June 15, 2022 • 43 mins
In this episode of ReligionWise, we talk with Jodi Eichler-Levine Professor of Religion Studies and Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization at Lehigh University. Our conversation considers the way that storytelling helps individuals and communities organize their lives and imagine their own identities, particularly when processing traumatic events.
Show Notes:
- Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature (https://jodieichlerlevine.com/books/#suffer)
- Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community (https://jodieichlerlevine.com/books/#painted)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chip Gruen (00:09):
Welcome to ReligionWise the podcast where
we feature educators,researchers and other
professionals discussing topicson religion and their relevance
to the public conversation. Myname is Chip Gruen. I'm the
director of the Institute forReligious and Cultural
Understanding at MuhlenbergCollege and I will be the host
for this podcast.
(00:30):
Today's guest is JodiEichler-Levine, Professor of
Religion Studies and the BermanProfessor of Jewish Civilization
at Lehigh University. She's comehere today to talk to us about
her first book "Suffer theLittle Children, Uses of the
Past in Jewish and AfricanAmerican Children's Literature"
that came out in 2013.
Subsequently, she had a bookthat came out in 2020, entitled
(00:51):
"Painted Pomegranates andNeedlepoint Rabbis, How Jews
Craft Resilience and CreateCommunity". Now, what seems to
hold these two books together,and a lot of the work that Dr.
Levine does is this interest inwhat is sometimes called
vernacular religion, or popularreligion. So not high theology,
not the beliefs and practices ofleadership necessarily, but how
(01:16):
do individuals on the groundthink about, construct their own
reality by telling stories, bymaking crafts, etc, just to
contextualize her work a littlebit, one of her other research
interests, and one of the thingsshe's working on right now is
very much like Dr. Peterfeso'sepisode, she is also interested
in the idea of Disney asvernacular religion. So this
(01:39):
contextualizes her work instorytelling in a particular way
that really emphasizes howindividuals who might not
necessarily be religiousspecialists or theologians deal
with their own religioustraditions or making meaning in
their world. So I wanted to talkwith Dr. Levine about "Suffer
the Little Children" because itdeals with this very important
(02:03):
topic of narrative andstorytelling. We can see right
now in our own world, in our owncontext, where what stories are
told how they're told about theAmerican experience, for
example, or about race, orethnicity, or the founding of
our country, or differences ingender and sexuality are dealt
(02:27):
with in public conversation, orin public education, etc. So far
from being an esoteric oracademic conversation. This is
actually something that isreally important for us to think
about, as we consider the waysthat we use narrative and tell
stories in our own world. Inparticular, when talking about
(02:47):
Jewish stories, and Jewishstories of trauma and pain, and
in particular, the Holocaust.
This is something that is veryimportant to the Institute for
Religious and CulturalUnderstanding, as we host
conference for middle school andhigh school students on
Holocaust education, and thelessons of the Holocaust to
(03:10):
reduce bigotry and hate based onidentity in our contemporary
world. So today's guest is JodiEichler-Levine of Lehigh
University. Thanks very much forappearing on ReligionWise, Jodi.
Jodi Eichler-Levine (03:23):
Thank you.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Chip Gruen (03:26):
So where I wanted to start was thinking about your
work, generally. It seems to mewhat you're most interested in,
it's not high theology, it's notritual, but it's really the
things that are evidenced by theordinary, the popular, can you
talk a little bit about yourinterest in the every day, and
(03:46):
its relationship to religiousand cultural identity?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (03:49):
Absolutely, yes, I definitely do whatever is
the opposite of high theology.
When I started graduate school,back in the early 2000s, the
study of lived religion wasreally becoming very dominant in
all fields of religion, butparticularly in my own home
(04:12):
fields of Jewish Studies, andNorth American religions. So in
my own experience of watchingpeople do religion, it was
always the little things thatreally stood out to me. So in
Jewish tradition, people readfrom the Torah ritually during a
service. But what always reallyinterested me the most about
(04:34):
that was the Yad, which meanshand or the pointer that is used
to read the Torah. What aboutthat object? Or I was very
interested in the fact that youcould read fantasy literature.
And it turned out there werereligious things going on in
fantasy literature, like whoknew CS Lewis was Christian? As
(04:55):
a Jewish kid growing up in NewJersey, I actually did not
initially know that.
And so for me, I really want toget at religion where it lives,
religion where people are. So Iwrote a book about children's
literature and a book aboutJewish objects. And I'm writing
a book about religion, and theDisney company, because all of
(05:16):
these are ways people makemeaning in the world. People
like to tell stories, peoplelike to see films, people like
to make gifts for one another.
And so for me, religion issomething that people do and
hold and touch. It's notnecessarily just about debates
about the substance of God, nooffense to anyone for whom
(05:37):
that's an important question.
Chip Gruen (05:41):
So, let's dig a little deeper into the stories,
because that was your firstbook, which is "Suffer the
Little Children, Uses of thePast in Jewish and African
American Children's Literature".
Tell me about the importance ofstories in your view, right?
What does considering stories dofor us? How do they function in
the lives of the authors in thelives, the communities, in the
(06:05):
lives, in this case of thechildren? Can you just elaborate
a little bit on on why you thinkstudying these narratives is
important.
Jodi Eichler-Levine (06:15):
So in my first book, I was particularly
interested in how narratives aretied to people's religious and
political identities, and thoseare really interwoven. And so I
became interested in the storiesof Jewish Americans, of mostly
black Christian Americans, andalso of African American Jews.
(06:39):
And in both of those histories,while they are different, you
have groups that really had toreckon with pretty serious
trauma, with things like theHolocaust, or the Middle
Passage. And also groups thatwere what scholar called R.
(07:00):
Laurence Moore called religiousoutsiders, people who in terms
of the American dominantnarratives, were outsiders,
either in terms of theirreligious tradition, which was
the case for Jews, or in termsof their racial identity, which
was the case for AfricanAmerican Christians. And so what
(07:20):
those stories did, was helppeople to fit in in America in a
way that honored variousidentities. One of my favorite
examples comes from the bookseries, "All-of-a-Kind Family",
which was written by a womannamed Sydney Taylor, and the
first book was published in1951. These books were published
(07:42):
in the midst of the Cold War. Infact, the Rosenberg trial,
accusing two Jewish Americans ofspying for Soviet Russia was at
its height as the book was beingedited. And we have evidence
that some scholars haveuncovered that Taylor was
encouraged to talk about thisJewish family in ways that would
(08:05):
make them seem like goodpatriotic Americans, her editor
actually made her add a wholechapter about the Fourth of
July, the original manuscriptonly had Jewish holidays. And
the editor said, you know, thereshould be something patriotic.
And the late scholar JuneCummins has wonderful articles
about this and study thatcorrespondence. So when somebody
(08:29):
like "All-of-a-Kind Family",which you might not immediately
think of as a religious storycomes out, it's giving Jewish
Americans first of allrepresentation, it's the first
time they see themselves in achildren's book from a
mainstream publishing house, butit's also explaining them to non
Jews, millions of non Jews haveread these books, I actually
(08:51):
found them on a shelf at theSalt Lake City Public Library
once and in the Amazon commentsthat I studied, studied. A lot
of non Jews said, This is how Ilearned about Judaism. So we can
talk about you know, the thechallenges of that right, where
people go for their informationabout religion. But what, one of
(09:12):
the things narratives do isperform identity for the group
telling its story, but they alsoperform identity for outsiders,
who then encounter that throughchildren's books. And that's one
of the reasons that debatesabout narrative are so charged
because narratives are sopowerful.
Chip Gruen (09:29):
So there seems to be a push and pull here that I'd
like you to talk a little bitabout, like, on the one hand,
having minoritized groups orgroups from different religious
or cultural tradition than themajority represent those groups
to a large body of people. Buton the other hand, the work that
(09:49):
they're doing for that communityis essentially saying, we are
very similar to you, we are, weare good Americans. We are
patriotic, we, you know, we arenot so different as you might be
led to believe. And I wonderwhat, how is that American
identity? Explain that, right?
