Let us remember…that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both. Christian Wiman [Blacks and Jews remain] “watchful of each other, mindful of hurts and wrongs, not forgiving, but still friends.” Emily Budick Copyright by Colleen H. McCallum-Bonar 2008 ABSTRACT Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land: Yiddish Literature and the Harlem Renaissance explores the relationship between African Americans and Eastern European immigrant Jews (Yiddish-speaking / Ashkenazic Jews) by examining the depictions of each in their respective literatures. The thrust of my project will address the representations of African Americans in Yiddish literature. An investigation of the depictions of Jews by Harlem Renaissance writers will contribute to the understanding of an African American/Yiddish interface in which attitudes towards each other are played out. This linkage of African American and Jewish history, traditions and reflections regarding identity, culture, and language appears at a significant point in the grand narrative of ethnicity and race ideology in the United States. For Yiddish writers, their works regarding African Americans revealed their projection of what it meant to be Black, just as those of Harlem Renaissance writers projected their concept of ii what it meant to be Jewish, all in a milieu which saw the redefinition of what it meant to be black, to be white, and to be American. Yiddish writers addressed concepts of Blackness and Jewishness with an understanding of what could be gained or lost; the push to become American, the opportunity for social, political and economic mobility and racial alterity was countered by the pull of conflict with respect to assimilation, American conceptualization of exclusion based upon race, and a Jewish consciousness which rejected both. iii DEDICATION For Jason, Sam, Matt, and Lisa iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my sincere appreciation to the members of my committee; my advisor Prof. David Neal Miller, Prof. Neil G. Jacobs, and Prof. Bernd Fischer for their intellectual support, constructive criticism, and encouragement, which made this dissertation possible. I also wish to thank Mr. Jason M. Payne for his suggestions, comments, editorial assistance, and friendship. For her advice, encouragement, positive energy, and academic as well as emotional support, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ms. Karen Sobul. I would also like to acknowledge Mr. Sam Jordan and Mr. Kevin Herzner for their feedback and observations. I am grateful to Prof. Diane Birckbichler, Rebecca Bias, and The Foreign Language Center for their continued support. For her assistance in running the administrative gauntlet, I would like thank Ms. Brenda Hosey of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. v To my husband Mr. Jon A. Bonar, I am deeply indebted for his patience, understanding, support, and encouragement, in addition to all of his technical and computer assistance. Finally, I would like to thank the McCallum and Bonar families, for their years of support and all of their encouragement. It is with all of them I share this achievement. vi VITA July 24, 1966 ………………………Born – Chicago, Illinois 1992 …………………………..……A.A. Riverside Community College, Riverside, California 1994 ………………………………..B.A. Language, University of California – Riverside Riverside, California 1995 – 1996………………………. Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Near Eastern, Judaic, and Hellenic Languages and Literatures The Ohio State University 1996 – 1997 ……………………….Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms Universität Bonn, Germany 1996 – 2005 ……………………….Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies Program The Ohio State University 2000 ………………………………. M.A. Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies Program The Ohio State University 2005-2007 ………………………....Foreign Language Center, The Ohio State University vii 2007-2008 …………………………Lecturer, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies Program The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Germanic Languages and Literatures Specialization: Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies Minor: African American and African Studies viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION......................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................... v VITA ................................................................................................................... vii Chapters: INTRODUCTION................................................................................................. 1 The Blacksmiths ............................................................................................8 1. Black and White and Read All Over ......................................................37 Insights and Perspectives .........................................................................55 Diasporic Perceptions...............................................................................69 2. Literary Blacksmiths: Identity and Memory ............................................74 Zakhor and Jewish Memory.....................................................................83 African Americans and Memory ............................................................87 Connecting and Reflecting.....................................................................91 3. Images: Bodies, Beauty and Blackness............................................... 137 4. Harlem: Two Tales of a City, Or the Poetics of Place........................ 168 Engagement, Texts and Contexts ....................................................... 174 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................... 189 APPENDIX ...................................................................................................... 197 Poetry and Song .................................................................... 197 WORKS CITED................................................................................................ 214 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................. 216 ix INTRODUCTION Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land is a project which reflects my interest in both Yiddish literature written in the United States and African American culture. My study can be viewed as an exploration of the literary and cultural convergence of Jewish Eastern European Yiddish-speaking immigrants and African Americans, in contact with one another for the very first time. This contact, in and on the pages of Yiddish writings, represents the genesis of the Black/Jewish discussion and dialogue in the United States. Traditionally, scholarship involving Jews and African Americans addresses their relationship in terms of their political and/or social alliance and the tension which inevitably comes with misunderstandings, miscommunication, and perhaps the realization of conflicting or competing goals. Whether the relationship perceived, invented or otherwise, pits them against each other or creates the notion of kinship, plays out in a narrative in which a great deal of investigation, exploration, and supposition has taken place. 1 In looking at Yiddish literature, specifically Yiddish poetry, I was struck by the number and kind of poems addressing African Americans and the representation of the Black experience in America. However, such connections between that experience and the Yiddish immigrant experience are typically overlooked by both African American and Yiddish critics. The implications of such literary connections in the American context, in terms of others writing others, offers multiple avenues of discussion, e.g. Jews writing Blackness as an experience vs. a color, or Blacks writing Jewishness as experiential and perceived in relationship to Biblical history, tradition, and the African continent. Thus, the concept of otherness becomes somehow governed by mutual intelligibility: Blacks and Jews as minority others able to translate, interpret, rewrite or, at the very least, understand each other’s otherness. My project first began with an interest in Yiddish literature, and more specifically, Yiddish poetry. I had come across poems in which African Americans were portrayed and became interested in the way in which they were depicted. I went from a handful of oblique references to forty some poems specifically addressing African Americans. The fact that that Blacks were represented at all in Yiddish 2 poetry attests to the level of engagement and interest between them and immigrant Yiddish-speaking Jews. Prior to my decision to research representations of African Americans in Yiddish poetry, I spent a great deal of time and effort in assembling such poems. I had recognized that there was no anthology of poems strictly addressing the depiction of African Americans, neither were there any collections of poetry addressing people of color. There were, however, anthologies addressing the American experience, and whether in Yiddish or translated into English, such works included