Wisse, whose doctorate was in literature, is described by literary scholar Edward Alexander as one of a group of scholars who earned PhDs in English literature in the 1960s, but moved into Jewish Studies in the 1970s and 1980s, applying the modern critical methods of literary scholarship to Yiddish and Hebrew texts.[5] Wisse describes Saul Bellow as her favorite English-language novelist.[6]
Wisse has taught at McGill, Stanford, New York, Hebrew and Tel Aviv universities. While teaching at McGill she developed a "pioneering" graduate program in Jewish studies".[7] She left McGill to teach at Harvard in January 1993.[8]
According to one critic, Wisse's work has been characterized "by the sharpness of her insight, by her unwillingness to retreat from a skirmish and by the inability of even those who disagree with her to deny her brilliance."[7] She won the 1988 Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish literature.[9] She received one of the 2007 National Humanities Medals.[10] The award cited her for "scholarship and teaching that have illuminated Jewish literary traditions. Her insightful writings have enriched our understanding of Yiddish literature and Jewish culture in the modern world."[11]
She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Jewish Review of Books and a frequent contributor to Commentary. She dedicated her last book, Jews and Power, to the editor, Neal Kozodoy.
Yiddish literature
Joyce Carol Oates described The Best Of Sholem Aleichem, a collection of short stories by Sholem Aleichem which Wisse edited with Irving Howe as, "Like all good anthologies... more than simply a heterogeneous collection of pieces linked by common theme or author: it is also a statement, an argument, an attempt at redefinition."[12]
Schlemiel
The Schlemiel as a Modern Hero, Wisse's first book, a rewriting of her doctoral dissertation "in a vigorously fresh and witty style," is about the schlemiel as both a type and a literary genre with its origins in the Yiddish literature in the period of Jewish emancipation.[13]
She has angered feminists by arguing in favor of traditional marriage and gender roles, condemned Jewish participation in Communism and has highlighted Jewish culpability for its crimes.[citation needed] Wisse's criticism of the women's liberation movement as a form of neo-Marxism has been extensively cited by critics of radical feminist politics. She wrote:
Women's liberation, if not the most extreme then certainly the most influential neo-Marxist movement in America, has done to the American home what communism did to the Russian economy, and most of the ruin is irreversible. By defining relations between men and women in terms of power and competition instead of reciprocity and cooperation, the movement tore apart the most basic and fragile contract in human society, the unit from which all other social institutions draw their strength.[17]
"Most of all," according to a May 2014 profile in The Forward, Wisse has been "one of the most forceful conservative voices in support of Israel, arguing that criticism of the state repeats ingrained habits of Jewish accommodationism and self-blame."[18] She sees no moral equivalence between the Arab and Israeli sides in the Middle Eastern conflict:
There is no such thing as an Arab-Israel conflict, ... there is an Arab war against Israel, there is an Arab war against the Jewish people's right to a state.[19]
Wisse has been criticized for writing that "Palestinian Arabs [are] people who breed and bleed and advertise their misery"[20][21][22] According to Alexander Cockburn, Wisse is bothered by the "failure of nerve" of American Jewish intellectuals and their "squeamishness about the shootings and beatings meted out to the breeders".[23] Following protests and Harvard University's decision to cancel Marty Peretz's speech after Peretz wrote "Muslim life is cheap, especially to other Muslims",[24] Wisse condemned "Groupthink" at Harvard and defended Peretz, saying that "to wish that Muslims would condemn the violence in their midst is not bigotry but liberality".[25] Wisse is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.[26]
Stating in a November 2016 interview that she voted for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 Presidential election in the United States despite his being "16th on [her preferred] list of Republican candidates for president,"[27] Wisse endorsed Trump for re-election in 2020 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.[28]
Books
Free As A Jew, A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation (2021). Post Hill Press.
The Well, by Chaim Grade; original title: Der brunem
Festschrift
Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon: Essays on Literature and Culture in Honor of Ruth R. Wisse, ed. Justin Cammy et al., Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University: distributed by Harvard University Press, 2008.
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