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Jewish Identity in Selected Short Stories by Nathan Englander

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Jewish Identity in Selected Short Stories by Nathan Englander Jewish Identity in Selected Short Stories by Nathan Englander Diplomarbeit Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Magisters der Philosophie an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz Vorgelegt von Lennart OSCHGAN Am Institut für Amerikanistik Begutachterin: Assoz. Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Ulla Kriebernegg Graz, 2021 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 2 Identity and Cultural Studies ................................................................................................ 2 2.1 Discourse and Subjects ............................................................................................................... 2 2.2 Identity ......................................................................................................................................... 5 3 Jewish American Identity .................................................................................................... 11 3.1 “American” Identity ................................................................................................................. 11 3.2 Jewish Identity ........................................................................................................................... 13 3.3 Jewish American Literature ..................................................................................................... 28 3.4 Nathan Englander ..................................................................................................................... 34 4 Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 38 4.1 Reb Kringle ................................................................................................................................ 38 4.2 The Gilgul of Park Avenue ....................................................................................................... 43 4.3 Peep Show .................................................................................................................................. 53 4.4 What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank ................................................... 60 5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 66 6 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................... 68 1 Introduction For more than two decades now, the US-American writer Nathan Englander has allowed readers accessible insights into the sensitivities, imaginaries, and peculiarities of a wide repertoire of mostly Jewish characters, whether they be Orthodox, secular, or in-between, US- centered or elsewhere, in the past or in the present. Throughout his oeuvre, Englander expresses a deep understanding of human nature that reverberates through his stories but is never obscured by topics perhaps unfamiliar to the reader. The American author, who has grown up as a so-called Orthodox Jew in New York, time after time challenges tropes of more than just Jewish identity and reveals fault lines within communities, but also – and more frequently – within the characters themselves. This is particularly apparent in his short story collections, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (1999) and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2012), where Englander posits peculiar questions about contemporary Jewish identity. In this thesis, I disassemble and evaluate these conundrums of identity that Englander recounts based on a number of selected short stories from these collections. What is it that constitutes their identity as Jewish? Or rather, how does Englander construct their identities within his stories? The first short story, “Reb Kringle,” entails the identity conflict of a heavily bearded Rabbi who works as a mall Santa during the holiday season. Reb Itzik’s cultural (or religious?) values are threatened by a situation brought forth by capitalistic assimilation. Secondly, in “The Gilgul of Park Avenue,” Englander imagines a WASP-y middle-aged man who realizes, out of the blue, that he is and always has been Jewish. His surroundings are forced to react to the transformation and his newly assumed identity is challenged. Thirdly, in “Peep Show,” a secular Jew who married out of the community and changed his name to a less Jewish-sounding name visits a live peep show only to find his rabbis from teenage years, Jewish mother, Christian wife, and therapist to appear to challenge his decisions and values. Finally, the titular story of the second collection, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” features two married couples meeting up, one based in the US, the other living in Jerusalem. They talk, drink, get high, discuss Judaism and the Shoah and eventually play a game of “Who Will Hide Me?” (in the event of another Holocaust). Differences between the secular US and the “ascended” Orthodox couple as well as different kinds of Judaism become apparent while the longstanding couples ask each other crucial questions that test their emotional limits. 1 The analysis of these short stories builds on theoretical concepts that I discuss in the first two chapters. The first chapter critically explores some ideas from the various disciplines that coalesced into the wider field of Cultural Studies in relation to my approaches to a study of Jewish identity. While this thesis assumes that the reader has some general knowledge about theories of postmodernism, politics of representation and cultural theories, it explores concepts such as discourse, (split) subjects, and identity in more detail as they underpin the foundation of this work. I elaborate on this in the first theoretical chapter. The second chapter explores concepts of identity, especially the Jewish identities that are central to Englander’s work. It interrogates the history and culture of these identities, both specifically within the United States as well as more generally. This part includes subchapters on general Jewish identity, Jewish history in the US, Jewish American literature as well as a subchapter focused on the pertinent author Nathan Englander, his personal history and attitudes. These chapters provide information on the cultural matrix that informs and locates within itself the oeuvre of Nathan Englander. 2 Identity and Cultural Studies Due to its high degrees of cultural verisimilitude, the literary work of Nathan Englander affects discourses, offers and influences subject positions as well as an examination of identity itself, whilst it is likewise influenced by them. Therefore, this chapter examines the relevant cultural studies concepts essential for the analysis of his work in relation to these cultural studies concepts. 2.1 Discourse and Subjects Chris Weedon subsumes the ways in which the French thinker Michel Foucault conceived discourses as ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them. Discourses are more than ways 2 of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the “nature” of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern. (“Feminist Practice” 108) By “‘nature’ of the body,” Weedon refers to how a body is interpreted – for example, the stereotypes associated with a long “Jewish” nose. In discourses, the negotiation of meaning itself as well as the production of meaning take place. In Foucault’s model, there is nothing outside of discourses. Consequently, (true) agency is left in a precarious position, as it exists within the binding framework of the discourse. Foucault argues that these “discourses produce subjects within relations of power that potentially or actually involve resistance” (Weedon, Identity and Culture 18). For instance, a contemporary Jewish woman’s subject position or identity may be produced through discourses about her (non-)adherence to her religion, the Shoah, womanhood, womanhood in Judaism, anti-Semitism, the state of Israel, Jewish and Non-Jewish literature, psychology, politics, and many other factors. She may take up certain positions within this discourse, which may reinforce certain viewpoints and/or resist others – and therefore, be shaped by them, being under the influence of power. In Foucault’s view, power relations are not specifically directed by some definite potentate, but by similar factors as those which Jacques Lacan subsumes as the Symbolic Order – society, narratives, institutions, etc. (Johnston) that (re-)produce discourses and thereby meaning and knowledge. Indeed, Foucault argues that it is not subjects themselves, but discourse that creates knowledge or meaning. After all, subjects themselves are produced within and by discourses of a certain time, of certain (sub-)cultures. Stuart Hall explains that subjects are “not able to take meaning until they have identified with those positions which the discourse constructed, subjected themselves to its rules, and hence become the subjects of its power/knowledge” (“The Work” 40). He further attests that “[subjects]/we [as readers or viewers] must locate themselves/ourselves in the position from which the discourse makes most sense, and thus become its ‘subjects’ by ‘subjecting’ ourselves to its meanings, power and regulation” (40). Ergo, to return to our earlier example,
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