Jewish Literature Essay

In the last several decades, the reading, writing, and publishing have emerged as an lively field of inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. Writing has been a means to many people to express their selves. Twentieth century Jewish literature in its main branches has produced a number of novels. It has been from the last few years that the first truly established presentation of the whole literature was made. Investigations of the history of Jewish literature have been possible, only during the last fifty years but in the course of this half –century, painstaking research has so actively been done that we can now gain at least a bird’s-eye view of the whole course of our literature. Jewish literature has developed organically, and in

What the term Jewish literature encompasses, however, demands definition, since Jews have lived in so many countries and have written in so many varied languages and on such diverse themes. Some have questions as to what may be considered as Jewish literature and as to who is a Jewish writer and if Jewish literature can include works with or without Jewish specificity, revels when read closely, Jewish meaning , values and sensibility. Taking into consideration the varios view, Jewish literature can be said as comprising of: (1) works written by Jews on Jewish themes in any language; (2) works of a literary character written by Jews in Hebrew or Yiddish or other recognized languages, whatever the theme; (3) literary works written by writers who were essentially Jewish writers, whatever the theme and whatever the language. Jewish literature was not created in the Middle East but in many other different places as well, mostly in Europe and later in America. Nevertheless, it is unique in comparison to both the western and Eastern literatures. Ancient Jews literature was dominated by religious themes. The most important ancient Jewish literary work is without a doubt the torah or the Hebrew Bible. It is thought to be written down in the 6th century BCE. Although the latest evidence suggests that it could be compiled as the 10th century BCE. The first major rabbinic work is the Mishnah or redaction of the oral Torah which was written by Rabbi Yehudah haNasi in 220