Subject: Re: Cheever and Salinger
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Fri Jun 21 2002 - 15:53:31 EDT
Ah, yeah, I can see an emotional commitment. But by commitment I meant the
willingness to follow through regardless of rejection by a small segment of the
community. If he really turned his back on Judaism at that point and never
looked back...he wasn't committed to it.
I agree, though...the question was designed to determine whether he was or was
not "really" Jewish. And this would be painful and disappointing to someone who
would always feel excluded for some reason or other.
Jim
Valerie wrote:
> From: "Jim Rovira" <jrovira@drew.edu>
> > Seems like Margaret Salinger said that JD corresponded with a group of
> Rabbis
> > there for awhile until one of them asked him what his mother's name
> was...then
> > he cut them off. Makes me think he was curious but not committed.
>
> Makes me think he was committed! If you're just curious, you don't feel hurt
> because you're asked about your mother's name. Of course he was not frankly
> committed, he was not religious. But it's blatant he had a problem with this
> being/not being a Jew . I think it's a recurrent problem for many
> half-jewish people, as if they miss something. Jewish religion is very
> excluding: see these rabbis who want to know whether you are really jewish
> or just an impostor. Holden, in the Catcher, tells the same story with the
> "nuns episode" (page 101. Penguin, with red and white cover): "Catholics are
> always trying to find out if I was a Catholic. It happens to me a lot, I
> know, partly because my last name is Irish....". Except that, of course,
> Salinger meant "Jews", not "catholics".
>
> Valérie
>
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