Secular Jewish Culture Research Articles

De-assimilation Without Assimilation? The Continuities in the Polish Secular Model of Jewishness

This article critically examines Krajewski’s (in this issue of Contemp Jewry) argument about the assimilation and subsequent de-assimilation of the Jewish population in Poland. While Krajewski asserts that Polish Jews underwent a process of assimilation followed by a revival of their cultural and religious practices, the authors argue that the term “de-assimilation” is not applicable in this context. They propose that post-war Polish Jews consciously chose to embrace a secular identity rather than a religious one, keeping their Jewish life private. This secular identity, characterized by interests in secular Jewish culture, learning, and social justice, as well as maintaining specific distinctive habits, remained dominant even after 1989. The authors also compare this process to the experiences of Spanish and Portuguese conversos, who returned to Judaism but retained syncretic identities. They emphasize the importance of understanding the complex nature of Jewish identity and involvement, highlighting the significance of secular and cultural practices among Polish Jews.

Publishing Activity of Kultur-LigPublishing Activity of Kultur-Lige in Kyiv in 1918-1931: Phases and Genres

The article covers the introduction of Yiddish publishing activities, initiated by the Jewish civic and cultural-educational organization “Kultur-Lige” in the period from 1918 to 1931. The research analyzes the historical context and preconditions of the organization beginning in the 19th century. Among the main preconditions, the author highlights the rapid modernization of Eastern European Jewry, the proclamation of Yiddish as one of the many national languages at the inter-party conference on Yiddish in Chernivtsi in 1908, and the revolutionary events of the first half of the twentieth century. In addition, the article encloses the concept of secular Jewish culture proposed by members of the Kultur-Lige and ways of its implementation through printed Yiddish-language products, the main "marketplaces" of Yiddish textbooks, teaching materials, fiction, periodicals. The article analyzes the printed products of the Kultur-Lige, after preliminary structuring and systematization of publications by category: the sources were divided into a layer of textbooks, teaching and learning materials, children's books, and fiction. The authors of the educational books, textbooks, and books for children were usually young Jewish writers and members of the Literature section of Kultur-Lige. The main consumer of such Yiddish books were the educational institutions established by the Kultur-Lige. Specifically, the Jewish public Yiddish schools, public libraries, and reading rooms, as well as Jewish Public University. Educational institutions organized by Kultur-Lige provided education for all categories of the Jewish community. The article also includes some information about the book design of Kultur-Lige artists. Among the illustrators was Mark Chagall, Sara Shor, Eliezer Lissitzky, Joseph Chaikov, Mark Epstein, etc. This organization provided unique opportunities to implement their artistic idea in the area of book illustrations. Besides that, the article includes information about the print run of some books and the financial sources of the publishing section

Reflections of an Atheist Jew

I was not born nor raised an atheist Jew. My identity was formed by various factors among them family background; geographical migration; British education; secular Zionism; anthropological study and research. These factors were the precipitates of two earlier modern revolutions that transformed the modern world and that affected both Jews and non-Jews, namely the French Revolution which was political, and the Industrial Revolution which was economic. For Jews the French Revolution split the hitherto fused elements of religion and ethnicity into their component parts whilst the Industrial Revolution gave rise to urbanisation and increasing individualism. Jews were faced with a choice of various identities; various permutations were adopted, some apparently paradoxical such as Jewish atheist. In this article I examine the interaction of these factors and document how a single case study, my own, exemplifies but one response to the question of modern Jewish identity. Other Jews have chosen different options. For example, my research in post-communist Hungary has shown that former communist Jews have embraced a number of options. Some founded a Reform Synagogues; others became Hasidim; yet others assumed modern Orthodoxy; a few became Zionists; most, however embraced secular Jewish culture.

