A Study of Jewish Community and Jewish Literature in East End : A Cultural Studies Approach

我们研究的目的是找出是什么让英国的犹太社区，尤其是伦敦东区的犹太社区，如此独特，与世界上其他犹太社区区别开来，以及这种独特性如何反映在英国的犹太文学中。我们首先调查了伦敦东区犹太社区发展的历史背景，自19世纪初以来，大批犹太人涌入该社区。伦敦东区被涂上了犹太文化的色彩。特别是它的街头文化，也可以说是意第绪文化，与当地的伦敦文化相融合，产生了一种引人注目的新城市文化。这种丰富的犹太文化传统在戏剧中得到了最好的体现，罗伯特·克罗斯在他的一篇启发性的文章中调查了英国犹太剧作家的特殊性，特别关注了史蒂文·伯克夫，这篇文章包括在我们的最终报告中。田口哲也则从民族关系的角度阐释了犹太文化融入英国文化的方式，认为犹太人的实验对今天英国多民族、多文化的城市想象的形成有很大的贡献。

The purpose of our research was to find out what made the Jewish community in Britain, particularly that of East End, so unique and distinguished from other Jewish communities in the world, and consequently how this unique nature was reflected in British Jewish literature.We have investigated, first of all, the historical background in connection with the development of the Jewish community in East End into which the waves of Jewish people had migrated since the turn of the 19^<th> century. East End was to be tinted with Jewish culture. Particularly its street culture, Yiddish culture if you like, was blended with native cockney culture, which resulted in the production of the strikingly new urban culture.This rich Jewish cultural tradition was best represented in drama and Robert Cross investigated the specific nature of British Jewish playwrights with special attention to Steven Berkoff in his enlightening article which is included in our final report. Tetsuya Taguchi, on the other hand, elucidated the way the Jewish culture assimilated itself into British culture in terms of ethnic relations and concluded that the Jewish experiment contributed a great deal to the making of today's multi-ethnic and multi-cultural urban imagination in Britain.