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Commemorating Philip Roth means confronting his limitations head on
(JTA) — Next Sunday marks the 90th anniversary of Philip Roth’s birth. In celebration of the famed novelist’s work, a scholarly conference titled “Roth@90,” sponsored by the Philip Roth Society, will be held starting Wednesday at the Newark Public Library. That will be followed by a weekend of high-profile events — staged readings, panel discussions, a bus tour of Roth’s old Newark neighborhood — co-presented by the library and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
Exactly 10 years ago, we commemorated his 80th birthday in a similar fashion. Dozens of Roth scholars made learned presentations about his work, of which Roth attended exactly zero. Later that week, the author read aloud from his novel “Sabbath’s Theater” in front of hundreds of fans, friends and well wishers. The proceedings were televised on C-Span.
Roth was being acclaimed for having just wound down an exemplary career. With the exception of the Nobel Prize, what garland evaded him? Was there a high-culture literary platform where his name wasn’t a virtual watermark? Could he publish any novel without hundreds of reviews being written in newspapers across the world? Was there a serious fiction writer out there with greater renown?
So much has changed in the decade between the two conferences. To begin with, Roth died in 2018. In that same span, the country witnessed the election of Donald Trump and the fissure it exposed in society in general and the Jewish community in particular. America endured one convulsive racial reckoning after another. Finally, in October of 2017, the #MeToo movement gained massive public salience.
All of those events, along with digital media’s indomitable ascent, have combined to affect and reshape Roth’s literary legacy. That legacy is far less assured than all the (justified) praise and lionizing that will occur this week might suggest.
Let’s start with Jews. The Trump era yielded two seemingly irreconcilable data points. On the one hand, Jewish-Americans endured the Charlottesville riot, the Tree of Life synagogue attack and a stunning rise in antisemitic incidents. On the other, there was staunch support for Trump among Orthodox Jews and supporters of Israel’s right wing.
Leaving that conundrum for others to parse, I simply note that Orthodox Jews and right-wing Zionists are almost completely absent in Roth’s fiction. A young Roth wrote a sensitive portrait of Holocaust survivors who want to start a suburban yeshiva in “Eli the Fanatic.” He also sketched a militant religious-nationalist Zionist in “The Counterlife,” Mordecai Lippman, who, according to Roth biographer Blake Bailey (about whom more below), was based on Elyakim Haetzni, one of the so-called founding fathers of the settlement movement. In the same novel, a version of the narrator’s brother falls under the settlement leader’s sway.
And that’s it, across a half century of writing. For traditionalist Jewish readers, whose political and social influence in the United States and Israel is substantial and growing, Roth’s fiction is not a mirror, nor a signpost, nor a scroll upon which is inscribed some essential truth.
The Jews who populated his stories, the Jews he best understood, were of Ashkenazi descent, white, liberal, assimilated and secular. His courage was to valorize them over and against other Jews who viewed them as defective, lost or even as apostates. Thus Anne Frank in “The Ghost Writer” was portrayed as a patron saint of secular Judaism. Elsewhere, his stories abound in proud, professionally accomplished diaspora Jews. They rarely think about God. Synagogue attendance is reserved strictly for lifecycle events and High Holy Days, if that.
A novelist, of course, is not a political clairvoyant. However, the immediate future of Judaism is being greatly shaped by Jews whose population and influence are growing and whom Roth rarely portrayed. In this manner, another stellar writer like Cynthia Ozick — herself Orthodox and quite attuned to the mindset of her co-religionists — might fare better commercially and emerge as more relevant than her friend in the coming decades.
Roth didn’t just write about Jews. In my book “The Philip Roth We Don’t Know: Sex, Race and Autobiography,” I pointed out that depicting non-Jewish Black people was an unrecognized “obsessional theme” across his 28 novels and 25 short stories. Much to my dismay, I found Roth’s multi-decade treatment of his African and African-American characters often to be crude, thoughtless and sometimes racist.
Familiarize yourself with the degrading portraiture we receive of Black people in “The Great American Novel” (1973), or a short story like “On the Air” (1970), and you might reconsider what Roth was after in “The Human Stain,” in which an academic who is accused of racism turns out to be an African American who had been “passing” as white and Jewish. The book, the 2001 Pen/Faulkner Award winner, is often seen as a sensitive treatment of racial issues in America, and perhaps as the author’s attempt to extend the hand of friendship to another oppressed minority.
In fact, my best guess is that, as with many Jewish writers post-1967, Roth was shaken by the deterioration of the Black-Jewish alliance. His frustrations were reflected in prose that often referenced Black communities in his hometown of Newark but showed little curiosity about their lives or sympathy for their plight.
Obviously, this type of literary rendering of African Americans — or any minority group — is disturbing and dated. Insensitive racial representation inspires calls for publishers to drop authors. They disappear from high-school or college syllabi. This bodes ominously for the afterlives of the titans of post-World War II American fiction, including John Updike, Saul Bellow Bellow and Norman Mailer, all three of whom have been accused of being racially insensitive and worse.
Roth’s marketability also seems to be sailing into a squall regarding gender. As women began demanding an accounting of sexual abuse and misogyny within the media, entertainment and other industries, numerous think-pieces wondered how the author of “Portnoy’s Complaint” — whose libidinous narrator identifies most of the women in his life by debasing nicknames — would fare in such an environment. Would he — should he — be “canceled”?
The question is more complex than his admirers and detractors make it out to be. No doubt, many of Roth’s male characters mistreated women. Accusations of Roth himself doing the same exist, but they are fairly rare, unsubstantiated and contested. The dilemma for researchers is that Roth was a deeply auto-fictional writer. You sense his presence in his stories — especially when protagonists share much of his biography, including Nathan Zuckerman and Peter Tarnopol, and when characters are named “Philip Roth.”
It’s hard not to speculate about the relation between the author and the many misogynistic fellows who cut an erotic swath through his pages. There will, of course, be readers who give him the benefit of the doubt. They might observe that Roth’s toxic males provide evidence of women’s experiences that needs to be explored, not censored.
Not helping him cleanse his reputation were the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against his hand-picked biographer, Blake Bailey. The ructions engulfing Bailey came to dominate the discourse about Roth, leading to a peculiar cancellation by proxy.
The episode also revealed that Roth had instructed his estate to eventually destroy a massive trove of personal papers he entrusted to Bailey. This led Aimee Pozorski (co-editor of Philip Roth Studies), myself and 20 other Roth scholars to issue a statement reminding his executors that “scholarship can only be advanced when qualified researchers engage freely with essential sources.”
As if all these concerns weren’t enough, his grim prophecies about the demise of an audience for serious literature seem to be coming true. “The book,” Roth worried, “can’t compete with the screen.” Meanwhile, the English major is in a very bad way, and the institution of tenure is under siege. Professors (insufferable as we might be) teach the next generation who to read and how to read. Writers might not like them, but they need them.
Roth is also getting the scrutiny that he was at pains to avoid in his lifetime. His disregard for scholars who might be critical of him always struck me, one such scholar, as misguided. Instead, he surrounded himself with friends — friends who had preternatural access to major media platforms. These friends built upon his own interpretations of his own work. It doesn’t mean they lacked wisdom. It just means that when they talked about Roth, they talked about what Roth wanted them to talk about. To wit: Jewish Newark, his sundry interpretations of his life, his pesky ex-wives and lovers, the close-mindedness of his critics, and so forth.
I think, in this cultural moment, it’s prudent to confront Roth’s limitations head on and chart one’s own path through his fiction. I pitch him to my students as a writer with some racial, religious and sexual hang-ups — who among us is innocent of those charges? I also present him as a bearer of unique and meaningful insights. Let scholars (while they still exist) parade those insights into sunlight.
I’ve tried to illuminate that his fiction was preoccupied, for 50 years, by how individual and collective bodies (like the Jews) change. Transformation, metamorphosis, metempsychosis — his obsession with those themes, I’ve noticed in my classrooms, is shared by Gen Z. If the span between Roth@80 and Roth@90 has taught us anything, it is that Roth was right: Life is about radical, unpredictable flux. Now his own legacy is in flux. I wonder who will read Roth@100.
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Les Wexner testifies that he was ‘conned’ by Jeffrey Epstein and did not know of his crimes
(JTA) — Leslie Wexner, the Ohio retail billionaire whose association with Jeffrey Epstein has shadowed his philanthropic legacy, spent six hours Wednesday answering questions in a closed-door congressional deposition that Democrats later derided as implausible and evasive.
Wexner, 88, appeared before staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at his home in New Albany, Ohio, where he sought to rebut years of scrutiny tied to Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who once managed Wexner’s personal finances.
In a prepared opening statement submitted to the committee, Wexner cast himself as a victim of deception.
“I was naive, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein,” Wexner said. “He was a con man. And while I was conned, I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.” He added: “I completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly twenty years ago when I learned that he was an abuser, a crook, and a liar.”
Wexner’s testimony comes amid renewed attention to his relationship with Epstein following the release of previously redacted federal investigative records. Wexner, long celebrated across the Jewish communal world for his business achievements and billion-dollar philanthropy, has never been charged with a crime connected to Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation and has consistently denied knowledge of Epstein’s misconduct.
In his statement, Wexner presented that denial in unequivocal terms. “Let me be crystal clear: I never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity,” he said. “I was never a participant nor co-conspirator in any of Epstein’s illegal activities.” He continued, “At no time did I ever witness the side of Epstein’s life for which he is now infamous.”
Wexner also addressed the emotional toll of the scandal and expressed sympathy for survivors. “Before going any further, though, I want to acknowledge the survivors of Epstein’s terrible crimes and the devastation that each of them has endured,” he said. “The pain he inflicted upon them is unfathomable to me. My heart goes out to each of them.”
Throughout the document, Wexner portrayed Epstein as a master manipulator who carefully curated an image of elite credibility. “Epstein lived a double life. He was clever, diabolical, and a master manipulator,” Wexner said, describing how Epstein “revealed to me only glimpses into the life in which he was a sophisticated financial guru.”
Wexner reiterated longstanding claims about the unraveling of their relationship, saying that after Epstein’s legal troubles surfaced, his wife Abigail Wexner reviewed financial records and concluded Epstein had misappropriated “vast sums” from the family. “Once I learned of his abusive conduct and theft from my family, I never spoke with Epstein again. Never,” he said.
But Democrats who participated in the deposition emerged sharply skeptical.
“He’s claiming there was no friendship with Jeffrey Epstein,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the committee’s top Democrat, told reporters during a press conference outside Wexner’s residence, calling the claim “bogus.”
Garcia went further, arguing that Epstein’s wealth and influence were inseparable from Wexner’s patronage. “There would be no Epstein island, there’d be no Epstein plane, there would be no money to traffic women and girls … without the support of Les Wexner,” he said.
Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts struck an even harsher tone. “There’s no question in my mind, given the evidence so far, that Les Wexner knew about this and failed to stop it,” Lynch said.
Other Democrats questioned the credibility of Wexner’s repeated assertions that he had neither seen nor suspected misconduct. Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona said his claims of not recalling key details about Epstein strained belief. Rep. Dave Min of California summarized the testimony as a case of “see no evil, hear no evil,” calling it “really just not credible.”
Committee Republicans did not attend the deposition, citing a medical procedure for Chairman James Comer. A committee spokeswoman said Wexner “answered every question asked of him” and pledged that video and transcripts would be released.
For Wexner, the proceeding marked another chapter in a saga that has complicated his public image and tarnished his name in the Jewish world, where countless rabbis and other professionals have received fellowships bearing his name. In his statement, he framed the deposition as an opportunity for to help the Epstein’s victims.
“I hope you are successful in uncovering the truth and bringing closure to all survivors,” Wexner said. “If I am able to assist you in that effort by answering your questions, I am grateful for the opportunity to do so.”
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Quietly sold by Jewish library, letter by famed 18th-century rabbi surfaces at auction, fetching $400,000
(JTA) — A decade ago, amid a financial crisis, the Jewish Theological Seminary turned to its assets, selling real estate as well as rare books from its world-renowned library. The book sales were private, and the institution has never detailed what was sold or for how much.
Now, a lost treasure from the library has once again emerged at auction: this time, a letter written and autographed by the 18th-century Jewish luminary Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, also known as the Ramchal.
When it was housed at the library, the letter belonged to a Ramchal collection numbering hundreds of pages. Removed from the collection and marketed to the auction house’s Orthodox clientele as a profound text by “a great and holy Kabbalist,” the letter sold on Sunday for nearly $400,000. The identities of the seller and buyer are not publicly known.
The price reflects the massive appeal of heritage items in a newly affluent Orthodox market, where rare texts and autograph material are increasingly treated as both status symbols and investment vehicles. It is a market the auction house, Genazym, has helped supercharge by selling not just books, but proximity to revered rabbinic figures.
Born in 1707, Luzzatto was an Italian Jewish thinker, mystic and writer whose influence far exceeded his brief life. His best-known work, “Mesillat Yesharim,” became a cornerstone of Jewish ethical literature and remains widely studied today. Though his mystical teachings stirred suspicion among some contemporaries, later generations regarded him as a major figure of Jewish thought.
In a famous 1928 essay titled “The Boy from Padua,” the Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik offered one of the most enduring modern interpretations of Luzzatto’s legacy. Bialik described Luzzatto as a forerunner of three great streams of modern Jewish history: the Lithuanian rabbinic tradition, Hasidism and the Enlightenment.
The auctioned letter, spanning two handwritten pages and addressed to his mentor, captures Luzzatto engaged in a detailed discussion of mystical concepts. He uses the space to explain his reasoning and mentions additional writings then in progress.
For scholars like David Sclar, the quiet removal of Luzzatto’s writings from the JTS library and their transfer to private hands suggests a cultural decline.
“It’s a scandal within the world of scholarship and American Jewish institutions,” Sclar, a librarian at a Modern Orthodox high school in New Jersey, said in an interview. Sclar wrote his dissertation on Luzzatto using primary sources such as the auctioned letter.
He is also a former employee of the special collections division at JTS who left the institution years before the crisis that precipitated the sell-off. He sees the outcome of the auction as evidence of not only wrongdoing but incompetence.
“This is one of the items that they sold through the back door, which means they sold it for probably virtually nothing,” Sclar said. “And the tragedy in all of this, besides JTS sort of destroying cultural heritage, is that it’s also stupid, because if they had decided that they were desperate for money then just do an auction. Don’t do it through the back door.”
The librarian at JTS, David Kraemer, declined a request for an interview, directing questions to the institution’s spokesperson, who offered a brief emailed statement.
“Decisions were made at the time with careful consideration of what was in the best interest of the institution,” the spokesperson wrote.
In 2021, amid earlier revelations of the library’s sell-off, Kraemer told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he had been ordered to sell items of his choosing to raise a specified amount of money, which he did not disclose.
In their defense of the sales, Kraemer and other JTS officials said at the time that the deaccessioned materials had been digitized and were deemed to have limited research value, allowing scholars to access their contents even after the originals left the collection. Seminary leaders described the decisions as financially prudent and of minimal impact on the library’s core mission.
Critics, however, argue that digitization does not replace the scholarly and cultural value of original manuscripts.
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International social workers group rejects measure to expel Israeli union amid pressure from Jewish groups
(JTA) — An international federation of social workers has voted not to expel the Israeli Union of Social Workers following weeks of debate and opposition from Jewish groups over their potential ban.
“After careful deliberation, IFSW members voted against this motion,” the National Association of Social Workers, the U.S. affiliate of the International Federation of Social Workers, said in a statement.
The vote to suspend or expel the Israeli union on Wednesday would have required 75% of the union’s 67 voting member nations to vote for the measures.
The vote stemmed from a complaint issued by the Irish, Spanish and Greek affiliates of the federation, who accused the Israeli union of failing to seek an exemption from mandatory military service for its members.
Wednesday’s decision marked the end of weeks of internal debate within the federation, during which the proposed expulsion drew mounting scrutiny from the Israeli union and Jewish groups who warned that the measure would single out Israeli, and Jewish, professionals for discriminatory treatment.
On Tuesday, 12 prominent Jewish organizations, including Hadassah, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of North America, sent a letter to the American and Canadian members of the international federation calling on them to voice their opposition to the vote.
“Hadassah is alarmed by this blatantly antisemitic maneuver to isolate and exclude Jewish and Israeli professionals solely based on their ethnic and religious identity,” said Carol Ann Schwartz, the national president of Hadassah, in a statement. “We call on the National Association of Social Workers and the Canadian Association of Social Workers to reject this outrageous and grossly discriminatory proposal.”
The same day, the U.S.-based National Association of Social Workers voiced their opposition to the vote for the first time, calling on the other voting members to “uphold the profession’s core values of unity, dialogue, and compassion.”
The motion to expel the Israeli union “directly contradicts IFSW’s mission of promoting international cooperation, unity, and constructive engagement,” wrote the American union in a statement. “Rather than fostering hope and harmony, expulsion would sow division and disharmony, eroding the trust and solidarity that are essential to our global community.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, which also signed onto Tuesday’s letter, hailed the vote Wednesday as a “victory for inclusion over discrimination.”
“While it is disappointing that the IFSW even considered such exclusionary motions, we are hopeful that this closes the door on any effort to isolate Israeli social workers initiated by international bodies that should be supporting and lifting them up,” said Guila Franklin Siegel, the chief operating officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, in a statement.
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