Meïr Aron Goldschmidts jødiske forfatterskab

Resumé

Informed by David Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism: A Western Tradition (2013), the article demonstrates how nineteenth-century Danish Jewish writers such as Georg Brandes and Meïr Aron Goldschmidt addressed political, social, and cultural issues by using the contemporary discourse about Jews and Judaism. The article elaborates on the contrasts between Brandes and Goldschmidt’s Jewish identities and delineates how Baruch de Spinoza served as a model of the independent Jewish intellectual. The article argues that Goldschmidt is one of the first multilingual minority writers in Danish literature. In his literary work, Goldschmidt utilizes his double vision as a Jew and a Dane to create radically new narrative, thematic, and stylistic features. In his first novel, A Jew (1845), Goldschmidt problematizes his Jewish life experience by including more than 200 terms in Yiddish and Hebrew and explaining them in footnotes. Goldschmidt’s Jewish work highlights the complex dynamic between minority and majority in Danish society. This makes it a valuable contribution to the current Danish public discourse about emigrants and refugees.