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Modern Jewish Literatures

Author: Sheila E. Jelen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-06-06

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0812204360

Is there such a thing as a distinctive Jewish literature? While definitions have been offered, none has been universally accepted. Modern Jewish literature lacks the basic markers of national literatures: it has neither a common geography nor a shared language—though works in Hebrew or Yiddish are almost certainly included—and the field is so diverse that it cannot be contained within the bounds of one literary category. Each of the fifteen essays collected in Modern Jewish Literatures takes on the above question by describing a movement across boundaries—between languages, cultures, genres, or spaces. Works in Hebrew and Yiddish are amply represented, but works in English, French, German, Italian, Ladino, and Russian are also considered. Topics range from the poetry of the Israeli nationalist Natan Alterman to the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam; from turn-of-the-century Ottoman Jewish journalism to wire-recorded Holocaust testimonies; from the intellectual salons of late eighteenth-century Berlin to the shelves of a Jewish bookstore in twentieth-century Los Angeles. The literary world described in Modern Jewish Literatures is demarcated chronologically by the Enlightenment, the Haskalah, and the French Revolution, on one end, and the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel on the other. The particular terms of the encounter between a Jewish past and present for modern Jews has varied greatly, by continent, country, or village, by language, and by social standing, among other things. What unites the subjects of these studies is not a common ethnic, religious, or cultural history but rather a shared endeavor to use literary production and writing in general as the laboratory in which to explore and represent Jewish experience in the modern world.

The Modern Jewish Canon

Author: Ruth R. Wisse

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2001-01-19

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0743205774

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What makes a great Jewish book? What makes a book "Jewish" in the first place? Ruth R. Wisse, one of the leading scholars in the field of Jewish literature, sets out to answer these questions in The Modern Jewish Canon. Wisse takes us on an exhilarating journey through language and culture, penetrating the complexities of Jewish life as they are expressed in the greatest Jewish novels of the twentieth century, from Isaac Babel to Isaac Bashevis Singer, from Elie Wiesel to Cynthia Ozick. The modern Jewish canon Wisse proposes comprises those books that convey an experience of Jewish actuality, those in which "the authors or characters know and let the reader know that they are Jews," for better or worse. Wisse is not content merely to evaluate the great books of Jewish literature; she also links the works together to present a new kind of Jewish history, as it has been told through the literature of the past hundred years. She tells the story of a multilingual, multinational people, one that has experienced an often turbulent relationship with Hebrew (the liturgical and scriptural language) and Yiddish (the commonplace vernacular tongue), as well as with the numerous languages spoken by Jews around the world. Wisse insists that language informs the essential meaning of a Jewish work, creating and ratifying political and religious alliances, historical and cultural circumstance, and methods of interpretation. Drawing from a broad sweep of twentieth-century Jewish fiction, Wisse reintroduces us to the deeper side of much-beloved books that remain touchstones of Jewish identity. Through her eyes we reencounter old friends, including: Tevye the Dairyman from Sholem Aleichem's landmark Yiddish stories, the character on whom Fiddler on the Roof is based Joseph K. of Kafka's The Trial, who "without having done anything wrong" was famously "arrested one fine morning" Anne Frank, whose poignant diary has shaped the way we think about the Holocaust Nathan Zuckerman, the enigmatic narrator of numerous Philip Roth novels Destined to be a classic in its own right, one that reshapes the way we think about some of the classic works of the modern age, The Modern Jewish Canon is a book for every Jewish reader and for every reader of great fiction.

Strangers in Berlin

Author: Rachel Seelig

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2016-09-19

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0472130099

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Insightful look at the interactions between German and migrant Jewish writers and the creative spectrum of Jewish identity

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon

Author: Justin Daniel Cammy

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 744

ISBN-13:

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Wisse is a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and a fearless public intellectual on issues relating to Jewish society and culture. In this celebratory volume, her colleagues pay tribute with a collection of critical essays whose subjects break new ground in Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature.

A Permanent Beginning

Author: Yitzhak Lewis

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2020-03-01

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1438477686

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The Hasidic leader R. Nachman of Braslav (1772–1810) has held a place in the Jewish popular imagination for more than two centuries. Some see him as the (self-proclaimed) Messiah, others as the forerunner of modern Jewish literature. Existing studies struggle between these dueling readings, largely ignoring questions of aesthetics and politics in his work. A Permanent Beginning lays out a new paradigm for understanding R. Nachman's thought and writing, and, with them, the beginnings of Jewish literary modernity. Yitzhak Lewis examines the connections between imperial modernization processes in Eastern Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century and the emergence of "modern literature" in the storytelling of R. Nachman. Reading his tales and teachings alongside the social, legal, and intellectual history of the time, the book's guiding question is literary: How does R. Nachman represent this changing environment in his writing? Lewis paints a nuanced and fascinating portrait of a literary thinker and creative genius at the very moment his world was evolving unrecognizably. He argues compellingly that R. Nachman's narrative response to his changing world was a major point of departure for Jewish literary modernity.

