Red, Black, and Jew : : New Frontiers in Hebrew Literature / / Stephen Katz.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Katz, Stephen,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (363 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One. Encountering Native Americans: B. N. Silkiner’s Mul ohel Timmura -- Chapter Two. Facing the Sunset: Israel Efros on Native Americans -- Chapter Three. To Be as Others : E. E. Lisitzky’s Representation of Native Americans -- Chapter Four. Fantasy or Plain Folk: Imagining Native Americans -- Chapter Five. Child’s Play: Hillel Bavli’s “Mrs . Woods” and the Indian in American Hebrew Literature -- Chapter Six. Red Heart, Black Skin: E. E. Lisitzky’s Encounters with African American Folksong and Poetry -- Chapter Seven. From Prop to Trope to Real Folks: Blacks in Hebrew Literature -- Chapter Eight. Representing African Americans: The Realistic Trend -- Chapter Nine. The Language of Alienation: The Anxiety of an Americanized Hebrew -- Chapter Ten. Singing the Song of Zion: American Hebrew Literature and Israel -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index