Muriel Spark’s Novel of a Roman Catholic in Jerusalem

On the occasion of what would have been the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark’s 100th birthday, Sarah Rindner comments on her Jewish origins and how they find expression in her work:

Born Muriel Camberg in Edinburgh to a Jewish father and a Presbyterian mother (who also had Jewish lineage), Muriel Spark was raised a Protestant with strong ties to her Jewish extended family. After a tumultuous young adulthood—including an abusive marriage, divorce, and her virtual abandonment of her son (he was raised by his grandparents)—Spark threw herself into her writing. At the age of thirty-six, Spark converted to Roman Catholicism, a move she believed contributed to her eventual success as a novelist. Her son, Robin, who became an Orthodox Jew, would eventually tell a different story about his mother’s origins, emphasizing the Jewishness of her maternal line. But Spark resisted her son’s narrative and continued to describe herself as a “Gentile Jewess.” . . .

This tension is explored most fully in The Mandelbaum Gate, which at more than 300 pages is also Spark’s lone “long novel.” Set in Jerusalem in 1961 during the period of the Eichmann trial, Mandelbaum Gate relates the Holy Land journey of Barbara Vaughan, an English schoolteacher in her late thirties who has recently embraced Roman Catholicism. In contrast with Spark, it’s Barbara’s father who is a Gentile and her mother who is Jewish. This swap only heightens Barbara’s identity conflict because it means that both religions can claim her. . . .

While Spark is far from a political writer, the novel contains a perceptible subtext contrasting the Arab and Israeli claims on Jerusalem. The Arabs whom Barbara encounters are constantly reimagining themselves, inventing histories of orange groves they once supposedly possessed in Jaffa, and nimbly adapting political affiliations and personal narratives for the edification of their Western listeners. This disposition both intrigues Barbara and puts her off. The Jews she meets generally present themselves as they are, and it is Barbara who is left fumbling for a firmer and more rooted identity.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: Arts & Culture, Catholicism, Jerusalem, Judaism, Literature

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF