The Subversion of the Jews: Post-World War II Anxiety, Humor, and Identity in Woody Allen and Philip Roth

J. P. Steed
Philip Roth Studies, Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2005, pp. 145-162 (Article)

Published by Purdue University Press

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The Subversion of the Jews: Post-World War II Anxiety, Humor, and Identity in Woody Allen and Philip Roth
J. P. Steed
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. Woody Allen

Much has been written about the generations of American Jews that grew up in mid-twentieth-century Americanized, secularized households but had parents or grandparents whose identities still bore the traces of a distinctively foreign and perhaps still somewhat religious Jewish identity. Some of these generations chroniclers bear familiar names: Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick. Although anxieties over ones Jewishness have been a part of being Jewish for centuriesnatural to being a part of an exiled, marginalized, persecuted groupthe tensions between and anxieties over alienation and assimilation for these newer generations in America differed from those of the previous generations, just as the tensions and anxieties for the previous generations in America had differed from those of the earlier generations in Europe. For secularized American Jews growing up in the mid-twentieth century, the conflict between Judaism and Christianity was minimalperhaps even nonexistent; their Jewishness was far more ethnic than religious. As Philip Roth puts it in his latest novel, The Plot Against America (2004), These were Jews who needed no large terms of reference, no profession of faith or doctrinal creed, in order to be Jews, and they certainly needed no other language [such as Hebrew or Yiddish]. Their being Jews issued from their being themselves, as did their being American (220). Whereas, for previous generations, the tensions Jews experienced had been predominantly between the Jewish and the non-Jewish communities, throughout the mid-twentieth century, many of these tensions shifted to within the Jewish communityover religion, between practicing Jews and secularized Jews; over the generation gap, between young, assimilated Jews and their seemingly parochial parents and grandparents; and over the sense
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of self, between the individual Jew and his or her expressionoften viewed as either an embrace or a rejectionof collective Jewish identity. These new tensions created new versions of Jewish American anxiety, new expressions and kinds of Jewish American humor, and a newly constructed sense of Jewish American identityall intricately intertwined, as the new anxieties manifested themselves via, and were explored and exploited by, the new humor, through which new identities were (de-/re-)constructed. One Jewish American identity that exemplifies this conflation is the Jew-as-neuroticthat now-stereotypical figure with extreme, often humorous, anxieties. Of course, one thing that the neurotic Jew is neurotic about is his or her own Jewishness. Arguably, the two most influential figures in the creationor at least in the propagationof this new identity of the Jew-as-neurotic are the writers Woody Allen and Philip Roth. This essay seeks to examine this new Jewish anxiety (over Jewishness) as it emerges in the early works of Allen and Roth, to express some possible conclusions about how these authors have (de-/re-)constructed notions of collective Jewish identity, and to explore the likely sources and/or causes of these new anxietiesor this new neuroticismand their concomitant humor and identity. Allens Hostage Crisis Allens portrayals of the neurotic Jew and his manifestations of anxiety about Jewishness appear often in his early prose and films. Many of his New Yorker pieces, for example, take up the Jew-as-neurotic explicitly and quite humorously, and pieces such as The Scrolls demonstrate Allens subversive bent toward Jewishness. In The Scrolls, he questions the authenticity of Jewish identity by questioning the authenticity of a collection of ancient scrolls (suggesting, for example, that the word Oldsmobile appears several times in the text [33]), by parodying biblical language, and by making light of two fundamentally Jewish stories from the Torahthe story of Job and the story of Abrahams sacrifice of Isaac. As though to emphasize the place of humor in Allens sense of Jewish identity, Allen portrays God as chastising Abraham for rushing off to sacrifice Isaac: I jokingly suggest thou sacrifice Isaac and thou immediately runs out to do it. Abraham then replies, See, I never know when youre kidding, and God complains, No sense of humor. I cant believe it (36). This story is representative of Allens ambivalence toward Jewishness, as it is manifested via humor; but a more focused look at Allens treatment of Jewish anxiety, Jewish humor, and Jewish identity can be achieved through examining Allens most well-known, and possibly his best, film, Annie Hall (1977). In this film, Allen opens with what appears to be documentary footage of Alvy Singer (Allen), a stand-up comedian, who appears just after the credits roll without any soundtrack. The absence of the lively jazz music that usually accompanies Allens credit sequences creates a sense of gravity. Then Alvy appears, faces the camera, and proceeds to tell two jokes with more sincerity than levity, as though hoping that we, the audience, will understand him thoroughly. It seems
