The New Yiddishists

The other day my coworker Emily sent me a link to an article entitled "The New Yiddishists" published earlier this month in Vanity Fair. I think you should read it too.

Why?

It's an excellent read and a nuanced look at the new crop of Jewish writers hanging out on the NYT bestseller list. I was particularly interested in what the article said because I teach a class for high schoolers (that I created) about short stories by contemporary Jewish writers. Sometimes people balk when I tell them who my students read — Elisa Albert, Peter Orner, Shalom Auslander, Judy Budnitz, Nathan Englander, Rebecca Walker, Julie Orringer — surprised to see nary a mention of Jewish mainstays such as Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, IB Singer, Amos Oz, Bernard Malamud.

But those stories from the 40s/50s/60s do not resonate as much with me or with my students as stories by these contemporary contemporaries. I don't know what it's like to have imigrant parents, to be the first person in my family to go to college or to be excluded from social institutions because I'm a Jew. Neither do my teenage students.

According to VG:

"For the first time in many decades (perhaps ever?), being Jewish — outwardly, proudly, Neil Diamond–ly Jewish — is cool, and the New Yiddishists are the literary vanguard of that. They are vastly more comfortable in their Jewish skin than previous generations of American Jewish writers ever were, and their stories reflect that."

You can read the full article here.

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