For Whom Do I Labor: Globalization and Contemporary Hebrew World Literature

Since the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, there has been a sharp rise in the extent of translations of new Hebrew literature to the dominant languages of the literary centers of the West: English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian. Thus, key parts of contemporary Hebrew literature are becoming literature whose conditions of writing, distribution, and reading are the conditions of translated works worldwide. The translation of Hebrew literature that the article terms “Hebrew world literature” is thus not a second, successive stage for it; rather, it is intermingled with the conditions of its production, distribution, and consumption. Global conditions that give Hebrew literature power and status in the world literary sphere, combined with the weakening of original Hebrew literature in the local Hebrew literary space, are also continuing to change the balance of power and priorities between translations and the original in the global present of Hebrew literature in the world. The article sketches these changes and poses key questions that it calls upon scholars of Hebrew literature to study as they both enter the twenty-first century.