The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization is a ten-volume series that collects more than 3,000 years of Jewish cultural artifacts, texts, and paintings, selected by more than 120 internationally recognized scholars.
When Benjamin Harshav, a poet, translator, and literary scholar, died on March 23rd, his loss was felt by friends and colleagues, including his colleagues who worked with him on the Advisory Board for Volume 7 of the Posen Library. But Professor Harshav, who emigrated to Palestine in 1948 and quickly joined the Israeli army, was not only an advisor to the Posen Library; he was also a contributor, whose essay, “Language in Time of Revolution,” is included in the Intellectual Culture section of Volume 10.
Professor Harshav embodied the mission of the Posen Library to an almost astonishing degree. He was an anthologist himself; he was a lifelong champion of Jewish learning and literature (in 1967, he established Tel Aviv University’s Department of Poetics and Comparative Literature); he was a scholar who, in his 2007 essay collection, The Polyphony of Jewish Culture, declared that “Modern Jewish culture speaks with many voices”—a sentiment very much consonant with the Posen Library’s mission to collect as many of those voices as possible.
As Professor Harshav’s students and colleagues mourn his passing, we at Yale University Press and the Posen Foundation do the same.