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clear that the primary purpose of the telling of the jokes is not to evoke laughter but to communicate something very serious that Alvy (that is, Allen), as a comedian, perhaps cannot communicate in any other way. Alvy begins, Theres an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of em says, Boy, the food at this place is really terrible. The other one says, Yeah, I know, and such small portions. Alvy then explains how this joke applies to his lifehow life is full of misery and horror, yet it is all over much too quickly. Then he tells the second joke: The the other important joke for me is one thats, uh, usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but I think it appears originally in Freuds Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious. And it goes like thisIm paraphrasing: Uh . . . I would never wanna belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member (Hall 4). Alvy goes on to apply this joke specifically to his relationships with women, saying he is unsure whether he wants to be involved with a woman who would have someone like him for a lover. Both of these jokes express anxieties concerning the nature of existence and identity, anxieties that Alvy wrestles with throughout the filmparticularly identity in a relational context, that is, with regard to the individuals relation to an Other or among Others within a group. The second joke, or more properly Alvys explanation of it, is more explicit in its approach to this issue, but the first joke is no less relevant. The women in the first joke are at a resortparticipating as individuals within a defined community or group. Their complaints are, in effect, aimed at what the community has to offer to the individual (metaphorically represented by food), and together the complaints articulate a tension that exists in the relationship between the individual and the group: What the group has to offer to the individual often is desired but also undesirable. Alvy offers his own interpretations of the jokes and applies them to his life in deliberate ways, but there is another anxiety that grips Alvy throughout the film and to which each of these jokes is likewise applicable, although Alvy never explicitly draws the connection. A characteristic that the jokes share is their Jewishness. That is to say, each joke has a certain distinguishable Jewish context from which it is created, or in which it exists. The first joke is set at a resort in the Catskills (a vacation spot traditionally associated with the Jewish community) and involves two women who complain to the point of contradiction, a trait that has been likewise stereotypically associated with Jewishness. The second joke is attributed first to Groucho Marx and then to Freud, two famous Jews, and its intent or effect is self-deprecation, a trait stereotypically associated with Jewish humor. The other of Alvys anxieties to which I refer, then, concerns Alvys own Jewishness, or his identity as an individual within a group identified as Jewish. Alvy expresses this anxiety explicitly and continually, chiefly through his sense of humor and through his paranoid perception of a nearly ubiquitous anti-Semitism. In his conversations with his friend Rob, for example, Alvy claims that an Aryan-looking man in a music store looked at him knowingly and then menSteed Philip Roth Studies 147

tioned a sale on Wagner. Alvy insists that he recognizes the racist subtext that the salesperson is intendingWagner being associated with Nazism. Later, after Annie speaks of the gifts that her Grammy gave her, Alvy says, Jesus, my-my grammy . . . n-never gave gifts, you know. She-she was too busy getting raped by Cossacks (Hall 36). When the two of them are on Annies balcony, Annie says, Youre what Grammy Hall would call a real Jew, to which Alvy responds somewhat uncomfortably, saying, Oh, thank you (what else can he say?), just before Annie says, Yeah, well . . . youShe hates Jews (3839). The result of this exchange is that later, at the Halls home, Alvy compliments the dynamite ham (55) only to feel as though Grammy is eyeing him suspiciously, seeing him with a beard and ringlets, wearing the hat of an Orthodox Jew. Being aware and even wary of anti-Semitism is, in itself, not necessarily expressive of a significant anxiety over ones Jewishness. If it were, then there would be nothing newly significant about the anxieties exhibited by Allen. What begins to reveal this anxiety in Alvy as significant (and new) are his attempts to distance himself from his Jewishness, his acts of resistance and subversion toward the traditional collective identity of Jewishness, which might be interpreted as assertions of individual identity at the expense of an association with a particular collective identity. For instance, Alvy again complains of anti-Semitism in another conversation with Rob, claiming that the worlds negative view of New York is itself anti-Semitic; then he admits that he sometimes shares this view. Rob uses this as an opportunity to encourage Alvy to move to California (perhaps metaphorically encouraging an escape from