Unclean Lips

Author: Josh Lambert

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1479876437

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Winner of the 2014 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award presented by the Association for Jewish Studies Jews have played an integral role in the history of obscenity in America. For most of the 20th century, Jewish entrepreneurs and editors led the charge against obscenity laws. Jewish lawyers battled literary censorship even when their non-Jewish counterparts refused to do so, and they won court decisions in favor of texts including Ulysses, A Howl, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Tropic of Cancer. Jewish literary critics have provided some of the most influential courtroom testimony on behalf of freedom of expression. The anti-Semitic stereotype of the lascivious Jew has made many historians hesitant to draw a direct link between Jewishness and obscenity. In Unclean Lips, Josh Lambert addresses the Jewishness of participants in obscenity controversies in the U.S. directly, exploring the transformative roles played by a host of neglected figures in the development of modern and postmodern American culture. The diversity of American Jewry means that there is no single explanation for Jews' interventions in this field. Rejecting generalizations, this book offers case studies that pair cultural histories with close readings of both contested texts and trial transcripts to reveal the ways in which specific engagements with obscenity mattered to particular American Jews at discrete historical moments. Reading American culture from Theodore Dreiser and Henry Miller to Curb Your Enthusiasm and FCC v. Fox, Unclean Lips analyzes the variable historical and cultural factors that account for the central role Jews have played in the struggles over obscenity and censorship in the modern United States.

A Rich Brew

Author: Shachar Pinsker

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1479827894

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Finalist, 2018 National Jewish Book Award for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, presented by the Jewish Book Council Winner, 2019 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, in the Jewish Literature and Linguistics Category, given by the Association for Jewish Studies A fascinating glimpse into the world of the coffeehouse and its role in shaping modern Jewish culture Unlike the synagogue, the house of study, the community center, or the Jewish deli, the café is rarely considered a Jewish space. Yet, coffeehouses profoundly influenced the creation of modern Jewish culture from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. With roots stemming from the Ottoman Empire, the coffeehouse and its drinks gained increasing popularity in Europe. The “otherness,” and the mix of the national and transnational characteristics of the coffeehouse perhaps explains why many of these cafés were owned by Jews, why Jews became their most devoted habitués, and how cafés acquired associations with Jewishness. Examining the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity, Shachar M. Pinsker argues that cafés anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafés that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin to New York City and Tel Aviv. A Rich Brew explores the Jewish culture created in these social spaces, drawing on a vivid collection of newspaper articles, memoirs, archival documents, photographs, caricatures, and artwork, as well as stories, novels, and poems in many languages set in cafés. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the café, nourished, and sent out into the world by way of print, politics, literature, art, and theater. What was experienced and created in the space of the coffeehouse touched thousands who read, saw, and imbibed a modern culture that redefined what it meant to be a Jew in the world.

Poets on the Edge

Author:

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 0791477142

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Poets on the Edge introduces four decades of Israel's most vigorous poetic voices. Selected and translated by author Tsipi Keller, the collection showcases a generous sampling of work from twenty-seven established and emerging poets, bringing many to readers of English for the first time. Thematically and stylistically innovative, the poems chart the evolution of new currents in Hebrew poetry that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s and, in breaking from traditional structures of line, rhyme, and meter, have become as liberated as any contemporary American verse. Writing on politics, sexual identity, skepticism, intellectualism, community, country, love, fear, and death, these poets are daring, original, and direct, and their poems are matched by the freshness and precision of Keller's translations.

Tubercular Capital

Author: Sunny S. Yudkoff

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2018-12-25

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 150360733X

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At the turn of the twentieth century, tuberculosis was a leading cause of death across America, Europe, and the Russian Empire. The incurable disease gave rise to a culture of convalescence, creating new opportunities for travel and literary reflection. Tubercular Capital tells the story of Yiddish and Hebrew writers whose lives and work were transformed by a tubercular diagnosis. Moving from eastern Europe to the Italian Peninsula, and from Mandate Palestine to the Rocky Mountains, Sunny S. Yudkoff follows writers including Sholem Aleichem, Raḥel Bluvshtein, David Vogel, and others as they sought "the cure" and drew on their experiences of illness to hone their literary craft. Combining archival research with literary analysis, Yudkoff uncovers how tuberculosis came to function as an agent of modern Jewish literature. The illness would provide the means for these suffering writers to grow their reputations and find financial backing. It served a central role in the public fashioning of their literary personas and ushered Jewish writers into a variety of intersecting English, German, and Russian literary traditions. Tracing the paths of these writers, Tubercular Capital reconsiders the foundational relationship between disease, biography, and literature.