SOURCE: Powers, Peter Kerry. “Disruptive Memories: Cynthia Ozick, Assimilation, and the Invented Past.” MELUS 20, no. 3 (fall 1995): 79–98.

In the following essay, Powers discusses Ozick's opinions about Jewish identity and the role of the Jewish-American author.

He that applieth himself to the fear of God, And setteth his mind upon the Law of the Most High, He searcheth out the wisdom of all ancients, And is occupied with the prophets of old.

—The Wisdom of Ben Sira

The popular and academic successes of Jewish writers in the 1950s and 60s led John Updike—in what now seems high comedy—to a sustained fret over the popularity of things ethnic in American literature.¹ While Updike's paranoia about his unmarketable ethnicity has abated, the predominance and importance of Jewish writers certainly have not. Even as I was writing this essay, Philip Roth won the P.E.N./Faulkner award for 1993. By almost...