Carlo Strenger : Safran Foer’s New Novel Explores Divorce Between Liberal Jewish Americans and Israel
‘Here I Am’ shows how because of Israel's growing
ethno-nationalism, embarrassment has replaced guilt as his generation's
dominant feeling toward Israel.
“Here I Am” is Jonathan Safran Foer’s
first novel after 11 years. Jacob Bloch, its anti-hero, after one
well-received novel published when he was very young, is writing for
television, and doesn’t like it. His marriage which, like most
marriages, started with hope, intimacy and tenderness has gradually
emptied of content after 15 years, and both Jacob and Julia, his wife
and future divorcee, feel that they are losing their own selves in the
family they have created.
The
bulk of the book is composed of scenes from a Jewish family life, much
of dialogue; some of it scintillating, much of it reminds of the
self-consciously virtuoso writing we have come to know from Safran
Foer’s first two highly acclaimed novels that made him a household name
of the American – and ever more so the Jewish American – literary scene.
His standing is reflected in the dozens of reviews appearing days after
the publication of Here I Am.
My
goal is not to write a literary review, but to formulate some thoughts
about what this book, written by one of the most prominent younger
American Jewish writers, says about the relation between younger Jewish
American liberals and Israel. This theme is quite explicit in the book,
for the narrative of the Bloch family – filled with longing, conflict,
hope, expectation, disappointment and pain, and conflicts about Judaism,
Jewishness and Israel, written in a variety of voices – intersects with
another theme.
Israel and Jewish American liberals
About
in the middle of novel, a second story line emerges: Israel and the
Middle East are shaken and largely destroyed by a powerful earthquake.
[Spoiler alert: If you don’t want to lose the tension of reading, skip
the next two paragraphs!] The Arab countries around Israel see the
opportunity of finally destroying the Jewish State. Israel’s prime
minister declares “Operation Moses,” with the goal of moving a million
American Jews to Israel to help in the war effort (I don’t know whether
Safran Foer was aware that there actually was an Operation Moses to
bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel). Only 55,000 actually arrive, tellingly
mostly over 45 years of age.
Younger
Jewish Americans, it seems, can’t really see much meaning in moving to
Israel and fighting for its survival, and those who come to help play no
role in Israel’s surviving the ordeal. Israel’s central strategy is
withdrawing from the West Bank and maintaining a blockade of
humanitarian aid to Gaza. Furthermore, Israel refuses any humanitarian
aid to Palestinians, and the Israel-Palestine conflict is largely solved
by Palestinians dying of a variety of illnesses.
“Infinite
debate corkscrewed the question of whether those new borders were good
for the Jews. Although, tellingly, the expression most often used by
American Jews was good for the Israelis. And that, the Israelis thought,
was bad for the Jews ... [Many can’t forgive Israel] the complete and
explicit abdication of responsibility for the non-Jews – the withdrawal
of security forces … the blockade of aid shipments to Gaza and the West
Bank.”
Nevertheless,
Irv, Jacob’s father, a somewhat one-dimensional portrait of the older
generation of American Jews for whom being pro-Israel is non-negotiable,
continues to defend Israel’s every step in his inflammatory and
controversial blog.
Toward
the end of the novel, Jacob rethinks his relationship with Israel. For
most of his life “[Israelis] were more aggressive, more obnoxious, more
crazed, more hairy, more muscular brothers […] over there. They were
ridiculous, and they were his. They were more brave, more beautiful,
more piggish and delusional, less self-conscious, more reckless, more
themselves.” But now all of this has changed: “After the
near-destruction, they were still over there, but they were no longer
his.”
Safran
Foer’s description of the cataclysm that befalls Israel is very
schematic and feels more like a pretext than a fully developed story; a
ploy that allows him to describe what many young American Jewish
liberals feel toward Israel today without offending anybody’s
sensibilities too much.
Jewish
American liberals of Safran Foer’s generation have still been brought
up with the idea that fervent love for Israel is essential to being a
good Jew and that Diaspora Jews should feel slightly inferior to, and
guilty toward, the “more hairy, more muscular, more piggish and
delusional” Israeli Jews, who live in constant danger and fight for the
existence of a Jewish homeland where Jews are fighting against the whole
Arab world, as they did in 1948, 1967 and 1973.
But
for Safran Foer’s generation these three wars are not lived experience,
but only something they have been taught about by their parents, at
Sunday school and in some Jewish youth movement, if they attended one.
The Israel they have gotten to know in person, if they have been here at
all, is a successful startup nation, not really endangered by any of
its neighbors, filled with excellent restaurants and cafés that serve an
espresso macchiato better than anything that you can get in Manhattan.
