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John Irving always felt like an outsider — is that all he thinks there is to Jewishness?
By John Irving
Simon & Schuster, 432 pages, $30
In The Cider House Rules, John Irving opens with a urological concern.
The nurses in the boys’ division of the St. Cloud Orphanage spend their new arrivals’ early days “checking that their little penises were healing from their obligatory circumcisions.”
Decades later, in Queen Esther, a muddled sequel of sorts, about a New England family and their ill-at-ease scion’s ambivalent Jewish identity, Irving considers the procedure as a sign of the covenant.
Esther Nacht, an orphan from that same institution — self-described as “a Viennese-born Jew who grew up in an orphanage in Maine, her mother murdered by anti-semites in Portland!” — becomes uniquely invested in what to do with the foreskin of her soon-to-be-born son.
It’s not her decision alone to make. Esther is only the surrogate mother, carrying the boy for Honor Winslow, the New Hampshire girl whose parents took Esther from the orphanage in the 1920s to be her au pair. Honor and Esther agree on one matter: The boy, Jimmy — who will be circumcised but will not have a bris — won’t be brought up Jewish, “for his own sake.”
Esther, for her part, has no choice. Her mother insisted she know about her Jewishness, and by dint of her murder at the hands of unclearly-motivated antisemites, unwittingly entrusted that education to the clueless Dr. Larch and his staff at St. Cloud. Irving, whose preoccupation with circumcision may betray him as a closet intactivist, seems to have a narrow and at times troubling idea of what it means to live Jewishly.
While Irving’s body of work is decidedly goyische, Jews have appeared sporadically. A mother in A Prayer for Owen Meany cries antisemitism over the title character’s rudeness (he didn’t know she was Jewish). Billy Abbott, in 2012’s In One Person, sides with Shylock while reading Merchant of Venice.
Irving makes no bones about being on the side of the oppressed — even vengeful — Jew. As he said in a 2024 interview with The Times of Israel, “I’m not Jewish, but I’ve always been pro-Israel, and I’ve always been pro-Jewish.” This novel, if coming from a left flank, with a stridently pro-choice and anti-religion cast of characters, may be his version of Project Esther.
The author’s identification is embodied here by Esther’s biological son Jimmy Winslow. Through his adoptive family he’s a faculty brat at Penacook Academy in New Hampshire, Irving’s latest stand-in for Phillips Exeter, where his stepfather was a teacher, and where he nursed a certain alienation.
“I always felt that I didn’t belong there; I always felt like a foreigner,” Irving told The Times, and so he connected with Jewish wrestling teammates. Throughout the book Jimmy is stuck with an unshakable “belief in his intrinsic foreignness.” (He later becomes an author who writes a novel called The Doctor’s Rules, about the orphanage at St. Cloud, which seems rather familiar.)
That Irving is not Jewish isn’t a problem, given Jimmy isn’t really either, beyond the fact of his biological parents, the tall, elusive Esther and a petite wrestler (always with the wrestling, and the nebulous paternity) named Moshe Kleinberg — aka “Moses Little Mountain.” Like Irving, he’s an “ally,” sticking up for a teammate named Jonah Feldstein (incidentally the given name of Superbad star Jonah Hill) roughed up by antisemitic toughs named Marcel and Marceau (ironically the stage name of a Jewish mime).
For the purposes of this plot, which mostly follows Jimmy, Jewishness is but a mark of difference, and a distinction without much of one. Except for fear.
“It’s too late for you to be Jewish — you didn’t grow up afraid,” Esther tells Jimmy, in one of her laconic letters.
Esther, with no real Jewish education, nonetheless had a Jewish calling, first going to Vienna in the lead-up to World War II, where she served as a courier to exiled Austrian Jews in Czechoslovakia. She later makes aliyah (Irving helpfully translates this and other Hebrew terms to English) and appears to work for the Haganah and later Mossad in some unknown capacity. Esther’s Jewish journey is one her adoptive family doesn’t feel comfortable tackling, and Irving doesn’t either, so we mostly hear the details in passing via the mailbox.
The book is both wildly preoccupied by Jewishness and antisemitism and completely uncomfortable with illustrating how either functions beyond some rote, inelegantly conveyed history lessons on Mandatory Palestine. It even recuses itself by disappearing Esther as she pursues her goal to be the best Jew possible, which makes you wonder why any of the Jewish meshugas is even there in the first place.