So we have on the one hand, thereligious, the cultural
(10:11):
minoritized identity. On theother hand, we have the
mainstream American identity.
What does that look like? Whatdoes that negotiation look like?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (10:21):
It's challenging. And I think that
since I wrote this book, whichcame out in 2013, there have
been newer movements like the WeNeed Diverse Books movement
hashtag, that have pushed notonly for greater representation
(10:42):
of minorities in children'sliterature, because the number
of African American children'sbook authors and illustrators is
still gross underrepresentation,but also for new kinds of
stories. Right? So the firstexample that I gave is from the
1950s, a moment of tremendousassimilation, for many groups
and of wanting to be seen asfitting in. I think that what
(11:08):
the turn we we got to in thiscentury, moved towards
recognizing different kinds ofstories. I think that the work
for example, of JacquelineWoodson, one of my favorite
authors of African American,mostly middle grade, or young
(11:30):
adult books has done is she'smoved into poetry. She has a
book that talks about rap thatuses Tupac Shakur. And so you
are starting to see children'sliterature get beyond the
anodyne, right beyond, let'sjust all tell a story about our
(11:51):
holidays and hold hands andsing. I think there's much
fresher stuff happening inchildren's literature today. But
you're quite right, that thereis this tension. There's still a
tendency, especially in picturebooks, for younger grades, to
want to focus on things like theHappy Thanksgiving story that
(12:12):
ends up completely uncritical ofthe Thanksgiving story, right,
that just sort of acts, youknow, pretends that Native
Americans were treated well, inearly America, because if it's a
book like Molly's Pilgrim, whichis a Jewish Thanksgiving story,
the Jews want to be on thePilgrim side of the equation,
(12:32):
not the Native American side,which you can't blame an author
in the 1980s for wanting to dothat. But it, it ends up being a
way of becoming American at theexpense of some difficult
historical truths.
Chip Gruen (12:47):
Yeah, so we have on the one hand, the telling of the
story of the community inquestion, and we have the
telling of the American story,right? And there's this idea
that maybe maybe those are thesame story, after all, or at
least that is one of the pushesthat we get. And I wonder if you
could talk about I mean, becausein your in your chapter about
dwelling, right, I love theThomas Tweed reference of the
(13:09):
crossing and the dwelling thing,it's a wonderful book, we'll put
we'll put that in the shownotes. In the dwell, the
dwelling, the identity ends uphighlighting things like
domesticity, economics,consumerism, you know, some of
the things that maybe wewouldn't highlight as American
religion writ large, but arecertainly some of the pillars
(13:31):
of, of American culture. Couldyou talk about and again, I
think that you've just alludedto the fact that these things
might have changed in the lastdecade, but the ways in which
domesticity and economic,economic systems are held up in
this type of literature as well.
Jodi Eichler-Levine (13:48):
Absolutely.
So yeah, I was very influencedby Thomas Tweed's definition of
religion and the idea that oneof the things religion helps us
do is make homes. We make homeswe sometimes intensify joy in
those homes, and sometimes weconfront challenges. And I think
that you can go back in Americanliterary history to Laura
(14:09):
Ingalls Wilder, whose "LittleHouse on the Prairie" books are
certainly not perfect. There'sbeen a lot of studies of them.
They certainly contain somehorrific racial tropes of
minstrelsy, at the same time,She ushers in this way of
looking at the domestic youknow, long descriptions of
dinners, Almanzo is alwayseating everything in sight,
(14:32):
discussions of how the familygets an organ and her sister
Mary plays it, how they sewtheir dresses, right? Everything
about the domestic is justoversized in "Little House on
the Prairie". And that threadreally continues through the
rest of American children'sliterature. So we have books
about quilts and the UndergroundRailroad, or about rag dolls on
(14:56):
the Underground Railroad. Wehave lots of Jewish books about
quilts as well, most famously,Patricia Polacco is "The Keeping
Quilt". And I think what's goingon there is something that the
scholar Colleen McDannell talksabout in a very well known book
called "Material Christianity",which is that religion is
(15:18):
something that is haptic,another scholar, David
Chidester, talks about hapticreligion. So something that we
feel with our hands. And so whenyou're talking about, say, the
history of Christianity, you cantalk as Colleen McDannell does
(15:40):
about Warner Sallman's portraitof Jesus Christ that was like
reproduced and became thepopular image of Jesus for
millions of American Christiansand would hang on their wall. So
what's hanging on someone'swall? And how is that part of
their religious life? Whathappens when a quilt is made out
(16:01):
of clothes that were rags as afamily escaped from Russia,
right, they escape and PatriciaPolacco tells the story of her
family's immigration through thestory of this keeping quilt and
then it becomes a ritual object.
It has multiple lives, itbecomes a wedding Chuppah or
(16:23):
canopy. And so it's kind of likemateriality is the glue. Or I
don't want to say the force eventhough I'm a Star Wars fan, but
it does kind of you know, flowthrough the home and bind people
in ways that can be quiteemotional as they live their
(16:46):
religious lives unless you arein a particularly ascetic
tradition. The odds are thatyour religious life does involve
memories of special foods thatyou eat, or ritual foods that
are supposed to be eaten in acertain way, like the Passover
supper. And so you've got all ofthese kinds of things you touch
(17:09):
and smell and feel that are partof people's religious lives.
Think about how incense smells,for example, that that evokes a
powerful sense memory for a lotof people for multiple religious
Chip Gruen (17:18):
So that's the domestic angle, the making a
traditions.
home, the dwelling angle, butthen one of the other things
that you argue is happeningthese stories, they're doing
cultural work, they'reprocessing trauma, or
remembering trauma. So in thecase, in "Suffer the Little
(17:39):
Children", on the one hand, theHolocaust, on the other hand
slavery, can you talk a littlebit about that function, not the
function of integration, buthere the function of remembering
the past?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (17:50):
Absolutely.
And in doing that, I was reallyinfluenced by a scholar named
Michael Rothberg, who encouragesus to think about what he calls
multidirectional memory, that ifwe're going to think together
with, say, the Holocaust andslavery or lynching, we're not
having a, you know, a sufferingOlympics, we're going to be
(18:10):
thinking about how these painstouch one another, in a more
subtle way. So in a lot of ways,both slavery and the Holocaust
are so dominant in how non how,let's say, white Christian
Americans understand Jews andAfrican Americans, that there's
(18:30):
more books produced on those twotopics than just about anything
else. And that's there's there'sa lot to criticize about that
right to say we should have morebooks about the happy stuff too.
But we always do have to reckonwith with trauma. And part of
why it's so important to keepteaching these books is because
so many Americans don'tunderstand the legacy of
(18:54):
slavery. Don't understand justhow brutal an institution it
was, or can't name concentrationcamps, which is something we're
seeing in surveys now. So whenJews and blacks write about
these traumas, or other peoplewrite about them, there's a way
(19:14):
in which suffering becomesredemptive. And that's something
I'm a little bit critical of attimes. Because I kind of worry
when you know, the most popularstory about a Jewish young woman
that Americans in general haveread is "The Diary of Anne
(19:37):
Frank", which is obviously animportant book and she was a
genuinely gifted writer whowanted her work to be published.
But at the same time, if we onlyhave that story of a young
Jewish girl who was murdered,and if we focus, especially
people tend to focus on thehopeful quotes towards the end
(19:59):
of the book, then we'reprocessing the trauma, but we're
also losing a lot of other partsof Jewish life. And the same
thing is true with slavery. Oneof my favorite books, though,
about slavery is JuliusLester's, "The Old African",
Julius Lester was a black Jew,he wrote a really beautiful
(20:24):
memoir of his conversionexperience to Judaism later in
life. And "The Old African" is amagical realist story that takes
us through the experience of anolder slave, and how he
literally walks back to Africaunder the ocean, and all these
ghostly things ensue. And one ofthe things I love about that
(20:46):
story is because it kind ofrecognizes that America is
hopeless. And that story Lestergives up on on America and
freedom is in this sort ofimagined landscape, something
you walk back to, under theocean. So this is a really long
way of saying that both groupsare processing trauma, sometimes
(21:12):
really eloquently in thesebooks. But when when other
Americans process these stories,they're in, at times educating
themselves about traumaticpasts. But they're also
primarily seeing dead andsuffering people. And I think
(21:33):
that's always a another sort oftension between wanting to honor
the past. You know, when I'm inthe classroom, my students come
in, they want to talk about theHolocaust, they want to talk
about slavery, they want thosestories, but not reducing
minority groups to their mosttraumatic moments. And so the
(21:56):
question becomes, how do you dothat?
