Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature: Lazarus, Syrkin, Reznikoff, and Roth

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 become multi-layered when viewed from Omer-Sherman's broad perspective. For example, the chapter titled, "'No Coherence': Philip Roth's Lamentations for Diaspora," illuminates many relational dynamics between the novelist and his forebears, between questions raised about Roth's characters and what Omer-Sherman terms "Jewish assimilation and amnesia." With skill Professor Omer-Sherman connects to the literary imagination such events as the Shoah and the birth of Israel, the problem of identity in Israel and the Jewish world as a whole. It is a terrific read.

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 Jews onto the dichotomy Zionism/Diaspora, Omer-Sherman is able to analyze, in great and telling detail, how representative writers have carved out a Jewish `homeland' in America.-Stephen Fredman, author of A Menorah for Athena

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.-Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Xavier University, Cincinnati

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.-Dr. Norman Finkelstein

The tension between Diaspora Jewish identity and the rise of political and cultural Zionism in the United States played itself out as much in the world of American Jewish culture as in the world of politics. Ranen Omer-Sherman uses four case studies: Lazarus, Syrkin, Reznikoff and Roth, to illustrate the complex history of a Jewish identity on the American frontier. The span of the book is breathtaking, its execution, elegant.-Sander L. Gilman, Director, The Humanities Laboratory, The University of Illinois, Chicago