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Editor's Note EDITOR’S NOTE This reference work aims to recover the rich history of Jewish creative writers worldwide in the 20th century and make visible their diverse accomplishments, examining in particular the Jewish themes in their work. We begin the century with Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism who was also a dramatist, and the masters of Yiddish, Mendele Moykher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and the father of Yiddish theatre, Avrom Goldfaden, as well as the pioneers of Hebrew in the new century, H.N. Bialik, M.Y. Berdyczewski and Y.H. Brenner. We end the century with contemporary writers such as the American Allegra Goodman, the Israeli Savyon Liebrecht, and the Dutch Harry Mulisch, all still writing happily into the 21st century. Many brilliant writers are included in this book: household names like Proust and Kafka, the Dadaist Tristan Tzara, the dramatist Ionesco, and the Russian poet Il’ia Erenburg; Nobel laureates of literature: S.Y. Agnon, Saul Bellow, Joseph Brodsky, Elias Canetti, Boris Pasternak, Nelly Sachs, Nadine Gordimer, and Imre Kertész, and the Nobel laureate of peace, Elie Wiesel; humorists such as Woody Allen, Ephraim Kishon, and Leo Rosten. So many lives have been affected by experiences in the Shoa: Henri Nathansen of Denmark com- mitted suicide rather than endure, a pattern later followed by Primo Levi and Paul Celan. Others died in the camps: Max Jacob, Janusz Korczak, Gertrude Kolmar, and Isaak Babel’. Survivors such as Elie Wiesel, Aharon Appelfeld, Rose Ausländer, Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yechiel Dinur), Piotr Rawicz, and the hidden child Judith Herzberg, lived to write eloquently of their experiences. We have unfortunately not been able to include the many writers who have written only one memoir/ journal/testimony to the period of the Holocaust. Because of this we have included an introductory essay on Holocaust writing by Sue Vice. Other introductory essays are on the rise and decline of Yiddish literature by Joel Berkowitz, and on the phenomenal rise of Hebrew writing in the 20th century by Leon Yudkin who com- ments on the many Israeli poets, novelists, and dramatists who have flourished, especially since the founding of the State of Israel. Many of these Israeli writers appear here in a reference work for the first time. Mark Shechner focuses on the flourishing of Jewish writing in America, and Bryan Cheyette writes on British-Jewish writing. Defining who is a Jew proved to be a challenge. Anyone who was born a Jew qualified for inclusion, even if he or she had subsequently converted or otherwise dissociated himself or herself from Jewish life. Muriel Rukeyser suggests that “to be a Jew in the twentieth century/ is to be offered a gift. If you refuse/ wishing to be invisible, you choose/ death of the spirit, the stone insanity”. Conversion was and is after all an aspect of Jewish experience. In the aftermath of Nuremberg, a person with only one Jewish parent qualifies for inclu- sion. We accepted as Jewish anyone who identified themselves as a Jew, or was perceived as such by others. Aharon Appelfeld has said that he has always loved “assimilated Jews, because that was where the Jewish char- acter, and also, perhaps, Jewish fate, was concentrated with the greatest force”. Although this is a book on Jewish writers, it does not try to define what constitutes Jewish writing. Is it simply writing by Jewish writers? Are those included good writers who happen to be Jewish, and does their Jewishness contribute to their success? Jews have always been devoted to the reading and writing of books, but 19th-century Jews would not have easily recognized as “Jewish writing” much of what was written in the 20th century. There had always been a rich tradition of literacy and scholarship, which was translated in the 20th century into secular imaginative literature. Does it need to be in a Jewish language, i.e. Yiddish or Hebrew? Patently not, because we have included writers from all over the world, writing in their vernacular languages. Many of these writers characterized a certain urban rootlessness, a sense of alienation or vii viii editor’s note psychological estrangement, deracination and marginality which became central to much 20th-century liter- ature. As Jabès said, “I have been wandering for 2,000 years”. Sometimes it is the sense of the little man (Mendele Moykher Sforim’s Dos kleyne mentshele), the luftmensch (dreamer), the vulnerable shlemiel, or even a wise fool, who is a victim of the more