The Literary Scene: The New Yiddishists

Found in Vanity Fair:

The New Yiddishists emerged during a turning point for American Jewish identity. Never in history have Jews been so integrated and accepted into the mainstream of a Diaspora country. Today, nearly half of American Jews marry outside the faith, while synagogue attendance continues its decline. Yiddish, a language that the majority of Jews once spoke, has been reduced (for most Jews) to a smattering of funny-sounding catchphrases and penis jokes. The generation of American Jews to which the New Yiddishists belong came of age questioning their sense of self. If you didn’t belong to a synagogue, keep kosher, or marry another Jew, then what exactly did it mean to be Jewish? Did it go beyond your DNA and a fondness for pastrami?

...American Jews began to feel a nagging sense of otherness again. At the same time, various cultural foundations were pouring millions of dollars into programs to stem the tide of assimilation. As a consequence, Jewish culture looked inward for the first time in decades.

...says Dara Horn...many of her generational peers have become more outwardly Jewish as they have gotten older. “When Jews came to this country, the way to piss off your parents was to eat pork and marry a shiksa,” Horn says. “Now the best way to piss off your parents is to go to Chabad [a Hasidic missionary organization], marry at 18, have 10 kids, and refuse to eat in their house because they’re not kosher enough.… But there’s also an opportunity to engage in Jewish life that didn’t exist for previous generations.”

That cultural renaissance has taken the form of magazines and Web sites such as Heeb, Jewcy, Guilt & Pleasure, and Nextbook; record labels (JDub) and micro-brews (He’Brew, “the Chosen Beer”); and countless grassroots initiatives in the arts and academia. 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...

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