Modern literature in the Hebrew language was created in Germany at the turn of the 19th century by “enlightened” Jews (maskilim) who, not willing to become Christian, strived for a respected Jewish-European existence. At first, under the influence of Romanticism, historical novels and long poems on Jewish biblical themes were the most common literary genres, where no Christian characters appeared. Romanticism was highly problematic, however, because of its clash with traditional Judaism. Under German, and later Russian unfluence, MHL absorbed and transformed Christian ideas and motifs, as part of its European modernity.
Christian literary characters appear in prose writing together with descriptions of social Jewish-Christian relations. Persecution of Jews by anti-Semitic Christians and the dangerous seduction of proselytism become a dominant themes. At the turn of the 20th century Christians appear in realistic MHL characters as part of Jewish-Christian social and economical tensions. In his stories M.Y. Berdychevsky (1865-1921) described personal Jewish-Christian relations, motivated by ir unconscious, especially sexual drives. Love between a Jews and a Christian became a frequent theme in MHL at the beginning of the 20th century ( M. Y. Berdychevsky, H. N. Bialik, 1873-1934, Sh. Tchernikhovsky, 1875-1943, U.N. Gnessin, 1879-1913, Y. Steinberg, 1887-1947, S.Y. Agnon, 1888-1970, D. Vogel, 1891-1044, and others). Here love is tragically frustrated not because of different socio-cultural backgrounds or religious beliefs, but because of deterministic genetic differences. In Bialik’s Behind the Fence (1910), Berdychevsky’s ‘Without Her’ (1899) and The Two (1912) and in Vogel’s Marriage Life (1929-1930, English: 1988, 1998) male Jews are yielding to the power of sexual seduction and are seen by the writer as responsible for the suffering they bring on themselves and on their Christian partners.
In his story ‘Circles of Justice’ (1923) Agnon depicts the Orthodox Jew’s complete ignorance of the theological and ritual world of Christianity. In contrast, early Christian theology, and especially the image of Jesus, was a center of interest for Hebrew writers during the 20th century, together with their criticism of modern anti-Semitism. Even the influential Bialik (1873-1934), the ‘Poet of Jewish Revival’ included in his poetry mystical elements which are common to Christianity and to Kabbala, such as the divine, Madonna-like Woman or the Jesus-like poet (‘The Scroll of Fire’, 1905). Circa 1913-1914 Y.H. Brenner (1881-1821) wrote: ‘We sometimes see in the story of Jesus a world tragedy and our heart goes to him, the tortured prophet … and sometimes we see in the whole business of prophecy a ridiculous and comic matter, and in his disciples fools who deviated from the way of the world.’
Uri Zvi Greenberg (1894-1981) wrote in 1935 in a forward to Sadan 1-2 which he edited: ‘the pain of the pure Christianity – this is the pain of the stabbed Judaism. The wound is in our flesh under the skin, not theirs.’ While fiercely attacking contemporary Christianity Greenberg identifies himself with Jesus in his early Hebrew and Yiddish poetry. Attraction to early Christianity and especially the proposal to ‘broaden the boarders’ of modern Judaism by seeing Jesus as ‘our brother’ and by including the New Testament in the Jewish canon, gave rise to stormy polemics.
Interest of MHL in Jesus and in early Christianity continued in pre-state Israel. In the 1910s -1920s U.Z. Greenberg, Avraham Shlonsky (1900-1973) Yitshak Lamdan (1899-1954, and Y. H. Brenner mythologized the sufferings of the Zionist pioneers using Christian symbols. Hayyim Hazaz (1898-1973) in his ‘Revolution Stories’ cycle (1924- 1925), portrayed young Jews taking part in the Bolshevik revolution in the image of Jesus or of John the Baptist. In Avigdor Ha-Me’iri’s (Foiershtein, 1890-1870) autobiographical story ‘On Behalf of Jesus the Nazarene’ (1928), a Jewish soldier who was taken captive by Russian soldiers during the 1st World War was forced to drink human blood, crucified and buried alive by a Russian commander. Natan Bistritski’s (1896- *) drama Judas Iscariot (1930), Aharon Kabak’s (1883-1944) novel Narrow Path: the Man of Nazareth (1936, English 1968) And Hayyim Hazaz’s unfinished novel on Jesus (1947-1948) portray the historical Jesus with deep sympathy, seeing him the founder of one of the many sects into which Judaism was split at his time. The purity of Jesus is distinguished from the heathen Christianity of his apostles. The speech of Jesus and the other characters is stylized according to post-Biblical Hebrew mixed with Arameic elements, thus making Jesus’ sermons an organic part of contemporary Judaism.
Life and sexual drives of nuns is the focus of interest in K. Y. Silman’s 1880-1937) short story ‘Pilgrims’ (1929), A. Lifshitz’ (1901- ?) story ‘The Sister and the Nun’ (written in the 1930s, published in 1982), and Shoshana Shababo’s (1910-1992) novel Maria: A Story of a Nun (1932).
After the Shoah a new wave of writing on Jewish-Christian relations appear in the writings of Greenberg, Agnon, and Aharon Appelfeld (b. 1932). These writers present anti-Semitism as a deterministic law, demonizing the seduction of Christian culture and its cruel disappointment. In his novels Katarina (1989, English 1990) and Railroad (1991), Appelfeld warns against sexual attraction of Jews to Christian women and against the seduction of proselytism for the sake of social success. Appelfeld’s deterministic world view denies the chances of conciliation between Jews and non-Jews.
Yigal Mossenzon’s (b. 1917, Israel) historical short novel Judas (1962, English 1963) depicts Christianity as an anti-Roman underground organization. The writer sympathizes with Jesus as well as with the banished Judas Iscariot. Amos Oz’s (b. 1939, Israel) short historical novel Unto Death (1971, English 1992) is a diagnosis of the Christian pathological attitude to Jews, depicted on the historical background of the Crusaders’ period. ‘My historical account with Christian Europe is bitter and more frightening than the quarrel with the Arabs and the Islam, which is just as episode’, said the writer in 1991. Common to Mossenzon and Oz is the image of the Jew as a warrior, who, in terms of bravery and moral values is superior to the Christian soldier.
Oz has been interested in Christianity since his early story ‘The Trappist Monastery’ (1962), where a Israeli soldier, having just experienced death and sacrifice, learns about the vow of silence taken by the monks of the this monastry, situated near Jerusalem. He reacts towards Christian asceticism with ambivalent feelings of reverence and horror. This ambivalence is part of Oz’s general attitude to Christianity. In the 1950s-1970s neo-romantic attraction to early and Middle-Age Christianity appears in the prose writings and poetry of Pinchas Sadeh (1929-1994), Yonah Wollach (1944-1985), and Avot Yeshurun (Perlmutter, 1904-1992). For the young Sadeh the search for Christianity , mixed with admiration of Nietzsche, was a revolt against Israeli mediocrity and an expression of an extreme, almost perverse yearning for spiritual purity and mystical experiences. In the 1980s-1990s Christianity together with Budhism and Zen arrtacts Yoel Hoffman (b. 1943). Binyamin Shvili’s (b. 1956) two novels, Kastoria (1998) and Down from the Cross (2000) are autobiographical poetic accounts of the writer’s spiritual search for his own religious identity. He cites the New Testament, together with Hassidic stories, excerpts from Plato and Sufi poetry. Although charmed by Christianity, the narrator never questions his Jewish identity.
The growing interest in Christianity in Israeli literature at the turn of the 21st century can be explained by intellectual curiosity and emotional attraction, almost free from the trauma of Christian anti-Semitism and from victim psychology.