The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
Sam Finkler, a well-known Jewish philosopher, writer, and television personality, and Julian Treslove, a mediocre former BBC radio producer, are old friends. They have maintained contact with one another and their previous teacher, Libor Sevcik, despite having a tense relationship and leading completely different lives.
The three men have a beautifully heartbreaking meal one evening at Sevcik’s apartment, dining together while the two Jewish widowers and the single Gentile, Treslove, remember a period before they had loved and lost before they had cherished anything so highly that they feared losing it. However, Treslove is ambushed and robbed in front of a violin shop as he walks home. Treslove is certain that the crime was an unintentional anti-Semitic act, and that as a result, his entire sense of self would unavoidably shift. A humorous, indignant, frank story about friendship and loss, exclusion and belonging, and the maturity and humanity of age, The Finkler Question is also a novel.
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
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The book is in the tradition of social satire, which has a very long history in England. Jewish literature also developed a very strong tradition of social satire in the 19th century. However, this novel made me realize that because Jews are constantly attempting to adapt to it, one of the things that nobody wants to mock is anti-Semitism. They don’t want to go about mocking and making fun of these things because they’re so eager to be accepted by the exact people that hate them the most.
Jacobson focuses more on fighting Jewish anti-Semites than general anti-Semites. In some ways, this is even more original and cunning. These are the types of people who merit satire. After all, the fact that there are countless millions of Arabs and Muslims living in various nations who have been fighting the Jewish state for 60 years is kind of comical. It’s one of the longest and most unfair wars in history, and it’s getting more and more violent. Of course, the people conducting the battle are one of its principal casualties, as they are organizing their politics against the Jews rather than dealing with their own communities.
The Finkler Question’s central figure is not Jewish. He is a media-famous novelist named Sam Finkler and an elderly Central European man named Libor who hangs around with Julian Treslove, a chronic misfit. Treslove serves as the story’s vantage point. The reader has the chance to see current Jewish life from his point of view as he grows more and more fixated on the concept of being Jewish. So what we have here is a book written by a Jew that is about a non-Jew intent on being Jewish. Here, being Jewish is a moving target. It lacks the quality of being taken for granted like, says, seizes the day…
