Censorship & Self- Censorship in Modern Jewish Cultures

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

The banning of books has made headlines in recent years, with a variety of attacks on writers, books, and libraries. But there is a long history of censorship in Jewish cultures that has aimed to suppress texts, ideas, and expressions of Jewish identity that are deemed dangerous. That control is often imposed by others, but it can also be internalized by writers, artists, and other cultural agents. This roundtable explores the nexus of censorship and self-censorship in modern Jewish cultures, analyzing the ways in which different combinations of power, privilege, and fear have shaped modern Jewish film, literature, and the press.

The session brings together scholars in different fields, time periods, and languages. Jonathan Branfman, a scholar of Jewish racialization, gender, and sexuality in visual culture, focuses on cinematic “passing” narratives as sites of self-censorship, in which a Jewish actor’s or character’s body becomes the anxiously censored text in U.S. films. Naomi Brenner, a literary scholar, focuses on the absence of formal censorship mechanisms in Mandatory Palestine and attempts to use social pressure to regulate popular Hebrew fiction. Ayelet Brinn, a historian, examines the US Government’s attempts to censor the Yiddish press and other Jewish publications during World War I and its aftermath. Josh Lambert, a scholar of literature and popular culture, will consider Lesbian Love, a censored 1925 collection of stories by Eve Adams [Chava Zlotchever], alongside Jo Sinclair’s novels Wasteland (1945) and The Changelings (1955), as examples of self-censored texts. Kate Rosenbatt, a historian, will consider US state department censorship of American Jewish historian and Communist Morris Schappes in the early 1950s.

The moderator, Shachar Pinsker, will draw on his own work on the censorship of Yiddish and the Holocaust in Palestine/Israel as he poses questions about the practices of censorship and self-censorship in modern Jewish cultures. What are the implications of censorship and how do they compare with those of self-censorship? Are there circumstances in which censorship or self-censorship is necessary or beneficial? Does censorship work differently in Jewish and non-Jewish contexts? What are the similarities and differences between censoring a literary text, a televisual text, and a Jewish body as text?

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Literature and Culture

Moderator

• Shachar Pinsker, The University of Michigan

Discussants

• Jonathan Branfman, Stanford university

• Naomi Brenner, The Ohio State University

• Ayelet Brinn, University of Hartford

• Josh Lambert, Wellesley College

• Kate Rosenblatt, Emory University

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 08