Di Amerikaner-Geboren Transformations of Yiddishkeyt in Jewish American Fiction

Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Dimino, Andrea

Keywords

Yiddish, Saul Bellow, Isaac Singer, Cynthia Ozick

Area of Concentration

Humanities

Abstract

Just as the Talmud, or Biblical exegesis, reaches back to its origins--the Torah--so too must writers of Jewish fiction evoke their literary predecessors. Hence the contemporary author Cynthia Ozick chooses to recreate the Nobel prize laureate of 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991), in her story �Envy; or, Yiddish in America� (1969). Singer himself returns to the past and the shtetl life in his novel The Slave (1969), and his story �Yentl the Yeshiva Boy� (1962), yet he also writes about contemporary New York in Enemies, a Love Story (1972). These two temporal realms help to form Singer's literary voice. Just as Singer melds time, his characters attempt to fuse as well: in chapter one I utilize the Kabbalistic term tikkun to elucidate how this combination happens. Edelshtein of Ozick's �Envy,� however, forms his identity via contrasts with others, both fictional and historical, since he is clearly the incarnation of the real-life poet Jacob Glatstein. Edelshtein feuds with the successful writer Ostrover, the fictional representation of Isaac Singer, and the young who embrace English and pose a threat to Yiddish's posterity. I examine one of Ozick's essays to consider what might happen to Jewish American voices in the future, and ask whether or not English can foster Jewish literary identity. This question is answered in the figure of Saul Bellow, a Jewish giant of English-language writing, who synthesizes American and Jewish cultures.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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