The Writer in the Jewish community

"The Writer in the Jewish Community presents edited selections from the conference of the same name held in October 1988 at the University of California-Berkeley and Stanford University. Also included in the volume is a foreword by cochair Eli Shaltiel (publisher of Am Oved in Israel) and an afterword by Nessa Rapoport. The work is divided into three sections: "The Jew as Writer/The Writer as Jew," "Jewish Writing in Context," and "Breaking the Language Barrier: Literary Dialogues between Israel and the Diaspora.""--BOOK JACKET. "What defines the Jewish writer, and how different is an American Jewish writer from an Israeli writer? Jewish writers have always struggled with where they stand as individuals, and where Jews stand as a people with a unique history. Whatever language Jewish writers choose to write in, a common cultural past unites them: Jewish survival, the Holocaust, Israel, nationality, and Jewish traditions.^

These issues of art and identity were addressed by more than thirty of the most acclaimed Jewish poets, critics, novelists, and scholars from Israel and North America, gathered in the Bay Area for the largest modern Jewish writers' conference of its kind."--BOOK JACKET. "In a series of lectures and panel discussions, renowned American writers Cynthia Ozick (The Messiah of Stockholm, The Pagan Rabbi), Max Apple (Free Agents), Rosellen Brown (Civil Wars), and Irving Howe (World of Our Fathers) shared ideas with Israeli writers Amos Oz (My Michael, The Black Box), Hanoch Bartov (The Brigade), and Hillel Halkin. Also exchanging views were Ted Solotaroff, Nessa Rapoport, Harvey Shapiro, David Scheutz, Meir Shalev, Alan Mintz, Meir Wieseltier, Ruth Almog, and Chana Bloch. Halkin talked about the crises faced by the masters - such as Bialik and Brenner - who chose to write in Hebrew, initiating its renaissance.^

Howe and Solotaroff discussed the crisis in subject matter for American writers who are Jewish. And Cynthia Ozick and Nessa Rapoport suggested applying the literary imagination eastward - toward Israel and traditional Jewish-written sources. In general, the conference members confronted, probed, and argued about the role of the Jewish writer, the future of the American Jewish novel, Jewish tradition and renewal, Jewish survival, Israel, and the Diaspora. Their passionate and eloquent expressions are here recorded."--BOOK JACKET.