β Scribed by Julian Levinson
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
How have Jews reshaped their identities as Jews in the face of the radical newness called America? Julian Levinson explores the ways in which exposure to American literary culture--in particular the visionary tradition identified with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman--led American Jewish writers to a new understanding of themselves as Jews. Discussing the lives and work of writers such as Emma Lazarus, Mary Antin, Ludwig Lewisohn, Waldo Frank, Anzia Yezierska, I. J. Schwartz, Alfred Kazin, and Irving Howe, Levinson concludes that their interaction with American culture led them to improvise new and meaningful ways of being Jewish. In contrast to the often expressed view that the diaspora experience leads to assimilation, Exiles on Main Street traces an arc of return to Jewish identification and describes a vital and creative Jewish American literary culture.
Cover......Page 1
CONTENTS......Page 8
acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction......Page 14
PART 1 breathing free in the new world:transcendentalism and the jewish soul......Page 26
1 Songs of a Semite: Emma Lazarus and the Muse of History......Page 29
2 Ecstasies of the Credulous:Mary Antin and the Spirit of the Shtetl......Page 50
PART 2 battling the nativists: mystics, prophets, andrebels in interwar america......Page 66
3 ββPilgrim to a Forgotten Shrineββ:Ludwig Lewisohn and the Recovery of the Inner Jew......Page 69
4 Modernist Flasks, Jewish Wine:Waldo Frank and the Immanence of God......Page 89
5 Cinderellaβs Dybbuk:Anzia Yezierska as the Voice of Generations......Page 106
PART 3 yiddish interlude......Page 132
6 From Heine to Whitman: The Yiddish Poets Come to America......Page 134
PART 4ββorating in new yorkeseββ :the languages of jewishness in postwaramerica......Page 156
7 ββMy Private Orthodoxyββ: Alfred Kazinβs Romantic Judaism......Page 160
8 The Jewish Writer Flies at Twilight:Irving Howe and the Recovery of Yiddishkayt......Page 184
Conclusion......Page 205
notes......Page 214
index......Page 238
Illustrations......Page 122
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