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There is no agreement over the term ‘Modern Hebrew Poetry’. Although most scholars tend to identify the modern period with the emergence of the Haskala ‘Hebrew Enlightenment’ at the end of the 18th century, it seems appropriate to begin with the towering figure of the philosopher and mystic Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (1707–1746), who was also a gifted poet and author of the first Modern Hebrew treatises on poetics and rhetoric. In the 11th chapter of his book of poetics לשון למודים lešon limmudim ‘A Tongue for Teaching’, Luzzatto proposed three possible poetic styles: a mosaic-lik…

Following the traditional periodization of Hebrew literature, the history of modern translations into Hebrew should begin with the emergence of the enlightenment movement ( haskala) in Berlin, towards the end of the 18th century. However, some critics would position the starting point somewhat earlier, at the beginning of the 18th century. As in the case of original Modern Hebrew literature, translated literature emerged against a background of deficiency: apart from a few medieval and Renaissance translations of scatt…