RESTORING VOICES: TRADITIONAL JEWISH SOURCES IN POST-HOLOCAUST JEWISH AMERICAN FICTION (MALAMUD, BELLOW, WALLANT; JOB, 'MIDRASH')

In the years since six million Jews died in Hitler's Holocaust, Jews have had to face questions crucial to their identity. Of central importance here is the context of Jewish tradition: can the teachings of Judaism help Jews confront the horror of the Holocaust and learn how to live as Jews in its aftermath?;This study explores the ways in which three writers of fiction speak to such concerns by engaging traditional Jewish sources, most often biblical texts, in writing about Holocaust. Saul Bellow in Mr. Sammler's Planet, Edward Lewis Wallant in The Pawnbroker, and Bernard Malamud in short stories and The Fixer all enter into dialogue with traditional Jewish sources, seeking their help in facing the Holocaust and examining them to see if those sources retain any value in its shadow. These three writers, in effect, carry on the ancient approach of midrash, commentary on the Hebrew Bible that takes the form of story. At the same time the traditional sources become commentary for these contemporary stories and novels, and together the modern fiction and the traditional sources offer commentary on the Holocaust and on Judaism since the Holocaust. These contemporary dialogues with tradition finally demonstrate that the tradition can play a vital role, even in the lives of post-Holocaust, secular Jews.