The Conversion of the Jews

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Phillip Roth - 1973

The Conversion of the Jews (German: The conversion of the Jews ) is a short story of the Jewish-American writer Philip Roth , which after its initial release in spring 1958 in The Paris Review , together with a short novel and four other stories in the same year in the anthology Goodbye , Columbus and Five Short Stories was published by Houghton Mifflin Publishers in Boston in 1959.

The German first edition appeared in 1962 in a translation by Herta Haas under the title The Conversion of the Jews in the Goodbye, Columbus collection . A short novel and five stories in the Rowohlt publishing house , Reinbek.

Table of contents

The conversion of the Jews describes in three key episodes, the adolescent rebellion attempts and rebellion of a thirteen year old Jewish -amerikanischen adolescents against outdated basic dogmas and doctrines of the Jewish faith and the fact in the course of his self-discovery and self-assertion resulting conflict with the rabbis of his community.

The story takes place in 1950s postwar America in or around New York City , probably in Roth's birthplace Newark, eight miles west of New York.

The protagonist of Roth's story, Oscar Freedman (known as “Ozzi”), takes part in religious instruction in the Hebrew school of the synagogue with the young and inexperienced thirty-year-old Rabbi Marvin Binder in preparation for his Bar Mitzvah .

In his first confrontation with the rabbi, the thirsty for knowledge, bright Ozzi questions the idea of ​​the Jews as God's chosen people in the classroom , since these do not conform to the principles of the American Declaration of Independence that all people are born equal . The rabbi's subsequent efforts to distinguish between political equality and spiritual election do not convince him; Even the influence and corporal punishment by his mother, whom the rabbi had previously summoned to the synagogue for an interview, cannot dissuade him from his persistent criticism.

In the second confrontation with the rabbi, Ozzi questions his mother and grandmother's reactions to a plane crash in a panel discussion in the Hebrew School: he wonders why his relatives are only interested in the list of the Jewish victims of the disaster, and he wants to know why the death of a Jew was a greater "tragedy" than that of a Christian American. The subsequent abstract attempts to explain and rambling statements by the rabbi about “cultural unity” remain unsatisfactory for him and, as Ozzi tells the rabbi in front of the class, do not answer his actual question; again his mother is appointed rabbi.

The third and decisive confrontation between Ozzi and Rabbi Binder is about the rabbi's declaration in class that Christ cannot be the Son of God because it is not possible that Mary gave birth to him as a virgin. Ozzi contrasts this with the assertion that if God was almighty and could have created the earth in six days, it must have been possible for him to have Mary conceived without intercourse. As before, the rabbi asked Ozzi's mother to come to him. Before she even arrives, however, he challenges the boy again in Question Time to “get Ozzi out of the bug once and for all”.

When Ozzi accuses the rabbi in the dispute that he understands nothing about God, the angry rabbi hits his nose with blood. Ozzi then insults the rabbi and escapes, cornered, through a trap door onto the roof of the synagogue, where the rabbi cannot follow him.

From the street the rabbi tries to get Ozzi to come down from the roof. There is a large crowd; the fire brigade appears and spreads a jumping sheet. Despite the threats and pleading pleas, Ozzi is initially unwilling to leave the roof, realizing the power he has suddenly gained.

It was only when the rabbi, his mother, who had joined him in the meantime, and the other spectators confessed on their knees at Ozzi's request that “God can make a child without sexual intercourse”, that “they believed in Jesus Christ” and that the rabbi and his mother never more would “hit someone because of God”, he jumps into the jumping mat.

Interpretative approach

The conversion of the Jews uses a comparatively simple initial situation to address the central problem of the Jew’s search for identity in modern American society in the conflict with his Jewish environment and milieu , here in the context of an initiation story in the adolescence phase of the protagonist.

In the controversy between the young protagonist and religious tradition and authority, Roth unfolds the fundamental theme of the clash not only of Jewish orthodoxy and liberal assimilation into contemporary American reality, but also of human individuality and social conformity , of tolerance and intolerance.

Ozzi's constant attempts to critically question the rabbi's statements and explanations in order to arrive at a well-founded personal view of what was given to him, but which contradicts his understanding, repeatedly unbalanced the rabbi and at the same time revealed his ultimately narrow-minded attitude and intolerance to other political , philosophical or religious or theological points of view.

In contrast to his friend Itzie and the rest of his classmates, who are completely indifferent or apathetic and willing to adapt in class, Ozzi takes the Hebrew class and the statements of the rabbi very seriously and tries to develop his own deeper understanding. When Rabbi Ozzi angrily asks why he is reading from the Hebrew book so slowly , Ozzi replies that he could read faster, but would then not understand the text.

