The Many Lives of Sabina: “Trashy” Fiction and Multilingualism

This article examines the circulation and translation of Yiddish and Hebrew serialized novels such as Sabina, Tamara, and Aviva from the 1930s to the 1950s. Popular fiction, especially these romance-adventures, were excoriated by Hebrew critics of the time as foreign, worthless, and culturally dangerous. But these popular, mass-produced texts became sites of multilingualism in the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine and in the early years of the State of Israel. Romanceadventures capitalized on textual reproducibility and readership demand, creating a literary marketplace in Israel that eschewed the formal institutions of Hebrew culture.