Yahrzeit … Haya Bar-Itzhak (1946–2020)

Abstract

Yahrzeit … Haya Bar-Itzhak (1946–2020) Simon J. Bronner (bio) Haya Bar-Itzhak was a driving force behind this journal and a shaper of the global study of Jewish folklore and ethnology. In her teaching, writing, and editing, she brought into relief the long lineage of work in periodicals devoted to Jewish folklore beginning in the nineteenth century (Bar-Itzhak 2010, 16–26) and inspired the editors of Jewish Folklore and Ethnology (JFE) with a vision for a journal that would go beyond an audience of Jews to become indispensable for all folklorists and ethnologists. The JFE editors, indeed all who care about understanding tradition, lost a friend and mentor when she died at her home in Haifa, Israel, on October 25, 2020. An organizer par excellence, one of her last projects was bringing together fieldwork-oriented scholars from around the world in 2013 to forge connections in a conference around the Talmudic directive to "Go out and see what the people do" (BT Eruvin 14B) as a folkloristic rallying cry. The conference occurred the same year that her Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions in two volumes was published, which she took over from Raphael Patai. And now the editors of Jewish Folklore and Ethnology find themselves similarly continuing a trajectory from her to a new generation of scholars and readers. With health issues mounting for Haya, the book based on the "Going to the People" conference came out in [End Page 210] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Haya Bar-Itzhak, August 2007. Photograph by Simon J. Bronner. 2016 under the editorship of Jeffrey Veidlinger, but Haya's influence on the work is clearly evident, as it is on every page of this volume of the journal and many more in several languages across several continents. Haya was born in Berlin, Germany, on August 17, 1946 to Polish Holocaust survivors. After emigration to Israel, she received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Haifa and finished her PhD in 1987 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a dissertation on "The 'Saints' Legend' as a Genre in Jewish Folk Literature" under the supervision of renowned folklore [End Page 211] professor Dov Noy. She returned to the University of Haifa as a professor and in 1992, became chair of the Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature and in 1994, head of folklore studies and the Israel Folktale Archives. A peripatetic teacher and scholar who attracted admiring students and colleagues wherever she went, she held visiting professorships at Indiana University, University of Michigan, Penn State University, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California–Berkeley. In addition, she was a fellow of the Simon Dubnow Institute in Leipzig, Germany. She received numerous grants and awards for her work from organizations such as the Koret Foundation, Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, S. O. Sidore Foundation, and the Council for Higher Education of Israel. She had broad interests in folklore that spanned Eastern Europe, northern Africa, Israel, and North America, and having taken on the Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions, in many ways her parting gift—and challenge—to the field, her scope of work extended to the far-flung corners of the world. She maintained specialties in folk narrative, particularly legend and women's culture from ancient times to the present. Her research and publications in English, Hebrew, German, Polish, and Yiddish earned her renown globally for a conceptualization of ethnopoetics informed by the Jewish experience. Her authored books in English include Jewish Poland—Legends of Origin (2001), Israeli Folk Narratives: Settlement, Immigration, Ethnicity (2005), and with Aliza Shenhar, Jewish Moroccan Folk Narratives from Israel (1993). Her edited books include Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions, 2 volumes (2013), Pioneers of Jewish Ethnography and Folkloristics in Eastern Europe (2010), and with Idit Pintel-Ginsberg, The Power of a Tale: Stories from the Israel Folktale Archives (2019). In Hebrew, she edited Folklore and Ideology: Studies Dedicated to Prof. Aliza Shenhar (2014), Legends of Poland: Ethnopoetics and Legendary Chronicles (1996), and with Aliza Shenhar, Folktales from Beth-She'an (1981) and Folktales from Shlomi (1983). She also was the editor of...