American Jewish Identity Politics (review)

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-81
Author(s):  
Elizabeth V. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
American Jewish Identity ◽  
American Jewish

Israel for American Eyes: Literature on the Move, and the Mediated Repertoire of American Jewish Identity, 1960–1980

AJS Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Omri Asscher
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
American Jewish Identity ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
Inherent Feature ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

The translation and mediation of literature can play an important role in the ideologically charged transfer of ideas between cultures. This paper approaches the English translation of Hebrew literature as a subtle form of cultural appropriation, whereby agents such as literary critics, scholars, editors, and translators mediated Israeli notions and narratives into Jewish American literary discourse. The article discusses forms of mediation of Hebrew literature in the 1960s and 1970s that promoted a more progressive, yet less secular, notion of Judaism than that depicted in the source works, and subdued an antidiasporic view of Jewish identity. It shows how high moral standards were represented as an inherent feature of Judaism, and Israeli society was portrayed in a more positive moral light than in the sometimes self-critical source texts. American Jewish readership was thus introduced to a notion of Judaism that the agents assumed would be “easier to stomach” than that of the source literary works, and could serve to reinforce some of the tenets of contemporary American Jewish identity.

Entering the “Tent of Abraham”: Fraternal Ritual and American-Jewish Identity, 1880-1920

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-182
Author(s):  
Daniel Soyer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Government Official ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Jewish Immigrant ◽  
American Jewish Identity ◽  
High Government ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Deep Impression

One evening in 1893, a young Jewish immigrant named William Bakst joined the New York mutual-aid association made up of his compatriots from the Lithuanian town of Oshmene. The strange ceremony that marked his induction made a deep impression on him. He found especially striking the regalia that seemed utterly to transform the presiding officer, whom Bakst knew by his familiar old-country nickname. “When the inside-guard led me to the president,” Bakst later recalled,so that I could give the oath that I would never, God forbid, reveal the secrets of the society and that I would be true to its goals, when I set eyes on Gershke Yankls with a red sash across his chest, Standing there giving three strong raps of the gavel, and all those present responding by standing, I became so scared that I didn't even know what they were telling me to repeat. The “regalia” that the president wore frightened me most of all. For me, a greenhorn just out of the yeshiva who had never in his life attended a meeting, the red sash gave the impression of a high government official.

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