Introduction

This Festschrift issue honors the achievements of Professor Dan Walden, the founding editor of Studies in American Jewish Literature. To say that Dan's long and preeminent career illustrates that the work of a single scholar can identify and define an entire field is an understatement. Walden outlined the contours of American Jewish literature and articulated its contributions to America's literary culture over the course of more than four productive decades. In addition to his pathbreaking scholarship in Jewish literature, Dan recognized, long before most in the academy, the importance of what today we call ethnic studies or multiculturalism. Early on in his academic career, he displayed great sensitivity to issues of gender and race. Indeed, he is a man of many firsts: at Penn State University, he introduced the first course on African-American literature and culture, the first ethnic studies course, and the first set of Jewish literature courses to be offered.

Dan Walden's impact on Jewish literature is manifold and is apparent to anyone who works in the field. Even a cursory look at Dan's bibliography, which appears at the end of this volume, will make eminently clear his formidable presence in the field of Jewish literature. In addition to his singular contributions to American Jewish literature, however, it is important to note that Dan Walden has been a pioneering force in ethnic literary studies. He has applied his literary insights to the study of ethnic literature, African-American literature in particular. He is fully cognizant of a basic truth: the study of any ethnic literature has universal implications for the study of literature in general. As a result, Dan's appreciation of literature as first and foremost a reading experience, which can elevate the soul and help reveal the manifold dimensions of one's identity, makes an indispensable contribution to understanding the human condition and enhances one's awareness of the synergy between literature and culture. Furthermore, during the turbulence that swept over American campuses in the sixties and seventies, Walden's emphasis on the study of ethnic literature and multiculturalism helped calm troubled waters.

The essays in this issue reflect both the editorial aims of SAJL, as Dan originally conceived of them, and the journal's ever-expanding circle of inclusivity. Works of women authors gained their rightful standing in the journal; poetry was added to prose; and novels of emerging writers were analyzed. Viewing the table of contents for this Festschrift, one sees the variety and richness of its articles. Two studies treat the Holocaust. Victoria Aarons discusses the vexing question of the relationship between personal experience and subsequent representation of the Shoah in dealing with second and third generation writers. "The post-survivor generation," she notes, "might be said to be plagued less by an absence of information . . . and more by an absence of immediacy." Hanna Berliner Fischthal compares Elie Wiesel's memoir of his ghetto experience in Sighet with that of her own father in the ghetto of Dabrowa Górnicza. She notes, among other things, the vastly different demographic in both ghettos: "While Wiesel's town was predominantly Jewish, Dabrowa's 5,500 Jews made up only one-seventh of the town's population." Essays by Nathan P. Devir, Sandor Goodhart, and Carole S. Kessner deal with canonical writers, for example, Chaim Potok, Bernard Malamud, and Cynthia Ozick. Devir offers a critical comparative study of Potok's The Gift of Asher Lev and his earlier work My Name Is Asher Lev. Devir argues that the ambivalent father-son relationship in Potok's novel mirrors both "the archetypal Abraham-Isaac relation" and "the paradoxes of allegiance and observance intrinsic to Jewish-American life." Goodhart's fascinating discussion of The Magic Barrel reveals the various ways that Malamud's work subtly functions as a story collection, as philosophic reflection, and as "redemption." Kessner's study discusses Ozick's most recent novel as a literary pentimento, "a longing for the Paris of old," amid a vastly altered Western world.

Three of the essays in this Festschrift volume further illustrate the range of SAJL's literary concerns. Sandford F. Marovitz writes about Myla Goldberg, a...