Chip Gruen (22:00):
Well, you took the bull by the horns here by doing
a comparative study, which beinga through and through religious
studies scholar, I reallyappreciate comparativeism, I
think comparativeism is reallyimportant. It can highlight
things that we might not seeotherwise. But I wonder, you
know, if we think about thequestion of whose stories are
(22:21):
these, whose stories are theseto tell? Have you gotten any
pushback on that at all? Butabout dealing with both of these
bodies of material, both side byside? Considering your, your own
identity and your place in theacademy?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (22:36):
Yeah, a little bit. Um, I mean, it's
Yeah, and it's always seemed tome like if you were doing
interesting. So I'm a whiteAshkenazi Jewish women from the
East Coast. So obviously, I'mmuch closer to the identity of
the Ashkenazi Jews in the book,then, to the African Americans.
I wouldn't say that I got pushback so much as the book was
(22:57):
most read, actually, bychildren's literature scholars.
And there was a slight push backactually, in a very thoughtful
review of the book that came outafter the Black Lives Matter
movement had gotten going. Sothat's one of the things that's,
you know, true with publishing,you spend years and years
(23:19):
publishing a book that comesout. And if you're writing about
a contemporary topic, somethingnew happens and changes the
whole story. And even though inthe book, I do say, you know
that for Jews, America was thispromised land and for African
Americans, it was it was hell,it was not a promised land, it
(23:42):
was pleased someplace you werekidnapped to and tortured. But I
do say both groups are able towrite their way into mentor,
into membership. And that lookedless true. After you know, once
we got into Black Lives Matter,I certainly was aware when I
wrote the book that racism wasstill alive and well in America.
(24:05):
But I wrote the book before,before Trayvon Martin, before
Eric Garner, before so manypeople, and Trayvon Martin in
particular, I remember watchingthat trial, while my daughter
was quite young, and I hadwritten about Emmett Till in the
book I had meditated on thelynching of this young black
(24:27):
teenager, in the 1950s. And itwas it was so chilling, watching
what happened in Ferguson, andwhat later happened in countless
cities, in light of havingwritten about this, but the book
was was done, you know, and so Ithink, I think I would have had
a different ending. If, if Iwere African American, I might
(24:51):
not have written about beingable to write your way into
membership at all right? I mighthave had a different way of
thinking, at the same time, I dothink it's really important for
people to be able to write aboutgroups that they're not part of.
I think that so I didn't, Ididn't get tremendous pushback,
(25:14):
but there was that little Hey,what about Black Lives Matter?
And I'm, you know, in it, it's,it's challenging, because I
think, you know, following J.Z.
Smith, you know, I think incomparison, the magic does dwell
that we notice things when weyou know, put blue against
yellow or black and white, youknow, the the wrong metaphor,
(25:36):
but we see things in greaterrelief when we compare them. But
undoubtedly, we all wright, fromcomparative work, it is almost
impossible to write about, youour social position.
(25:57):
know, to not write aboutsomething that is not your own
identity,Unless you, unless you yourself,
we were all hybrid, but unlessyou have a deeply hybrid
identity.
Chip Gruen (26:06):
Yes, absolutely. So speaking of how things change
given current events, I mean,this seems and I want to talk to
you today about narrativebecause of current events. Here
we sit in 2022. We have allkinds of I mean, I would say
proverbial fights, but I thinkthat there are actual fights too
about, about history, aboutmemory, about what whose
(26:29):
narratives are who's about whatstories can be told that there
are countless states andmunicipalities where books are
being pulled from shelves, wherecurricula are being reviewed,
certain titles are being excisedfrom from curriculum, how does
that particular this particularhistorical moment play against
(26:53):
the idea of the crossing and thedwelling the building of
identity that coping with traumathat happens in the literature
itself? How, how do how does allthis fit together?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (27:05):
So in a really, really sad and
depressing way, I'm not entirelysurprised by our cultural moment
of, you know, banning books,again, of limiting what can be
said in curricula. I'm sadly notsurprised. I think it actually
speaks to the power of storiesto cause empathy, and lead
(27:31):
people to care about those whoare other than they are. I think
that's the threat. So whenpeople say they want to ban any
discussion of critical racetheory, aside from the fact that
they're misunderstanding thehistory of critical race theory
as a concept coming out offeminist legal scholarship,
they're really saying, let's nottalk about race. Let's not talk
(27:54):
about privilege. And I mean, wehad the example of the Tennessee
School Board, banning "Mous"because of nudity. And the
problem is, these books arepowerful, right? You can't, if
you read Art Spiegelman'sgraphic novel "Mous", you have
(28:17):
to confront not only the horrorof the camps and the Holocaust,
but the horror of thebystanders, the horror of the
neighbors, right. And that'sreally powerful stuff. I saw
that one of the books that wasbanned, I think, in Ohio, was a
book called "The PurimSuperhero", which was a PJ
(28:39):
library book about, about aJewish kid dressing up for the
Jewish holiday of Purim. And histwo dads, and it wasn't even
like a book that was like here.
Here's a book about you knowabout having gay dads, it was
just part of the story. And so Iwasn't surprised at all that
(29:00):
that book was banned, because itsuggests that queer families are
just like everybody else is inyou know, figuring out what the
costume should be dealing withfamily stresses. And so when we
see a moment like this, it'sbecause there have been so many
(29:20):
gains in children's literatureover the last say 30 years it
has become much more robustlydiverse and it has started to be
more critical of the sort ofstandard everyone comes to
America and makes it story rightlike you know, Ibram Kendi. I
will say, I haven't read"Antiracist Baby" yet. But
(29:43):
obviously, there's various newtrends in children's literature
that are not alwayscomplimentary. Jacqueline
Woodson is another person whoreally is will point out that
not everything can be mended.
Not every bridge can be built,you know, she she writes about
(30:07):
neighborhoods that have beentorn about by bridges, and you
can't always fix what's beenbroken. And so I think that that
to a lot of people, thatnarrative that America is
imperfect, or could be improved,is very threatening. And and
it's, it's, it's empathy. And Ican say more about that, but
(30:29):
I'll stop for now.
Chip Gruen (30:30):
Yeah, well, I want to follow up on that, because
one of the things that comesthrough and I want to before
we're done, I want to talk aboutfantasy, fantasy literature,
because I think that that's justfascinating, in lots of
different ways. But this ideathat you can reimagine pain, but
you can't undo it. And the ideathat children's literature,
(30:50):
particularly good children'sliterature is often subversive,
right? That we tend to thinkabout, and they all live happily
ever after as sort of thequintessential ending to a
children's book. But more oftenthan not, that's not the case,
particularly for children'sliterature that's, that's sort
of critically acclaimed andrecognized as being significant.
(31:13):
Can you can you talk a littlebit about, about children, about
subversiveness? I mean, they areon the outside right they're,
they don't have power. Theydon't have money. They don't
have political influence. Imean, there's a lot of ways in
which children can be read as,as quintessential outsiders, how
does the literature thesubversiveness of this
literature play into theidentity of these children as
(31:36):
well?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (31:37):
Yeah, children are the only
constituency of literature whogenerally can't write their own
literature. There's a scholarly,a scholar named Jacqueline Rose,
who wrote about this, thecalling it the impossibility of
children's literature. Buteveryone thinks they know what
it's like to be a child becausethey were once and we kind of
(31:59):
remember. This is where we getinto Maurice Sendak, who's far
and away my favorite. Probablymy favorite author I've ever
written about. And he famouslysaid, you know, I don't write
books for children, I write andthey say that's for children.