When, in the final stretch, the plot places an adult Jimmy in Jerusalem amid the Lebanese Civil War two characters, who seem sympathetic at first, collapse his empathy toward Palestinians by affirming the ugliest slander imaginable: The Arab population wants to wipe out all Jews, and indoctrinate their children to think the same.
“This is what Esther was protecting him from,” Jimmy concludes, “the eternal conflict, the everlasting hatred.”
To Irving, the Jewish condition is being hated, and not much else. It’s a relief when he drops this theme, for about half the novel, to recount a zany sex plot in Vienna (it always waits for Irving’s characters) where Jimmy befriends a German Shepherd named “Hard Rain” (for the Dylan song), and plots to “knock up” the lesbian partner of his roommate to dodge the draft in Vietnam.
Somewhere inside here is a reflection of the predicament of the biblical Queen Esther, whose tale provides an epigraph (“For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish”).
Like Jimmy, Esther had a Jewishness she had to suppress in order to function as a secret advocate for her people. Only Jimmy is told to ignore his heritage — not just the Jewish parts, but the Mayflower pedigree of his adoptive family. That this may come as a loss is dutifully acknowledged, but a bit beside the point.
With regard to Esther herself, Irving’s read of the Megillah is misguided, opting to see her namesake as “wreaking vengeance on Haman.” The Winslows call her an “Old Testament girl,” and Irving seems to think most of that book boils down to “kill-or-be-killed” talion law.
Many critiques I can level at the novel are already voiced within it.
At various points the book points to Esther’s “vagueness” saying it’s as if she “lived in the background, like peripheral characters in a novel” Later Jimmy states there is “something more mythical than actual about Esther. Like a literary character,” with the mysterious loss of her arm seeming more “symbolic than real.” Pretty much. Pointing this out doesn’t make up for her deficiencies as a character. The fact that her name means “hidden” is hardly an excuse for obscuring nearly everything about her.
Where the Book of Esther is lean, cogent and contains nothing extraneous, Queen Esther is flabby and unfocused. Jimmy’s grandfather, Thomas, an English teacher with a love for Victorian fiction, insists “real life isn’t plotted like a novel.” This novel isn’t either.
But Thomas, a Boston Brahmin just out of place in smalltown New Hampshire, also offers some sage words when it comes to Esther. Whenever the family’s concerned for her undefined escapades in Europe or the new State of Israel, he reminds them “Jewish business is her business, not ours.”
If only Irving was canny enough to keep out of it too.
The post John Irving always felt like an outsider — is that all he thinks there is to Jewishness? appeared first on The Forward.
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EU-Funded NGO Backed Online Platform Targeting Jewish Businesses in Catalonia
Supporters of Hamas demonstrate outside the Israeli Embassy in Madrid, Oct. 18. Photo: Reuters/Guillermo Yllanes Gonzalez
The controversial online platform mapping Jewish-owned businesses, schools, and Israeli-linked companies in Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain, was promoted by an EU-funded non-governmental organization.
On Tuesday, NGO Monitor — an independent Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — released new information showing that Engineers Without Borders – Catalonia (ESF-C) and Universities with Palestine (UAP) jointly promoted the BarcelonaZ project on social media, identifying themselves as its primary backers.
First reported by the local Jewish outlet Enfoque Judío, the interactive map was launched by an unidentified group claiming to be “journalists, professors, and students” on the French-hosted mapping platform GoGoCarto.
As a publicly accessible and collaboratively created online platform, the map marked over 150 schools, Jewish-owned businesses — including kosher food shops — and Israeli-linked as well as Spanish and international companies operating in Israel, labeling them as “Zionist.”
“Our goal is to understand how Zionism operates and the forms it takes, with the intention of making visible and denouncing the impact of its investments in our territory,” the project’s website stated.
According to NGO Monitor’s newly released report, ESF-C is a European Union–funded NGO running a Youth Internship Program subsidized by the Public Employment Service of Catalonia, with 40 percent co-financing from the European Social Fund Plus — the EU’s primary program for funding employment, education, and social initiatives.
The EU Financial Transparency System shows that ESF‑C partnered on two EU grants worth about $2.8 million from 2019 to 2023 and received at least $164,000 in funding.
