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Like many Jews of our generation, Jon Stratton grew up in a family more concerned about assimilation than about preserving Jewish tradition. While he could easily 'pass' among non-Jews, he found himself increasingly torn between his fear of not belonging and a deeply-felt commitment to his family's past.Coming Out Jewish examines the unique challenge of constructing an identity amid the clash between ethnicity and conformity. For many Jews, the idea of full assimilation ended with the Holocaust. But the pressure to adapt to the mainstream, Stratton eloquently argues, remains powerful, especially for those with anglicized names, assimilationist parents, a history of recent immigration, or ambivalent experiences of themselves as Jews. With reference to the work of Daniel Boyarin, Ien Ang, and Homi Bhabha, among others, Stratton offers fresh analysis on a wide range of topics, including the Jewish origins of pluralism in the US, anti-Semitism in Germany, the Jewishness of sitcoms like Seinfeld, and the Yiddishization of American culture since World War II.More than a book about Jews and Jewishness, Coming Out Jewish smartly and accurately mines the Jewish experience in the West to give voice to the issues of migration, Diaspora, assimilation and identity that affect those, displaced and 'othered', around the world.
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COMING OUT JEWISH
A brilliantly anxious reading of the state of Jewish identity. Jon Stratton has marked the cultural sites where an occluded, unspoken self-image and a history of given representations might meet. Coming out Jewish is a work of recovery and innovation. Andrew Renton, University College London
What does it mean to be ‘Jewish’ in the modern world? In Coming Out Jewish, Jon Stratton explores the nature of ‘Jewishness’ as a racial and ethnic identity, and addresses issues of migration, assimilation, diaspora and multiculturalism through the experience of being Jewish. He argues that ‘Jewishness’ is being understood in an increasingly secular and nonessentialist way. In autobiographical material woven through a number of chapters, Stratton introduces his own experience of being brought up in a highly assimilatory household. He goes on to explore attitudes to Jewishness as expressed in cultural policy and in popular culture, considering the ambivalent place of Jews in Europe, the United States, and Australia. Stratton discusses the place of Jewish thought within Cultural Studies, referring to theories of diaspora and identity developed by authors such as Ien Ang and Stuart Hall, and also to writers from Jewish Studies such as Daniel Boyarin and Sander Gilman. Using a Cultural Studies perspective, Stratton is able to show both what is distinctive in the case of the Ashkenazi and Yiddishbackground Jews, and also what is common to them and other minoritised groups in modern nation states. Interweaving autobiographical narrative with historical analysis, ranging from the Jewish origins of cultural pluralism in the United States to the Jewishness of Seinfeld, Coming Out Jewish is a path-breaking book that firmly places the Jewish experience on the Cultural Studies agenda. Jon Stratton is Professor of Cultural Studies at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia.
COMING OUT JEWISH Constructing ambivalent identities
Jon Stratton
London and New York
First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2000 Jon Stratton All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photoc