The Role of Religion - Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Jewish American Literature E-Book
Alina Polyak
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- Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009
Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: In der Magisterarbeit handelt es sich um die Rolle der Religion in der modernen jüdisch-amerikanischen Literatur. Die Suche nach den Wurzeln ist ein Trend in der amerikanischen Gesellschaft geworden. Dieser Trend widerspiegelt sich auch in Kunst und Literatur. Die Gesellschaft wandelt sich von einem “Schmelztiegel” in eine multiethnische und multikulturelle Gesellschaft. Viele Autoren wenden sich in ihren Werken an die Kultur ihrer Vorfahren. Die jüdisch-amerikanische Literatur ist auch ein Beispiel hierfür. Es ist fast unmöglich, die Kultur von der Religion zu trennen, denn wenn es sich um jüdische Themen handelt, geht es um die Kultur, die eng mit der jüdischen Religion verbunden ist. Judentum ist eine Religion, die mit Zeit und Geschichte eng verbunden ist. Selbst wenn Autoren sich mit säkularen Themen beschäftigen, gibt es trotzdem eine Anbindung an die religiöse Problematik. Viele moderne Werke sind von Autoren geschrieben, die fundiertes Wissen vom Judentum haben, sie benutzen oft jüdische Sprachen, Figuren aus der Folklore und religiöse Ideen. Es gibt einen großen Unterschied zwischen den frühen Werken von Immigranten und den modernen Werken der amerikanisch-jüdischen Autoren der dritten Generation. Während die Immigrantenautoren sich bemüht haben, sich so schnell wie möglich zu assimilieren und die Welt der Väter hinter sich zu lassen, haben die jüngsten Autoren in ihren Werken die jüdischen Themen neu entdeckt. Für die Autoren der ersten Generation war das Erlernen der englischen Sprache sehr wichtig. Die Autoren von heute haben Englisch als Muttersprache. Sie schreiben zwar auf Englisch, benutzen aber sehr häufig Begriffe oder Ausdrücke, die nicht erklärt oder übersetzt sind aus den jüdischen Sprachen Hebräisch und Jiddisch. Jüdische Literatur war immer multilingual. Hebräisch ist die Sprache der Liturgie und Jiddisch ist die Sprache des Europäischen Judentums. Nach dem Holocaust wurden die meisten Sprecher des Jiddischen ausgerottet. Das ist der Grund, warum Jiddisch heute eine Rolle der “heiligen Sprache” spielt und in dieser Hinsicht an die Stelle des Hebräischen rückt. Das moderne Hebräisch ist die Staatssprache Israels und hat die Position der Alltagssprache genommen.
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Abschlussarbeit
zur Erlangung des Magister Artium im Fachbereich Amerikanistik
“The Role of Religion: Tradition and Modernity in
Contemporary Jewish American Literature.”
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The search for the roots has become a major issue in contemporary American society. The tendency to seek one's origins finds its reflection in many aspects of popular culture including art and literature. It seems that American society is witnessing a revival of ethnic roots and has been lately passing from a “melting pot” to a “boiling cauldron” of multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual America, where people of different origins coexist. The recently coined term “hyphenated Americans” reflects the tendency of Americans looking for ethnic identity. It shows that one's identity can be multiple and one side of the hyphen does not necessarily have to exclude the other. Different cultures are influenced by American mainstream culture, and mainstream culture is in turn influenced by different traditions. In the final analysis, the mainstream culture becomes enriched through all the different influences. There are no restrictions about who writes about what. White authors can write about black characters, Chinese authors about Jewish characters, male authors about female characters etc. The centrality of Christian tradition remains rooted in American culture and literature, but with the new trend of ethnic multicultural writing, other traditions and rituals are represented to the general audience as well. These ethnic writers who are “insiders” in their culture often criticize traditional practices, which are largely unknown to the general public. This is also true for the Jewish American writing. Hana Wirth-Nesher points out that although Jewish American writing shares many features with other ethnic literature in the United States, its singularity is that it also entails a religious dimension. The Jewish identity is redefined as a faith rather than as civilization and the separation of church and state in the United States has transformed Jews into adherents of Judaism (“Traces of the Past,” 119). It seems that by the end of the twentieth century, the approach to religion and to identity, which in case of Judaism overlap, has taken a new turn. Many novels are being written by writers knowledgeable in Jewish tradition and lore, using Jewish languages, figures of Jewish folklore and religious notions. Jewishness is not something to be ashamed of anymore.
