The New York Intellectuals: The First Generation

A new online course with Ruth R. Wisse

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In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Jews flooded into the United States. Large numbers settled in New York, fashioning an intellectual community that became the basis of American Jewish culture today.

Through essays, poems, novels, and short stories—in Yiddish and English—the writers who formed this “concentrated explosion of intellectual talent” sought to understand what this new country was about, and what it ought to be about. In doing so, they also prompted important changes in America itself.

In this course, the distinguished literary critic Dr. Ruth R. Wisse will explore the writing and ideas of the women and men who made up the first generation of the New York Intellectuals.

Professor Ruth Wisse is a senior fellow and contributor at Tikvah and Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard. She writes regularly at Mosaic, teaches throughout America and Israel, and hosts the Stories Jews Tell podcast. Her books on literary subjects include A Little Love in Big Manhattan (1988), The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey through Literature and Culture (2003), an edition of Jacob Glatstein’s two-volume fictional memoir The Glatstein Chronicles (2010), and No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (2013), a volume in the Tikvah-sponsored Library of Jewish Ideas with Princeton University Press. Her original translation of Chaim Grade’s My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner was published by Koren’s Maggid Press in 2022. She is also the author of two political studies, If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992) and Jews and Power (2007). Her memoir, Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, was published in 2021.

Episodes

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In her first lecture, Professor Wisse provides a brief overview of the first generation of the New York Intellectuals: their emergence, goals, and cultural context. In particular, she probes the work of three different Jewish writers—Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Anzia Yezierska, and Ludwig Lewisohn—who serve as examples of how these hitherto European Jews tried to balance their Jewishness with their new identities as Americans.

Entering the <i>Goldene Medinah</i>: The Birth of American Jewish Identity

Entering the Goldene Medinah: The Birth of American Jewish Identity 39:14

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Co-founder and editor of the Yiddish daily Foverts, Abraham Cahan was perhaps the greatest Jewish newspaperman of his age. In this episode, Professor Wisse will discuss how he became a pivotal figure in bridging the gap between Eastern European Jewish immigrants and American society. She also discusses the ways in which Cahan's work influenced later generations of Jewish intellectuals, and assesses his lasting impact on American Jewish culture.

Abraham Cahan 50:17

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Poetry dominated early Yiddish literature in America, and Jacob Glatstein was perhaps the country's greatest Yiddish poet. In this episode, Professor Wisse examines Glatstein's foreboding, realist, but still inspirational work. Through his poetry, as well as his essays and criticism, Glatstein challenged American Jewry, lamented the commodification of Judaism, excoriated Nazism and Communism, and served as both defendant and prosecutor of God after the Holocaust.

Jacob Glatstein

Jacob Glatstein 46:26

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The Yiddish writer H. Leivick spent much of his life as a dedicated socialist. But over time, he grew disillusioned by Communism and the Soviet Union, forming a deep connection to Israel and coming to appreciate America. In this episode, Professor Wisse examines Leivick's ideas through the lens of his most influential work, The Golem. This dramatic poem gives voice to Leivick's understanding of evil, chosenness, Jewish redemption, and much else.

H. Leivick 48:45

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Prior to Leonard Cohen, A.M. Klein was Canada's most famous Jewish poet. In this lecture, Professor Wisse explains how Klein's life and career in Canada can help illuminate New York's great Jewish writers. She also discusses Klein's attachment to both Canada and to Jewishness, his Zionism, and how he understood the modern intellectual challenges to Judaism.

A.M. Klein 42:50

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This course, and all of Ruth Wisse's work at Tikvah, is supported by the generosity of Robert L. Friedman.