Published: 28 May 2018
Last updated: 5 March 2024
And then there is the kind of Jew who is convinced that we have been passive long enough, who is convinced that it is time to strike back at our enemies, to reject once and for all the role of victim, who will willingly accept that Jews cannot afford to depend on favours, that we must be tough and strong.
And the trouble is, Fein added, that most Jews are both kinds of Jew.
As I came of age, I felt that tug embodied most in the characters of Philip Roth and Leon Uris. The two books that were most formative of my polarised Jewish psyche were, hands down, Exodus and Goodbye Columbus.
I marvelled at the pride of Ari Ben Canaan and his ability to stare down an anti-Semitic British officer who could “spot a Jew a mile away.” At the same time, I felt the unease of Jews just finding themselves in America, feeling the tug of both maternal and Holocaust guilt while wallowing in passivity and helplessness.
While Ari Ben Canaan was who we wanted to be, Roth’s characters represented who we were, or at least who we perceived ourselves to be. And in their own way, those characters were equally heroic.
FULL STORY Ari Ben Portnoy (Times of Israel)
Photo: Paul Newman plays Ari ben Canaan and Richard Benjamin in Portnoy’s Complaint
