Dow Sadan. Historyk literatury Żydów

Abstract

The article introduces the figure of Dow Sadan – a Jewish literary historian, literary critic, essayist, translator from Polish, German and Yiddish to Hebrew, as well as a poet. His translations of Jewish poetry classics from Hebrew to Polish helped bringing this body of literature closer to the Polish audience. He treated both Hebrew literature, and literature written in Yiddish as Jewish literature, which was not consistent with the position of Israeli scholars, who wanted to see the concept of Jewish literature reserved only to Hebrew literature. Sadan created a definition of Jewish literature as “a set of works in any language, written by authors who are aware of their Jewish identity.” He was the first in the history head of the department of Yiddish language and literature at the University of Jerusalem. Privately, he was known as a talented storyteller, collecting a group of listeners in his house.