Customer Reviews

Mark Twain's Jews

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How self-absorbed, arrogant and censorious do a people have to be to justify a book of this nature? What kind of man would spend his time combing through every word an author had written to discover every last tiny example of when he wasn't properly worshipful of the Jews? Before World War II, the vast majority of Western man held some fairly common beliefs about Jews and, unlike today, had no fear of social extermination if he expressed them. Mark Twain was raised with those ideas, and some very minor examples may have found their way into his works, but he turned out to be pretty much a liberal philo-semite very early on. Mr. Vogel turns over and parses every single reference to Jews in Mark Twain's work, to the ridiculous extreme of criticizing Twain for giving a Jewish character the stereotypical and "coldly, depersonalized" name of Isaac. Someone should warn Jewish parents who are thinking of naming their sons Isaac that Mr. Vogel may accuse them of anti-Semitism! Maybe they should choose "Leroy" or "Patrick" instead!

Who really cares if Mark Twain (or Shakespeare or Wagner or Dickens) had a negative Jewish character in an early work or didn't completely toe the party line of the modern-day ADL? He was a writer whose works are of great artistic value and humane sentiment. This book is a silly waste of time for ethnic narcissists whose view of humanity doesn't extend beyond their noses.

Mark Twain's Jews by Dan Vogel (Professor of English at Yeshiva University and Dean of Stern College for Women) is a seminal and informative study investigating the anti-Semitism of the famous and influential American author and public speaker Mark Twain (1835-1910). Carrying readers through an in-depth analysis concerning the anti-Semitic content of Twain's personal letters, newspaper articles, essays, lectures and sketches reflecting the Jewish religion collectively, Mark Twain's Jews knowledgeably reveals a logical justification of Twain's intentions and beliefs as reflected in his particular writings. An impressive work of original scholarship, Mark Twain's Jews is very strongly recommended reading for students of the life and thought of Mark Twain, as well as a supplemental addition to American History reference collections with respect to anti-Semitism of the 19th and 20th centuries.