Jewish American literature

[2] The early twentieth century saw the appearance of two pioneering American Jewish novels: Abraham Cahan's "The Rise of David Levinsky" and Henry Roth's "Call It Sleep".

It reached some of its most mature expression in the 20th century "Jewish American novels" by Saul Bellow, J. D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud, Chaim Potok, and Philip Roth.

Their work explored the conflicting pulls between secular society and Jewish tradition which were acutely felt by the immigrants who passed through Ellis Island and by their children and grandchildren.

[citation needed] More recent authors like Paul Auster, Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, Joshua Cohen, Helen Epstein, Jonathan Safran Foer, Alan Kaufman, Nicole Krauss, Lev Raphael, and Art Spiegelman have continued to examine dilemmas of identity in their work, turning their attention especially to the Holocaust and the trends of both ongoing assimilation and cultural rediscovery exhibited by younger generations of American Jews.

Fleeing the persecution of pogroms and anti-Semitic policies in Europe, two million Jews settled in the United States between 1880 and 1924, marking a significant cultural break with the past.

Didacticism, or telling stories for the purpose of teaching a moral lesson, is important to the writers Meyer Liben, Lionel Trilling, and Delmore Schwartz, who interweave Jewish philosophical discussion with self-identity as a basis for critiquing post-war America.

[7] Self-portraiture is another way Jewish-American writers confront identity, with Robert Mezy and Henry Roth investigating the conflicts between secular and religious life, English against Hebrew and Yiddish, and community transcending language.

[9] These forms of literature are partly in response to antisemitism, reclaiming the tropes and histories that instigated the exodus to The United States, and ultimately transforming language to reflect the experiences of the Jewish diaspora.

These early science fiction Jewish writers based in New York City led to works like Iron Man and I, Robot, having tremendous influence on the trajectory of speculative literature.

American Jewish writers often depict Israelis in a disparaging manner, as Zionistic idealism is converted to aggressive self-righteousness targeting minorities, featuring the moral and political crisis in the country.

Jewish residents of New York City celebrate the Jewish New Year in a tenement converted into a synagogue.
Sitka, Alaska is the world's foremost Jewish city in Michael Chabon's alternate history book, The Yiddish Policeman's Union.
Michael Chabon's book, The Yiddish Policemen's Union , imagines an alternate history where Israel is destroyed in the 1950s and Sitka, Alaska becomes the world's foremost Jewish city.