Ido Bassok

Ido Bassok
Born	1950 Ashdot Ya'akov Meuhad, Israel
Occupation	poet, translator, researcher of literature and history
Nationality	Israeli
Spouse	Ginat Bassok

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Ido Bassok (Hebrew: עידו בסוק, Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'akov Meuhad, Israel, 1950–) is a poet, a translator, and a researcher of literature and history.

Biography

Ido Bassok was born in kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov Meuchad, Israel. His father, Moshe Bassok, was a translator, editor, and poet. His mother, Shulamit, was the daughter of the journalist and lyricist Kadish Yehuda Sillman, and she herself was a teacher of literature and language.

Bassok began to write poems when he was seventeen years old, after moving from the kibbutz to Jerusalem, where he was enrolled in the elite High School of the Hebrew University. Some of these poems were published in major newspapers and magazines, including the Ha’Aretz daily paper, the "Masa" section (literary supplement) of the LaMerchav newspaper, and the Keshet magazine.

He is a graduate of the Department of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1973), and studied education. He worked as a teacher of literature and writing from 1976 to 1979. Between 1979 and 1983 he lived in France where he was a teacher of Hebrew language and literature in French universities. He received his Master's in modern French literature at the University of Grenoble in France (1982), and in 1991 he received a second Master's degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

His book In the Shadow of Orchards on a Leprous Soil: Studies in the Literary and Essayistic Work of Moshe Smilansly and Uri Zvi Grinberg for which he received the prize for reference books from the society of authors, composers and music publishers (ACUM) in Israel for 1994, is based on his graduate studies at the Hebrew University. Bassok received his PhD from the Hebrew University under the mentorship of Prof. Dalia Ofer in 2010; the title of his doctoral dissertation was Aspects of education of Jewish youth in Poland between the world wars in light of autobiographies by Jewish youth from the YIVO Collection.

Bassok did post-doctoral studies at the Hebrew University in the framework of which he began to write a biography of the Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernichovsky. The completed work was published in 2017 under the title Of Beauty and sublime aware: Shaul Tchernichovsky – a life.

His research papers have been published, among others, in the following Hebrew and English journals: Bikoreth u-Parshanuth (Criticism and Interpretation),  ;29Gal-Ed: On the History and Culture of Polish Jewry, 18 & 24; Mada'ei ha'yahaduth (Jewish Studies), 44; Simon Dubnow Institute's Yearbook, 9; Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 30: Jewish Education in Eastern Europe; Iyunim Bitkumat Israel (Studies on the establishment of Israel), Thematic Series, 10: Israeli Exiles.

Literary career

Poetry

Asher ha'Susim Rei-av (Whom the Horses are his Friends). Bassok's  first book, of which the first part he composed while in high school. It consists of love poems, poems about the Hebrew language, and poems about the art of poetry.

Comedia (Comedy)

This was an attempt by Bassok to write a long narrative poem, in which he strives to expose the reality beneath sanctity and the abstract.

Poema Politit (Political Narrative Poem) Bassok's aspiration towards the concrete reality, weaving it into the Zionist myth about returning to the connection with the concrete and telluric and abandoning the "excess of intellectualism" characterizing the lives of the Jews in the Diaspora.

Teva Tove'a (Natura Naturans, lit. Sinking Nature): A Year in the Mountains  contains poems written during the years 1980–1981 in Grenoble, Paris and Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. Another section was written in the years 1984 -1985. The last section is entitled Laments in memory of Lotan – an elegy in memory of Bassok's brother-in-law who was killed in the First Lebanon War. The book also includes poems dealing with his older son, who was born in Paris, and his wife.    

Kehu Ze (Just Him), a selection of Bassok's poems that had been published in his four previous books

Translations

Bassok has also translated fine literature and reference works from French and Yiddish into Hebrew for major Israeli publishing houses. The most important of his translations are: Gargantua et Pantagruel by François Rabelais (4 volumes); Le Contrat Social by Jean-Jacques Rousseau; De l'ésprit des Lois by Montesquieu; Dialogues (Le Neveu de Rameau, Le Rêve de d'Alembert and two other dialogues( by Denis Diderot; Mythologies by Roland Barthes.

