SOURCE: "The Death of the Jewish Novel," in The New York Times Book Review, November 25, 1984, pp. 1, 38-39.

In the following essay, Lelchuk argues that Jewish writers in America have moved to a new phase in which ethnicity is still apparent but secondary to artistic accomplishment.

Let me start with two anecdotes concerning Saul Bellow and the varieties of ethnic displeasure he has caused. In Jerusalem in the 1970's, I was sitting in the living room of Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism and one of the tribal chiefs of secular Judaism, when the discussion turned to American literature. At the mention of the name Bellow, Scholem, normally cool and relaxed, immediately grew livid, stood up and, striding back and forth, began to downgrade Bellow as a writer and to berate him personally. At the bottom of Scholem's ire, it turned out, was Bellow's remark after he...