SOURCE: Landis, Joseph C. “Yiddish Dreams in America.” In Handbook of American-Jewish Literature: An Analytical Guide to Topics, Themes, and Sources, edited by Lewis Fried, pp. 143-65. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.

In the following essay, Landis chronicles the growth of Yiddish literature in America, focusing particularly on the image of the New World as represented in the writing and poetry.

Collective dreams, unlike private ones, are a public affair and simpler to explore since their content tends to be more overt than latent. The wishes they reflect seem more obvious to the eye. It is not difficult to observe, however, that when wishes are held with such tenacity as to border on illusion, the corrections administered by reality are often bitter. Such certainly was the case with the European dream of America, which was from the outset imbued with illusion. Columbus's confusion of desire with reality became a...