Gerda Elata-Alster

Gerda Elata-Alster (* 1930 as Gerda Thau in Vienna ) is an Israeli literary scholar and until her retirement was professor for foreign language literature and linguistics at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva. Born in Austria, she emigrated to Holland with her parents' family in 1938 and emigrated to Israel in 1964 , where her academic career took place.

Life

Gerda Thau was born in 1930 in Vienna, the oldest of three siblings. After Austria was annexed to the German Reich in 1938, the father fled to Holland and brought the family to join them at the end of 1938. In 1939, the maternal grandmother also followed. Even as a child she learned several languages ​​at the same time: German , Dutch , Yiddish and Hebrew . After the occupation of Holland by German troops, the family hid under a false identity - Paraguayan nationality and the religious community of Karaites belonging - in Hilversum . The whole family was spared persecution, deportation and murder. After the liberation, it turned out that their neighbors knew very well about this camouflage, but did not reveal anything to the Germans.

After the Second World War, Gerda Thau graduated from the classical lyceum in 1948. In 1952 she married Mordechai Alster, together they wanted to emigrate to Israel , which could only be realized in 1964. Mordechai Alster died there of cancer in 1965, so Gerda Alster stayed alone in Israel with her three children. At the Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan she got a position as a lecturer for general and Hebrew literature. In 1973 she married Chaim Elata, who was a professor of engineering at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva and who later became president of the university there. Gerda Elata-Alster received her Ph.D. at Bar Ilan University and then held various positions as senior lecturer and visiting researcher at universities in England and the USA before she was appointed to foreign language literature and linguistics at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva in 1978. In 2001 she was Franz Rosenzweig visiting professor at the University of Kassel .

Act

The research of Prof. Elata-Alster moves far beyond the narrow boundaries of linguistics and literary studies, they fundamentally include religious studies, philosophical, psychoanalytical, literary theoretical and political issues. A special peculiarity of her research method is the linkage of hermeneutics with the art of interpretative retelling derived from the tradition of the Midrash . Her publications testify to an enormous range, from the Greek literature and tragedy, which her dissertation deals with, to the Italian Renaissance, to contemporary Hebrew and European contemporary literature. One fruit of this diverse line of tradition is her forthcoming book Talk of the Town: Jewish Attitudes to Civic Discourse , which uses literary sources to deal with the political and cultural rift in modern Israeli society.

Fonts (in selection)

• with BM Mossel: Hadachlil. Leerboek van het Israëlisch Hebreeuws . Assen 1969, 2nd edition 1976.
• On Noble and Base Hubris. Some Investigations into the Tragedies of Aeschylus . Dissertation, Bar Ilan 1981.
• Talk of the Town. Jewish Attitudes to Civic Culture , (in preparation).
• Gathering the Leaves and Squaring the Circle. Recording, Reading and Writing in Dante's' Vita Nuova 'and' Divina Commedia . In: Italian Quarterly . Volume 24, Spring 1983.
• The King's Double Bind. Paradoxical Communication in the Parodos of Aeschylus Agamemnon . In: Arethusa . Volume 18, No. 1, Spring 1985.
• with B. Maoz: Some Basic Principles of Psychotherapy in the Light of the Philosophical Writing of Franz Rosenzweig . In: Wolfdietrich Schmied Kowarzik (ed.): The philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). International Congress Kassel 1986 . 2 volumes, Munich and Freiburg 1988.
• with B. Maoz: Paradise, History and Messianic Time . In: Ursula Baumgardt and Ingrid Olbricht (eds.): Search for paradise. Illusions, wishes, realities . Munich 1989.
• with B. Maoz: Trauma and Miracles. Experience of trauma as a miracle in the sense of Franz Rosenzweig's philosophy . In: Hilarion G. Petzold and Rolf Kuhn (eds.): Psychotherapy and Philosophy: Philosophy as Psychotherapy? . Paderborn 1992.
• with R. Salmon: Retracing a Writerly Text. In the Footsteps of a Midrashic Sequence on the Creation of the Male and the Female . In: Ann Loades and Michael McLain (eds.): Hermeneutics, The Bible and Literary Criticism . London 1992.
• Speechless in the desert . In: Literature and Theology. An International Journal of Theory, Criticism and Culture . Volume 8, No. 3, 1994.
• "Returning the Glance from Elsewhere - Socratic Irony as / and the Tactics of Rhetorical Evasion: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf", in: Cult and Culture: Studies in Cultural Meaning , Les Cahiers du CICC, 8 (Juillet 1999)
• Wanderings as well as don't look back (even in anger) - Sodom as transcendence . In: Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (ed.): Confrontations with the destroyed Jewish heritage. Franz Rosenzweig guest lectures (1999–2005) . Kassel 2004.
• with Benyamin Maoz and Natalia Skradol: Narcissism and Creativity. Trangulation in Franz Rosenzweig's Life and Work in the Wake of the 'Gritli' letters . In: Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (ed.): Franz Rosenzweig's “new thinking”. International Congress Kassel 2004 . 2 volumes, Freiburg and Munich 2006.

Web links

• International Rosenzweig Society / Visiting Professorship ( Memento from October 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive )