Literatureגרשון שקד

Gershon Shaked

Gershon Shaked was an Israeli scholar and critic of Hebrew literature who won the Israel Prize in 1993.

1929 to 2006Hebrew Narrative Fiction 1880-1980Coining "the Zionist super-plot"Research on S.Y. Agnon

Born: 8 July 1929, Vienna
Died: 28 December 2006, Tel Aviv
Occupation: writer, literary critic, university teacher, literary theorist
Education: Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Zurich

Gershon Shaked was born in 1929 in Vienna

Shaked was born Gerhard Mandel in Vienna in 1929. After the Anschluss in 1938, the Nazis arrested his father. In 1939 he was sent alone to the Land of Israel with Youth Aliyah, and his parents followed some months later and settled in Tel Aviv.

He lived at a youth boarding school in Pardes Hanna and later studied in Jerusalem. He finished Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv in 1948 and joined the IDF Artillery Corps that year. In 1950 he began studying literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a doctorate in 1964.

He taught in the Hebrew University's Department of Hebrew Literature from 1960, became a full professor in 1975, and chaired the department. His five volume work on Hebrew narrative fiction from 1880 to 1980 appeared between 1977 and 1998 and introduced the term "the Zionist super-plot." He studied writers such as Mendele Mocher Sforim and S.Y. Agnon and was a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

In 1989 his car and home door were set on fire after he signed a petition calling for talks with the Palestinians. He retired from the Hebrew University in 1997 and began teaching at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He died in Jerusalem in 2006 and was survived by his wife Malka and 2 daughters.