JEWISH AUTHORS


Immigration of Jews to America

Jewish immigration to America started almost immediately after the founding of the first American
colonies. (The first Norh American community of Jews was established in 1654 in the Dutch colony of
New Amsterdam, now New York).  From 1880s to 1920s there was a massive immigration. Almost 3
million Jews came to the United States, mainly from eastern Europe. Jews did not come with their
families only, but the population of entire communities and villages came to the United States.
Thus they were able to preserve their communal identity. Unfortunately, discrimination of Jews was
more and more frequent. It could partly spring from their difference: they had different conception
of the world, different religion, values, traditions and culture. Jews were also hardworking and
many of them became successful and rich, which also does not add to popularity but rather to envy.

The experience of holocaust had an immense effect on the personalities of Jews. Many of them lost
their relatives in Europe. After the war the Jews conceived the idea that they are superior to
other races. They were aware of antisemitism, intolerance and racism of American society.


Jewish-American literature

In the 1940s, the Jewish-American novel grew in importance. Jewish writers looked at the spiritual
and psychological problems of mid 20th century life in a new way, they revived the interest in the
problems of morality, and also created a new kind of humour: the humour of self-criticism.

During the 50s, Jewishness won such an extraordinary acceptance that much of it was incorporated
into American-ness, as if it had always been present within the American culture.

Themes appearing in Jewish fiction: holocaust, conception of Judaism, religious conversion, strong
family ties, prejudice and anti-semitism on the part of the non-Jews, the complexity of relations
between blacks and Jews. The typical hero is an outsider, urbanized, sensitive, highly verbal and
making fun of himself.


Bernard Malamud (1914-86) inspected the tragic moments of life – especially of American Jewish
immigrants who were trying to move up in the society. His novels tend to be serious and tragic, his
short stories are essencially satirical and comic

The Tenants, a novel exploring the relations between Jews and blacks

Idiots First, a collection of short stories, full of wry humour


Saul Bellow (1915) explores the tragicomic search of urban man for spiritual survival in a
materialistic world. His novels are very intellectual, he is fascinated by ideas rather than
action. He created a new kind of hero who lives actively inside his own mind.

Herzog, a novel about a Jewish intellectual, a professor of philosophy, who is searching for the
meaning of life.


Philip Roth (1933) portrays the Jewish community in a satirical light. The Jewish families he
describes consist of weak fathers, bitterly complaining mothers, and stupid children. Jewish
religion is a kind of conspiracy to make people behave according to rules.

Portnoy´s Complaint, a novel, it is delivered as a monologue by Alexander Portnoy from his
psychiatrist´s

            couch. Portnoy speaks about his growing up in New Jersey, playing softball, staring at
girls, and

            masturbating. Young man´s suffering is described as the result of his mother´s
authority in the family.


Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-91), a polish-born American writer, came from a family of rabbis, and
almost became a rabbi himself. He attended a rabbinical school but decided not to become a rabbi
because „I began to doubt, not the power of God, but all the traditions and dogmas.“ He wrote
several novels and many imaginative short stories. He wrote his fiction in Yiddish, but translated
many of his works into English himself. In all his writing he drew heavily on his Polish background
and the fantasies of Jewish and medieval European folklore. He wrote about confrontations of old
and new Jewish values. His stories are moral fables or allegories.


Woody Allen (1935), filmmaker, actor and writer. Both in his films and his short stories Allen is
concerned with philosophy, literature, sexuality, death, other filmmakers, and his Jewish identity.
„People have always thought of me as intellectual comedian,“ he wrote, „and I´m not. I´m not
moralizing or didactic in any way. I just want to be funny.“


Art Spiegelman (1948) studied art, but left for full-time cartooning. He became a well-known
„underground“ comic artist.

Maus, the serialized saga of his family in Europe and the United States, tells movingly of the
holocaust, with

           Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs, and Jews as mice