Ofer Dynes of McGill University will be giving a talk entitled, "Why Did Jews Start Writing Literature?"
The rise of modern Jewish literature in Eastern Europe is usually studied as an exclusively Jewish story. The turn to narrative, scholars have argued, was a way for both Hasidim and Jewish enlighteners to popularize their ideology. This talk revisits this argument. After Poland was partitioned by its neigbors, literature emerged as a vehicle to communicate new forms of political knowledge. In a time when most forms of expression in Hebrew and Yiddish were censored, literature became a central venue for Jews to negotiate their encounter with the state.