His “ subversive ” questions do not arise from unbelief, but from contradictions that he experiences in his everyday experience in a predominantly Christian society, and to this extent reflect his mental confusion and his striving for clarification and the search for truth. Rabbi Binder, on the other hand, insists on mechanical reading speed; in his formal, dogmatic faith, he impatiently ignores all contradictions that preoccupy the boy; his abstract, rambling attempts at explanation do not provide answers to his questions. Since he cannot put forward convincing arguments in relation to the thirteen-year-old's doubts in order to dissolve the incompatibility of the idea of ​​a chosen Jewish people with the idea of ​​equality that ideologically characterizes American society , or to deny the divinity of Christ, he tries to pressurize his battered authority and to restore coercion. In his view, Ozzi critical questions are only an additional internal threat to the Jewish religious community, whose religious identity is already fundamentally endangered in the predominantly Christian American society. Rabbi Binder's self-righteous attempts to force Ozzi to believe in the correct faith in a ridiculously “dictatorial” manner, if necessary by force, only document his own narrow-mindedness, rigidity, intolerance and inability.

The reversal of roles and power relations in the final part of this ironic , comical and at the same time satirical story by Roth does not, however, indicate a conversion of the Jews who fear for Ozzi's life in front of the synagogue, as the Andrew Marvells poem To His Coy Mistress (1681) as intertextual quotation suggests the title of the story.

The line from Marvell's poem refers to the Last Judgment , which in the Old Testament heralds the end times of a new world and history for mankind as an acocalyptic revelation of both the final divine judgment and redemption . Roth's ironic-satirical manipulation of this concept through the completely disproportionate parallelization with the wildly waving arms, "like a machine" screeching appearance of Ozzi on the roof of the synagogue clearly shows that Ozzi is by no means to be understood as the vision of a new messiah .

Although Ozzi brings the rabbi, his mother and the rest of those present to their knees, as in Christian prayer, in the catechized confessions that he then enforces from the rabbi, he is less concerned with a fundamental theological distinction between Judaism and Christianity, let alone with it A conversion of the Jews rather than the basically monotheistic idea of God's omnipotence as well as the recognition of elementary laws of logical reasoning and thus the turning away from illogical, intolerant dogmas: If the omnipotence of God is accepted, then this simply includes the idea for purely logical reasons That God could “have a child without intercourse”.

Ozzi's symbolically exaggerated plunge into the depths at the end of the narrative remains ambiguous; Even if this jump into the yellow net can be interpreted as Ozzi's return to Jewish conformity, this net shines in the darkness of the beginning of the evening at the same time like a Christian halo and thus again calls into question all religious dogmatics or orthodoxy. As Link explains in his interpretation, Ozzi "is returning to a certain extent back into the arms of the community, which, however, has now recognized its independence."

Impact history

In contemporary literary and literary critical reception, the conversion of the Jews is predominantly viewed as an impressive short story and (developmental) psychological study of adolescent rebellion against cocky authority ( "impressive short story" , "psychological study of adolescent rebellion against pretentious authority" ) seen as a revealing example of the Jewish variation of the topic of growing up within an ethnic minority in postwar America ( “instructive example of the Jewish variation of 'growing up ethnic' in postwar America” ).

Roth's realistic and lively ( "vivid" ) design of the speech behavior of the two youthful characters of Itzie and Ozzi in the dialogic passages of the story is matched by JD Salinger's precise design of the youthful speech behavior in The Catcher in the Rye (1951, German: Der catcher im Roggen , 1954), which Roth even surpasses with his sardonic- satirical style ( "Roth goes further than Salinger, for he ranges from the sardonic to the satiric" ).

Occasionally, however, literary studies criticize Roth's partially exaggerated or exaggerated symbolism in The Conversion of the Jews . Thus, according to Th. Solotaroff, the name symbolism of the protagonists is obviously so programmatic that an experienced reader feels offended (i.e. binder for the teacher who wants to bind his pupil to dogma, and Freedman for the pupil who is free from the shackles of religious beliefs Wants to liberate doctrines). In his criticism, Solotaroff also complains that the plot of the story with its numerous “brilliant”, “funny” and “symbolic” phrases becomes “flabby” ( “action becomes flabby with its bravura, jokes and symbolism” ).

Roth has been repeatedly accused by Jewish (literary) critics that in The Conversion of the Jews , as in his other stories from the anthology Goodbye, Columbus, he depicts the Jewish characters as "depraved and lecherous creatures" ), serving as a Jew himself the prejudices of the non-Jews ( "playing up to Gentile prejudices" ) and supporting anti-Semitism even after the Holocaust ( "a Jewish anti-Semite" ) by betraying his own legacy ( "Traitor to his own heritage" ) and denigrate the rabbis; he is therefore a “nest fouler” . Roth responded to these accusations by pointing out the literary and fictional nature of his stories, which are not about a realistic depiction of reality, and for his part criticized the undifferentiated black and white thinking (“either good-for-the-Jews or no -good-for-the-Jews ” ) of its Jewish critics. In addition, he emphasized that it was never his intention to represent the American Jews in his narrative work.

Current issues

  • The Conversion of the Jews . In: Philip Roth: Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories . Houghton Mifflin Verlag, Boston 1989, ISBN 0-395-51850-4 . (original English text)
  • The conversion of the Jews . In: Philip Roth: Goodbye, Columbus. A short novel and five stories. German by Herta Haas. Hanser, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-446-23065-1 . (German translation)

Secondary literature

  • Heiner Bus: Philip Roth · Jewish tradition as irritation and a way out of the crisis . In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history. 2nd act. Edition, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-02036-3 , pp. 448-451, here especially pp. 148f.
  • Peter Freese : Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , pp. 340-366.
  • Thomas David: Philip Roth . Rowohlt's monographs. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2013, ISBN 978-3-499-50578-2 , pp. 65ff.
  • Gottfried Krieger: Philip Roth . In: Martin Christadler (Ed.): American literature of the present in single representations (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 412). Kröner, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-520-41201-2 , pp. 129–154, here especially pp. 138f.
  • Franz Link: "The Conversion of the Jews", 1959 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 138f.
  • Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 427-435.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the information in Peter Freese (Ed.): The American Short Story I: Initiation . Texts for English and American Studies 16 . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1984, ISBN 3-506-41083-0 , p. 127. The Goodbye, Columbus collection has since been reprinted several times in various editions and publishers.
  2. ↑ The German edition was reprinted in 2004 and 2012 by Rowohlt Verlag and also published in 2010 by Hanser Verlag . See the information in the catalog of the German National Library under [1] .
  3. ↑ See Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 427f., And Peter Freese : Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , p. 347f. and 364.
  4. ↑ On the reconstruction of the place and time of the action from detailed textual information and commentary by Roth, see the detailed analysis by Peter Freese : Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , pp. 342-344.
  5. ↑ See German text edition, pp. 176–178. See also Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , p. 348.
  6. ^ See German text edition, p. 176. See also Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , p. 348.
  7. ↑ See German text edition, pp. 180f.
  8. ↑ See German text edition, pp. 181f.
  9. ↑ See German text edition, p. 183ff. See also Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , p. 430f.
  10. ↑ See German text edition, pp. 193–195. See also the table of contents in Franz Link: "The Conversion of the Jews", 1959 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 138, and Peter Freese : Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , p. 348.
  11. ^ Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , pp. 348, 352f., 357f. and 364. See also Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , p. 427ff.
  12. ↑ See Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , p. 427ff. See also Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , p. 347ff., And p. 364.
  13. ^ Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: "The Conversion of the Jews" . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 428f.
  14. ↑ See German text edition, pp. 179f., 184f. See also in more detail Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 428-432. Similarly detailed Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , pp. 348-350 and 353f.
  15. ↑ Cf. German text edition pp. 184-189, 191-195. For the interpretation approach outlined here, cf. in depth Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 430-433, and Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , pp. 352-359. For the meaning of the title of the story, cf. especially ibid, p. 357f.
  16. ↑ See German text edition p. 193f. For details on this interpretation, see Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , pp. 354f. Likewise Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 431f.
  17. ↑ Cf. German text edition, p. 195. For the different interpretations and possible interpretations of the end of this short story cf. in detail Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , pp. 354-357, and Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , pp. 431f.
  18. ^ Franz Link: "The Conversion of the Jews", 1959 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 139.
  19. ↑ See more detailed Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , p. 364.
  20. ↑ See Pierre Michel: Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” . In: Klaus Lubbers (ed.): The English and American short story . Scientific Book Society Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-05386-9 , p. 433.
  21. ↑ Theodore Solotaroff: "Philip Roth and the Jewish Moralists", in:. Chicago Review, 13 (1959), pp 87-99, esp p 99. See also the information and documents with Peter Freese. The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , p. 346f. The quotations are taken from this source.
  22. ↑ See the detailed description in Peter Freese: The American Short Story I: Initiation - Interpretations and Suggestions for Teaching . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-41084-9 , pp. 340–342. The quotations are taken from this source.