Elisha Ben Abuya, the Hebrew Faust: On the First Hebrew Translation of Faust Within the Setting of the Maskilic Change in Self-Perception

The publication of Meir ha-Levi Letteris’s translation-adaptation of Goethe’s Faustinto Hebrew in 1865 was a prominent event in the contemporary world of Hebrew literature. The translator chose the story of Talmudic sage Elisha Ben Abuya, charged with connotations of otherness, heresy and rebellion, as a framework for absorbtion of Goethe’s tragedy. The translation-adaptation provoked a dispute among 19thcentury Maskilim about two pivotal questions of self-identification – their position relative to Jewish tradition and its canon of exemplary figures, and the role of European literature in the formation of a Hebrew literary canon. The essay argues that the polemics which erupted following the publication of the Hebrew Faustindicated a transition within Maskilic society from universalistic Enlightenment models of self-comprehension and identification to nationalistic particularistic ones.