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It is not an easy task to define what Jewish American literature is, whether this definition depends on author's religious faith, ethnicity, range of themes, languages that the author uses, the use of liturgical texts, etc. Today, the Jewish American writers write in English, their native language, a language of Christian culture, which adapts to the Jewish view of the world, changing and absorbing ideas and words from Hebrew and Yiddish. They write for the mainstream American audience, the majority of which are non-Jewish readers, using notions and ideas which are rooted in the Jewish culture and religion, without explaining or translating them, assuming that their audience is able to understand them without translation.
Ezra Cappell claims that today's writing is the “new American Talmud.” The Talmud consists of two distinct parts, the bigger one, which deals with legal issues, the smaller one, theaggadicpart consisting of stories, homilies, interpretations of biblical passages and advice on ethics. Cappell compares theaggadicsection of the Babylonian Talmud in its storytelling aspects with the cultural work of American Jewish fiction. “...through its literary passages the Talmud reinterprets the Torah anew for its own generation. This open-endedness, this celebration of multiple perspectives, is not only a characteristic of the Babylonian Talmud; it is also a hallmark of twentieth-century and contemporary American Jewish fiction“ (2).
According to Cappell, the literary production of Jews in America can be seen as a new layer or a stage of development of rabbinical commentary on the scriptural inheritance of the Jewish people. The center of rabbinic storytelling is scripture and the Jewish American writers also often refer to scripture, sometimes without full awareness of doing so. However they may stray from the Jewish tradition, they often return to the centering force of Judaism: the Scripture and the Holy Books. A book has a deep meaning in symbology in Jewish culture, the Jews are called “the People of the Book.” There is a deep respect for knowledge and a book is a storage of knowledge and values. A book that is written by Jewish-Americans metamorphoses into a kind of a metaphysical place for them to explore the impact of identity, be it religious or ethnic. The defining feature of rabbinic literature is its ongoing interpretation of history. Literature becomes the faith for secular contemporary Jews, a tool to
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understand and interpret history for future generations. The Jewish American writers have become the theologians of the contemporary Jewish American culture (Cappell, 2-5). Another parallel between the Talmud and modern fiction is the concern for humanity, for moral design and purpose. Nancy Haggard-Gilson writes that, at least since the 1950's among the second generation American Jews, Judaism has been replaced by “Jewishness,” a secular, ethnic culture. The drive for assimilation carried away the religious components replacing them with folk symbols, ethnic food and identification with the State of Israel. She argues that Jewish fiction mirrored the concern with ethnic identity and the flight from Judaism as a response to the pressure to assimilate. But the distinction between “Jewishness” and “Judaism” might be too simplistic. The level of Jewish religious observance is not a defining part of a Jewish identity anymore. Jewish identity can be both religious and cultural, in America it also has a strong ethnic component But the history of Jews does not imply that a lessening of religious practice severs identification with the ideas, ethics and the world views of Judaism. The pursuit of justice and morality, the observing of ethical rules and the identification with the historical experience of the Jewish people, are some of the things which are no less important to Judaism than belief in God, or literacy in Hebrew and Talmud. Adam Meyer points out that the idea of a return to a religious sense of Judaism came to the forefront in many works of the third generation authors. Instead of “writers who are Jews” they have become “Jewish writers.” They have rediscovered their Judaism and retrieved Jewish forms and topics. Meyer quotes Nessa Rappoport's phrase: “Having won our place in American culture, we are beginning to be confident enough to reclaim Jewish culture” (111). Returning to Jewish values seems to be a major trend and the main feature which makes them different from the previous generations. There are many thematic fields which are connected to the Jewish identity, whether it is cultural or religious, such as settings in Israel or Jewish Diaspora, issues relevant for Jewish people, use of religious symbols, Hebrew and Yiddish languages. The Jewish identity is inseparable from the Jewish culture, which is in turn inseparable from religion. Judaism is a religion connected to time and memory. In order to consider themselves one religious entity, Jews “must rely upon the recognition of a shared past and tradition to retain continuity and
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cohesiveness” (Haggard-Gilson, 24). When writing about Jewish themes which are at a first glance, secular, authors connect to religion through different channels.
