23 - TheCaravan Returns

Summary

The inscribed copy of The Jewish Caravan bears larger significance for the study of American Jewish literary anthologies. According to David Stern, the anthology has served as a medium for the canonization, transmission, preservation, and generation of tradition, as well as for the re-creation, of Jewish culture and community. Schwarz's anthologies arose from an existential fear about the end of Jewish life under the pressures of modernity, proffering a canon of great Jewish literature as a means of shoring up collective Jewish identity. Every significant Jewish American literary anthology published since 1977 has attempted in some way to refute Howe's dismal predictions for the Jewish American literary future. Antler emphasizes two important ideas in her introduction to Anthologies of British Poetry: Critical Perspectives from Literary and Cultural Stories: writing and reading literature can bolster national, geographical, or group identity and a diversity of voices is preferred to uniformity.