Mujeres judeo-progresistas en Argentina

Thi s w or k sh o w s th e pro f ile s o f th e w ome n w h o joine d th e W omen ’ s O r ganizatio n Idisher Cultur Farband (ICUF) between 1947 and 1957 in Argentina. Identified with a secular Jewish culture and the fight against fascism that promoted the Communist International since 1935, a group of activists founded the Women’s Organization ICUF (OFI) in 1947. The OFI encouraged the creation of “reading circles” (in yiddish: “ leie n c r aizn ”) in each of the entities attached to its movement. They also edited the bilingual magazine D i idish e f r oi-L a muje r judi a between 1950 and 1970. From their daily work in schools and libraries and the pages of that publication, OFI developed a real “female pedagogy” rooted in a liberal, antifascist, anti-Peronist, and Jewish, but not Zionist, culture. The study of OFI makes clear the way in which these Yiddish-speaking women, admirers of the USSR, built their progressive Jewish identity in Argentina.

A passion for the true and just: Felix and Lucy Kramer Cohen and the Indian New Deal

Felix Cohen, the lawyer and scholar who wrote The Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1942), was enormously influential in American Indian policy making. Yet histories of the Indian New Deal, a 1934 program of Franklin D. Roosevelt s New Deal, neglect Cohen and instead focus on John Collier, commissioner of Indian affairs within the Department of the Interior (DOI). Alice Beck Kehoe examines why Cohen, who, as DOI assistant solicitor, wrote the legislation for the Indian Reorganization Act (1934) and Indian Claims Commission Act (1946), has received less attention. Even more neglected was the contribution that Cohen s wife, Lucy Kramer Cohen, an anthropologist trained by Franz Boas, made to the process. Kehoe argues that, due to anti-Semitism in 1930s America, Cohen could not speak for his legislation before Congress, and that Collier, an upper-class WASP, became the spokesman as well as the administrator. According to the author, historians of the Indian New Deal have not given due weight to Cohen s work, nor have they recognized its foundation in his liberal secular Jewish culture. Both Felix and Lucy Cohen shared a belief in the moral duty of mitzvah, creating a commitment to the true and the just that was rooted in their Jewish intellectual and moral heritage, and their Social Democrat principles. A Passion for the True and Just takes a fresh look at the Indian New Deal and the radical reversal of US Indian policies it caused, moving from ethnocide to retention of Indian homelands. Shifting attention to the Jewish tradition of moral obligation that served as a foundation for Felix and Lucy Kramer Cohen (and her professor Franz Boas), the book discusses Cohen s landmark contributions to the principle of sovereignty that so significantly influenced American legal philosophy.

Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture

Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture

“In Sunshine and Joy”?

Medem Sanatorium in Miedzeszyn was one of the most famous establishments of TSYSHO, the Central Yiddish School Organization, in interwar Poland. Although not officially associated with the Bund, it unofficially promoted Bundist ideals through its teaching staff. This article aims to examine the educational methods of Medem Sanatorium in Miedzeszyn. Medem served as a central space for Bundist ideology, attracting such figures as Polish radical socialist Wanda Wasilewska, and hosting, among others, a young Marek Edelman, the future leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Showing the activities and struggles of the institution the author touches different problems of the Polish interwar period: the entanglement of Bundist ideology, everyday life, religious practices, and, last but not least, politics towards Yiddish. Ultimately, the author underlines that the Medem Sanatorium was a part of a broader action concentrated on creating a new secular Jewish culture.

Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture

Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture

Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture Stephen Fredman Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture. Stephen Paul Miller and Daniel Morris, eds. Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010. Pp. xvi + 456. $67.50 (cloth), $39.95 (paper). This large provocative book contains many insightful essays that inter-animate one another to produce a lively dialogue around the place of modern Jewish poetry in American culture. In addition to praising its contents, I would like to think about how the terms “Jewish secularism” and “radical poetics” are deployed and also to point out an unexplored mechanism, Jewish mimicry, which helps account for the ways in which Jewish poetry stakes its claims in the larger culture. As Charles Taylor argues in A Secular Age, the rise of secularism in the Christian West has affected the horizon of belief, transforming belief in God from a social given to a conscious choice.1 Jewish secularism, though (which Taylor does not treat), arises from different motives and circumstances than Christian secularism; in fact, “secularism” may not be the best term for it. In a religion that rests ultimately on a family-centered rather than a belief-centered social structure, quarrels with orthodoxy became a feature of Jewish culture long before the present “secular age.” In “Letter to the Romans” (418–38), poet Benjamin Friedlander makes this point in a radical way by arguing that Saint Paul was an early prototype of the non-observant Jew, a dissenter who, like many subsequent Jewish thinkers, mounted an antinomian critique of Judaism in a cosmopolitan world. Although other essayists attempt to make rough-and-ready distinctions between an observant practice of Jewish law (Halakah) and divergences from it (Eric Selinger depicts secular Jews as those “who recite the Shema [the profession of faith in one God] less frequently and reverently than they tell Jewish jokes” [356]), the discussions of Jewish secularism throughout the book rest finally on the claim that the work should be treated as Jewish—regardless of the poet’s knowledge or observance of Jewish law. So if the issue of secularism can be seen as something of a red herring in a book of essays that creatively demonstrates the impact of Jewish lore, ethics, history, and practice on a wide range of modern (mostly American) poetry, there is also not much direct argument for what might constitute a “radical” poetics. The essayists either depend upon acceptance by the reader that there exists a radical tradition among Jewish poets, headed by Gertrude Stein, moving to New York with the Yiddish poets and the Objectivists, continuing after World War II with poets of the 1960s like Rothenberg, David Antin, and Michael Heller, in the 1970s with Language poets like Bernstein, DuPlessis, and Bob Perelman, and expanding in the 1980s and after to include [End Page 947] a range of unaffiliated poets such as Lazer, Norman Fischer, Norman Finkelstein, Stephen Paul Miller, Joseph Lease, and Adeena Karasick; or they take the entirely different tack of discussing Jewish dilemmas present in American poems without reference to whether the poems are formally or politically radical. The deepest probing of the intersection of radical poetics and Jewish culture occurs in some of the refreshingly frank meditations by poets on their vexed and productive relationships to Judaism. One poignant theme is the admission by several avant-garde poets that they write out of a bottomless sense of the loss of European Jewish culture. According to Bernstein, if there is to be a “European poetry and philosophy by the descendents of Benjamin and Heine,” then it “must be the task of secular Jewish culture on this side of the Atlantic and of our radical poetry and ambiguating poetics.” He admits his difficulty in acknowledging “this unwanted and perhaps even insufferable task,” but affirms, fatalistically, “perhaps this is what we were chosen for” (16). This statement by the author of Shadowtime, an opera exploring Benjamin’s death, is echoed by DuPlessis, whose long poem Drafts becomes more and more elegiac as it unfolds: “I feel, increasingly, as the work goes on, that I am being spoken through, almost as if I were single-handedly building into existence some...

