Adi Mahalel
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies
amahalel@umd.edu
1108 Taliaferro Hall
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Dr. Adi Mahalel, Visiting Assistant Professor of Yiddish Studies, received his doctoral degree from Columbia University. He is the author of The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism and the forthcoming translation and introduction of Hanan Ayalti’s novel Boom and Chains: A Yiddish Novel Set in Israel/Palestine.
Adi’s areas of interest include modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, Jewish cultures in modern times, Israeli culture, film and media studies, and the intersection of culture and politics. He has taught courses on Jewish culture and language at Columbia University and the YIVO Institute.
Publications
The first translation of this radical novel set at the heart of 1930s Israel/Palestine.
In late 1920s Palestine, Zalmen has just arrived at Jaffa port on his way to a small northern kibbutz. Young and idealistic, he hopes to put down roots and help create a model society. But he soon realizes that the power dynamics between British colonists and Jewish and Arab workers have reached a breaking point. Zalmen, caught in the web of ideological conflicts, violence, and revolution, must decide with whom his loyalties lie.
With frank depictions of political and ethnic tension, sexual freedom on the kibbutz, Labor Zionist politics, and rising Communist influences, Boom and Chains offers a rare glimpse of the Jewish left before the State of Israel and vividly illustrates the physical and mental toll of making a life in Mandatory Palestine. Author Hanan Ayalti's own journey resembles that of Zalmen and reflects his disillusionment with early Labor Zionism. The novel raises important questions around the development of discourse about Israel/Palestine, socialist Zionism and anti-Zionism, sexuality and sexualization, and Jewish left history over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.