Major themes of research

The research approach of Bassok has been characterized from the beginning as an inter-disciplinary intertwining of literature, history and psychology. His first book, Betzel Pardessim (In the shadow of Orchards, 1996) deals with two figures in the period of pre-state Israel (the "Yishuv"), the writer Moshe Smilansky and the poet Uri Zvi Grinberg. The book is primarily an analysis of the essays of Grinberg from the 1920s, and demonstrates  his radical-nationalistic tendencies even at that period, when he officially was a member of the Labor Movement.

Later on, Bassok's research focused upon two subjects: (1) the history of Jewish education among Polish Jewry in the period between the two world wars and (2) biographies of major Hebrew literary figures.

On the basis of his doctoral dissertation two books have been published:

• An anthology – with introductions and commentaries – of 20 works from the YIVO Institute’s collection of autobiographies of Jewish young adults written during the interwar period (in the framework of a series of contests): Youthful Plots: Autobiographies of Polish-Jewish Youth Between the Two World Wars, selected, edited and translated by Ido Bassok, Tel Aviv University, Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, and Beth Shalom Aleichem, Tel Aviv, 2011
• An adaptation of the research done for his dissertation entitled: A Revival of Jewish Youth: Family and Education among Polish Jewry Between the World Wars, The Zalman Shazar Center For Jewish History, Jerusalem, 2015.

In 2017 Bassok released a comprehensive biography of the major Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernichovsky, a founder of the New Hebrew Culture, entitled Of Beauty and Sublime Aware - Shaul Tchernichovsky: A Life, Carmel Publishing House, Jerusalem, 2017.

He completed a biography of Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000), the most important writer of the 'generation of Israel's statehood'. Bassok's biography will soon be released in Hebrew by Schocken Books.

Awards

• Prize of the Minister of Culture, Science and Sport for Translators, 2007
• The Leah Goldberg Prize for Translation (for the Hebrew translation of Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais), 2005
• Palme Académique – Title of knighthood from the government of France, 2003
• Prize for Literature from the Israeli Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers in Israel (for In the Shadow of Orchards), 1994
• Prize of the Minister of Culture for translators, 1994

Published works

Poetry

• Kehu Ze (Just Him), Jerusalem: Carmel, 2000.
• Teva Tove'a: Shirim (Natura Natirans: Poems), Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Ma'ariv, 1989
• Poema Politit, Jerusalem, 1978
• Comedia: Poema (Comedy: A Narrative Poem), Jerusalem,1976
• Asher Ha'susim Re'av: Shirim (Whom the Horses are his Friends: Poems), Tel Aviv: Hotzaat Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1974

Research

• Layofi venisgav libo er: Shaul Tchrenichovsky – Hayim (Of Beauty and Sublime Aware: Shaul tchernichovsky – A Life), Jerusalem: Carmel, 2017. Pg. 751.
• Tehiyat Hane'urim: Mishpaha vehinuch beyahadut Polin Beyn Milhamot Ha'olam (A Revival of Jewish Youth: Family and Education among Polish Jewry between the World Wars, Jerusalem: the Zalman Shazar Center for the Study of History of the Jewish People, 2015. pg. 357
• Alilot Ne'urim: Otobiographiot shel Bney No'ar Yehudim miPolin beyn Shtey Milhamot Ha'olam (Youthful Plots: Autobiographies of Polish-Jewish Youth Between the Two World Wars), Selected, edited and translated [introduced and annotated:] Ido Bassok, Scientific editor: Abraham Nowerstern. Beit Shalom Aleichem, The Zalman Shazar Center, The Center for the Study of Polish Jewry, Tel Aviv University, 2011. pg. 802
• Betzel Pardesim al adama Metzora'at (In the Shadow of Orchards on a Leprous Soil: Studies in the Literary and Essayistic Work of Moshe Smilansky and Uri Zvi Grinberg. Tel Aviv:  Hakibbutz HaMe'uchad Publishing House, 1996. Pg. 199

References

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