CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION TO JEWISH AMERICAN NOVEL
The Jewish-American literature speaks about the dreams and aspirations of the
immigrant Jewish people, passionately seeking a homeland of their own. It draws
heavily from the immigrant experience and memories. It gives an account of the
struggle between fathers and sons and their ideologies due to the modern revolution
and describe the lives of the people caught up between past and present, religion and
freedom, and about seeking transcendence through humanism and not by God. It
speaks about the individual in the face of duality, history, suffering and ultimately
transcendence.
The Jewish-American literature deals with the individual suffering and the
dualities which include acceptance and rejection of God. It corresponds to Romantic
literature as opposed to Classical, and it is spontaneous, self-assertive, egotistical, and
undisciplined. The transformation of the self, which is a basic, integral ingredient of
an individual, gained importance in Jewish literature. The trials and exactions helped
the Jewish-American writers to express their views in a right manner. Jewish writers
in their uncertainty, alarm, and protean changeability are indeed heralds of the
literature which communicates the strange experiences of their people, caught up in a
strange world.
American Jewish writing began with prominent figures like Emma Lazarus
(1849–87), Abraham Cahan (1860-1951) and Anzia Yezierska (1885-1970). All of
them were concerned with the themes of immigration, identity, and cultural
assimilation. Collections of Lazarus, Songs of a Semite (1882) have been regarded as
the first important poem in Jewish American Literature. A new wave of fictional
writers gave a renewed dimension to the realm of literature. Writers like Cynthia
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Ozick, Chaim Potok, Grace Paley, Edward Harris Wallant, Tillie Olsen, Bernard
Malamud, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, E.L.Doctorow, Erica Jong,
and Paul Auster including Philip Roth captivated the hearts of many readers. Mary
Antin’s highly acclaimed and popular novel, The Promised Land talks about the
period’s concern with the past, present and future. Leslie Fiedler’s To the Gentiles and
Irving Howe’s The World of Our Fathers are other classics in Jewish American
literature. The thought provoking writings triggered a chain reaction to the corners of
the world. The major themes revolved around cultural assimilation, anti-Semitism,
holocaust, Zionism, alienation, identity, religion, and freedom.
Talking about the American-Jewish writers, Donald Daiches says, ‘The
American-Jewish writer has been liberated to use his Jewishness in a great variety of
ways, to use it not aggressively or apologetically, but imaginatively as a writer
probing the human condition’ (qtd. in RPR 19). The ‘trio’ of Jewish Literature Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth made a mark in American Jewish
literature. They have received some of the prestigious awards in the field of literature
and amongst these three writers Solotareff identified the theme of suffering leading to
purification: ‘There is the similar conversion into the essential Jew, achieved by acts
of striving, sacrificing, and suffering for the sake of some fundamental goodness and
truth in one’s self that has been lost and buried’(qtd. in RPR 18).
Since 1654, there has been a constant Jewish presence in America as groups
from Spain and Portugal came as settlers. However, the major Jewish immigration
took place in the 19th century where an estimated 2.5 million Jews migrated from the
Eastern Europe. American Jews form one of the components in the multi-ethnic
mosaic of the United States constituting more than two percent of the American
population. The Jewish population is defined as enlarged Jewish population which has
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three different types of belonging. The first group is Core Jews (CJ), which includes
those who are either born to Jewish parents or converted to Judaism. The second
group includes people with a Jewish Background (JB), who are born or raised as Jews
but claim identity with another religion. The third group includes Non-Jews (NJ) who
doesn’t have Jewish background but reside in households with at least one Jewish
person. The core Jewish population (CJ), comprises of different types of groups
namely, Jews by Religion (JR), who follow Judaism as their religion; Ethnic Jews
(EJ), who claim themselves as Jews but do not have religious preferences, Jews by
Choice (JBC), who are either converted to Judaism or claim to be Jewish personally,
The people who identify themselves as Jews by religion (JR), have ideological
preferences for one of the three major denominations in America, such as Orthodox
(OR), Conservative (CN), and Reform (RF). The ideological orientation defines the
people in terms of religious identity and provides information about the secular,
social, and cultural compatibility of Jews in the American society.
The tradition of Jewish writing in Yiddish has conquered a remarkable place
till now starting from the 19th century. When one thinks of Jewish culture, the few
things that come to one’s mind would be Torah, Yiddish, shtetl (Jewish town), shul
(Jewish synagogue), ghetto, family, religion, persecution, and Zion. The Yiddish past
and the Yiddish tradition play a significant role in the retention of Jewish society. It
has played a crucial role in the survival of Jewish society since ages. Yiddish was the
everyday language for most of the Jews in Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Latvia,
Lithuania, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) for over 1000 years. It is known
as a language of Holocaust victims, a language of mourning and commemoration. The
elegant usage of Yiddish phrases indicates one’s knowledge of and connection to the
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roots of Jewish culture. Yiddish embodies Jewish fortitude and encapsulates modern
Jewish history.
Education played a significant role in safeguarding the culture of the Jewish
community since ages. It became a major factor for the Jewish survival around the
world. The survival of the Jews depended upon the internal solidification of the
Jewish community. The major focus of Jewish education was on inculcating a sense
of belonging to the past, the historic people, and sharing the future of their historical
people. Despite of dispersion, the Jews as historical people were united with the core
of cultural traditions, inner sense of equality, equanimity which helped them to face a
hostile world. The persistent struggle for survival and stabilization of the Jews, paved
a way for some of the landmark achievements in the framework of Western
civilization.
The first phase in Jewish education was the middle age and the biblical period
in which the sacred books became indispensable tools of education for children. The
Jewish sacred book Torah imparted the core of education. The biblical
commandments were put forth to practice, ‘And thou shall teach them diligently unto
thy children’ (Deut. 6:7), and ‘Hear, my son, the instruction of thy father and forsake
not the teaching of thy mother’ (Prov. 1: 8). In the biblical period, the education was
part of religion and had strong roots in it. The Talmudic era was the second phase of
Jewish education overlapping with the biblical period starting from the fourth century
B.C to the end of the fifth century A.D.
The education of this period marks a nostalgic longing for returning to the
homeland. The development of the Talmud, the central text of Rabbinic Judaism,
consisting of commentaries, interpretations, and codifications of the Law, is an
indication of Jewish attachment to their faith. The holy book of Torah became a
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portable fatherland in exile with Talmud serving as a fence around it. In the period of
dispersion, the Jewish people were connected with the book more than any of their
land, and it became an important source for the unification and retention of their
culture. The medieval period of Jewish education could be approximately traced to
sixth century to the end of the eighteenth century. The Middle Age of the Jews came
to an end by the culmination of the Enlightenment in Europe. The Jews of this period
were widely dispersed throughout the Western world and isolated themselves in their
local communities. It was a transitional stage for the Jewish community, torn between
the memories of the glorious past and a Messianic belief of a bright future, leading
towards a fictional world.
The aggravated persecution of Jews in the Western world accentuated the
nostalgic intellectual feeding upon the past and the romantic elaboration of the hopes
for the future. The remnant of Israel and its survival became crucial for the realization
of the Messianic hope. The Rabbis and their edicts became a guiding tool for the
dispersed Jews and played a significant role at the time of crisis. The development of
an educational system became necessary for the Jews, as they were strangers to
European culture, differing in descent and occupations. Religion was the central
criterion for the Jewish way of life and they always considered themselves as the
bearers of the civilization. In a way, the rabbinical tradition became a source for the
Jewish living and flourished in the northern and eastern Europe.
