A Cultural History of the Jews

Tzvi Howard Adelman, Jerusalem
adelman@macam98.ac.il

Week 12
Modern Jewish Short Stories and Diasporan Culture

In this lecture I will try to accomplish two tasks almost
simultaneously. On the one hand, I would like introduce possibility of
using the short story as a vehicle for studying Jewish culture and, on
the other hand, I would like to raise the question about the viability
of diasporan Jewish culture. In particular, the paradoxical question
emerges whether most of the authors we shall study are in fact writing
from a culture that is Jewish. In other words, just because an author
is Jewish, or even writes about Jews, does that mean that the author
reflects Jewish culture. This question further begs the question of
what is exactly Jewish culture. Many of the writers are from the United
States and the question has regularly been asked whether there is an
American Jewish culture. A few of the authors are from other diasporan
countries, notably Russia and Germany, with further stories in the
anthologies by British and South African writers, though there are other
authors who could be studied from every country in the world, including
Latin America, Canada, France, and many other places, and similar
questions could be asked about these writers as well. Some of the
authors are from Israel, where the question can be asked in reverse,
just because they come from a culture that is primarily and consciously
Jewish and write in Hebrew, does their work represent an extension of
Jewish culture.

For purposes of convenience, I will discuss short stories from two of
the most popular anthologies of Jewish short stories, Great Jewish Short
Stories, edited by Saul Bellow, and The Penguin Book of Jewish Short
Stories, edited by Emanuel Litvinoff. Because several editions of each
book have appeared, I won't give specific page numbers. Most of the
stories in these books, representing almost some sort of canon, appear
in many other anthologies as well as in the basic works of the authors
mentioned. I will occasionally mention other stories and other
writers as well.

Hasidic Stories
Not merely an early manifestation of modern Jewish short stories but a
major leitmotif in subsequent authors as well, running as far a field as
Philip Roth and Woody Allen, the hasidic tale constitutes a major
transition between traditional Jewish culture, including the hasidic
critique of it, and modern Jewish culture. The classic repository, In
Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, Shivhei Ha-besht (1700-1760), mentioned in
earlier lectures, continues mystical hagiographical tales such as
Shivhei Ha-Ari, In Praise of Isaac Luria, a borrowing betrayed by the
appearance of the Palestinian palm trees in stories about Poland. The
Praise of the Baal Shem Tov (available in English) based on Yiddish oral
traditions, first appeared in 1815 in Hebrew, but most hasidic stories
were published later in the century, precisely the time when modern
Hebrew, Yiddish, and other modern vernacular Jewish literatures were
forming. In the same year the stories of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav
(1772-1810) appeared in a bilingual Hebrew and Yiddish edition.
Questions of influence go both ways. Gershon Scholem, one of the first
scholars to take Jewish mysticism and hasidic teachings seriously,
raised the question, especially in light of Martin Buber's
popularization of hasidic tales at the turn of this century, whether
they actually represent hasidic teaching, especially when compared to
other genres of hasidic literature, or whether they constitute an
attempt by hasidim themselves to popularize and westernize their
teachings.

The retelling of hasidic tales by non-hasidic authors further distanced
the images of Hasidim from reality. In particular, western writers for
their own reasons often accentuated the antinomian tendencies of the
Hasidim rather than their strict adherence to Jewish law. In Mayer
Levin's retelling of Nachman of Bratzlav's "The Rabbi's Son," (Bellow)
the tensions between traditional rabbis and wonderworking hasidic
zaddikim are shown. The problem is, however, that despite the attempt
to make a clear distinction between the obsessive observance of the
rabbi and the wild, questionable observance of the zaddik, in this story
the rabbi too believes in omens, dreams, and divine and demonic
intervention in mundane matters, and the zaddik, with his Christ-like
mediations between the holy and the sinful, is actually not unobservant
after all. The story ends with the anti-hasidic rabbi, whose beloved
son died before his father allowed him a meeting with the zaddik, which
may have saved his life, making a pilgrimage to the zaddik. (To save a
few letters, I have used the term "Christ" consciously to refer to the
supernatural, divine aspects in Christian tradition; "Jesus" is a
convenient term for the person. My point here is that the Hasidim were
interested in the zaddikim as divine intermediaries and their views,
like Jews in every period and location, were influenced by contemporary
Christian beliefs.)

