Jewish American literature makes aliyah? Jewish/non-Jewish boundary maintenance and the Israeli approach to the Diaspora

This paper analyzes the ideological ambivalence inherent in the critical reception of Jewish American literature in Israel from the late 1950s through the 1980s. On the one hand, there was a tendency in Israeli literary discourse to particularize and “Judaize” universal aspects of works by Jewish American authors and to take pride in their literary achievements, generally exhibiting an affinity to diaspora Jewish culture. On the other hand, there was also a tendency to (over)emphasize the difficulty of living as a Jew in a non-Jewish world, from both a spiritual and intellectual standpoint and a physical and social one, in a way that bolstered Israeli sovereignty as the only true solution for contemporary Jewish existence. This dialectical Israeli perception of American Jewish culture entailed both inclusivity and dismissal, implied both communal affinity and unequal hierarchy, and may be emblematic of the dual nature of the Israeli approach to diaspora existence in general.