ABSTRACT
While teaching a British Literature survey at Yeshiva University earlier this year, a student asked me whether we could read the works of any famous Jewish poets even though none were listed on the syllabus. Some others chimed in: “Yeah, where are all the Jewish poets?” I mentioned, off the top of my head, a strange mix of American and European, of contemporary and early writers: Allan Ginsberg, Yehuda Ha-Levi, Carolyn Kizer, David Ignatow, Yehuda Amichai, Marge Piercy, Hannah Senesh, Emma Lazarus. The students had heard of none of these, save the last, and were disappointed to find that none of the writers in our Norton Anthology were Jewish. For our next class, I brought in selected works of a few of these poets dealing with specifically Jewish subjects, and the students were surprisingly disappointed. They wanted a Jewish Spenser, a Semitic George Herbert; they weren't at all satisfied with overtly Jewish references written for a Jewish audience. Aside from their dissatisfaction with the quality of writing, they were concerned with the poets' Jewishness. “Were these writers observant?” they demanded. Sure, they were born Jewish, the students acknowledged, but how religious were they? This question loomed largest in their minds and most influenced their judgments. If these Jewish poets were merely secular, then they should write poetry of the caliber of Sidney and simply restrict themselves to Judaic references. If they were observant, however, they could be forgiven much more in their choice of language and subject. Jewishness and level of observance are the lenses, I have learned, through which all writing, all art, all science, is judged at Yeshiva University.
