• Women, Love, and the Reform Jewish Mission:Jewish-Christian Marriage in Emma Wolf's Other Things Being Equal and its Literary Successors¹
• Jessica Kirzane (bio)

In her 1892 debut novel Other Things Being Equal, Emma Wolf depicts a romance between a Jewish protagonist, Ruth Levice, and a white Protestant man, Dr. Kemp, culminating in their decision to marry. Despite Ruth's father's initial disapproval, he comes to assert that "mentally, the woman was of the same stratum as the man. Physically, both were perfect types of pure, healthy blood…Religiously, both held a broad, abiding love for man and God."² The father's description of the union between these two individuals as one between equals is at the heart of the novel's utopian premise: that equality between (white) Christian and Jew, man and woman, can be conceived of as possible through a liberal, universalizing perspective, and within the privileges of the shared bourgeois society in which the protagonists find themselves. Wolf's novel proclaims this marriage as evidence of the progress that women have made in the era of New Womanhood, as Ruth exceeds her frail mother's capacity and becomes a partner in her marriage. This evolutionary approach toward woman's growing independence mirrors Wolf's attitude toward interfaith relations in the novel. Wolf's narrative is not only one about a young woman's growing independence. It is also a story about a marriage between a Jewish woman and a Christian man, using that [End Page 289] union as a model for the American public sphere, a potential future of equality between Jews and Christians and between men and women.³

In 1896, in direct response to Wolf's novel, Dr. Friedrich Kolbenheyer, a prominent Austrian-born obstetrician, penned a novella, "Jewish Blood," in opposition to Wolf's optimistic stance on marriage between a Jew and a Christian. He intervenes as a voice of male, and medical, authority to warn against what he sees as the tragic loss of Jewish reproductive capacity should Jewish men choose Christian women as their mates. Utilizing a racialized conception of "blood," he participates in a broader American discourse that "trumpeted the grave dangers of interracial sex" as something deleterious to human fertility, a material iteration of a "broader cultural fear of generational discontinuity."⁴ He makes a case for the preservation of Jewish "blood" through endogamous Jewish marriage and reproduction.

In 1908, Bettie Lowenberg, a contemporary of Emma Wolf and a fellow member of the San Francisco Jewish women's literary community, offered another response to Other Things Being Equal in the form of a long novel, The Irresistible Current. Going beyond the marriage Wolf envisions for Ruth and Dr. Kemp, Lowenberg paints a portrait of a cast of characters yearning for and predicting a kind of universal monotheistic utopia. Through her idealistic portraits of romance, she collapses the bounds of Protestant Christianity and Reform Judaism through mutual love and shared universal faith.

Placing Kolbenheyer and Lowenberg's responses alongside Wolf's Other Things Being Equal, this essay demonstrates that Wolf's work was central to a national literary conversation about Jewish racial and religious identity within a white Christian American public sphere. Examining these works together uncovers a turn-of-the-twentieth-century literary conversation about white Jewish-Christian romance centered on how new scientific and social movements might revolutionize Jewish life in relation to their Christian neighbors, and the role of Jewish women [End Page 290] in particular in shaping Jewish religious and societal norms and futures in a turn-of-the-twentieth century American context.⁵

The models of pluralist integration and the potential for assimilation outlined in Wolf's, Kolbenheyer's, and Lowenberg's narratives are predicated upon the perspectives and experiences of "middle-class Jews who have achieved economic stability, and, with that, a degree of social equality," in Lori Harrison-Kahan's description. The readers, writers, and protagonists of these narratives are Jews who do not merely have the "potential to become Americans" through assimilation, but who "can pass effortlessly" proving that they "already are."⁶ It is precisely the problem of a difficult-to-pinpoint Jewish difference that occupies these narratives...

• 妇女，爱情与改革犹太使命：艾玛·沃尔夫《其他事物平等》中的犹太基督教婚姻及其文学继承者¹
• 杰西卡·基赞（Jessica Kirzane）

艾玛·沃尔夫（Emma Wolf）在1892年的处女作小说《其他事物平等》中描述了犹太主角露丝·里维斯（Ruth Levice）和白人新教徒肯普博士之间的恋情，最终他们决定结婚。尽管露丝的父亲最初不赞成，但他断言：“从心理上讲，女人与男人处于同一阶层。从生理上讲，这两种都是纯净，健康血液的完美类型……在宗教上，两者对男人和上帝都有着广泛而持久的爱。” ^2个父亲将这两个个体之间的结合描述为平等之间的关系是小说的乌托邦式前提的核心：（白人）基督徒与犹太人（男人和女人）之间的平等可以通过自由主义，普遍化的观点来设想。 ，并在主人公发现的共同资产阶级社会的特权之内。沃尔夫的小说宣称这段婚姻是新女人时代女性取得进步的证据，因为露丝（Ruth）超出了她脆弱的母亲的能力并成为了婚姻的伴侣。这种对女性日渐独立的进化方法反映了沃尔夫对小说中宗教间关系的态度。沃尔夫的叙述不仅是关于一名年轻女子日益独立的故事。[第289页]工会是美国公共领域的典范，是犹太人和基督徒之间以及男女之间平等的潜在未来。³

1896年，直接回应沃尔夫的小说，奥地利著名的妇产科医生弗里德里希·科尔本海耶（Friedrich Kolbenheyer）博士写下了中篇小说《犹太血》，以反对沃尔夫对犹太人与基督徒之间的婚姻持乐观态度。他以男性和医学权威的身份进行干预，以警告他认为，如果犹太男人选择基督教妇女作为伴侣，犹太人生殖能力的悲剧性丧失。通过种族化的“血统”概念，他参加了更广泛的美国演讲，“吹嘘异族性行为的严重危险”是对人类生育有害的东西，是“更广泛的文化对世代不连续性的恐惧”的实质性重复。⁴他为维护犹太人的“血统”提出了理由

1908年，艾玛·沃尔夫（Emma Wolf）的当代人，旧金山犹太妇女文学界的同伴贝蒂·洛文伯格（Bettie Lowenberg）以长篇小说《不可抗拒的潮流》的形式对《其他事物平等》提出了另一种回应。洛夫伯格超越了沃尔夫为露丝和肯普博士所设想的婚姻，描绘了一幅人物向往并预测一种普遍的一神论乌托邦的画像。通过理想主义的浪漫主义肖像，她通过相互的爱心和共同的普遍信仰，打破了新教基督教和犹太教改革的界限。

在沃尔夫的《平等的其他事物》中，将科尔本海耶和洛文伯格的回应放在一边，这表明沃尔夫的作品是在白人基督教徒公共领域内有关犹太种族和宗教身份的全国文学对话的核心。一起审视这些作品，发现了二十世纪初关于白人犹太基督教徒浪漫史的文学对话，其话题集中在新的科学和社会运动如何相对于其基督教邻居，改变犹太人的生活，以及犹太妇女的作用[结束[第290页]，特别是在20世纪初的美国背景下塑造犹太人的宗教，社会规范和未来。⁵

Wolf，Kolbenheyer和Lowenberg的叙述中概述的多元化整合和同化潜力的模型是基于“已经实现经济稳定并因此获得一定程度的社会平等的中产阶级犹太人的观点和经验”的。在洛里·哈里森·卡汉（Lori Harrison-Kahan）的描述中。这些叙述的读者，作家和主角都是犹太人，他们不仅具有通过同化的“成为美国人的潜力”，而且“可以毫不费力地传递”证明自己“已经”。⁶这些叙述恰恰是难以精确指出的犹太人差异的问题...