The capitalistic revolution in Europe had a profound impact on the European
society and on the Jewish society. In the course of time, the Jewish education began to
liberalize, opening the doors to the new atmosphere and assimilation, weakening the
ancient religious traditional culture. The Jewish people started to migrate to capitalist
countries and urban areas leading to proletarianization. The Jewish proletarianization
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and the associated influences of class consciousness, socialism, trade-unionism
weakened the traditional religious culture and the old structure of the religiously
sponsored education system. The nationalist, particularly Zionist sections of the
Jewish population were in need of a distinct Jewish education for the young children.
Cheder became the traditional type of school among the Jews in medieval times, and
later on Talmud Torah, a modern consolidated school, modeled on Cheder came into
existence.
Talmud Torah’s elementary education was in Hebrew, the scriptures
(especially the Pentateuch), and the Talmud (and Halakhah), which was meant to
prepare them for Yeshiva, for Jewish education at a high school level. This form of
education became an unique medium for the continuation of the Jewish religion from
generation to generation, for the cultural unity of Jews in a hostile world. It did not
support sport or recreation as they were treated as distractions by the pious Jews, the
puritans. Intellectual acrobatics took up the place of games in these schools to develop
the mind in the subtleties of Talmudic casuistry. The Jewish education confined the
Jewish children to Cheder from fourth or fifth year onwards, unlike the Christian
education system, which couldn’t show enthusiasm to such compulsory education till
the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Matmid was the ideal product of this system in
which the young man devotes himself to the study of Hebrew literature, daily without
discontinuity. The Jewish education changed according to the needs and
circumstances of the Jewish society. The system nurtured a consciousness of a
common past and destiny along with the transmission of knowledge and skills.
Between 1945 and 1965, the American literature underwent enormous change,
in which, the Jewish intellectuals, writers, and critics played an important role. The
influence of the European trends brought the change and the American literature was
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‘Europeanized.’ The Jewish journals Partisan Review and Commentary became the
vehicles of a new sensibility. Jews, who were considered as the people of the holy
book, became people of all textual forms, because of the enlightenment. The
improvement of economic standards of Jews in America helped them to enter into the
artistic and intellectual sphere. The rise of the Jewish novel as an age of maturation
aimed at social growth and balance. The Jewish literature got influenced by the
intellectual migration where the refugees of Hitler and Stalin migrated to America.
The new writings, with the intellectual migration, rendered a new spirit and tone that
was different from the Jewish writing produced before the World War II.
Before the war, the Jewish writers like Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska,
Mike Gold, Daniel Fuchs, and S.N. Bihrman wrote novels and plays in a native
realistic mode. The Dangling Man (1944) written by Saul Bellow appeared to be a
new writing at hand and received appreciation for its inner-directed, controlled, and
self-conscious spirit. Bernard Malamud, Isaac Rosenfeld, Norman Mailer, Meyer
Levin, Mike Gold, Delmore Schwartz, Paul Goodman and Lionel Trilling were seen
grappling with the intricacies of the human spirit and the subtleties of literary form.
American literature between 1945 and 1965 was able to see a new writing called
‘Renaissance’ which denotes resurrection, renewal and rebirth. The literature dealt
with the crisis and conversion, death and rebirth, turmoil and confusion.
The Renaissance writings are the testimony of the writer’s conversions. The
Jewish writers and the social thinkers of the postwar generation lived in the state of
flux, social unrest, and they always had a passion for revolution in the 1930’s. As the
ideal socialist order failed in the Soviet Union, the writers and the intellectuals were
plunged into confusion of how to preserve their iconoclasm and bury their
revolutionism. In a struggle to resolve the dilemma, the ideas of the common man
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changed making a profound impact on their thinking and literature. The American
Marxism which had critical intelligence and the creative impulse paved a way for
creativity and intellectual power in literature. The Jewish writers of this era
abandoned old faiths to some extent, and the writers who could succeed were not the
ones who changed their minds, but the ones who got transformed by the ordeals of
redemption and conversion.
Isaac Rosenfeld’s Passage from Home (1946), Lionel Trilling’s The Middle of
the Journey (1947), Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Allen
Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), Norman Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself (1959) and
Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) became a releasing agent for the American
imagination. These novels focused on the need for American ethic of selfimprovement and they are considered as allegories of crisis and change. Augie March
is a classic conversion book with testimony to a new faith and it is a testament of
being an independent American, by accepting terms and conditions, separating itself
from Russification.
The duality of American Jewish fiction as a product of American culture and
a reaction to the same culture gave a way to marginality and alienation. However in
this conflict, the halakhic demands did not yield to the lure to assimilation. The
cultural clash between the American expectations and the Jewish demands frequently
resolved in favour of the former, nevertheless with mixed feelings. The American
Jewish fiction of the seventies followed Americanism and not the traditional Jewish
halakha as its standard. Hugh Nissenson, Arthur A. Cohen and Cynthia Ozick wrote
novels with a concern for theology and ritual awareness giving a distinct literary
cadence to the Jewish fiction. Ruth Wisse termed these works as ‘Act two’ of
American Jewish Fiction (Wisse 41).
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The American Jewish fiction of the eighties grappled with the Jewish problem
caught up between the covenant and chosenness. This fiction involves a strong
theological imagination as the writers deal with classical texts and traditional figures.
The myth and mysticism of Judaism became a material for imagination and gave a
new sense to theology. Apart from Shoah, the concern of the eighties is the Jewish
identity, Jewish authenticity, and the ambiguous relationship between God and man.
The American Jewish fiction of the eighties had established novelists such as Cynthia
Ozick, Chaim Potok, Tova Reich, Hugh Nissenson, Anne Roiphe, including Thomas
Friedmann, Allegra Goodman, Rhoda Lerman, and Steve Stern.
The fiction of the eighties observed some of the significant works by the
second generation writers like Carol Ascher, Barbara Finkelstein, Thomas Friedmann,
and Julie Salamon. The writings have a concern for Holocaust and deal with the
stories of children of survivors. These novels explore the meaning of being Jewish
from the Jewish perspective than from the perspective of American culture. They deal
with the issues like the Jewish family relations, State of Israel, role of memory and
history. The novels re-examine the Jewish orthodoxy, the relationship between Shoah
and the Jewish diaspora, and the role of gender in Jewish practice. Scholarly studies
of the eighteenth century, dealt with the themes ranging from Jewish humor to the
Shoah, and from the Jewish American cinema to literary criticism.
Orthodoxy played a vital role in American Jewish fiction and most of the
novelists were preoccupied with it. Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky
(1917) and Anzia Yezierska's The Bread Givers (1925) are two novels in which the
protagonists continue to view orthodoxy as the standard of authentic Jewish existence.