Three Basic Models of Secular Jewish Culture

Three Basic Models of Secular Jewish Culture Yuval Jobani (bio) Introduction The encyclopedia, New Jewish Time: Jewish Culture in a Secular Age1 is the highlight of the intensive, comprehensive, and relentless pre-occupation of contemporary secular Jewish culture with defining itself. This encyclopedia endeavors to present a panoramic documentation of the individuals, the movements, the works, and the institutions that left their mark on this culture in the past two hundred years. This project not only documents the past but also reflects the present and delineates the future horizons of secular Jewish culture from the viewpoint of the project's participants. The educational goal is presented in the foreword by Yair Tsaban who initiated this project: It is incumbent upon a public that defines itself as secular to learn the meaning of secularity and how the processes of modernization and secularization occurred in our people and in other peoples.2 Be that what it may, Secular Jewish cultural education, must first require a thorough examination of the term "secular Jewish culture", which is elucidated in the introductory essay by the chief editor Yirmiyahu Yovel. I argue that the term "secular Jewish culture" cannot be reduced to a single essence, for it extends the category of family and in a family nothing is discernible beyond a complicated web of interwoven similarities amounting to what Wittgenstein termed "a family resemblance". As in any large family, secular Jewish culture has branches corresponding to clusters of attributes, or shared patterns. [End Page 160] Defining Secular Jewish Culture Secular Jewish culture is one of the offshoots of the secularization of Western culture in the modern era. However, this offshoot is unique and complex not only due to the exceptional status of Jews in Western culture, but also for the ancient traditional dominance of the Jewish religion over Jewish identity. The term "secularization", in its narrow sense as a terminus technicus, denotes the process of transferring some particular thing from the sacred sphere to the non-sacred sphere, that of the world (the saeculum). Beyond the narrow legal-ecclesiastical sense, this term is used to denote a process of freeing politics and culture from the guardianship of the medieval Catholic Church and a process whereby values, norms, types of authority, behavior and knowledge become independent of those sanctified by the medieval Church and of the sphere of faith and transcendence . . . this term signifies the core essence of modernity as the Church's and the Catholic faith's hegemony over all aspects of society characterized the core essence of medieval times.3 The terms "Jewish culture" and its modern offspring "secular Jewish culture" resist any rigid formal definition that might bind them within restrictive necessary and sufficient conditions. We must make do with what Wittgenstein termed a "family resemblance" between "a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing."4 Even if we were to accept Yovel's broader and more generous definition of a Jew, "A personal preoccupation with the question of Jewishness is a natural and sufficient indication that one is Jewish" (I. xvii) and further accept his general definition of culture as denoting "all that human beings jointly create, and that, in turn, contributes to their interpretation of the world and to their inter-relationships".5 We would not then be able to argue that every cultural creation created by Jews (whether religious or secular, according to one definition or another) is part of that culture, whatever the precise content of that culture. No one would argue that Einstein's theory of relativity is part of (even secular) Jewish culture, whereas all would agree that Brenner's stories and essays are part of that culture, while opinions may differ on Marx's writings and philosophy.6 Wagner's claim that Mendelssohn's music is Jewish is considered anti-Semitic; the assertion that Klezmer music is Jewish is often presented as factual (although it may not necessarily be true or entirely so), [End Page 161] and Adorno's description of Mahler's music as having a Jewish quality is controversial.7 Although, in matters of "family resemblance" it is far easier to identify than to define, even identification is far from simple. By adopting...

A Chimney on the Canadian Prairies: Yiddish-Language Libraries in Western Canada, 1900 to the Present

Yiddish book culture did and does exist in Western Canada, even outside the vibrant Jewish culture of Winnipeg, in communities whose geographic isolation from the Yiddish-speaking centers may seem extreme. Two libraries may serve as examples of the variety of manifestations of Yiddish reading in these localities: the library of the farm community of Edenbridge, Saskatchewan, which may be said to be emblematic of cultural organization in these rural colonies, which existed from before World War I until the 1960s; and the Kirman Library at the Vancouver Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, itself an unusual example of a Yiddish secular school, which is now the last specifically Yiddish library in Western Canada. Finally, the meaning of Yiddish books in these independent libraries, far from institutional support or a critical mass of Jews, is examined.

Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 1918-1930 by David s> Shneer (review)

