lokroma reviewed The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Review of 'The Netanyahus' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Although this book is flawed in some ways as a novel, it's a really, really good book (thus 5 stars), and it's certainly a fitting time to read it. It is brilliant, hilarious, intense, and under all the humor, real pain flickers.
The narrator, Ruben Blum, is the lone Jew on the faculty of a fictional college in upstate New York in the late 1950s. Because he is the lone Jew he is asked to sit on a search committee that is interviewing Benzion Netanyahu (Bibi's dad) as a candidate for a faculty position in the history department. This is despite his expertise being in an entirely different area. The story is based very loosely on Netanyahu's real life faculty appointment at Cornell.
Netanyahu is a Zionist Jewish historian, and Blum a non-secular American Jew. Their relationship is symbolic of the conflict between Zionism and more the more progressive forms …
Although this book is flawed in some ways as a novel, it's a really, really good book (thus 5 stars), and it's certainly a fitting time to read it. It is brilliant, hilarious, intense, and under all the humor, real pain flickers.
The narrator, Ruben Blum, is the lone Jew on the faculty of a fictional college in upstate New York in the late 1950s. Because he is the lone Jew he is asked to sit on a search committee that is interviewing Benzion Netanyahu (Bibi's dad) as a candidate for a faculty position in the history department. This is despite his expertise being in an entirely different area. The story is based very loosely on Netanyahu's real life faculty appointment at Cornell.
Netanyahu is a Zionist Jewish historian, and Blum a non-secular American Jew. Their relationship is symbolic of the conflict between Zionism and more the more progressive forms of Judaism in Jewish history. There is even a nearly 20 page history of Zionist Revisionism in the form of a reference letter for Netanyahu from a professor at Hebrew University.
The Blum family struggles with the unexpected arrival of Netanyahu's rambunctious family along with him. Because of a kerfuffle at the local inn, Ruben and his wife are forced to put them up in their own home, resulting in a wild scene with out of control children, spilled drinks, and permissive parents. The chaos seems to be the point -- it is the result of widely divergent worlds crashing together.
Cohen never resolves Ruben's dilemma. The messiness of the situation reflects the course of Jewish history and its relation to western Christian history, from which Jews have often been left out. There is so much to think about here, and so much that is relevant to the current situation in the Middle East. I highly recommend it.