Jewish American Literature Makes Aliyah? Bellow, Malamud, and Roth in the Israeli Literary Discourse

This talk analyzes ideological aspects of the reception of Jewish-American literature in the Israeli literary discourse, primarily in the 1960s and 1970s. It maps the trends underlying the Israeli approach to translated works by major American authors such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud, who were often perceived as representative of Jewish-American culture and life. By examining literary reviews, editorials and interviews with the authors, I discuss the ambivalence inherent to the Israeli literary discourse: on the one hand, one finds a tendency to “Judaize” universal aspects of works by Jewish-American authors, to take pride in their literary achievements or criticize them when they are “too critical” of Jewish life, generally assuming a common destiny with American Jews and exhibiting an affinity to American Jewish culture; on the other hand, one finds a tendency in the Israeli literary discourse to (over)emphasize the threat and difficulty of living as a Jew in a non-Jewish world, and to assume and concomitantly construct a spiritual-cultural hierarchy in the Jewish world, that places the cultural and literary life in Israel as Jewishly superior to that of American Jews. These two trends attest to the dialectic perception of the collective boundaries of the Jewish people, realized in the Israeli literary discourse in the face of the challenge represented by the other major Jewish center, in the United States.