Another post regarding History within Literature

I have noticed that an intricate intertextual web has emerged surrounding several key and peripheral players.

• Nathan Englander's story "The 27th Man" represents one extreme, with a lack definite signifiers, but a clear allegory.
• Ozick's story "Yiddish in America" has clearer signifiers and parallels than Englander's.
• Dara Horn's complete recreation's of Der Nister and Marc Chagall.

All of these need to be worked into my "fiction versus history" inquiry.

Is Edelshtein Glatstein? Yes and no. Certainly we can conceive of this as true; but did the events chronicled in Ozick's story happen to the real Jacob Glatstein? No, they did not.

But if we turn back to Englander's story, and the 27 Yiddish writers who are and are not the ten murdered by Stalin, we see that the story-within-a-story is quite similar to "The Man Who Slept Through the End of the World" by Moyshe Nadir. This real author, however, did not die in Stalin's purges, but from a heart attack in New York.

Tired of the First Amendment

Person A:"...Unfortunately, the media has many Helen Thomases who do not express their hatred of Israel, or of Jews, so directly but use it as the basis (and bias) for their work"

B: So what? This is America. Haven't you heard? Its your god given right as a goddammed gun-toting american sh*t-kicker to despise and blame other people for your short comings. That being said, in what way does this real or imagined closet anti-semitism effect YOU? And please when answering, try to keep it real. Spare us that "defender of the faith, protector of the realm" stuff, where you annoint yourself spokesman for the collective. Because believe me, no ones buying into this concept that this supposed selflessness and altrusim (yours or anybody elses) is trumping self-interest.

Me:

Paranoia of goyim, or fear of "closet anti-Semitism", definitely falls under the umbrella self-interest. I love Valley's comics, and agree that Helen Thomas is used for fear-mongering, but does she not represent (at least somewhat) legitimate racist sentiments held by many Americans against the Jews?

I am torn on this issue. While I don't think a pogrom would ever happen in America, I wouldn't be surprised if it did. One nearly happened against Muslims in this country; a country whose citizens ARE all too free to "blame other people for their short-comings." How many nimrods watch Glenn Beck and think he has the right to ask a Muslim congressman, "are you trying to destroy America?" Those who think Helen Thomas has a right to tell Jews where to live are complicit in racism just like Tea Baggers who think there is only one type of American are racist.

B:

"...Those who think Helen Thomas has a right to tell Jews where to live are complicit in racism"

Lane, you seem like a sharp guy. Sharp enough to know that in fact she does have the right. Just as you have the right to tell Helen to go fu*k herself 9 ways from sunday, Wow, all this talk about pogroms makes me want to drink a six-pack and caress my 12-gauge. :-D

Me: While I agree with you (how can I not? First Amendment, etc) I am sick of the Bill of Rights being used to defend bigots and morons.

German-Philia

While I would agree that Deutsches Kultur ist über alles, and therefore have no problem with Jews championing it*, but not over everything to the extent that everything else is garbage. Or, for that matter (and to an extreme), that it results in internalized anti-Semitism. Gilad Atzmon and his novel are merely a contemporary example of this pattern which was set by Moses Mendelssohn, whose antagonism towards Yiddish was mimed by none other than Richard Wagner. Not everyone can be as level-headed as Heine or Lewisohn?

I have not considered an equivalency in Jewish English-language literature. Mark Twain, the Judeo-phile, criticized Bret Harte for it, I guess. Englander, among others, claims to not be a Jewish writer, lulz.


*There was that weird moment in German class where my professor said I had a "great German name." Like, yeah, I know. Too bad bitches had to escape, right? Some other kid's last name was "Jaeger." No joke.

History in my Literature?

On page 229 of the NYRB edition of Der Nister's Di Misphoke Mashber, history intercedes, and readers are introduced to concrete, historic signifiers. We are left wondering: did history invade a magical world, or was the magical inserting itself into history? That is what literature is.

Oh, David Malouf! I would your parenthesis were wholly, incontrovertibly Truth!

So is "N" actually Berdichev, as your punctuation emphatically suggests? Is it? Really? We don't know. And that is what literature is.

Pilsudski

90 years ago today, Jewish fighters assisted the Polish army in defending Warsaw against the invading Reds. Jozef Pilsudski was instrumental in granting Jews more rights, and they joined the army as a sign of Polish allegiance, but also as Jews who wanted vengeance on Cossacks.

Wiki's page on the battle in 1920.

Zionism as Secular Messianism

Is sort of how the ultra-frummies see it, and I sort of agree.

"Yet Heilman and Friedman also argue that Lubavitch was in competition with Zionism, which it saw as a "false Messiah [that] was going to steal the faith of the Jews that Lubavitchers had been worrking so hard to arouse.'"

In America, there is such a big fucking deal (is this an acronym yet?) made by the Orthodox (and even the Conservatives) about what their "less religious" kin do with their lives. But do they care what Israelis do? I appreciate the fluidity of Jewish religiousness in America, yet Israel in contrast seems to possess a strongly demarcated binary.

Why is Reform more odious than atheism/secularism? And why is Judaism the only religion that missionizes or proselytizes to its own people?

Rosenzweig Rules

And is now the major influence behind how I read fiction and my potential master's thesis.