Jewishness) and offers the climate as an ostensible reason for the move, suggesting more sun might be good for Alvy. But Alvy says, Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat, college (Hall 30). The joke is created out of incongruity; parents are supposed to be benevolent authority figures providing reliable and helpful direction, and this is juxtaposed with the idea that their direction is instead faulty and damaging. The humor hits a high note when Alvy tosses in college for good measure. The effect of the joke, however, is to undermine the authority of the parental figure or of authority figures in general. Such a stance effectively places Alvy in opposition to his Jewish parents and to the Jewish (or at least Judaic) precept of honoring ones parents and respecting authority. Moreover, within the Jewish community, Jewishness itself is another thing that ones parents said was good. Perhaps Alvy, who rejects the advice of his Jewish parents and can include even college in his rejection of everything our parents said was good, is in fact rejecting Jewishness itself, too, as bad. Because it manifests itself almost wholly via Alvys humor, this animosity (or at least ambivalence) toward Jewishness is complicated. That is, there are no diatribes, no polemics against Jewishness; there is no explicit rejection of the collective identity. Rather, Alvys humor reveals a complexity in his response to Jewish identity that perhaps hints at the nature of Jewish identity itself. After all, his anxiety-ridden jokes about Jewish identity are themselves
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identifiable as Jewish. One might say that ones anxiety over ones Jewishness becomes a marker of ones Jewishness; to say, I am not sure I am, or want to be, a Jew, paradoxically (and perhaps unwittingly) functions as an assertion of ones Jewishness. In effect, the identity becomes inescapable, andin a vicious cycle that is fully appropriate to Allens sense of farcical humorthis in turn becomes a source of additional increased anxiety for Alvy. His Jewishness holds him hostage, and this identity as hostage is one that he both craves and despises, one that he pursues but cannot escape. On one level, Alvys humor is a coping mechanism, a way for him to deal with his anxiety over this hostage crisis by diffusing it. Freuds assessment of the function of humor is, of course, applicable here. It also is interesting to note the historical context: Alvy is struggling with a hostage crisis in a 1977 film, just two years before the notion of hostage crisis would take on a new significance for Americansand just five years after nine Israeli athletes were taken hostage and killed during the 1972 Olympics. Allens/Alvys sense of anxiety over his identity and its manifestation as a sort of hostage crisis is timely; clearly, his humorous treatment of it is an attempt to manage and negotiate it. But besides being a coping mechanism for this hostage crisis, Alvys humor also is a means of creating the hostage identity; in fact, one joke that Alvy tells early on does so explicitly. Alvy does not directly refer to Jewishness in the joke, but its relevance to Alvys Jewishness is substantial. At one point in the film, we are shown a clip of a talk show on which Alvy had appeared as a guest. As the shows discussion turns to the topic of the military draft, Alvy declares that he has been classified as 4-P. He then explains that this means that, in the event of a war, he has been designated a hostage (9). Alvys humor here again arises out of incongruity: The common idea that one is designated for a particular purpose by ones draft status is juxtaposed with the decidedly uncommon idea that one might be designated for such a purpose as that of hostage. But why does Alvy, as the creator of the joke, choose to make himself a hostage? Why does he choose for himself this particular identity? Wartime is traditionally and typically a time when members of a community unite under the auspices of a shared group identity. In nationalistic terms, patriotism flourishes. Even those who protest a war do so usually out of their own conception of patriotism, so that they, too, are expressing their identity as part of the national community. But here Alvy separates himself from the community by asserting a uniquely individual identitya draft status of 4-P, which he shares with no one else, and a status, moreover, that prevents him from playing an active role within the community when war is declared. As hostage, he cannot participate in the community as a soldier, as a supporter of the war, or even as a protester of the war. His unique draft status, which is to say his (duly asserted) individual identity, in fact, removes him completely from the community by placing him in another country where he will be held hostage. Yet, paradoxically, it must be noted that his hostage-ness, his identity, continues to be reliant on his previous association with the group from which he has distanced
