Identity Papers: Contemporary Narratives of American Jewishness by Helene Meyers (review)

Helene Meyers’s Identity Papers is an engaging study that considers the function of contemporary Jewish American literature. Meyers suggests that narratives that deal optimistically with contentious aspects of Jewish identity, such as queerness or intermarriage, are not merely symptoms of an increasingly assimilated Jewish population but rather present opportunities to reaffirm Jewish difference in a positive and creative way. Jewish difference is therefore no longer reduced to a binary opposition between Jews and non-Jews, a structure that is both overdetermined and essentialist, but also includes difference among Jews: feminist Jews, black Jews, gay Jews, liberal Jews, and so forth. In this sense, argues Meyers, Jewish identity is forever in flux; it is a process rather than an absolute. Contemporary Jewish American literature contributes to and shapes this process, since, as Meyers argues, “aesthetic narratives need to be understood not only as mimetic in nature but also visionary or prophetic.” The premise of Meyers’s book is consequently as problematic as it is liberating: while it offers an inclusive framework that strives to ensure “postmodern Jewish sustainability,” it by necessity fails to posit any suitable definition of Jewishness.

Identity Papers is divided into five chapters. In the introduction, Meyers outlines her core thesis but also establishes her own voice within the book, one that is notably personal and journalistic. While this makes for compelling reading it occasionally undermines Meyers’s rigorous scholarship. To talk of “some of our greatest thinkers” or “one of the most promising and gifted young contemporary Jewish writers” is heartfelt yet ultimately meaningless.

In the remaining four chapters, Meyers meticulously analyses a series of texts each pertaining to various permutations of Jewish difference and considers how they are represented or positioned. In several instances she compares a text that categorically refuses any nuance within Jewish identity to one that celebrates it. This is an effective methodology that reveals the frequency with which literary discourse falsely inscribes Jewishness as completely divorced from other categories of difference such as gender, race or sexuality. Moreover, argues Meyers, those texts that do allow for intra-Jewish difference are a reminder that so much of what is regarded as intrinsically and authentically Jewish such as patriarchy or homophobia is in fact historically constructed.

For example, chapter 2, “Feminism and Orthodoxy: Not an Oxymoron,” makes the crucial point that Orthodox gendering is not a timeless feature of Judaism; it has developed over the centuries, and the exclusion of Jewish women from religious education is based upon custom rather than law. In Tova Mirvis’s The Ladies Auxiliary (1999), Bathsheva, a recently widowed convert to Judaism, arrives in Memphis, Tennessee, from New York and disturbs the female Orthodox status quo with her enthusiasm for Jewish learning—and her Jewish feminism. Initially this enthusiasm is dismissed as a symptom of Bathsheva’s otherness, a mark of her gentile background. Yet once the auxiliary members are made aware of her thoroughly orthodox training, Meyers argues, it becomes apparent that the feminist otherness she represents already exists within Judaism.

Chapter 3, “Queering the Jewish Family,” also offers a historicist approach and contends that Jewish homophobia is a form of internalised anti-Semitism rather than an accurate reflection of Jewish ideals of sexuality. Referencing Daniel Boyarin’s work on the history of Jewish masculinity, Meyers argues that heterosexuality has become “not only a means of Jewish survival but also a vehicle of assimilation.” Conversely, the texts explored in this chapter depict the process of coming out as a means of critiquing received notions of Jewishness and queerness whilst simultaneously innovating these categories. Although Meyers’s conclusions regarding these texts are original and thought-provoking it is clear that she is more interested in their status as sociological documents than works of literature. Moreover, this focus is double edged: works such as Judith Katz’s Running Fiercely toward a High Thin Sound (1992), or Lev Raphael’s Dancing on Tisha B’Av (1991), are so unreadable that their dual...