What is Jewish literature?

About this book

What Is Jewish Literature? is a richly thoughtful analysis and comprehensive overview of what defines Jewish literature. It is an international collection, featuring authors and scholars who write in different languages from different literary, spiritual, and personal perspectives. The book explores long-standing questions: What are the criteria for identifying Jewish literature? Are they language, religious affiliation of the author, religious sensibility, a distinctive Jewish imagination, or literary tradition? If the writer is the criterion, do Sholem Aleichem and Nathanael West really inhabit a shared universe? Is a text by S.Y. Agnon part of the same literary tradition as a play by Arthur Miller? Is Yiddish or Hebrew or Ladino the defining element? If so, where do we place Franz Kafka, Primo Levi, Elie Weisel, Saul Bellow, Nellie Sachs? Is tradition the yardstick? Do we then classify Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet as a Jewish novel... as Holocaust literature... as American fiction? What Is Jewish Literature? debates all these possibilities. It is a landmark collection that encourages the reader to participate in the quest for answers that defy simple responses. The contributors reflect the multilingual and multicultural nature of any discussion of Jewish literature. Their voices range from polemical to speculative, from scientific to lyrical. What Is Jewish Literature? is an enduring contribution to the literary resource for the scholar, the teacher, and the student and for any individual who strives to appreciate, evaluate, and understand the varied riches of Jewish writing.