Editing Nadine Gordimer (section)

===Jewish themes and characters===
Gordimer has occasionally given voice to [[Jewish]] characters, rituals and themes in her short stories and novels.

[[Kenneth Bonert]], writing in ''[[The Forward]]'', expressed the view that Jewish identity was rarely explored in her work: "For all of her Jewish heritage and personal connections (not only were her parents and family Jews, so were both of her husbands), overt signs of Jewishness are largely absent from her body of work. It's impossible to guess from the books alone that Gordimer was Jewish; and it would be easy to assume the contrary, since whenever Jews do appear in her fiction, they tend to be seen through the eyes of a non-Jew, looking in with almost anthropological fascination onto an alien culture."<ref name=Kenneth/>

In ''The Later Fiction by Nadine Gordimer'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 1993),  edited by Bryce King, Michael Wade fostered a discussion on Jewish identity as a repressed theme in Gordimer's novel, ''[[A Sport of Nature]]'' (1987): "Any exploration of the Jewish theme in Nadine Gordimer's writing, especially her novels, in an exploration of the absent, the unwritten, the repressed." Wade noted parallels between Gordimer's white, Jewish social milieu with those of Jewish writers living in urban areas on America's east coast: "Jewishness functioning as a mysterious but ineluctable cultural component of individual identity and expressed as an aspect of the nominally Jewish writer's particular, unique quest for identity in a heterogeneous society".<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=155 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

[[Benjamin Ivry]], writing in ''[[The Forward]]'', highlighted several examples where Gordimer employed Jewish characters and themes: "Gordimer proved that indeed anything was possible when examining the personal significance of [[Yiddishkeit]]."<ref name=forwardng/>

In 1951, she wrote "A Watcher of the Dead" for ''[[The New Yorker]]''.<ref name=watcher>Gordimer, Nadine. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1951/06/09/a-watcher-of-the-dead A Watcher of the Dead] ''The New Yorker''. 9 June 1951</ref> It centres on the death of a [[Jewish]] grandmother and her family observing the ritual of ''[[Shemira]]'', as they arrange for a ''[[shomer]]'' to watch over the body from the time of death until burial.<ref name=watcher/> The story later appeared in ''[[The Soft Voice of the Serpent]]'' the following year. 

In the same collection, Gordimer's story, "The Defeated" appeared. It follows the narrator's friendship with a young Jewish immigrant, Miriam Saiyetowitz. Miriam's parents operate a Concession store among the mine compound stores. They later study together at university to become teachers, and Miriam marries a doctor. The narrator visits Miriam's parents on an impulse at their store, they feel abandoned by Miriam, who rarely visits from [[Johannesburg]] with their grandson. The narrator explained "I stood there in Miriam's guilt before the Saiyetovitzes, and they were silent, in the accusation of the humble." For Wade: "Miriam's punishment of her parents for their otherness is severe and complete, and conceals Gordimer's own desire to avenge her sense of displacement on her parents for their otherness."<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=157–158 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

In her debut novel ''[[The Lying Days]]'' (1953), a major character, Joel Aaron, son of a working class Jewish shopkeeper, acts as a voice of conscience. He has progressive, enlightened views about apartheid. His ethical stances and sense of Jewish identity and ancestry impresses his non-Jewish white middle-class friend, Helen: "His nature had for mine the peculiar charm of the courage to be itself without defiance."<ref name=forwardng/> Joel is known for his intelligence and integrity. In contrast to Miriam in "The Defeated", Aaron effortlessly accepts his parents and their background.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=158 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref> He is a [[Zionist]] and makes [[aliyah]] to [[Israel]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=156 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

In ''[[A World of Strangers]]'' (1958), there is less Jewish character development, with only a reference to an older man at a party with a thick Eastern European accent with an attractive blonde spouse.<ref name=wade1/> In  ''[[Occasion for Loving]]'' (1963), a Jewish character, Boaz Davis appears, but for Wade: "the only Jewish thing is his name".<ref name=wade1/>

For Wade, Gordimer saw her father as the most emblematic symbol of Jewishness in her household: "she was compelled to make him both the sign of Jewishness and the object of her rejection." The Jewish otherness is also attributed to the patriarch in "Harry's Presence", a 1960 short story by Gordimer. It is notable as Gordimer's only treatment of the Jewish immigrant experience that does not include or mention black characters.<ref name=wade1>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=162 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref> 

