Firing a Loose Canon: The Current State of Modern Jewish Literary Studies

In her introduction to The Modern Jewish Canon, Ruth Wisse gives an account of her pioneering efforts to introduce courses in Yiddish literature at McGill University, on the grounds that they would broaden the university's coverage of Western culture: "I came to see the task as urgent…. This was more than a decade before Holocaust studies were offered at universities, and I believed then, as I still do, that it is important to teach Jewish civilization for its own sake, and as a counterforce to antisemitism and that, as a matter of priority, learning about Jews is more important to the future of humankind than about their extinction."¹ Wisse's convictions, as articulated in The Modern Jewish Canon, were and continue to be a mix of fierce, partisan loyalty to the particularities of Jewish literature and the idea of the Jewish people, as well as a conservative commitment to the idea of Great Books and Western culture writ large, at a time when, as the editors of Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon: Essays in Honor of Ruth R. Wisse note in their introduction, many humanities departments were mounting a severe critique of Western culture.²

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon, a sprawling collection of thirty-eight essays organized around Wisse's 2000 book, attests to the resounding success of Wisse's early as well as more recent pedagogical and scholarly efforts to establish modern Jewish literature, in general, and Yiddish literature, in particular, as important fields of study in universities. This is a massive book, brimming with learned and perceptive pieces by students and colleagues of Ruth Wisse, all of which respond to the choices and interpretations offered in "Wisse's canon," as it is referred to in several essays—a paradoxical term, to be sure, insofar as it suggests objective or universal importance (via the word canon) but also signals the subjectivity inherent in the project of choosing the strongest, more important works of modern Jewish literature.

The book is divided into five sections. The first, "Making a Canon," treats the larger idea of a modern Jewish literary canon and interrogates some of Wisse's criteria for the works chosen in her book. The second section, "Elaborations," offers essays that largely confirm and elaborate upon Wisse's choices, offering new interpretations of works by Wisse's canonical authors—a kind of Talmudic expansion, if you will, on the "mishnah" that is Wisse's book. The third section, "Conversations," opens up the canon to cross-linguistic, interdisciplinary discussion, while the essays in "Interventions" address authors, texts, and genres that were excluded in Wisse's book. The final section, "Writers, Critics, and Canons," includes three articles by contemporary fiction writers (Jonathan Rosen, Dara Horn, and Cynthia Ozick) reflecting on canon-formation as well as the moral/ideological commitments of the critic. Several of the contributors employ a personal mode both as a means of expressing their indebtedness to Wisse's teaching and scholarship, but also in recognition of her personally and politically engaged polemical writing. Robert Alter calls his small book on the subject of literary canons Canon and Creativity;³ one might have called this festschrift "Canon and Community" insofar as it represents a historical coming together of a large group of Jewish literary scholars intent, like Wisse, on enriching and explicating great works of modern Jewish literature.

A spirit of deference for the master teacher/scholar for whom this festschrift is dedicated has clearly shaped and tempered some of the editorial choices. For example, with the exception of one essay...