Jewish Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #682

by Ilan Stavans

The story of Jewish literature is a kaleidoscopic one, multilingual and transnational in character, spanning the globe as well as the centuries. In this broad, thought-provoking introduction to Jewish literature from 1492 to the present, cultural historian Ilan Stavans focuses on its multilingual and transnational nature. Stavans presents a wide range of traditions within Jewish literature and the variety of writers who made those traditions possible. Represented are writers as dissimilar as Luis de Carvajal the Younger, Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Isaac Babel, Anzia Yezierska, Elias Canetti, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Irving Howe, Clarice Lispector, Susan Sontag, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Amos Oz, Moacyr Scliar, and David Grossman. The story of Jewish literature spans the globe as well as the centuries, from the marrano poets and memorialists of medieval Spain, to the sprawling Yiddish writing in Ashkenaz (the "Pale of Settlement' in Eastern Europe), to the probing narratives of Jewish immigrants to the United States and other parts of the New World. It also examines the accounts of horror during the Holocaust, the work of Israeli authors since the creation of the Jewish State in 1948, and the "ingathering" of Jewish works in Brazil, Bulgaria, Argentina, and South Africa at the end of the twentieth century. This kaleidoscopic introduction to Jewish literature presents its subject matter as constantly changing and adapting.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Jewish, Literature

172 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 3, 2021

About the author

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. An award-winning writer and public television host, his books include Growing Up Latino and Spanglish. A native of Mexico City, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given Ilan Stavans in his "Resurrecting Hebrew" contends that Gaelic + Welsh somehow were among progenitors of Old English, the Celt in me, reading this in Ecuador, opened this uncertain about his credibility. Even if he's a lauded professor at Amherst College, praised with blurbs galore for shelves full of publications. He's very prolific, straddling the Latino-Jewish borderline as he crosses back and forth at will. So, it's no surprise to find he devotes a chapter to Latin American authors; intriguingly among them in his anthologies of Jewish writers from El Sur, Borges, but he leaves JLB out here.

He starts with the Sephardic voices, who after all preceded the Ashkenazi in terms of chronicling their lives in both the Old World and the New where they sometimes had to flee. He covers the Yiddish and Israeli-Hebrew names; the role of mass media (e.g., film, comedy, drama, the graphic narrative arts); literary criticism; European, Mizrahi, North American storytellers; immigration; multilingualism.

I picked up a few pointers to accounts I'd never have heard of, always a valuable payoff from these little handbooks. Stavans with his wide erudition keeps alert to manifestations on the page of the first words of Genesis, and of Kafka's Metamorphosis, to illustrate Jewish creativity in rendering meaning. And I never knew of Isaac Bashevis Singer's "second original" method of getting from his native Yiddish through halting English by, uh, "often female" secretaries who didn't know his mother tongue, and then approving their tidying up of transcripts they polished and handed back!

A couple places caused me to stop. He uses the rather passive term "left" for those who emigrated from the Pale of Settlement and the shtetl heartlands between 1880-1930. That elides the pogroms, wars, discrimination, and myriad forces compelling people to flee, rather than always by their own volition. He later asserts three errors fundamental to "Zionism," implying its ideology comes out of the European nationalism of the 19th-20th centuries, but never that the return to Zion has been at the core of Jewish aspiration since the fall of the Second Temple, so it's far more venerable a cause.

For as Bernard-Henri Levy notes in a book I reviewed right after this, Israel Alone (2024), Psalm 126 expressed with persistence and passion the hopes of the exiled Hebrews to return to Jerusalem...

Although he's a linguist, he did produce the first grammar in Yiddish as well as a tribute to ancient Rabbi Hillel on his religious philosophy of Homaranismo, so could L.L. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, have gotten a fraternal shout-out from his fellow intellectual? There's also an editing oversight where "he" is not clearly linked back beyond the preceding paragraph to its referent of Danilo Kiš. Since Oxford UP produces these reference guides, one expects these glitches to be fixed.

Given the extreme brevity imposed on those who undertake their installments in this valuable VSI series, Stavans delivers a suitably broad take, looking at places that might not occur to the casual inquirer, to find articulate tellers of their heritage, which after all transcends any frontier or locale. One issue given his own predilections for examining blurred lines might be for a future critic: how intermarriage, continuing assimilation, conversion in and out of the faith, and "who's a Jew" in the state of Israel all weigh in as it gets more difficult to discern who belongs at first sight to this Tribe.

[Rose Rosetree · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a magnificent survey of Jewish writers: Recounted by a professor at Amherst University, with so much history tucked into the tiniest pages I've ever attempted to read.

Eventually, I'll confess, I gave up. Squinting, even while wearing eye magnifiers!

Yet even reading this just book halfway through, I found much in this survey that resonated with me as a Jew and as a writer.

For instance, I feel so proud that the poem on America's Statue of Liberty was inscribed with an excerpt from a poem by a Jewish American, Emma Lazarus.

I'll quote the poem below.

The New Colossus
BY EMMA LAZARUS

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

FIVE STARS for this book of insight and recognition... and community. Thank you, Professor Stavans.

[july!! · Rating 3 out of 5]

subject matter was very interesting! however, this was NOT very short lol. and it really needed editing. the author took a very subjective approach when I was expecting an academic standpoint. it was also a rather self-indulgent and flowery writing style, especially for an academic piece, and could have been much more concise with good editing - but instead, the author tended to go in loops, rambles, and tangents, frequently repeating himself and tossing in irrelevant information. alas, i must give it 3 stars for this

[Erika Dreifus]

I've assigned this book's introduction (as reprinted on the Literary Hub website) in my current course, and I wanted to be sure to read the rest of the book, too. Stavans has taken on a daunting task here. A couple of disagreements notwithstanding (I have some different views on Elie Wiesel's Night, for instance), I'm super-impressed. Chapter 6, which focuses on Israeli literature, is particularly well done, and I'm likely going to assign that as well.

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and easy to read. I would have preferred a more clear timeline and chronology in the chapters as well as some more elaboration on the causes and effects of different movements and writers because that is how I best understand history. However, I do believe it did do its job and give me a suitable foundation to build off of because I feel confidenent enough now to begin studying any piece of Jewish literature.

[Peter Rowe]

nothing i didnt alrady kno