{{Short description|Israeli literary critic (1907–1972)}} {{Infobox person | name = Baruch Kurzweil | native_name = ברוך קורצווייל | native_name_lang = he | image = Uri Zvi Greenberg, Baruch Kurzweil and Shai Agnon.jpg | alt = | caption = Baruch Kurzweil (center) with Uri Zvi Greenberg and Shai Agnon in 1967 | other_names = | occupation = Literary critic | birth_date = {{birth year|1907}} | death_date = {{Death date and age|1972|1907|mf=yes}} | birth_place = Brtnice, Moravia, Austria-Hungary | death_place = Ramat Gan, Israel }}
'''Baruch Kurzweil''' ({{Langx|he|ברוך קורצווייל}}; 1907–1972) was a pioneer of Israeli literary criticism.<ref>David, Anthony, ''The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959'', p. 296</ref>
==Biography== Kurzweil was born in Brtnice, Moravia (now Czech Republic) in 1907, to an Orthodox Jewish family.<ref>Myers, David N. ''Resisting history: historicism and its discontents in German-Jewish thought''. Princeton University Press. 2003. [https://books.google.com/books?id=VfarFfIw1-gC&dq=%22baruch+kurzweil%22+born+orthodox&pg=PA225 p. 225].</ref><ref name="first" /> He studied at Solomon Breuer's yeshiva in Frankfurt and the University of Frankfurt.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=VfarFfIw1-gC&q=kurzweil&pg=PA155 Myers 155]</ref> Kurzweil emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1939.<ref name="first">{{cite journal|last=Singer |first=David |date=August–September 1990 |title=The Orthodox Jew as Intellectual Crank |journal=First Things |url=http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/09/006-the-orthodox-jew-as-intellectual-crank-35 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110610010719/http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/09/006-the-orthodox-jew-as-intellectual-crank-35 |archivedate=2011-06-10 }}</ref> Kurzweil taught at a high school in Haifa, where he mentored the poet Dahlia Ravikovitch and psychologist Amos Tversky.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bloch|first=Chana|author2=Chana Kronfeld|title=Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch|publisher=W.W. Norton & Co.|year=2009|pages=16|chapter=Introduction|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oSP9CtOwoHoC&dq=%22baruch+kurzweil%22+&pg=PA16 | isbn=978-0-393-06524-4}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Undoing Project|url=https://archive.org/details/undoingprojectfr0000lewi|url-access=limited|last=Lewis|first=Michael|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|year=2017|isbn=978-0-393-35610-6|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/undoingprojectfr0000lewi/page/90 90]}}</ref> He founded and headed Bar Ilan University's Department of Hebrew Literature until his death. He wrote a column for Haaretz newspaper.<ref name="first" /><ref>Orr, Akiva. [https://books.google.com/books?id=ggv3iiDCq48C&q=%22baruch+kurzweil%22&pg=RA1-PA194 The unJewish state: the politics of Jewish identity in Israel]. p. 194</ref>
Kurzweil committed suicide in 1972.<ref name="first" />
==Thought==
Kurzweil saw secular modernity (including secular Zionism) as representing a tragic, fundamental break from the premodern world.<ref name="first" /> Where before the belief in God provided a fundamental absolute of human existence, in the modern world this pillar of human life has disappeared, leaving a "void" that moderns futilely attempt to fill by exalting the individual ego.<ref name="first" /> According to Kurzweil, this discontinuity is reflected in modern Hebrew literature, which lacks the religious foundation of traditional Jewish literature: “The secularism of modern Hebrew literature is a given in that it is for the most part the outgrowth of a spiritual world divested of the primordial certainty in a sacral foundation that envelops all the events of life and measures their value.”<ref name="first" /><ref name="google">{{cite book|title=Modern Hebrew Fiction|author1=Shaked, G.|author2=Budick, E.M.|date=2000|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=9780253337115|url=https://archive.org/details/modernhebrewfict00gers|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/modernhebrewfict00gers/page/160 160]|accessdate=2014-10-08}}</ref><ref name="google2">{{cite book|title=Jewish Education and Learning: Published in Honour of Dr. David Patterson on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday|author1=Patterson, D.|author2=Abramson, G.|author3=Parfitt, T.|date=1994|publisher=Harwood Academic Publishers|isbn=9783718653249|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AfXwaTaXl6QC|page=130|accessdate=2014-10-08}}</ref><ref>Crowsly, Marcus (2006). ''Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography''. Stanford University Press. [https://books.google.com/books?id=W3IgD-jxofQC&dq=%22barukh+kurzweil%22&pg=PA35 p. 35].</ref>
Kurzweil saw a writer's response to the "void" of modern existence as their most fundamental characteristic.<ref name="first" /> He believed S.Y. Agnon and Uri Zvi Grinberg were the greatest modern Hebrew writers.<ref name="first" /><ref name="wertheimer">{{cite book|last=Roskies|first=David G.|title=The Modern Jewish Experience: a Reader's Guide|editor=Jack Wertheimer|publisher=NYU Press|year=1993|pages=214|chapter=Modern Jewish Literature|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=btDQXwiZtqwC&dq=%22baruch+kurzweil%22&pg=RA1-PA214 | isbn=978-0-8147-9262-9}}</ref> A confrontational polemicist, Kurzweil famously wrote against Ahad Haam and Gershom Scholem, who he saw as attempting to establish secularism as the foundation of Jewish life.<ref name="first" />
==Awards== * In 1962, Kurzweil was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.<ref name=bialik>{{Cite web|title=List of Bialik Prize recipients 1933-2004 (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv Municipality website |url=http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/Hebrew/_MultimediaServer/Documents/12516738.pdf |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071217143811/http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/Hebrew/_MultimediaServer/Documents/12516738.pdf |archivedate=2007-12-17 }}</ref>
==See also== *Hebrew literature *List of Bialik Prize recipients
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== Diamond, James S. ''Barukh Kurzweil and modern Hebrew literature''. Chico, Calif. Scholars Pr. Brown Judaic Studies. 1983.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurzweil, Baruch}} Category:1907 births Category:1972 deaths Category:People from Brtnice Category:Israeli literary critics Category:Israeli Orthodox Jews Category:20th-century Czech Jews Category:Czechoslovak emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Category:1972 suicides Category:Suicides in Israel Category:Bialik Prize recipients Category:Academic staff of Bar-Ilan University Category:Moravian Jews