The Subversion of the Jews: Post-World War II Anxiety, Humor, and Identity in Woody Allen and Philip Roth

A new Jewish anxiety, along with its concomitant new Jewish humor, emerges through the mid-twentieth century to de- or reconstruct American Jewish identity. This essay seeks co examine this phenomenon as it is manifested in the works of Philip Roth and Woody Allen, and to assess the impact of these writers on notions of American jewishness.