The Ascent of Hebrew and Jewish Literature in America Review Essay

Beginning with the great Jewish migration of the 1880s, when pogroms, socioeconomic hardships, and the lure of a better life elsewhere beckoned, America became the preferred destination for millions of Jews over Old World lands and even Zion. Along with these immigrants, Hebraists and other Jewish intellectuals, thinkers, educators, poets, essayists, and novelists were swept to the Golden Land. They were later joined by those who were to grow up in America to give rise to an old-new corpus of literature in Hebrew, Yiddish and, soon enough, English.

These literary figures produced a significant body of writings—poetry, short-stories, plays, and novels, and also a wide range of essays—that were published in America's periodical literature. Many, in addition, also saw the light of day in journals that came out in pre-Holocaust Europe, in Eretz Israel, and in the State of Israel. Though a systematic survey is still waiting to be conducted, many were included in literary Hebrew and Yiddish anthologies published in America and Israel. This trend saw a decisive decline with the deaths of America's Hebrew followed later by Yiddish literati, while some migrated to Israel.

Critical studies of this literary output, moreover, were published in a host of sources—newspapers, journals or book-length studies. Many of these— and one must admit that they possessed a range in terms of quality, caliber and depth—that were written in Hebrew were directed at a postulated Hebrew-reading audience, one that, presumably, was also able to plumb the depths and nuances of the works discussed. Though a decreasing number in America, these readers remained a viable target for Hebraists whose works were also acquired, and reviewed, in Israel's Republic of Letters.

In light of the seeming dearth of scholarship examining the output of a whole literary center of Hebrew—including Yiddish and Jewish literature that may have received better treatment—what does one do first? The possibilities are many when such a vacuum has been formed over the decades of neglect. As any superficial examination would indicate, the field is ripe for the contribution of a host of approaches available in the discipline. It is against this reality that the last few years have witnessed the publication in America, with some even in Israel, of studies of American Hebraic belles lettres. These are setting a high standard for scholarship about American Hebrew literary studies. Most are in English, and though this trend seems to indicate a new wave characterized by its rising number, it is not a complete turnabout for the study of Hebrew literature. In fact, the English version of such scholarship traces its roots back to the Hebraic one, relying on seminal studies, paradigms, and interpretations to carve out ever-newer ground-breaking paths heretofore left unexamined, resulting in a tour de force in contemporary studies of American Hebrew and Jewish belles lettres.

Before us are three that draw attention to the literary activities of Jews in America—two devoted to Hebrew literature and the third to Yiddish and English—primarily during the first half of the twentieth century. Each in turn shares with the others a number of features, among them, for example, the curious matter of the interest exhibited by Jewish writers in Native Americans, the often ambivalent attitudes about acculturation, life in America's urban centers, and natural vistas. Each, to be sure, addresses these phenomena in accordance with its own predilection, giving rise to differing models of approaches as to what can be done in the study of American Jewish literature. So in place of recommending one of the three above the others—for each is unique in its own way...