Odysseus in Los Angeles: European, American and Yiddish Echoes in a Hebrew Bildungsroman—And Identity

Abstract

This article argues that while the classical European Bildungsroman typically affirms national identity through the formation of individual identity, the Hebrew Bildungsroman tends to expose the seams of collective identity and render it problematic.

A close reading of And This Is the Light (1946), a Bildungsroman by Israeli author Lea Goldberg (1911–1970), examines its affinities with the European model as well as its revision of genre conventions. Focusing on the representation of America, the article uncovers a dynamic of exoticism and its unravelling: The protagonist’s fascination with a distant, imagined America reveals not only her personal identity dilemmas but also broader tensions within interwar European Jewish communities and, in a broader sense, the disillusionment of the American Dream for them.The final section here links the authenticity of identity—central to the Bildungsroman—to the authenticity of the novel itself. An archival discovery enables a confrontation between fantasy and reality: the heroine’s desire for a Jewish immigrant who appears to have become fully American, even “native,” gives way to the recognition that such reinvention is ultimately illusory. Through this exploration, the forgotten figure of a Yiddish poet active in 1930s Los Angeles reemerges.