T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

jews to flee like nomads from their own home lands to differentIn a state of unsettlement and unrest. Until 1948 theyhad no country of their own. They remained slaves in Egypt anddwelt among the Babylonians, lived in the Hellenicworld, stored at the bier of the Roman empire,flourished in the Mohammedan civilization, emergedfrom a twelve-hundred-year darkness known as theMiddle Ages, and rose to new intellectual heights inmodern times. (Dimont 1964,151Jewlsh hlstory, for all the glory of great names llke Jesus,Paul, spinoza, Marx, Einstein, Freud - is an unparallelledchronicle of discrimination, persecutiion, exile and attemptedgenocide.In America the Jews suffered the same disabilities as theother lmmlgrant groups. Ever since thelr flrst settlement inthat country, they have reslsted the tyranny of the majority.Resistance has tightened the internal cohesion of the Jewishcommunity. Suffering has chastened the Jews and acted as acoheslve force of unlon and solidarity. Their four-thousandyear history has taught the Jews not only 'suffering' but also'compassion' as a way of llfe.Whlle sharlng the deep concern of other Jewish novelistsfor the predicament of modern man, Bernard Malamud goes furtherand asserts that only suffering and compassion can redeemmodern man. Chastened by suffering, hls characters mellow under