Yehoshua Bar-Yosef

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yehoshua Bar-Yosef ( Hebrew יהושע בר-יוסף; born May 29, 1912 in Safed ; died October 7, 1992 ibid) was an Israeli writer .

life and work

Yehoshua Bar-Yosef's birthplace Safed is in the north of Eretz Israel and belonged to the Ottoman Empire until 1920 . It had been rocked by several earthquakes over the centuries , including a major earthquake in 1837. When Bar-Yosef was four years old, another major earthquake struck; then his mother moved with him to Transylvania (now part of Romania). Throughout his life he kept the glorified childhood memories of his hometown. He grew up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family and studied at a yeshiva in Transylvania. In 1930 he returned to Eretz Israel , which was now under British administration as part of the Mandate Palestine , and continued his yeshiva studies in Jerusalem . In the 1930s he gave up the religious way of life. His first story, kol chatan wekol kalla (Voices of the Groom and Bride), was published in the literary supplement of the Dawar newspaper in 1936 . The beginning of his writing coincides with leaving the traditional society in which he grew up. This break is reflected in his writing.

Bar-Yosef worked as a newspaper editor for ten years and as a freelance journalist until 1980. As a writer, he has written novels, short stories, short stories and plays. He wrote his works in Hebrew ( Ivrit ). Only a few have been translated and none into German (as of 2019). His plays Be-Simta'ot Yerushalayim and Shomerei ha-Homot (Guardian of the City Walls) were staged in the Ohel Theater . His autobiography was published in 1972 under the title Bein Tzfat Li-Yerushalayim (Between Safed and Jerusalem). His son Yosef was born in 1933, his daughter Bilhah in 1936 and his son Yitzhak in 1949.

He has received numerous literary prizes, the most important of which is the Bialik Prize (1984). However, in the 1930s to 1950s when he began writing, poetry was at the center of Hebrew literature; At that time, prose writers like him were hardly noticed by the cultural elite and the general readership.

In the history of modern Hebrew literature, Bar-Yosef is included in the "third generation" of writers; it is characteristic of them that they were not born in Palestine and that they began to write between the two world wars. (He was born in Safed but grew up in Europe.) His early works are in a realistic style, while his later works show a tendency towards symbolism .

Individual works

Bar-Yosef's most important novel ir kessuma (Enchanted City) was first published in three parts from 1949 to 1951 and was published in full in 1958. It takes place in the mid-19th to the beginning of the 20th century and combines the documentary description of his hometown Safed with the fiction of Chronicle of a family living there It combines depictions of daily life, the mystical view of the Kabbalists as well as historical and natural events such as the earthquake, epidemics, the uprising of the Druze , war and famine.

The historical novel sukkat schalom (Hut of Peace), published in 1958, addresses Safed as the center of Kabbalah in the 16th century . In this work Bar-Yosef implemented his historical models more freely than in ir kessuma , where he stayed closer to the historical documents.

literature

Web links

  • Yehoshua Bar-Yosef at ITHL (Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature) (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Notice de personne: Bar-Yossef, Yehoshua. In: Catalog of the Bibliothèque nationale de France . October 24, 2017, accessed November 30, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Nicholas N. Ambraseys: The earthquake of January 1, 1837 in Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel. In: www.earth-prints.org. Retrieved November 30, 2019 . (PDF)
  3. ↑ a b Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 174
  4. ↑ a b c d Yehoshua Bar-Yosef at ITHL
  5. ↑ a b c BAR-YOSEF (Zenwirth), YEHOSHUA. In: www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved November 30, 2019 .
  6. ^ Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 154
  7. ^ Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 247
  8. ^ Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 21
  9. ^ Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 175
  10. ^ Gershon Shaked: History of Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 176
personal data
SURNAME Bar-Yosef, Yehoshua
ALTERNATIVE NAMES יהושע בר-יוסף (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Safed
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 1992
Place of death Safed