{"id":112236,"date":"2024-04-20T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-20T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=112236"},"modified":"2024-04-15T07:54:46","modified_gmt":"2024-04-15T05:54:46","slug":"20-05-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=112236","title":{"rendered":"Why Edmund Wilson Saw Judaism as the Key to America\u2019s Cultural Survival"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Why Edmund Wilson Saw Judaism as the Key to America\u2019s Cultural Survival<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n


\nSHALOM GOLDMAN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The great New Yorker and New Republic critic discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Vladimir Nabokov and despised the federal income tax. He was also a passionate and erudite champion of the Hebrew language, Jewish culture, and the Jewish state<\/strong>..<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

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\nSYLVIA SALMI\/BETTMANN VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

From the early 1930s to the late 1960s Edmund Wilson was among the most influential literary critics in the English-speaking world. In the pages of The New Yorker, The New Republic<\/em>, and\u00a0The Nation<\/em>, (and in scores of lesser journals and newspapers) Wilson addressed his learned and engaging criticism to what he termed \u201cthe intelligent skeptical reader.\u201d But, while Wilson strove for an accessible writing style and endeavored to tackle subjects with wide appeal (the Civil War, the Dead Sea Scrolls) he did not intend for his readers to sit back and simply absorb the material. If you were a faithful and constant reader of Edmund Wilson, you were expected to work at the task: Read the book or books under discussion, see what other critics were saying about those books, and learn something about the history of the controversy that Wilson was either addressing or fomenting.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Wilson was famous for immersing himself deeply in the topics he wrote about, often taking up the study of foreign languages to write authoritatively about national literatures unfamiliar to American readers. In the early 1950s he took up the study of biblical Hebrew.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Edmund Wilson\u2019s formal study of Hebrew began in 1952 at Princeton Theological Seminary. His interest in the Jews as a people had long preceded this linguistic endeavor. Wilson\u2019s narrative of his initial involvement with the Hebrew language takes him back to his colonial American origins. On his mother\u2019s death in 1951 he returned to the family home in Talcottville, New York, to go through her belongings. Rummaging in the attic he found the divinity school textbooks used by his paternal grandfather, Thaddeus Wilson, a prominent 19th-century Protestant clergyman. Among the books were Hebrew study texts, a Bible, and a grammar. As he described this moment of discovery in\u00a0On First Reading Genesis<\/em>, \u201cI had always had a certain curiosity about Hebrew, and I was perhaps piqued a little at the thought that my grandfather could read something that I couldn\u2019t, so finding myself one autumn in Princeton, with the prospect of spending the winter, I enrolled in a Hebrew course at the Theological Seminary, from which my grandfather had graduated in 1864.\u201d That Wilson\u2019s grandfather studied Hebrew was not at all unusual. All candidates for the Presbyterian ministry had to study Hebrew and Greek, a situation that remains today at some Presbyterian seminaries.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This rediscovery of a family legacy, and Wilson\u2019s subsequent decision to study Hebrew language and literature merged two family intellectual traditions: his paternal grandfather\u2019s preparation for the Presbyterian ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary, and his mother\u2019s descent from the Mather family with its tradition of vast scholarly erudition, and a specific affinity for Hebrew studies. Cotton Mather\u2019s Harvard thesis was on the question of whether Hebrew was the \u201coriginal language.\u201d His many works (50 books and pamphlets) were peppered with Hebrew words and phrases and he delighted in describing Harvard College as one of the \u201cbatei midrash<\/em>\u201d (the Talmudic study halls) of New England. At the death of his brother Nathan, Mather mourned the loss of a promising young scholar of Hebrew. But he was consoled in the certainty that Nathan\u2019s knowledge of Hebrew would \u201cease his way into heaven.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Edmund Wilson visited Israel twice: in 1954, on assignment from\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0to research the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls; and in 1967, on the eve of the Six-Day War. Both visits left a deep impression on him. His visit with S.Y. Agnon and his essay on that novelist and short story writer introduced Agnon to the American literary world. On the 1954 publication of Agnon\u2019s collected works, Schocken Publishers issued a Hebrew language brochure in Agnon\u2019s honor. The only non-Israeli included in the list of 14 literary luminaries who praised Agnon was Edmund Wilson.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The philosopher Isaiah Berlin, a close friend of Wilson\u2019s, told the following delightful story about Wilson in Israel. \u201cHe went to Jordan and when he came back he had to pass through the Mandelbaum Gate. The Israeli passport officer looked at his passport, noticed it was Edmund Wilson, then said: \u2018I think your dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls is not quite right. I think it should have been fifty years before.