Iris Parush

Ben-Gurion University

Iris Parush is a professor of Modern Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University. Her book National Ideology and Literary Canon (in Hebrew, Mossad Bialik 1992), explores the impact of Zionist and non-Zionist ideologies on the formation of the Modern Hebrew literary canon. Her book Reading Women - The Benefit of Marginality (in Hebrew, Am-Oved 2001), won the Zalman Shazar Prize for Jewish History 2001. An English edition of the book, entitled Reading Jewish Women - Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish society, was published in 2004 by Brandeis UP, and an article entitled Another Look at "The Life of 'Dead' Hebrew": Intentional Ignorance of Hebrew in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society, appeared in Book History, 7 (2004). She is currently writing two books: The Sin of Writing - on the writing histories of Eastern European Yeshivah scholars undergoing enlightenment, and The Badkhanim (wedding masters of ceremony) and the Rise of Modern Secular Poetry in 19th century Eastern European Jewish society.