Triangles of History and the Slippery Slope of Jewish American Identity in Two Stories by Cynthia Ozick

MELUS ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Janet L. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
American Identity ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Cynthia Ozick

Dimensions of Jewish-American Identity

1973 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 891-900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itai Zak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Common ◽  
High Degree

The main problem posed in this study is: What are the content and structure of Jewish and American identity? The Jewish-American Identity Scale, which was adapted and refined for this study, was administered in 1971 to four samples, totaling 1006 Jewish-American college students from various parts of the United States. Initially, factor analysis was applied to the separate samples. Intersample comparisons of factor structures indicated a high degree of congruency; consequently, the samples were combined for subsequent analyses. Factor analysis of the test scores demonstrated that most of the common factor variance was appropriated by two relatively orthogonal factors. Items dealing with American identity and those dealing with Jewish identity had medium to high loadings on the two respective factors. These findings supported the hypothesis of the duality and the orthogonality of dimensions of Jewish and American identity, and cast doubt on the notion forwarded by some researchers that Jewish-American identity forms a bipolar continuum.

Willy Loman and Postwar Jewish Insecurity

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-76
Author(s):  
Mark Hodin
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
American West ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Land Of Israel ◽  
Death Of A Salesman

Abstract Willy Loman’s cryptic Jewish identity, recognizable but absent, has long been considered an act of ethnic betrayal, evidence of Arthur Miller’s inauthenticity as a Jewish writer. However, as scholars recently have explored the undercurrent of anxiety running beneath the surface of postwar Jewish life, Willy’s feelings of rootlessness, and his worries over American success, seem now particularly “Jewish.” Arguing that Willy Loman represents a postwar Jewish-American identity crisis, not a suppressed Jewish essence, the article analyzes the reception of Death of a Salesman (1949) in the Jewish press, from the pulpit, and within the synagogue community. Throughout, Willy’s preoccupation with acceptance and his eventual self-destruction resonate uncomfortably with the nightmare of European catastrophe that American Jews were then processing. In this context, the article claims that Biff’s attempt to counter his father’s world of selling by laboring in Texas, an action usually interpreted through myths of the American West, may have been read by Jewish Salesman audiences through a discourse of postwar Zionism they knew well: namely, the resettlement of Holocaust refugees in the land of Israel.

Sometimes Jewish, sometimes not: The closeting of Jewish American identity

2000 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Hecht ◽  
Sandra L. Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
American Identity ◽  
Jewish American
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