“The Netanyahus” Points to the Exhaustion of American Jewish Literature

At the center of Joshua Cohen’s new novel is an encounter between Benzion Netanyahu—the Jewish historian, personal secretary to Vladimir Jabotinsky, and father of the former prime minister—and a fictional American Jewish college professor named Ruben Blum. Ben Judah writes in his review:

The Netanyahus . . . was one of those highly irritating novels: so interesting I couldn’t stop reading it, without ever being sure I was actually enjoying it. As a kosher smorgasbord of ideas it is wonderful: a car journey to the Catskills worth of fun arguments. As a piece of fiction—until the very last, brilliant chapter—it didn’t do it for me. The problem isn’t Benzion: everything about him is fantastically conjured. The problem is Rube, his wife Edith, and the whole family of caricatures set up in opposition. This makes the novel mostly a drag.

I think these thinly drawn characters—the unassuming, uninsightful Rube Blum, next to the incredible, unforgettable, Benzion Netanyahu—takes us back to Cohen’s obsessions, and mine. We’re not really obsessed with Jews. We’re obsessed with dead Jews or we’re obsessed with Israelis. The way The Netanyahus seems to rush through its plot, ticking off what we are supposed to know about American Jews—father worked in the rag trade, tick, daughter wants a nose job, tick—to get to Benzion reflects something much deeper. Wherever the energy is in American Jewish letters right now, . . . it is about Israel. Wherever the crazes are—Fauda (the secret missions of the IDF) [or] Shtisel (the secret lives of ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem)—it is not about us as Americans, as Diaspora Jews, but them.

Roth. Malamud. Bellow. They were fascinated by Jews as Americans—it was a constant exploration for them—in a way that Rube feels like homework both for Cohen and for the reader, until we get to Ben-Zion and the good stuff. Maybe those novels of the immigrant experience can’t be written by [today’s American Jews]. We are bored of ourselves.

Read more at UnHerd

More about: American Jewish literature, American Jewry, Jewish Culture, Literature

To Stop Attacks from Yemen, Cut It Off from Iran

On March 6, Yemen’s Houthi rebels managed to kill three sailors and force the remainder to abandon ship when they attacked another vessel. Not long thereafter, top Houthi and Hamas figures met to coordinate their efforts. Then, on Friday, the Houthis fired a missile at a commercial vessel, which was damaged but able to continue its journey. American forces also shot down one of the group’s drones yesterday.

Seth Cropsey argues that Washington needs a new approach, focused directly on the Houthis’ sponsors in Tehran:

Houthi disruption to maritime traffic in the region has continued nearly unabated for months, despite multiple rounds of U.S. and allied strikes to degrade Houthi capacity. The result should be a shift in policy from the Biden administration to one of blockade that cuts off the Houthis from their Iranian masters, and thereby erodes the threat. This would impose costs on both Iran and its proxy, neither of which will stand down once the war in Gaza ends.

Yet this would demand a coherent alliance-management policy vis-a-vis the Middle East, the first step of which would be a shift from focus on the Gaza War to the totality of the threat from Iran.

Read more at RealClear Defense

More about: Gaza War 2023, Iran, U.S. Foreign policy, Yemen