The Charm of Wise Hesitancy ― Talmudic Stories in Contemporary Israeli Culture

In recent decades, there has been a resurgence of interest among both secular and religious Israelis in Talmudic stories. This growing fascination with Talmudic stories has been inspired by contemporary Israeli writers who have sought to make readers aware of the special qualities of these well-crafted narratives that portray universal human situations, including marriages, relationships between parents and children, power struggles between people, and the challenge of trying to live a good life. The Charm of Wise Hesitancy explores the resurgence of interest in Talmudic stories in Israel and presents some of the most popular Talmudic stories in contemporary Israeli culture, as well as creative interpretations of those stories by Israeli writers, thereby providing readers with an opportunity to consider how these stories may be relevant to their own lives.

David C. Jacobson is Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University. He is author of Modern Midrash: The Retelling of Traditional Jewish Narratives by Twentieth-Century Hebrew Writers (State University of New York Press, 1987); Does David Still Play Before You? Israeli Poetry and the Bible (Wayne State University Press, 1997); Creator, Are You Listening? Israeli Poets on God and Prayer (Indiana University Press, 2007); Beyond Political Messianism: The Poetry of Second-Generation Religious Zionist Settlers (Academic Studies Press, 2011); Israeli and Palestinian Identities in History and Literature, edited with Kamal Abdel-Malek (St. Martin's Press, 1999); and History and Literature: New Readings of Jewish Texts in Honor of Arnold J. Band, edited with William Cutter (Brown Judaic Studies, 2002).