(32:19):
Even even fairy tales, you know,you use the happily ever after
example, but fairy tales wereincredibly dark in their
original tellings. The Grimfairy tales are just bloody and
messy. You know, the originalAndersen's story of "The Little
Mermaid" ends in tragedy. Sochildren who were used to dark
stories because childrensuffered too. You know,
(32:42):
sometimes they suffer inhorrific ways impacted by
geopolitical conflicts. Andsometimes they suffer because
it's lonely on the playground,but they suffer. And so I think
that, you know, books, a book,like "Where the Wild Things
Are", was revolutionary in theearly 1960s, precisely because
(33:03):
it was about Max's interiorvoyage, about his going off to
the land of the wild things andjust getting to be himself. And
it actually, the Wild Thingscame from a Yiddish expression.
Sendak's relatives called himvilde chaya, which means wild,
wild, animal wild living thingin Yiddish. And so I love the
(33:28):
fact that there is this Yiddishexpression at the center of this
really subversive book. So, um,children's literature has
always, if we go back tofolklore, not been just for
children, these were stories forpeople of all ages, the idea of
(33:49):
a separate shelf for children isvery modern. And those stories
have always had loss, andchallenge and they've always,
they've always turned the worldupside down. They've always
messed with the power structure.
And that's again, where Sendakis so powerful because Mickey
like in the Night Kitchen,Mickey is saying like I'm taking
control of the milk. I am themilk and the milk is in me is
(34:12):
like this battle cry. Thatactually he's the one in charge,
not the, you know, whoever'sbringing the milk.
Chip Gruen (34:20):
Yeah. And so you make this comparison in the
book. And I'm going to, to do aTolkien reference here. But
about about loss, right. And andwhile maybe we would not
consider Tolkien children'sliterature, I think it's a
(34:41):
really interesting example incomparison to some of the
stories that you talk about,because we get to the end of
"The Lord of the Rings". Andit's, it's sad. I mean, it's
unresolved. Frodo has to sailaway, you know, from everything
he knows his wounds don't quiteever heal, you know, the Shire
(35:02):
is not what it once was, youknow, there's just tremendous
loss. And, you know, you make,maybe not in that explicit
detail, but you make thatcomparison. And I wonder if you
know, thinking about fantasy andthe mechanisms of fantasy and
what gets resolved and whatdoesn't get resolved. How you
see that in some of the storiesyou've dealt with here, or
(35:23):
fantasy in general?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (35:24):
Yeah, I, first of all, aside from the
fact that I love fantasy. Ithink what Tolkien does in
particular, both Frodo's ending.
And with one of the reallyfamous lines from the books that
ends up in the movies, whereGandalf says, to Frodo, you
know, all you have to do ischoose what to do with the time
(35:48):
you are given. It's a slightparaphrase. Fantasy in its
extraordinary locations andsituations, and it's sort of
bigness forces us to reallyconfront what we would do in
(36:09):
times of tragedy or inchallenging times, like the ones
we've been living through. So Ithink that part of the power of
fantasy is to unbind. In thebook, I talk a lot about
metaphors of binding, as in thesacrifice of Isaac, and
(36:30):
unbinding. And fantasy allows usto imagine what would happen if
we were powerfully unbound? Ifwe could fly away, for example,
which I talked about in terms ofSendak and Tony Kushner's
"Brundibar", where in this sortof Holocaust metaphor, because
(36:53):
the book is based on an operathat was performed at the camp
Theresienstadt. The children areable to fly away from Hitler on
blackbirds on giant blackbirds,but they're also be lost. You
know, it's, it's this image thatshould be of liberation, but
(37:13):
it's actually the parents losingtheir children. And it's
absolutely tragic. So, fantasyshows us both horror and
liberation, depending on how weread it. And somebody like "Lord
of the Rings", you know, I thinkyou're right, that that example
of the wounds that don't heal issomething that I think anyone
(37:34):
who has been through a traumaknows that. But if you haven't,
or if you've forgotten, or youjust need to feel less alone in
it, the narrative provides thatreminder. And fantasy provides
that reminder.
Chip Gruen (37:53):
Yeah, I'm excited, I'm getting ready to teach my
religion and popular cultureclass in the fall, I haven't
done it in a few years. And oneof the things I always lead
with, and I want to get yourtake on this, is that there's
really no such thing asescapism. That, you know, we
watch, you know, we say, I wantto forget about the world. So
I'm gonna watch this three hourmovie. But in the end, you're
(38:13):
just really dealing with yourown reality on a different
level. And I think I see echoesof that in some of what you're
doing here. Would you, would youagree with that sentiment?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (38:21):
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I teach a
class on religion and fantasyliterature. So we read Tolkien,
we read Lewis who read, weapproach Harry Potter in various
ways. And I actually taught itonline mid pandemic. And it was
really powerful. Because itallowed my students to really
(38:45):
give voice to all the challengesthey were living through in the
children's books. It wasn'tescapist at all. It was actually
one of the it was the best classI taught online. And it was
really a reckoning. Becausefantasy, good fantasy really
brings up human vulnerability.
This is why I'm obsessed withN.K. Jemisin, who is not a
children's book author, she'sjust, in my opinion, one of the
(39:06):
best. One of the best fantasysci fi writers writing today.
And that was my pandemic readwas to go straight through
pretty much every book she'sever written. The and it didn't,
it didn't allow me to escape.
And some of it was incrediblydark. It allowed me to think
(39:27):
about how do we live throughtraumas, you know, how do we
encounter great battles, and Ithink that even though, you
know, someone like Tolkien isdoing that in a much more sort
of like high medieval Christianway. Some of the themes just,
you know, hold true. Soabsolutely, I would agree with
(39:48):
you 100%. It's not escapist atall.
Chip Gruen (39:51):
So where we always like to end up is, you know, as
as I was saying to you earlier,I'm really interested in you
know how we talk about religionwhen we talk about religion that
this isn't that what we'retalking about here is not
esoteric, but instead is reallyabout our own lived experiences
(40:13):
about us being in the worldperceiving the world, you know,
not only as scholars andacademics, but people in their
other in their professionallives and their family lives,
etc. And so I always like tofinish up with, what is the
takeaway? Like, what is thething that we should not only
sort of intellectually take awayfrom this conversation? But if
(40:35):
we are being active in theworld, if we're thinking about
putting books in the hands ofour children, or grandchildren,
or we're thinking about, youknow, how we should be in the
public square? What What shouldwe learn from this conversation?
And how should that inspire usto action?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (40:54):
Well, I'd say what we should take away is
something the poet Naomi ShihabNye Palestinian American poet,
writes, in one of her novels,she says, stories are the way
you know, stories were the onlything holding us to the ground,
I'm paraphrasing, but that imageof that, which rather than
(41:17):
flying us away, actually keepsus here with other humans
navigating our lives with otherhumans is so powerful. And
that's obviously why I think weshouldn't ban books, we should,
you know, propagate books andspread them around. In part
because we don't all live indiverse places, right? I spent
(41:41):
eight years teaching in Oshkosh,Wisconsin, which has diversity,
sure. But I was usually the onlyJew my students had ever met, or
the first Jew. racial diversitywas not tremendous there. But
books can exist everywhere. Andthat's why they're so powerful.
(42:01):
It doesn't mean that becauseyou've read "All-of-a-Kind
Family", you now know everythingabout Jews today. You don't,
it's set in 1914. But it's astart. And I think that's why we
all just need to if we want tothink about religious
difference, racial difference,all of these things, class
(42:23):
difference, even people who livein really diverse cities often
only hang out with people oftheir own class and race. We
need to at least start withempathy and with those stories,
and that's, that's why they'reso important and powerful.
Chip Gruen (42:42):
All right. Well, Jodi Eichler-Levine. Thank you
very much for sitting downtoday. I really enjoyed the
conversation.
Jodi Eichler-Levine (42:48):
Thank you so much for having me.
