Nu, you! Yes you, rhetorical-you, why don’t you like being seen as a Jewish writer? Is it because you imagine the Jewish writer as a man with a long beard, peyes, and a fur hat? Is it because you imagine the Jewish writer as a prickly Sabra holding a gun? Is it because you imagine them as old, or dead, or lost in one of the many cities we were forced to leave behind? Is it because when you picture the Jewish writer, they do not look like you? Why? You’re not religious? Fine! You don’t speak Hebrew or Yiddish or Ladino? Great! Is it because you’re interested but largely apathetic to the realm of Jewish policy and politic? Wonderful! You are still, if you want it, a Jewish writer.
You are a Jew because you are a Jew and as a Jew what you write is Jewish. There is no expectation and there is no bar of entry – there is only you and the page. So you know nothing about the religion, so you know nothing about Israel, why does that make your voice any lesser? So you don’t write about particularly “Jewish themes,” well what are “Jewish themes” anyway? Themes in other literatures change, why not in ours? We cannot tie ourselves to the themes and exceptions of Malamud, Roth, and Bellow no more than they could tie themselves to themes and expectations of Sholem Aleykhem, Mendele, and Perets. They say that American Jewish literature is dead, but I feel it lives on in a new form. Sholem Aleykhem, Mendele, and Perets discovered Yiddish. Malamud, Roth, and Bellow discovered the goyish world. Why can’t we discover ourselves? Not in the way a [BrithRate/BirthRight] trip is supposed to “return us to our roots” or in the way a Chabad dinner brings us “closer to G-d” but in a way that we can reckon, sans nostalgia and idealization, with the breadth of the 20th century in the way our parents and grandparents, who were living through it, could not.
The Jewish world which my Grandfather was born into in the late 1930s looks nothing like the Jewish world I live in now. When my grandfather was born, the majority of Ashkenazi Jews spoke Yiddish and lived in Eastern Europe. Now, the bulk of the world’s Jewish population is equally split between the United States and Israel with sizable communities scattered throughout the rest of the world. Generous estimates predict there are now only 600,000 to 1 million Yiddish speakers today. This is not even to mention the massive demographic, territorial, and linguistic shift among Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews caused by explosive immigration from North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. These demographic, territorial, and linguistic shifts that our people experienced in the last 100 years have fundamentally changed us. The expulsions and murders, the immigrations and wars, our assimilation and liberation, all have changed how we see ourselves and how we interact with the world. The effect of these events are not contained within the events themself, like ripples in water we feel the effect of the Holocaust or the Exclusion from the Arab world are felt generations down the line. Only now, when the ripples are beginning to disperse and old threats reemerge can we truly take stock of who we have become.
The literature of a people reflects who they are. Now, in a time of Jewish identity crisis, we need literature that reflects us more than ever. How do we reckon with all of these elements of our past? We have inherited the difficult question of what it means to be Jewish, and with it we have inherited the questions that come with forging a national identity. What does it mean to be Jewish; does it mean we must be religious, does it mean we must be Zionist, does it mean we must speak a Jewish language? What does “never again” mean to us? How do we marry our varying histories? How do we make sense of the Holocaust and Israel and domestic antisemitism and how do we live with that? Most importantly, after all this upheaval and change, how do I feel Jewish enough?
The function of literature is to answer these questions, to reckon and discuss until we can nd something meaningful. We cannot answer these questions when we aspire to be something we are not, or when we decide that our voices are somehow lesser. Israel and religion are not the only answers to our existence, nor are they the only answers to who we are. Ours is a non-territorial nation, a diverse and complicated multi-ethnic nation of people united by the stiff-necked assertion: “hineyni, I am here.” Within our small community we have always had a diversity of opinion shaped by the hineyni-assertion and by our diverse experiences. In other words: there are no bad Jews. There is no one less deserving of being Jewish because of their culture or practice or language. Each of us, from every background, brings to the table a unique perspective on what it means to be Jewish and how to reckon with the 20th century. While this is true, it doesn’t always feel true. For us living in the diaspora, especially in America, it is easy to look at Jews living in Israel or religious Jews living in community and think that they are somehow more Jewish than we are. It is easy to read literature set in Israel, or set in an imagined “historical Russia” and think that those Jewish characters are more Jewish than we are. This is not true, no matter how it feels. So what do we do about that feeling of inadequacy?
Our work is two fold. We must use our diverse experiences to reckon with our past and we must create a Jewish literature that looks like us. We need to create Jewish literature that feels meaningful, dynamic, and relevant to us, one that invests in and grows out of the cultures of the diaspora – our cultures. That means not composing on what is meaningful for something that feels authentic. It means looking into our past to find the elements that reflect who we are today. It means looking at the world we live in now and, like Simon Dubnow said, ״!ארשרײַבטַפֿ און שרײַבט ,דן ״י (Jews, write and record!) We need to rebuild a Jewish identity that is not based on state or place and all the expectations that come with that. There is nothing more Jewish about Israel or New York or Paris, except the fact that more Jews live there. We need to honestly celebrate who we were, who we are, and who we want to become rather than an idealized “authentic” version.
To do this we need to create an infrastructure that has the goal of fostering the next generation of Jewish writers. This means creating small journals and publications run by young Jews and targeted towards young Jews. This means creating writing groups or something like a writing chavrusa/khavruse. This means looking into our past and connecting with elements of our culture that we lost in assimilation and incorporating them into our contemporary lives and literature in a way that feels meaningful rather than obligatory. This means buying into and accepting that there is still a strong Jewish identity among the non-Orthodox population of American Jews and this means buying into and accepting that we have something meaningful to say about who we are in the world. This means accepting the fact that the 20th century has changed us, and for many of us has left us feeling like we do not know who we are.
Part of fostering the next generation of Jewish writers means accepting that we need to search our souls to reconcile the many diverse parts of who we now are in 21st century America. As Jews, we talk and joke a lot about our generational trauma, but how often do we mourn with the ghosts of our lost cities, the remnants of our lost customs, the refugee words of our lost languages? How often do we reckon with our personal traumas and discomforts that came from being raised Jewish? Our personal experiences with Judaism range from the vague suggestion of Jewishness in the home, to religious trauma, to rejection of the identity completely, to a deep love of Jewishness and being a Jew. Some of us come from homes with one Jewish parent, and one non-Jewish parent. These experiences, both personal and familial, complicate the identity of being a Jew. Jewish identity becomes even more complicated when these personal and familial questions are coupled with the national or religious expectations imposed
and Jewish politics in such an intense way for it to be considered Jewish? What are we losing when we expect “Jewish literature” to be anything more than a camera with which the author conveys to the reader their own experience? Only when our literature looks like us and feels like us, can every Jew feel Jewish enough – so go make it look like you!