In 1966, Gordimer wrote an original story for ''[[The Jewish Chronicle]]''. "The Visit" includes an extract from the [[Talmud]] and follows David Levy returning home from a Friday night [[Shabbat]] service.<ref name=jcng>[https://www.thejc.com/news/world/prickly-gordimer-anti-apartheid-star-ossrbpqg 'Prickly' Gordimer, anti-apartheid star] ''The Jewish Chronicle''. 17 July 2014</ref> In the same year she published "A Third Presence" for ''[[The London Magazine]]''.<ref>Gordimer, Nadine. [https://thelondonmagazine.org/fiction-a-third-presence-by-nadine-gordimer/ A Third Presence] ''The London Magazine''. Vol 6, No. 6, September 1966. Accessed on 27 July 2024</ref> The story follows two Jewish sisters, Rose and Naomi Rasovsky. According to Wade: "The story's ending indicates that Gordimer has not yet broken through the wool-and-iron barriers of confusion and conflict aroused by the question of her Jewish identity."<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=164|chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

In 1983, she published "Letter from His Father" in ''[[The London Review of Books]]'', a response to [[Franz Kafka]]'s "[[Letter to His Father]]". In the letter, Gordimer makes references to [[Yiddish]], [[Yom Kippur]], [[Aliyah]], [[Kibbutzim]] and [[Yiddish theatre]].<ref>Gordimer, Nadine. [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n19/nadine-gordimer/letter-from-his-father Letter from his Father] ''The London Review of Books''. Vol 5 No. 1, 20 October 1983</ref><ref name=forwardng/>

In her 1984 novella, ''[[Something Out There]]'', the reader is first introduced to Stanley Dubrow, who uses a camera paid for with his [[Bar Mitzvah]] money to capture a photo of a mysterious, dangerous beast, a "something" stalking Johannesburg's affluent white suburbs.<ref name=rush>Rushdie, Salman (29 July 1984). [https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/29/books/something-out-there.html?searchResultPosition=1 Something Out There] ''The New York Times''. Retrieved on 8 March 2025</ref> Later in the novella, Dr Milton Caro, a Jewish pathologist, witnesses the beast from the golf course. Gordimer contrasts his distinguished medical career with his [[petit bourgeois]] upbringing: "the gruff, slow homeliness of a Jewish storekeeper's son whose early schooling was in Afrikaans."

Hillela, a Jewish South African woman, figures as the protagonist of ''[[A Sport of Nature]]'', (1987).<ref name=forwardng/> Wade concluded: "By writing ''A Sport of Nature'' in the transcendent style she chose, she tried again to give meaning to her personal muddle over Jewish identity and experience, this time by creating  Hillela, whose name represents the deepest moral and prophetic tradition in Jewish history, and who, united with Reuel (=[[Jethro]]), the great (not-Jewish) guide and adviser of the beginnings of that history, is able to resolve the inherent contradictions of (the writer's?) white-South-African-radical-Jewish identity. But Hillela is perhaps the most striking example in all Gordimer's writing of 'the Jew that went away', and it is not clear that she succeeds in creating the new sign she seems to have sought."<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=171 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

In the short story "My Father Leaves Home", that appears in ''Jump: And Other Stories'' (1991), Gordimer describes an Eastern European ''[[shtetl]]'', presumably the hometown of the title character. The [[anti-semitism]] the character faced in Europe makes him more sensitive to racism against black people in South Africa.<ref name=forwardng>[https://forward.com/culture/202047/the-jewish-life-and-times-of-nadine-gordimer/ The Jewish Life and Times of Nadine Gordimer] ''The Forward''. 14 July 2014</ref>

In Gordimer's final novel ''[[No Time Like the Present]]'' (2012), one of the central characters, Stephen, is [[half-Jewish]] and married to a [[Zulu people|Zulu]] woman. His nephew's [[Bar Mitzvah]] prompts a meditation on his own Jewish background and he fails to grasp his brother's embrace of [[Judaism]].<ref name=Kenneth>[https://forward.com/culture/430943/the-gift-nadine-gordimer-gave-to-me/ The Gift Nadine Gordimer Gave to Me] ''The Forward''. 3 October 2019</ref>