Subject: Re: Cheever and Salinger
From: Valerie (kate.beown@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri Jun 21 2002 - 15:41:10 EDT
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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