The Modern Goy: The Gentile in the Writings of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Aharon Appelfeld

The category of the non-Jew had become a central category in the description of the relations between the Jewish minority and the non-Jewish majority in European diasporas. The fundamental question that stands before my presentation is how this category has evolved and how it has been influenced by socio-political developments, while still remaining a vital part of the Jewish cultural imagination in its centres. I aim to answer this question by exploring chosen literary texts written in Israel and in the United States after the Second World War by two of the most prominent Jewish writers of that period, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Aharon Appelfeld, both of whom combine in their writings the experience of living in European diasporas and that of reformulating Jewish identity in its new centres. To that effect, I will explain the role of the non-Jewish “other” in constructing Jewish identity and how this role changed over time in different historical, geographical, political and social realities. In my prestentation, I will take into consideration in what situations the construction of the goy tends to have deeper roots and when it is only phantasmatic. I will place a particular focus on the gender difference between the non-Jewish man, or ‘goy’ and the non-Jewish woman – ‘shiksa’. I am convinced that at the time of continuous redefinitions of and reflections upon Jewish identity, answers to the questions I am asking in this paper are essential – they are necessary for comprehending the processes which have defined this identity.