Cormac McCarthy’s Most Jewish Novels Have Little to Do with Jews, but Much to Do with Faith

Jan. 19 2023

Last year, Cormac McCarthy released two novels with intertwined plots, The Passenger (named one of Mosaic’s books of the year) and Stella Maris. Their main characters are the brilliant siblings Alice and Bobby Western, whose father was a Manhattan Project physicist and who are, respectively, a troubled mathematical genius and a thrill-seeking salvage diver. Abe Greenwald writes in his review:

The Passenger and Stella Maris are the most Jewish books McCarthy has ever written. Which is to say, they’re not very Jewish at all. But Bobby, Alice, and both their parents are Jewish. There is no evidence of their ever having been exposed to an inkling of Jewish life or thought. But it’s made unmistakably clear that they are Jews. And this raises a question: why? The answer is simple. Verisimilitude. McCarthy knows the degree to which Jews are overrepresented in math and science. His friends and colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute, [the scientific research center where he is a trustee], include or have included theorists such as Murray Gell-Mann, George Zweig, and Lawrence Krauss. He’s well aware of the statistics on Jewish genius.

As Alice says to [the psychiatrist] Dr. Cohen, “Jews represent 2 percent of the population and 80 percent of the mathematicians. If those numbers were even a little more skewed we’d be talking about a separate species.” Some might bristle at the “separate species” remark, but it’s clear McCarthy means it only in reverence.

When it comes to religion, however, the books offer a message of more substance

Alice says . . . in Stella Maris: “Mathematics is ultimately a faith-based initiative. And faith is an uncertain business.” This is McCarthy’s check on scientism, the secular faith that purports to answer all of life’s meaningful questions through the process of observation, experimentation, equation, and peer review. And McCarthy knows whereof he speaks. . . . He edits books and papers from some of the country’s most accomplished scientists on a broad range of topics. Science and math, by his own admission, have come to occupy him more than literature. Thus, he addresses the faith-vs.-science debate from a much-needed perspective. And that perspective, embodied in both Bobby and Alice, is this: science and mathematics are vital in telling us how little we can ever understand, and a world so inscrutable makes faith and mysticism at least a viable avenue of contemplation.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Jews in literature, Literature, Science and Religion

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023