The Tunnels and Chains in the Hebrew and Yiddish Works of Ayalti

Bilingual writer Hanan Klenbort (1910-1992), known by his penname Ayalti, authored his first Yiddish novel »Bum« un keytn (»Boom« and Chains) in 1936. The novel sketched a blueprint for understanding the violence that erupted in Palestine just months after he finished writing. It framed the Labor Zionist settlements as anti-utopias, including in the sexual realm. Through examination of Ayalti's debut novels in Hebrew and Yiddish, this article shows the author's unusual linguistic transformation relative to his contemporaries. I will demonstrate how this linguistic shift was caused by the author's disillusionment by Zionism, causing him to turn away from its official language. Instead, he chose to create in Yiddish, a language spoken and simultaneously rejected by most Zionist settlers, but officially embraced by various circles of Jewish diaspora leftists. That shift freed him to represent the situation in Palestine through a uniquely critical and yet highly authentic lens.