This ending is very similar to that of "Elie, The Fanatic," by Philip
Roth. While this story is not in the collections mentioned above, it is
in Roth's first collection called Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short
Stories, perhaps the most exciting and controversial modern Jewish
stories written. Invariably when I have taught versions of this course,
students have gravitated towards Roth. While I will speak about him in
his proper place, a brief comparison between Nachman of Bratslav and
Philip Roth will put our theme in perspective. In "Elie," a Hasid and
Holocaust survivor, Leo Tzuref, wants to establish a residential
yeshivah in a suburban New York community. And Eli Peck, a Jewish
lawyer, opposed this move ostensibly on the basis of the zoning laws,
but actually on the appearance of the Hasidim, especially their hats, to
modern suburban Jews trying to integrate into a once restricted
community. Unable to grasp either the nature of the Hasidic community
or the experiences they endured during the Holocaust, Elie becomes
obsessed with the way that the Hasidim dress and tries to convince them
to change their ways. His obsession, similar to the rabbi in Nahaman of
Bratslav's hasidic story who lost his son, became incapable of dealing
with his own pregnant wife. The Jews work themselves into a frenzy
against the fanaticism of the Hasidim (reminding me of a local
bumper-sticker Yamutu Hakanaim, Death to the Zealots), including
accusing them of inventing the idea that the biblical Abraham was going
to kill his own kid for a sacrifice. The story ends with Elie dressing
up in the Hasid's clothing and walking through the town to the
astonished reactions of the townspeople. One neighbor called him and
said, "Eli, there's a Jew at your door." To which he responded, "That's
me."

In "The Judgment," as retold by Martin Buber, the zaddik, here the Baal
Shem Tov himself, as we saw earlier in our discussion of medieval German
Jewish pietism, served as a liaison between the living and the dead.
Here not only are many of the classic hasidic themes in place such as
fantastic travel and a Christ-like revival of the dead, but the events
are witnessed, and hence verified, by a non-hasidic observer. We shall
meet these themes in modern Jewish literature. The one thing that seems
to be off in this version of the story, which means that there are
probably other matters askew as well, is that Jewish weddings don't
usually take place on the Sabbath. Moreover, reconstructing the
sequence of events carefully may lead to the possibility that some of
the healing took place on the Sabbath as well, furthering the
Christ-like aspects of the Baal Shem Tov.

Modern German Jewish Literature
One of the first modern Jewish short stories, though launched as a novel
but never completed, was begun in 1824 the year before the author,
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), converted to Christianity and was published
as a fragment in 1840, the year of the Damascus Blood Libel. Heine's
"Rabbi of Bacherach" (in Bellow) is about a blood libel at Passover time
in medieval Germany. Having previously discussed Heine's involvement in
the Verein fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Organization for the
Scientific Study of Judaism, his subsequent conversion, and sentimental
attachment to Judaism, I would stress now that this somewhat rambling
story reflects both imperfect knowledge of Jewish history, barely a
field of research at the time, and intensive first hand experience with
the Jewish Question. Heine began the novel as a student in Goettingen,
after he had returned to Berlin to celebrate Passover there with
friends.

Key to Heine's presentation of Jewish history, based on his reading of
Jacques Basnage's History of the Jews and various medieval chronicles,
is what we would know call the lachrymose conception of Jewish history,
Jewish history being the shortest distance between two massacres. Heine
contrasts bleak external circumstances with Jewish piety and Spanish
Jewish skepticism with Ashkenazic Jewish piety. He, like the translators
of the hasidic stories often get matters of Jewish law and legend wrong:
to marry witnesses are required, holiday candles are lit before not
after sunset, mixed choirs were not allowed by traditional Jews, David
did not build the Temple, but Solomon, and the king would not have
entered the Holy of Holies.. The rabbi and his wife fled an anticipated
blood libel leaving not only all their possessions but also his students
and the rest of the community to fend for themselves. Earlier the rabbi
had married his wife, seemingly without her consent, and then fled from
her for seven years to study in Spain.