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himself. In other words, Alvys hostage identity, while a removal from the group, also is the result of his association with the group. In effect, he is held hostage for his group identity and thus by his group identity, despite his efforts to shed it. And this hostage-ness is, incredibly, the identity he chooses. While this joke does not explicitly refer to Alvys Jewishness, its selfdeprecating nature might suggest its participation in a long tradition of selfdeprecating Jewish humor, and its relevance to the Jews mid-twentiethcentury struggles with alienation and assimilation both within and without the Jewish community is clear. It seems reasonable to say that the hostage joke is applicable to and indicative of Alvys anxietyhis hostage crisis, his identity crisisregarding his Jewishness, or perhaps it is indicative of an anxiety over his Americanness; after all, only one who perceives himself as not fully American would eschew the American identity options of soldier, supporter, or protester in favor of the ambiguous and ambivalent identity of hostage. In this case, it is still an anxiety over his Jewishness, for it is Alvys Jewishness that complicates his identity as an American. Allens manifest anxiety toward Jewishness continues through his later films, although often less explicitly. That is, there are fewer open conversations about Jewish identity in Allens films of the 1980s and 1990s. Zelig (1983) is a notable exception as a film that deals entirely with a Jews obsessive need to assimilate whatever identity he encountersand it is worth mentioning that Zelig even feels the need to assimilate Jewishness: When in the company of obese men, he grows in girth; when in the company of black men, his skin darkens; and when in the company of Orthodox Jews, he grows ringlets and a beard. The suggestion is that the assimilating Jew is without an identifiable identity, and yet, paradoxically, this slippery, unidentifiable identity is the American Jews identity. (Throughout history, of course, anti-Semites have asserted this same identity for Jews, in insidious and inflammatory tones, denouncing Jews for their guileful infiltration of the community; thus, Allen opens himself to charges of selfhatred and anti-Semitism with a film such as Zelig.) Throughout almost all of Allens filmseven when Jewishness is not directly or explicitly treatedthe Allen persona, usually played by Allen himself, is present and is almost always at least nominally Jewish and somewhat neurotic, if not fully blown as the Jew-as-neurotic. Indeed, the Allen persona has become essentially synonymous with the identity of the Jew-as-neurotic, or the Jew who is overly anxious about everything (including his Jewishness), so that almost every Allen film is a reconstruction and reassertion of that identity. This includes his more recent work. Mary P. Nichols, in her discussion of Mighty Aphrodite (1995), for example, notes Lenny Weinribs (that is, the Allen personas) anxiety over and desire to distance himself from his Jewish identity, especially when Lenny and his wife discuss a name for their child. Lenny avoids names that sound too Jewish, moving to other possibilities when Amanda suggests Ben and Nichols also notes that Lennys parents (that is, representatives of his Jewish roots) are conspicuously absent from the movie (19798).
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Even those films in which Allen does not appear as actor, such as Bullets Over Broadway (1994) or Celebrity (1998), still manage to succeed in reconstructing and reasserting this Jew-as-neurotic identity via the performances of other actors who simply re-create the Allen persona (John Cusack and Kenneth Branagh, respectively). Perhaps these actors are simply playing a role that Allen could not play himselfbeing perhaps too old for the young artist of Bullets Over Broadway and perhaps not young enough or physically attractive enough, by Hollywood standards, for the role in Celebrity. Any viewer of the films who is familiar with Allens other work can recognize the attempts by Cusack and Branagh to re-create the Allen persona, as they exhibit the familiar stammerings and bumblings, yammerings and mumblings of their predecessor. One cannot overlook the fact that Cusacks character is a bohemian writer from Greenwich Village named David Shayne, and that Branaghs is a journalist/writer named Lee Simon. Despite Allens absence and despite the non-Jewishness of actors Cusack and Branagh (both are Irish), a fairly compelling case can be made that Cusack and Branagh are performing the Allen persona, or the Jew-as-neurotic identity. It may even be possible to read into this casting an attempt on Allens part at a further distancing of his individual identity from the Jewish collective, as he enlists actors who are identifiably goyim to play a persona that is identifiably Woody Allen, thus subverting the already subversive identity of Jew-as-neurotic. Roths Subversion Philip Roths work has much in common with Allens in its manifestations and explorations of Jewish anxieties. Perhaps the most obvious similarity is in the two authors bitter portrayals of the stereotypically domineering and anxietyinstilling Jewish mother figure. Allens short film, Oedipus Wrecks (1989), for example, is a sort of companion text to Roths Portnoys Complaint (1969) in that regard. Roth, even more so than Allen, is an author obsessed with identity, as works such as The Counterlife (1986) and Operation Shylock (1993) make clear. This obsession also is situated squarely within a Jewish context; that is to say, the identity with which Roth seems particularly obsessed is a