Rage Against Europe: Uri Zvi Greenberg and the Emotional Work of Jewish Masculinity

Abstract: Poet Uri Zvi Greenberg has been celebrated for his powerful poetry and forceful visions of Jewish nationalism. This article offers a view of the celebrated poet and his fashioning of body and gender, through the story of the short-lived Yiddish journal Albatros (1922 Warsaw–1923 Berlin). As Berlin would prove to be his final European home for a time, it also became the place where Greenberg parted with his Yiddish (before his eventual return to bilingual writing in Hebrew and Yiddish with his return to Europe in 1930). This article looks at a pivotal moment in Greenberg’s life and writing, a short span where Greenberg moved from Europe to Palestine and from Yiddish to Hebrew, all in the span of several months. This article will show how in this moment Greenberg would produce some of his best poetry, where rage and gender intersected to fashion Jewish masculinity. In fact, Greenberg conducted a literary tour de force, lashing out in rage against Europe and its co-opted emblem, Jesus, in an attempt to reshape the Jew and direct Jewish masculinity toward a different, perhaps better, existence.