The novel is not fully developed, but contains many points of interest
relevant to German Jewish culture in the time of Heine more than to
medieval Germany. As we saw with several later Hebrew poets, Heine, most
famous for his Lorelei, was enchanted by the ancient German legends of
the Nibelungs, Astarte, and the Rhine River. Like so many other works
of Jewish literature, this story too touches on the Akedah, noting that
had Abraham actually killed Isaac "there would be more goats and fewer
Jews in the world." It also describes a custom of not only dipping the
finger in the wine during the recitation of the plagues, but sprinkling
the wine on the children. Like many German Jews, especially those
involved in the Wissenschaft des Judentums, Heine saw Spanish Jewry as a
model for his time, identifying with the Spanish Jews, and with lapsed
Jews, many of whom returned to the fold only for major events such as
Passover. He also saw the baptisms of Spain as emblematic of the
situation in Germany, "Water-you well know what I mean-water is your
misfortune and you will sink." He even has one lapsed Spanish Jew
express the idea that even had he lived in the biblical period he would
have felt the narrowness of living in Jewish kingdoms and left to live
among the Phoenicians or the Babylonians. Heine, who once noted that
the three volumes of the Zeitschrift fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums
did not do as much to save Judaism as kugel, puts similar sentiments
into the mouth of one of the characters: "I love your cooking much
better than your faith. It lacks the proper sauce."

As we have seen many times in this course, the editor's introductions
are rarely adequate and often misleading. A particular case in point is
Bellow' introduction to Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) which leaves out some
of the most important aspects of his life, especially in terms of his
relationship with Jewish culture. His entry into the world of Viennese
literature was paved by Theodor Herzl who as literary editor of the Neue
Freie Presse, published one of his essays. The war in no way
interrupted his activities. After the Nazis came to power, he wrote the
libretto for an opera by Richard Strauss, but they suppressed it and he
soon left for England. Zweig had little to do with organized Jewish
life, but did see himself and many other prominent Austrian writers as
Jews. He wrote several stories on Jewish themes. One of the most
prominent writers in the first half of the twentieth century, Zweig and
his second wife, distressed over the fate of Europe, committed suicide
together in Petropolis, ouside of Rio de Janeiro.

Zweig's story "Buchmendel," situated during the first World War, may
reflect more the culture of the Jews than Jewish culture. Jacob Mendel,
who had left the world of traditional Judaism, "the worship of the harsh
and jealous Jehovah," for the world of antiquarian books, "the more
lively and polytheistic cult of books." He reads with rocking motions
acquired in Galician talmudic academies, a training that left him void
of other culture and unable to adjust to the mundane world. His
devotion to his trade is described in religious terms, like a man at
prayer, engaged in a solemn ritual. After his disappearance, when the
author inquired after him at the cafe where he had conducted his
business for almost forty years, he invoked Exodus, "there had arisen a
new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph." Finally the Toilettenfrau,
was able to report to the narrator Mendel's story. Lost in his world of
books, Mendel did not register as an alien in Vienna at the start of the
war. Continuing to make inquiries to enemy countries about
bibliographic matters the censors arrested him and sent him to a
concentration camp for two years, an experience which, despite his
eventual release marred him in a manner which must have been similar to
what Zweig experienced with the rise of the Nazis. When the cafe was
sold, the new owners were not pleased with "this dirty little Russian
Jew." It was the Catholic Klofrau who, although she never read a book
in her life, was most concerned about his welfare, but unable to locate
him, settled for having a mass said for him.

Modern Yiddish Literature
After a period of polemical preoccupation with battles between Hasidim
and their enlightened opponents, with the work of Mendele Mokher
Seforim, the pen name of S. Y. Abramowitz (1835-1917), who wrote in both
Hebrew and Yiddish, modern Yiddish began as a literary genre during the
1860s and 1870s. Mendele offered harsh criticisms of Jewish life and
Jewish leadership.