\u2019 Wilson answered, and the supervising officer said: \u2018Stamp Mr. Wilson\u2019s passport. You can\u2019t discuss the Scrolls here, not on the Government\u2019s time.\u2019 He talked to me about that afterward, saying, \u2018Only in Israel would I find a passport officer who wished to question the date of the Scrolls!\u2019 That amused him. It pleased him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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From his first visit to Israel in 1954, to his death in 1972, Wilson was an enthusiastic supporter of the Jewish state, and often found himself defending its policies against the attacks of Jewish associates on the literary left. Literary biographer Leon Edel recounted a furious exchange in early 1967 between Wilson and Jason Epstein concerning Israel\u2019s military situation. If the Israelis are in trouble, Epstein contended, it was because \u201cthey had a talent for causing trouble by being where they didn\u2019t belong.\u201d Wilson was shocked by Epstein\u2019s response. Though Wilson\u2019s support of Israel was nuanced, it was also powerful enough to arouse the ire of Edward Said and other supporters of the Palestinian cause.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilson was undeterred. A bannerlike inscription in biblical Hebrew hung over his desk in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and it was this phrase,\u00a0Hazak Hazak Venithazek<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cbe strong and be strengthened\u201d in Wilson\u2019s translation), that is engraved on the base of his tombstone. Wilson was also known to use the phrase as a short grace before meals.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Hebrew exhortation, to be strong in one\u2019s studies, had application across the full range of Wilson\u2019s interests throughout the critic\u2019s lifetime. Apparent in his literary essays is a sense of struggle with the historical material out of which a particular review or essay was crafted. In the Jewish intellectual tradition, he saw methods with which such a struggle might be conducted. His wife, Elena, noted that \u201cto the very end of Edmund\u2019s life, he would be found at his desk surrounded by Bibles and dictionaries, keeping with the new developments, deciphering the Old Testament and facsimile of fragment of the scrolls.\u201d For Wilson, the centrality of the Bible, its cadences and its powerful images, were, as he noted, \u201cpart of the texture of our language: the culture of no other Western people seems so deeply to have been influenced by these: something in the English character, something mystical, tough and fierce, has a special affinity to Hebrew.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of Wilson\u2019s Christian friends, amused and bewildered by his obsession with Hebrew and Jewish history, often kidded him about it. After an article of Wilson\u2019s was published in\u00a0Commentary,<\/em>\u00a0John Dos Passos wrote him to say that he thought Wilson was \u201ccarrying out his role of uncircumcised rabbi very well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What Wilson saw in the Jewish intellectual tradition was an affirmation of the scholarly, and an openness to criticism. As a representative of an American cultural world that he believed was disappearing, he sought allyship in the Jewish tradition. In his mind, what was noble about the American tradition was its \u201cHebraic\u201d element. In Jewish culture he saw the possibility of American renewal or, at the very least, cultural preservation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilson was therefore all the more disappointed when he encountered American Jews who knew little about their own traditions.\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Sixties<\/em>, the last volume of his memoirs, is peppered with references to Jewish acolytes and visitors who knew woefully little about the Bible, the Hebrew language, or Jewish religious customs. Even close friends came in for criticism. Critic Alfred Kazin noted that \u201cWilson took every area for his own. He knew more Hebrew than I\u2019ve learned since my Bar Mitzvah.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilson, whose intellectual staying power was legendary, stayed with the study of the \u201csacred tongue\u201d and achieved a degree of competence, if not mastery. It was his interest in Hebrew that led\u00a0The New Yorker\u00a0<\/em>to send Wilson to Israel. An outsider who saw many aspects an insider could not see, Wilson brought a degree of detachment to the subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls that partisans of religious or academic dogma could not. Two testimonies illustrate this point. The first is from Israeli archaeologist and former IDF Chief of Staff Yigal Yadin on Wilson\u2019s contribution to popularizing the discovery and implications of the Dead Sea Scroll. The second is from Hebrew University professor David Flusser on Edmund Wilson\u2019s contribution to the comparative study of Judaism and Christianity.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a review in\u00a0The Times Literary Supplement,\u00a0<\/em>Yadin had this to say about Wilson\u2019s\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0articles on the scrolls: \u201cThe Dead Sea Scrolls were not discovered by archaeologist but by the Bedouin, and their importance was brought to the knowledge of the world at large, again not by an archaeologist, but by a very scholarly amateur, Edmund Wilson.