Jewish-American Literature
Holocaust fiction | The 1970-80's Jewishness |
Christopher Columbus discovered America in times of Catholic witch-hunts in Europe. The same year when the first Europeans stepped on the new continent, the king and queen of Spain issued a law forcing Jews who refused to convert to Christianity to leave the country. Consequently, the first Jews from Spain and Portugal settled in New Amsterdam in September 1654. It was the beginning of a long history of Jewish immigration to America. In 1694, the 17th Council of Toledo made all Spanish Jews slaves, which proved that Spanish Jews who hoped for any tolerance from Catholic Royal family made a mistake.
The second important political event in Europe, which forced large numbers of Jews to leave their homeland, was assassination of Czar Alexander I in 1881. His son Alexander II started to openly persecute the Jews. Russian Jews already had a bitter experience from dealing with the Russian Orthodox Church and they started to leave for the New World in unprecedented numbers (Wise 36).
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Jewish immigrants joined the Protestant pilgrims and they viewed America as the promised land. With some exceptions, in contrast with history of African Americans, America offered what Jewish immigrants hoped for. Some of the first settlers of this era felt as they found Zion in America (Wise 37). Among some groups of Jewish immigrants there was a strong effort to become quickly the Americanized Jews. Interestingly, some of them quickly considered the fourth of July to be the second most important day of their calendar just after the Passover feast (Wise 38).
Immigration and settling in the new conditions is the first major topic in Jewish-American literature (JAL). Most of the first Jewish immigrants in America spoke Yiddish, therefore the first literature was written in the same language. Many Jewish immigrants liked the fact that their new lives in America were less religious than in their native European countries. Jews were able to choose one of several branches of Judaism from conservative Orthodoxy to modern and much less strict forms of American Judaism. One of the authors who celebrated this freedom of choice was Morris Wishnevsky. He was a follower of Jewish enlightenment called Haskalah (movement with a strong secular emphasis) and he represented the revolt against religion in JAL at the end of the 19th century (Carlson et al. 169). Probably the most important Yiddish writer of the beginning of the 20th century, who was also inspired by a new freedom in his life, was Abraham Cahan. In 1917 he wrote The Rise of David Lewinsky in English, which has been called by some critics “the most important novel written by a Jewish immigrant.” (Carlson at al. 502) Another important Jewish writers who wrote in Yiddish and who rejected religion and believed in pragmatism and realism in solving man’s problems, were Anzela Yezierska, James Oppenheim, Samuel Ornitz, and Ludwig Lewishon. Morris Rosenfeld was a Yiddish writer who represents so-called “sweatshop” poets - radicals of this era. The radicalism was the reaction to the reality of living in immigrant slums, exploitation of Jewish workers, and the desperation of Jewish masses (Carlson at al. 504).
The end of 1920’s and the beginning of the 1930’s was the time period when anti-Semitism in the United States was at its peak. The Depression of the 1930’s hit Jewish population in many aspects. The biggest problems Jewish immigrants faced were denial of work opportunities and housing. Many Jewish immigrants were not allowed to enter colleges, many of them were refused while applying for various jobs, just because of their ethnicity. Some homeowners and landlords refused to rent or sell to Jewish immigrants. (Heilman 61). In important writings of the 1920’s and ‘30s Anzia Yezierska (Bread Givers, Hungry Hearts), Mike Gold (Jews Without Money), and Henry Roth (Call it Sleep) paid attribute to the struggles of their parents and getting away from the ghetto, but they also rebelled against local traditions and their parents. They felt captured by they domineering but ineffectual fathers and loving but overly emotional mothers (Dickstein 26). Their bitter memories of small-mindedness and poverty sparked their imagination. During the depression of the 1930’s American Jewish writers were very much affected by the discontinuity of European Judaism with American Jewishness. They leaned toward the political left and saw their Jewishness as a secular condition (Wise 38). Many of them viewed socialism as the answer to the Jewish problems, such as Charles Reznikoff in By the Waters of Manhattan. They believed that Marxism not Judaism is the answer to degradation and immigrant slums. Some artists, however, didn’t see a problem in their background and they focused exclusively on their work. Probably the best example of this group is a poet Gertrude Stein, one of the most influential of the pre-World War II Jewish American poets and short-story writers (Carlson at al. 514).
The second unifying topic in history of JAL after immigration is dealing with the Holocaust. It took American-Jewish authors almost two decades to be able to reflect and make sense of one of the most terrible human tragedies of the world. In their works they tried to approach this topic from historical, theological, ethical, and aesthetic points of view in forms of diaries, psychosocial analyses, oral histories, memoirs, etc. The questions they often asked involved the nature of God, the covenant supposed to have been made between Chosen people, the nature of evil, and other implications of Jewish identity (Carlson at al. 530).
