The New Jewish-American Literature

Abstract

A holy day celebrated at dawn on April 8, 1981, is emblematic of the endurance of Jewish-American literature. On that day, Jews recited the Blessing of the Sun in commemoration of the fourth day of creation. The sun assumes this position in the heavens only once every 28 years, so the privilege of reciting this blessing comes only two or three times in a lifetime. The prayer that reminds us of the world's first Wednesday is transmitted from one generation to the next. The form, retrieved only thrice a century, persists. This season, so auspiciously ushered in by the Blessing of the Sun, seems to be an era of the retrieval of indigenous forms. The most vital of these traditional shapes seems to be the hasidic tale. This type of story recuperates the earliest Yiddish genre, translating it into an American setting. It authenticates itself through the thirteen tales which Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav told to his disciples between the summer of 1806 and the spring of 1810. This great-grandson of the Ba'al Shem Tov validated his enigmatic fantasies in a sophisticated narratology, recorded by his disciple Nathan in 1815. Cosmic events, like the creation of the world, and its eventual redemption, are domesticated (Nathan says garbed or veiled) in folkloric motifs. Their mystical armature, the Lurianic Cabbala, has been minutely explicated through the monumental researches of Gershom Sholem. They have never ceased exerting their fascination in translations by Martin Buber, by Eli Weisel, by Meyer Levin, by Arnold Band, and by Arthur Green.