Lessons in Jewish Politics from Three of the 20th Century’s Greatest Works of Jewish Fiction https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/arts-culture/2018/06/lessons-in-jewish-politics-from-three-of-the-20th-centurys-greatest-works-of-jewish-fiction/

June 12, 2018 | Ruth R. Wisse
About the author: Ruth R. Wisse is professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literatures at Harvard and a distinguished senior fellow at Tikvah. Her memoir Free as a Jew: a Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, chapters of which appeared in Mosaic in somewhat different form, is out from Wicked Son Press.

In the period between the world wars, Isaac Babel wrote the cycle of stories Red Cavalry in the Soviet Union, S.Y. Agnon wrote the novel In the Heart of the Seas in Jerusalem, and Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote the novella Satan in Goray in Warsaw. Each book, influenced by its author’s experience of war, revolution, and—in Agnon’s case—immigration to Palestine, explores aspects of the Jewish condition. Ruth R. Wisse finds in these works much that is relevant to Jewish politics today. (Video, 35 minutes.)

Read more on Jewish Leadership Conference: https://www.jewishleadershipconference.org/session/jewish-books-jewish-politics-new-old-literature-old-new-land/