Simon Bar Kokhba - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Since the end of the nineteenth century, Bar-Kochba has been the subject of numerous works of art (dramas, operas, novels, etc.), including:

  • Harisot Betar: sipur `al dever gevurat Bar Kokhva ve-hurban Betar bi-yad Adriyanus kesar Roma (1858), a Hebrew novel by Kalman Schulman
  • Bar Kokhba (1882), a Yiddish operetta by Abraham Goldfaden (mus. and libr.). The work was written in the wake of pogroms against Jews following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II of Russia.
  • Bar Kokhba (1884), a Hebrew drama by Yehudah Loeb Landau
  • The Son of a Star (1888), an English novel by Benjamin Ward Richardson
  • Le fils de l’étoile (1903), a French opera by Camille Erlanger (mus.) and Catulle Mendes (libr.)
  • Bar-Kochba (1905), a German opera by Stanislaus Suda (mus.) and Karl Jonas (libr.)
  • Rabbi Aqiba und Bar-Kokhba (1910), a Yiddish novel by David Pinsky
  • Bar-Kokhba (1929), a Hebrew drama by Saul Tchernichovski
  • Bar-Kokhba (1939), a Hebrew drama by Shmuel Halkin
  • Bar-Kokhba (1941), a Yiddish novel by Abraham Raphael Forsyth
  • A csillag fia (1943), a Hungarian drama by Lajos Szabolcsi
  • Steiersønne (1952), a Danish novel by Poul Borchsenius
  • Prince of Israel (1952), an English novel by Elias Gilner
  • Bar-Kokhba (1953), a Hebrew novel by Joseph Opatoshu
  • If I Forget Thee (1983), an English novel by Brenda Lesley Segal
  • Kokav mi-mesilato. Haye Bar-Kokhba (1988), a Hebrew novel by S.J. Kreutner
  • Ha-mered ha-midbar. Roman hstoriah mi-tequfat Bar-Kokhba (1988), a Hebrew novel by Yeroshua Perah
  • My Husband, Bar Kokhba (2003), an English novel by Andrew Sanders

Another operetta on the subject of Bar Kokhba was written by the Russian-Jewish emigre composer Yaacov Bilansky Levanon in Palestine in the 1920s.

John Zorn's Masada Chamber Ensemble recorded an album called Bar Kokhba, showing a photograph of the Letter of Bar Kokhba to Yeshua, son of Galgola on the cover.

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