Most
importantly, the Israel to which they are supposed to feel allegiance
doesn’t give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks – including
American Jewish liberals committed to universal human rights and
political correctness, and instead consistently moves toward
ethno-nationalist right-wing politics, often with racist undertones. The
process is difficult to understand: Israel’s top security brass thinks
that Israel’s existence is safer than it has ever been, even if Bibi
keeps droning on about Israel’s imminent destruction. And yet, the safer
Israel has become, the more it has moved to the right.
The
likes of Benjamin Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman as well
as the ultra-Orthodox stranglehold on religion in Israel make many
Jewish liberals of Safran Foer’s generation feel that Israel and
Israelis are no longer “theirs.” Israel’s total disregard for the
Western ideal of religious pluralism is driving an ever deeper wedge
between Jewish American liberals and Israel, and so is its treatment of
Palestinians.
Safran
Foer is not inventing the growing alienation of his generation from
Israel: There are plenty of social science data that show that young
Jewish Americans no longer have the deep connection to Israel their
parents had, and voices like Peter Beinart have been warning for years
that this trend is exacerbating with Israel’s continual disregard of
liberal values, and by its creating facts on the ground that make a
future implementation of the two-state solution impossible.
Israel
has become more nationalistic than ever; mainstream Israelis no longer
care about liberal values, sophistication and sensitivity for other
ethnicities, races and religions. Reform Judaism’s ideal of tikkun olam –
healing the world with universalist values and commitment to humanity
as a whole – is utterly foreign to Israel’s mainstream.
Safran
Foer refers to the racism that has become the bon ton of Israel’s
dominant political right within the context of the fictitious
earthquake: Israel’s government refuses any humanitarian help to
“non-Jews” – Safran Foer seems uncomfortable writing “Arabs” – and lets
them die, even though it could save them.
As
a result of Israel’s growing ethno-nationalism, embarrassment has
replaced guilt as the dominant feeling toward Israel for Safran Foer’s
generation – and certainly the generation coming of age now. Hence “Here
I Am” is the story of the fraying not only of the Blochs’ marriage, but
also of the relationship between young Jewish Americans and Israel.
The sacrifice of Isaac
This
novel is not just an indictment of Israel, or a meditation about the
vagaries of marriage. It reflects a seismic change in American Judaism
in its non-Orthodox forms, which comprise 90 percent of all United
States Jews. “Here I am” is the translation of the Hebrew hineni, which
Abraham utters twice in one of the most famous – or notorious, depending
on perspective – stories in the Book of Genesis: the sacrifice of
Isaac. The first time Abraham says “Here I am” is when God turns to him
to tell him to take his beloved son Isaac and sacrifice him. The second
time he utters it is when Isaac, after a three-day journey, turns to his
father asking where the sheep for the sacrifice is, answering evasively
that God will show the offering.
Here
we come to what for me is the core moment of Safran Foer’s “Here I Am.”
Sam, Jacob and Julia’s eldest son, is about to celebrate his bar
mitzvah. The novel begins when Sam is accused by the rabbi running his
bar mitzvah class to have written racist expletives on his desk. Julia
thinks that he needs to apologize; Jacob tends to believe Sam’s denial
of having written this including the “N-word” (Safran Foer, with some
irony, keeps returning to this specific sin, the ultimate atrocity for
political correctness).
Sam,
an introvert, precocious child, also lives a “second life” through the
avatar of a Latina called Samanta, and through her voice he writes his
bat mitzvah speech (after all, he’s a girl in his “second life”), which,
of course, he will never deliver at his actual bar mitzvah. It is a
soaring indictment of our forefather Abraham: How, he asks, could
Abraham use the same “Here I am” toward God and toward his son? Whose
was he anyway? Isaac’s or God’s? Obviously he couldn’t be both, as God
demanded the slaughter of Isaac. Analogously, how could his parents not
have taken a clear stance and made clear that they were his, and
defended him against the rabbi?
Safran
Foer does not really elaborate on this point, but the story of the
sacrifice of Isaac is, I believe, the shibboleth that separates Jewish
liberals from conservative Orthodoxy. For millennia, Abraham’s
willingness to follow God’s demand to slaughter his son has been hailed
as the ultimate expression of faith by Jews, Christians and Muslims. But
for many of us nowadays, the present writer emphatically included, the
sacrifice of Isaac is one of the most dramatic expressions of the
profound moral faults of most traditional religions, and Judaism in
particular.
El
Kana, the jealous god who accepts nothing but total submission to his
will, for most Jewish liberals is an atavistic, inhuman idea, more akin
to a cruel, wanton king insistent on total obedience than a benevolent
god, and they recoil from Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son
just to demonstrate total submission.
