Ginsberg and Roth Choose Their Judaism I take these things for granted. Tradition and cultural awareness for me is another thing I can shrug off as too much homework. For my generation, it's fashionable to embrace other traditions: Mendhi tattoos for Italians, matzo ball soup for Pakistanis, McDonald's for Nigerians. When did we learn to borrow from everyone else? When did I learn to come to terms with my identity? The civil rights movement started it all. In quick succession, Asians demanded recognition, Native Americans wanted to carve out a place in their country, women wanted to burn their bras. Why not Jews in America? Allen Ginsberg used his own heritage and his mother's death to establish that identity, while Philip Roth used a fictional narrative to tell the story of a Jewish family in America. Why compare these works? Both are creative accounts of American Jewish culture, one through poetry and the other through a fictionalized self. Both use Judaism to express feelings related to tradition or memory. Both are literary works from the 1960s that deal with Jewish identity rather than black, white, or other identities. But I'm getting ahead of myself...Allen Ginsberg says his work "Kaddish" is "a composition finally completely free, the long line breaking within it into short units of staccato breath - annotations of a spontaneous phrase after the other... ." (Allen 417). "Kaddish" is a prayer of atonement, which is expressed through rhythm, repetition and incantation. Ginsberg uses “Kaddish” to express his understanding of his own identity, and also to fit that identity into the structure of Judaism. Ginsberg's mother, Naomi, went through a series of mental hospitals and psychological epidemics since Ginsberg's childhood, eventually receiving a lobotomy and dying shortly after. The Ginsberg family never held a traditional "Kaddish" because too few men were present to do so. Two years later, Ginsberg performed the ceremony with then-friend Zev Putterman, and later wrote his own version of "Kaddish" (Asher). He begins his "Kaddish" by enchanting Naomi's spirit by recalling memories of her and her identity. “I walk to the / Lower East Side – where you walked fifty years ago, little / girl – from Russia, eating the first poisonous tomatoes in / America – scared on the pier” (Allen 195). In Part IV, Ginsberg goes on to sing to his mother with the phrases "O mother", "with yours" and "with your eyes"..