Abstract
Abstract: The article examines contemporary Israeli poetry by post-Soviet Jews who migrated to Israel after the collapse of the USSR. Complicating the dominant assessment of post-Soviet literature in Israel as an isolated and "ghettoized" phenomenon, an analysis of the poetry by Soviet-born, Hebrew-language poets Rita Kogan, Alex Rif, and Arik Eber reveals the strong influence of Hebrew literature in general, and of the Mizrahi poets of Ars Poetika in particular. Through close textual analysis and interviews with Rif, Kogan, and Eber, the article demonstrates how their verse has adopted and adapted the dominant building blocks of Ars Poetika—resistance to Ashkenazi hegemony, protest against exclusion and discrimination, and embrace of one's own culture and identity—to the situation of Russian-speaking Jews in Israel. Ultimately, the chapter shows how the cultural affinity with poets of Ars Poetika allows post-Soviet immigrants to both construct themselves as part of the Israeli-Jewish population and at the same time express their post-Soviet particularity, thereby bringing into relief the two halves of the poets' hyphenated Russian-Israeli cultural identities. Reflecting on this cultural cross-pollination, the chapter concludes by reading the poetry of Rif, Kogan, and Eber as part and parcel of contemporary Israeli literature.
Published Version
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