It could be argued that Jewish identity has never been easy to
track.  As Jews have endured constraints posed by antisemitism,
acculturation, assimilation, and antisecularism, there has been a
powerful shift in how Jewish identity has been rhetorically offered
to American audiences.  Following the Holocaust, American Jews began
to hold the power to shape how their identity is represented to
literate and mass audiences.  This course will follow this struggle,
one that reflects the difficulty in determining the seeds of that
identity.  Moreover, this course will begin to examine one current
phenomenon, the emergence of "tough Jews," those Jews either real or
representational (and sometimes radical) who are determined to close
the door on victimization, emasculation, essentialism, and self-
hatred.