Though orthodoxy persisted as a driving force, the traditional Judaism was either
derided or ignored. Thomas Friedmann in his article says, ‘. . . the novels of Cahan
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(and) Yezierska . . . are ethnic Jewish works, not merely because characters are
Jewish, but also (if not rather), because they concern themselves with the uniquely
Jewish issues of Covenant and of observance’ (Friedmann, pp. 69-70). Some of the
novels of eighties advocate neo-orthodoxy which deals with the impact of feminism
on Judaism. The novels deal with the themes of chosenness (Israel as an am segullah),
favorable portrayal of rabbis, and scholarly Jews. One of the important aspects of
these novels is to enlighten the Jewish community of their forgotten culture by giving
detailed information about their rituals. Cynthia Ozick’s classic story, The Pagan
Rabbi and Other Stories (1983), enunciates the unbridgeable gap between Hebraic
and Hellenistic cultural paradigms which theologically means espousal of covenant,
acceptance of monotheism, and rejection of idolatry. Tshuva which means repentance
plays a significant role in Jewish literature.
Another significant aspect in Jewish literature is the role of holy covenant.
Nessa Rapoport's Preparing for Sabbath (New York, 1981) deals with the story a
Canadian Jewish woman Judith Raphael and her feminist attempt to find meaning in
orthodox Judaism. In order to attain spiritual growth, Judith goes through various
stages of life. Anne Roiphe's novel, Lovingkindness (1987) deals with the struggle of
the soul, the breakdown of the family, the replacement of God with psychiatry, the
difficulty of feminism, and the crumbling of religious vitality. Roiphe and Nessa
Rapoport employ Bratslaver Hasidism as a cipher of Jewish orthodoxy. According to
Roiphe, Orthodox Judaism can exist only in Israel. Allegra Goodman's collection of
short stories, Total Immersion (1989) depicts orthodoxy as the outpost of Jewish
authenticity.
Cynthia Ozick and Isaac Bashevis Singer are the literary champions of Jewish
orthodoxy. The Polish born Singer’s novel, The Penitent (1983) caught the attention
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of American audience. It deals with the theme of Orthodox Jew and adherence to the
laws of Shulhan Arukh. The essays of Cynthia Ozick, Art and Ardor (1983) and
Metaphor and Memory (1989) argued for liturgical literature and a rigorous Jewish
model. Liturgical literature is morally didactic which speaks with a communal voice
and acknowledges the holy God of history. Ozick’s The Cannibal Galaxy (1983)
deals with a French Jewish Holocaust survivor and America’s Jewish amnesia.
Another distinguishing characteristic of the eighties is literatures engagement with
Jewish theology.
The writings of eighties deal with messianism, kabbalah, Midrash, rabbinic
teachings, search for redemption, significance of covenant, human encounter with
divinity. The imaginative theology deals a variety of themes with humour and
tragedy. Cynthia Ozick’s 1982 ‘Puttermesser and Xanthippe,’ and Rhoda Lerman's
1989 God's Ear are examples of humorous and poignant tales. Nissenson’s award
winning novel The Tree of Life (1985) and his collection of stories and journals The
Elephant and My Jewish Problem (1988) demonstrate the writer’s theological point of
view. Nissenson contends that a writer must emphasize religious impulse and says
that the religious impulse resides in compassion. For Nissenson, the central problem
for Jewish theological imagination is evil. On one hand, he insists that a writer needs
to pursue religious impulse in the face of evil. Norman Kotker's novel Learning About
God (1988) addresses divinity and its darker side. Tova Reich's Master of the Return
(1988) deals with the story of an old Jew longing for redemption in Israel. Steve
Stern’s collection of short stories Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven (1986) deals with the
subject of kabbalah and demonism. Susan A. Handelman's The Slayers of Moses: The
Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (1982) describes
the influence of Rabbinic tradition.
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Tova Mirvis’s The Outside World (2004) is a moving and gently humorous
story which deals with the varieties of insularity, faith, acceptance and reconciliation.
The novel plunges deeply into the daily duties and private soul-searching of its devout
characters. The rabbis play a significant role and take a center-stage in Jewish
literature. They play a significant role in Sydney Nyburg’s novel The Chosen People
(1917) and Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep (1934). Jonathan Rosen’s Joy Comes in the
Morning (2004) presents contemporary fiction that marks a radical change, featuring
women rabbis. Will Eisner, the great American master of comics in his graphic novels
Fagin the Jew (2003) and The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion (published shortly after Eisner’s death in 2005) uses caricature to combat antiSemitism. Eisner’s later reassessed his approach to self-disclosure as he grappled with
matters of Jewish identity.
The writings of Norma Rosen, Roberta Kalechofsky, Joanne Greenberg,
Thomas Friedmann, and Cynthia Ozick made an effort to define Jewishness from
historical context. In order to surmount the perils of Jewish culture, they began to
perceive the inter-connectedness of Jewish life and dealt with the collective survival
problems. The aspect of Cabbalistic universe and the infusion of all things with
divinity got prominence in the art of seventies. Thomas Friedmann is a Hungarian
Jewish writer whose orthodox upbringing and studies in a hasidic yeshiva reflect in
his novel Hero Azriel: A Collection of Tales. Children are inducted into ‘Yiddishkeit’
by means of stories. Cynthia Ozick's Five Fictions and Norma Rosen's At the Center
are other two significant books.
The African American other and starkly contrasting visions of the relationship
between Jews and blacks have been dealt in Malamud's ‘Angel Levine,’ ‘Black Is My
Favorite Color,’ and The Tenants (1971), and Saul Bellow's The Dean's December
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(1982). Jay Neugeboren’s novels - Big Man (1966), Corky's Brother (1969), and
Sam's Legacy (1974) deal with the African American other. Lore Segal's Her First
American (1985), Grace Paley's ‘Zagrowsky Tells,’ and Joanna Spiro's ‘Three
Thousand Years of Your History . . . Take One Year for Yourself,’ Rebecca
Goldstein's The Mind-Body Problem (1983) and her most recent collection of stories
Strange Attractors (1993), and Robin Roger's ‘The Pagan Phallus’ shows that
creativity of American Jewish writers is stimulated by the inter-connection of Jews
and African Americans. Leslie A. Fiedler’s Fiedler on the Roof: Essays on Literature
and Jewish Identity (1991) is a collection of American Jewish literature, dealing with
the American Jewish writers and significant aspects of Jewish literature.
The Jews were alleged to be Christ-killers and in 1870’s the term antiSemitism got coined in Western Europe. The term gradually came into usage in the
United States and some of the American Jews wanted to refer themselves as an
Israelite or Hebrew rather than a Jew. There was confusion in defining a Jew, as some
treated him as a member of a religious body and the others labeled him as a person
with a nationality, a race with a lack of consistency and precision. The discriminated
Jew saw himself as a victim of religious bigotry. In the European countries of Poland,
Italy, Czechoslovakia, and France the Jews were the first targets. The Nazis were the
biggest enemy of the Jews and it was evident in their attitude. For the people fighting
against the Nazis, an equation was formed: The Enemy Nazi = Anti-Semite. They not
only became the enemies of Jews, but also a threat to the safety and security of the
entire nation. The atrocious Nazi racialism was unmasked by some of the political
scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, biologists and the historians. In an address
delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on Jewish Relations, Koppel S.
Pinson in ‘Antisemitism in the Post-War World’ says:
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The Nazis made anti-Semitism not only a matter of internal domestic
policy; it became the ideological cornerstone of their entire foreign and
world policy. They identified all their enemies as Jews or Jewcontrolled. Wherever they penetrated and spread their evil power, the
first step was the introduction of Nazi racial and anti-Semitic
legislation and the process of liquidation of Jews. (99)
All the churches, including the churches of the United Nations were influenced by the
Nazi dissemination of racial anti-Semitism. As the anti-Semitic campaign continued,
the Protestants and Catholics realized that the fight is not merely against the Jews, but
against Christianity on the whole. Jacques Maritain called anti-Semitism a
‘psychopathically disguised Christophobia,’ and ‘Nazi anti-Semitism’ (qtd.in.Pinson
101). Nazi anti-Semitism became the ordeal of the civilization and Nazism became a
synonym for anti-Semitism, which had no humanistic aim, but was only keen on the
annihilation of Jews, and the image of God. The term ‘Judeo-Christian basis’ (101),
itself speaks about the awareness of Christian leaders, of the determined policy of the
Nazis, to carry out the assault on the Jews in the most cruel and brutal fashion.
The Socio-religious changes in the American Jewish life have been equivalent
to the changes in American Jewish literature and film. The assimilation of American
Jews has become a dynamic subject for exploration by the American Jewish writers,
despite of problems with Jewish identification. The Jewish artists such as Bernard
Malamud, Saul Bellow, Woody Allen, and Philip Roth established Jewish film and
fiction as a great testament of American expression. For a long time, the angst-ridden
assimilation of American Jews had been depicted by the sensitive, funny, brilliant,
neurotic Jewish men, who loved and hated the American culture. The American Jews
matured in the late 1970s and 1980s, and the assimilatory struggle began to lose its
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importance. The American Jewish writers in order to deal with the transformation of
the Jewish identity weaved new elements into their work such as exploration of the
State of Israel, and the impact of the Holocaust. In The Counterlife, Roth exposes the
Zionistic attitudes of the Jewish society towards the state of Israel. It gives an
evidence of his affinity to the promised land: ‘they are not throwing stones at Israelis.
They are not throwing stones at ‘West Bank’ lunatics. They are throwing stones at
Jews. Every stone is an anti-Semitic stone. That is why it must stop!’ (TC 125)
In contemporary America, anti-Semitism survives, but without the virulence
of former times. Hostility towards Christianity became a foundation for AntiSemitism and the Christocide lessons in the churches created an unpleasant
atmosphere. The Jews served as ready targets during the times of economic crisis,
social stress, national stress or personal anxiety. Jews were always treated as the alien,
the other, and the Great Depression, The Civil War, and the World War II increased
the anti-Jewish behavior. Anti-Semitism slowly started to mix with nativism and antiimmigration as ostracism and quota system emerged. During the World War II, the
American born Jews were galvanized following the creation of the state of Israel and
the Holocaust became ordinary. There was a gradual change in the American society
as some of the Jewish liberals started to support the civil rights movement and antiSemitism slowly became unfashionable. As the Jewish Americans eagerly waited for
a change, by the end of 1962, the practice of restricting Jews from American resorts
virtually disappeared giving a new hope to them.
In the view of Christian-Jewish relations, Leonard Dinnerstein in AntiSemitism in America says that, ‘it may take several generations of promoting respect
for, and acceptance of Jews . . . before centuries-old beliefs are eradicated’ (227).
Race and ethnicity have been a domineering factor in the making of a history. Most of
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political situations have changed the face of the history in the name of race itself.
Jews were also considered to be a race, a biologically different human group,
characterized by a combination of particular physical and behavioral traits. However,
the claim proved to be wrong as these traits were found even in other races. Jews were
also socially identified by a certain physical characteristics such as speech, manners,
postures, gestures, expressions etc. They were brought up in a Jewish family,
characterized by a specific Jewish atmosphere, which helped them in the formation of
certain emotional and intellectual characteristics. The Jewish nationalistic attitudes
can be traced to the Hellenistic period. The attitudes can be traced to the biblical story
of Moses and the deliverance of God’s chosen people from the land of Egypt, to the
promised land of Israel.
The nation and the Promised Land are of great significance to the Jewish
society, as they have continuously faced challenges throughout their history to acquire
it. The Jewish people living in America and other countries have their nationalistic
attitudes which differ in various levels. Gustav Ichheiser in, ‘The Jews and
Antisemitism,’ says that there are three types of Jewish nationalism based on the
nationalistic attitudes on two different levels - unconscious motivations and conscious
manifestations. He defines them as:
1). The ‘conscious Jewish nationalism’ - Zionism. In this case the
conscious manifestations of the nationalism is an adequate expression
of the unconscious motivation. 2). The ‘non-Jewish nationalism of the
Jews’. In this case the Jews identify themselves with the nationalism of
one of the adopted countries. 3). The ‘unconscious nationalism of the
Jews through rationalization of the dilemma of not having a country of
their own’. (103)
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The Jewish manifestation of the unconscious nationalism and its skewed situation
evokes some kind of anti-Semitic reaction. The Zionists are the only ones, who
openly admit that it is a misfortune not to have a country of their own, and therefore
strive to correct the misfortune. They find it as an ecological problem and cling to
territorial separation to preserve their culture. No matter where they live, with or
without a particular territory, they remain as a culture-within-a-culture. The issue of
territorial separation can become volatile, as it may lead to conflicts between the
nations, based on the cultural influence and cultural irritation. However, the cultural
host without a local habitation feels annoyed and perplexed at the condition of the
culture-within-a-culture. The Jewish culture appears as an impediment to the host
culture and they take it as a parasite, growing from within, as a hindrance for the
normal functioning. The Jewish community needs to analyze the basic causes of antiSemitism and act accordingly in order to strengthen their situation. The antagonistic
attitudes against them can always be of a mortal danger and therefore they are
required to confront the hostility and antipathy by a realistic diagnosis of antiSemitism.
History has witnessed the brutality, bloodshed, and cruelty of the anti-Semitic
movement, for over many years. Holocaust became a synonym for genocide in the
last decades of the 20th century to refer to the mass murder of Jews. Most of the
innocent people, including children were killed in the name of race. The Holocaust
has transcended the conceptual bounds of historical catastrophe, turning into a
metaphor of radical evil. The result has been always been mixed and paradoxical. On
the one hand, the study of the Holocaust has drawn the attention of the scholars from
various disciplines giving a scope for a research, in the course of events and human
17
enterprise. On the other hand, conceptualization of the Holocaust had its own demerits
of leading to trivialization and hyperbole.
Holocaust also termed as Shoah in Hebrew is known as a period of killing and
cruel treatment of Jews by Hitler and the Nazi Party, in the 1930s and 1940s. The
shocking experiences traumatized the entire world with gruesome bloodshed and
violence. The genocide of the Jews by the Nazi regime has led to the deaths of nearly
six million people. This period marked as one of the cruelest age the modern times
could ever witness. The Jewish history has seen the Holocaust as a watershed event,
wherein, the Holocaust survivors and the American non-witnesses always had
different perspectives about it.
Holocaust became a subject of paradox for the Jewish writers. Initially, the
American Jewish fiction did not focus much on the Holocaust and the destruction of
European Jews. The silence was broken, subsequently, as some of the writers took up
the subject of the Holocaust in their writings. The Diary of Anne Frank (1952) and the
televised trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in 1961 helped to end the long silence
about the holocaust. After 1960, there were direct representations of the Holocaust
and the primary concern was its influence on the American Jews and the secondgeneration Jewish survivors.
