Lovesong: Becoming a Jew
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In Lovesong: Becoming a Jew Julius Lester begins by declaring this truth of his own self-identity first formally accepted while he was in retreat at a Trappist monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts: "I have become who I am. I am who I always was. I am no longer deceived by the black face which stares at me from the window. I am a Jew" (Lester 1). At Lovesong's end Lester concludes that "the essence of Chosenness" is a mixing of the "joyous and mournful", that is, a gladness for the gift which has been given and a bit of sorrow at how much responsibility such a gift entails (Lester 243). In discovering who he is Lester has moved along his chosen path which has intentionally mixed the traditions of two of America's most dominant minorities, the blacks and the Jews. Part of the explosive nature of Lovesong is that in its pages Lester indicates that before he could reformulate his identity he first had to erase it. In choosing to recast his black identity into that of a Jewish child of God, Lester straddles two separate experiential worlds often marked by racial exclusivity and society's prejudicial rejection. A large part of Lovesong's power stems from Lester's uncommon ability to celebrate the minority status of both his black racial inheritance and his chosen Jewish faith.Writing in the Partisan Review Leonard Kriegel asserts that the fear and suspicion that exists between blacks and Jews is due to the "false image" which they have of each other (Kr
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by the Jewish scrolls and rituals but that he was overcome with a "surge of sudden and wondrous love whose name I did not know" (Lester 28). This mystical experience on an otherwise normal afternoon in Nashville, Tennessee stays with him and can be vividly recalled years later. Lester indicates that the God of his Father is foreign and insufficient for his own experiences. He has lost the God of his childhood and he is unsure where to turn. Lester suggests that he has murdered his childhood faith and abandoned the God of his father who seemed to function like "some CPA of Morality" recording his every curse word, failing or sin (Lester 29). These details of abandonment and searching are important since they set the scene for Lester's willingness to reach past his childhood and enter into a new phase of identity, culturally and spiritually at odds from where he has been. It also appears significant that his attraction for Roma Jones, his desire that she seduce him, underscores his spiritual inching toward Judaism. Here Lester, perhaps subconsciously, relies upon the centuries old mystical trope of God appearing before his Chosen one in the guise of a beautiful women. Lester records elegantly how the merging of his black rac
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Approximate Word count = 2807
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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