Jewish Memory, Moral Vision, and Creative Imagination in The Puttermesser Papers

Abstract

This paper examines the imaginative landscape of The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick, a landscape rich in symbolic resonance yet consciously estranged from conventional representational demands. It argues that for Ozick, imagination is a form of liberty—but one intricately bound by ethical and theological consequence. Through the figure of the golem and the protagonist’s creative impulses, the novel dramatizes the tension between literary invention and Jewish moral tradition. Drawing on the dual symbolic registers of Xanthippe and Leah, Ozick explores the divided yearning of the Jewish creative writer: the drive to construct new worlds and the simultaneous desire for return, redemption, and textual rootedness. Ultimately, the paper frames Ozick’s fiction as a form of midrashic resistance, where imagination becomes both an act of ethical risk and a mode of reconnecting with exilic memory.