Contention; or, My Disputes with Irving Howe, Yiddish Academia, and Holocaust Memorials

We present here the eleventh chapter from the memoirs-in-progress of the renowned scholar and author Ruth R. Wisse. Earlier chapters can be found here. Further installments will appear over the next months.

I am often asked whether political adversaries can also be friends. But without knowing the historical circumstances, the question is meaningless. Otherwise compatible Gentile and Jewish laboratory partners in 1930s Berlin would have discontinued their scientific collaboration had the former decided to join the Nazi party; by contrast, tennis partners in the United States were unlikely to split up after the 1984 election if one had voted for Ronald Reagan and the other for Walter Mondale.

But why not offer a complicated case of my own?