Chip Gruen (42:53):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. For moreinformation, and additional
programming, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com. There,you'll find our contact
information, links to otherprogramming, and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. ReligionWise
(43:16):
is produced by the staff of theInstitute for Religious and
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ReligionWise wherever you getyour podcasts. We look forward
to seeing you next time.
Welcome to ReligionWise the podcast where
we feature educators,researchers and other
professionals discussing topicson religion and their relevance
to the public conversation. Myname is Chip Gruen. I'm the
director of the Institute forReligious and Cultural
Understanding at MuhlenbergCollege and I will be the host
for this podcast.
(00:30):
Today's guest is JodiEichler-Levine, Professor of
Religion Studies and the BermanProfessor of Jewish Civilization
at Lehigh University. She's comehere today to talk to us about
her first book "Suffer theLittle Children, Uses of the
Past in Jewish and AfricanAmerican Children's Literature"
that came out in 2013.
Subsequently, she had a bookthat came out in 2020, entitled
(00:51):
"Painted Pomegranates andNeedlepoint Rabbis, How Jews
Craft Resilience and CreateCommunity". Now, what seems to
hold these two books together,and a lot of the work that Dr.
Levine does is this interest inwhat is sometimes called
vernacular religion, or popularreligion. So not high theology,
not the beliefs and practices ofleadership necessarily, but how
(01:16):
do individuals on the groundthink about, construct their own
reality by telling stories, bymaking crafts, etc, just to
contextualize her work a littlebit, one of her other research
interests, and one of the thingsshe's working on right now is
very much like Dr. Peterfeso'sepisode, she is also interested
in the idea of Disney asvernacular religion. So this
(01:39):
contextualizes her work instorytelling in a particular way
that really emphasizes howindividuals who might not
necessarily be religiousspecialists or theologians deal
with their own religioustraditions or making meaning in
their world. So I wanted to talkwith Dr. Levine about "Suffer
the Little Children" because itdeals with this very important
(02:03):
topic of narrative andstorytelling. We can see right
now in our own world, in our owncontext, where what stories are
told how they're told about theAmerican experience, for
example, or about race, orethnicity, or the founding of
our country, or differences ingender and sexuality are dealt
(02:27):
with in public conversation, orin public education, etc. So far
from being an esoteric oracademic conversation. This is
actually something that isreally important for us to think
about, as we consider the waysthat we use narrative and tell
stories in our own world. Inparticular, when talking about
(02:47):
Jewish stories, and Jewishstories of trauma and pain, and
in particular, the Holocaust.
This is something that is veryimportant to the Institute for
Religious and CulturalUnderstanding, as we host
conference for middle school andhigh school students on
Holocaust education, and thelessons of the Holocaust to
(03:10):
reduce bigotry and hate based onidentity in our contemporary
world. So today's guest is JodiEichler-Levine of Lehigh
University. Thanks very much forappearing on ReligionWise, Jodi.
Jodi Eichler-Levine (03:23):
Thank you.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Chip Gruen (03:26):
So where I wanted to start was thinking about your
work, generally. It seems to mewhat you're most interested in,
it's not high theology, it's notritual, but it's really the
things that are evidenced by theordinary, the popular, can you
talk a little bit about yourinterest in the every day, and
(03:46):
its relationship to religiousand cultural identity?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (03:49):
Absolutely, yes, I definitely do whatever is
the opposite of high theology.
When I started graduate school,back in the early 2000s, the
study of lived religion wasreally becoming very dominant in
all fields of religion, butparticularly in my own home
(04:12):
fields of Jewish Studies, andNorth American religions. So in
my own experience of watchingpeople do religion, it was
always the little things thatreally stood out to me. So in
Jewish tradition, people readfrom the Torah ritually during a
service. But what always reallyinterested me the most about
(04:34):
that was the Yad, which meanshand or the pointer that is used
to read the Torah. What aboutthat object? Or I was very
interested in the fact that youcould read fantasy literature.
And it turned out there werereligious things going on in
fantasy literature, like whoknew CS Lewis was Christian? As
(04:55):
a Jewish kid growing up in NewJersey, I actually did not
initially know that.
And so for me, I really want toget at religion where it lives,
religion where people are. So Iwrote a book about children's
literature and a book aboutJewish objects. And I'm writing
a book about religion, and theDisney company, because all of
(05:16):
these are ways people makemeaning in the world. People
like to tell stories, peoplelike to see films, people like
to make gifts for one another.
And so for me, religion issomething that people do and
hold and touch. It's notnecessarily just about debates
about the substance of God, nooffense to anyone for whom
(05:37):
that's an important question.
Chip Gruen (05:41):
So, let's dig a little deeper into the stories,
because that was your firstbook, which is "Suffer the
Little Children, Uses of thePast in Jewish and African
American Children's Literature".
Tell me about the importance ofstories in your view, right?
What does considering stories dofor us? How do they function in
the lives of the authors in thelives, the communities, in the
(06:05):
lives, in this case of thechildren? Can you just elaborate
a little bit on on why you thinkstudying these narratives is
important.
Jodi Eichler-Levine (06:15):
So in my first book, I was particularly
interested in how narratives aretied to people's religious and
political identities, and thoseare really interwoven. And so I
became interested in the storiesof Jewish Americans, of mostly
black Christian Americans, andalso of African American Jews.
(06:39):
And in both of those histories,while they are different, you
have groups that really had toreckon with pretty serious
trauma, with things like theHolocaust, or the Middle
Passage. And also groups thatwere what scholar called R.
(07:00):
Laurence Moore called religiousoutsiders, people who in terms
of the American dominantnarratives, were outsiders,
either in terms of theirreligious tradition, which was
the case for Jews, or in termsof their racial identity, which
was the case for AfricanAmerican Christians. And so what
(07:20):
those stories did, was helppeople to fit in in America in a
way that honored variousidentities. One of my favorite
examples comes from the bookseries, "All-of-a-Kind Family",
which was written by a womannamed Sydney Taylor, and the
first book was published in1951. These books were published
(07:42):
in the midst of the Cold War. Infact, the Rosenberg trial,
accusing two Jewish Americans ofspying for Soviet Russia was at
its height as the book was beingedited. And we have evidence
that some scholars haveuncovered that Taylor was
encouraged to talk about thisJewish family in ways that would
(08:05):
make them seem like goodpatriotic Americans, her editor
actually made her add a wholechapter about the Fourth of
July, the original manuscriptonly had Jewish holidays. And
the editor said, you know, thereshould be something patriotic.
And the late scholar JuneCummins has wonderful articles
about this and study thatcorrespondence. So when somebody
(08:29):
like "All-of-a-Kind Family",which you might not immediately
think of as a religious storycomes out, it's giving Jewish
Americans first of allrepresentation, it's the first
time they see themselves in achildren's book from a
mainstream publishing house, butit's also explaining them to non
Jews, millions of non Jews haveread these books, I actually
(08:51):
found them on a shelf at theSalt Lake City Public Library
once and in the Amazon commentsthat I studied, studied. A lot
of non Jews said, This is how Ilearned about Judaism. So we can
talk about you know, the thechallenges of that right, where
people go for their informationabout religion. But what, one of
(09:12):
the things narratives do isperform identity for the group
telling its story, but they alsoperform identity for outsiders,
who then encounter that throughchildren's books. And that's one
of the reasons that debatesabout narrative are so charged
because narratives are sopowerful.
Chip Gruen (09:29):
So there seems to be a push and pull here that I'd
like you to talk a little bitabout, like, on the one hand,
having minoritized groups orgroups from different religious
or cultural tradition than themajority represent those groups
to a large body of people. Buton the other hand, the work that
(09:49):
they're doing for that communityis essentially saying, we are
very similar to you, we are, weare good Americans. We are
patriotic, we, you know, we arenot so different as you might be
led to believe. And I wonderwhat, how is that American
identity? Explain that, right?
So we have on the one hand, thereligious, the cultural
(10:11):
minoritized identity. On theother hand, we have the
mainstream American identity.
