Post­ed by Joseph Winkler

A Jew­ish joke: what do you get when you stick five con­tem­po­rary, tal­ent­ed Jew­ish writ­ers on a panel?

A. 10 opin­ions on what con­sti­tutes a Jew­ish writer.
B. A very stale and bad Jew­ish joke.
C. A dynam­ic, enter­tain­ing, and insight­ful pan­el that explored the cross sec­tions of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty and lit­er­a­ture.
D. All of the above.

If you guessed D, you win a badge of pride (good joke, I know.) Last night at the Hous­ing Works on Cros­by Street — dubbed ​“best book­store, per­haps ever” by the pan­elists – the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil in con­junc­tion with Vol. 1 Brook­lyn host­ed an event enti­tled The New Yiderati: Redefin­ing the Jew­ish Expe­ri­ence in Lit­er­a­ture. (Side­point: If I had to choose a book­store to go all From the Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweil­er on, I would def­i­nite­ly choose the Hous­ing Works book­store because of its roman­tic set­ting full of rich mahogany book­shelves.) Speak­ing to over fifty peo­ple, the five authors — Michelle Haimoff (These Days Are Ours), Sharon Pomer­antz (Rich Boy), Joan­na Smith Rakoff (A For­tu­nate Age), Adam Wil­son (Flatscreen), Jef­fery Oliv­er (Fail­ure to Thrive) — along with mod­er­a­tor Jason Dia­mond opined on a range of issues includ­ing a work­ing def­i­n­i­tion of Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture, ques­tions of sup­posed oblig­a­tions to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, and the bur­geon­ing role of Jew­ish women writ­ers. Like all great Jew­ish dis­cus­sions, the con­ver­sa­tion worked off a ten­sion between inno­va­tion and tra­di­tion, though the tra­di­tion in mind was more the lit­er­ary Jew­ish tra­di­tion than the reli­gious one. 

For exam­ple: How do you cre­ate a satire of Jew­ish, wealthy sub­ur­bia with the shad­ow of Philip Roth loom­ing over your writ­ing? As women authors, how do you sit­u­ate your­self in a large­ly patri­ar­chal lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, espe­cial­ly if Grace Paley and Cyn­thia Ozick were just not doing it for you as an aspir­ing artist? What’s the dif­fer­ence between a Jew­ish nov­el and a Jewy nov­el? On the whole, every­one pro­vid­ed fod­der for fur­ther thought, although some authors nailed spe­cif­ic ques­tions. Jeff Oliv­er explained what ​“Jewy” meant with his insight­ful comedic style: ​“If it makes me feel full of dread, anx­i­ety and ter­ror, then it feels pret­ty Jewy to me.” ​“How Jew­ish is ​‘too Jew­ish’ in lit­er­a­ture?” (per­haps the ulti­mate Jew­ish lit­er­ary ques­tion) elicit­ed a range of smart answers, but none as sharp as Adam Wilson’s ​“If you find your­self more Jew­ish than Lar­ry David then your book might be too Jew­ish.” What emerged amongst the hodge­podge of respons­es was a con­sen­sus that our soci­ety, espe­cial­ly the lit­er­ary sub­cul­ture, has moved past the ques­tion of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty into a peri­od in which Jew­ish char­ac­ters sim­ply rep­re­sent part of the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence. Thank­ful­ly, we live in an era where Jew­ish char­ac­ters need not wear flash­ing neon signs announc­ing their Jew­ish­ness to the world.

At these type of pan­el events, the audi­ence hopes that the speak­ers them­selves will pick up the ques­tions and run with them, cre­at­ing flu­id nat­ur­al con­ver­sa­tions not bound by the orig­i­nal ques­tions. Last night’s pan­el did not dis­ap­point. The most con­tentious ques­tion of the night, con­cern­ing the role of women in the Jew­ish nov­el, elicit­ed a fun, live­ly argu­ment about the por­tray­al of women in nov­els. These prob­ing crit­i­cal ques­tions forced some of the authors to explain their choic­es in writ­ing parts of their nov­els, but what’s a good Jew­ish event with­out some mod­est argumentation? 

Over­all, the event bal­anced a sense of seri­ous­ness with a cool insou­ciance appro­pri­ate for a pan­el of this kind. Many of the writ­ers sprin­kled jokes through­out their answers, jokes that yes, in a Jew­ish man­ner, pro­vid­ed stel­lar answers albeit in an indi­rect way, end­ing on ques­tions, work­ing off cir­cu­lar­i­ty. While many of the ques­tions and answers still require diges­tion (and my intu­ition tells me that the ques­tions asked were more con­ver­sa­tion starters, intel­lec­tu­al ice­break­ers, than ques­tions demand­ing con­crete answers), the event did pro­vide one answer to an implic­it ques­tion over­hang­ing the event: yes, Jew­ish writ­ers are not only alive and writ­ing en masse but are thriv­ing, think­ing, and pub­lish­ing impor­tant works, which I think we can all agree is a cause for celebration.

Joseph Win­kler is a free­lance writer liv­ing in New York City. He writes for Vol.1 Brook­lyn, The Huff­in­g­ton Post, Jew­cy, and oth­er sites. While not writ­ing, Joe is get­ting a Mas­ters in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture at City Col­lege. To sup­port his extrav­a­gant lifestyle, Joe also tutors and unabashed­ly babysits. Check out his blog at nocon​ver​sa​tion​left​be​hind​.blogspot​.com