L. Stahlberg notes that history or remembrance of history serves God in Judaism. Forgetting history is equated with sinfulness. She suggests that contemporary Jewish literature should be read in light of the past which it reflects. The need to remember is essential in Judaism. Remembering the covenant is as important as keeping it. “Remembering becomes bound up in narrative, in writing and retelling history; keeping is accomplished through ritual observance... Religiously, the focus of memory in Judaism has been on remembering and keeping the commandments, on ritually reenacting the past“ (Stahlberg, 74 -75).
The future of Judaism is bound up in remembrance of the past, since the tradition for Jews is a chain that connects past and future generations. Many of the Jewish rituals, words in Jewish languages, rabbinical commentaries, Torah sources, liturgy fragments etc. are mentioned in contemporary texts without their meanings being explained.
Hana Wirth-Nesher points out that the Jewish American literature has always aimed at a double audience, at the general and the Jewish reader (“Accented Imagination,” 290). Although the general American non-Jewish reader might be familiar with some practices of Judaism through popular culture, movies, etc. nevertheless most of the American readers do not have a profound knowledge of the Jewish tradition. Thus, the texts can be understood on different levels. The readers are divided into groups - a smaller group of those who have the knowledge of Judaism, the “in-group readers,” and those who have no “insider” knowledge: the “outside” readers.
Early immigrant writers were trying to enter the mainstream literary culture - which they apparently succeeded to do. They had to explain many terms of their culture, which were unknown to the general American audience. Although their native language was in the most cases Yiddish, they nevertheless chose to write in English, their adopted language. English was the means to reach their intended “outsider” audience. For example, they made appendixes of words unfamiliar to their intended non-Jewish American audience, or tried to give intercultural translations. For example, Mary Antin has a glossary which has a
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key to pronunciation and bracket transcriptions of Hebrew and Yiddish words. Religious rituals and holidays are explained on a basic level. The in-group Jewish reader
does not need these explanations. Werner Sollors mentions in his introduction to Mary Antin's novel that Antin imagines a more hostile Gentile outside reader. She adjusts herself, trying to make her text more understandable: “ ...strategy of sometimes addressing, but almost always implying a reader from the outside world have to have certain effects on the writing of such a text: the in-group reader would feel more excluded, and the role of the author as mediator would be strengthened” (Sollors, Introduction, XXI).
Sometimes these explanations were apologetic, building on how the “barbaric” rituals were connected to harsh life conditions in their countries of origin. The immigrant Jewish American novels by Abraham Cahan, Mary Antin and Anzia Yezierska treated the Jewish tradition as a vestige of the Old World, something a Jewish immigrant had to get rid of in order to be accepted in the new society. Today there are hardly any translations or explanations to be found, making higher demands of the reader.
Judith Oster mentions the observations of a sociologist Marcus Lee Hansen who noted the phenomenon of third-generation Americans who are discovering the traditions of their grandparents. What the second-generation wanted to forget, these grandchildren now want to remember. She thinks that there is a literary pattern operating, when the grandchildren are discovering the stories of the grandparents, which were forgotten and discharged. In order to find them again, they go through such hardships as learning their grandparents' languages, be it Yiddish or Chinese. Oster quotes Lan Samantha Chang who coins the term “unforgetting.” “Different from merely remembering, unforgetting is the unraveling of the deliberate effort of forgetting” (Oster, 153-154).