What does that look like? Whatdoes that negotiation look like?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (10:21):
It's challenging. And I think that
since I wrote this book, whichcame out in 2013, there have
been newer movements like the WeNeed Diverse Books movement
hashtag, that have pushed notonly for greater representation
(10:42):
of minorities in children'sliterature, because the number
of African American children'sbook authors and illustrators is
still gross underrepresentation,but also for new kinds of
stories. Right? So the firstexample that I gave is from the
1950s, a moment of tremendousassimilation, for many groups
and of wanting to be seen asfitting in. I think that what
(11:08):
the turn we we got to in thiscentury, moved towards
recognizing different kinds ofstories. I think that the work
for example, of JacquelineWoodson, one of my favorite
authors of African American,mostly middle grade, or young
(11:30):
adult books has done is she'smoved into poetry. She has a
book that talks about rap thatuses Tupac Shakur. And so you
are starting to see children'sliterature get beyond the
anodyne, right beyond, let'sjust all tell a story about our
(11:51):
holidays and hold hands andsing. I think there's much
fresher stuff happening inchildren's literature today. But
you're quite right, that thereis this tension. There's still a
tendency, especially in picturebooks, for younger grades, to
want to focus on things like theHappy Thanksgiving story that
(12:12):
ends up completely uncritical ofthe Thanksgiving story, right,
that just sort of acts, youknow, pretends that Native
Americans were treated well, inearly America, because if it's a
book like Molly's Pilgrim, whichis a Jewish Thanksgiving story,
the Jews want to be on thePilgrim side of the equation,
(12:32):
not the Native American side,which you can't blame an author
in the 1980s for wanting to dothat. But it, it ends up being a
way of becoming American at theexpense of some difficult
historical truths.
Chip Gruen (12:47):
Yeah, so we have on the one hand, the telling of the
story of the community inquestion, and we have the
telling of the American story,right? And there's this idea
that maybe maybe those are thesame story, after all, or at
least that is one of the pushesthat we get. And I wonder if you
could talk about I mean, becausein your in your chapter about
dwelling, right, I love theThomas Tweed reference of the
(13:09):
crossing and the dwelling thing,it's a wonderful book, we'll put
we'll put that in the shownotes. In the dwell, the
dwelling, the identity ends uphighlighting things like
domesticity, economics,consumerism, you know, some of
the things that maybe wewouldn't highlight as American
religion writ large, but arecertainly some of the pillars
(13:31):
of, of American culture. Couldyou talk about and again, I
think that you've just alludedto the fact that these things
might have changed in the lastdecade, but the ways in which
domesticity and economic,economic systems are held up in
this type of literature as well.
Jodi Eichler-Levine (13:48):
Absolutely.
So yeah, I was very influencedby Thomas Tweed's definition of
religion and the idea that oneof the things religion helps us
do is make homes. We make homeswe sometimes intensify joy in
those homes, and sometimes weconfront challenges. And I think
that you can go back in Americanliterary history to Laura
(14:09):
Ingalls Wilder, whose "LittleHouse on the Prairie" books are
certainly not perfect. There'sbeen a lot of studies of them.
They certainly contain somehorrific racial tropes of
minstrelsy, at the same time,She ushers in this way of
looking at the domestic youknow, long descriptions of
dinners, Almanzo is alwayseating everything in sight,
(14:32):
discussions of how the familygets an organ and her sister
Mary plays it, how they sewtheir dresses, right? Everything
about the domestic is justoversized in "Little House on
the Prairie". And that threadreally continues through the
rest of American children'sliterature. So we have books
about quilts and the UndergroundRailroad, or about rag dolls on
(14:56):
the Underground Railroad. Wehave lots of Jewish books about
quilts as well, most famously,Patricia Polacco is "The Keeping
Quilt". And I think what's goingon there is something that the
scholar Colleen McDannell talksabout in a very well known book
called "Material Christianity",which is that religion is
(15:18):
something that is haptic,another scholar, David
Chidester, talks about hapticreligion. So something that we
feel with our hands. And so whenyou're talking about, say, the
history of Christianity, you cantalk as Colleen McDannell does
(15:40):
about Warner Sallman's portraitof Jesus Christ that was like
reproduced and became thepopular image of Jesus for
millions of American Christiansand would hang on their wall. So
what's hanging on someone'swall? And how is that part of
their religious life? Whathappens when a quilt is made out
(16:01):
of clothes that were rags as afamily escaped from Russia,
right, they escape and PatriciaPolacco tells the story of her
family's immigration through thestory of this keeping quilt and
then it becomes a ritual object.
It has multiple lives, itbecomes a wedding Chuppah or
(16:23):
canopy. And so it's kind of likemateriality is the glue. Or I
don't want to say the force eventhough I'm a Star Wars fan, but
it does kind of you know, flowthrough the home and bind people
in ways that can be quiteemotional as they live their
(16:46):
religious lives unless you arein a particularly ascetic
tradition. The odds are thatyour religious life does involve
memories of special foods thatyou eat, or ritual foods that
are supposed to be eaten in acertain way, like the Passover
supper. And so you've got all ofthese kinds of things you touch
(17:09):
and smell and feel that are partof people's religious lives.
Think about how incense smells,for example, that that evokes a
powerful sense memory for a lotof people for multiple religious
Chip Gruen (17:18):
So that's the domestic angle, the making a
traditions.
home, the dwelling angle, butthen one of the other things
that you argue is happeningthese stories, they're doing
cultural work, they'reprocessing trauma, or
remembering trauma. So in thecase, in "Suffer the Little
(17:39):
Children", on the one hand, theHolocaust, on the other hand
slavery, can you talk a littlebit about that function, not the
function of integration, buthere the function of remembering
the past?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (17:50):
Absolutely.
And in doing that, I was reallyinfluenced by a scholar named
Michael Rothberg, who encouragesus to think about what he calls
multidirectional memory, that ifwe're going to think together
with, say, the Holocaust andslavery or lynching, we're not
having a, you know, a sufferingOlympics, we're going to be
(18:10):
thinking about how these painstouch one another, in a more
subtle way. So in a lot of ways,both slavery and the Holocaust
are so dominant in how non how,let's say, white Christian
Americans understand Jews andAfrican Americans, that there's
(18:30):
more books produced on those twotopics than just about anything
else. And that's there's there'sa lot to criticize about that
right to say we should have morebooks about the happy stuff too.
But we always do have to reckonwith with trauma. And part of
why it's so important to keepteaching these books is because
so many Americans don'tunderstand the legacy of
(18:54):
slavery. Don't understand justhow brutal an institution it
was, or can't name concentrationcamps, which is something we're
seeing in surveys now. So whenJews and blacks write about
these traumas, or other peoplewrite about them, there's a way
(19:14):
in which suffering becomesredemptive. And that's something
I'm a little bit critical of attimes. Because I kind of worry
when you know, the most popularstory about a Jewish young woman
that Americans in general haveread is "The Diary of Anne
(19:37):
Frank", which is obviously animportant book and she was a
genuinely gifted writer whowanted her work to be published.
But at the same time, if we onlyhave that story of a young
Jewish girl who was murdered,and if we focus, especially
people tend to focus on thehopeful quotes towards the end
(19:59):
of the book, then we'reprocessing the trauma, but we're
also losing a lot of other partsof Jewish life. And the same
thing is true with slavery. Oneof my favorite books, though,
about slavery is JuliusLester's, "The Old African",
Julius Lester was a black Jew,he wrote a really beautiful
(20:24):
memoir of his conversionexperience to Judaism later in
life. And "The Old African" is amagical realist story that takes
us through the experience of anolder slave, and how he
literally walks back to Africaunder the ocean, and all these
ghostly things ensue. And one ofthe things I love about that
(20:46):
story is because it kind ofrecognizes that America is
hopeless. And that story Lestergives up on on America and
freedom is in this sort ofimagined landscape, something
you walk back to, under theocean. So this is a really long
way of saying that both groupsare processing trauma, sometimes
(21:12):
really eloquently in thesebooks. But when when other
Americans process these stories,they're in, at times educating
themselves about traumaticpasts. But they're also
primarily seeing dead andsuffering people. And I think
(21:33):
that's always a another sort oftension between wanting to honor
the past. You know, when I'm inthe classroom, my students come
in, they want to talk about theHolocaust, they want to talk
about slavery, they want thosestories, but not reducing
minority groups to their mosttraumatic moments. And so the
(21:56):
question becomes, how do you dothat?
