Yiddish in Jewish-American Literature: An Asset to Teaching at German Universities

There are many good reasons to teach Jewish-American literature at German universities. An obvious motivation, which hardly applies to the German context alone, is that many novels and short stories of Jewish writers undoubtedly constitute an important part of the canon of American fiction in general. At the same time, this literature falls into the category of minority writing and thus negotiates identities distinct from the American mainstream. Several theoretical concepts of postcolonial studies, ‘race,’ ‘alterity,’ and ‘hybridity’ among them, should be part of a teaching unit on Jewish writing, particularly if it deals with the immigrant experience. The contested idea of the American Melting Pot, popularized by the Jewish-British author Israel Zangwill, may be discussed in conjunction with Jewish-American landmark texts addressing the issue of assimilation. In this essay, I will focus primarily on arguments that are of particular relevance to German higher education: the linguistic particularities of Jewish-American literature by authors of Eastern European descent and the cultural proximity of parts of American Jewry to German students. Apart from my principal aim of facilitating a deeper understanding of Jewish-American literature for them, I also want to bring to mind that Jewish history does not consist of the Holocaust only. Frequently, Jewish history is exclusively equated with the Holocaust, which may preclude an appreciation of existing Jewish life-worlds. I want to counterbalance this tendency by offering students the opportunity to go through complex processes of identification, empathy and understanding. I have been teaching Jewish-American literature and culture for many years at several universities in Germany and I am now part of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Bamberg, which includes modules on literature, the arts and other aspects of culture. The number of students in this program being modest, most of the participants in the lectures and seminars I teach on this topic are regular students of English and American Studies. The starting point for my reflections on teaching Jewish literature in this context may sound a bit sobering: Most of the students have very little previous knowledge of Jewish history and culture and – for that matter – languages.Without these insights, clearly, it is hard to understand many of the central concerns, conflicts and stylistic characteristics of Jewish-American fiction. Our students have certainly learnt a few things about the Jewish faith at school, and one can also rely on reasonable knowledge of the history of anti-Se-