The major dilemma for the writers was dealing with the subject of the
Holocaust. The writers saw themselves at risk, as the subject could be trivialized or
falsified, if it isn’t dealt properly. A successful work could risk aestheticizing, as
whatever conveyed can give a false impression. Simultaneously, the omission of the
subject could only mean to omit the central event of the twentieth century. Holocaust
was apparently not a major theme in post-war Jewish-American fiction, even till
1970’s. However, some of the novels dealt with domestic anti-Semitism in Miller's
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Focus (1945), Bellow's The Victim (1948), and Malamud's The Assistant (1957). The
wartime fate of European Jewry was dealt in Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird
(1965) and Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet (I970). The subject of the Holocaust was
dealt explicitly in Fromberg Schaeffer's Anya (I974) and Norma Rosen's Touching
Evil (1977). Jewish-American women writers- Anzia Yezierska, Hortense Calisher,
Tillie Olsen, Cynthia Ozick, and Grace Paley gave a new life to Holocaust literature.
The Holocaust literature had three dimensions in it which made the writings complex.
Firstly, the psychoanalytical dimension which dealt with Jewish bewilderment,
suffering, and trauma.
Secondly, the sociological dimension which dealt with the society and its
location in the global map. Here, the American Jews weren’t entitled to claim the
legacy of the Holocaust as they did not witness the European war. Thirdly, the
political dimension as Germany became an ally of America in the Cold war. The
absence of the Holocaust has been seen as a moral failure and the Jewish-American
fiction seemed to suffer with perverse amnesia as it proceeded as if the Holocaust had
ever existed. Holocaust became a hidden subject which got submerged; however, it’s
never forgotten in the subconscious mind and always emerges inflecting the literature.
Talking about Jewish-American fiction by women, Victoria Aarons in A
Measure of Memory: Storytelling and Identity in American-Jewish Fiction says, ‘one
would expect that a preoccupation with the past would fade as the immigrant's
marginalized status in America became less distinct [...] we find a growing
preoccupation with an even more vigorously imagined past’ (I70). The JewishAmerican women writers engaged in Holocaust writing breaking their silence. The
omission of holocaust by the Jewish-American male writers and the importance given
to it by the Jewish-American women writers constituted a rebellion, redefining the
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parameters of Jewish-American fiction. Norma Rosen is a Jewish-American writer
who focused on the theme of the Holocaust. The writer later on took a resolution not
to invent Holocaust scenes as it might add more pain. In her novel, Touching Evil, a
Gentile woman makes an effort to understand and sympathize with the victims of
anti-Semitism.
Cynthia Ozick’s 'The Shawl' which is first published in 1980, and then
published after ten years, with a sequel ‘Rosa,’ depicts the brutalizing conditions in
which the Jewish woman lives. Ozick’s great imagination helped her to recreate the
life at the death camps with the help of a mother character and her two daughters. The
women Holocaust writers faced the tension of breaking the silence, determination to
speak, and the coercion to preserve. The short stories of 1980’s, Leslea Newman’s 'A
Letter to Harvey Milk' and Rebecca Goldstein's 'The Legacy of Raizel Kaidish' deal
with the legacy of Holocaust stories. Newman and Goldstein depicted the Holocaust
tales with retrospection. The conflict of writing or not writing, between the conviction
to write and the guilt thereafter, thinking that it might defile the shibboleths remained
a mystery of these times.
The women writers prevailed over the taboos and defied the expectations
without compromise. The work of Cynthia Ozick (born 1928) is important and
especially the fictional works of Leviathan: Five Fictions (1982), The Cannibal
Galaxy (1983), The Shawl (1989) and her play Blue Light (1994). The writings of
Primo Levi (1919-87) and Elie Wiesel (born 1928) have played a significant role in
the development of American Holocaust Literature. Edward Lewis Wallant's The
Pawnbroker (1961) domesticates Holocaust and pays little attention to theological
consequences. Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) recognizes the Holocaust
as a marker for civilization. Arthur A. Cohen's In The Days of Simon Stern (1973)
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deals with the theological quandary endangered by the Holocaust. Philip Roth's The
Ghost Writer (1979) is a result of Holocaust’s increasing domestication.
The focus of eighties fiction was on the theological and moral scars caused by
Holocaust on the second generation Jews. This period experienced detailed
discussions over who should write Holocaust. Alvin Rosenfeld's 1980 A Double
Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature, raises many of these issues. The fiction
of eighties deals with the stories of Holocaust victims and survivors. The novelists
explore the nature of the covenant and its fundamental issues from the theological
point of view. American Jewish novelists turned to the theologians and witnesses in
order to answer the questions related to God’s role, Jewish response to Holocaust, the
nature of evil, the impact of Shoah on American Judaism, Jewish-Christian relations
after the Holocaust. The views of Elie Wiesel, Emil Fackenheim, and Irving
Greenberg have a profound impact in this period.
Ozick contributed a lot to the Holocaust literature of the eighties. The Shawl
(1989) deals with the Holocaust, the prewar and the postwar in which Rosa loses her
daughter Magda when she is thrown into the electrified fence at the Nazi death camp.
After coming to America, Rosa lives in isolation due to her past memories. Ozick’s
imaginative short story, The Messiah of Stockholm (1987) deals with the Holocaust
history and parodies the post-modern novel. While dealing with the subject of
messiah and who exactly is a messiah, Ozick’s novel Trust (1966) gives the answer
for the same: ‘When we remember the martyrs we bring on the Messiah’ (236). In
writing so, Ozick declares that the martyr in the manuscript is the messiah, and not the
author. In order to confront the Holocaust authentically, one must remember the
martyr than the author, ‘One must remember that the martyr acts present a version of
truth that was necessary and significant to their authors than a complete story’ (Rhee,
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41). Saul Bellow's The Bellarosa Connection (1989) focuses on the Jewish history
and the necessity to pay attention to the Holocaust survivors. The dramatic plot
revolves around Harry Fonstein, a crippled refugee, trying to escape from the Nazi
camps with the help of Billy Rose. Memory becomes a shield in Bellow’s writing,
similar to Wieselian fiction. The aspect of memory and remembrance plays a crucial
role in Jewish fiction.
The second generation Jewish writers played a significant role in dealing with
the subject of Shoah. It comprises of writing by the children of survivors who
witnessed the survival of their parents from Shoah. This fiction deals with the
Holocaust literature and its constitution and serves as a stimulus for informed
response. The novels tell the tales of the Holocaust and remembers it by using
distinctive icons. Elie Wiesel's French edition, The Fifth Son (1984) deals with the
Jewish struggle to achieve moral, emotional, and theological coherence. Thomas
Friedmann's Damaged Goods (1984), Art Spiegelman's Maus (1986), Barbara
Finkelstein's Summer Long-a-Coming (1987) and Julie Salamon's White Lies (1987)
made an impact. The novels speak of trauma, suffering of the innocents, and the
vulnerability of the Jewish people.
The novels of second generation give an account of the children who are
estranged from their survivor parents and American friends. Maus is a unique writing
and Spiegelman utilizes animal figures; Jews are mice and Nazis are cats. The second
generation writers display great determination to bear witness and share the identity of
their second generation. The experience of their parents, the anti-Semitism, the
Holocaust, and other forms of violence inspired them to write with a hope of changing
the world. Even though the theological aspect seems to be muted the determination to
ask questions to God about the injustice was prevalent. Second generations'
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responsibility for remembering reverberated in Daphne Merkin's Enchantment (1986)
and Rebecca Goldstein’s The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind (1989).
