Red, Black, and Jew : new frontiers in Hebrew literature / Stephen Katz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Katz, Stephen, 1947-

Series:

Jewish history, life, and culture.

Jewish history, life, and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians in literature.

African Americans in literature.

Hebrew literature, Modern--United States--History and criticism.

Hebrew literature, Modern.

Hebrew literature, Modern--American influences.

Jews--United States--Intellectual life.

Jews.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (364 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Between 1890 and 1924, more than two million Jewish immigrants landed on America's shores. The story of their integration into American society, as they traversed the difficult path between assimilation and retention of a unique cultural identity, is recorded in many works by American Hebrew writers. Red, Black, and Jew illuminates a unique and often overlooked aspect of these literary achievements, charting the ways in which the Native American and African American creative cultures served as a model for works produced within the minority Jewish community. Exploring the paradox of Hebrew literature in the United States, in which separateness, and engagement and acculturation, are equally strong impulses, Stephen Katz presents voluminous examples of a process that could ultimately be considered Americanization. Key components of this process, Katz argues, were poems and works of prose fiction written in a way that evoked Native American forms or African American folk songs and hymns. Such Hebrew writings presented America as a unified society that could assimilate all foreign cultures. At no other time in the history of Jews in diaspora have Hebrew writers considered the fate of other minorities to such a degree. Katz also explores the impact of the creation of the state of Israel on this process, a transformation that led to ambivalence in American Hebrew literature as writers were given a choice between two worlds. Reexamining long-neglected writers across a wide spectrum, Red, Black, and Jew celebrates an important chapter in the history of Hebrew belles lettres.

Contents:

Encountering Native Americans : B.N. Silkiner's Mul ohel Timmura

Facing the sunset : Israel Efros on Native Americans

To be as others : E.E. Lisitzky's representation of Native Americans

Fantasy or plain folk : imagining Native Americans

Child's play : Hillel Bavli's "Mrs. Woods" and the Indian in American Hebrew literature

Red heart, black skin : E.E. Lisitzky's encounters with African American folksong and poetry

From prop to trope to real folks : Blacks in Hebrew literature

Representing African Americans : the realistic trend

The language of alienation : the anxiety of an Americanized Hebrew

Singing the song of Zion : American Hebrew literature and Israel.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-292-79926-8

OCLC:

451636212