A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Seventy

I have been doing quite a bit of research this week, particular to do with depictions of Jews in literature.  It is rather strange, some of what I have encountered, and I find it very unsettling to hear certain things.  For example, I have read about the attitudes of scholars in the latter half of the twentieth century, who were appalled to have Jewish colleagues studying Shakespeare or Renaissance literature, as both are "Christian".  I was quite prepared for some of what I might find, but this strikes me quite hard, as do some of the stories I've encountered about British communities of conversos, Jews who accepted Christianity in order to escape the Inquisition.  

In some ways the most upsetting thing I have found, however, is that their seems to be a great absence in terms of studying this subject within American literature.  The one large study I have run across on that specific subject spends a great deal of time discussing this issue, expressing that it is largely a product of the absence of major Jewish characters of note in the popular imagination.  European literature offers many examples of Jewish figures, often based on overt negative stereotypes, who are well-known.  Consider Dicken's creation of Fagin. 

I wonder, in considering it, what this absence says, what it reflects about the othering of Jews in this country, as opposed to in other nations.  Jews were never rejected from the United States, and it is clear that, at least in the letter of the law, the United States was the first nation to allow Jews equality in a true sense.  However, it is also apparent that this does not reflect all the social values present in the country, and the legal rights I mention were sometimes curtailed at the state level.  While European culture was insistent on pushing Jews out of their midst, they also kept the image of Jewish greed and degeneracy alive.  By contrast, it seems as though the US chose to allow Jews to remain, but to largely leave Jews out of culture, at least until the twentieth century.  Of course, that is just an impression from initial research into the subject, but the contrast seems rather bold to not be of some importance.