Moshe Goultschin

This study deals with Baruch Kurzweil as a hero of the Hebrew Israeli cultural scene of the 1950s and '60s. Kurzweil's critical corpus known mainly for his work on S.Y. Agnon's fiction is treated here not only as literary criticism, but first and foremost as a cultural phenomenon, bearing spiritual and social significance. The book reveals urzweil in the role of cultural agent for German hermeneutics in the tradition of chleiermacher, and for continental aesthetics and protestant theology. Kurzweil aimed to impose European horizons of thought by means of the complex power-knowledge mechanisms proposed by Jean-Franµois Lyotard (1924-1998) and Michel Foucault (1926-1984). The book ends with a discussion of the unusual relationship between Kurzweil and his ultimate object of criticism, S.Y. Agnon. This re-examination of urzweil's famous critical work surprisingly reveals the destructive effect that Agnon's fiction had on Kurzweil's critical thought. In conclusion: this book introduces the reader to an unknown Kurzweil.