Alphabetical by Author . Recently Released . Toby Crime . Toby Hebrew Classics Jewish & Israeli . The Republic of Letters

With the dramatic growth of interest in Hebrew literature over the past decadses, there has beena parallel growth in the need for English translations of the classics of Modern Hebrew literature. This is an area particularly poorly served: works are either expensive academic texts, or simply out of print.

The Toby Hebrew Classics attempts to fill the need with well edited, well produced texts, translated and introduced by leading experts. Some will be new editions of undeservedly out of print works; others will present previously unavailable texts.

Both students and individuals seeking the real undiscovered pleasures of this new literature in the classical yet thoroughly modernized language will welcome this new series.

A Book That Was Lost: Thirty-Five Stories: Expanded Edition, by S. Y. Agnon Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, S.Y. Agnon is considered the towering genius of modern Hebrew literature for his hard-edged modernism and soft-hued imagery. With this collection of stories, reissued in paperback and expanded to include 11 more Agnon classics, the English-speaking audience has, at long last, access to the rich and brilliantly multifaceted fictional world of one of the great writers of this century. These stories span the lifetime of a quintessential wandering Jew-born in Buczacz, Poland, living in Germany, and finally settling in Jerusalem - and they bring to life the full gamut of the modern Jewish experience in fiction... Publication date: September 2008   More Info...
Ancient Jewish Novels In the Greco-Roman period there arose among the Jews a new form for retelling Bible stories and for composing new religious stories—the novel. Written around the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls and New Testament, these worldly texts reveal the ambiguities and conflicts encountered by Jews of that period... Paperback, ISBN 978 1 59264 195 6, C.320 pages, US$14.95 Publication date: September 2007   More Info...
Miriam and Other Stories by M.Y. Berdichevsky Micha Josef Berdichevsky was the descendant of a line of Chassidic rabbis. In 1886 he began studying at the Volozhin Yeshiva. It was there that he began his literary career, infuriating his teachers. In 1892 he moved to Berlin, where he combined both Jewish and secular studies. Opposed to both Ahad Ha-Am and Herzl, and encouraged by his friends and other Hebrew writers there, by 1900 Berdichevsky had firmly established himself with the publication of nine volumes of articles and stories. Paperback: ISBN: 1-59264-066-4 8½"x5½" US$ 14.95 Publication date: May 2004   More Info...
Random Harvest and Other Novellas by Haim Nachman Bialik Bialik is celebrated as one of the leading figures in modern Jewish literature. Although most famous for his Hebrew poems, Bialik was also a master of short prose. Often expressing a realism and social awareness associated with the Russia of his youth, Bialik's stories showcase his gift for lyricism, symbolism and humor, captured in engaging vignettes of life in the Ukrainian countryside. Paperback: ISBN: 1-59264-094-X 8½"x5½" US$ 14.95 Publication date: February 2005   More Info...
Breakdown and Bereavement by Y.H. Brenner Yosef Haim Brenner published his first story in 1900. He immigrated to Palestine in 1909, and was killed by Arab rioters in 1921. Essayist, critic, commentator, translator, novelist and poet, Brenner was the most prominent literary figure in Pre-State Israel in his day, and in effect shifted the center of Hebrew literary activities away from Europe. Breakdown and Bereavement is set in a Jewish settlement in Palestine in the years before World War I. The hero, Hefetz, is typical Brenner, a wanderer in search of a spiritual homeland. ISBN 1 59264 067 2, paperback, $14.95 Publication date: May 2004   More info...
Out of the Depths & Other Stories by Y.H. Brenner Brenner was the most prominent literary figure in pre-State Israel in his day, and shifted the center of Hebrew literary activities away from Europe. This volume includes a large selection of Brenner’s shorter fiction, including Out of the Depths, One Year, From A to M, Impressions of a Journey, Nerves (translated by Hillel Halkin) and the fascinating Memories of Brenner, by the Hebrew poet David Shimoni. Paperback, ISBN 978 1 59264 135 2, C.500 pages, US$14.95, UK£9.99 CAN$19.95 Publication date: February 2008   More Info...
