the seen
The 2022 Pulitzer Prize in fi ction
went to “The Netanyahus,” a scath-
ing, satirical novel by Brooklyn writer
Joshua Cohen that imagines a visit
by the family of the former Israeli
prime minister to an American col-
lege town in the early 1960s.

The prize committee called the
novel “a mordant, linguistically deft
historical novel about the ambigu-
American author Joshua Cohen is seen at the Coop Ambasciatori bookshop in
Bologna, Italy, on Sept. 5, 2019.

ities of the Jewish-American experi-
ence, presenting ideas and disputes
as volatile as its tightly-wound plot.”
Cohen, 41, based the novel on a
real-life visit by Benzion Netanyahu,
a historian and the father of Benjamin
Netanyahu, to Cornell University,
where the elder Netanyahu
served as a professor of Judaic stud-
ies from 1971-1975. Cohen said the
story of the Netanyahus’ initial visit
to the campus was related to him by
the late literary critic Harold Bloom.

In the novel, the assimilated Jewish
narrator hosts the family and bris-
tles at Benzion’s fi ercely nationalist
worldview. “I wanted to write some-
thing about the identity politics and
the campus politics that are around
us,” Cohen told Hey Alma, JTA’s
sister site. “There’s a lot in Benzion
Netanyahu that’s really about the
tribalism that happens when these
large ethnic or racial collectives col-
lapse — these empires collapse, and
they collapse into tribalism.”
Reviews were largely positive
for the novel; The Guardian called
it “a comic historical fantasia — a
dizzying range of bookish learning
and worldly knowhow is given rich,
resourceful expression.” The novel
won the Jewish Book Council’s fi c-
tion award for 2021.

But there were detractors. Jewish
Currents criticized the novel for being
derivative of both Philip Roth and
Saul Bellow, and the Jewish Review
of Books said that the novel includes
“a capsule history of Zionism that
is so blatant a distortion that I just
gave up.”
“The Netanyahus” is Cohen’s sixth
novel. One of the fi nalists for the fi c-
tion prize was “Monkey Boy,” by
Francisco Goldman, based in part
on Goldman’s own background as
the son of a Jewish father and a
Guatemalan Catholic mother.

— Andrew Silow-Carroll
Roberto Serra--Iguana Press/Getty Images via JTA
Joshua Cohen’s Satirical Novel ‘The Netanyahus’
Wins Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Some Jewish baseball fans know the name Elie
Kligman, even though he’s just a freshman in col-
lege. That’s because last year he became one of
the fi rst two Orthodox Jewish players ever picked
in a Major League Baseball draft.

But virtually no one knows about Kligman’s
younger brother — who has the potential to be as
good or better than his sibling.

Ari Kligman is now a high school senior, and
while it doesn’t appear he will be drafted this
year, he is beginning to attract attention from a
number of Division I colleges. (His brother Elie
Kligman chose to refi ne his skills at Wake Forest
University, after being drafted No. 593 overall by
the Washington Nationals.)
While Elie Kligman is primarily a catcher, Ari
Kligman, who doesn’t turn 18 until the fall, is siz-
ing up to be a pitching prospect. He can hit up to
89 miles an hour on the radar gun, and by next
year, he’s hoping to top 90, to go along with a
devastating curveball that could turn the heads
of major league scouts. He joined his brother at
the advanced Wake Forest pitching lab in the fall
to analyze his mechanics and make them more
4 MAY 12, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Ari Kligman hopes to follow his older brother in
being drafted into the MLB.

effi cient.

A main takeaway: gain some muscle weight.

Most MLB pitchers these days are over six feet
tall. Ari Kligman is now 6-foot-2, 190 pounds —
after gaining 20 pounds over the past year.

The brothers are very close, born just 20
months apart. Their sibling rivalry is less hierarchi-
cal than some families.

In their off seasons, Ari Kligman pitches to his
brother, and they dream of becoming only the sec-
ond major league Jewish sibling pitcher-catcher
battery — in 1960, the Dodgers’ Larry Sherry
pitched to Norm Sherry. (Since 1900, there have
been four other sets of Jewish brothers in the
majors besides the Sherrys, most in the earlier
part of the 20th century: Sydney and Andy Cohen;
Erskine and Sam Mayer; Lou and Harry Rosenberg;
and Ike and Harry Danning.)
But that won’t happen on Shabbat.

While the other Orthodox MLB draftee Jacob
Steinmetz says he would play on Shabbat —
after walking to a stadium and not using elec-
tricity — the Kligmans are fi rm in their decisions
not to play from Friday sundown to Saturday
sundown. — Rob Charry
Courtesy of Marc Kligman via JTA
Orthodox MLB Draft Pick Elie Kligman Has a Younger Brother Who
Could Follow Him to Professional Baseball



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