_Contemporary Literature as _Modern_Midrasly
Janet Burstein
.
T
he lure of our earliest texts, like a persist-
of the essayists above. Engaged in the work of
ent undertow, has been drawing
what theorist Maurice Halbwachs has called "col-
American Jewish writers back to the
lective memory," the essayists drew "from the
sources of our culture. Among the first of many
past what still lives or is capable of living in the
contemporary writers to "look back" were
consciousness" of people who "keep... memory
women, who brought to biblical texts not only a
alive." But Diamant's popular novel — like other
traditional midrashic interest in searching out
historical fictions — performed another kind of
meaning, in "seizing upon" what Norma Rosen
cultural work. Like history, which pays "primary
called "improbabilities" and "gaps" in the original
attention to changes and differences" between
narratives, but also a politically edged, feminist
then and now, historical fictions emphasize the
curiosity. In Biblical Women Unbound, her book of
exotic nature of the past. They imagine another
"counter tales," Rosen wanted to give voice to the
world and time, different from ours, but shaped
matriarchs, to bring them into contemporary
by our preoccupations.
perspective, to ask questions and "to argue...with
the text, trying to draw closer to it."
Reacting to Diamant's — largely feminist — pre-
occupations, critics argued about whether or not
In two mid-nineties collections of essays,
this novel could be considered midrashic. But
poems, and short fictions, Out of the Garden and
Jewish women readers devoured it, in part
Reading Ruth, the midrashic impulse developed
because it addresses the desire to imagine, from a
women's insight into a culture that had seemed to
woman's perspective, what life might have been
silence and subordinate women. Their personal
like when women drew their power from forbid-
essays on biblical texts drew on many sources.
den sources and bonded with one another despite
Janet Burstein is Professor
When Rebecca Goldstein asked, for example,
their subordination to the patriarchs.
of English at Drew
what makes Lot's wife "look back," she consid-
At a deeper level, a powerful literary attraction
University. She is the author
ered the text and its classical midrash, imagining
to our textual sources may rise from a sense that
of Writing Mothers, Writing
the doomed woman's pity and love for two older
the enduring complexity of human experience
Daughters (University of
daughters who were left behind with their hus-
and human nature owe much to the rich ambigu-
Illinois) about American
bands when Sodom was destroyed. A mother
ities of our origins. Thomas Mann's massive
Jewish women writers, and
herself, Goldstein identified with that woman's
Joseph and his Brothers develops those ambiguities
the forthcoming 'Tell the
desire to share the fate of her children.
in a twelve-hundred-page "descent" to the
little Secrets': American
Goldstein's father's devotion to his daughters also
sources of western culture written during the tur-
Jewish Writers of the New
taught her that one may look back - despite risk -
bulent days of Germany between the wars. One
Wave (University of
not because of "voyeurism or skepticism, nostal-
can see a similarly ironic sense of the conflicts
Vineessuin)
gia or bravado," but because of "the backward
embedded within us and our culture in Cynthia
pull of love": the desire "to follow after one's
Ozick's "The Pagan Rabbi" (1966). Ozick builds
child....to be one with her." Insights similarly
- upon the biblical moment in which Rebecca
drawn from collective and personal experience as
finds Isaac walking in the field - a story that
well as rabbinic commentary run like bright
divides its protagonist between irreconcilable
threads through both collections.
alternatives that have existed in us, and in the
Also in the nineties Anita Diamant published
The Red Tent, a novel that reversed the direction
world, from the beginning.
Life both within and outside the fence of the