17th Annual Rice University Lecture Series: Ido Telem – H.N. Bialik and the Poetry of Slaughter

Hebrew Culture Responding to Violence: Before and After October 7

Jewish and Hebrew culture has always reflected and responded to the turbulent and often violent history of the Jewish people, from ancient persecutions to modern conflicts. In recent years, violence has once again profoundly shaped Jewish life and identity, particularly following the events of October 7 and the ongoing aftermath. This lecture series examines how Hebrew culture has grappled with violence across different eras and contexts, from the lived experiences of contemporary artists to the collective memory embedded in literature and history. By exploring these diverse perspectives, we will consider the varied ways Hebrew culture has and continues to process, memorialize and respond to violence in its many forms.

H.N. Bialik and the Poetry of Slaughter: Then and Now

In April 1903, the Jewish community of the Bessarabian town of Kishinev experienced one of the worst pogroms of the time. Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), Israel’s would-be national poet, responded with two defining poems: “On the Slaughter” [‘Al ha-shḥitah], an immediate response to the massacre, and “In the City of Slaughter” [Be’ir ha-harigah] a written later that year after his visit to Kishinev as head of a delegation of Hebrew authors. The two Hebrew poems became cornerstones of the Zionist movement, galvanizing a new ethos of Jewish self-defense. More than 120 years later, the poems continue to resonate throughout Jewish and Israeli history as among the most poignant Hebrew cultural responses to violence. This talk will explore the cultural history of these poems, their continuing relevance and various appropriations and misappropriations across different moments, and what insights they may offer us about the violence of our own time. The poems will be read and discussed in English translations alongside the Hebrew originals.

Ido Telem is the Samuel W. and Goldye Marian Spain Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Rice University. He specializes in modern Hebrew and German literature and thought, with a focus on the cultural history of Zionism. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, where his dissertation examined how modern Hebrew authors looked to German philosophy to guide the revival of Hebrew culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ido’s research has been published in the Yearbook for European Jewish Literature Studies.

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