ABRAMSON, Glenda 1938-

PERSONAL:

Born November 16, 1938, in Johannesburg, South Africa; daughter of Lionel (a physician) and Rose (a teacher and museum curator) Melzer; married David Abramson; children: John, Liam. Ethnicity: "Jewish." Education: University of the Witwatersrand, B.A. (English, history, Hebrew), 1960, B.A. Hons. (Jewish studies), 1964, M.A. (Hebrew/Jewish theatre), 1969, Ph.D. (Hebrew poetry), 1973. Hobbies and other interests: Music, gym, collecting miniature hippopotamuses.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Oxford, Oriental Institute, Pusey Ln., Oxford OX1 2LE, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and writer. St. Cross College, Oxford University, Schreiber Fellow in Modern Jewish Studies, Cowley Lecturer in post-Biblical Hebrew.

MEMBER:

Association of Jewish Studies, Association of Israel Studies, European Association of Jewish Studies, British Association of Jewish Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Honorary D.H.L., Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, 1998.

WRITINGS:

Modern Hebrew Drama, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1979.

(Translator, with Tudor Parfitt) Yehuda Amichai, Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1983.

(Editor) Essays in Honor of Salo Rappaport: On the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, South African Jewish Trust (Johannesburg, South Africa), 1985.

(Editor, with Tudor Parfitt) The Great Transition: The Recovery of the Lost Centers of Modern Hebrew Literature, Rowman & Allanheld (Totowa, NJ), 1985.

(Editor) The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Blackwell Reference (Cambridge, MA), 1989.

The Writing of Yehuda Amichai: A Thematic Approach, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Tudor Parfitt) Jewish Education and Learning: Published in Honour of Dr. David Patterson on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, Harwood Academic Publishers (Langhorne, PA), 1994.

(Editor, with David Patterson) Tradition and Trauma: Studies in the Fiction of S. J. Agnon, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1994.

(Editor) The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) The Experienced Soul: Studies in Amichai, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1997.

Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Hebrew in Three Months, DK Publishing (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor) Modern Jewish Mythologies, Hebrew Union College Press (Cincinnati, OH), 1999.

Editor for Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. Contributor of articles to anthologies, including Muslim-Jewish Encounters: Intellectual Traditions and Modern Politics, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998; New Readings of Jewish Texts in Honour of Arnold J. Band, Brown Judaic Studies, 2002; The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, Oxford University Press, 2003; and to journals, including Journal of Jewish Studies, Prospect, Prooftexts, Jewish Studies Quarterly, and Israel Studies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Oxford scholar Glenda Abramson is one of the foremost English-speaking experts on Hebrew culture. She has served as one of the seven international judges for the 100 Great Jewish Books project, held in the United States. Over the years Abramson has, among other things, edited numerous studies of Hebrew literature, translated some of the works of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, and written two studies of Hebrew theater, Modern Hebrew Drama and Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel. The former book, a survey of Hebrew-language plays performed from the 1920s to the 1970s, "should be of great value to students of drama at all levels," a reviewer commented in Choice.

In contrast, Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel "presents much more than a survey of Israeli drama; it places Israeli theatre in the context of ideological and political developments since the establishment of the state," Rachel Feldhay Brenner wrote in Shofar. As Abramson notes, Israeli theater has—from its inception—been politicized to the point where the message of a play is often seen as more important than its artistic merit. In Abramson's own words, "Israeli theater has preserved its traditional polemical function, to comment and commentate, almost to the extent of participation in social processes. In fact, it is frequently on the brink of becoming a social process." In a review for Choice, M. Butovsky concluded, "critically balanced and rich in textual readings, [ Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel ] is a valuable guide to the intricate nature of political theater."

Among the books that Abramson has edited are The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories and The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. In her introduction to the former book, Abramson examines how Israelis resurrected the ancient language of Hebrew, which had nearly died out—Yiddish was the language of daily life for most European Jews—and adapted it to the needs of modern literature. The translations in The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories are "consistently good," Gene Shaw noted in Library Journal, and Abramson's introduction and notes are "excellent."

The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture is a "wonderfully informative work," S. Lehmann declared in Choice. The book contains an eclectic mix of articles, ranging from biographies of famous Jews, to articles about aspects of Jewish culture, to essays on the relationships between Jewish figures and wider cultural trends. In the opinion of Times Literary Supplement contributor Hyam Maccoby, the unifying theme in these articles is "the specifically Jewish contribution to Enlightenment culture, and therefore, incidentally, … both the impact of the Enlightenment on the Jews and the impact of the Jews on the Enlightenment." Maccoby also deemed the book "well organized and, on the whole, well executed." To Library Journal critic Paul Kaplan, The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture is "a feast of learning.… Clear double-columned pages yield a treasure trove of easy-to-read information and analysis."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Abramson, Glenda, Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 1996, Bill Ott, review of The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories, p. 572.

Choice, October, 1980, review of Modern Hebrew Drama, p. 255; September, 1990, S. Lehmann, review of The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, p. 70; April, 1999, M. Butovsky, review of Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, p. 1453; November, 2000, L. D. Loeb, review of Modern Jewish Mythologies, p. 574.

Comparative Drama, fall, 1999, Shimon Levy, review of Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, pp. 424-427.

Drama Review, September, 1980, review of Modern Hebrew Drama, p. 117.

European Judaism, autumn, 2002, Alan Sillitoe, review of The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories, pp. 161-162.

Judaism, winter, 1992, Ezra Spicehandler, review of The Writings of Yehuda Amichai: A Thematic Approach, pp. 97-104.

Library Journal, January, 1990, Paul Kaplan, review of The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture, p. 96; September 15, 1996, Gene Shaw, review of The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories, p. 99.

Modern Drama, winter, 1998, Nahma Sandrow, review of Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, p. 659.

New Theatre Quarterly, November, 1999, Claude Schumacher, review of Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, p. 342.

New York Times Book Review, November 13, 1983, review of Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers, p. 27.

Poetry, November, 1984, William Logan, review of Great Tranquility, pp. 109-110.

Present Tense, autumn, 1984, Jo-Ann Mort, review of Great Tranquility, pp. 59-60.

Reference and Research Book News, November, 1997, review of The Experienced Soul: Studies in Amichai, p. 142.

Shofar, spring, 2001, Rachel Feldhay Brenner, review of Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, p. 172.

Theatre Journal, October, 1999, Freddie Rokem, review of Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, pp. 346-347.

Theatre Research International, Spring, 2000, Gad Kaynar, review of Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel, pp. 94-95.

Times Literary Supplement, August 3, 1990, Hyam Maccoby, review of The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture, p. 828; March 7, 1997, Bryan Cheyette, review of The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories, p. 23.

ONLINE

Associated Institutions: University of Oxford Web site,http://associnst.ox.ac.uk/ (November 14, 2003), "1998 Honorary Degrees to Be Awarded to Archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor, Dr. Glenda Abramson, Jacob Behrman, Vladka Meed, Ben Steinberg, and Professor Laurence Tribe."

Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University Web site,http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ (November 14, 2003), "Dr. Glenda Abramson."