Imagining Judaism in America

Heschel, Susannah

doi:10.1017/ccol0521792932.003

Cited by 3 publications

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“…In fact, the book anticipates this instrumentalization of African Americanness when Neil goes up to the library's art section to protect the boy from the other librarians: "By the light of the window behind him I could see the hundreds of spaces between the hundreds of tiny black corkscrews that were his hair. He was very black and shiny, and the flesh of his lips did not so much appear to be a different color as it looked to be unfinished and awaiting another coat" (36). The boy's fetishization-of which, as here, the book seems often to be notably aware-serves Neil's labor of self-recognition but only to a point.…”

Section: [123]mentioning

confidence: 83%

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The Failure of Identity: Toward a New Literary History of Philip Roth's Unrecognizable Jew

Schreier¹

2011

Jewish Social Studies

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This article challenges an influential historicism in Jewish American literary study that takes for granted that Jewish American literature is primarily representational. This kind of historicism inevitably links into a nationalist project to secure (that is, by assuming) a specifically Jewish subject formation that would unify all historical expressions of Jewish culture. Through a rereading of Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus" but with reference across his oeuvre, this article argues that the primary drama in Roth's fiction is the failure of available terms and paradigms to express Jewish identification compellingly. It is not that Roth's characters do not want to be Jews; it is that they do not know how to describe themselves as Jews. The article makes a case for revisioning Jewish American literary study as primarily critical, as displacing the positive subject representational historicism expects to find in it.

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Section: [123]mentioning

confidence: 83%

“…36 Roth's work dwells in the destabilizing flipside of this deracination, where a secure Jewishness no longer underwrites Jewish self-recognition. Jewishness is far from self-evident in "Goodbye, Columbus," and no ostensibly Jewish character seems to bear an unproblematic Jewish identity.…”

Section: Funny You Don't Look Jewishmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Failure of Identity: Toward a New Literary History of Philip Roth's Unrecognizable Jew

Schreier¹

2011

Jewish Social Studies

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“…The emergence of Jewish spirituality in general, and the self‐centered neoliberalized forms of Jewish spirituality in particular, is strongly related to the singular attributes of American Jewry. Unlike other centers of Jewish life in Europe and Israel, where Orthodox forms of religion dominate, in North America, liberal Judaism, especially Reform Judaism, has been the prevalent affiliation since the mid‐nineteenth century (Heschel, 2003). The unselfconscious blending of the secular and the sacred created a folk religion “that is mindful of traditional obligations but relaxed and voluntaristic in its discharge of them” (Mittelman, 2005, 306).…”

Section: Jewish Spirituality In North America: a Brief Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The unselfconscious blending of the secular and the sacred created a folk religion “that is mindful of traditional obligations but relaxed and voluntaristic in its discharge of them” (Mittelman, 2005, 306). For these Jews, living in America meant the freedom to develop all sorts of religious expressions through a democratic process (Heschel, 2003).…”

Section: Jewish Spirituality In North America: a Brief Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Secularize, psychologize, neoliberalize: The entangled Jewish self of North American Jews

Werczberger¹

2023

Ethos

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This article unpacks the construction of the Jewish spiritual self in three current projects of Jewish spirituality in North America—Jewish mindfulness, the neo‐Musar movement, and the nascent Positive Judaism—and explores their relations with the neoliberal economic regime and ideology. Based on the content analysis of 30 popular online and offline texts, among them promotional websites, podcasts, and published works, and data gathered during long‐term ethnographic study on Jewish spirituality in Israel and North America, the article argues that the highly individualized Jewish spirituality has become an institutionally mediated form of Jewish self‐expression. By building on anthropological works about the cultural implications of neoliberalism on the self and following the lead of the foundational works linking Jewish cultural production and neoliberalism in North America, this article offers a perspective on Jewish spirituality that recognizes the relations between neoliberalism, self‐cultivation, and community life. Fusing the spiritual, therapeutic, and neoliberal discourses, projects of Jewish spirituality package neoliberal ideals such as choice, emotional, resilience, well‐being, and happiness as Jewish spiritual commodities. At the same time, the subjectivity cultivated in these projects is a Jewish‐specific formation—a self that is highly individualized but remains strongly connected to its religious‐ethnic community and cultural tradition. Jewish spirituality is thus used here as a case study for how neoliberalism affects contemporary forms of religious practice and creates new ethical orientations to communal belongings.

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How to Write Poetry after Auschwitz: The Burnt Book of Michael Palmer

Pritchett¹

2014

Journal of Modern Literature

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Imagining Judaism in America

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

The Failure of Identity: Toward a New Literary History of Philip Roth's Unrecognizable Jew

The Failure of Identity: Toward a New Literary History of Philip Roth's Unrecognizable Jew

Secularize, psychologize, neoliberalize: The entangled Jewish self of North American Jews

How to Write Poetry after Auschwitz: The Burnt Book of Michael Palmer

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