This
is by far not the only aspect of the Torah that they can no longer
accept: After all, it also commands the genocide of all non-Jewish
tribes of Canaan, the extinction of Amalek, the execution of homosexuals
and it rejoices in Moses’ ordering the killing of 3,000 sons of Israel
after they built the Golden Calf.
Jewish
liberals have made an enormous effort to humanize Judaism; to
de-mythologize it and turn it into a religion compatible with modern
humanism. This project started in 19th-century Germany, and has come to
its fruition in American Judaism, where the vast majority of Jews, if
they are affiliated with any religion at all, have cleansed historical
Judaism of its anachronistic attachment to what is ultimately a cruel
God, epitomized in the sacrifice of Isaac.
Judaism after the sacrifice of Isaac
The
name “Isaac” plays an important role in “Here I Am.” At the novel’s
beginning, Sam’s great-grandfather Isaac is still alive. He has survived
the Holocaust, partially by hiding in a hole for so long that he can’t
fully straighten his legs for the rest of his life. Like the biblical
Isaac, he is almost sacrificed by history. He survives, crippled for the
rest of his life. But ultimately his life will end tragically in old
age, after having raised a family in the New World. He commits suicide,
feeling betrayed because his family insists on his moving to an old-age
home against his will.
We
don’t get to know much about Isaac Bloch, no more than we know about
his biblical namesake, the blandest of the three mythical forefathers of
the Jewish people: Passive, he lets himself be manipulated and never
becomes a personality, and in due time Abraham will even send his
servant to find Isaac a bride, Rivka, apparently convinced that he’ll
never get something done on his own.
In
contemporary psychological lingo we would say that the biblical Isaac
never recovers from the trauma of understanding that his father was
willing to sacrifice him to satisfy the whims of a totalitarian God.
About his contemporary namesake Safran Foer writes “Isaac had been the
embodiment of Jacob’s history; his people’s psychological pantry, the
shelves collapsed. His heritage of incomprehensible strength and
incomprehensible weakness.”
Jacob
Bloch is named after biblical Isaac’s son, Jacob, who steals his
brother Esau’s primogeniture and then flees, only to become the
forefather of the 12 tribes that will become the People of Israel,
fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham that he will become a great people.
Like his biblical namesake, Jacob Bloch is not much of a hero. He’s the
typical young Jewish liberal; highly sensitive, politically correct to a
fault, indecisive almost to the point of paralysis, living his family
life conscientiously but not quite sure that this life is actually his.
His
divorce is initiated not by a full-fledged affair, but by Julia’s
finding out that he was sexting with a co-worker in the TV series that
he is involved in. But Jacob and Julia are fervent believers in modern
humanist values in all aspects of their lives: They separate on amicable
terms, collaborating in the effort to create familial continuity for
their children.
I
imagine that their divorce doesn’t include any of the ancient Jewish
rituals that are so profoundly humiliating for women, but was conducted
according to the beliefs and the way of life of their Jewish-American
cohort, which is far removed from the ancient creed that religion trumps
human morality. They have also rejected the primacy of the ancient
Jewish injunction “honor your father and mother” and adopted the modern
liberal creed that parents who choose to put children into this world
have the duty to be attentive to their needs and try to meet them as
sensitively as possible.
Not
only the second-rate status of women is jarring for modern Jewish
liberals, but another theme currently very much en vogue in certain
circles in Israel. There are Orthodox groups that want to restore the
Temple, and are creating models for the tools used in the Temple among
others to resume the endless series of animal sacrifice that were
central to its rituals. This, to Jewish liberals, seems the relic of a
pagan past, and the idea of animal sacrifice seems outrageous to them.
Safran
Foer refrains from stating his opinions on the matter, even though one
can guess what his position on slaughtering animals for ritual purposes
is likely to be. Instead of lashing out at animal sacrifice, “Here I Am”
ends on a chapter that compresses these themes poignantly: Jacob has
moved into a house of his own, and the kids are beginning to share their
time between his house and Julia’s, who, we find out, has finally
transformed from an architect dreaming about projects to an architect
who builds actual houses.
Argus,
the family dog, has stayed with Jacob, but he is beginning to
deteriorate, and Jacob realizes that it is time to release Argus from
his suffering. The book’s final scene, in which he takes Argus to the
vet, is heart-wrenching, and its last words are Jacob’s assent to the
patient vet to give Argus his last injection: “I am ready,” ready to
take responsibility to reduce my dog’s suffering; a humane variation to
the book’s leitmotif “here I am.”
Haaretz Contributor
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