Chip Gruen (22:00):
Well, you took the bull by the horns here by doing
a comparative study, which beinga through and through religious
studies scholar, I reallyappreciate comparativeism, I
think comparativeism is reallyimportant. It can highlight
things that we might not seeotherwise. But I wonder, you
know, if we think about thequestion of whose stories are
(22:21):
these, whose stories are theseto tell? Have you gotten any
pushback on that at all? Butabout dealing with both of these
bodies of material, both side byside? Considering your, your own
identity and your place in theacademy?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (22:36):
Yeah, a little bit. Um, I mean, it's
Yeah, and it's always seemed tome like if you were doing
interesting. So I'm a whiteAshkenazi Jewish women from the
East Coast. So obviously, I'mmuch closer to the identity of
the Ashkenazi Jews in the book,then, to the African Americans.
I wouldn't say that I got pushback so much as the book was
(22:57):
most read, actually, bychildren's literature scholars.
And there was a slight push backactually, in a very thoughtful
review of the book that came outafter the Black Lives Matter
movement had gotten going. Sothat's one of the things that's,
you know, true with publishing,you spend years and years
(23:19):
publishing a book that comesout. And if you're writing about
a contemporary topic, somethingnew happens and changes the
whole story. And even though inthe book, I do say, you know
that for Jews, America was thispromised land and for African
Americans, it was it was hell,it was not a promised land, it
(23:42):
was pleased someplace you werekidnapped to and tortured. But I
do say both groups are able towrite their way into mentor,
into membership. And that lookedless true. After you know, once
we got into Black Lives Matter,I certainly was aware when I
wrote the book that racism wasstill alive and well in America.
(24:05):
But I wrote the book before,before Trayvon Martin, before
Eric Garner, before so manypeople, and Trayvon Martin in
particular, I remember watchingthat trial, while my daughter
was quite young, and I hadwritten about Emmett Till in the
book I had meditated on thelynching of this young black
(24:27):
teenager, in the 1950s. And itwas it was so chilling, watching
what happened in Ferguson, andwhat later happened in countless
cities, in light of havingwritten about this, but the book
was was done, you know, and so Ithink, I think I would have had
a different ending. If, if Iwere African American, I might
(24:51):
not have written about beingable to write your way into
membership at all right? I mighthave had a different way of
thinking, at the same time, I dothink it's really important for
people to be able to write aboutgroups that they're not part of.
I think that so I didn't, Ididn't get tremendous pushback,
(25:14):
but there was that little Hey,what about Black Lives Matter?
And I'm, you know, in it, it's,it's challenging, because I
think, you know, following J.Z.
Smith, you know, I think incomparison, the magic does dwell
that we notice things when weyou know, put blue against
yellow or black and white, youknow, the the wrong metaphor,
(25:36):
but we see things in greaterrelief when we compare them. But
undoubtedly, we all wright, fromcomparative work, it is almost
impossible to write about, youour social position.
(25:57):
know, to not write aboutsomething that is not your own
identity,Unless you, unless you yourself,
we were all hybrid, but unlessyou have a deeply hybrid
identity.
Chip Gruen (26:06):
Yes, absolutely. So speaking of how things change
given current events, I mean,this seems and I want to talk to
you today about narrativebecause of current events. Here
we sit in 2022. We have allkinds of I mean, I would say
proverbial fights, but I thinkthat there are actual fights too
about, about history, aboutmemory, about what whose
(26:29):
narratives are who's about whatstories can be told that there
are countless states andmunicipalities where books are
being pulled from shelves, wherecurricula are being reviewed,
certain titles are being excisedfrom from curriculum, how does
that particular this particularhistorical moment play against
(26:53):
the idea of the crossing and thedwelling the building of
identity that coping with traumathat happens in the literature
itself? How, how do how does allthis fit together?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (27:05):
So in a really, really sad and
depressing way, I'm not entirelysurprised by our cultural moment
of, you know, banning books,again, of limiting what can be
said in curricula. I'm sadly notsurprised. I think it actually
speaks to the power of storiesto cause empathy, and lead
(27:31):
people to care about those whoare other than they are. I think
that's the threat. So whenpeople say they want to ban any
discussion of critical racetheory, aside from the fact that
they're misunderstanding thehistory of critical race theory
as a concept coming out offeminist legal scholarship,
they're really saying, let's nottalk about race. Let's not talk
(27:54):
about privilege. And I mean, wehad the example of the Tennessee
School Board, banning "Mous"because of nudity. And the
problem is, these books arepowerful, right? You can't, if
you read Art Spiegelman'sgraphic novel "Mous", you have
(28:17):
to confront not only the horrorof the camps and the Holocaust,
but the horror of thebystanders, the horror of the
neighbors, right. And that'sreally powerful stuff. I saw
that one of the books that wasbanned, I think, in Ohio, was a
book called "The PurimSuperhero", which was a PJ
(28:39):
library book about, about aJewish kid dressing up for the
Jewish holiday of Purim. And histwo dads, and it wasn't even
like a book that was like here.
Here's a book about you knowabout having gay dads, it was
just part of the story. And so Iwasn't surprised at all that
(29:00):
that book was banned, because itsuggests that queer families are
just like everybody else is inyou know, figuring out what the
costume should be dealing withfamily stresses. And so when we
see a moment like this, it'sbecause there have been so many
(29:20):
gains in children's literatureover the last say 30 years it
has become much more robustlydiverse and it has started to be
more critical of the sort ofstandard everyone comes to
America and makes it story rightlike you know, Ibram Kendi. I
will say, I haven't read"Antiracist Baby" yet. But
(29:43):
obviously, there's various newtrends in children's literature
that are not alwayscomplimentary. Jacqueline
Woodson is another person whoreally is will point out that
not everything can be mended.
Not every bridge can be built,you know, she she writes about
(30:07):
neighborhoods that have beentorn about by bridges, and you
can't always fix what's beenbroken. And so I think that that
to a lot of people, thatnarrative that America is
imperfect, or could be improved,is very threatening. And and
it's, it's, it's empathy. And Ican say more about that, but
(30:29):
I'll stop for now.
Chip Gruen (30:30):
Yeah, well, I want to follow up on that, because
one of the things that comesthrough and I want to before
we're done, I want to talk aboutfantasy, fantasy literature,
because I think that that's justfascinating, in lots of
different ways. But this ideathat you can reimagine pain, but
you can't undo it. And the ideathat children's literature,
(30:50):
particularly good children'sliterature is often subversive,
right? That we tend to thinkabout, and they all live happily
ever after as sort of thequintessential ending to a
children's book. But more oftenthan not, that's not the case,
particularly for children'sliterature that's, that's sort
of critically acclaimed andrecognized as being significant.
(31:13):
Can you can you talk a littlebit about, about children, about
subversiveness? I mean, they areon the outside right they're,
they don't have power. Theydon't have money. They don't
have political influence. Imean, there's a lot of ways in
which children can be read as,as quintessential outsiders, how
does the literature thesubversiveness of this
literature play into theidentity of these children as
(31:36):
well?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (31:37):
Yeah, children are the only
constituency of literature whogenerally can't write their own
literature. There's a scholarly,a scholar named Jacqueline Rose,
who wrote about this, thecalling it the impossibility of
children's literature. Buteveryone thinks they know what
it's like to be a child becausethey were once and we kind of
(31:59):
remember. This is where we getinto Maurice Sendak, who's far
and away my favorite. Probablymy favorite author I've ever
written about. And he famouslysaid, you know, I don't write
books for children, I write andthey say that's for children.