One of the most powerful criticisms of Jewish life was offered by I.saac
Leib Peretz (1851-1915) in his story "Bontsha the Silent," "Bontsha
Schweig," a name that now is as much an epithet as the name of a
specific story (which appears in both Bellow and Litvinoff). My reading
of this story about the ultimate Jewish victim has rarely been easily
accepted by students who want to see in the story a paean to piety
rather than a strident critique of Jewish passivity. After describing
his suffering almost excessively, I think the point is made at the end
of the story when he is judged in heaven, "You never understood that you
need not have been silent, that you could have cried out and that your
outcries would have brought down the world itself and ended it. You
never understood your sleeping strength." When offered his reward in
Paradise he asks for breakfast every morning a hot roll with fresh
butter. At which point there is shocked silence and then bitter
laughter. I think that this reaction is negative and critical.

As proof of this view I offer his story "The Golem," also found in both
books, which seems to be about the incredible powers for revenge among
the Jews. When operative, however, here in the form of killing all the
gentiles, the Jews are concerned that with their demise they will be
deprived of gentiles to serve them on the Sabbath. Such a reaction I
think reflects a Kulturkampf, a conscious Neitzschean attack on
traditional Jewish values.

Peretz, however, also began a neo-hasidic trend in Yiddish and Hebrew
literature, idolizing rather than criticizing the hasidic masters. A
famous example of this is the story, "If Not Higher." This story, like
the story by Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, shows the tensions between
Hasidim and their opponents, here designated as a Litvak, a Lithuanian
rabbi obsessed with the study of Jewish law. To find out what happens to
the famous zaddik who disappears each year on Friday before the High
Holidays, he hides under the rabbis bed. This is a situation filled
with sexual suggestiveness, which Peretz exploits, describing the
groaning going on in the bed, but describing it as sorrow for the people
Israel. The plot shows the zaddik dressing as a Russian peasant
providing an old woman with fire wood, during which time he recited his
penitential prayers. In the course of his investigations, as in the
Bratslav and the Philip Roth story, the rabbi becomes a disciple of the
zaddik.

Yiddish literature reached its peak in the prolific work of Sholom
Aleichem, the pen name of Sholom Rabinowitz (1859-1916). Born in the
Ukraine, he received a traditional Jewish education and then a secular
one. He spent time in Odessa and the US. Like the other major Yiddish
writers he also wrote in Hebrew. Despite his voluminous productivity,
range of accomplishments, and his elevation of Yiddish literature, in
his day Sholom Aleichem struggled and suffered from lack of recognition.
The story "Hodel," anthologized in both readers (why they both had to
repeat stories rather than draw on different selections the rich corpus
of each author is beyond me) is part of a larger cycle of stories about
Tevya the dairyman and his daughters, which became the basis of both
some of the earliest Yiddish films as well as the American Broadway and
Hollywood extravaganza, Fiddler on the Roof. A comparison between these
different works constitutes a fascinating study beyond the scope of this
introductory presentation. The main features of the "Hodel" story are
the narrator talking to Sholom Aleichem, Tevye's warped quotations from
Jewish tradition, and the tensions between modernity and tradition, both
in terms of marriage customs and learning, "You can go around bareheaded
. . . but if you know what Rashi and the others have said, you are a man
after my own heart." The story with all its pathos of Tevya coming to
grips with his daughter's choice of a mate who will take her far from
home, ends with one of the most famous lines in Jewish literature, long
separated from the story and his own mother's tragic death, "And now
let's talk about more cheerful things. Tell me, what news is there
about the cholera in Odessa."

Yiddish literature received recognition with the awarding of a Nobel
Prize in Literature to Isaac Bashevis Singer (b. 1904) in 1978. Singer
was raised in a traditional Jewish family in Warsaw where he received a
Jewish religious as well as a secular education and also spent three
years in a village with his grandfather. He arrived in the US in 1935
where his work was serialized in the Yiddish Jewish Daily Forward and
gradually appeared in English, sometimes as the original language,
especially for sophisticated, less Jewishly literate audiences such as
the New Yorker. In addition to short pieces he produced many long
epics. Singer's works regularly draw on the forces of folklore and the
demonic. "Gimpel the Fool" draws on classic traditions of the
literature of the fool (Erasmus) and the grotesque (Rablais). Moving
from goat turds to cemetery weddings to family violence and adultery to
discussions of the existence of God, the story mixes serious social
critique with frivolousness that reflects literary trends rather than
positivistic data on Jewish life. "A Friend of Kafka" evokes a similar
surrealistic mixture of reality and fantasy, including many names such
as Chagall, Stefan Zweig and Martin Buber. Our encounter with Kafka is
mediated by Jacques (Jankel) Kohn, a former actor in the Yiddish
theater, an image rarely associated with serious endeavors, though he
offers some fascinating insight along the way: "Jews Remember too
much. That is our misfortune. . . . If our literature would only
reflect this insanity, it would be great. But our literature is
uncannily sane. . ."