Literary critic Alan L. Berger divides Holocaust fiction into three groups: religious responses, secular responses, and symbolic responses. In the first group there are authors such as Arthur Cohen, Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Potok, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Elie Wiesel. These writers emphasize the nature of covenant between God and Jews and how that covenant can be reconciled with acts of Nazi Germany during WWII. The second, group there are writers such as Saul Bellow, Mark Helprin, Robert Kotlowitz, and Susan F. Schaeffer. These writers believed that it is the Holocaust itself, not the covenant that defines Jewish identity. The third group includes Norma Rosen, Phillip Roth, Leslie Epstain, Hugh Nissenson, and Bernard Malamud. These authors represent the symbolic responses and they used the least traditional approaches to the tragedy of Holocaust (Berger 188).
The works of a member of the last group of Holocaust writers Phillip Roth are excellent examples of the rejection of the traditional Judaism. Like their non-Jewish contemporaries and predecessors, Jewish writers in the last half of the 20th century contributed to the secularization of America and Jewish life as well as they created a distinction between Judaism and Jewishness. Many of the Jewish American writers together with Roth, opposed their Jewish heritage and treated it with disdain. Roth first expressed his attitude in Good-Bye, Columbus (1959). He did to the Jewish world what non-Jewish writers had already done to the Christian world for a century. “He secularized the sacred. He ridiculed the divine” (Dickstein 31). Phillip Roth together with many other Jewish-American writers, strongly contributed, not only to the secularization of Judaism and America, but also to de-mystification of the Jewish tradition (Dickstein 32). He showed that many members of Jewish community are much more interested in “blending” into American society rather than being organized members of their synagogues.
In the 1970’s and 80’s Jewishness is no longer an exotic ethnicity. At this time period Jewish-American writers approached many different topics from very traditional to very modern. From this point on, it is very hard to divide JAL into traditional categories. Some literary experts even suggest that JAL “Is just about extinct”, because of lack of unifying and traditional topics (Furman 4). Meanwhile, there are numerous literary critics and artists who are certain that modern JAL is still quite meaningful and fresh. This disagreement is reflected in a philosophical conflict between Phillip Roth and another Jewish American writer Irving Howe, who represents more traditional approaches. Irving Howe believes that the immigration, Judaism, and the Holocaust are the three biggest topics in JAL and that much of its inspiration comes from life’s sadness. He believes that moral burden is essence of our humanity. Phillip Roth, on the other hand, claims that moral burden leads to neurosis, anger, and painful comedy (Furman, 9). He believes in traditional Jewish sense of humor, irony, and self-criticism. He celebrates challenging of the old, criticizing comfortable materialism, ruthless careerism and stiff traditions. In short, Roth, who is hated by some (he was even called Jewish anti-Semite) and celebrated by others, wants contemporary Jewish American authors to keep looking and moving ahead.
One of the most famous Jewish American writers of the post-war period was a poet Allen Ginsberg. He is a good example of an artist who left a traditional path and who turned into Zen Buddhism. He was a member of the Beat Generation who fought for sexual liberation (gay movement) and against an establishment of the 60’s and 70’s (opposed the Vietnam War)(Wade 149). Among other important writers of this time period there are: Joseph Heller (Catch-22), Erica Jong (Fear of Flying), Bernard Malamud, who is still writing, (The Tenants, Idiots First, Rembrandt’s Hat), Cynthia Ozick who is also still writing (Bloodshed and Three Novellas, Art and Ardor, Fame and Folly), Chaim Potok (The Promise, The Chosen, My Name is Asher Lev, I am the Clay) who also published in The New York Times Magazine, and J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye) (Carlson at al. 505).
One of the literary experts who believe in the future of JAL is an author of a book Contemporary Jewish American Writers and the Multicultural Dilemma: The Return of the Exiled (2000) Andrew Furman. He suggests that a renaissance in JAL in not a recovery of traditional Judaism, but transformation of it, as contemporary Jews in America (now truly integrated into mainstream society) explore through their works ways of establishing a meaningful Jewish ethos in a secular country (Furman, 9). He is fascinated (similarly to Phillip Roth) with potential of young Jewish-American writers. In his article The Exaggerated Demise of the Jewish-American Writer he introduces numerous talented writers of the 1990’s and the beginning of the 21st century such as: Nathan Englander (For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, 1999), Steve Stern (The Wedding Jester, 1999), Allegra Goodman (The Family Markowitz, 1996 National Book Award finalist), Melvin Jules Bukiet (After, 1996), Rebecca Goldstein (Mazel, 1995), and Jonathan Rosen (Talmud and the Internet, 2000). These authors are opening wide variety of topics: irony toward the ultra-Orthodox in America and Israel, satire of contemporary Jewish mores, theological imaginations, the struggling of Jewish women over the centuries etc. Furman believes that “We should rejoice that we had a Bellow, but read and enjoy young Jewish novelists on their own terms” (Furman, 9).
It is fascinating how long and how challenging journey the Jewish-American writers have gone. It is also fascinating how wide variety of the topics, from Orthodox religion to modern feminism, they have approached. For me, it is hard to imagine that there is no future in JAL. It is especially hard because of such rich history of JAL and because of level of difficulties Jewish American writers have overcame on their way to presence. It is also clear that most of the modern literary experts strongly believe in the future of JAL.
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Jewish-American Literature
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Last updated:
10 July 2003
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