Diversity Within the Return to Religion

At the end of the 1970’s the distinguished literary critic Irving Howe expressed his fear that an American literature with a distinctive Jewish voice would no longer be possible because Jewish American literature drew too heavily on the immigrant experience which as time passed would disappear from the memory of those who experienced it (Jewish American Stories). Thus Howe believed that Jewish American literature was destined to slowly die out. However Jewish American identity is certainly not only defined by the immigrant experience alone. Victoria Aarons points this out when she states that: “More and more Jewish writers speak about and within American culture transcending an earlier “immigrant” identity imposed by an alien culture” (“The Outsider Within” 379). As a result contemporary Jewish American writers create a distinct Jewish-American voice. Such a process is currently taking place and a small part of it namely the return to Judaism will be the focus of this book.