Jewish Storytelling and Reading Jewish

Americo Paredes was a writer descended from Spanish Jews. Although not raised religiously Jewish, Paredes, as a minority in American society, used the academic side of storytelling to write about his culture, Mexican folklore, and use his innermost emotions to express identity. 

A great way to explore Otherness in America includes Jewish Storytelling and Self-Representation in the Arts. As Jews are "others" in society, the idea of identity expressed through art is imperative to the understanding of Otherness in America. Specifically, the way in which Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews use mediums of art to tell stories of their pasts and present to a society in which they are considered "other.” Within this specific project, the concentration of American Otherness is in 20th century Sephardic-Jewish literature and folklore, as this medium of art speaks to the culture and innermost emotions of individuals who are both Spanish-descended and ethnically Jewish (Paredes 19-20). 

The focus on this influential Sephardic folklorist engages in a larger conversation of Jewish storytelling which examines the histories, geographies, religions, and cultures of Jewish groups and the way they used art to express complex pasts and reactions to the present. This conversation can only be accomplished through a process called “Reading Jewish.” The place to begin finding implicit Jewishness and self-identity is in the work of Americo Paredes. "The Tide", shown here, is one of Paredes' early works, as the piece was discovered in his Junior High yearbook, the Palmegian.

Those defined as "others" in America need storytelling and art to dig into the deepest parts of their histories and identities. Paredes is a prime example of Otherness in America, and of Jewish-descended and Sephardic folklore.

This concept of "Reading Jewish" in Jewish-American literature to further understand Otherness in America can also be explored in Ashkenazi works, as will be explored below in "Yentl" by I.B. Singer and Barbra Streisand, as well as "Focus" by Arthur Miller.

Yentl is a perfect representation of reading Jewish: Reading Jewish is understanding certain elements of a story that can be viewed from a Jewish lens and holds certain Jewish qualities that are religious, moral, social, or cultural. It is what makes a story uniquely Jewish. This idea extends to many written-word mediums: literature, screenwriting, playwriting, and songwriting to name a few. It also extends to many genres, such as comedy, drama, fantasy, science fiction, mythology, philosophy/morality, and more. Scholars such as Hoberman and Shandler, Behlman, and Antler believe this close reading study, “Reading Jewish”, is important to the mediums, stereotypes, and artists in which they analyze within their works (Hoberman and Shandler 229).

This draft of the famous Yentl song, "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" was written and edited by Barbra Streisand herself. (Fun fact: in some other pages of this same draft, Streisand handwrote the editing notes!) The song speaks to a popular element of Jewish storytelling: using Old World values to express connections with the New World. In the draft shown, Streisand's character, Yentl, is struggling with "Otherness" as a Jew in society and "Otherness" as a woman in Old World society, where she is not permitted to study religious or philosophical texts. Joyce Antler, in her book, explains the greater historical picture of Old World/New World tensions with increasing American assimilation and acculturation (Antler 147). Hoberman and Shandler, similarly, use explicitly-told Jewish stories to understand Jewish creators and their characters through the lens of history and treatment in America. My research, specifically, will attempt to improve the lens in which scholars read Jewishly—where researchers often focus on the intentions of the author, the Otherness in America Exhibit intends to also examine the storytelling derived from one’s culture, and how that connects to a larger historical and ethnoreligious lens. This study is invaluable to the research of Jewish history and identity, as well as the histories and identities explored throughout the exhibit.

Focus is a novel which explores “otherness” of the American-Jewish community in the 20th and 21st century, and how acts of societal outcasting lead to the creation of multiple works of Jewish art as an expression of “otherness” and oppressive or complex histories. The Jewish-centered project within the Otherness in America Exhibit includes multiple periods of American history and works of literature, theatre, and film, directly relating attitudes toward the American-Jewish population to the works of art that population produced. The introduction of the novel, which explains the intentions behind the writing of this form of "othering," one of the best examples of Jewish storytelling in the arts as a window to identity, history, and culture.

This archival piece of the exhibit shows the Introduction to Arthur Miller's "Focus" as it went through multiple drafts of editing. The writing itself discusses the book as a window into understanding Jewish otherness in American society by having a non-Jewish character experience antisemitism. As the Introduction goes through multiple rounds of editing, it is interesting to see the ways in which Miller expresses his thought process of exploring Jewish-American Otherness. This strange narrative lens provides an insight for all of American society in understanding Otherness in America.