Singer's brother, Israel Joshua Singer (1893-1944) was also a popular
Yiddish writer. His story "Repentance" (Bellow) sets up a comparison
between two rabbis, the joyous Rabbi Ezekiel, whose followers omitted
most traditional Jewish fasts and enjoyed the Day of Atonement, and
Rabbi Naphtali, "a weakling and a pygmy of a Jew." Passing judgment on
these two polar opposites, Singer offers a critique of morose Jewish
life by ending the story with Rabbi Naphtali dying of gloom.

Russian Jewish Literature
Isaac Babel (1894-1941) was born in the Jewish cultural center of Odessa
and was killed by the Soviet Communists in 1941. Considered one of the
best writers in the Soviet Union, most intriguing from the vantage point
of Jewish culture was the fact that his first book, Red Cavalry,
published in 1924, was an appreciation of Cossack Soldiers, himself
having joined a Cossack regiment in the Red Army. Indeed, he sees Jews
through the vantage point of the Cossacks. In the autobiographical "The
Story of My Dovecot," (both anthologies) he describes himself as short,
weakly, and suffering from headaches from excessive studying, and refers
to other Jews a vulgar parvenus. The story ends with the death of his
grand-uncle Shoyl at the hands of a mob during a pogrom. Similar
critiques of the Jews are found in two other stories "Gedali" and
"Awakening" (Bellow). "O the rotted Talmuds of my childhood! O the
dense melancholy of memories! . . . By the ancient synagogue, by its
yellow and indifferent walls, old Jews with prophets' beards and
passionate rags on their sunken chests . . . " ". . . from our house,
impregnated with the smell of leeks and Jewish destiny. . . In my
childhood, chained to the Gemara, I had led the life of a sage. When I
grew up I started climbing trees."

Modern Hebrew Short Stories
S. Y. Agnon (1880-1970), who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966,
represents, contrary to Bellow's note and Agnon's own statements, a
major imaginative synthesis between hasidic literaure, rabbinic texts,
and western literary tradition. A native of Galicia , Agnon immigrated
to Palestine and then returned to spend an extended period of time in
the Hebrew circles of Berlin and Bad Homberg. As I have mentioned
earlier, at the beginning of the twentieth century Germany was a major
center for modern Hebrew literature and home to writers such as Micha
Josef Berdychewsky, David Frishman, Zalman Shazar, Fischel Lachower,
Hayyim Nakhman Bialik, Saul Tchernichowski, Simon Rawidowicz, Ahad Haam,
and many others. Already in Palestine and in Germany as well Agnon read
the classics of modern literature and parallel developments such as
folklore. Of great controversy is the question whether he read and was
influenced by Kafka. Although he denied doing so, indeed he ochestrated
many of the myths associated with his persona, scholars have found
various types of evidence, albeit inconclusive, to indicate such
influence on his work. Despite gullible reports offered by some
scholars about the surprise of his receiving the Nobel prize, typical of
his construction of his own persona were his attempts throughout the
1950s to lobby for the prize, on of which ended with his getting a heart
attach in Stockholm in 1951 and the other his having a friend appointed
ambassador to Stockholm in 1955 (with connections who needs protetzia?)
His stories can barely be summarized and their success as literature is
based on the intricate web of traditional imagery mixed with modern
atmospherics. The fullest explication of the levels of meaning in
Agnon's stories is found in Arnold Band's Nostalgia and Nightmare.

Aaron Appelfeld (b. 1932), a Holocaust concentration camp survivor who
settled in Israel, was one of the first Israeli writers to deal with the
Holcaust, like the poet Uri Zvi Greenberg, without actually mentioning
it. "Badenheim 1939," part of a longer novella, presents life in an
Austrian resort outside Vienna after the country was annexed by the
Nazis. The meandering description touches on the requirement of Jews to
register as such with the Sanitation Department and the attendant
reactions of various Jews and former Jews. Despite ghettoization of the
Jews, there is never a realization on their part of the issues involved
nor does the author explicate them.

