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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 self-

improvement 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 anti-

Semitism. 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 anti-

Semitism 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 Jew-

controlled. 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 Anti-

Semitism 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 anti-

immigration 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 anti-

Semitism 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 Anti-

Semitism 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 anti-

Semitism 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 anti-

Semitism.

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

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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 second-

generation 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 Jewish-

American 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 well-

crafted 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: ,ציוןizT-noy ), 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 organization-

Chicago 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 anti-

Semitism. 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-to-

riches 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

33

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

34

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

35

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.