We live in a time where people speak more and more and say less and less. The news is crowded with loud voices that claim to speak for people they don’t represent, and individual stories are often obscured by a deluge of preconceptions. The most important thing our school system can do is give voice to the quiet stories that aren’t being told, and give students a human perspective of the world, rather than a politician’s.
The English department is filled with many dedicated teachers who strive to provide a comprehensive literary education to all the students who pass through their four-year curriculum. I’ve been exposed to a wide variety of incredible novels and plays. Recently, however, I noticed a startling omission from this literary catalog.
In my four years at the high school, not once have I read a novel or play by a Jewish author, or from a Jewish perspective in an English class. There are a few books by Jewish authors in the curriculum, but as teachers can only select a few from each class’s reading list, Jewish authors are often overlooked, passed over or deemed unnecessary.
This underrepresentation is in no way due to a lack of Jewish authors or writings from Jewish perspectives. Elie Wiesel, Franz Kafka, Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Joseph Heller, Saul Bellow and many more have contributed indispensably to the literary world and universal perceptions of modern Jewish identity. Jewish literature is not antiquated either; it continues to grow on a global stage, as exemplified by Adam Baumbach’s “The Golem of Brooklyn” and countless other contemporary Jewish novels.
There is a huge Jewish student body here at the high school, but it is in no way reflected in the books we are given in English class, and I believe it is the duty of our English department to provide a more adequate and representative collection of works by Jewish authors.
Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and author of the acclaimed “Night” trilogy, l said, “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” How can we understand where we are going if we have no concept of where we have been? And how can we understand where others are going if we don’t understand the path they have walked?” Jewish stories are not relegated to the past; history often repeats itself, with violence perpetrating itself where it has already inflicted the most harm.
“Terrible things are happening outside… poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”
Where do you think this quote is coming from? Unfortunately, there are many possibilities: maybe a man in Minnesota whose neighbors are being abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or a woman under the Argentinian dictatorship in the 1980s or even a scene witnessed during the Rwandan Genocide. In reality, it’s from the diary of Anne Frank, a victim of the Holocaust. She died over 80 years ago, yet the words from her diary seem incredibly relevant today. The world is constantly providing us with new context for old hatred.
Jewish literature remains relevant and constantly necessary to understand the repercussions of violence founded on hatred. Jewish literature also helps us understand warmth and belonging, and every theme explored elsewhere in literature, only from a perspective that many in our community who aren’t Jewish have never been exposed to.
Social media has caused many to develop a warped perception of Judaism and the Jewish people. Much of modern antisemitism stems from the inability of people to separate the actions of a government from those of its people, causing antisemitism in the same capacity as all bigotry, founded in misunderstanding. Now, more than ever, it is important to hear the voices of those whose heritage places them under the umbrella of assumption. Now, more than ever, it is essential to expose ourselves to stories; lack of exposure begets lack of understanding, which enables misunderstanding.
The world may not be fixed by reading “The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay,” an epic novel about two cousins at the start of the comic book industry in World War II Manhattan, or “Everything is Illuminated,” a story of a man on a quest to find the woman who might have saved his grandfather from the Nazis, but it will give students a broader view of the range of stories the world has to offer. While Jewish literature tackles many of the same issues addressed in other books in our curriculum, it does so from a perspective that is familiar to some and foreign to others, but is necessary either way. On the page they are just words, but putting books in the hands of students gives voice to the stories being told; the importance of understanding can’t be understated.
Knowledge cannot be returned once it is distributed, and the stories we are exposed to remain with us, even if we forget subplots for reading checks. As Elie Wiesel said in his speech at the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, “Whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness.” English teachers, you have an opportunity, more than any other subject’s professors, to expose us to new worlds, to people we never would have known otherwise. You can make witnesses of us all.
