•

By SOLOMON GRAYZEL..

Editor Jewish Publication
Society of America

Can we hope for a flourish-
ing literature in the English
language that will reflect the
life and hopes of American
Jews?
Not too long ago the ques-
tion concerning a diaspora lit-
erature used to evoke an ex-
pansionist answer. The tests
for inclusion in Jewish litera-
ture were simple: the Jewis
origin of the author and
Jewish contents of the
Around the time • of World
I, young and old, whoever pos
sessed a measure of Jewis
cultural awareness deba
whether Heinrich Heine's wo
could be considered Jewish as
well as German literature. In
the 1930s, the temptation was
great to adopt Thomas Mann's
magnificent trilogy.
Now, the tendency is to con-
tract the limits and to permit
only that to be called Jewish
literature which is in Hebrew
and Yiddish. In a sense, this
would regularize the concept of
Jewish literature by tying it to
a language, as is the case with
other literatures. Such a limita-

tion strikes us as contrary to
Jewish fact, experience and
tradition.
* * *
The fact is that diaspora
Jewish literature has always
been multi-lingual.
Leaving aside the Aramaic
portions of the Bible and the
Talmud, one segment of Jewish
literature in a diaspora vernacu-
lar comes to mind a once in
nection th Greek-
nturies
ak .
ew-
0
the be-
Christian era.
nna
uch a erature, t gh
noth
of 'afferent type, w
duced in Arabic. S ely
would dream o
place in Jewish
the Arabic wor aadia
Gaon and Maimon es.
Jews have use many lan-
guages, and any 1 guistic test
would be beside he point.
One of the basic difficulties
in deciding what is and what is
not Jewish literature is due not
to language, but to a change in
literary fashion which is re-
flected in the restricted mean-
ing generally given to the term
literature.

,

V3est Woliday Wisit

WM.

53

s.

BROOMFIELD

CONGRESSMAN — 18th DISTRICT

Philosophical writing has be-
come limited to the scholars
and the scholarly; and works on
religion appeal, with few ex-
ceptions, to the theologically-
minded or the maudlin. Now
and then, by accident, we have
a Bertrand Russell or a George
Santyana and, on the Jewish
side, a Schechter or a Heschel,
whose writings possess literary
grace and find wider accept-
ance. But even they are blithe-
ly ignored by most readers. To
read means to enjoy popular
fiction. It is the price we pay
for democratic literacy.
This has clearly not been the
t Jewish view of litera-
re fiction used to play
or role. The modern Jew,
moreover, would be well advis-
ed agaa t too ready acceptance
of the
rrent definition. It is
not at 11 unlikely that the li-
terary
shion will change in
the cul red world about us:
that th thoughtful essay will
come b k into fashion, that
poetry
1 return to favor, and
that phil ophy and history will
resume t it primacy in literary
life. Rea rs may get tired of
contrived lots and their made-
to-order
aracters. The grow-
ing ante t in biography al-
ready pre e
the change. Thus
literature
a higher sense may
before lon come closer to the
type of w ing which has his-
torically b n characteristic of
the Jewish ople. And this kind
of writing
the Jewish field
is as cert
to be done in
English as
as done in Greek,
Arabic or H rew
* *
Herman
uk's "Caine Mu-
tiny" cannot
nnot
listed among
Jewish novel any more than
can the thou tful works of
Waldo Frank r the popular
novels of Edn Ferber. More-
over, the Je
nature of its
contents and c aracters is
equally inconclu ye as a test of
a navel's Jewis ess. The re-
cent spate of n 1 els in which
Jewish life an
the Jewish
people are cari tured, even
when they are wr en by Jews,
has no more cla
to being
considered Jewis
literature
than does Hitl s "Mein
Kampf" which also ays much
about .Tews. Nor ca we con-
Sider Jewish thos w s of •
ton written by
or
JewS in which Jews
ur to
, as
a greater or lesser e
either heroic or vi nous
characters (like "The
ung
Lions" whose author was Jew-
WI, and "By Love Posseased"
whose author was non-Jewish).
All this is as it should be: Jews
must figure in an American
novel because they constitute
part of the total American
scene. Literary critics may wel-
come such novels into Ameri-
can literature, or reject them
on the basis of style or . crafts-
manship ,or whatever other Cri-
teria the critics set up as tests
of quality. Jews, however, can-
not accept them into an Ameri-
can Jewish- literature unless
they meet two further tests: the
one of comprehension, the oth-
er of tradition.
When - one considers - those
works of fiction which are -un-
deniably Jewish, one finds that
they. possess ..the following
characteristics: They make the
Jewish situation central to their
story; the problems they pose
are such as none other than, a
Jewish American would encoun-
ter or want to solve. They then
proCeed to discuss the eltarae-
ters and their - problems with
understanding, appre ciation
and compassion. This is what
has made Ab Oahan's "The Rise
of David Levinsky" the outsand-
ing example of what an Ameri-
can Jewish story should be.
This, too, is what has 'made
Ludwig Lewisohn's "The Island
Within" a good Jewish story.
Even Wouk and Philip Roth,
for all their pcirtrayaI of tawdri-
ness and vulgarity in American
Jewish life, can be said to have
made a contribution to this type

.

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of literature because they know
the Jewish situation and they
discuss it in sorrow rather than
with scorn. Bernard Malamud,
above all, far-fetched though
some of his plots may be, has
shown insight into Jewish
character.

There is one other quality
which the books just mentioned
possess to a greater or lesser
degree. It is the traditional
Jewish attitude of social aware-
ness. The fact is that Jewish
literary activity in the many
centuries which preceded ours
was directed toward social im-
provement in terms of morals,
ethics and the molding of char-
acter. Biblical, rabbinic and
philosophical works, midrash,
poetry and law stressed the
one goal of tikkun ha'olam, the
improvement of the world. Of
course, the best non-Jewish
contributors to every literature
have also expressed it; but our
point is that no book can quali-
fy for Jewish literature unless
this viewpoint lies at its base.
Without it we will have—as we
already do have in considerable
numbers—not a Jewish ••tera-

ture, but stray novels about
Jews, exotic literary by-products
of American life. One can find
them by the dozen; they are
without perception, meaning, or
positive influence.
It seems clear that, in the
course of the past half century,
we in America have laid the
foundations for an American
Jewish literature, both of the
broader kind demanded by Jew-
ish tradition 'and of the nar-
rower fictional type.
All this assumes, of course,
that such future authors will
continue to see a struggle for
values that are worth while.
Uttimat@ly literature is a func-
tion of The culture from which
it rises. This is why the future
of Jewish literature depends di-
rectly on the vitality of Ameri-
can Jewish life.

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Time To Remember The

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The year 5721 marks the Bar Mitzvah anni-
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31 - THE DETRO IT JEWISH NEWS — Friday, September 23, 1960

Tests for American Jewish Literature: Future Depends on Vitality of Life of U. S. Jews

