Telling the Jewish American Story: Exile, Guilt and Identity in Contemporary Jewish American Friction

Abstract

By analysing the writings of Saul Bellow, Tony Kushner and Keith Gandal, this survey paper traces the impact of the historical Jewish journey to the Promised Land in providing the underlying metaphor for the Jewish condition in particular and the human condition in general. Beginning with exploring the Jewish American identity, it focuses on the notions of uprootedness that lie at the heart of the Jewish self. The argument here foregrounds how the concept of Jewish exclusivity is firmly entrenched in the Jewish identity as it emanates from the Talmud and manifests itself in their creative writings. Basing its exploration on the premise that storytelling is deemed to be a Jewish inheritance, this essay works on the ideas of the Holocaust, the complete history of Jewish deracination across many regions, and the conceptions of sin and guilt that manifest themselves in Jewish-American writings. In so doing, it unravels the schisms and dilemmas that have surfaced owing to the efforts of the Jewish American writers in portraying the problems of acculturation and assimilation in the USA while striving to deal with their Jewish identity.