By Kara Lewis for readpoetry.com, May 26, 2021
From Emma Lazarus to Allen Ginsberg, Jewish Americans have been among the most influential and talented poets throughout the country’s history. These five contemporary voices are carrying on that legacy and tradition today. From readpoetry.com.
To read Jewish-American novels is to examine a multitude of other topics: religion, immigration, family, responsibility, love, culture, mysticism, tradition, and place. The influx of Jews into American life came in three waves: 1) Sephardic Jews (originating from Spain and Portugal, sometimes through Brazil) around the time of the American Revolution, 2) German Jews after the failed German revolution in 1848, and 3) Polish and Russian Jews fleeing from Russian pograms before WWI through the post-WWII/Holocaust era, which was by far the largest of the three waves.
Each of these waves brought with it a distinct economic, social and religious tradition and contributed to the fabric of American Jewish life. More recently, Eastern European Jews have come to the US after the fall of communism, adding yet another layer onto the Jewish American experience. Many many novels have been held up as the definitive examination of Jewish American life (looking at you Philip Roth), but authors have been exploring the nuance of this culture more recently as well. Here is a not-at-all complete list of 20 Jewish-American novels and short story collections published in the past 20 years that highlight the Jewish American experience in ways large and small. From Bookriot.com
By Michelle Anne Schingler for bookriot.com,
...Reading through the diverse and ever-expanding Jewish literary canon is a natural way to work toward understanding a community that, while comparatively small, is incredibly diverse. This list draws Jewish voices in from all corners of the diaspora, from several continents as well as from Israel itself. The voices on it have different conceptions of what it means to be Jewish; some of these novels embrace the tradition self-consciously, some are more ambivalent about it, and some don’t mention religious traditions at all.
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