Autobiographical Jews examines the nature of autobiographical writing by Jews from antiquity to the present, and the ways in which such writings can legitimately be used as sources for Jewish history. Drawing on current literary theory, which questions the very nature of autobiographical writing and its relationship to what we normally designate as the truth, and, to a lesser extent, the new cognitive neurosciences, Michael Stanislawski analyzes a number of crucial and complex autobiographical texts written by Jews through the ages. Stanislawski considers The Life by first-century historian Josephus; compares the early modern autobiographies of Asher of Reichshofen (Book of Memories) and Glikl of Hameln (Memoirs); analyzes the radically different autobiographies of two Russian Jewish writers, the Hebrew Enlightenment author Moshe Leib Lilienblum and the famous Russian poet Osip Mandelstam; and looks at two autobiographies written out of utter despair in the midst and in the wake of World War II, Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday and Sarah Kofman’s Rue Ordener, Rue Labat. These writers’ attempts to portray their private and public struggles, anxieties, successes, and failures are expressions of a basic drive for selfhood which is both timeless and time-bound, universal and culturally specific. The challenge is to attempt to unravel the conscious from the unconscious distortions in these texts and to regard them as artifacts of individuals’ quests to make sense of their lives, first and foremost for themselves and then, if possible, for their readers.

This is a work of unprecedented scope, tracing the origins of Jewish autobiographical writing from the early modern period to the early twentieth century. Drawing on a multitude of Hebrew and Yiddish texts, very few of which have been translated into English, and on contemporary autobiographical theory, this book provides a literary/historical explanatory paradigm for the emergence of the Jewish autobiographical voice. The book also provides the English reader with an introduction to the works of central figures in the history of Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and it includes discussion of material that has never been submitted to literary critical analysis in English.

Twenty-eight selections from the writings of some of the best-known American-Jewish novelists, dramatists, critics, and historians span the social and cultural history of American Jews in the twentieth century. Often joyous, occasionally tragic, they provide a fascinating record—from immigration to assimilation, from life in the ghetto to the current movement by many to recapture their Jewish identity. At once personal and historical, the selections are poignant and moving testimonies to the perseverance of the American-Jewish people.

The contributors are highly productive and respected Jewish-American scholars, critics, and teachers from departments of English, history, American studies, Romance literature, Slavic studies, art, women's studies, comparative literature, anthropology, Judaic studies, and philosophy.

Excerpts from the adventurous lives of Jewish men and women exemplifying their adjustment to and participation in American life, mostly between 1880 and 1920.

In 1942, YIVO held a contest for the best autobiography by a Jewish immigrant on the theme “Why I Left the Old Country and What I Have Accomplished in America.” Chosen from over two hundred entries, and translated from Yiddish, the nine life stories in My Future Is in America provide a compelling portrait of American Jewish life in the immigrant generation at the turn of the twentieth century. The writers arrived in America in every decade from the 1890s to the 1920s. They include manual workers, shopkeepers, housewives, communal activists, and professionals who came from all parts of Eastern Europe and ushered in a new era in American Jewish history. In their own words, the immigrant writers convey the complexities of the transition between the Old and New Worlds. An Introduction places the writings in historical and literary context, and annotations explain historical and cultural allusions made by the writers. This unique volume introduces readers to the complex world of Yiddish-speaking immigrants while at the same time elucidating important themes and topics of interest to those in immigration studies, ethnic studies, labor history, and literary studies. Published in conjunction with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

The Civil Rights movement brought author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal together, and in 1969 their daughter, Rebecca, was born. Some saw this unusual copper-colored girl as an outrage or an oddity; others viewed her as a symbol of harmony, a triumph of love over hate. But after her parents divorced, leaving her a lonely only child ferrying between two worlds that only seemed to grow further apart, Rebecca was no longer sure what she represented. In this book, Rebecca Leventhal Walker attempts to define herself as a soul instead of a symbol—and offers a new look at the challenge of personal identity, in a story at once strikingly unique and truly universal.