In this thesis, I concentrate on Jewish American literature and explore how the search for roots - in this case the roots which are connected to Judaism - is reflected in many novels which are written by American Jewish authors of different generations. I illustrate by examples from contemporary American Jewish writing, comparing the attitudes to Judaism in contemporary and first-generation immigrant writing. I argue that one
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cannot separate the Jewish ethnic identity, which is a focus of Jewish American literature, from the Jewish religion. Judaism encompasses all aspects of culture and even the most secular of writers relate to Judaism the moment they write about Jewish themes. Even when they choose to assimilate and remove themselves from religion, they would be writing about the religion they have distanced themselves from. In the Jewish context and history, it is impossible to separate the religion from tradition and culture. I explore how different aspects of identity interconnect through religion and how the legacy of the Jewish tradition is reclaimed and reaffirmed by modern authors writing in English. The thematic fields I explore encompass different spheres of life, which are connected to Judaism. The way writers deal with these themes shows the importance (or unimportance) that the religious tradition has for them. Even when they criticize religious ideas, these are Jewish ideas they deal with. Judaism is something they either reject or embrace, but it is there in their works and it is what makes their writing Jewish American writing. I would also like to compare the attitude towards religion in the works of first-generation immigrant authors, whose native language was not English, and how this attitude changed with the new generation of writers at the end of the twentieth century.
In order to understand the complexity of the Jewish identity, one needs to know how Jews came to become Americans and to perceive the “golden land” of America (as the common Yiddish phrase went) as the new promised land. America was the final destination for many immigrants and they embraced its values and culture sometimes sacrificing their own cultural values.
1.1 Historical overview
The first Jews ever to set foot on American soil were twenty three refugees from the Dutch colony of Recife in northeastern Brazil in year 1654. Their families had to flee Spain and Portugal when Isabella of Spain ordered all Jews to leave in 1492.
The Jewish immigrants came from Germany and central Europe in 1880's in thousands, but the biggest wave of immigrants came from Eastern Europe
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and Russia, fleeing the pogroms between 1880 and 1924. These Jews werestrictlyreligious and their primary language was Yiddish. By 1925, there were 4.5 million Jews in the United States, constituting one of the world's largest communities (Diner, New Promised Land,1-45). The first Jewish writers who entered the American mainstream belonged to this wave of immigration. Their native language was Yiddish. For example, Abraham Cahan wrote both in Yiddish and in English. Their works became a kind of a bridge between two cultures. Their novels were intended for a Gentile American Christian reader who did not know much about the Jewish culture. Mary Antin is trying to describe her becoming an American in terms understandable for non-Jewish American readers, thus making her immigrant experience universal. “The making of American” and getting rid of the “old” identity is a common theme in early immigrant novels.
1.2 Christianity as a “default” religion
Even today the United States of America is a religious country, its society is deeply rooted in Christian Protestant tradition. When the immigrants came to America, for them the “default” American religion was Christianity. It was introduced as “Americanness.”
