“Patient and hardworking like ants”: translating and teaching modern Hebrew in Italy during the 1910s to 1970s

From the 1980s, Hebrew language literature in Italy experienced a translation boom. If this period of significant success was initially due to the works of great Israeli authors such as Abraham B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and David Grossman, over time books by lesser-known writers became available too – as studies already showed. The article investigates the preceding period – so far almost not investigated – and analyses the first cases of literary translation from modern Hebrew into Italian between the 1910s and the 1970s. As a corollary to that, it looks at how the teaching of modern Hebrew developed in Italian universities in the same period, and to what extent this influenced the diffusion of Israeli literature and culture. The history of translation out of modern Hebrew into Italian and of teaching it at an academic level thus becomes a window to observe changes in the relations between Italy, its Jewish diaspora and Israel, before and after the Holocaust and 1948, and in the global reception of modern Hebrew literature.