A Literary Journey to Jewish Identity: Re-Reading Bellow, Roth, Malamud, Ozick, and Other Great Jewish Writers

Born and raised Jewish, Stephen B. Shepard ceased to be observant by the time he entered college. He simply retreated into his own private diaspora: a Jew in name only, a non-religious member of the tribe, linked only tenuously to the heritage, culture, and social values of Judaism. Yet he was aware that there was a flowering of Jewish writing in post-war America : and that many of the authors he was reading were Jewish. What, he wondered, did it mean to be a Jewish-American writer? Was the...