Dr. Andrea Gondos, DFG-Emmy Noether Research Group, Freie Universität

Introduction: Matan Barzilai, Head of Archives, National Library of Israel

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The Tishby archive held at the National Library of Israel constitutes a unique repository of personal letters, diaries, pictures, and literary writings of Isaiah Tishby, the celebrated scholar of Kabbalah at the Hebrew University. By drawing on a number of captivating vignettes from the archive, the talk will strive to draw a complex portrait of Tishby that will also touch upon major themes from twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history: the dissemination of Zionism in Transylvania; the Holocaust, through a series of personal exchanges between Tishby and his sister Leah, a survivor whose poignant letters depict the struggles Jewish refugees faced when coping with personal trauma, displacement, and immigration; and questions of language and identity that left their indelible mark on Tishby’s poetry and other creative writings. By
surveying these treasures of the Tishby archive we will gain a better understanding of an exceptional scholar who pursued the re-mythologization of Jewish history through a redemptive secular narrative.

Dr. Andrea Gondos, DFG-Emmy Noether Research Group, Freie Universität

Introduction: Matan Barzilai, Head of Archives, National Library of Israel

‍

The Tishby archive held at the National Library of Israel constitutes a unique repository of personal letters, diaries, pictures, and literary writings of Isaiah Tishby, the celebrated scholar of Kabbalah at the Hebrew University. By drawing on a number of captivating vignettes from the archive, the talk will strive to draw a complex portrait of Tishby that will also touch upon major themes from twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history: the dissemination of Zionism in Transylvania; the Holocaust, through a series of personal exchanges between Tishby and his sister Leah, a survivor whose poignant letters depict the struggles Jewish refugees faced when coping with personal trauma, displacement, and immigration; and questions of language and identity that left their indelible mark on Tishby’s poetry and other creative writings. By
surveying these treasures of the Tishby archive we will gain a better understanding of an exceptional scholar who pursued the re-mythologization of Jewish history through a redemptive secular narrative.

‍