L ifestyle /C ulture
Books: Bibi Netanyahu as Fiction, Childhood in
Philadelphia Remembered
B OOKS
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
The Creation of
Netanyahu “The Netanyahus: An Account
of a Minor and Ultimately
Even Negligible Episode in
the History of a Very Famous
Family” Joshua Cohen
New York Review Books
IT APPEARS, for now, to be
over. Though the howling of a
few MKs may have drowned
out Naftali Bennett’s first
speech as prime minister
before the Knesset, the reign of
Benjamin Netanyahu — Bibi,
Melech Yisroel — has come to
an end. No one ever spent as
much time as the established
Israeli state’s chief representa-
tive to the world as he did.

Though Netanyahu’s time
as prime minister is finished
(maybe), Bibism will outlast
his term. His two-pronged
approach to diplomacy, with
its different tones and rhetor-
ical touchstones for Israelis
and Americans; his Manichean
sense of absolute good and evil,
whereby all enemies of the state
are descendants of Amalek
and all Jews fighting for Israel
descendants of the Maccabees;
his barely-concealed disdain
for the Diaspora, and so on.

Those qualities of Netanyahu’s
are frequently reflected in the
Israeli state’s attitude toward
their American cousins, and
aren’t going anywhere any
time soon.

How did the world’s
most-famous Cheltenham
High School graduate become
this man? How did his attitudes
regarding Zionism, the Galut
and the world-historical role
of the Jews in the goy imagi-
nation come to be? For a man
on a nickname basis with most
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Courtesy of New York Review Books
of the word, this is a curiously
infrequent topic of discussion.

Joshua Cohen’s new novel
barely mentions the current
standard-bearer of
the Netanyahu surname. But it
does try to answer the question
of his creation, and ask a great
many others about Jewish life
in America and Israel.

“The Netanyahus” is mostly
the story of a visit by Bibi’s real
father, Benzion Netanyahu, to
the fictional Corbin College in
the winter of 1960. The novel
is narrated by Ruben Blum, a
Jewish historian who is “not an
historian of the Jews,” the first
distinction of many between
Blum and Netanyahu, who
is very much an historian of
the Jews.

Perhaps it’d be useful to
think of “The Netanyahus” as
an American Jew’s extended
investigation into the distinc-
tions between Blums and
Netanyahus. Blum, the lone
Jewish faculty member among
colleagues who cannot stop
reminding him of this, is
tasked with hosting the obscure
Netanyahu for a weekend as
the latter interviews for a job
at Corbin.

Blum is of “Ukrainian/
Russian” Jews, accommo-
dating, meek and unable to stop
apologizing; his wife, Edith,
is of a haughty “Rhenish”
Jewish clan, who are mortified
that their daughter has been
taken beyond the boundaries
of Manhattan. Their daughter,
Judy — Judele, to Blum’s
parents — is a high-achieving
child of an America that still
believes in the possibility of
meritocracy, who is also willing
to go to terrifying lengths to fix
her long, bony nose.

I read that broad portrait
of easily identifiable Jewish
“types” as Cohen’s acknowl-
edgment of how seductive the
Bibi view of the world can
be. History and Jewishness
both become simpler to think
about when there is a “fixed
and enduring ‘Jew,’” one
who is basically unchanged
in function within the larger
Christian world, rather than
many Jews created by their
particular circumstances.

That’s Benzion’s intellectual
project, to explain Jewish
existence in this way, and
that’s how Cohen is able to
tell the story of Benjamin by
telling the story of Benzion:
the son carrying out the
project of the father, and
expanding it.

Over the course of the
weekend of the Netanyahus
incursion into the Blum
home — let’s just be cheeky
and call it their occupation
— the clash between the two
families is obviously more than
a matter of manners, culture
or economic status. In reading
Netanyahu’s ruminations
on Jewish history, especially
regarding the Inquisition,
Blum comes to see that the
future Netanyahu wants is as
fixated on the elimination of
Blum-ism as it is on the ingath-
ering of the world’s Jews.

Blum’s half-admitted fear,
Netanyahu’s self-assured
prediction and one of Cohen’s
questions is about whether the
world’s Blums will just do it to
themselves. JEWISH EXPONENT
Cohen is a writer of morally
serious fiction. His work
grapples with his own pieties
and beliefs, and considers
that they might be wrong.

His language is more essay-
istic than it used to be; the
Cohen of “A Heaven of Others”
and “Witz” appears to be good
and dead, replaced by the
Cohen of “Moving Kings” and
“Attention.” I miss that Cohen,
but for a novel like this, it helps
to just say what you mean.

Cohen recently gave an
interview where he described
his “deep and lasting enmity
against Jews from Philadelphia”
— spoken like a true New
Jersey Jew, I might add. But
at least for this Philadelphia
Jew, the enmity is not recipro-
cated; I just don’t see another
American-Jewish novelist
working at his level right now.

Memoir Takes a
Look at Personal
History in
Philadelphia “The Diamond Cutter’s
Daughter” Elaine Terranova
Ragged Sky Press
Speaking of Jews from
Philadelphia! Elaine Terranova’s
new memoir of her childhood
and adolescence as the daughter
of a Sansom Street diamond
cutter is a tender, clear-eyed
interrogation of the world that
created her. Though interroga-
tion probably isn’t the right word;
Terranova is an eminently fair,
forgiving writer, and though she’s
not afraid to name exactly what
was wrong in that world, she’s
hardly out to put it to the rack.

Fragments are in, and
Terranova, a much-lauded
poet, is into fragments. Rather
than a straight recapitulation
Courtesy of Ragged Sky Press
of her childhood, Terranova
breaks up this short book into
named chapters, some no more
than a few paragraphs long.

The result is something like a
prose poem, a sepia-toned walk
among the row homes with a
black cherry wishniak in hand
and Terranova whispering in
your ear, reminding you — or,
in my case, letting me know
for the first time — about what
was here, and what it did to the
people who lived in it.

There are trips to Shibe
Park, and secretive jaunts to
Fairmount Park for makeout
sessions. Terranova recalls a
tortured relationship to eating
and to her own body, not helped
along by a mother who believed
a woman’s place was in the
kitchen. For Philadelphia Jews
of a certain age, the world she
writes about will be instantly
recognizable. Sometimes her descrip-
tions of family life are so
beautiful I got the sense she
was showing off; reading an
extended comparison of her
craft (poetry) with that of her
father’s (diamond-cutting), I
could feel her over my shoulder,
ready to do the Michael Jordan
shrug. This is a lovely, unique memoir,
with much to offer anyone —
even non-Philadelphians. l
JUNE 17, 2021
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