The trial of Judaism — a recurring theme among Jewish writers — provides the basis for Josephine Zadovsky Knopp's assertion that the Jewish novel constitutes a coherent literary genre. She offers evidence by examining the writings of Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, I. B. Singer, and Nelly Sachs, and by presenting the first extensive treatment to date of André Schwarz- Bart and Elie Wiesel.
These novelists, writing in several languages and a variety of styles, are linked together by their Jewish backgrounds and their dependence on an essential core of Jewish history, experience, tradition, and outlook.
Knopp points out that the tendency of Jews to test their ancient beliefs in the modern world is expressed in the recurrent use of the trial of Judaism as a central theme. She recognizes and examines the underlying philosophy of mentshlehkhayt, a particularly Jewish form of humanism that serves to unify Jewish writing as seemingly disparate as the European novels of the holocaust and Jewish- American fiction.
As explained by Knopp, the trial of Judaism takes three forms: the trial of God, the trial of Jewish tradition, and the trial of the Jews. Wiesel, conceding the presence of evil in God — God's share of responsibility for the holocaust — believes that the Jew must rise against God, but without renouncing his faith.
Malamud is preoccupied with moral evolution — the development of man into mentsh, the discovery of the ways of mentshlehkhayt, the conversion into the essential Jew. Bellow suggests that Jews who are alienated in the contemporary world have forgotten tradition and grown away from their roots.