Jewish American Novel

Abstract

There is little consensus about the definition of the Jewish American novel. Should we mean novels both by and about American Jews, or is one of these criteria sufficient? For that matter, how is “American Jew” defined? As with any identity‐based canon, the problem is that barring racialist logic, the categories are incoherent (see race ). To argue narrowly, that a Jewish novel reflects the tenets of Judaism, is to miss the bulk of Jewish American writers, whose secularism defies religious dogmas (see religion ). Similarly, language cannot demarcate the Jewish American novel; indeed, European‐born Jews writing in yiddish in the U.S., like Scholem Asch and I. B. Singer, only complicate our job. To more broadly insist that Jewish novels thematically explore specifically Jewish ideals, sensibilities, or leitmotifs—novelist Cynthia Ozick, for one famous example, claims that Jewish literature is necessarily “liturgical”—or that the Jewish American novel presents Jews experiencing problems historically experienced by Jews—such as religious doubt, generational conflict, anti‐Semitism, assimilation, marginality, etc.—is to plunge into a metonymical morass from which only race provides coherent escape.