confident world, that suggests a kind of Jewishness. In many works, it is a depiction of Yiddishkeit, a way of living in the lost world of the shtetl, or in the ghettos of New York or London’s East End. But for many writers, assimilated into the larger population, it was necessary to be discreet, to express themselves as Jews with great reserve. This applied to many English Jewish writers and to several French Jewish writers, where the obligation was “to be a man in the street and a Jew at home”, as well as to Soviet Jews where there was active discrimination against Jews like Brodsky or Mandel’shtam. After the Holocaust or Shoa, it was a sense of Zakhor, the ethical duty to remember, that needed to be ful- filled and which gave integrity to those who had witnessed the terrible events. And after the Shoa, the sense of the dispossessed and suffering was even more important, yet the flame of hope survived. As Rose Ausländer wrote: “I, survivor/ of the horror/ write with words/ life”. For Brazilian Moacyr Scliar, the rediscovery of ethnic identity was important because “Jewishness is a condition one cannot escape, one that carries within itself the strength to endure.” Above all, Jewish writing may be characterized by the need to understand what it is to be a mentsh, a humane person, with a heightened consciousness or sensitivity to oppression, in the apartheid era of Nadine Gordimer’s South Africa, in Ariel Dorfman’s Chile, or in David Grossman’s Israel. Freud is reputed to have said that “conscience is a Jewish invention”. So it is appropriate that Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock ends with the line, “Let your Jewish conscience be your guide.” Perhaps the best advice is from George Eliot, quoting from J.S. Mill’s On Liberty: “from the freedom of individual men to persist in idiosyncracies, the world may be enriched. Why should we not apply this argument to the idiosyncracy of a nation, and pause in our haste to shoot it down?” (On the Jewish Problem). Of course we could not include every writer who deserved to be here, and had a real tussle in deciding who was worthy of inclusion. Given the comparatively uncharted nature of this subject, Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century cannot hope to be completely comprehensive. However, the inclusion of the longer survey articles should ensure that many interesting issues are raised, and that lesser-known individuals as well as the 19th-century pioneers, are mentioned. There may be inconsistencies in the transliteration of places and names. Accepted usage is followed in most cases, but there are many problems: places and countries had different names at different periods. A prefer- ence has been given to works in the English language when recommending books for Further Reading, but many others have been listed. We have tried, where possible, to include the translator of the works listed under Selected Writings, where we have tried to list the most important and significant works. Acknowledgements I was fortunate to be able to complete the task of this book, begun with Muriel Emanuel in 1994, but aborted when the previous publishers closed their London office in 1995. This project was revived in 1999 when it was greeted enthusiastically by Roda Morrison of Fitzroy Dearborn, with Muriel Emanuel and Laura Phillips as wonderful assistant editors. Since then it has blossomed and finally reached publication because these pro- fessional people were dedicated to the project, set it into motion, and worked energetically, remaining com- mitted to its progress. I thank them all, as well all those scholars and specialists who have written for the book and were so generous with their time in giving advice and answering queries. I would also like to thank my husband Jack, my family, and many others, including Alan Todres in Chicago, Dorothée van Tendeloo, librar- ians at the British Library and the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, Tel Aviv, Dr Glenda Abrahams of Oxford, Professor Tami Hess of the Hebrew University, Professor Yael Feldman of New York, and of course the original board of advisers, Dr Risa Domb of Cambridge who co-opted some of her best students to write essays, the late Professor Eduard Goldstücker of Prague, Professor Gabriel Josipovici of Sussex, and Dr Stephen Lehmann, Philadelphia, and Professor Simon Sibelman, Wisconsin. The essay on Patrick Modiano was first published in Contemporary World Writers, 2nd edition, edited by Tracy Chevalier (Detroit and London: St James Press, 1993). Sorrel Kerbel.
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