A review by hongjoongie
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

challenging funny informative reflective tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

However, he claimed, sometime toward the close of the fifteenth century […] the Church became interested in culling its flock and returning its youngest lambs back to their ancestry. Dr. Netanyahu, as far as I could tell, had dedicated his entire career to proving this claim, and to explaining why the change happened. And while I couldn't hope to evaluate the evidence myself […] it was the explanation that really got to me. It bothered me. Because it wasn't really an explanation. It was more like-I want to say a dogma. 
 
Why did the Church restore to Judaism the very converts it had just spent the better part of the Crusades trying to obtain, according to Dr. Netanyahu? Because the converts were bad Catholics? No, not all of them. Or because they were too good at being Catholic? No, not all of them either. Rather, the reason was because: as long as the Catholics still required a people to hate, the Jews had to remain a people doomed to suffer. 

 

This was an excellent mix of fictional campus novel and a non-fiction history of Jewish diaspora and Zionism. I went into it with certain assumptions (was it going to uncritically spout Zionist ideology? The answer is no; the book is quite critical of the Netanyahus,  in a smart way), but was pleasantly surprised by how funny and informative it was. I loved both the “fictional aspects” (the narrator’s life as a Jewish historian and his struggles to assimilate into 1950’s academia) and the non-fictional aspects (I now know much more about revisionist Zionism, Benzion Nethanyahu’s dogma, and the general idea of why the current conflict between Palestine and Israel is happening). I also loved the idea that history is subjective, mutable, and up to individual and ideological interpretation; the book itself is a testament to this. Of course, this book is also very timely. While it may not be perfect, it’s a book everyone should read.