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Professor says anti-Semitic
'It*? V* ••
literature a teaching problem
A Jewish teacher of English at
Houston University has asserted
that while it may not be prac
tical or ethical to censor or ban
such anti-Semitic classics'as
Shakespeare’s “Merchant of
Venice,” teachers in public
schools and colleges should be
required to recognize the anti-
Semitism in such classics and
use them to teach their students
“what anti-Semitism is ail
about.”
E. L. Dachalager, in offering
his criticism, declared that “the
image of the Jew as cunning,
crafty, consumed by cupidity
and hatred for Christians," is,
“for the most part, the Jew
found in the pages of some of the
world’s great—and occasionally
not so great —art and
literature.”
Discussing the issue in a re-
cent issue of “Sh’ma,”
Dachslager asserted that “such
images have greatly contributed
to the longstanding idea of the
Jew as an undesirable element in
our society.” He added that “in
view of the risk inherent for
world Jewry” in teaching such
plays as “Merchant of Venice” to
“thousands of public school and
college students” year after
year, there was “at least an
argument” for barring "such ob
vious examples of anti-
Semitism” from the curricula of
the schools and colleges.
He said that if the Jewish
community does not wish to, or
is not able to, prohibit such
works, the issue becomes how
they should be taught He posed
the question: “what, at least, are
the obvious requirements for a
teacher charged with teaching
literary texts which embody
anti-Semitic views or descrip
tions?”
“The most obvious re
quirement,” he asserted, “is that
the teacher should be able to
recognize that an anti-Semitic
text is anti-Semitic.” But, he
declared, “the truth is that a
good many teachers and critics
of literature fail, or at least
refuse," to accept the fact that
“some of their most cherished
texts” are “clearly and often
viciously anti-Semitic.”
Literature teachers, he said,
“sometimes fail to distinguish
between satire of ‘Jewish’
behavior .or characteristics, and
radical or ill-meant anti-
Semitism.” He cited, in that con
nection, the comment of a
colleague: “After all, no
American author i? more atati-
Semitic than Philip Roth."
The second responsibility of
the teacher, Dachslager declar
ed, “is to come to terms with the
anti-Semitism, rather than
evade it. To say, for example,
that Chaucer, Marlowe,
Shakespeare, the anonymous
authors of medieval religioaa
drama, Charles Dickena, Frank.
Morris, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound,
et al, were not really an
tagonistic to Jews but were
simply following the beliefs of
their times, merely expressing
the conventional views of ‘their
day,’ is not only to evade the
question of teaching what anti-
Shylock's “pound of fleth. ”
Semitism is all about but, even
more, to evade history itself."
In the list of those authors, he
said, “their day” runs from the
14th century to the 20th, “from
the Crusades to Auschwitz.”
He also criticized the fact that
anti-Semitism in literature “is
often by-passed as irrelevant, a
aide issue, ‘not a pressing
matter,’ as one critic has written
about an anti-Semitic poem by
T. S. Eliot.” In rebuttal to that
contention, Dachslager noted
that Lucy Davidowicz, an
authority on the Nazi genocide
against European Jewry, among
others, "has amply
demonstrated” that the Jews in
Hitler’s mind were, for the most
part, “the same Jews found in
the pages of Chaucer and
Shakespeare, Pound and Eliot.”
Dachslager declared that “an
even less professional, if not less
ethical, approach to teaching
anti-Semitism in literature is to
justify it as simply a literary
device, a wayward but uninten
tional transgression committed
in the service of artistic
necessity.”
By that artistic yardstick, he
said, Dickens created Fagin
“because he needed a
recognizable villain; that Fagin
happened to be a Jewish villain
is, at best, seen as incidental.”
The teacher added that Eliot’s
“negative images” of Jews are
sometimes regarded as the ex
pression of traditional or
“mythical” images of the Jew,
rather than as examples of
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Eliot’s “real” opinion oi Jews.
The “undeniable fact that Bleis-
tein and his pre-types.and after-
types actually have been taken
for real "Hew* g^s lost in the
alibi.”
Ha inaisted that “the whole
question of the morality, not to
mention artistry, of an author
who creates racial or ethnic
stereotypes is largely ignored by
teachers of literature” in public
schools and colleges. Dachslager
cited the comment by the
American poet, Charles Olson,
about Ezra Pound: “No man can
attack a race and remain useful
to anyone as an artist.”
Dachslager asked: “How many
teachers of literature” are “able,
or willing, to consider seriously”
Olson’s declaration?
He said that if Olson’s judge
ment was correct, declaring he
believed it waa, then teachers of
literature are “hypocrites,
propagandists for the ‘humaniz
ing effect of literary study”
when they know the effect of
literary anti-Semitism ” has
proved to be de-humanizing.
He declared that anti-
Semitism is not cultivated -only
“in the pulpit, the coon try club,
the board room, the reactionary
fears of left-or right-wing
political groups.” He-said it ia
cultivated aa much, “if not
more,” in the classroom and in
some of the texts used to teach
literature..
He warned that if what is said
or taught in the classroom, or L_
such textbooks “is not at the
very least recognized, evaluated
and judged for-what it is, $en
the chances are good that the
students will continue to receive
an image of the Jew which
should have been long ago erased
from their minds.”
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