The Destruction of Israel and Other Fantasies in Twenti-First Century Jewish American Literature

In my proposed lecture, I intend to discuss the gradual separation of two communities – The Jewish liberal community in America and the Jewish community in Israel – through a series of literary texts that were published in the early years of the 21^st century.

Recent scholarly Studies, contemporary literary texts and even theatrical and cinematic productions of the last years in the United States have addressed the changing political climate in Israel. Zionism is defined in these texts as a movement in crisis, and the state of Israel as a tragic case study of institutional violence. It is a shift between Jewish powerlessness, which culminated in the Holocaust, to the unjustified implementation of Jewish power, in the West Bank or in Gaza, for example.

My lecture will specifically deal with literary texts that were published in America by the leading Jewish American novelists – Michael Chabon, Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer – that depict an imagined destruction of Israel as a possible, perhaps inevitable, outcome of the country`s current state of affairs.

By reading Israel through the lens of Jewish American literature I intend to explore the reversal of fortunes in 21^st century Jewish culture. It is, as I will argue, a willingness to decentralize the state of the Jews as the center for Jews.