Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

“What do you know?”; Or, The Question of Reading in Groups and Academic Authority 1

2008; Routledge; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10436920802107609

1545-5866

Temma F. Berg,

Jewish Identity and Society

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I would like to thank Stephen Stern and Janelle Wertzberger for all their work in organizing the library discussion series that became such an important part of this article. Stephen's intellectual energy and knowledge of Jewish culture along with Janelle's organizational skills and openness to experimentation ensured the success of the series. I would also like to thank all of the students in my fall 2006 class on “Your Heart's Desire: Sex and Love in Jewish Literature” and all the members of my book club, both of which also served—willingly or unwillingly—as laboratories. I would also like to thank Barbara Silverstein for reading an early version of this article and for suggesting many astute changes. Other scholars who have contributed to this growing field include Kate Flint (The Woman Reader, 1837–1914); Celia Konchar Farr and Rebecca Kurtzahn-Beach (“Book Club Ladies: Marshaled by Oprah, Guerrilla fighters in the Culture Wars”); Anne Ruggles Gere (Intimate Practices: Literary and Cultural Work in U.S. Women's Clubs, 1880–1920); Rona Kaufman (“‘That, My Dear, Is Called Reading’: Oprah's Book Club and the Construction of Readership”); Theodora Penny Martin (The Sound of Our Own Voices: Women's Study Clubs 1860–1910); Jacqueline Pearson (Women's Reading in Britain, 1750–1835: A Dangerous Recreation); Katherine Scheil (“Public and Private Reading: Shakespeare and American Women's Reading Groups”); and William St. Clair (The Reading Nation in The Romantic Period). Janelle Wertzberger, the librarian who coordinated the evening discussion series, kept a record of attendance, but, unfortunately, we could not be sure that everyone signed in, so figures are not exact either for town or gown attendance. See Susan A. Handelman's two illuminating monographs about Rabbinic reading habits and literary interpretation: The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory and Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Levinas. This is my essentialism/social construction footnote. Do I believe there is an essential Jewish nature? Of course not. Do I believe that identity is socially constructed? Certainly. But is there a difference between Jews and non-Jews? Without a doubt. However, this difference is fluid and the differences within any group of Jews or non-Jews are often greater than the differences between Jews as a group and non-Jews as a group. For me, the question of whether or not there is a difference is not an either/or question but a both/and question. There is and is not a difference. When citing directly from my students’ response papers, I will not use “[sic].” To do so seems unnecessarily harsh to me. “Sics” have always carried, for me, a self-congratulatory ring. Towards the end of her article, Lieberman links the function of “The Public Jew” to the presence of conflicts within the Jewish community and within herself and the need to acknowledge them: “If there is any justification for taking on the symbolic function of the Public Jew, it is to open a dialogue between Jews and non-Jews by acknowledging the conflicts within my community and within myself. This is my acknowledgment” (324). These personal details were noted over the course of the five meetings. This couple came to every session and shared much about themselves in both the smaller and larger group discussions. The name has been changed to protect the guilty. See Elizabeth Long's “Literature as a Spur to Collective Action: The Diverse Perspectives of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Reading Groups,” where she argues that although the function of reading groups has changed over time, they have always served to help women “negotiate life choices and identities” (352). She also notes how similar women's book clubs are to consciousness-raising groups: “Reading groups offer both support and the wherewithal to explore woman's identity and negotiate its complexities over time. Although now they do not generally have a political or even a public mission, they do allow members to think about themselves and the social world in ways that often provide critical purchase on the collective and individual dilemmas facing contemporary women” (357). The process of book distribution by the CAE is completely centralized: “They run a lending library of book sets (15 per box, the upper limit of group size), which are distributed cheaply on a monthly basis via couriers. The institution has operated continuously in Victoria since 1946; book group membership in August 2000 was 11,007 members, 95% of whom are women” (Devlin-Glass 572). See The Jewish Century. I used its Introduction as an opening icebreaker in class. It begins provocatively enough: “The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish century. Modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. It is about learning how to cultivate people and symbols, not fields or herds. It is about pursuing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sake. It is about transforming peasants and princes into merchants and priests, replacing inherited privilege with acquired prestige, and dismantling social estates for the benefit of individuals, nuclear families, and book-reading tribes (nations). Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish” (1). Additional informationNotes on contributorsTemma BergTemma Berg is Professor of English and Women's Studies at Gettysburg College. She has published frequently on critical theory and on women writers. Her most recent book is The Lives and Letters of an Eighteenth–Century Circle of Acquaintance. She is presently working on a biography of Charlotte Lennox and on the consequences of reading in groups.