352 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 piece, fastidious in establishing exact dates, yet curiously anecdotal in the informationit provides.In writingthe book, Ross had privilegedaccess to the church archiveswhich he quotes extensively (sometimesrunning into pages). But I miss the point of this, since again, treatmentof materialstends to yield gossipy 'tittle-tattle',ratherthan instructiveinsightsinto the fabricof Russian emigre life, and the role of the Church in forging a sense of community. Clearly,the foregroundtopic the historyof a parishchurchin a country that has played a centralrole in the developmentof Russianculture- throws up many relatedtopics.For sure,Ross does make a stabat these:the changing profile of the Russian emigre community as the nineteenth century progressed ,mutual stereotypingbetween host and guest populations,the doubleedged function of the Church (and dual allegiance of the clergy)as an official institutionrepresentingstate interestsabroad, but also as a spiritualanchorage , or simplya meeting place in the dailylives of Russiantravellers,residents or exiles. But none of these is handled in an effectivemanner. That said, this is an extremely informativestudy and no doubt a useful one to consult for those specializingin Church and/or emigrationhistory. School ofHistogy FRANCEs NETHERCOTT University ofStAndrews Shneer, David. Yiddish andtheCreation ofSoviet JewishCulture, i9i8-I930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2004. ix + 300 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.[30.00: $45.00. WHILEJews played a prominentpart in the Russianrevolutionarymovement, they were not well-representedin the Bolshevikfaction, despite the presence of prominent individualslike Trotskii, Kamenev and Zinov'ev. The absence of Jewish cadres was particularlyapparent when efforts were made, postOctober , to 'takethe Revolution to theJewish street'.In order to accomplish thisgoal of spreadingsocialistideals,the CommunistPartyhad to rely onJews co-opted from other parties, especially the Bund. There was a price to pay: these activistsalready had developed a programme for fashioning a modern Jewish identity.Willy-nilly,their ideological preceptswere integratedinto the Partyprogramme. Historianshave not generallybeen kind to these activists,who are usually portrayedas naive (at best) collaborators,or rank political opportunists,who thoughtlesslydismantledtheJewish culturalheritage. David Shneer seeksto rehabilitatethese pioneers and restorethem to their rightfulplace in modernJewish history.He characterizesthem as the 'Soviet Yiddish intelligentsia'and describes them as individuals intent on building a modern, secularJewish culture. In the main they were veterans of the Jewish culturewars fought between Bundistsand Zionists,Yiddishistsand Hebraists that had been fought out in the decades before the Great War. As Shneer demonstrates,their destructiveactivitiesonce in power, directedat both their religious and Hebraist opponents alike, were balanced by positive initiativesto create a new, modernJewish identity. Its attributeswere to be REVIEWS 353 national, secularand based on the Yiddish language. In short, they sought to establishtheJews as an ethnic group, whose culturewas transmittedthrough a national vernacular,while eschewing any notion of theJews as a religious community. This same process was at work in the West, it should be noted, but spontaneously,without active state support. The greatbreakof the SovietYiddishintelligentsiawas to detachJews from Judaism and its millennia-oldreligiousculture.But once religiousculturewas removed, what remained to make theJews 'a nation differentfrom all other nations'?The answerwas found in the Yiddishlanguage,seen as the carrierof a secularJewish culture. To make their case, the Soviet Yiddish intelligentsia had to engage in 'culturalproduction' in Yiddish. This task necessitatedand justifiedtheir role as intermediariesbetween the Soviet regime and theJewish masses.Their accomplishmentwas to secureofficialsupportfor this objective. Historiansof SovietJewry have always acknowledgedthe Yiddish cultural institutionscreatedunder this arrangement:schools,theatres,printinghouses, etc.. They have usually been dismissed as no more than 'national in form, socialist in content' and devoid of any Jewish content. Thus, it was claimed, Sholem Aleichem became part of the educational curriculumonly after the ideological content of his stories was bulked up. His quintessential shtetl, Kasrilevka, filled with Jewish types such as the shnorrer (beggar),the luftmensch who survivedon air, and the good-natureddairymanTevye, whose chief concern was to marry off his many daughters,was transformedinto a battlegroundof class struggle. Shneer disputes this stereotypical picture as incomplete. He would supplementit with the accomplishmentsof the Soviet Yiddishintelligentsia however tragictheirultimatefate 'to create a secularYiddishcultureand a people who identifiedwith thatculture'(p. 2I9). As he demonstrates,therewas never a unitarySoviet state that prescribedthe form this culturewas to take. Rather, there was a vigorous contest between members of the Soviet Yiddish intelligentsiaand disparate representativesof the Soviet state...

The USA in the Making of the USSR: The Washington Conference, 1921-1922, and 'Uninvited Russia' by Paul s> Dukes (review)