(32:19):
Even even fairy tales, you know,you use the happily ever after
example, but fairy tales wereincredibly dark in their
original tellings. The Grimfairy tales are just bloody and
messy. You know, the originalAndersen's story of "The Little
Mermaid" ends in tragedy. Sochildren who were used to dark
stories because childrensuffered too. You know,
(32:42):
sometimes they suffer inhorrific ways impacted by
geopolitical conflicts. Andsometimes they suffer because
it's lonely on the playground,but they suffer. And so I think
that, you know, books, a book,like "Where the Wild Things
Are", was revolutionary in theearly 1960s, precisely because
(33:03):
it was about Max's interiorvoyage, about his going off to
the land of the wild things andjust getting to be himself. And
it actually, the Wild Thingscame from a Yiddish expression.
Sendak's relatives called himvilde chaya, which means wild,
wild, animal wild living thingin Yiddish. And so I love the
(33:28):
fact that there is this Yiddishexpression at the center of this
really subversive book. So, um,children's literature has
always, if we go back tofolklore, not been just for
children, these were stories forpeople of all ages, the idea of
(33:49):
a separate shelf for children isvery modern. And those stories
have always had loss, andchallenge and they've always,
they've always turned the worldupside down. They've always
messed with the power structure.
And that's again, where Sendakis so powerful because Mickey
like in the Night Kitchen,Mickey is saying like I'm taking
control of the milk. I am themilk and the milk is in me is
(34:12):
like this battle cry. Thatactually he's the one in charge,
not the, you know, whoever'sbringing the milk.
Chip Gruen (34:20):
Yeah. And so you make this comparison in the
book. And I'm going to, to do aTolkien reference here. But
about about loss, right. And andwhile maybe we would not
consider Tolkien children'sliterature, I think it's a
(34:41):
really interesting example incomparison to some of the
stories that you talk about,because we get to the end of
"The Lord of the Rings". Andit's, it's sad. I mean, it's
unresolved. Frodo has to sailaway, you know, from everything
he knows his wounds don't quiteever heal, you know, the Shire
(35:02):
is not what it once was, youknow, there's just tremendous
loss. And, you know, you make,maybe not in that explicit
detail, but you make thatcomparison. And I wonder if you
know, thinking about fantasy andthe mechanisms of fantasy and
what gets resolved and whatdoesn't get resolved. How you
see that in some of the storiesyou've dealt with here, or
(35:23):
fantasy in general?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (35:24):
Yeah, I, first of all, aside from the
fact that I love fantasy. Ithink what Tolkien does in
particular, both Frodo's ending.
And with one of the reallyfamous lines from the books that
ends up in the movies, whereGandalf says, to Frodo, you
know, all you have to do ischoose what to do with the time
(35:48):
you are given. It's a slightparaphrase. Fantasy in its
extraordinary locations andsituations, and it's sort of
bigness forces us to reallyconfront what we would do in
(36:09):
times of tragedy or inchallenging times, like the ones
we've been living through. So Ithink that part of the power of
fantasy is to unbind. In thebook, I talk a lot about
metaphors of binding, as in thesacrifice of Isaac, and
(36:30):
unbinding. And fantasy allows usto imagine what would happen if
we were powerfully unbound? Ifwe could fly away, for example,
which I talked about in terms ofSendak and Tony Kushner's
"Brundibar", where in this sortof Holocaust metaphor, because
(36:53):
the book is based on an operathat was performed at the camp
Theresienstadt. The children areable to fly away from Hitler on
blackbirds on giant blackbirds,but they're also be lost. You
know, it's, it's this image thatshould be of liberation, but
(37:13):
it's actually the parents losingtheir children. And it's
absolutely tragic. So, fantasyshows us both horror and
liberation, depending on how weread it. And somebody like "Lord
of the Rings", you know, I thinkyou're right, that that example
of the wounds that don't heal issomething that I think anyone
(37:34):
who has been through a traumaknows that. But if you haven't,
or if you've forgotten, or youjust need to feel less alone in
it, the narrative provides thatreminder. And fantasy provides
that reminder.
Chip Gruen (37:53):
Yeah, I'm excited, I'm getting ready to teach my
religion and popular cultureclass in the fall, I haven't
done it in a few years. And oneof the things I always lead
with, and I want to get yourtake on this, is that there's
really no such thing asescapism. That, you know, we
watch, you know, we say, I wantto forget about the world. So
I'm gonna watch this three hourmovie. But in the end, you're
(38:13):
just really dealing with yourown reality on a different
level. And I think I see echoesof that in some of what you're
doing here. Would you, would youagree with that sentiment?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (38:21):
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I teach a
class on religion and fantasyliterature. So we read Tolkien,
we read Lewis who read, weapproach Harry Potter in various
ways. And I actually taught itonline mid pandemic. And it was
really powerful. Because itallowed my students to really
(38:45):
give voice to all the challengesthey were living through in the
children's books. It wasn'tescapist at all. It was actually
one of the it was the best classI taught online. And it was
really a reckoning. Becausefantasy, good fantasy really
brings up human vulnerability.
This is why I'm obsessed withN.K. Jemisin, who is not a
children's book author, she'sjust, in my opinion, one of the
(39:06):
best. One of the best fantasysci fi writers writing today.
And that was my pandemic readwas to go straight through
pretty much every book she'sever written. The and it didn't,
it didn't allow me to escape.
And some of it was incrediblydark. It allowed me to think
(39:27):
about how do we live throughtraumas, you know, how do we
encounter great battles, and Ithink that even though, you
know, someone like Tolkien isdoing that in a much more sort
of like high medieval Christianway. Some of the themes just,
you know, hold true. Soabsolutely, I would agree with
(39:48):
you 100%. It's not escapist atall.
Chip Gruen (39:51):
So where we always like to end up is, you know, as
as I was saying to you earlier,I'm really interested in you
know how we talk about religionwhen we talk about religion that
this isn't that what we'retalking about here is not
esoteric, but instead is reallyabout our own lived experiences
(40:13):
about us being in the worldperceiving the world, you know,
not only as scholars andacademics, but people in their
other in their professionallives and their family lives,
etc. And so I always like tofinish up with, what is the
takeaway? Like, what is thething that we should not only
sort of intellectually take awayfrom this conversation? But if
(40:35):
we are being active in theworld, if we're thinking about
putting books in the hands ofour children, or grandchildren,
or we're thinking about, youknow, how we should be in the
public square? What What shouldwe learn from this conversation?
And how should that inspire usto action?
Jodi Eichler-Levine (40:54):
Well, I'd say what we should take away is
something the poet Naomi ShihabNye Palestinian American poet,
writes, in one of her novels,she says, stories are the way
you know, stories were the onlything holding us to the ground,
I'm paraphrasing, but that imageof that, which rather than
(41:17):
flying us away, actually keepsus here with other humans
navigating our lives with otherhumans is so powerful. And
that's obviously why I think weshouldn't ban books, we should,
you know, propagate books andspread them around. In part
because we don't all live indiverse places, right? I spent
(41:41):
eight years teaching in Oshkosh,Wisconsin, which has diversity,
sure. But I was usually the onlyJew my students had ever met, or
the first Jew. racial diversitywas not tremendous there. But
books can exist everywhere. Andthat's why they're so powerful.
(42:01):
It doesn't mean that becauseyou've read "All-of-a-Kind
Family", you now know everythingabout Jews today. You don't,
it's set in 1914. But it's astart. And I think that's why we
all just need to if we want tothink about religious
difference, racial difference,all of these things, class
(42:23):
difference, even people who livein really diverse cities often
only hang out with people oftheir own class and race. We
need to at least start withempathy and with those stories,
and that's, that's why they'reso important and powerful.
Chip Gruen (42:42):
All right. Well, Jodi Eichler-Levine. Thank you
very much for sitting downtoday. I really enjoyed the
conversation.
Jodi Eichler-Levine (42:48):
Thank you so much for having me.
Chip Gruen (42:53):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. For moreinformation, and additional
programming, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com. There,you'll find our contact
information, links to otherprogramming, and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. ReligionWise
(43:16):
is produced by the staff of theInstitute for Religious and
Cultural Understanding ofMuhlenberg College, including
Christine Flicker, and CarrieDuncan. Please subscribe to
ReligionWise wherever you getyour podcasts. We look forward
to seeing you next time.
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