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Yadin\u2019s admiration for Wilson was reciprocated. Edmund Wilson met Yadin on his 1967 journey to Israel and described him as having \u201can extraordinary combination of high intelligence, informed authority and almost hypnotic persuasive charm.\u201d On that same trip to Israel, Wilson met the \u201cman he admired most in Israel,\u201d David Flusser, professor of comparative religion at Hebrew University. According to Flusser, an expert on Christian-Jewish relations in the formative periods of Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, \u201cWilson\u2019s book about the Dead Sea Scrolls raised questions which the scholars were forced to answer, and so it changed profoundly the course of research into Essenism and had an important impact upon the study of both ancient Judaism and the beginnings of Christianity. Wilson compelled the scholars to think … he has written a book which is from many aspects a turning point in the research of the history of religion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While many other scholarly reviewers expressed indignation that Wilson had \u201cblundered\u201d into their territory and made errors of judgment, Flusser was able to see the significance of Wilson\u2019s contribution. A \u201cscholarly amateur\u201d could bring insights to the discussion that seasoned experts might overlook or deliberately ignore. One biblical scholar who revised his thinking about Wilson\u2019s contribution to the conversation about the Scrolls was James Sanders of Claremont College. \u201cOn first reading [The Scrolls From the Dead Sea<\/em>] essays forty years ago,\u201d Sanders wrote, \u201cI recall thinking that he did not get it quite right. By contrast, when read today his work seems not only engrossing and enthralling but also amazingly balanced and fair, given the fact that he was a self-avowed anti-religionist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In his occasional excursions into short fiction, Wilson also took up Jewish themes. In\u00a0Encounter<\/em>, Wilson published a short story, \u201cThe Messiah at the Seder.\u201d In that story the Messiah appears in mid-20th-century Manhattan on the eve of Passover. He is invited to a Seder on the Upper West Side. There he discovers that the fractious and contentious participants at the Seder\u2014which include a Freudian, a Marxist, and a religious thinker\u2014are unable to accept that he is the Redeemer. Nor are they able to agree on anything else. And, when they come to terms with the reality of his mission to the world, they want to deny their ideological opponents a \u201cshare in the world to come.\u201d This satire on the multiplicity of opinions in the Jewish world is anything but savage. The satirical effect is achieved with considerable subtlety and verve.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the 1960s Wilson was dismayed at what he saw as the decline of reading and the shrinking of an audience for serious and accessible literary criticism. He was especially dismayed to meet Jews who knew little of their own culture, and found it difficult to accept that American Jewish intellectuals might be ignorant of their own cultural traditions. On making the acquaintance of American intellectuals of Jewish origin he would assume, often mistakenly, that they had some innate knowledge of Hebrew and Judaic lore. Jason Epstein remarked that Wilson \u201chad convinced himself, completely inaccurately, that I knew Hebrew and could teach him something about it. I knew nothing about Hebrew, but whenever I saw him in those years, he would ask me whether I knew Hebrew or not. I suppose he assumed that in the interval between each occasion I had learned it, but that is what he was like.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilson\u2019s interest in the Bible, Hebrew, and the Jews persisted until the end of his life. Alfred Kazin, visiting the declining Wilson at his Cape Cod home, has left us this literary snapshot: \u201cEdmund Wilson, the perfectionist, always correcting a word, a fact. Still obsessed with the word in his old age, bitterly disillusioned with America and shakily confronting the end. In his Wellfleet kitchen he (with more Hebrew than I could ever master) asked me\u2014me!\u2014what the Jewish religion could offer a man in his situation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilson left instructions for his funeral, requesting that Old Testament readings be central to the service. At the funeral, in June of 1972, several Psalms were read, as well as the concluding chapter of Ecclesiastes. Despite his frequent anticlerical statements and his declaration that he was \u201cnot a Christian,\u201d Wilson requested that at his funeral there be the full ritual of the Presbyterian church in which he had been baptized. The church ceremony also had its Judaic aspects. Wilson\u2019s cousin Charley Walker, the eminent Yale labor historian, opened his eulogy with the phrase \u201cShalom, Dear Edmund.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Shalom Goldman<\/strong> is Professor of Religion at Middlebury College. His most recent book is\u00a0Starstruck in the Promised Land: How the Arts Shaped American Passions about Israel<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Why Edmund Wilson Saw Judaism as the Key to America\u2019s Cultural Survival SHALOM GOLDMAN The great New Yorker and New Republic critic discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Vladimir Nabokov and despised the federal income tax. He was also a passionate and erudite champion of the Hebrew language, Jewish culture, and the Jewish state.. . SYLVIA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112236"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112287,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112236\/revisions\/112287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}