I Married a Jew
| "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]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c Lewis, Gretchen (January 1939). "I Married a Jew". The Atlantic.
- ^ a b Khazan, Olga (4 February 2015). "Who Wouldn't Want to Marry a Jew?". The Atlantic.
- ^ a b Chait, Jonathan (29 October 2013). "1939 Atlantic Author's Jewish Husband Way Too Sensitive About Anti-Semitism, Hitler". New York.
- ^ Sparber, Max (17 November 2016). "I Married a Jew". Brityiddish.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Catalogue of Copyright Entries
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- 1939 essays
- Works originally published in The Atlantic (magazine)
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- Works about antisemitism
- Antisemitism in the United States
- Religious identity
- Interracial marriage in the United States
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- German-American history
- 1939 in Judaism
- Nazis in the United States