Jewish American Literature & Culture

American Studies Seminar: The Promised Land
Syllabus Yiddishkeit Student Pages Resources Laura Leibman

We have discussed both how old roles are recycled in this era and how a number of new gender roles & stereotypes were created

MEN

  1. Schlemiel (Loser)
  2. Schimazel (Passive)
  3. The Jewish Son/Husband
  4. The Rebel/Obscene

 

WOMEN

1. The Jewish Mother

2 . The Loud Voiced Daughter

 

 

"My mother Anne and her two older brothers, Bruce and Paul; effortlessly American crica 1954." Joey Rubin's Family History Page, English 303 Reed College. http://www.reed.edu/%7Erubinj/projectshome.html (30 March 2004).

Other Assimilation Woes Gender Images:

Orion's Family

Miranda's Photo Album

Joey's Family

Women in Della's Family

Sophie's WWII Family Images

Laura's Chicago Family


My grandmother Lavene in Southern California, 1965.

Orion Teal's Family History Page, English 303 Reed College. http://www.reed.edu/%7Etealo/familyhistory.html (3 March 2004)

What changes are made in Jewish American literature and from the end of WWII to 1973? For the sake of comparison to the great tide, here are our same four topics.

To this we also have added the disussion of

Anthropologist Karen Brodkin argues while Jews were often not considered fully white before WWII, after the war they benefited from the G.I. Bill, and the government subsidized establishment of suburbia after the war (How the Jews Became White Folks). The combination of the move to the suburbs and the entrance into higher education helped American Jewry become more fully white during this era, as did their physical dislocation from Black communities. We looked at a number of writers on the following subjects:

  1. Jewish Black Relations (Sinclair, Lester)
  2. the Flight to the Suburbs (Sinclair, "Grace Paley's Faith: The Journey Homeward, The Journey Forward"; "Moving to the Suburbs: Its Possible Impact on the Role of the Jewish Minority in American Community Life"; Philip Roth)

We discussed in what ways Jews new social identity as “white folks” was often constructed at the expense of African Americans.

One of the greatest changes that has occurred with language that we have noted is the rise of the obscene. How does obscenity allow Jewish men (and women?) to enter the mainstream? Figures to consider include: Phillip Roth, Saul Bellow, Lenny Bruce, and Allen Ginsberg.

 

We have also noted the emergence of a polyvocality in stories like The Changlings. We suggested that this novel both picks up on the Yiddish "monologue within dialogue tradition" and emphasizes postmodern distrust of storytelling from one point of view. We also felt that it more accurately reflected the urban setting in which the Changlings took place and the fracturing of Jewish life in this era.

World War II has often been seen as a watershed moment in American and world culture and is used as the starting point for "postmodern" literature. For American Jews the holocaust would have deeper ramifications and would mark a paradoxical moment in time: at the same time that Germans were bent upon eliminating Jews, Americans were slowly come to accept Jews as "white folks." For many American Jews, this newfound status meant an obligation to help elimate other forms of racism in America; many young liberal Jews were involved in the civil rights movement. For others, the newfound status was precarious at best and to be well guarded, lest prejudice and oppression return. Your job is to formulate a response to the anti Semetic poem, "Hey, Jew boy..." from the perspective of two of the characters in Sinclair's the Changlings. What did it mean for Jews at this time to be "white" and Jewish? How does Sinclair's vision of being white and Jewish differ from that of other writers and thinkers of this era?

Two new issues have arisen with respect to humor

  1. The use of the obscene (e.g. Lenny Bruce, Saul Bellow, & Phillip Roth)
  2. The way that stereotypes can simultaneously empower and oppress (The Goldbergs)
  3. The way that humor has been used to boost Jewish manhood by denegrating Jewish women.

If the tenement became the new mythos for American Jews of the Great Tide, the physical and cultural ethos of suburbia would transform American Jewish life after WWII. One of the most famous suburbs of this era was Levittown in Long Island. As the curriculum materials for American Passages: A Literary Survey notes, “Not surprisingly, these housing developments tended to contain only white middle-class families. Black families were not welcome, and the sameness of the homes enforced, at least outwardly, the sameness of the lives lived inside them” ( Unit 14 “Suburban Dreams”). Phillip Roth exposes this oppressive sameness is depicted in many of his stories, including “Eli the Fanatic” found in Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology.

 
 
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