Whither? and Other Stories by M.Z. Feierberg "Whither captures the quandary of young men like Isaac Bashevis Singer, riven by conflicting emotions and wrenched between the choices of rejecting a world of rigid traditionalism or embracing the new secular Yiddish culture with its lack of a meaningful spiritual compass." - Seth Wolitz. Feierberg was only 25 when he died of a long illness. His first story was published when he was 22, and Whither? was published just prior to his death in 1899. Paperback: ISBN: 1-59264-068-0 8½"x5½" US$ 14.95 Publication date: May 2004   More Info...
Found in Translation: 20 Hebrew Poets - A Bilingual Edition Translated by Robert Friend The American-born Robert Friend, who died in Jerusalem in 1998, was a distinguished poet and translator. The present volume contains Friend’s versions of twenty Hebrew poets including Bialik, Rachel, and Uri Zvi Greenberg. Robert Friend’s close friend, the poet and translator Gabriel Levin, has edited the late poet’s uncollected translations into a collection Friend himself could not have bettered. Not only reflecting Friend’s taste and skills, the collection has a kind of serendipitous coherence as a representative anthology of twentieth century Hebrew poetry. Paperback: ISBN: 1592641741 Pages: c.250 US$14.95 UK£9.99 Publication date: October 2006   More Info...
Besides & Other Stories by Uri Nissan Gnessin Gnessin is recognized as one of the fathers of modern Hebrew literature. His stream-of-consciousness technique has greatly influenced contemporary authors. This is the first English language edition of many of his works, which bring together some of his finest writings, including Besides, The Time Before, Uproar and Sideways. ISBN 1 59264 093 1, paperback, $14.95 Publication date: November 2004   More info...
Selected Poetry & Drama by Lea Goldberg Lea Goldberg (1911-1970) was born in Russia, and came to Palestine in 1935. She was a highly successful poet, children's author, theater critic, translator and editor. In 1952, she established the Hebrew University's Department of Comparative Literature, and was later awarded the Israel Prize. This collection features a new translation by Rachel Tzvia Back of a large selection of Goldberg's poetry, as well at T. Carmi's classic translation of her only work for the theater, The Lady of the Castle. Paperback: ISBN: 1-59264-111-3, Pages: c.250, US$14.95 Publication date: May 2005   More Info...
Gates of Bronze by Haim Hazaz Paris in 1923" writes Robert Alter in the introduction, "hardly seems a likely place for the gestation of a novel written in Hebrew that would offer a searching panoramic vision of the shtetl's disintegration in the historical maelstrom of the Russian Revolution." Gates of Bronze is a prize-winning landmark of Hebrew fiction. In Hazaz's fictional village of Mokry-Kut, a dot on the vast landscape of Russia, the most portentous currents converge. It is a place where ideologies clash; where a way of life is painfully disintegrating... Paperback, ISBN: 1-59264-134-2 US$14.95 UK£9.99, Publication Date: October 2005   More Info...
The Sermon and Other Stories by Haim Hazaz This is a representative volume of stories by Hazaz, spanning his career and interests, from Shtetl life, to the spiritual life of the Yemenite community and his understanding of Zionism and Jewish history. The collection features an outstanding introduction by Professor Dan Miron of Columbia University. "No section of Hebrew literature has given such powerful, intelligent expression to the experience of beforehand, of almost, of wavering on the threshold, of movement between being and nothingness, as the wide-ranging work of Hazaz." Paperback, ISBN: 1-59264-121-0 US$14.95 UK£9.99, Publication Date: October 2005   More Info...
The Love of Zion by Abraham Mapu Mapu was one of the first, and finest, of the novelists to write in Hebrew. Heavily influenced by a wide range of sources--the Bible, the Romantic Novelists, and renewed pride in ancient Jewish history--his works recall the finest works of writers such as Flaubert and other great romantic novelists. His first novel, Ahavat Ziyyon (The Love of Zion), published in 1853, won immediate acclaim. Its sixteen editions attest to its continued popularity. Paperback, ISBN: 1-59264-129-6 US$14.95 Publication date: April 2006   More Info...
Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems by Ra'hel - A Bilingual Edition, translations by Robert Friend Ra’hel (Bluwstein) was born in Russia in 1890. She arrived in Palestine in 1909 and soon became a passionate kibbutznik. Her tightly woven Hebrew poetry expressed a zeal for the Land and nature, as well as the anguish of unrequited love, childlessness, and illness. Ra’hel’s timeless poems have become true Israeli classics, with many set to music. Flowers of Perhaps is the first English-language collection of this beloved Israeli poet. Publication date: May 2008   More Info...
8 Great Hebrew Short Novels selected and edited by Alan Lelchuk and Gershon Shaked This is an outstanding anthology comprising complete novellas by some of the finest Hebrew writers of the past century. S.Y.Agnon, Yosef Brenner, Uri Gnessin, Yitzhak Shami, David Fogel, Amos Oz, Yehoshua Kenaz and A.B. Yehoshua are all represented in newly revised translations. Selected and edited by Alan Lelchuk and Gershon Shaked, with an outstanding introduction by Alan Lelchuk, this is an indispensable volume for students of modern Hebrew literature. Paperback: ISBN: 1-59264-112-1, US$14.95 Publication date: March 2005   More Info...
Modern Hebrew Fiction by Professor Gershon Shaked Gershon Shaked’s history of modern Hebrew fiction traces the emergence and development of a literature “against all odds”—from its European roots in the 1880s, when it had neither a country nor a spoken language, to the flowering of a literary culture on Israeli soil from the founding of the State through the 1990s. The product of more than twenty years of research, it is unique in its scope, profiling four generations of Hebrew writers... Publication date: May 2008   More Info...
Three Jewish Philosophers This anthology brings together the most important works of three Jewish Philosphers of the Middle Ages. Selections of the writings of Philo of Alexandria, edited with an introduction by Hans Lewy; Saadia Gaon's Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, abridged, introduced and translated from the Arabic by Alexander Altmann; and Yehuda Halevi's influential Kuzari, abridged and with an introduction and commentary by Isaak Heinemann, with a selection of Halevi's poetry. Paperback: ISBN: 1-59264-147-4, US$14.95 Publication date: March 2006   More Info...
Married Life by David Vogel Written in Hebrew and published in Palestine in 1929, this is the only novel by Vogel, a poet who is presumed to have died at Auschwitz in 1944. Set in Vienna in the 1920s, the novel is a portrait of the disastrous marriage of one Rudolph Gurdweill, a poor Jewish intellectual, to a sadistic and anti-Semitic baroness. Her unfaithfulness and cruelty to the well-meaning but helpless and masochistic writer clearly represents the relationship between Vienna and its Jews... Paperback, ISBN 10: 1-59264-179-2 ISBN 13: 978-1-59264-179-6 C.300 pages, US$14.95 Publication date: May 2007   More Info...
Midnight Convoy & Other Stories by S. Yizhar “There is some of Yizhar in every writer who has come after him,” says Amos Oz. Throughout Yizhar’s work there is a strong moral sense, an expression of his generation’s ambivalence towards its pioneering heritage. Known for his powerful lyricism and reverence for nature, Yizhar’s sensory impressions and descriptions of Israel’s landscape are unmatched. This is the only available collection of Yizhar’s shorter fiction. Paperback, ISBN 10: 1-59264-183-0 ISBN 13: 978-1-59264-183-3 C.500 pages, US$14.95, UK£9.99 CAN$19.95 Publication date: May 2007   More Info...
Preliminaries by S. Yizhar After a silence of almost 30 years since his Stories of a Plain, Yizhar reasserted his position as the greatest living master of Hebrew prose with Preliminaries. Strongly autobiographical, Preliminaries progresses frame by frame, showing a boy growing up in a Jewish farming community in Palestine and in the young city of Tel Aviv between the years 1917 and 1930... Hardback: ISBN 10: 1-59264-190-3 ISBN 13: 978-1-59264-190-1 Pages: c.500 US$24.95 UK£14.99 CANADA $33.95 Publication date: May 2007   More Info...