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Literature · Antisemitism

Essay | Sylvia Plath’s Private Jewish Problem

Summarizing Carl Rollyson in Moment · Published Wednesday, July 9, 2025
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JL;DR SUMMARY Carl Rollyson explores Sylvia Plath's complex and contradictory relationship with Judaism and Jewish identity. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish Identity  Jewish References  Literary Analysis  Cultural Attitudes  Personal Correspondence  Holocaust Imagery  Sylvia Plath  Daddy Poem  Ted Hughes 

Places mentioned

York, United Kingdom
"On October 12, she repeated to her mother that she had to be careful about the Yorkshire-Jew quality of his family."
Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States
"Philip McCurdy, mentioned that Plath grew up in antisemitic, WASPy Wellesley, MA, but he did not comment otherwise on Plaths own attitude toward Jews."
London, United Kingdom
"Anti-Jewish expressions, coming from intellectuals I interviewed, were commonplace, and no one I encountered in social gatherings seemed to consider that I might be offended by them."
Poland
"The same was true in 1979-80 when as a Fulbright scholar I was teaching in Poland, which was rife with antisemitic jokes, some of them targeted at Golda Meir."
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
"On January 25, 1946, a neighbor and friend of the Plath family took 13-year-old Sylvia to Temple Israel in Boston."
South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States
"In August 1951, Plath was on a Massachusetts beach, taking a break from her babysitting job, writing in her journal and watching fat, gold-toothed, greasy-haired Jews sunning themselves."
Bridgeport, Connecticut, United States
"During the summer of 1952, Plath dated a Jewish boy who, she writes, told her about his grammar school in Bridgeport, CT, and how he always came home with a bloody nose until he learned how to fight."
New York, United States
"In the fall of 1955, sailing to England for her Fulbright year, she had a shipboard romance with Carl Shakin, an NYU physics major."
New York, United States
"On a visit to New York City in the spring of 1953, she mentions sitting at a table in Delmonicos for a stimulating evening with very liberal Jews talking about racial prejudice and religion."
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
"At Cambridge University she met Mallory Wober, whom she called a jewish greek god."
France
"Sitting with Ted waiting for a room in the lobby of a French hotel: Slimy dark curly Jewish Americans saunter down, expensive tweed jackets; lets sneak out and not pay."
North Tawton, Devon, United Kingdom
"At a New Years 1961 event in North Tawton, where she had just moved with Hughes, she observed short, dark, Jewy looking Mrs. Young."

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Cairo Item ID 56552
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Retrieved 2025-07-10 05:30:45 UTC
Curated 2025-07-10 08:32:01 UTC