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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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At the Vatican, two elderly men — one Jewish, one Catholic — exchange gifts and mutual admiration
On Wednesday, two senior citizens, Robert Zimmerman, 85, a Jew originally from Minnesota, and Robert Prevost, 71, a Catholic of Chicago, had a brief meeting at the younger man’s office in central Italy.
Sources on the scene report that Zimmerman was in town for business and Prevost, who goes professionally by Leo, had recently cited Zimmerman’s work in the preface to a book about nuclear disarmament.
Both men dressed in uniform, looking a bit Spy Vs. Spy, with Zimmerman in a black hoodie and Prevost in white with a small white skull cap. The confab was brief, a bulletin from Prevost’s workplace reported, consisting of “greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges.”
Prevost gifted Zimmerman with prayer beads, and Zimmerman presented Prevost with a copy of his memoir, published under his pen name, Bob Dylan.
While Zimmerman was raised in a Jewish home, he had, for a time in the late 1970s to early 1980s, converted to born-again Christianity, confounding many.
The post At the Vatican, two elderly men — one Jewish, one Catholic — exchange gifts and mutual admiration appeared first on The Forward.
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The Michigan Senate race showed the exact wrong ways to fight antisemitism
The campaign against Abdul El-Sayed was example after example of how not to fight antisemitism—a display of conflation, double standards, and bigotry that we need to learn from and reject if we hope to ensure Jewish safety and security in a pluralistic society.
El-Sayed won his election Tuesday with 52.5% of the vote. He won despite an ugly campaign that alleged that he was not only critical of Israel but antisemitic, and that he does not care about or consider Jewish safety, and in which he was repeatedly asked to prove his sincerity on Jewish safety while also being attacked for running for office while being Muslim.
El-Sayed is not above criticism and questions from Jews just because he is a Democrat and most Jews vote for Democrats. It is right and appropriate that Senate candidates have to answer questions about antisemitism. El-Sayed did campaign with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker in the primary, and Piker did liken Zionists to Nazis, and many Jews in Michigan and elsewhere are Zionists; it is appropriate for El-Sayed to be asked about that.
It is also fair for a candidate who is vocal in his criticism of Israel to be asked how he’ll work to ensure the safety of his Jewish constituents, since we know that there is at least a correlation between anger at Israel and violence directed toward Jews. After West Bloomfield, Michigan’s own Temple Israel was attacked, El-Sayed did say, “hurt people hurt people,” and though he was referring to a specific event—the perpetrator’s family was reportedly killed in an airstrike in Lebanon—it is understandable that he was called upon to explain his own remarks to upset Jewish families in his state, whom he is also charged with representing in Congress.
From this point, however, the campaign against El-Sayed developed in several ways.
For one thing, when critics make demands of politicians, they need to actually allow those politicians to meet them. Yet despite distancing himself from Hasan Piker (“a Twitch streamer,” as he repeated to reporters), speaking repeatedly about how and why he took the safety of Jewish Michiganders seriously, and apologizing at length for his “hurt people hurt people” comment, El-Sayed was treated in the media and by his political opponents (and by some Democrats) as suspect and insincere.
These same questions were not asked of his opponent, Republican Mike Rogers, whose student outreach team included someone who defended a Young Republicans group chat praising Hitler.
If El-Sayed had to speak repeatedly about Piker, why did Rogers not have to answer whether he accepted the view of the U.S. president—who like Piker, joined his preferred candidate on the campaign trail—that any Jew who voted for El-Sayed was crazy and should be ashamed of themselves? (This was not a one-off missive, but the latest in the long line of Trump comments insisting on American Jewish responsibility to be loyal to Israel by voting for him, Donald Trump.)
Why wasn’t Rogers grilled on what he made of comments by Ohio’s U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno implying that senators should have to believe in Jesus, a remark that if rendered policy would impact El-Sayed and also, say, every Jew in public office?
The discrepancy suggests that reporters, pundits, politicians, and Jewish leaders do not take antisemitism seriously from all corners, and in fact that they consider it worse and more suspect from a Muslim American who criticizes Israel than a Republican who doesn’t.
Worse, still, is that that Republicans trafficked in vile anti-Muslim hate throughout the campaign. Rozina Ali, author of Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America, wrote on X on Tuesday, “Islamophobia appears to be on the ballot in Michigan, in an unprecedented way.” These tropes weren’t new, Ali explained, but they were at a fever pitch this election, with El-Sayed dubbed a “jihadist leprechaun” by a sitting Senator. The vice president of the United States said El-Sayed has “zero attachment to this land.”
Too often, Jewish leaders and institutions met this rhetoric with silence, or even encouragement. As I argued last week, dual loyalty narratives against one population just make the voting public more comfortable with the trope being used against other groups, including Jews. Moreover: Silence is not going to build solidarity from non-Jews, and Jews — just 1.4% of voters in Michigan and two percent of this country — are not going to fight antisemitism on our own.
Finally and troublingly was the willingness of El-Sayed’s primary opponent, Haley Stevens, to claim that it was Jewish safety that motivated her public questioning of El-Sayed (notably over an ad that his campaign did not put out) and her eventual flip to campaigning and voting for Rogers. Stevens is a staunch supporter of Israel and was backed by AIPAC. However, she is not Jewish (though she said she is considering converting), and yet spoke repeatedly as if she had authority on what Jewish voters in Michigan wanted to hear from El-Sayed. But she was not an emissary from Jewish voters, who are not a monolith — and 60 percent of whom, per one exit poll, voted for El-Sayed.
What can we learn from this race? First, conflating criticism of Israel and calls for more challenging policies toward Israel with attitudes toward Jewish voters needs to stop, even or especially while understanding that anger toward the country can be channeled against the people here.
Candidates of both parties, regardless of their positions on Israel, need to be held accountable with demands for real answers on what they will do for the well-being of all of their constituents, including Jews, and including when those stumping for them challenge the idea of full Jewish participation in civic life.
Jewish voters need to reject the idea that Islamophobia and antisemitism are somehow at odds with each other, and that it costs us something to call out hatred of Muslim Americans when in fact, so often, we are on the same side of racist hatred. (On Tuesday night, X was filled with posts blaming Jews for El-Sayed’s victory and bemoaning what it meant for American culture.)
And reporters, pundits, politicians, Jewish leaders, and for that matter Jewish voters need to stop speaking about Jewish voters on antisemitism and Israel as though all of us understand the intersection of these issues in the same way or want to hear the same things about them from politicians.
Since Abdul El-Sayed will be in the Senate starting in January, we will soon have ample opportunity to put these lessons into practice.
The post The Michigan Senate race showed the exact wrong ways to fight antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump’s midterm defeat changes the equation for Netanyahu and Israel
The Republican rout in the U.S. midterm elections may have consequences far beyond America’s shores. The most immediate impact could be in Israel, where the struggle to translate Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral defeat into a change of government is entering its decisive stage.
In the week that has passed since the Israeli election, there was much anticipation that Trump might intervene to rescue his longtime ally. He endorsed Netanyahu, suggested that Israel’s security depended on his continued leadership, and hinted that renewed war with Iran depended on his victory (seeming to believe, perhaps falsely, that Israelis yearn for this). There was speculation that he might pressure opposition leaders into joining a unity government headed by Netanyahu, reversing the political meaning of Israel’s election.
Now the American electorate may have changed the equation.
The Democrats’ sweeping gains, which enabled them to seize decisive control of both houses of Congress, represent a substantial repudiation of Trump’s administration. The president retains enormous authority over foreign policy and national security – but in January he faces a hostile Congress, increased scrutiny of his decisions and a political environment even less hospitable to another Middle Eastern military adventure.
There is a counterintuitive possibility, of course: Trump might conclude that the period before the new Congress takes office offers a final opportunity to strike Iran. A weakened president is not necessarily a restrained president, and yet another unpopular war, especially one suspected of serving Netanyahu’s political interests, could deepen the backlash against Trump at home as Republicans are already looking fearfully at 2028.
It’s reasonable to think that many of them would not want to be associated with a strong-arming of Israel’s opposition in order to rescue Netanyahu, who is, fairly or unfairly, scarcely less toxic in the United States these days than Vladimir Putin.
The larger point: Trump’s political leverage has diminished. His presidency has an expiration date, and the American political system is already beginning to look beyond him. This will offer headwinds to those Israeli politicians who argue that a government that could serve for years should be cautious about treating the preferences of a politically weakened American president as decisive.
That is an especially potent thought on Wednesday, as Israeli President Isaac Herzog begins consultations with Israel’s newly elected parliamentary factions.
Israel’s election produced a clear numerical result: Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, while parties opposed to his continued rule secured 67. The opposition has a parliamentary majority, although it is struggling to form a governing coalition.
Under Israel’s system, the president consults representatives of the elected parties, who recommend a candidate to form the government. Herzog must then decide which lawmaker has the best prospect of assembling one. The recommendations are politically important but not legally binding, and the president is not required to select whoever receives the most endorsements, though this is the tradition.
If former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot receives recommendations representing 67 seats, that would establish the breadth of parliamentary opposition to Netanyahu. Eisenkot would likely be tapped, and then he would face the central difficulty: what to do about Israel’s Arab parties.
Of the 67 seats held by Netanyahu’s opponents, 19 belong to Arab parties, whose electoral success reflected a remarkable increase in Arab turnout – which at around 85 percent exceeded that of Israel’s Jews. Several Jewish opposition leaders promised during the campaign not to rely on those parties to establish a government.
Eisenkot himself has said that he would demand any coalition partners agree that Hamas should be removed as a military and governing body in Gaza, which the Arab parties have not yet done. Polls show that a majority of opposition voters favor finding a way to form a government, even if it’s dependent on the Arab parties.
Indeed, many are arguing that this is a test of Israel’s democracy, and that for the opposition to stick to its refusal to rely on the Arab parties would strengthen enemies of Israel who argue that it is not a true democracy.
Here, too, the American midterms offer an intriguing counterpoint.
According to a voting breakdown in The New York Times, Republicans received 51 percent of the white vote, compared with 48 percent for Democrats. Would anyone seriously argue that the Democratic congressional victory is illegitimate because it depended partly on Black, Hispanic and Asian voters? Should Republicans retain the House speakership because they performed better among white Americans?
Of course not. Yet Israel faces an argument with a disturbingly similar implication.
If a parliamentary majority cannot govern because some of its members are considered unacceptable on ethnic or national grounds, the damage to Israel’s democratic reputation could be immense.
Under Israeli parliamentary rules, a government can win confidence through a majority of those participating in the vote. Abstentions or outside support from Arab lawmakers could therefore make a minority government possible.
With 48 seats for the non-Arab opposition parties, all Eisenkot would need would be the more moderate of the Arab parties, Ra’am, which has eight seats, to show support. The new coalition’s 56 seats could outvote Netanyahu’s 53 to win Knesset confirmation, even with the 11-seat Joint Arab List abstaining. That means Eisenkot does not necessarily require 61 affirmative votes to take office.
The obstacle is Avigdor Lieberman, head of the seven-seat Yisrael Beitenu party. A nationalist West Bank settler, he has fallen out with both Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox allies, and has been counted as part of the opposition. This week he reiterated his vow not to support a government dependent on Arab parties. But he also ruled out rejoining with Netanyahu, and described a repeat election as the worst option.
So while the outcome is clear now in the United States, in Israel the guessing game continues.
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