American Talmud: The Cultural Work of Jewish American Fiction (review)

Jewish-American literature, especially in the heyday of Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth was often viewed from a sociological perspective. Its themes seemed rich in the American aspects (especially immigration and assimilation) but slim in its usage of Jewish ideas. If the latter did appear, they were usually of the negative sort with a denigration of those who practiced the faith or adhered to its religious theories. While some writers despaired at the state of America or the degeneration of a moral center, they saw little in Judaism as a means to restore value or moral cohesion. No wonder then that Irving Howe in the introduction to his anthology of Jewish-American Stories in 1977 rang a death knell for the genre. But as Ezra Cappell in his text American Talmud: The Cultural Work of Jewish American Fiction, points out, Howe's obituary was both premature and off-base. Especially with second or third generation Jewish-American authors, Cappell sees not only a revitalization of Jewish-American literature but a utilization of Jewish ideas and mores in relevant ways.

Jews have been called the "People of The Book," (i.e. the Pentateuch) and over the centuries they have read this work with the help of the Talmud and other commentators like the indispensable Rashi, whose gloss is considered essential to a Jewish understanding of this primary text. Of late, the concept of Midrash where Biblical stories have been spun in ways that can sometimes seem tangential to the original, has grown popular, as people have sought to bring the text home. It is in these traditions that Cappell places Jewish-American writing. As he says: "I am forcefully suggesting that the literary production of Jews in America be seen as one more stage of rabbinic commentary on the scriptural inheritance of the Jewish people" (2). While stories still center on relevant aspects of American and Jewish history, Cappell sees the most important writers as returning to "the centering force of Judaism: scripture and the Holy Books" (3).

Cappell is well-versed in literature and Judaism, and in clear, jargon-free, prose he offers detailed examinations of the works of the already canonized Henry Roth, Bellow, Malamud, and newer writers like Allegra Goodman (Kaaterskill Falls) and Rebecca Goldstein (The Mind-Body Problem). (A lengthy interview with Goldstein forms an appendix to this text.) First he offers a contra view of Roth's Call it Sleep, generally viewed as a seminal work in the genre. Cappell argues against this glorification, positing that Roth presents Judaism not as a faith that offers hope or redemption but one to be derided—as the author did in real life. (In a later chapter, he gives a more favorable reading to Mercy of a Rude Stream, the novel Roth wrote after his return to Judaism and writing.)

Following this argument, he takes the almost sacrosanct Malamud to task for his presentation of Judaism as a religion of "suffering" which Cappell shows only works in the abstract and not when placed in the context of real life events, such as the Holocaust. The prurient image of a concentration camp number on a woman's breast in the short story "The Lady in the Lake" stands as a glaring example of Malamud's limitations when dealing with Jewish history.

Having set up, as it were, a counter view of how Jewish values can be cheapened or abused, he turns to writers who project a more positive reconciliation with their birth faith. In light of this, Bellow comes in for a revisionist reading of works that some have dismissed as lesser but which Cappell sees as deserving of more respect. Using the short stories "The Old System" and "The Bellarosa Connection," where Bellow espouses a more positive view of traditional Judaism than heretofore, Cappell makes a good case for his cause, though that Bellow became increasingly conservative in his political views and concomitantly more sympathetic to Judaism might have been...