Jewish leaders in Spain have strongly denounced the BarcelonaZ initiative, warning that it fosters further discrimination and hatred against the community amid an increasingly hostile environment in which Jews and Israelis continue to be targeted.
“The mapping and boycotting of Jewish businesses in Catalonia is an echo of some of the darkest chapters in history, including the prelude to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany,” the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Director of European Affairs, Shannon Seban, said in a statement.
“The organizers of this initiative put a target on the backs of Spanish Jews, at a time when Jews are being hunted across the globe, as seen so horrifically in Australia just three weeks ago,” she said, referring to the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which killed 15 people and wounded at least 40 others.
“Clear incitement to violence of this nature must not be platformed or tolerated by internet companies or government authorities,” Seban continued.
On its website, ESF-C describes its mission as promoting “a fair international society, which does not exclude anyone,” and highlights its commitment to “non-denominationalism and non-partisanship.” Yet, the NGO’s 2024 annual report also asserts that it “cannot ignore the Palestinian resistance, a clear expression of the struggle for freedom of all oppressed peoples.”
In a social media post, the NGO also accused Israel of “genocide” during its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, describing its platform as “a resource designed to inform, raise awareness, and mobilize the educational and student community in Catalonia.”
“The attacks that began on Oct. 7 have involved water and electricity cuts, the boycott of essential water infrastructure, and the contamination of Palestinian water sources,” ESF-C wrote in an Instagram post, without mentioning the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.
“The violation of these basic rights is a key weapon used by the State of Israel to perpetuate genocide,” the statement read.
NGO Monitor also revealed that UAP is a network of Catalan faculty- and student-led anti-Israel organizations that co-sponsored the BarcelonaZ project.
Last year, UAP organized a “People’s Court” at Complutense University of Madrid on what it called the “Palestinian genocide,” with attendance from several terror-linked NGOs and individuals, including Samidoun, Masar Badil, Al-Haq, and Raji Sourani, NGO Monitor reported.
Several community organizations have filed complaints with GoGoCarto, demanding the site’s removal and arguing that it violates French laws against hate speech and discrimination.
Earlier this week, GoGoCarto announced it had removed the BarcelonaZ project from its website after local groups denounced the initiative as blatantly antisemitic and dangerous.
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Knesset member from Netanyahu’s party decries ‘new enemy’: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens
(JTA) — In an address to the Knesset on Monday, Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz decried what he said was a “new enemy” rising within American politics: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
“We are used to enemies from outside. We fight terror tunnels of Hamas. We fight the ballistic missiles of Iran. But today I look at the West, our greatest ally, and I see a new enemy rising from within,” said Illouz, who is originally from Canada originally, in an English address. “I am speaking of a poison being sold to the American people as patriotism. I’m speaking of the intellectual vandalism of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.”
Illouz’s comments come as the Republican party has been roiled in recent months by debates over the mainstreaming of antisemitic influencers within the GOP.
טאקר קרלסון וקנדיס אוונס הם לא פטריוטים – הם ונדלים אינטלקטואלים. הם טוענים שהם נלחמים בשמאל הקיצוני, אבל הם בדיוק אותו דבר: אותה שנאה למערב, אותו רלטיביזם מוסרי ואותו ניסיון להחריב את המורשת שלנו ואת המערב. pic.twitter.com/ygN70WtGEw
— דן אילוז – Dan Illouz (@dillouz) January 7, 2026
In October, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson hosted far-right antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes on his platform, igniting outrage from Jewish conservatives who warned of the growing reach of antisemitic voices.
Owens has long made antisemitic rhetoric a hallmark of her YouTube channel, which has 5.7 million subscribers. A recent analysis of her content by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that three-quarters of her videos that mentioned Jews were antisemitic.
“They claim to fight the woke left. They are no different than the woke left,” said Illouz. “The radical left tears down the statues of Thomas Jefferson, Tucker Carlson tears down the legacy of Winston Churchill. The radical left says Western civilization is evil, Candace Owens says the roots of our faith are demonic. It is the same sickness.”
Carlson and Owens are among the right-wing influencers who have made opposition to Israel a centerpiece of their output, at a time when support for Israel is declining among conservatives, particularly younger conservatives.
