Books : Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature: Lazarus, Syrkin, Reznikoff, and Roth (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life)
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by: Ranen Omer-Sherman
Amazon.com's Price: $24.95 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 3 to 5 weeks
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 809.88924
EAN: 9781584652021
ISBN: 1584652020
Label: Brandeis
Manufacturer: Brandeis
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: March 01, 2002
Publisher: Brandeis
Sales Rank: 829653
Studio: Brandeis
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This interdisciplinary study explores the evolving representations of diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American writing from 1880 to the late 20th century. Beginning with the often neglected proto-Zionist verse of Emma Lazarus, through the urban and Holocaust-inflected lyrics of Marie Syrkin and Charles Reznikoff, to the post-assimilationist novels of Philip Roth in the 1990s, Ranen Omer-Sherman analyzes literary responses to the competing claims on the self made by this dual allegiance.
He explores ethnic nationalism in the works of Lazarus; history and identity in the prose and verse of Syrkin and her husband Reznikoff; and considers the Jewish writer's relation to the loss of diasporic affliction as an organizing principle for Jewish life in the novels of Roth. Much more than just literary criticism, Omer-Sherman shows how this literature developed in direct relation to crucial phases in Jewish acculturation in the context of nativism, xenophobia, the holocaust, and a beckoning distant homeland.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - a new perspective on Jewish writing
Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature charts the course of Jewish American literature as it meanders between several poles: assimilation and tribalism, universalism and particularism, exilic uprootedness and national at-homeness,
private experience and collective identity. It offers a broad view that stretches from the late nineteenth century to the present and encompasses all major literary genres. And what it achieves in scope is not at the expense of depth: the study zooms in ... Read More
Rating: - Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature
Ranen Omer-Sherman is one of our most perceptive literary critics. The book is a slow read but that's because its ideas take time for the examiner to work out. The book teaches us a lot about cultural theory, as well as about literary criticism. We are able to appreciate how the background of the Jewish Diaspora and Zionism contribute to similar themes in the work of writers as diverse as Emma Lazarus, Marie Syrkin, Charles Reznikoff, and Philip Roth. Dichotomies in the literature of these writers ... Read More
Rating: - Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish literature
Omer-Sherman's study is the first to track the impact of Zionism upon the development of Jewish American literature. Where earlier scholars have written about the American Jewish experience by probing the tensions existing between tradition and assimilation, Omer-Sherman shifts the terms of the argument: he demonstrates that an investigation of American Jewish negotiations with Zionism tells us something new about the self-fashioning of a culture. Most strikingly, by mapping the identity struggles of American ... Read More
Rating: - Jewish literary diasporism
The subject of this book-the relationship between diasporic and Zionist tendencies in Jewish American writers-has been waiting to be addressed by an able critic. No one has attempted anything near the scope of Omer-Sherman's book. An ambitious and wide-ranging work of scholarship, [it is] well-informed by contemporary cultural theory and interdisciplinary in the best sense of the term. It will interest anyone concerned with the development of American Jewish literature, history, and identity in the twentieth century. ... Read More
Rating: - Jewish literary diasporism
The subject of this book-the relationship between diasporic and Zionist tendencies in Jewish American writers-has been waiting to be addressed by an able critic. No one has attempted anything near the scope of Omer-Sherman's book. An ambitious and wide-ranging work of scholarship, [it is] well-informed by contemporary cultural theory and interdisciplinary in the best sense of the term. It will interest anyone concerned with the development of American Jewish literature, history, and identity in the twentieth century. ... Read More
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