The first national conference on Jewish writing and Jewish writers in America concluded here today, marking the opening of the nationwide annual celebration of Jewish Book Month. The two-day conference, which took place at the Theodor Herzl Institute, drew noted novelists, poets and historians and included among its speakers Maurice Samuel, Meyer Levin, Alfred Kazin, Charles Angoff and other Jewish authors.
Mr. Levin contrasted the climate for writers in a free world with that of the totalitarian world. “We must remember the 15 Jewish writers of the Soviet Union executed five years ago because they wrote as Jews, “he said, “But this is not a Jewish question alone. We must pay attention to the plight of Hungarian writers today under arrest for warning as Hungarians. We must see clearly that the issue goes beyond the identity of any one group to the broadest question of every human identity.”
Mr. Angoff told the meeting that “it is true that the general Jewish public is not as hospitable to Jewish books as it should be, but some of this is due to the fact that many of our creative Jewish books have either been mediocre in quality, or downright bad, Another and probably a more telling reason–is that Jews here have for a long time inclined to look down upon their own traditions and hence upon the imaginative works that rely so heavily on these same traditions.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
