Three of the most remarkable works of interwar Czech literature dealing prominently with Jewish themes were all first published in 1937, and they all feature depictions of Eastern European Jews and their spirituality presented as an alternative to the highly assimilated, secularized lifestyle shared by most Jews in the Czech lands. This lecture begins with an overview of the ways the traditional, mostly Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe were widely viewed by assimilated Central European Jews in the early twentieth century and the interwar period, and then proceeds to analyze and compare the ways in which Eastern Jewish identity and spirituality function in Nine Gates by Jiri Langer, Golet in the Valley by Ivan Olbracht, and House without a Master by Egon Hostovsky. Although the three books under consideration employ many of the same tropes for characterizing Eastern Jews’ mentality and way of life, they lead their readers to very different conclusions about the viability of Eastern Jewish identity and spirituality as models for contemporary Czech Jews to imitate or in some way incorporate into their own lives.

Christopher Harwood

Christopher Harwood has been lecturer in Czech in the Slavic Department of Columbia University since 2001. He received his PhD in Russian literature with a minor in Czech language and literature from Columbia in 2000. His research and teaching focus on methods and materials development for teaching Czech as a foreign language, and on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Czech literature and culture. In 2019-2021 he is serving as Co-Director of the East Central European Center at Columbia’s Harriman Institute. Christopher Harwood is a member and former co-president of the International Association of Teachers of Czech (IATC) and a member of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL), the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), the Czechoslovak Studies Association (CSA), and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). He was first elected to serve a two-year term as president of the New York chapter of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU NY) in December 2015, and he was re-elected to that position in 2017 and 2019. 

The lecture will be streamed on ZOOM. RSVP through Eventbrite to receive a Zoom link. It will be recorded and available on YouTube.

Free and open to the public. Suggested donation $10.

This event is a part of lecture series “Literature by and about Czech and Slovak Jews “organized by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews and Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, New York Chapter, with support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA).