Long Island Compromise
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
(Random House)

Of the three middle-aged Fletcher siblings whose perspectives are told in Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s extremely funny-yet-serious second novel—which was published on July 9, 2024—it pains me to admit that I am a Nathan. Nathan’s the worrier, ramped up to 11 for art’s sake, but I see where Nathan’s coming from. You never know if an old tree that’s been there for hundreds of years might fall on you, is the sort of thought Nathan expresses in Long Island Compromise. That I can relate to. I have wondered about trees. Whereas his kid brother, nicknamed Beamer, stoned out of his mind on drugs some of which I’d never heard of, behaves in ways so irresponsible it’s almost painful (in a good way, as in, the writing is impressive) to read about them.

Nathan and Beamer are a yin to a yang, or more like two sides of a black-and-white cookie. Beamer is a man overflowing with what the biological determinists would call testosterone: no risk untaken, no woman unavailable to him. All id. Nathan’s a little weenie—a Nathan’s—afraid of his own shadow.

There is also a sister, Jenny. She’s the scholar, the rebel, the nose job rejecter. (Rhinoplasty was evidently de rigueur in wealthy Jewish circles on 1998 Long Island; my memory of 1998 Manhattan is that they were viewed among otherwise similar Jews—snobbishly—as very Long Island, so it tracks.) She seems like the sort of person who’d extract herself from a narrow, cossetted suburban upbringing and do great things, but she flounders because… well, because of a family curse.

Carl Fletcher, their mega-rich factory-owner father, was briefly kidnapped for ransom when Beamer and Nathan were young, and just before Jenny was born. This seems like a spoiler but is how the book opens. The siblings’ curse is an impossible-to-disentangle mix of growing up with their traumatized father never reckoning with his experience, and the trust funds making it so that they never need to work. That financial necessity is the mother of getting your act together, to borrow and botch an adage, is, superficially, the point of the book. But there’s far more to it.

***

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a New York Times journalist, known for her celebrity profiles, though the piece of hers I think about the most is an essay on The Rules, the 1990s dating guide advising women to pretend not to be into men so as to seduce those men. I remember enjoying her 2019 novel, Fleishman is in Trouble, but not to this extent. I don’t remember basically hurling it at everyone being like, read this immediately.

Long Island Compromise picks up on some of the same themes as Fleishman, including marital woes and the resentments the merely upper middle class can feel towards the rich. It’s the story of the Fletchers, a massively wealthy Reform Jewish family living in something like Great Neck that isn’t Great Neck, told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator who grew up with the Fletchers, but without their means. The narrator has a distinct voice and doesn’t shy away from an editorializing comment or fact-check, but only brings in a first-person I near the end, just the once. All the reader knows of the storyteller is that this is someone with a scoop on the Fletchers. It’s fiction, but with real-life inspiration: the 1974 kidnapping of Long Island, NY steel factory owner Jack Teich; Brodesser-Akner knows the family, and she wrote about the story as a form of advance promotion for this novel.

I wrote about the real-life 1974 kidnapping of Jack Teich — the one that inspired my new novel, Long Island Compromise — and the way that trauma holds on. It changes, and, if you’re lucky, it morphs. But in my experience, it never really goes away. https://t.co/B4GcjJ7YWL

— Taffy Brodesser-Akner (@taffyakner) July 7, 2024

There’s a nostalgia to the book, with its quaintly pre-2020 preoccupations. Daughter Jenny introduced as uninterested in shopping and primping, in what seems like a hint of a gender-topics plotline to come. She is instead a garden-variety (albeit depression-prone) straight woman, vacillating between the draw of the nice boy next door and that of the charismatic cad. And there’s a plot arc around the fact that what the Fletchers got rich producing—polystyrene, known as Styrofoam—now has a terrible environmental reputation. I kept expecting Jenny—a lefty labour organizer—to take a Greta Thunberg turn and denounce her family specifically for making Earth-destroying microplastics, but environmentalism is at most an afterthought.

There are some brief nods to contemporary culture wars, with #MeToo alluded to as on the horizon, and in the painful scene where Beamer thinks he’s written a brilliant script but finds himself facing a sensitivity reader of sorts who alerts him to the problematicness and cultural appropriation and such. Beamer pivots to deciding that he will write about oppression in an #OwnVoices manner, because everyone agrees that Jews are oppressed, right? Poor Beamer, never did stand a chance.

***

The number of times I thought, this, this is the funniest line in the book, is substantial. We learn, of a secondary character who has spent the previous section berating Jenny for being rich and hiding this fact about herself, “Andrew left New Haven soon after he was fired and went to work at his father’s hedge fund.” Any other writer would have said something about how it turned out Andrew was a hypocritical (not to mention antisemitic) rich kid himself, but Brodesser-Akner just drops this detail with utmost elegance. Boom, Andrew interlude over.

We learn that the town of Middle Rock had been called Duty Head, but that it lost that name “immediately when the mayor went to cut the ribbon and that new train station and heard someone say the name Duty Head aloud.” There are passages about families having, or not having, microwaves that would alone be reason to read this book.

Being a woman myself, I cannot speak to whether Brodesser-Akner has cracked the supposedly uncrackable code and entered the minds of male characters, a la Adelle Waldman with The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. She gets details about the menfolk right from what I’ve observed, particularly the stuff where Beamer (who, recall, puts anything and everything into his own body) is quietly judging his wife for getting work done on her face. He thought she was so much prettier before, when they first met! So like a man to forget that, cosmetic interventions or not, women’s faces shift away from conventional ideals as we age.

And the novel’s title, and what it refers to, suggests we no longer need to sit around wondering who will be the next Philip Roth.

***

To speak of the Jewishness of the novel is expected, certainly in this venue. And here I realize the thing to do is to enumerate the references to Reform temple and to Orthodoxy, to the rabbi character, to Hadassah, to the Holocaust, to Israel Bonds, to the way that, much like trauma, the propensity to give out sports-team-themed yarmulkes crosses generations. Bar mitzvah scenes serve the function that a wedding will on a Midsomer Murders. Intermarriage, dybbuks, eating bacon, not eating bacon, it’s all in there.

There are also Jewish in-jokes, at least I think there are. Is the Fletcher patriarch “Zelig” because of the 1983 Woody Allen movie of the same name? (Would have to be, given the role of impersonation in Zelig Fletcher’s origin story.) Does Jenny, in a bout of listlessness, consider “marine biologist” as a career possibility in reference to George Costanza’s fake career? (A stretch, but I like it.)

But it’s impossible to read the book and not see it as being about the hostages. Yes, even though it is not, objectively, about that, because it couldn’t be.

As a strictly chronological matter, Brodesser-Akner started writing Long Island Compromise well before Oct. 7, 2023. But books are published into the worlds that exist when they appear, and it is now all but inevitable that a book about how you can think you’re safe—specifically, that you, as a Jew, as a Jewish family, have found safety—and then all of a sudden someone sneaks up at you and the next thing you know, you’re kidnapped and tortured. Kidnapped and tortured by someone who sees your comfort as at their expense. (Carl’s kidnappers claim to be working on behalf of Palestinian liberation, but this turns out to be part of what is effectively gibberish. The enemy is within, is all I’ll say.)

There’s a passage in the book (more than one, but it’s one in particular coming to mind) about the precariousness of it all, about how the Holocaust and associated horrors and desperation are always lurking. No, the individual Oct. 7 abductees were not Styrofoam gazillionaires, but they were Israelis or others present in Israel who thought they were secure in Israel, who couldn’t have known what was coming for them, and indeed who’d have seemed paranoid if they’d anticipated anything of the kind. And no, being held hostage for over a year is not the same as being locked up for ransom for a week, but the thematic question of the impact on an individual and those close to them resonates.  

How are others not seeing this? According to The Forward reporter Mira Fox, “Even their trauma isn’t particularly Jewish; anyone could be kidnapped.” A sentiment I’d have agreed with on Oct. 6, 2023.

Must Jews be defined by trauma? Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s sharp new novel offers a surprising answerhttps://t.co/yJ8XfO2b68

— TheForwardFeed (@TheForwardFeed) July 8, 2024

Last summer, in his review for the leftist publication Jewish Currents, critic Mitchell Abidor argues that the book “struggles to say anything of substance about being a Jew in America today.” Did he and I read the same book? The safety question—are Jews safe, do Jews feel safe—is central to the postwar Jewish experience and so much more so of late.

In a review of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s new novel, Long Island Compromise, Mitchell Abidor argues that the book ultimately reproduces the nullity at the heart of contemporary American Jewish life.https://t.co/WU6LbXfHpj

— Jewish Currents (@JewishCurrents) August 2, 2024

Brodesser-Akner’s own main non-fiction interventions in this area are from the before-times—a 2015 Tablet essay about antisemitism and accusations of “Jewish privilege”; a 2021 New York Times review of Joshua Cohen’s novel The Netanyahus with insightful personal-political digressions—but you know what? That’s fine. Maybe some moments elude the essay, and are best processed through novels, even ones not directly written about them to begin with. 

The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at pbovy@thecjn.ca, not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. She is also on The CJN’s weekly podcast Bonjour Chai. For more opinions about Jewish culture wars, subscribe to the free Bonjour Chai newsletter on Substack.

The post The safety question: Jewish existential dilemmas in Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s hilarious ‘Long Island Compromise’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

There was a staggering 340 percent increase in total antisemitic incidents worldwide in 2024 compared to 2022, according to newly unveiled research from the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Announced on Monday, the new report presented by the two groups to Israeli President Isaac Herzog also showed that antisemitic incidents skyrocketed globally last year by nearly 100 percent compared to 2023.

Researchers chose to analyze data starting in 2022 in order to assess a year without a major event inflaming antisemitism, namely the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The report documented similar levels of antisemitic incidents growing in both North America and Europe last year. The United States saw an increase of 288 percent over the totals of 2022, while antisemitic atrocities in Canada rose by 562 percent. Meanwhile, incidents in France surged by over 350 percent, and the United Kingdom experienced a spike of 450 percent, with nearly 2,000 acts of antisemitism in the first half of 2024 alone.

In Asia, the report found a new emergence of antisemitism in a region with previously fewer incidents. Chinese social media sites featured a boost of antisemitic content and conspiracy theories which Israel’s embassy in the state called a “tsunami.” Japan and Taiwan saw anti-Israel protests and Nazi salutes, both formerly rare.

The report found mixed results in South America, where Chile’s antisemitic incidents increased 325 percent, but Argentina saw a slight decrease. Anti-Israel statements from Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also provoked tension with the Jewish state and an increase in online antisemitism.

In South Africa, antisemitism increased by 185 percent, while Australia saw a jump of 387 percent.

Analyzed at a global level, the report found that 41 percent of incidents featured antisemitic propaganda, 15.5 percent included violence, and approximately 25 percent focused on Israel.

The research also showed online antisemitism surged, increasing over 300 percent. Analysts found that classical antisemitism made up 38.5 percent of reported content, Holocaust denial accounted for 21.1 percent, and anti-Zionist material reached comprised 15.4 percent.

At an event held at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, two leaders from the World Zionist Organization (WZO) — chairman Yaakov Hagoel and Raheli Baratz, head of the group’s Department for Combating Antisemitism and Community Resilience — and two from the Jewish Agency (JAFI) — chairman Maj. Gen. (Res.) Doron Almog and Yigal Palmor, director of international relations — gave the report to Herzog.

“The report indicates a serious increase in antisemitism worldwide. Social networks have become central platforms for spreading hatred and antisemitism under the guise of freedom of expression,” Herzog said in a statement. “Calls to boycott Israel, especially when combined with ancient and ugly hatred against the Jewish people, are rapidly degenerating into violent outbursts to the point of harming Jewish property, body, and soul. I emphasize again: the hatred of antisemitism never ends with Jews alone and is a threat to democracy and the entire free world.”

Herzog urged all governments around the world to “act together to combat the phenomenon and educate for dialogue, tolerance, and mutual respect.”

Hagoel discussed the impact of antisemitism in the West Bank.

“In the Palestinian Authority, they continue to amplify hatred against Jews and the state of Israel, feeding antisemitic content in textbooks and the media, raising a generation that sanctifies death, terror, and hatred,” Hagoel said. “History has taught us repeatedly [that] antisemitism may start with Jews, but it never ends with them. The next stop is the entire Western world, which is under threat of the values it claims to represent.”

Hagoel said that the WZO “calls on world leaders to unmask antisemitic organizations, act against them, denounce incitement, and protect Jewish communities from any threat.”

Almog described the scope of JAFI’s efforts, explaining that “not only are we fighting antisemitism; we are seeking to ensure a better and more inclusive reality, one in which every Jew in the world can feel secure and proud of their Jewish identity.” He said the group will c”ontinue to fight valiantly to ensure our existence, not out of hatred for our enemies, but out of love and with the aim of building an exemplary society that strives for excellence and never leaves the weak behind.”

Baratz noted that the growth of hatred against Jews endangered free societies more broadly.

“The 340 percent increase in antisemitic incidents poses a real threat to the foundations of Western democracy, where the new antisemitic discourse erodes the fundamental values of democratic society and creates cracks in the wall of pluralism and tolerance,” Baratz said.

Baratz also explained how the use of the term “anti-Zionism” acted as a mask to conceal conventional antisemitism.

“The data shows that while traditional antisemitic expressions are being pushed to the margins, the term ‘Zionism’ and its derivatives have become a new code for expressing hatred towards Jews,” Baratz said. “This is not a coincidence — it is a deliberate change in language aimed at making antisemitism socially acceptable. When a person or organization uses the term ‘anti-Zionist,’ they are often not expressing a legitimate political position but rather are reviving historical antisemitic patterns under a contemporary guise of legitimacy.”

The post Global Antisemitism Skyrocketed 340% From 2022 to 2024, Says New Report Presented to Israel’s President first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A Hamas official said on Monday the Palestinian terrorist group would next release hostages on Sunday, a day later than expected under a complex ceasefire accord reached this month with Israel.

Nahed Al-Fakhouri, head of the Hamas prisoners’ media office, said in a statement the names of Israeli hostages it would release would be provided on Saturday. Israel would similarly disclose the names of Palestinian prisoners to be released under the deal, he said.

“Based on these two lists, the actual implementation will be carried out on Sunday,” Al-Fakhouri said.

Hamas had been expected to release four hostages on Saturday, coinciding with a release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that as far as Israel was concerned, the deadline for the next hostages to be released by Hamas was Saturday.

“This is the agreement and must be adhered to,” the official told Reuters.

Earlier this month, Israel and Hamas agreed to a three-phase ceasefire that could bring an end to the 15-month war in Gaza. The ceasefire came into effect on Sunday with Hamas releasing three Israeli hostages. Israel also released Palestinian prisoners and detainees, who were largely imprisoned for involvement in terrorist activities.

The ceasefire accord outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and release of hostages taken by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, massacred 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.

The post Hamas Says Next Hostages to Be Released on Sunday, a Day Later Than Expected first appeared on Algemeiner.com.