In November, Amichai Chikli, the Israeli Diaspora minister, echoed Illouz’s concerns in an interview with the New York Post, telling the outlet that he was “far more concerned about antisemitism on the right than on the left.” The comments were notable because Chikli is himself a right-wing, anti-“woke” warrior who, in a first for Israel, has stoked relationships with far-right European parties that in some cases have ties to the Nazis.
“One of the worst moments was when a popular conservative broadcaster called one of the most vile Holocaust deniers in America ‘one of the most honest historians.’ That legitimizes hate — it normalizes it,” Chikli told the New York Post, appearing to refer to Carlson’s past praise of the Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper.
Chikli also warned against the rising influence of Fuentes and Cooper among young Americans.
“Antisemitism has become fashionable for Gen Z,” Chikli continued. “They listen to podcasts, not professors. When people like Nick Fuentes or Darryl Cooper are treated as thought leaders, that’s dangerous. These are neo-Nazis.”
The Times of Israel asked Illouz whether he was worried about appearing to interfere with American politics. “Defending the alliance between America and Israel is not interfering,” he said. “I am in touch with many pro-Israel conservatives who know that Candace and Tucker are a threat to America as much as to Israel.”
Top GOP officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have largely dismissed calls from Jewish conservatives, including Ben Shapiro, and others to draw a line against antisemitic influencers.
“Do you think you are the first to try to delegitimize the Jewish people? We are the people of eternity,” said Illouz toward the conclusion of his address, adding that “we will be here long after your YouTube channels are forgotten dust.”
The post Knesset member from Netanyahu’s party decries ‘new enemy’: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens appeared first on The Forward.
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Texas Joins Legal Action Against American Muslims for Palestine as Move to ‘Counter Hamas Terrorism’
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Dec. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Cheney Orr
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday announced the state would join Virginia and Iowa in the filing of a legal brief against the nonprofit activist group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and other organizations which he characterized as “radical” in order “to combat Hamas terrorism.”
“Radical Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas must be decimated and dismantled, and that includes their domestic supporting branches,” Paxton posted on the social media platform X.
“Terrorism relies on complex networks and intermediaries, and the law must be enforced against those who knowingly provide material support,” Texas’s top legal officer added in a statement. “My office will continue to defend Americans who have been brutally affected by terrorism and ensure accountability under the law.”
In November, Texas began more aggressive legal efforts against organizations long alleged by researchers and law enforcement to be part of a domestic Hamas support network in the United States. Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Nov. 18, the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.
A month later, Paxton filed a motion defending the designation in court, countering a suit by the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters of CAIR. “My office will continue to defend the governor’s lawful, accurate declaration that CAIR is an FTO [foreign terrorist organization], as well as Texas’s right to protect itself from organizations with documented ties to foreign extremist movements,” Paxton said at the time.
In its latest statement, Paxton’s office described how on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, the groups AMP and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) “declared that they were ‘part of’ a ‘Unity Intifada’ under Hamas’s ‘unified command.’”
“Those who have been victimized by Hamas’s terrorism brought claims against the radical groups under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act,” the statement continued. “Attorney General Paxton’s brief is in support of the victims and was filed to ensure terrorist supporters are brought to justice.”
The legal brief references the “unity intifada” and “unified command” sentiments before stating, “They should be taken at their word. And just like their predecessor organizations — convicted or admitted material supporters of Hamas — they should be held accountable.”
The brief charges, “Defendants here are alleged to have provided material support for Hamas, the brutal terrorist regime that not only oppresses millions in Gaza but that also murdered more than a thousand innocents and kidnapped hundreds more. States have an interest in ensuring that valid claims brought under material support statutes are allowed to be litigated in court and that any violators are held accountable.”
Last year, Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares — whose name appears at the lead of the brief — sought to press AMP to reveal its funding sources, which a judge ruled it needed to do May 9, 2025.
The latest brief provides a history lesson about how AMP and NSJP “did not begin their material support for Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023; rather, their material support has been going on for decades — both as the current organizations and through predecessor entities. Indeed, AMP was founded after a predecessor organization and five of its board members were convicted of providing material support for Hamas.” The brief describes the network beginning when “first, the Muslim Brotherhood founded the ‘Palestine Committee’ in 1988 to fund the terrorist organization Hamas.”
This network included “several organizations providing Hamas financial, informational, and political support,” the legal document explained. “Among those organizations were the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), organizations founded and controlled by senior members of Hamas leadership.”