Protocols of the Elders of Judea and Samaria
The stealth propaganda of Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant
- by Courtney Druz -
I don’t have much interest in reviewing books, let alone in bothering with one already reviewed countless times. But when a novel as hate-filled and propagandistic as this one passes unchallenged for so long through the hands of respectable Jewish and non-Jewish critics alike, someone is obligated to question its seemingly universal acclaim.
Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant has been available in paperback since July 2011 (W.W. Norton & Co. publishers), and even now continues to gather both awards and the praise of many fine authors. This is not wholly unjustified, as it is a “well-written” novel in the technical sense. Leegant has an ear for prose, an eye for detail, even a heart. The plot is absorbing, and I could not help but feel moved by the characters and their struggles. The style is literary, in an acceptably book-club sort of way; indeed, my copy includes a “reading group guide” in the back. Yet the fact that its author is a Jew is irrelevant to the need for readers to confront the revolting and inflammatory prejudice displayed by this novel against certain, apparently too-Jewish Jews.
My criticism is not against a lapse in “political correctness,” a fault in taste, as in some ethnic joke about a sports star. Rather, it is against the author’s wholesale stereotyping and condemnation of all characters in the book who stand for faithfulness to the land of Israel or to Jewish tradition, and her complementary lauding of all characters who succeed in refusing such a stance.
Upon examination, this dichotomy seems not merely ignored by reviewers, but, chillingly, is possibly the basis for much of the book’s favorable reception. The cover blurbs wave words like “brave” and “cautionary.” We are told that the book intends a definite moral message—to warn us against “the attractions—and dangers—of Jewish religious and political extremism.”
The trouble is that these dangers are straw men manufactured by the author. Here is her train of logic, as far as I am able to detect it: A) Islamic terrorists are motivated by religious ideology. B) Observant Jews have a religious ideology. C) Observant Jews are terrorists. This perversely wishful thinking takes a dangerous step beyond even the flawed moral equivalency of terrorist and victim so often drawn in leftist writings. It posits that because there is widespread, undeniable terrorism by Arabs against Jews, there must be an equivalent force of terrorism by Jews against Arabs, in real life, whether or not there is any evidence for such a thing. That is, though Jewish jihadism does not exist, Leegant finds it necessary to invent it.
While Leegant is often celebrated for the variety of her character types, a closer look reveals a moral gulf between those Jewish characters who manage to transcend Jewish particularism and those who do not. Leegant’s successfully cosmopolitan, post-religious Jews, attractive and unencumbered by history, are sympathetically drawn. But the definitively Jewish-acting characters in Wherever You Go form an inventory straight out of antisemitic central casting. Start in America and you’ll find Rabbi Wasserman, the slovenly, lecherous talmudist. Then there are the insufficiently secular parents of his disciple Greenglass, vain Felicia née Phyllis and mercenary Lenny, vulgar and class-climbing, unable to suppress their embarrassing Brooklyn roots. There is the elder Blinder, churning out schlocky Holocaust-themed best-sellers to fuel his pride and income, and his delinquent, delusional son, who exploits his inherited store of Holocaust propaganda to manipulate other unbalanced youths into the destruction of themselves and of innocent others. And of course, the monetary enablers of that evil act are the naive, guilt-motivated, American “Israel-firsters.” Thus go the “protocols” of Jewish life in America. So what’s it like in Zion?
If Americans travel to Israel in Leegant’s world, it is for the purpose of a romanticized escape from reality. Those who come find an equally abhorrent group of practically-hook-nosed caricatures. Prominent among these are the dogmatic, compassionless “settler” women, dutifully producing babies to gain dominance of the land, and to sacrifice them, if necessary—their eyes gleam with the hope of its necessity—on the altar of the land. These indoctrinated “settler” children also have murderous martyrdom in their “cold hazel eyes.” Those families form the basis of the more reputable “settlements” to be found over the Green Line—a depiction, I should not have to say, that is utterly divorced from reality. More clandestine are the so-called “Kahanist” cells, terrorists imagined to form the heart of the “settler” movement. And worst among all these, laired in the center of his vast-reaching web, is the hideous “puppeteer” Shroeder—pulling the strings of friend and foe alike to gain money, power, and land through the shedding of gentile blood. Tell me when this libel sounds familiar.
The “only good Jew,” and the book’s most fully realized character, is Mark Greenglass, once-secular son of the aforementioned shallow, money-grubbing parents. To redeem himself and his family, and to win the love of a worthy woman, he must, however, renounce his new-found orthodoxy. His embrace of religious observance in early adulthood is depicted as deadening but instructive, a necessary error in his development on the road to clean-shaven doubter and self-sacrificing victim. Significantly, he must be willing to give up not only his religion but even, almost, his own life to attain this authorial approbation.
Another positive central character, Yona, is also wounded by dogmatic Judaism. We know she’s a good person because she counters that oppression with purposeful adultery and the purchase of an artistically designed idol. I’m not making this up. It is obviously meant to be subtle, part of the same palette of supposedly sensitive scriptural allusions linking characters to a haphazard array of ancient biblical counterparts.
The plot centers on an improbable act of Zionist terrorism against innocent young Scandinavian women, lovely blond art students slaughtered by a despicable trio of misguided Jews. Yes, you heard me right. Even worse, the strong narrative implication is that much of the real-world terrorism attributed to Arabs against Israeli Jews is actually secretly performed by Jews for the purpose of provocation, and that the whole range of Zionist “elders,” from the Yesha council to Shin Bet, know about this and cynically conspire to hide it. This patently false suggestion is worse than merely irresponsible, it is potentially deadly. Novels have impacted deeply on far less volatile political realities than our own; even a writer of fiction must take responsibility for her words and her message.
I would not be writing this were it not for the blanket acceptance and praise this book has received in Jewish as well as general literary circles, and for the depressing predictability of such a knee-jerk positive response to what ought to be seen as grotesque slander. I cannot imagine a contemporary novel gaining such acclaim if the objects of its hateful incitement were of a different ethnic or religious group. And I cannot imagine what ethical response the author hopes might come from those who truly pay attention to her work.
Courtney Druz will be reading from her new book this Sunday March 18 in Jerusalem. (www.courtneydruz.com/events/ )