So if I were trying to zero in on a definition of Jewish literature now, I'd want datapoints which actually come from Jewish cultures other than Eastern Europe. They still came out of Eastern European culture, just framed through a South American lens.
For one thing, the essay never touches on speculative fiction or SF - which is largely because of when and where I wrote it I wasn't immersing in those genres at that moment in time, but if I were writing it now, I'd want to speak to Jewish tropes and themes in SF/F too, especially given Michael Weingrad's recent essay Why there is no Jewish Narnia (which I've also been wanting to respond to, and haven't had time, so instead I'll direct you to Abigail Nussbaum's excellent Fantasy and the Jewish Question.)įor another thing, although I made an effort to overcome my North American bias by reading works from Ilan Stavans' Jewish Latin America series, I realize now that most of the works I read were still Ashkenazi. I still like my essay, though realizing that it's been twelve years since I wrote it makes me feel old! And if I were engaging in that project now, there are some things I'd do differently.
FATHER MULCAHY I JUST TRANSLATE IT INTO LATIN PDF
Reading coffeeandink's essay gave me the impetus to go back and reread one of my own old essays: " Nu, What Makes Jewish Literature So Jewish, Anyway?" (Find that essay in pdf format here - I posted it to this blog back in 2005.) I wrote that essay midway through my MFA at Bennington, after spending a semester delving into Jewish fiction and poetry in an attempt to discern what makes Jewish literature identifiably Jewish. I also appreciate her points about the general perception that Jews are white ("or white-ish") and the ways in which that perception damages both Jews of color and the mainstream culture which is impoverished by the invisibility of Jews and people of color. But I appreciate coffeeandink's point about the ways in which Christianity's cultural dominance often results in Judaism's invisibility. And one of my friends has argued that the show's tropes are more Miltonic than Christian per se.) Anyway, given the show's use of Christian material, Peterson's implicit assumption that "religious" means "Christian" may be understandable. (Though I also hear that the show makes use of material from early kabbalah, especially Lilith and Samael material as you'd find in R' Isaac ben Jacob ha-Kohen's treatise on evil. I get the sense from Peterson's piece, and from conversations with friends, that SPN draws a lot on Christian imagery. coffeeandink's response to Peterson's essay, Religion !=Christianity, which I recommend reading alongside the Peterson piece, argues that Peterson's article "has a lot of interesting points, but its basic framework is the kind of privileged assimilating universalization that underlies so many discussions of religion in the Christian-dominant West." I'm not the only person thinking along these lines. (Arguably it's more apt to speak separately of angels in Torah, angels in the later books of the Hebrew scriptures, angels in midrash, angels in medieval Judaism, and angels in kabbalah, since Judaism's concept of angels has undergone many metamorphoses over the centuries! But my point is, the Christian concept of angels isn't the only one out there.) Angels in Judaism are an entirely different thing than what Peterson describes. I know what she means, but I also think there's something slightly problematic about her presumption that "religion" necessarily means Christianity. "We know this because of the constant circulation of the concept in society, from Christmas tree decorations to popular culture." "We know that angels have white wings and are surrounded by light, perhaps even a halo," she writes.
Peterson talks a fair bit in the essay about representations of religion in pop culture - for instance, our common notion of what angels look like. Maybe in a few months when Drew's in part-time daycare.) (I keep meaning to write an essay about clergy and chaplains as seen through the lens of television - Shepherd Book and Father Mulcahy and Brother Cavil, from Firefly, M*A*S*H and Battlestar Galactica, respectively - but I haven't had the time. I don't watch SPN, but I read Line Nybro Peterson's essay Renegotiating religious imaginations through transformations of "banal religion" in "Supernatural" because - as you might imagine - media representation of religion is a subject which is of some interest to me. The latest issue of Transformative Works and Cultures is a special issue focused on Supernatural.
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