{"id":36912,"date":"2018-08-05T18:59:20","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T15:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=36912"},"modified":"2022-02-28T00:03:24","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T22:03:24","slug":"it-cuts-both-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/it-cuts-both-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"It Cuts Both Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The great American novelist, Philip Roth, had a complex relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people. To begin with, he was an atheist (though one of Judaism\u2019s secrets is its uncanny ability to absorb an endless array of permutations, including professing against the faith). As for peoplehood, Roth\u2019s early work was seen by the American Jewish community as a betrayal; it had the unforgivable timing of appearing only shortly after six million Jews were exterminated in Europe. Yet Roth\u2019s voice remained a Jewish voice, documenting the aches and breaks of the American Jewish immigrant experience, and weighing in on Jewish life, most successfully through the ventriloquism of fiction. In this way, Roth took on the specter of circumcision and its meaning for secular Jews with sharp profundity:<\/span><\/p>\n

Circumcision makes it clear as can be that you are here and not there, that you are out and not in \u2013 also that you\u2019re mine and not theirs…Quite convincingly, circumcision gives the lie to the womb-dream of life in the beautiful state of innocent prehistory, the appealing idyll of living \u2018naturally,\u2019 unencumbered by man-made ritual. To be born is to lose all that. The heavy hand of human values falls upon you right at the start, marking your genitals as its own.<\/span><\/p>\n

I often think of this passage, from <\/span>The Counterlife <\/span><\/i>(1986), when reading God\u2019s demand that Abraham and his male progeny circumcise themselves. It may seem that the cited approach here is a modern re-interpretation of an ancient ritual, but to my mind, it perfectly captures <\/span>milah<\/span><\/em>\u2019s<\/em> early, primitive truth. Circumcision reminds us of the persistent, primal claims that traditions, like Judaism, make of its people, whether they like it or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roth died this spring and was buried in the Bard College cemetery. Supposedly, he chose that Hudson Valley idyll as his final resting place in order to be close to Hannah Arendt \u2013 another great Jew who had a tortured relationship with the Jewish people. Roth\u2019s funeral was a thoroughly secular affair, and yet I am confident that pilgrims to his grave will practice the Jewish custom of placing rocks on his tombstone, just as they do for Arendt. During life, we have the freedom, or at least its illusion, to chart our own path. But your people claim you in birth and in death.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":37126,"id":37126,"title":"roth's books","filename":"roths-books-e1533652582527.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/roths-books-e1533652582527.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/it-cuts-both-ways\/roths-books\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"roths-books","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":36912,"date":"2018-08-07 14:34:16","modified":"2022-02-27 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