Video Course
The New York Intellectuals: The First Generation
With Dr. Ruth Wisse
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Jews flooded into the United States. Large numbers settled in New York, fashioning an intellectual community that became the basis of American Jewish culture today.
Through essays, poems, novels, and short stories—in Yiddish and English—the writers who formed this “concentrated explosion of intellectual talent” sought to understand what this new country was about, and what it ought to be about. In doing so, they also prompted important changes in America itself.
In this course, the distinguished literary critic Dr. Ruth R. Wisse will explore the writing and ideas of the women and men who made up the first generation of the New York Intellectuals.
The New York Intellectuals: The First Generation · Lesson 1
Entering the Goldene Medinah: The Birth of American Jewish Identity
In her first lecture, Professor Wisse provides a brief overview of the first generation of the New York Intellectuals: their emergence, goals, and cultural context. In particular, she probes the work of three different Jewish writers—Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Anzia Yezierska, and Ludwig Lewisohn—who serve as examples of how these hitherto European Jews tried to balance their Jewishness with their new identities as Americans.
