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Jewish Americans produced some of the most important writing in the U.S. in the twentieth century. This Companion addresses the distinctive Jewish American contribution to American literary criticism, poetry and popular culture. It establishes the broadest possible context for the discussion of Jewish American identity as it intersects with the corpus of American literature. Featuring a chronology and guide to further reading, the volume is valuable to scholars and students alike.
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This page intentionally left blank The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature For more than two hundred years, Jews have played important roles in the development of American literature. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature addresses a wide array of themes and approaches to this distinct yet multifaceted body of writing, among them literary history, immigration and acculturation, Yiddish and Hebrew literature, popular culture, women writers, literary theory and poetics, multilingualism, the Holocaust, and contemporary fiction. This collection of specially commissioned essays by leading figures discusses Jewish American literature in relation to ethnicity, religion, politics, race, gender, ideology, history, and ethics, and places it in the contexts of both Jewish and American writing. With its chronology and guides to further reading, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and students alike. THE CAMBRIDGE C O M PA N I O N T O JEWISH AMERICAN L I T E R AT U R E EDITED BY H A N A W I RT H - N E S H E R M I C H A E L P. K R A M E R Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521792936 © Cambridge University Press 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2003 - isbn-13 978-0-511-07157-7 eBook (EBL) - isbn-10 0-511-07157-4 eBook (EBL) - isbn-13 978-0-521-79293-6 hardback - isbn-10 0-521-79293-2 hardback - isbn-13 978-0-521-79699-6 paperback - paperback isbn-10 0-521-79699-7 Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. CONTENTS List of contributors Chronology Introduction: Jewish American literatures in the making h a n a w i rt h - n e s h e r and m i c h a e l p. k r a m e r 1. Beginnings and ends: the origins of Jewish American literary history m i c h a e l p. k r a m e r 2. Imagining Judaism in America s u sa n n a h h e s c h e l page vii x 1 12 31 3. Of crucibles and grandfathers: the East European immigrants p r i s c i l l a wa l d 50 4. Coney Island, USA: America in the Yiddish literary imagination dav i d g . ro s k i e s 70 5. Hebrew literature in America alan mintz 92 6. Traces of the past: multilingual Jewish American writing h a n a w i rt h - n e s h e r 110 7. Accents of the future: Jewish American popular culture donald weber 129 v list of contents 8. Jewish American poetry m a e e r a y. s h r e i b e r 149 9. Jewish American writers on the Left a l a n wa l d 170 10. Jewish American renaissance r