Why is it often difficult to see parallels? Do we resist seeing them? Need one oppression cancel out another? Would the recognition that it is not ei… - Evelyn Torton Beck

I had managed to rationalize my shock and dismay when I found the narrator of Ruby fruit Jungle (by Rita Mae Brown) describing the fat Jewish girl Barbara Spangenthau as someone who "always had her hand in her pants playing with herself, and worse, she stank. Until I was fifteen I thought that being Jewish meant you walked around with your hand in your pants." In 1974, as an emerging lesbian, I didn't want to admit that the movement's leading fiction writer was basing her humor on age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes. I simply couldn't afford to take it in. So I kept silent. In those early years of struggle it seemed unworthy to make a fuss. And worse-it seemed divisive. I could not yet claim my anger. I wanted too much to belong...Bertha Harris' novel lover shocked me by its reliance on Jewish stereotypes, associating Jews with violence, sex and money. Jewish physical characteristics are consistently seen as exotic and dangerous...while there are quite a number of Jewish characters in Jan Clausen's short story collection Mother, Sister, Daughter, Lover, not one of them has any positive attributes.

I want the radicalism of the very outrageous, very outspoken, very political lesbian-feminists, Maxine Feldman, Robin Tyler, Alix Dobkin, and Linda Shear to be recognized as part of the Jewish radical-activist tradition in Eastern Europe. As comics, Feldman and Tyler follow the tradition of Jewish storytellers and wedding jesters (who warned the brides against marriage), whose job it was to keep the community laughing and crying, revealing it to itself: “Jewish women within the movement have often been the ones to change their names. . . . My last name is obviously very Jewish. Someone once asked me why I hadn't changed my name. I said to them, "I think you better check your anti-Semitism. Why haven't you asked Meg Christian?" (Maxine Feldman)

That virtually no reviews of these highly-praised and widely-read authors mention anti-Semitism is a symptom of how little consciousness there is of this issue. Fortunately, excellent guidelines that would help raise consciousness are available. Paul E. Grosser and Edwin G. Halperin in Anti-Semitism: The Causes and Effects of a Prejudice, include an extended discussion of how to analyze anti-Semitism in works of literature while keeping in mind the integrity and responsibility of the artist.