The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

One noticeable feature of the novel is the first-person narrator’s use of erudite (having or showing great knowledge or learning) vocabulary and his insertion of Yiddish, German, and Spanish words and phrases. While some have criticized the language, finding it unnecessarily difficult and serving to aggrandize the author’s own erudition, the language mimics the vocabulary a professor in the humanities and a Jew who grew up speaking Yiddish may use. It also highlights the notion that The Netanyahus follows in the tradition of the campus/academic novel.

The primary concern with the first chapter is the establishment of the narrator and main-protagonist Ruben (“Rube,” “Ruvn ben Alter”) Blum. Ruben is a history professor at a fictional college in the northern New York in the fictional town of Corbindale. Some argue that Corbin University is an ersatz Cornell University, though Cohen denies this. Nevertheless, the parallels between fiction and reality are a topic that resurfaces throughout the novel. Moreover, other topics and themes are introduced through Ruben’s autobiography. The first is the use of Jewish stereotypes. Ruben’s focus and specialty is American colonial tax history, and one of the many Jewish stereotypes is facility with money, and a stereotypical occupation for a Jew is as an accountant. Ruben, in essence, is a glorified accountant. More stereotypes emerge as the novel progresses, not only personified in Ruben but also in all of the other Jewish characters.

The second topic of importance is the idea of assimilation and the definition of Jewishness. The novel’s epigraph is a quotation from Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the New Zionist Organization and leader of what is referred to as revisionist Zionism: “Eliminate the Diaspora or the Diaspora will eliminate you.” The idea behind this quotation is the need of Jewish unification before Judaism/Jewishness disappears through its assimilation into other nations and cultures. Ruben and his family personify this process. Ruben is the least assimilated by the very fact that he questions history, its relevance to the contemporary, and how he as a Jew fits within the parameters of Judaism and Americanism. He says on Page 15, for example, that he finds no strength in his Jewish origins and does his best to ignore it or deny it all together, yet throughout the novel he can neither deny his Jewishness nor evade it. Edith is much more assimilated. Her parents were not orthodox, though they did teach her Yiddish. Judy is the most assimilated and later in the novel becomes completely assimilated. The notion of Jewish identity is further strengthened through Bloom’s explanation of the meaning of several Jewish names. His Jewish name, for instance, is Ruvn ben Alter, the son of Alter. His father’s name is Alter, a German word meaning “old man.” The significance of names is discussed further in Chapters 3-5 Analysis. Ben-Zion’s name means the son of Zion.

A third topic introduced in Chapter 1 is the idea of history’s useful- or uselessness. For instance, Ruben’s expertise on American colonial taxes was born from the fact that no one else was specializing in it. That in itself raises the question of its necessity. Furthermore, Ruben introduces the very idea of history’s usefulness by mentioning that questioning its usefulness was not his idea but an idea posed by Van Wyck Brooks, an influential American literary critic and historian during the first half of the 20th century. The usability, as Ruben points out, is questioned by the contemporary students, or Generation Z. This notion of utility focuses on the influence that Jewish history has on contemporary Jews in their attempt to deal with the Holocaust and the founding of the nation of Israel.

Chapter 2 continues with the interpretation and analysis of Jewish beliefs and history through Ruben’s reading of Ben-Zion Netanyahu’s historical research, essays, and his dissertation coupled with Ruben’s comparison of Judaism with American culture. Ben-Zion’s paradigm-changing thesis that the connotation of Jew switched from being that of a believer of Judaism to a racial category forms the epicenter of Ben-Zion’s personal interpretation of history, and it is the driving force behind Ruben’s decision to tell his story about meeting Ben-Zion since it is his discussion of his self-evaluation as an American Jew in the framing story that introduces the main storyline. Ruben’s musings in the framing story introduce the question of What is Jewishness, which is a primary theme of the novel.

As Ruben retraces events from his past, specifically those that shaped and marked him as Jewish, he notices his struggle between Jewish orthodoxy, Jewish identity, and the idea of the American “melting pot,” which suggests the assimilation of many cultures to create the foundation of what it means to be an American. However, he notices that as a Jew he is marked as an individual who is not fully American. Being a Jew prevents this according to his understanding and the teachings of various rabbis. His rabbinical teachers criticized much of American culture, but Ruben himself criticized them for not being grateful to live in a country that granted them the freedom to be openly critical. However, as he learns more about Ben-Zion’s central thesis and interpretation of Jewish history, Ruben arrives at the realization that everything he may assume about being a Jew or about Ben-Zion is an assumption, and he will need to question everything: what it means to be a Jew, an American, and what he understands of history.

Ruben’s reminiscence brings up the Church of Assumption, a Protestant, new-age church that moved into what was once a synagogue. Ruben states that the church became his personal pun that he uses to describe how both Jewish and non-Jewish people assume his Jewishness and level of faith. His personal Church of Assumption represents how whatever people think they know about him and his relationship to Judaism is an assumption and does not necessarily represent the truth. The metaphor then expands to include the human population at large. Ruben states that Dr. Morse is a member of this church, and so is everyone else, including Ruben himself. By including every person in the Church of Assumption, the metaphor serves as a hint to the reader that whatever they might assume about the book they are reading is also wrong. The reader should prepare for their assumptions to be false, which places the reader on the same level as Ruben. This reference to the reader is an element of metafiction, one of the literary styles used in the novel. The use of metafiction serves to remind the reader that this is a work of fiction even if there is some fact blended into the narrative. This distinction becomes more important as the novel progresses and the line between fact and fiction blurs.