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I Married a Jew

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"I Married a Jew"
Short story by Gretchen Lewis
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)essay/article
Publication
Published inThe Atlantic
Media typePrint
Publication dateJanuary 1939

"I Married a Jew" is an essay by Gretchen Lewis published in The Atlantic in the January 1939 issue.[1] It discusses her marriage to a Jewish man, referred to as Ben in the article. Herself being a Christian White American of German descent, she describes her marriage as an interracial marriage. The article also discusses the assimilation of Jews and other minorities into a white American mainstream culture. She writes that she frequently tries "to see things from the Nazis' point of view," to "the hurt confusion" of her Jewish husband.[1]

The essay became the subject of extensive commentary after The Atlantic published its archive on the Internet in 2008, leading to the article's rediscovery and going viral.[2][3] The commentary focused on the topics of white privilege and the prejudices in America at the time, and pointed out her naïveté and the fact that "the author, a liberal-minded young woman, manages nonetheless to be spectacularly wrong about just about everything."[4] Jonathan Chait wrote that "she tries to take a balanced, blame-both-sides-equally approach to the anti-Semitism issue" and called her "the world’s first recorded Shiksplainer," a portmanteau of the disparaging Yiddish term shiksa, meaning a non-Jewish woman or girl, and mansplainer.[3] Olga Khazan wrote that the "tone-deaf" article serves as a cautionary tale against Islamophobia today, and noted that it "echoes current conversations about European Muslim identity."[2]

The article was published anonymously, but her name was published in the Catalog of Copyright Entries.[5] According to the article, Lewis was around 29 years old when it was published in 1939.[1]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c Lewis, Gretchen (January 1939). "I Married a Jew". The Atlantic.
  2. ^ a b Khazan, Olga (4 February 2015). "Who Wouldn't Want to Marry a Jew?". The Atlantic.
  3. ^ a b Chait, Jonathan (29 October 2013). "1939 Atlantic Author's Jewish Husband Way Too Sensitive About Anti-Semitism, Hitler". New York.
  4. ^ Sparber, Max (17 November 2016). "I Married a Jew". Brityiddish.[permanent dead link]
  5. ^ Catalogue of Copyright Entries