Baruch Kurzweil

Baruch Kurzweil (; 1907–1972) was a pioneer of Israeli literary criticism.

Biography Kurzweil was born in Brtnice, Moravia (now Czech Republic) in 1907, to an Orthodox Jewish family. Kurzweil emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1939. Kurzweil taught at a high school in Haifa, where he mentored the poet Dahlia Ravikovitch and psychologist Amos Tversky. He founded and headed Bar Ilan University's Department of Hebrew Literature until his death. He wrote a column for Haaretz newspaper.

Kurzweil committed suicide in 1972.

Kurzweil saw a writer's response to the "void" of modern existence as their most fundamental characteristic. A confrontational polemicist, Kurzweil famously wrote against Ahad Haam and Gershom Scholem, who he saw as attempting to establish secularism as the foundation of Jewish life.