The Holocaust had its impact on the second generation Jews and Germans,
which is reflected in the films and poems of the eighties. Gina Blumenthal's 1981
film, ‘In Dark Places’, Steven Brand's ‘Kaddish’ (1983), Owen Shapiro's ‘The Dr.
John Haney Sessions’ and ‘Open Secrets’ (1984), Eva Fogelman's award-winning
‘Breaking the Silence’ (1984), and Debbie Goodstein's (1989) ‘Voices from the Attic’
focuses on the psychological issues of second generation Jews. They deal with the
issues of uncertain parent-child relationship, parental overprotection and intrusion into
their children’s life, anxieties of separation, difficulty of survivors to communicate
their traumatic experiences.
Pierre Sauvage's 1988 film ‘Weapons of the Spirit’ is a tribute to the bravery
of village inhabitants who hid the Jews and an infant during the Holocaust. Stewart J.
Florsheim’s poem Ghosts of the Holocaust: An Anthology of Poetry by the Second
Generation was published in 1989. Sidra Ezrachi's By Words Alone: The Holocaust in
Literature (1980) deals with the taxonomical study of Holocaust literature. Dorothy
Bilik's Immigrant Survivors: Post-Holocaust Consciousness in Recent Jewish
American Fiction (1981) deals with the distinctiveness of Jewish survivors in
America and Europe.
Arthur A. Cohen's The Tremedum: A Theological Interpretation of the
Holocaust (1981) argues that the Holocaust not only scars the people of Europe but
also the people living outside Europe. Two books of 1984, David Roskies' Against the
Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture and Alan Mintz'
Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature deal with literature, history,
liturgy, and Jewish response to destruction. Alvin Rosenfeld's Imagining Hitler deals
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with the fascination of high culture to Nazism and warns of its partaking as evil. Alan
L. Berger's Crisis and Covenant: The Holocaust in American Jewish Writing
describes Shoah and its theological implications. S. Lillian Kremer's Witness Through
the Imagination: Jewish American Holocaust Literature (1989) elucidates some of the
selected American author’s themes and stylistic strategies of Holocaust fiction.
Another major development in Holocaust literature was the emergence of the
post-war German fiction which depicted some of the finest Jewish stereotypes. The
Jew is portrayed subtly slanted in Alfred Andersch's Zanzibar or The Final Reason
(1957). Gerhard Zwerenz's novel The Earth is Uninhabitable like the Moon (1973)
under the title City, Sewage, Death (1975), caricatures the Jew as an exploiter which
becomes the center of the work. Alfred Doblin’s Travels to Poland gives an account
of a trip to the Warsaw, in which the superstitions of the Hasidic community are
criticized.
Guntur Grass is a post-Holocaust generation writer and an exemplary liberal
political figure. He depicted exemplary Jews, instead of the German-Christian
readers, and also for the German-Jewish readers. His novel The Tin Drum (1958)
depicts a toy dealer Sigismund Markus as a stereotype with mitigating variations. Dog
Years (1963) deals with the antagonistic relationship between two friends, a Jew and a
German, bigoted by the Nazi ideology. Grass’s stereotypes shift ironically and break
down at a crucial moment which helped him to deal with the Jewish problem in the
liberal high culture of Germany.
Grass’s work became a touchstone to understand the undermined Jew, making
him the self-appointed guardian of the German liberal tradition. Jurek Becker’s
depiction of the Jew became the most important representation in the German
Democratic Republic literature. Bruno Apitz's Naked Among Wolves (1958) is a story
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of an infant Jew who is rescued from the Nazi death camp by the Communists. Franz
Ftihmann is the first Jewish writer who gave full voice to the Jewish victim in his
Novella The Jew's Auto (1962) and Jurek Becker's first novel, Jacob the Liar (1969)
portrays the world of the victim. Becker’s experiences of his childhood in the camps
of Ravensbrtick and Sachsenhausen and in the Lodz ghetto helped him to write
effectively. Jacob the Liar is a classic in which the eponymous hero rescues a child
and lies for comforting her. The circumstances make Jacob to lie and survive with it
in the world of insanity. The novel mirrors the world of the victim, of the dead, and
it’s written in the pseudo-Yiddish tone.
The Boxer (1976) is another significant novel which presents a child as a
survivor and not as a victim. It deals with the language of the Jews and its death in the
world of the camps. Becker's novel, Bronstein's Children (1986) is undoubtedly the
most successful work, which deals with a young Jew, growing with conflicts of
identity in the German Democratic Republic. The plot deals with a family living in
East Berlin in 1973-74. Hilsenrath is another popular author of Jewish books. He has
published the bestselling novel The Nazi and the Barber in English in the year 1971.
His novel Bronsky's Confessions (1980) deals with the creative response of Jews
against the damaged discourse of the Jew. The British-Jewish writer Clive Sinclair
was able to give a voice to the hidden language of the Jews in his two novels Blood
Libels (1985) and especially in his 1987 memoir Diaspora Blues. Becker and
Hilsenrath have been denied of status as Jews in their own nation.
Apart from the American Jewish writers and German Jewish writers, the
writers from various parts of the world also made a significant contribution to the
Holocaust literature. Dannie Abse’s Walking Under Water is a learned and wellcrafted work. Ilche Aichinger’s Herod’s children is written in the voice of a youthful
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girl Ellen, who is imbued with the hope of the future. It is a religious and secular
work: ‘You mustn’t die before you are born’ (188) indicates the necessity of a greater
hope. Jean Amery’s classic work of literature, At the Mind's Limits (1980), deals with
the story of a Nazi victim at the death camps and his inner condition after the Gestapo
torture. Myriam Anissimov’s, Sa Majesté la Mort (Her Majesty, Death), published in
the year 1999, was awarded with Jean Freustié Prize. It has the autobiographical touch
in which Anissimov recounts her visit to the southwestern region of France to get
information of her mother’s brother, Samuel Frocht who has suddenly vanished
during the war.
Aharon Appelfeld is the foremost Israeli author of Holocaust literature, one of
the most accomplished novelists in the world. Appelfeld’s novels portray the lives of
the people entrenched in the brutal Auschwitz camps. He extends the scope of
Holocaust beyond the confines of the camps and deals the subject with silence
without graphic descriptions of the concentration camps. His novel Badenheim
(1939), translated into English in 1980, is a striking novel set in an Austrian resort
town. Hanoch Bartov is another prominent Israeli author of Holocaust fiction and his
novel, The Brigade (Pitzay Bagrut 1965), describes the first-hand encounter of a
young Israeli born Jew with the survivors of the holocaust.
Mary Berg’s Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary (1945) written in Yiddish is a memoir
and an eyewitness account of life in the Warsaw ghetto. Livia Bitton-Jackson’s
memoir Elli: Coming of the age in the Holocaust (1980) is another important work
which focuses on the crucial role played by the mother-daughter relationship in
surviving from the Auschwitz camp. Tadeusz Borowski was a Polish non-Jewish
writer, who views himself as the messenger of the dead. Tuvia Borzykowski’s,
Between Tumbling Walls (1976) gives some of the detailed accounts of the Warsaw
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and Jews. Paul Celan is one of the most anthologized poets to emerge from the
Holocaust, who interweaves his life and his poetry. Thus, the Holocaust literature
makes an effort to unmask the evil and bring out the inhumanity of man. It gives a
response to the greatest catastrophe that mankind could ever witness, subjected to
concurrent events of trauma, pain, quandary, and social upheaval. It’s a universal
testimony of human suffering and a tribute to the initiative and human dignity.
