JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

english literature
and M.J. Landa. A number of Jewish writers also became
eminent as literary scholars and critics. They include Sir Sidney
*Lee; F.S. Boas; Sir Israel *Gollancz; Laurie *Magnus; V.
de Sola Pinto; Jacob Isaacs (d. 1973), first professor of English
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; David *Daiches; and
George Steiner. The left-wing publisher, author, and pacifist,
Victor *Gollancz, attempted to synthesize his conception of
Judaism with a liberalized Christianity. Joseph *Leftwich, J.M.
Cohen (d. 1989), and Jacob Sonntag (d. 1984) were prominent
editors, anthologists, and translators.
NEW IMPULSES. In the mid-20th century a new dimension
was given to the problem of Jewish existence both by the
European Holocaust and its aftermath and by the birth and
consolidation of the State of Israel. These momentous events,
shattering old illusions, in time created a new sense of tragedy
and peril, in which the Jew became the focus of a universal
situation. This feeling can be detected in several Anglo-Jewish
writers, although none of them was as significant as such
U.S. authors as Saul *Bellow, Bernard *Malamud, and Philip
*Roth. In poetry the outstanding names were Dannie *Abse,
Karen Gershon, Michael Hamburger, Emanuel *Litvinoff, Rudolf
Nassauer, Jon *Silkin, and Nathaniel Tarn. A writer whose
novels, essays, and political and philosophical works commanded
wide attention from the 1930s onward was the Hungarian-born
Arthur Koestler. Like Koestler, Stephen Spender
(1909–1995), a leading poet and critic of partly Jewish origin,
was a disillusioned leftist. His works include impressions of
Israel, Learning Laughter (1952). Elias *Canetti was a refugee
playwright who continued to write in German, his works being
translated into English. Harold *Pinter, Peter *Shaffer, and
Arnold *Wesker were leading playwrights of the post-World
War II era. In 2005 Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for
literature. Janina David (1930– ) described her childhood
experiences in pre-war Poland and the Warsaw ghetto in A
Square of Sky (1964); its sequel, A Touch of Earth (1966), tells
of her postwar move to Australia. The Quick and the Dead
(1969), a novel by Thomas Wiseman (1930– ), reflects early
memories of Vienna during the 1930s and the Anschluss era.
A few writers attempted to demythologize the Jewish image
by presenting Jews as basically similar to their fellows. The
novelist Alexander Baron, the novelist and playwright Wolf
*Mankowitz, and Arnold Wesker all belong to this category,
although Mankowitz later reassessed his commitment to Judaism.
Popular novelists included the Socialist member of parliament
Maurice Edelman, whose book The Fratricides (1963)
has a Jewish doctor as its hero; and Henry Cecil (Judge Henry
Cecil Leon), who specialized in legal themes. From the late
1950s a “new wave” of Anglo-Jewish writers appeared following
the publication of The Bankrupts (1958), a novel by Brian
*Glanville harshly criticizing Jewish family life and social
forms. Works of similar inspiration were written by Dan *Jacobson,
Frederic Raphael, and Bernard *Kops. Following the
general inclination to reject or debunk the inheritance of an
older generation – these writers were not, however, entirely
destructive, their aim being to strip Jewish life in England of its
complacency and hypocrisy. Other writers were more firmly
committed to Jewish values and ideals. They include the humorist
Chaim Bermant; the novelists Gerda Charles, Lionel
Davidson, William Goldman (1910– ), Chaim Raphael, and
Bernice Rubens; and the Welsh-born poet Jeremy Robson
(1939– ), who edited Letters to Israel (1969) and an Anthology
of Young British Poets (1968).
Another member of this group was the critic John Jacob
Gross (1935– ), assistant editor of Encounter. The Six-Day
War of June 1967 galvanized many Jewish writers in England
into a sudden awareness of a common destiny shared with
the Israelis in their hour of peril. This found expression in a
forthright letter to the London Sunday Times (June 4) signed
by more than 30 Anglo-Jewish authors.
[Harold Harel Fisch]
Later Developments
The trends which had characterized Anglo-Jewish literature
during the 1960s continued to manifest themselves in the
1970s. New books were published by virtually all of the better-known
writers, including the novelists Gerda *Charles,
Frederic *Raphael, Chaim *Raphael, Nadine *Gordimer, Bernard
*Kops, Barnet *Litvinoff, Chaim *Bermant, Bernice
*Rubens, the last of whom was awarded the Booker Prize for
Fiction in 1970 for The Elected Member (1970), the story of a
drug addict and his Jewish family set against the background
of London’s East End.
One of the new trends in the years under review was a
growing closeness to the Hebrew tradition. Dan *Jacobson’s
The Rape of Tamar (1970) brought King David, his family,
and court to life in a searching and brilliant retelling of biblical
narrative. His drama, The Caves of Adullam (1972), treated
the David-Saul relationship no less interestingly. Later heroism
was described in David *Kossoff ’s Voices of Masada (1973), the
story of the siege as it might have been told by the two women
who, according to Josephus, were the only Jewish survivors. In
another historical novel, Another Time, Another Voice (1971),
Barnet Litvinoff deals with Shabbetai Ẓevi, while against the
background of present-day Israel Lionel *Davidson’s detective
story, Smith’s Gazelle (1971), deftly wove together kibbutz and
Bedouin and the Israel love for nature.
Davidson, who settled in Israel after the Six-Day War,
in 1972 became the first writer in English to win the Shazar
Prize of the Israel Government for the encouragement of immigrant
authors. Another English writer who settled in Israel
was Karen *Gershon, the German-born poet, whose poems
on Jerusalem were the heart of her volume of verse, Legacies
and Encounters, Poems 1966–1971 (1972). A cycle of the Jerusalem
poems appeared in Israel with Hebrew translations facing
each page.
The new, sometimes even personal, relation of Anglo-
Jewish writers to Israel is paralleled by a deeper involvement
with the Jewish past in England itself. Thus, Gerda Charles’
novel, The Destiny Waltz (1971), grew out of the life of Isaac
438 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6