Reviews

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

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memelollars's review

3.0

This book is so quirky, so out there, and so unlike anything I have read before. The campus novel colliding with an anecdote about the Netanyahus staying with Harold Bloom and making a literal mess was an interesting premise. It almost felt like an over-the-top Royal Tennenbaums or something written by the Coen brothers with a strongly Jewish slant. I liked the exploration of Jewish identity in America, which was very central to the novel; the collision of a secular Jewish academic with a Zionist academic was interesting. It is so well written and hilarious, but I think the humor will appeal to those with a specific sense of humor: black, absurd, and bizarre humor. Not everyone will find it funny, and there were super crass moments I could have done without. Do I love it? Do I hate it? I truly don’t know! Reading it was certainly an interesting experience and a bit of a wild ride that I won’t quickly forget.

hendersonj84's review

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5.0

Absolutely outstanding

lsaligmander's review against another edition

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5.0

I loved this book for the way it made me, as a Jew, think deeply on issues of identity. To me, this book was all about what it means to be a American Jew in a post 1948 world.

It’s first half, which details the history of the fictional Blum and his family, seemed to me to encapsulate a lot of aspects of the Jewish American experience: It showed how many communities of diverse experience from around the world bubbled and boiled in the American melting pot to create a somehow ancient somehow brand-new diaspora identity the members of which, while definitely distinct from Christian America, are not fully sure of who they are or to what extent they should assimilate.

The book also brilliantly lays out how the Diaspora Jews (though this statement applies to the diaspora at large, I should acknowledge that this book focuses mainly on the US Jewish experience) is in a very complicated relationship with the other half of the Jewish community: the Israeli Jews.

This brings me to the second half of the book, when the Netanyahus meet the Blums. Though this part of the book is nothing short of absurd when taken at face value, when I started thinking of it as a metaphor for the clashes and tensions between Diaspora and Israeli Jews I found it highly relatable and at many points illuminating. It made me think about the ways the two communities shape each other, and the overall affect these interactions have had on the Jewish identity as a whole.

If you want to know what specific truths the book ‘revealed’ to me, I’m happy to discuss privately, but it seems too personal for a book review.

Critics of the book will say it is unnecessarily pretentious and inaccessible, and I agree, but it still gets five stars for making me think so much.

As for those who are offended by the negative and fictionalized portrayal of the “very famous family” I kind of think it’s within the fair bounds of satire and criticism which should be welcome in a democratic society. Is it a bit sketchy to claim the portrayal of the Netanyahu’s is the real them in the same breath as saying you needed to invent certain details? Perhaps. But it would also appear Cohen went to great lengths to research the family and even contact them for their perspective, to no avail. This being the case, even the aforementioned sketchiness is understandable in my view (Cohen did what he could).