Becoming American was one of the things that the immigrants craved for most and there was only one American identity, which did not include multiethnic and multicultural characteristics of immigrants. The school was the first step on the road to Americanness, and there were compromises to be made. Mary Antin describes how at school the class said “the Lord's prayer.” “In the middle of the prayer a Jewish boy across the aisle trod on my foot to get my attention. “You must not say that”...”it's Christian”... I did not know but what he was right, but the name of Christ was not in the prayer, and I was bound to do everything that the class did. If I had any Jewish scruples, they were lagging away behind my interest in school affairs“ (165). Michael Gold, Rose Cohen and Alfred Kazin give accounts of encounters with Christian missionaries who launched a mighty campaign to convert the Jews. “They set up schools and orphanages designed in particular to attract Jewish children. They roamed
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hospitals and sought deathbed conversions.” In schools Christian prayers and mandatory readings of the King James version of the Bible made immigrant children a captive audience of the missionaries (Diner, The Jews, 118-119). Rose Cohen’s younger siblings attended school that was connected with a church. When the family had nothing to eat, they are told that “any child in class who would say a prayer received a slice of bread and honey” (Cohen, 160). Many literary works and memoirs look at Christmas as a symbol of assimilation. In the Jewish consciousness, Christmas and Easter are connected with persecution and pogroms, whereas for Christian America they are the biggest holidays. For Anne Roiphe, “Christmas is a kind of checking point where one can stop and view oneself on the assimilation route” (206). Her mother considered Christmas an American holiday and made sure her children got the best of America. It was a “strange Christmas without a Christ.” Grace Paley deals with this topic in a humorous way when she describes in her short story “The Loudest Voice,” how Jewish children are taught the Christian tradition in American schools. Shirley is chosen to participate in a Christmas play because she has a “particularly loud, clear voice with lots of expression” (35). Jewish children are given roles in a Christmas play and the story is retold from a child's point of view. Her parents discuss what is happening at the school: “You're in America! Clara, you wanted to come here. In Palestine the Arabs would be eating you alive. Europe you had pogroms. Argentina is full of Indians. Here you got Christmas...Some joke, ha?” (36). Christmas is inseparable from America, it comes in one and the same “package” and cannot be disposed of. It is a “creeping pogrom,” a thing which brings the assimilation in a “nice” holiday package. The “kind city administration” places a Christmas tree on a street corner. “In order to miss its chilly shadow,” the neighbors walk three blocks in the cold to buy the bread, because the tree offends their feelings. It is “a stranger in Egypt” in the predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, and it is a part of “genuine” America. It never would occur to the city administration that their efforts to integrate the new citizens might be offending to their religious feelings, and to the citizens it would never occur to complain -- for them it is inevitable to be a minority whose interests are not taken into account.
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In Nathan Englander's short story “Reb Kringle,” an Orthodox Jew has a temporary job as a Santa in a chain supermarket store, entertaining children. He is the only one among all Santas who has a genuine beard. He thinks this job is a sin, but his wife makes him do it. He is famous as a star and even the elevator man recognizes him as “that Rabbi Santa.” He is sure that “...his very spirit was being challenged, as if God had become sadistic in his test of the human soul.” (146) One of the children goes with safety scissors after his beard, he thinks of him as “a little Nazi.” He starts talking with the child who expresses a wish for a menorah. Stunned, Izik the Santa finds out from the boy that he is Jewish, not Christian. His response is: “You ask Santa for Chanukah, you get it” (148). He promises to bring the candles himself. When the child tells him that they are going to Vermont to go to his new father's parents' church, Izik's patience ends. “Church and no Chanukah” is too much. “He grabbed the pompom hanging down form his head and yanked off his hat, revealing a large black yarmulke” (149). A woman faints upon seeing this. The store was just glad to fire him but was afraid because it just had to pay a fine for firing an “HIV Santa”, so it would not have the courage to fire a “Reb Santa or Punjabi Santa.” This is the situation in today's America, where minorities are still perceived as minorities, but nobody wants to get into trouble for discriminating them.
1.3 Conversion to Judaism
It seems that the topic of conversion to Judaism is becoming quite common in works of American Jewish literature, though it is not a common phenomenon in Jewish religious life. Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, it does go out to recruit newcomers and does not encourage conversion. Many people would agree with Tova Mirvis's character who is wondering about a convert: ”She couldn't understand why anyone would voluntarily take on so many commandments. She had enough trouble remembering all of them and she had been born into it” (Ladies Auxiliary, 90).
Diversity and freedom of choice are highly valued in American culture and Judaism has become one of the choices. Popularity of the conversion theme signifies the new openness of American Christian society. Being American can
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mean anything, like in Jish Gen's novel Mona in the Promised Land. It is a novel by Chinese-American writer, which deals with Jewish-American issues as one of the central themes. For Jish Gen's heroine, a Chinese-American, being American means being anything she wants. She chooses being Jewish partly because most of her friends are Jewish and she lives in a Jewish neighborhood. Her parents are not happy about her choice. They made a point of telling her that they came to the United States to become American and not Jewish. “Jewish is American... American means being whatever you want, and I happened to pick being Jewish” (Jen, 49).
