7. The ingathering

“The ingathering” surveys modern Jewish literature after the Second World War beyond Israel and the United States and meditates on the multilingual aspect of Jewish literature. This includes the work of Alberto Gerchunoff and Jacobo Timerman in Argentina, Clarice Lispector and Moacyr Scliar in Brazil, Elias Canetti in Bulgaria, Dan Jacobson and Nadine Gordimer in South Africa, and Harold Pinter and Howard Jacobson in the United Kingdom. Jewish writers are simultaneously insiders and outsiders, a position that allows them a unique perspective full of nuance. Therefore, modern Jewish literature is truly global, in regard to not only its authors but also its multifaceted audiences.

10. The letterless canon

“The letterless canon” argues that Jewish literature from the mid-twentieth century onward is not restricted to fiction, poetry, and theater. The book as a tool for the dissemination of knowledge has undergone a metamorphosis. Along the way, the border between high-brow and popular culture has been erased. Comic strips like Superman and graphic novels can be viewed as literary artifacts. Indeed we should consider the work of Will Eisner (A Contract with God), Art Spiegelman (Maus), and Alison Bechdel (Fun House), each of whom offers different contributions. There is also the matter of stand-up comedy, film scripts, and television shows which examine, from a Jewish perspective, gender, racial, and class issues.

1. After the expulsion

“After the expulsion” looks at the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, along with the rise of the Enlightenment, as decisive moments in which Jews entered modernity. The literature of Crypto-Jews in the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas is worth looking at in this area of study, especially the memoir of Luis de Carvajal the Younger as are the literary manifestations of Sephardic writers such as Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti, Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua, and Mexican writer Angelina Muniz-Huberman. There are similarities and differences in the relationship between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic branches in modern Jewish literature. Ladino is a language that evolved after the 1492 expulsion but lost steam in the twentieth century.

5. Into the mainstream

“Into the mainstream” looks at immigrant Jewish writers in America, such as Abraham Cahan (The Rise of David Levinsky), Anzia Yezierska (Bread Givers), and Isaac Bashevis Singer (Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories), all of whom transitioned from Yiddish into English, and analyzes Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep as a transitional novel. We notice here the transition from “ethnic” to “national” writer in the careers of Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, and Cynthia Ozick. Much was gained and lost in Jewish literature as a result of Jews becoming a “successful minority” in America. Jewish readers have always been a voracious audience of international literature.

3. The age of anxiety

“The age of anxiety” surveys Jewish thought and literature from the end of the nineteenth century to the Second World War, starting with Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. The works of Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, and Bruno Schulz are worthy of examination. In particular, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is an invaluable prism through which to understand diaspora Jewish life in the first third of the twentieth century, illustrating the perception of alienation and monstrosity. The works of these writers manifest the anxiety experienced by Jews as they realized how vulnerable their status was in secular European culture. Such anxiety was prescient, foreshadowing the Holocaust.

Introduction

“Introduction” explores the appellation “People of the Book” as it pertains to the Jews, arguing that, theologically as well as culturally, Jews depend on books to exist. The work of Argentine man of letters Jorge Luis Borges is invoked to introduce the concept of aterritoriality. Modern Jewish literature does not have a specific address and is written in multiple languages. There is a connection between Hasidism, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Israeli literature, and the work of Jewish writers in other diasporas. Jewish literature should also include graphic novels, film scripts, television shows, and other textual manifestations.

9. Translation matters

“Translation matters” looks at the role of translation in Jewish literature from the Talmudic period to the present, focusing on the ongoing effort to make Jewish works available speedily in multiple languages. Chaim Nakhman Bialik, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Robert Alter were important translators of sacred literature. Translingualism is a feature of modern Jewish literature, with examples like Sholem Aleichem, Elias Canetti, and Ariel Dorfman. There are also a number of thinkers like Walter Benjamin and George Steiner, who studied translation as a sine qua non of twentieth-century literature. Modern literature depends on translation to exist.

6. The Promised Land

“The promised land” looks at the Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth century in its commitment to create a Jewish state that could not only normalize diaspora Jewish life but also establish a national literature. It meditates on the work of Theodor Herzl, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim Nakhman Bialik, Sh. Y. Agnon, and Amos Oz as canonical voices in Israeli literature. It is worth reflecting on Palestinian literature written in Hebrew, as in Anton Shammas’s Arabesques, and ask the question: ought it to be considered part of Jewish literature? Israeli literature, despite argument to the contrary, is another facet of modern Jewish literature in the diaspora.

2. The Yiddish self

“The Yiddish self” analyzes the emergence and dissemination of Yiddish as the lingua franca of eastern European Jews from the thirteenth century to the Holocaust and beyond, focusing on the three founders of Yiddish literature: Mendele Mokher Sforim, Israel Joshua Singer, and Sholem Aleichem. Sholem Aleichem’s volume of interconnected stories Tevye the Dairyman is arguably the most important narrative ever to be produced in the Yiddish language. Yiddish writers have reflected on anti-Semitism and migration. Yiddish writing in the United States, Latin America, and other parts of the world and the Singer siblings (Israel Joshua, and Isaac Bashevis) in particular are examples of adaptation to different environments after the Second World War.

8. The critic’s “I”

“The critic’s “I”” argues that Jewish literature is not only what writers and readers do, but also the degree to which critics are constantly contextualizing it. Cultural thinkers like Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Irving Howe, and Alfred Kazin, through a discerning “I” and a penetrating eye, allow literature to speak to society and vice versa. There is an important role for public intellectuals who have a connections with, or away from, institutions of higher learning. It is worth looking at the cases of Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom. Without criticism, literature is incapable of lasting meaning. In the case of Jewish literature, critics become torchbearers of transnational ideas.