354 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 The story,predictably,ends in tears.Kharikand many of the other leading activistsof the Soviet Yiddish intelligentsiacame to a stickyend in the purges of the 1930S. The Nazi Final Solution on Soviet soil, which swept away the Yiddish-speakingheartland,completed the process of destroyinga secular Jewish culture based on Yiddish. Yet the experiment itself deserves a close examination, and is well-servedby Shneer's sensitiveand well-arguedbook. Department ofHebrew andJ7ewish Studies J. D. KLIER University College London Dukes, Paul. TheUSAintheMaking oftheUSSR:TheWashington Conference, I92I1922 , and 'Uninvited Russia'.Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe, 2. RoutledgeCurzon,London and New York, 2004. xi + 156 pp. Table. Map. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?6o.oo. THE Washington Conference of I921-22 forms the only significantachievement in foreign affairsof the Harding Administration.The literatureusually focuses on the agreements reached in the area of naval disarmament.Paul Dukes has made a notable additionto it by adoptinga comparativeapproach. Dukes has sought to reassessthe relationsof all the Great Powerswith Russia after the Revolution. He stressesthe importance of Soviet Russia to the process of attemptingto bring stabilityto the Pacific. He arguesthat the United States believed that the Bolshevik Revolution representeda brief, transitory phase thatwould precede the emergence of a new, capitalistRussia.American policy thus aimed to maintainthe integrityof the territoryof the formertsarist empire, and resisted all effortsby other powers to dismemberit, so that the non-Communist successor state would inherit the power and influence of the tsars.Thus, despite itself, the US 'promoted rather than undermined the process of the formation of the Soviet Union' (p. I28). Dukes offers a brisk survey of the sources of American predominance after I920. American policy-makersexploited their hold over the other Great Powersthat stemmedfromwar debts.Most notably, they forced GreatBritain to abandon the Anglo-Japanesealliance in I922 (threateningalso to disrupt the Empireby coercing the Dominions to disavowthe alliance should Britain standby its ally).Britainalso relinquishedthe two power standard(thatis, the requirementfor the Royal Navy to be equal in strengthto the combined naval forcesof the next two navalpowers).The interestBritainpaid on itswar debts was equal to the cost of a squadronof new super-dreadnoughts.As the Soviet critic,L. E. Berlin,discerned,at little cost to itself,the US had become nearly as powerfulat sea as Britain,with the potential to overtakeits position effortlessly . (Indeed the Royal Navy was actually weaker than the American and Italian fleets combined, let alone the next two strongest.) Dukes suggeststhat the Conference's success in limiting naval armaments can be explained as a confirmation of a realignment that had already occurred. Effortsto cut the number of supportingvessels, especiallycruisers, failed; indeed, investment in the latter would increase after 1922. Dukes remarksgloomily that, overall, defence expendituredid not diminishin order REVIEWS 355 to protectwhat had been gained duringthe Conference. The seriesof treaties signed at Washington 'did not free the world from the danger of armed conflictseven more terriblethan the War of I9I4-I8' (P.43). On the contrary, they 'cleared the decks for rearmament' (p. 47). Such a judgment seems tainted by excessive hindsight. It was by no means self-evidentthat rearmament on a great scale would be needed in the early 1920S. The Washington treaties were fundamentallyarms control agreements that sought to control the increase in armamentsand were moderatelysuccessful.Fortunately,their flexibility permitted rapid re-equipment once the strategic conditions had drasticallyaltered. To scholarsdeeply versed in the strategicdilemmas of the inter-waryears, Dukes's discussionof these aspectswill not appear as strikinglynovel, despite his stimulatingcomparativeapproach,and the use of Soviet writersneglected by Anglo-Saxon historians.Dukes'smajor contributionis an acute assessment of American policy in the Far East vis-a-visBolshevikRussia who lurked outside the Washington system. The main difficultyin the region was posed by the other power to emerge strengthenedby the FirstWorld War, namely Japan. The Japanese had occupied the southern part of Sakhalin and had encroached upon the Far Eastern Republic (FER) adjacent to Manchuria. The American Secretaryof State, Charles Evans Hughes, stubbornlyrefused to recognize BolshevikRussia, but despiteallowingan FER Trade Delegation to visit the US in September 1922, declined to recognize the FER either, mainly because he opposed the 'Balkanization'of Russia. On I3 November I922 the FER asked to join...

