A Galician Yeshiva-Bo?ur and Two Cities: Hame?orer’s Minority Report

Abstract

This article focuses on the role played by the author Yehoshua Radler-Feldman, also known as R. Binyamin (1880–1957), in the editing of the journal Hame͑orer and his poetic-political editorial approach that often contradicted the approach of his fellow editor, Yosef Ḥayyim Brenner. Brenner is usually described as bearing the burden of publication alone, a view influenced by Brenner’s hegemonic status in the sphere of Hebrew literature, as opposed to R. Binyamin’s marginality. This exclusive identification of Hame͑orer with Brenner illustrates the attempt to depict the development of Modern Hebrew literature as a linear process. This article argues that restoring R. Binyamin to a prominent position in the context of Hame͑orer leaves us with an image of the journal as a site where various poetics competed and where the power relations between these different approaches were crystallized. In order to examine these approaches, this article turns to the cultural and geographical context of London’s East End, where they developed at the turn of the century. It describes the reality of Hame͑orer as it emerges from R. Binyamin’s perspective and highlights the differences between R. Binyamin’s experiences in London and those of Brenner, which were due largely to their different points of origin—the Russian Empire and Habsburgian Galicia via Berlin, respectively. This will serve as a basis for understanding the rift between the two figures, which was simultaneously poetic, religious, and political.