Jewish New York - The Remarkable Story of a City and a People

'This volume narrates the history of the New York Jews, with an eye to their distinctive story as well as consciousness of how Jews embedded their particularity within the city's contentious past'. Jewish New York is nowadays a reality of the diasporic Jewish history and present, and this book, based on serious historical and sociological data, might create at least one more topic for a further academic investigation. For instance, the issue of American Zionism, and therefore the ways in which American Jews are positioning themselves in relation with the state of Israel and the everyday political struggles from the country.

The evolution of the Jewish community is analized back in the 17th century, which makes this volume a valuable source of information for recreating a process of creating mentalities and social patterns. It also offers a multi-layered approach, which goes back and forth from the economic, cultural, social and citizens rights perspectives, creating a pretty accurate landscape where people are relocating continously, adapting their habits from the Old Country while maintaining a certain degree of individuality. With more than a million Jews living in New York, the city is considered a symbol of Jewish life in the diaspora but at the same time, at least in the last 2 decades, there are Jewish communities in many other locations in the USA, which increases the diversity of Jewish life. Although the book has the focus on NYC, a short comparison would have even better outline the specificities of the city. Another omission of the book in my opinion is that it ignores the strong Israeli community in the city, which although remains a distinctive group among the various Jewish communities, it has its own dynamic and specific influence on the cultural patterns and habits of the bigger group as such.

The book is a recommended read to anyone looking to become familiar, in an academic way, with the Jewish history of New York, either for academic or pure knowledge purposes. 

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Different versions of Zionism

Image via Wikipedia//David ben Gurion, the "founding father"

An interesting article, by Dr. Offer Shiff, on the different interpretations of Zionism- and frictions - between David ben Gurion and Abba Hillel Silver, before but mostly after the creation of the state of Israel. A good lecture outlining the identity discussions and eventual controversies that set the terms of the dialogue between the state of Israel and its diaspora, mainly the American one.

Who We Are: Identity and Words

Being Jewish is so important for the identity of a writer? Or it is rather a kind of secret obligation to address exclusively and preponderantly Jewish issues in their books? Or it is simply impossible to go out of your cultural background when writing, although the issues addressed doesn't deal necessarily with identity matters?

The collection of articles edited by Derek Rubin and authored by various writers - more or less famous, more or less known beyond the boundaries of the Jewish culture, or simply more or less interesting - isn't offering the universal solution but various faces of various interpretations of their Jewish identity.

What do I think about this issue? Expressing your identity is a creative choice. Nobody force you to do so, but you will be able to convince your reader when your words are reflecting a specific reality reorganized in a new way or outlining completely new corners. You will write better about what do you know better. As Isaac Bashevis Singer said: "Every writer needs to have an address".

I liked a lot the cover of the book (see image) and I was happy to discover new names and works that I already included on my reading list for the next days - and mostly nights.

Following, there are some quotes from some of the authors:

Saul Bellow: "I am often described as a Jewish writer; in much the same way one might be called a Samoan astronomer or an Eskimo cellist or a Zulu Gainsborough expert". (p.5)

Cynthia Ozick: "A Jewish book is liturgy, ethics, philosophy, ontology. A Jewish book speaks of the attempt to create a world in the image of G-d while never presuming to image G-d". (p.19)

Chaim Potok: "You can grow up along the periphery of your subculture and enter the rich heart of Western secular humanism - say, be going to university, the generating plant of Western secular civilization (...) You can grow up along the periphery of your subculture and experience only the periphery of Western civilization". (p.31)

E.L.Doctorow: "Of course the writer's background, religion, tradition, nationality, lived life is crucially directive as to what she writes about whom and where...but as a reader I find quite beside the point that Garcia Marques is Catholic from Columbia - or Jane Austin is an Anglican from Britain, as instrumental as their culture may have been in forming them". (p. 38)

Philip Roth: "The test of any literary works is not how broad is its range of representation - for all that breadth may be characteristic of a kind of narrative - but the depth with which the writer reveals weather he has chosen to represent". (p. 49)

Leslie Epstein: "I believe that the return to Israel, the sensation of being immersed in Jews and Judaism must have represented in some sense a return to my own past and not just to that of my coreligionists". (p. 70)

Erica Jong: "By writing, we reinvent ourselves. By writing, we create pedigrees". (p. 99)

Jonathan Wilson: "A Jew can never really be English: it's as simple as that". (p. 157)

Melvin Jules Bukiet: "No one - not a German and not a Jew - who isn't a child of survivors can begin to understand the bottomless depth of rage inside those born into the Khurbn. No one can understand how we can hold collectively guilty not only the octogenarian perpetrators but the rest of the nation that saw nothing for the twelve-year reign of the Thousand-Year Reich, and their children and their children's children and the yet unborn tainted by their German blood". (p. 173)

Nessa Rapaport: "The moment I noticed our sacred texts flowing through me without cease was the moment I became a Jewish writer". (p. 177)

Lev Raphael: "My writing is deeply Jewish not just in subject matter, but in its sense of urgency to break every constricting silence. The refusal to accept silence and marginalization, the importance of speaking for ourselves, of telling stories, have been recurring themes of my fiction and essays". (p.200)

Binnie Kirshenhaum: "We're attaching ourselves to the world of our grandparents". (p. 225)

Thane Rosenbaum: "I am a post-Holocaust novelist, which means that I rely on my imagination - my capacity to reinvent worlds and reveal emotional truths in order to speak to the Holocaust and its aftermath, one generation removed from Auschwitz". (p. 244-245)

Jonathan Rosen: "The Talmud tells us that in the womb we all study and master the Talmud, but that at birth an angel touches us and we forget everything we've learned". (p. 253)

Allegra Goodman: "I have come to think that a writer cannot have enough labels if they are keys to new audiences, if they are combined and subverted imaginatively. I work with as many as I can - Jewish writer, woman writer, Generation X. Each provides a different opportunity". (p. 268)

Rachel Kadish: "I grew up with two paths stretched before me: the life I would live in the United States and the life I would live if I had to flee". (p. 286)

Tova Mirvis: "I do some of my best writing in shul. Not with pen and paper, not with my computer, all of which are forbidden on the Sabbath, but in my head. What moves me to write is the gap created in shul, the contrast between worlds: the public and the personal, the holy and the prosaic". (p. 300)

Dara Horn: "Jewish literature is a contemporary commentary on ancient Jewish texts". (p. 315)

Yael Goldstein: "As my favorite works of literature, the stories of the Bible had always functioned as the standard of depth and largeness I longed to reach when I wrote". (p. 329)

The Conversion law

The debate is not recent. It is maybe the final point of various kind of approaches and discussions regading this issue, taking into account the experiences from the last decenies, including the massive Alyah from Central and Eastern Europe.

Here are several opinions expressed in this respect:

Ha'aretz - Conversion as a strategic goal

"The purpose of the Conversion Bill is to increase the number of Jews, and as such it must be supported on principle. It is a strategic goal, a matter of survival for our people, whose ranks are dwindling exponentially. Diaspora Jewry is in an accelerated process of extinction, out of choice, and every action that increases the worldwide Jewish population, whether legislative or educational, is welcome".

Diaspora - A threat!

On the other side, it is to be mentioned that Reform and Conservative movement do not enjoy equal rights and status in Israel - see here an example of the relations with the Orthodox mainstream, so claiming now the risk of division is rather a political move, than reflecting an action plan aimed to correct this situation.

The supporters

The Jerusalem Post - Troubles in the coalition

Madoff case: the consequences

An extensive analysis from the last issue of Commentary.