From Pintele Yid to Racenjude: Chaim Zhitlovsky and racial conceptions of Jewishness

The Russian Jewish intellectual, Chaim Zhitlovsky (1865–1943), a leading architect of secular Jewish culture and thought, was a central figure in the progressive Jewish intelligentsia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In an essay written in 1927, “Yidn un Yiddishkayt” (“Jews and Jewishness”), he sought to define the secular essence of what he calls Yiddishkayt. This essay is not the first in Zhitlovsky’s long publicistic career in which he searches for new, secular definitions of Jewish identity and culture. But this essay differs, since it is marked by Zhitlovsky’s use of contemporary “social scientific” notions of race and racial traits to conceptualize what he believes constitutes Jewishness in a non-religious context, along with his adoption of the mystical Jewish concept of the “pintele yid,” the theory of an innate Jewishness embodied by a “Jewish spark.” Zhitlovsky’s desire to craft a truly secular theory of Jewish identity led him ironically to accept models of Jewish identity at odds with his stated larger vision. In turning to contemporary racial theory, as well as long nurtured mystical models of Yiddishkayt, Zhitlovsky reveals the wide range of ideological discourses that led him to innovative and controversial notions of modern Jewish identity.

The Collected Stories of Moacyr Scliar (review)

The Collected Stories of Moacyr ScliarScliar is one of the most comprehensively in Latin America. Although he is well known to connoisseurs of the short story in a continental tradition that has produced figures of international stature like Borges, Garcia Marquez, and Cortazar, he is, like most Brazilian writers, not widely read either by other Latin Americans (because of the differences between the Portuguese of Brazil and the Spanish of the majority of Latin America) or even in English, a language into which there are many superb translations of Brazilian literature: Brazilian literature is extensively translated into English, but not extensively read or discussed, at least to judge by conventional literary forums. The result is that Brazilian literature, which has some truly great writers (Brazil's nineteenth-century novelist Machado de Assis is easily of the stature of any European writer of the period) is marginalized within Latin American literature and marginalized in American literary circles in the same way that all Latin American literature is. This becomes even truer when it is a matter of a subaltern writer like Scliar, whose subalternity in this case is his commitment to Jewish culture defined in the broadest terms possible. Although Latin America has major Jewish cultural centers (Buenos Aires being the largest; S...o Paulo being one of the most dynamic and prosperous; Mexico City being one of the most assimilated), virtually no Latin American Jewish writer has entered the mainstream of American consciousness (or European, for that matter). Borges wrote about his probable Jewish roots and wrote many stories based on Jewish themes, particularly the Cabala, but Borges is not usually identified as a Jewish writer.The Jewish Latin America series, directed by Ivan Stavans of Amherst College, and published by the University of New Mexico Press, is a brilliant project designed to correct the lack of access to Latin American writers of Jewish descent whose works concern themselves with Jewish themes. Stavans has made superb choices for inclusion in the series, the translations are first-rate, and his articulate and urbane (and often highly personalized) introductions establish clear reading parameters for each text.The Scliar collection is one of the most important in the series, not only because of the comprehensiveness of the representation (five-hundred pages consisting of one hundred stories drawn from a half-dozen collections -- about one third of Scliar's total number of short story collections -- spread out over three decades), but also because of the sheer scope of Scliar's fictional enterprise.Scliar is very much a representative of many of the most sophisticated and noteworthy Jewish writers of Latin America. He is deeply imbued with secular Jewish culture (although he laments never having learned Yiddish, which is still spoken in many Latin American communities): although he is not a religious Jew (few Latin American Jewish writers are, as Latin American Jewry tends to be divided in a pronounced way between conservative and orthodox Jews and secular Jews, with little of a reform middle-ground), Scliar is profoundly familiar with Jewish history, with the richness of Jewish heritage, custom, and ritualistic observance. Scliar is often bitingly critical of the rigidities of Jewish law and of the intransigence of the debates involving compliance, assimilation, and interfaith relations, but his writing turns on a sensitivity to the abiding meanings of Jewish lore and custom. …

I.L. Peretz and the making of modern Jewish culture

I. L. Peretz (1852-1915), the father of modern Yiddish literature, was a master storyteller and social critic who advocated a radical shift from religious observance to secular Jewish culture. Wisse explores Peretz's writings in relation to his ideology, which sought to create a strong Jewish identity separate from the trappings of religion.