Hyphenated-Jews and the Anxiety of Identity

Abstract

slight it further, of punctuation)-little noticed even on occasions when grammar or punctuation do raise serious conceptual questions. lowly hyphen is bound by few set rules; it rests on a convenient escape clause that allows users themselves to decide at times to do away with it-turning hyphenated phrases back into two distinct words (as in science fiction or peer group) or, in the opposite direction, blending hyphenated phrases into a single word (as in postmodern or subdivision). These shifts are closely tied to history: the more frequent the usage, for instance, the more probable the singleword option (as in the last two examples, and often now in the term antisemitism). Unlikely as it may seem, this same link to history in another of its aspects makes the hyphen both informative and provocative on the question ofJewish identity. Or so, at least, I propose here in considering the syntax of hyphenated-Jews, as that group characterization figures in the American-Jewish and other Jewish Diaspora communities-and as the hyphen in them draws on and shapes IsraeliJewish identity and, arguably,Jewish identity as such. An alternate title for the discussion here-evoking still another tradition-might well be The Hyphen and the Jewish Question. This account of the hyphen in an uncharacteristically influential role begins with statements by two American presidents, speaking at a