in the UChicago Press website, and can be found here: Zionism in Translation: Encounters in the German-Hebrew Archive, Rokem