The Jewish Question

Amazingly the novel "The Finkler Question" by Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize for 2010. It purports to be mainly a narrative by a non-Jew, Julian Treslove (get it, three loves) who admires Jews and wants to be a Jew himself because of his depressive, sensitive nature. His two best friends are Jews, Sam Finkler, a typical Jewish anti-Semite, who doesn't want to be associated with anything to do with Israel or religious Jews, and Libor Sevcik, an improbable Czech Holocast survivor, who was a success in Hollywood, yet ended up teaching Sam and Julian in school in suburban London. Treslove's girlfriend is Hephzibah, a Jewish earth mother with whom he pretends to actually be Jewish. Since Treslove substitutes the name "Finkler" for anything Jewish, so you have the title "The Finkler Question," because nobody would buy a book entitled "The Jewish Question."

The book is a ruminative treatise on what being Jewish means and consists of a series of cliches about Jews, how sensitive, contradictory and self-hating they are, written by a Jew posing as a non-Jew who wants to be a Jew. It is self-indulgent and in the end nothing much happens. There is a little drama, Sam becomes leader of an anti-Israel Jewish group in the wake of the Gaza "Operation Cast Lead" which is called "ASHamed Jews," but then repudiates them. Julian is mugged by a woman who takes him for a Jew. Libor, whose loving wife dies, can't take life anymore and commits suicide. That's about it. Ultimately the reader doesn't care much what happens to this small cast of shallow characters and in the end the book is inconsequential,

But, it does have redeeming features. It has a wry humor, but at least it is not vulgar, like some of Jacobson's earlier books. It is well written and does invoke a sense of style.

"Treslove was another in a long line of men who needed saving. Were they the only men who came to her - the lost, the floundering, the dispossessed? Or were there no other sort? Either way their demands worried her. Who did they think she was - America. Give me your tired, your poor ... the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. She looked strong and secure enough to house them, that was the problem. She looked capacious. She looked like safe harbor."

In part it is a satire on the self-denying Diaspora Jew, trying too hard to over-compensate for being a Jew in a non-Jewish world.

"By what sophisticated twisting of argument do you harry people with violence off your land and then think yourself entitled to make high-minded stipulations as to where they may go now you are rid of them and how they may provide for their future welfare? I am an Englishman who loves England, but do you suppose that it too is not a racist country? Do you know any country whose recent history is not blackened by prejudice and hate against somebody? So what empowers racists in their own right to sniff out racism in others? Only from a world in which Jews believe they have nothing to fear will they consent to learn lessons in humanity. Until then the Jewish State's offer of safety to Jews the world over - yes, Jews first - while it might not be equitable, cannot sanely be construed as racist. I can understand why a Palestinian might say it feels racist to him, though he too inherits a disdain for people other than himself, but not you madam, since you present yourself as a bleeding heart, conscience-pricked representative of the very Gentile world from which Jews, through no fault of their own, have been fleeing for centuries..."

But, the Jews in this book are all without actual Jewish content in their lives, they philosophize endlessly about Jewish characteristics but they lack any commitment themselves to Jewish life, except in the end when they say Kaddish for their dead friend. I suppose it is a sign of the times that this slight book on Jews and anti-Semitism in Britain was selected to win this prestigious prize.

This was the first book that I read on an e-book reader (a Barnes and Noble "Nook Color") so this might have altered my reading experience somewhat. First of all, since there is no physical book in one's hands it is difficult to judge how far one has gone and how much more there is to read. Although the page number and the total number of pages is written on the upper right corner of the screen/page, that is an abstract concept. So there is an irrational feeling that the book will go on forever. Also, I found myself touching the screen/page lightly without thinking and so turning pages before I had finished reading the end of that page, then having to find my place back. Nevertheless, it was a great experience, especially being able to change the format of the page with black background and white lettering to reduce the glare and read in the dark. On a recent cruise I was surrounded by people reading books on different e--readers. There is no doubt that this is the wave of the future or actually of the present.