One of the most powerful stories in these collections is Amos Oz's
"Setting the World to Rights." Oz, a contemporary Israeli writer, a
kibbutznik who confronts the issues facing a kibbutznik, and by
extension, Israeli society. The story is about a kibbutznik filled with
hatred, overwhelmed by the inability of his ideals and those of the
state to sustain him in a world of corruption and degeneracy. One of
the central metaphors of the story that of whoredom, borrowed from the
biblical indictment of all that does not confirm to its strict canons of
morality, is applied as a critique to the State of Israel. The story
ends with the subject spending a night with a whore and then killing
himself.

Other important Israeli writers not included in these collections are
Asher Barash, especially his historical stories "The Last in Toledo,"
"Before the Gate of Heaven, and "In Marburg"; Devorah Baron, one of the
few women writers of modern Israel.

The United States
The US has not been a center of Hebrew creativity, with a few minor
exceptions. Yiddish stories which did flourish in the US, and many more
are available in the anthologies than I discussed, gradually made way
for English writing. The writer who best embodies the issues of
American Jewish culture is Philip Roth (b. 1933), despite-- indeed
because --- of the harsh criticism directed against him by communal
leaders and congregational rabbis. Roth, despite his own strident
rejection of the label of being a Jewish writer, has fulfilled the
tradition of Jewish writers serving as critics of Jewish culture and
society.

Not only has Roth exposed the vacuousness of suburban Jewish life,
especially cinderblock synagogue schools, but he has explicated the
conflicts and tensions among Jews and captured their verbal and
intellectual patterns better than anybody else. After having worked in
religious schools, my all time favorite Philip Roth story is "The
Conversion of the Jews." Indeed the story was a veritable beacon of
light as I found my way through the reality of contemporary Jewish
education. Roth, who grew up in suburban New Jersey wrote this story
when he was twenty-three years old. In this story Roth manages to pack
all the issues that trouble modern Jews: Christian theology (despite
all denials and institutionalized contempt, all Jews are fascinated by
discussions of the Trinity), the chosen people, sexuality, Jewish
particularism, and rabbinic authority and hypocrisy. Central to the
story was, despite a liberal and open facade, the rabbi's inability to
deal open and honestly with questions that troubled his students.

One of the classical scenes of suburban Jewish identity offered by Roth
is the discussion between the mother and the grandmother of the hero of
the story, Ozzie, about whether there were eight or nine Jews on a plane
that crashed based on the list of fatalities published in the paper
because of the contested name of "Miller." Utlimately, Ozzie's posture
was not so much driven by rebellion, which it may have seemed, but by
genuine piety. If God were as omnipotent as the rabbi claimed, then why
could He not have a virgin conceive.. Moved to great spiritual depths
by his mother's lighting Sabbath candles, his questions and the rabbis
objections to them provoke her to slap him in the face for the first
time in his life, a reaction that will be repeated by the rabbi himself
Ozzie accused him of not knowing about God. The story reaches a climax
with a wounded Ozzie running to the roof of the synagogue threatening to
jump unless the rabbi and the assembled crowd below expressed their
belief in Jesus Christ. It concludes with Ozzie asking his mother to
promise that "you'll never hit anybody about God."

In a way, the standoff between Ozzie and the rabbi is very similar to
the previous collisions we have seen in Jewish literature between rabbis
and zaddikim. Ozzie represented a spontaneity and an honesty towards
religion and community which may have been the reason that so many
rabbis and community leaders expressed such revulsion for Roth and his
work. For fascinating reading about Roth, I highly recommend, at the
suggestion of at least one student, his own collection of essays in
Reading Myself and Others.

Cynthia Ozick, whose fame has greatly increased, writes the "Pagan
Rabbi" using a man's voice. The story begins with the fact that a
prominent rabbi had hanged himself in a public park. The story then
traces the spiritual odyssey of the rabbi by one of his colleagues who
learned, with little patience or empathy, that the rabbi had acquired
all sorts of pagan, pantheistic tendencies. Rather, however, than
seeing such a development as abnormal, I think that we have seen enough
developments in modern Jewish culture to indicate that Jews had
developed many pagan tendencies.

