World of Our Fathers

Eliezer Greenberg

1976

To think of the culture brought over by the immigrant Jews as a “mere” folk culture is a patronizing error, though an error often indulged in by later generations of American Jews. There was, of course, an abundance of folk materials as these had arisen in eastern Europe—dances and jokes, proverbs and songs, legends and superstitions. There were…

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Creator Bio

Eliezer Greenberg

1896–1977

A prominent literary critic and lifelong leftist, Irving Howe was the quintessential New York intellectual, a label he popularized in the 1960s. Born in the Bronx, New York, he turned a quarrelsome temperament into a vocation, writing for and editing intellectual journals, including Partisan Review, Commentary, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books, criticizing capitalism and championing democratic socialism. After rejecting Judaism as an adolescent, he changed course dramatically, immersing himself in Yiddish literature and the world of East European Jewish immigrants. Howe lectured widely and taught literature passionately. Dissent, the journal he founded and edited for four decades, survived him, continuing his legacy.

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