It is always heartening to discover that long-term projects still exist in Israel, especially if they are in the area of literature. Currently quite an ambitious project is getting under way: creation of a lexicon of Hebrew literature in which there are entries on Israeli writers from the establishment of the state to today. Those responsible for the project include the staff at Heksherim: The Research Center for Jewish and Israeli Culture and Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), headed by Prof. Yigal Schwartz, and editor Zissi Stavi, who for more than 30 years edited the literary supplement of the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

The project, costing about NIS 2 million, is slated for completion in four years and is being funded by the Caesarea Foundation (established by the Rothschild family, the main supporter of the Heksherim Center) and BGU. At this time three volumes are planned, the first of which is scheduled for publication in about two years. In each volume there will be three kinds of entries: brief, middle length and long. The entries will be written by both veteran and young literary researchers.

Schwartz is chairman of the editorial board of the lexicon, and Stavi is editor in chief. The editorial board is composed of Avner Holzman, Dan Laor, Avidov Lipsker, Iris Parush, Nissim Calderon and Yaya Shaham. The producer of the lexicon is Matan Hermoni, a doctoral student at BGU.

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A comprehensive lexicon of this sort has long been needed, as currently there is no up-to-date lexicon of Hebrew literature (apart from those published on the Internet). Two literary lexicons have been published in Hebrew since the establishment of the state: "The Dictionary of Contemporary Literature, Hebrew and World" in 1959, which was edited by Avraham Shaanan, a Bar-Ilan University professor, in one volume, and G. Karsel's "The Lexicon of Hebrew Literature in Recent Generations" in two volumes, published in 1965. In addition, there is "The Ofek Lexicon of Children's Literature," which Uriel Ofek wrote in 1985.

"The idea for the lexicon has been stirring in my mind for quite a while," says Stavi. "At first I thought of updating Karsel's lexicon, but after I saw there that Amos [Oz] has written two books and A.B. Yehoshua has published one collection of stories, I decided that it was impossible and also not sensible to update this lexicon. In addition, this was the work of one person, written in a certain style and in accordance with Karsel's personal selection, and in his list of writers there were also very many who have disappeared and whom no one knows."

The new lexicon is not planned as a survey of Hebrew literature, however, but rather of Israeli literature. This means that figures like Haim Nahman Bialik, Shaul Tchernikovsky, Joseph Haim Brenner or Uri Gnessin will not appear in it. The new volume has certain chronological boundaries - that is, it will include writers most of whose work was written after the establishment of the State of Israel.

"There is an ideological position here that is hard to evade," says Yigal Schwartz. "Arabs who write in Hebrew or in Arabic are part of the fabric of our culture. Hebrew literature will have changed completely within a few years because of the Russian writers who are living and writing here. To ignore them would be like ignoring the literature of the transit camps in the 1950s. We've already made that mistake once and there is no need to repeat it. The lexicon will cover writers and poets, the bulk of whose work was written after 1948, including S. Yizhar, Haim Hazaz and Natan Alterman. I would be glad to do a lexicon that starts with the Bible and goes to this day, but first it is necessary to look at the place where we live now and research it and not ignore what is happening around us."

A lexicon like this has aspirations to reshape the Israeli canon.

Schwartz: "That's right, though not only in the sense of who goes in and who does not but also who will receive a main entry and who gets a secondary entry, and whether we will publish one volume of writers, one of poets and one of critics, or all of them together. It's impossible to do this without leaving a certain fingerprint. The time has come not only to talk about multiculturalism, but also to do it."

Entry criteria

The definition of "Israeli writers" is writers who live and write in Israel. The lexicon will also include writers who write in languages other than Hebrew, if they published after 1948, their work is considered of high quality, they are permanent residents of Israel and at least some of their work has been translated into Hebrew and is known to readers.

The entries in the lexicon will cover playwrights, essayists, translators, critics, editors and influential literary figures. People like the late editor Ehud Zmora, or like the founder of the largest chain of bookshops in the country, Ari Steimatzky, will likely appear as entries in the lexicon.

How many of the writers of the younger generation of today will be included in the lexicon?

Stavi: "We will use our judgment and our common sense. During all my years of working in editing, I was a pluralistic editor and I will also be one in the lexicon."

How are you going to compete with similar lexicons that are published on the Internet?

"The difference between this lexicon and the Interent will be in the quality of the editors, the reliability and the accuracy. There are still advantages to a bound volume. On the Internet there is a lot of material, but it is not equal in value to an entry that an expert on literature writes. In addition, I hope that our lexicon will also have an online edition, and in that way we will also enter the Internet."