Zionism occupies a significant place in Jewish fiction. It is derived from the
word Zion (Hebrew: noy-izT ,‫)ציון‬, which refers to Jerusalem, the holy city of Jews
and Christians. According to the Holy Bible, Israel is considered as the land of
Canaan, a promised land of God, a promise made to Moses. The book of Exodus in
Bible describes the liberation of God’s chosen people from slavery to the promised
land, i.e. the land of Zion. ‘Zionism’ gained prominence as anti-Semitism became
strident during the depression of the 1930s, the Civil War, the McCarthy era, the War
in Southeast Asia, the oil boycott, the War of Lebanon. Over the years, there has been
a continuous argument over the claim of the ancestral homeland of Israel by Jews and
Palestinians. The postwar decades witnessed the dangers of anti-Semitism shifting the
attention to Zionism and Israel. It became a dynamic force demonstrating an unerring
instinct for what lies at the center of Jewish sensibility.
The anti-Semitic movement was so powerful that Jews got dispersed
throughout the world and were disconnected for some time to their ancestral
homeland. They were isolated in different parts of the world without any security and
there was a need to go back to their homeland in order to preserve their culture,
identity, and freedom. The nationalist movement, i.e the Zionist movement started in
Europe by the numerous groups promoting the national resettlement of the Jews in
their ancestral homeland of Israel. Zionism was basically established with the goal of
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creating a separate Jewish state. The first Jewish American Zionist organizationChicago Zion Society was established in the mid 1890s in Chicago, Illinois. Zionism
as a national revival movement emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern
Europe advocating the need for Jews to return to Israel:
Zionism is the Jewish national movement of rebirth and renewal in the
land of Israel - the historical birthplace of the Jewish people. The
yearning to return to Zion, the biblical term for both the Land of Israel
and Jerusalem, has been the cornerstone of Jewish religious life since
the Jewish exile from the land two thousand years ago, and is
embedded in Jewish prayer, ritual, literature and culture. (Mazur 10)
Zionism had been categorized based on its ideologies such as General Zionism,
Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Green Zionism, etc. Zionism
became a dominant force in Jewish politics with the mass destruction of Jewish life in
the Central and Eastern Europe. The academic studies analyze Zionism within the
larger context of diaspora politics and as an example of modern national liberation
movements. The ideology of Zionism is based on the assumption that anti-Semitism is
inherent in the diaspora. American Zionism is influenced by the non-ideological
character of American anti-Semitism. Zionism became a measuring tool for the
Jewish perception of anti-Semitism. Initially, the Zionist movement was not given
much importance by the American Jews until the years of the Holocaust and antiSemitism. It basically focused on philanthropy and spoke rarely of reshaping of the
Jewish people, eschewing resettlement in Israel with a non-nationalistic ideology,
away from physical danger and anti-Semitism.
Philip Roth has also shown his inclination to open his fiction to the challenges
of Israel, dealing with the themes of Zionism and Israel in his Middle East novels The
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Counterlife (1986) and Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993). The two Middle East
novels present the enormity of the American Jewish tsurus (troubles) in relation to
Israel and Arab conflict over the Promised Land. The novels mark a new current in
American Jewish fiction. The concept of ‘the promised land’ have conflicting
versions with some claiming the holy land of Israel as the promised land and the other
claiming America to be their promised land. The popular autobiography of Mary
Antin The Promised Land (1912) contributes to the argument that America is the
promised land. It is a celebratory hymn to the Americanization of the East European
Jew.
Abraham Cahan’s American tale, The Rise of David Levinsky, the rags-toriches story, depicts immigrant Jews who looked to America as their promised land.
They found America to be the land of opportunities, a place where one can be free
from restriction, fear or confinement. In the novel, The Rise of David Levinsky, the
narrator Levinsky says that America is a place of freedom: ‘The United States lured
me not merely as a land of milk and honey, but also, and perhaps chiefly, as one of
mystery, of fantastic experiences, of marvelous transformations’ (55). However, the
conflict didn’t end between Palestintsy and Amerikantsy, with the Zionist thinkers
actively promoting Palestine as the promised land of Jews:
The Jews are not a nation, but a religious community. Zion was a
precious possession of the past . . . but it is not our hope of the future.
America is our Zion. Here, in the home of religious liberty, we have
aided in founding this new Zion . . . The mission of Judaism is
spiritual, not political. (Sarna 132)
America became Zion and Washington became Jerusalem shaping the sensibilities of
American Jews for many years. However, the Zionistic voice wasn’t absent and
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competed by the Zionist writers of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s such as Meyer Levin,
Marie Syrkin, Maurice Samuel, Ludwig Lewinsohn, Ben Hecht and the Canadian
writer A. M. Klein. The main theme of these writers was the Jewish return to
Palestine. They supported the Jewish nationhood and focused on the spiritual,
political, and cultural realignment of Jews in America to the importance of the Jewish
homeland. Zionist writers like Lewisohn, Samuel, Levin, and Hecht moved away
from the mainstream of American writing in order to realize the Zionistic aspirations.
1940s and 1950s witnessed the emergence of some of the outstanding Jewish writers.
Especially, the New York intellectuals of 1940s reached to the pinnacle of their
intellectual influence in the 1950s.
The trio of Jewish literature - Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth
also emerged in the same period occupying a major place in American letters,
stimulating interest in what has been called ‘the American Jewish novel.’ Novel, as a
genre of fiction, gave an unparalleled scope to the writers to exhibit their ideas,
interests, passions, styles, and accomplishments. The Jewish writers of mid-century
displayed literary seriousness, resourcefulness, and sophistication in developing their
subject matter and fictional voices. They were instrumental in connecting the
mainstream of American and European fiction, bringing necessary changes and
striving for the enrichment of the fiction. The outstanding contributions made by these
writers made them to be recognized as the ‘elite’ writers by the literary critics.
Apart from these writers, there were other writers with popular success like
Leon Uris, Herman Wouk, and Chaim Potok who had focused on World War II,
Holocaust, rebirth of Israel, the battles fought in defense of the Jewish state,
challenges faced by Jews with the modern culture. The works of these writers became
popular and especially Leon Uris’s Exodus (1958) received great appreciation,
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wherein the Israeli is depicted with a positive image more than any other American
work of fiction. The novel is considered as a melodramatic book by most of the
critics. It became an inspirational novel by depicting the stereotypical characters,
recasting the image of the Jew as a triumphant person.
