Jewish-American Literature Makes Aliya? Negotiating Collective Borders in the Israeli Literary Discourse

• In Event: On the Move: Travel, Migration, and Modern Jewish LIteratures

Abstract

This paper analyzes ideological aspects of the reception of Jewish-American literature in the Israeli literary discourse, primarily in the 1960s and 1970s. It maps the trends underlying the Israeli approach to translated works by major American authors such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud, who were often perceived as representative of Jewish-American culture and life.
By examining literary reviews, editorials and interviews with the authors, I discuss the ambivalence inherent in the Israeli literary discourse: on the one hand, one finds a tendency to particularize and “Judaize” universal aspects of works by Jewish-American authors, to take pride in their literary achievements or criticize them when they are “too harsh” in their depictions of Jewish life, generally assuming a common destiny with American Jews and exhibiting an affinity to American Jewish culture; on the other hand, one finds a tendency in the Israeli literary discourse to (over) emphasize the difficulty and peril of living as a Jew in a non-Jewish world, and to assume a spiritual-cultural hierarchy in the Jewish world, that places the cultural and literary life in Israel as more authentically Jewish and therefore superior to that of American Jews.
These two trends attest to the dialectic perception, realized in the Israeli literary discourse, of the collective boundaries of the Jewish people as a whole; a perception shaped in the face of the continuous challenge represented by the other major Jewish center of the second half of the 20th century, the one in the United States.

Author

• Omri Asscher, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev