"I Married a Jew" | |
---|---|
Short story by Gretchen Lewis | |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | essay/article |
Publication | |
Published in | The Atlantic |
Media type | |
Publication date | January 1939 |
"I Married a Jew" is an essay by Gretchen Lewis published in The Atlantic in the January 1939 issue. [1] It discusses her marriage to a Jewish man, referred to as Ben in the article. Herself being a Christian White American of German descent, she describes her marriage as an interracial marriage. The article also discusses the assimilation of Jews and other minorities into a white American mainstream culture. She writes that she frequently tries "to see things from the Nazis' point of view," to "the hurt confusion" of her Jewish husband. [1]
The essay became the subject of extensive commentary after The Atlantic published its archive on the Internet in 2008, leading to the article's rediscovery and going viral. [2] [3] The commentary focused on the topics of white privilege and the prejudices in America at the time, and pointed out her naïveté and the fact that "the author, a liberal-minded young woman, manages nonetheless to be spectacularly wrong about just about everything." [4] Jonathan Chait wrote that "she tries to take a balanced, blame-both-sides-equally approach to the anti-Semitism issue" and called her "the world’s first recorded Shiksplainer," a portmanteau of the disparaging Yiddish term shiksa, meaning a non-Jewish woman or girl, and mansplainer. [3] Olga Khazan wrote that the "tone-deaf" article serves as a cautionary tale against Islamophobia today, and noted that it "echoes current conversations about European Muslim identity." [2]
The article was published anonymously, but her name was published in the Catalog of Copyright Entries. [5] According to the article, Lewis was around 29 years old when it was published in 1939. [1]
"I Married a Jew" | |
---|---|
Short story by Gretchen Lewis | |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | essay/article |
Publication | |
Published in | The Atlantic |
Media type | |
Publication date | January 1939 |
"I Married a Jew" is an essay by Gretchen Lewis published in The Atlantic in the January 1939 issue. [1] It discusses her marriage to a Jewish man, referred to as Ben in the article. Herself being a Christian White American of German descent, she describes her marriage as an interracial marriage. The article also discusses the assimilation of Jews and other minorities into a white American mainstream culture. She writes that she frequently tries "to see things from the Nazis' point of view," to "the hurt confusion" of her Jewish husband. [1]
The essay became the subject of extensive commentary after The Atlantic published its archive on the Internet in 2008, leading to the article's rediscovery and going viral. [2] [3] The commentary focused on the topics of white privilege and the prejudices in America at the time, and pointed out her naïveté and the fact that "the author, a liberal-minded young woman, manages nonetheless to be spectacularly wrong about just about everything." [4] Jonathan Chait wrote that "she tries to take a balanced, blame-both-sides-equally approach to the anti-Semitism issue" and called her "the world’s first recorded Shiksplainer," a portmanteau of the disparaging Yiddish term shiksa, meaning a non-Jewish woman or girl, and mansplainer. [3] Olga Khazan wrote that the "tone-deaf" article serves as a cautionary tale against Islamophobia today, and noted that it "echoes current conversations about European Muslim identity." [2]
The article was published anonymously, but her name was published in the Catalog of Copyright Entries. [5] According to the article, Lewis was around 29 years old when it was published in 1939. [1]