Uris’s novel, Mila 18 (1961) depicts the image of the heroic fighting Jew in
the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Herman Wouk’s novels of World War II, The Winds of
War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978) became the best sellers depicting the
Jews as war heroes. The Hope (1993) and The Glory (1994) were the other successful
works of Wouk which depict the Jewish heroes dramatically. The Zionist writers of
America were able to deal with the heroic themes of War placing Israel in the
foreground. Apart from these writers, there are few successful writers whose novels
became popular. Alfred Coppel's Thirty-four East (1974), Peter Abraham's Tongues of
Fire (1982), Lewis Orde's Munich 10 (1982), and Chaim Zeldis's Forbidden Love
(1983) are few novels which dealt with the theme of Israel and Middle East. Ludwig
Lewisohn's The Island Within (1928); Uris's Exodus; and Meyer Levin's Yehuda
(1931), The Settlers (1972), and The Harvest (1978) are unequivocally and
passionately Zionist novels. Cynthia Ozick is undoubtedly a prominent American
Jewish writer who has displayed passionate attachment to Judaism and Jewish
historical fate. Two other books which deal with the theme of Israel are Tova Reich's
The Jewish War (1995) and E. M. Broner's A Weave of Women (1978).
The Judeo-Christian relationship and heritage occupied a significant place in
the postwar America. Many books and articles emphasized the continuity between
Judaism and Christianity, especially Edmund Wilson’s 1955 controversial book on
the Dead Sea scrolls. The book raised doubts over the divine origin of religion, which
in turn increased a fascination for religious subjects. In the 1950s, the United States of
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America has witnessed a domestic religious revival with its assertions of ecumenism
and Judeo-Christian unity. Jews were ‘Christianized’ in the public culture amidst Cold
War pressures to remove differences among Western people. Bible stories began to
occupy a prominent place in America, and the Middle East became a sacred land by
virtue of its religious base.
The religious significance of the ‘Holy Land’ had a profound impact on
Americans and they began to treat the political problems of the Middle East
differently from the rest of the world. The religious consciousness of ‘Judeo-Christian
civilization,’ benefitted Judaism with Islam remaining a culture apart. The moral and
political values gained importance and the Jews who were considered as the objects of
indifference got ‘Christianized’ in popular culture. The Judeo-Christian values were
instrumental in shaping the American culture and politics. The new cultural trends
also affected the recently formed State of Israel. The land of Israel was imagined as
the land of ‘Chosen People,’ wherein prophets and warriors live as represented in the
Biblical stories.
Another significant development in the Jewish relations was the reinforcement
of Judeo-Christian bond through movies and books by retelling Biblical stories.
Drama and romance took the center stage with the episodes from the Old and New
Testament. The films and novels offered a fascinating portrait of ancient Jews and the
bible stories brought a new meaning to the modern society. An emphasis was made on
the importance of the biblical stories in contemporary American life. The stories
brought out the similarities between American and ancient Israelis, and the image of
Jews got Christianized. The fiction drew parallels between modern political values of
America, the historical Judeo-Christian values and the Middle East. The people of
America began to attend the historical sites and the biblical stories got recreated with
32
growing interest towards American history and folk culture after the World War II.
The mythical became literal and the ephemeral developed into concrete, reinforcing a
sense of shared history, with a thirst for knowing the past. The image of Jews as an
unflattering social stereotype got superseded by the idea that they were founders of
Western monotheism. The modern American audience and ancient Hebrews got
identified with modern Jews and Israelis, as the modern Jews inherited and embodied
ancient values, culture, and tradition. Monotheism was the fundamental theme in the
biblical fiction of the 1950s.
Films and fiction played a significant role in the 1950s America, highlighting
the biblical themes, biblical stories, and monotheism. Frank Slaughter’s novel The
Song of Ruth: A Love Story of the Old Testament (1954) dealt with monotheism.
Films came with great adventures and mysteries of the bible, filled with action and
visual effects, drawing the attention of the audience. Samson and Delilah (1949), The
Prodigal (1955), and The Ten Commandments (1956) highlighted the story of
monotheism. Samson and Delilah, presents the Samson as the hero, whose strength
reflects the superiority of the religion. Samson is identified as a religious hero of both
Judaism and Christianity. The Prodigal was adapted from the story told in Luke 15, in
which Micah is threatened by pagan worshipers but strengthened by his Judaism. The
contrast between paganism and monotheism were brought to light in the film. Judaism
was presented like Judeo-Christianity of the twentieth century, closer to true
spirituality, ideals, and ethics, while the pagans of the film were presented like the
modern Soviets who reduced everything to a physical and materialist equation.
Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film, The Ten Commandments, presents monotheism
as universal good and dramatizes the biblical story of the Exodus, in which Moses
becomes the deliverer of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. The political freedom was
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considered to be a universal goal in the 1950s America and De Mille intertwined the
story of slavery and freedom with the elements of spirituality, law and morality. The
story of the Moses has many parallels with the story of Jesus, and the scene of the Ten
Commandments on Mount Zion has great significance in the Holy Bible. Moses
speaks in the language used in the Book of John, with his encounter with the burning
bush: ‘And the Word was God . . . He is not flesh but Spirit, the Light of Eternal Mind
. . . His light is in every man’ (Bible 507). The 1960 film, The Story of Ruth, presents
the tale of the loyal Moabite different to the Bible story. Naomi is visited by an angel,
who reveals Gods plans that a great king (David), and a Messiah (Jesus) whom many
will worship, will be issued to their family.
Sholem Asch, a Polish born American Jewish novelist was a well known
‘Yiddish Writer’ in the 1940s and 1950s. His works The Prophet (1955) and Mary
(1949) present the Messiah as the bridge from Judaism to Christianity, strengthening
the Judeo-Christian relationship. He focused on the Messianic hope that would
redeem everyone, which is of great importance to both Judaism and Christianity.
Asch’s novel, Moses describes about the laws that were received by Jews at Mount
Sinai. Asch explored the Christian element of the Messianic tradition in which
suffering and martyrdom is needed to achieve the spiritual redemption. Asch focused
on the continuity between the Hebrew and Christian Bibles in his novels - The
Nazarene (1939), The Apostle (1943), Mary (1949), Moses (1951), and The Prophet
(1955). He celebrated the Jewish roots of Judeo-Christian monotheism and the
spiritual heritage, and status of Jews as the chosen people.
The main aim of this thesis is to understand Jewish-American society through
the lens of Philip Roth’s Zuckerman novels. The novels of Philip Roth selected for the
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present study throws light on the Jewish American culture and the significant
elements which formed the basis for the evolution of its character.
The thesis has been divided into five chapters. The first chapter “Introduction
to Jewish American Novel” describes the genesis of Jewish American literature,
Jewish-American history and culture. It puts light on anti-Semitism, Holocaust,
Zionism, Judeo-Christian relationship, Jewish education and religion.
The second chapter “Philip Roth and Zuckerman Novels” examines Roth’s
Zuckerman novels, key elements of Roth’s writings, and the place of the writer in
Jewish literature.
The third chapter “Early Phase” is a study of Zuckerman Bound series and The
Counterlife. It examines the life of Zuckerman as a Jewish writer, the nature of the
artist, the relationship between an author and his creations, and the consequences of
art. It deals with the journey of a writer seeking solutions to art and life.
The fourth chapter “Later Phase” critically examines the American trilogy
from the historical context, and the Jewish life caught up in the web of social,
political, and cultural forces.
The fifth chapter “Conclusion” is a summation of Zuckerman novels in
relation to the Jewish American fiction. It draws conclusions from the analysis of the
novels carried out in the preceding chapters. Based on the arguments in these
chapters, an attempt is made to come to an understanding of the Jewish American
individual, society, and its culture.
35