Baruch Kurzweil (; 1907–1972) was a pioneer of Israeli literary criticism.David, Anthony, The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959, p. 296
Biography Kurzweil was born in Brtnice, Moravia (now Czech Republic) in 1907, to an Orthodox Jewish family.Myers, David N. Resisting history: historicism and its discontents in German-Jewish thought. Princeton University Press. 2003. p. 225. He studied at Solomon Breuer's yeshiva in Frankfurt and the University of Frankfurt.Myers 155 Kurzweil emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1939. Kurzweil taught at a high school in Haifa, where he mentored the poet Dahlia Ravikovitch and psychologist Amos Tversky. He founded and headed Bar Ilan University's Department of Hebrew Literature until his death. He wrote a column for Haaretz newspaper.Orr, Akiva. The unJewish state: the politics of Jewish identity in Israel. p. 194
Kurzweil committed suicide in 1972.
Thought
Kurzweil saw secular modernity (including secular Zionism) as representing a tragic, fundamental break from the premodern world. Where before the belief in God provided a fundamental absolute of human existence, in the modern world this pillar of human life has disappeared, leaving a "void" that moderns futilely attempt to fill by exalting the individual ego. According to Kurzweil, this discontinuity is reflected in modern Hebrew literature, which lacks the religious foundation of traditional Jewish literature: “The secularism of modern Hebrew literature is a given in that it is for the most part the outgrowth of a spiritual world divested of the primordial certainty in a sacral foundation that envelops all the events of life and measures their value.”Crowsly, Marcus (2006). Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography. Stanford University Press. p. 35.
Kurzweil saw a writer's response to the "void" of modern existence as their most fundamental characteristic. He believed S.Y. Agnon and Uri Zvi Grinberg were the greatest modern Hebrew writers. A confrontational polemicist, Kurzweil famously wrote against Ahad Haam and Gershom Scholem, who he saw as attempting to establish secularism as the foundation of Jewish life.
Awards In 1962, Kurzweil was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.
See also Hebrew literature List of Bialik Prize recipients
References
Further reading Diamond, James S. Barukh Kurzweil and modern Hebrew literature. Chico, Calif. Scholars Pr. Brown Judaic Studies. 1983.