Finally, Grace Paley (b. 1922), provides a hilarious collection of
voices in dialect in "Goodbye and Good Luck." "With me, we will raise up
the sands of Palestine to make a nation. That is the land of tomorrow
for us Jews." "Ha-Ha, . . . I'll go tomorrow then."

Conclusion
Because of space limitations I have not been able to cover all the
modern short story writers that I wished to treat. Nevertheless, from
these stories it is clear that like the sands of Palestine, Jewish
culture is continually shifting. Indeed, as I prepared the last two
lectures my own views have shifted yet again. Never enthusiastic for
the diaspora negation associated with most trends in Zionist thought,
while I may have cast aspersions on the vitality of diasporan culture, a
review of these materials has led me to reaffirm my sense that the
grounding of the most profound Israeli writers is in the diaspora.
While I may occasionally mistake Hebrew continuity for Jewish
creativity, the fact remains that Jews have flourished in a range of
languages.

During this course, the 2,400 subscribers plus those who are getting the
lectures indirectly constitute evidence of thriving Jewish culture
around the world. The range of serious learning that students have
brought to our discussions both from very traditional Jewish
backgrounds, liberal Jewish backgrounds, and Christian backgrounds,
shows that Jewish culture can flourish and that Jews and Jews and
Christians can engage it critically and analytically. Students in this
course constitute many teachers, professors, rabbis, filmmakers,
writers, and I am happy that people have both sought my input on various
projects and given me their input to this project. As questions and
criticisms come in I continue to update my files, but paradoxically
continue to distribute the unchanged version as requests for back issues
come in. Feel free to contact me over the summer should you need
missing lectures.

As a result of doing these courses, I feel as if I have found a voice
and a medium to teach which is new and exciting, for students who would
never meet in the same classroom. Maybe the beauty of the virtual
classroom is that it brings together students and teachers who would not
meet in any other circumstances. It has been said that any teacher who
can be replaced by a computer should. With these courses I don't think
that we are replacing traditional learning sites, but creating new
ones. In addition to the standard evaluation forms, I would be
interested in receiving any additional feedback from students. From
these courses I have been invited to join other virtual study programs
and some real ones too, and am continually working to make the courses
better. Students continue to visit in Jerusalem; next week I will
receive my fourth visitor from the third continent.

Where to go from Here: One of the best books written introducing the
Jewish textual tradition is the collection of essays in Barry W. Holtz's
Back to the Sources. Each chapter provides further direction for
additional reading. On Jewish literature the journals Prooftexts and
the Association for Jewish Studies Review have provided consistently
innovative studies on various authors, works, and genres. For Yiddish
stories, see I. Howe and E. Greenberg, A Treasury of Yiddish Stories.
For recent Jewish fiction I would highly recommend the novels of Naomi
Regan.

As I finish up this lecture, Dana International, Israel's trans-sexual
singing star, has just finished performing Dunash ibn Labrat's sabbath
hymn Deror Yikra and collapsed on stage unable to hand the medals to
this year's Swedish winners. Israel participated in a contest with many
nations, such as Spain and Germany, that once tried to obliterate her,
voting for her singers. Germany, after years of denial, has finally
recognized the rights of its Turkish citizens and not only moved towards
citizenship rights, but entered a song in Turkish instead of Gerrman.
In Israel, with a new government being formed by the broadest coalition
ever, adjustments are being made to return territories to Syria,
Lebanon, and to a Palestinian State. Whether one may be for or against
such events, the consequences are inevitable. Israel and its supporters
are moving from a defensive/aggressive posture to one in which questions
of culture will again play a prominent role. As such adjustments take
place, matters related to Jews and Judaism around the world will become
of even greater interest than the simple "erev tov yerushalayim" that
the vote counters called in to the hosts of Eurovision in Jerusalem. I
hope that this course helped provide a background for what will continue
to be interesting discussions about Jewish culture in Israel and around
the world. Thank you for your interest and participation.

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