Book review: "The Netanyahus: An Account..." (fiction)

The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, by Joshua Cohen, is a story about the only Jewish professor at the fictional Corbin College was forced to host Ben-Zion Netanyahu and his family (which included his sons Yonatan, Bibi and Iddo) for his interview.

The plot is thin, but Cohen's writing is a joy to read. Writing as the professor Ruben Blum, the book is filled with sly asides and observations as well as a profligate vocabulary.

Blum is an assimilated Jew who cannot escape his Jewishness. The only reason he is placed on the committee to evaluate Netanyahu is because he is Jewish. he is embarrassed to have the only house in his adopted town of Corbindale not to have a Christmas wreath. 

When Ben-Zion Netanyahu arrives with his thoroughly Israeli family, Nathan and his wife Edith are shocked at their rudeness as they take over the house, making long-distance calls, using the washing machine, changing their youngest on the counter without asking permission. (One of the few missteps that Cohen makes is assuming that Pampers existed in 1960.) 

Netanyahu's academic career was centered on proving that Jews were always treated as Jews no matter what they did. His major work centered on the Jewish converts to Christianity in Spain - most of whom, he claims, converted willingly - and how the Spanish Inquisition persecuted them anyway, being the first to treat Jews as a race and not just a religion. To Ben-Zion, one cannot escape being a Jew no matter how hard one tries; the antisemites will go after you no matter what.

Even though Cohen is not a fan of the real Netanyahus - his afterword makes that clear - the point of the book is that Ben-Zion is right, that Judaism is not something one can run away from, even if some Jews are uncouth, blunt, rude and pushy. 

One of the many observations made was that in 1960s, Jews in the US were all trying to become as American as possible and leave Judaism behind, while in Israel the Jews were trying to all become Israeli and homogenize their Judaism. All Jews were moving to become something else.

The Netanyahus is an often funny book, poking fun at the assimilationist American Jews as much as the overbearing Israelis. The Blum's daughter Judy would ask her maternal grandmother, who was all about appearing cultured, whether she had seen gallery openings or poetry readings of people from the Andrew Jackson administration and she would answer that of course she did; Blum's wife asks the baffled Netanyahus to take off their shoes when they enter her house and Ben-Zion ("Son of Zion") has a hole in his sock showing his big toe; the Netanyahus take no responsibility for anything they do wrong, blaming others.

Cohen's writing is virtuosic. The Netanyahus is a fun read and it brings up a number of issues about the differences between American and Israeli Jewry that are still relevant.

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