Jewish oneor might be, might not be, ought to be, could be, should not be. This complexity and undecideability with which Roth treats Jewishness both spur and frustrate the obsession and are a primary source of the anxiety. Roths, like Allens, is a humor at once grounded in yet hostile to ethnicity (Workman 16). Nathan Zuckerman, Roths alter-identity, for example, sees himself, in The Counterlife, as a Jew among Gentiles and a Gentile among Jews. He is a Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple (Counterlife 370). Clearly, Zuckerman struggles with the tensions of assimilation and alienation; this mini-speech is an articulation of these anxieties over his Jewishness. He is, as Alan Cooper puts it, suspended in a state of fictive uncertainty about his own identity: about how much he is the American,
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how much the Jew (3). He says he is a Jew, acknowledges that he is a Jew, but what makes him a Jew if he lacks all the traditional markers of Jewishness? To say he is a Jew [. . .] without Jewishness is to make of himself an object for study, for inquisition. It is to say an apple is an apple while simultaneously attempting to reject or deny all that marks its appleness. When he says he is a Jew among Gentiles and a Gentile among Jews, he articulates the shift that took place during the mid-twentieth century, as tensions spread from Jew versus nonJew to Jew versus Jewperhaps even from Self versus Other to Self versus Self. For Zuckerman, his Self is the ultimate OtherOther to Gentiles, Other to Jews, even Other to his Self. (Talk about an identity crisis!) Another Roth creation, and the quintessential construction of Jew-asneurotic, Alexander Portnoy, voices this division between his Jewish Self and his fellow Jews and the anxiety it produces. When referring to his parents, he says, These people are incredible! These people are unbelievable! These two are the outstanding producers and packagers of guilt in our time! (Portnoy 39). Like Alvy, Portnoy uses a food metaphor to express his ambivalence toward and even an outright rejection of the Jewish community and the Jewishness that that community has to offer: I dont want the food from [my mothers] mouth, he says. I dont even want the food from my platethats the point (16). Portnoy seeks relentlessly to be liberated from, rather than integrated with, his community (Workman 24), and he even notes his entrapment in a hostage situation similar to Alvys: We are not a family, he says, that takes defection lightly (Portnoy 64). The fact that humor is central to Portnoys (and Alvys, and Zuckermans) anxiety-ridden struggle with Jewishness hardly needs mentioning; the most revealing discussion of that humor in Portnoys Complaint comes when Naomi, an Israeli woman, tells Portnoy, [T]here is something very wrong with you. She observes that Portnoy is the most unhappy person she has ever known and adds:
You seem to take some special pleasure, some pride, in making yourself the butt of your own peculiar sense of humor. [. . .] Everything you say is somehow twisted, some way or another, to come out funny. All day long the same thing. In some little way or other, everything is ironical, or self-depreciating. Selfdepreciating? Self-deprecating. Self-mocking. (29899)

Portnoys clarification of the womans English also is a confirmation. He knows this is his humor, and he defends it, saying, Self-deprecation is, after all, a classic form of Jewish humor. But the woman replies, Not Jewish humor! No! Ghetto humor (299; emphasis in original). She closes their conversation with this condemnation: Mr. Portnoy, she said, raising her knapsack from the floor, you are nothing but a self-hating Jew. Portnoys response? Ah, but Naomi, maybe thats the best kind (300). The fact that Portnoy does make himself the butt of his own jokes is indicative of the complications and the conflictedness that he, like Alvy, feels regard152 Philip Roth Studies Fall 2005

ing his own Jewishness. Strictly speaking, self-deprecating humor can be a sign of modesty and humility, an acknowledgment of the individuals inability to measure up to the ideal. These are traits that, within the Judaic system of values, might be praiseworthy; indeed, this is in part why self-deprecating humor is a classic form of Jewish humor. But Naomi is right the first time, when she calls Portnoys humor self-depreciating, because his humor is not a manifestation of modesty or humilityvalued traits in the Jewish ethos that are sometimes displayed via self-deprecation. Rather, Portnoys (and, at least in this novel, Roths) humor is, quite clearly, full of self-ridicule; it is (as Portnoy admits) self-mocking, and in effect it devalues, it depreciates the Self specifically the Jewish Self, as it is his Jewishness that Portnoy holds responsible for his suffering (Portnoy 40). The ghettoization of the Jews in Eastern Europe and in Germany was an attempt, historically and politically, to subvert Jewish identity and undermine the strength and power of the Jewish community. When Naomi accuses Portnoy of ghetto humor, then, it is an accusation of subversionan accusation of, as she makes clear, Jewish self-hatred. In other words, from Naomis perspective, Portnoys humor alienates him from the Jewish community, and neither he nor it benefits as a result (Workman 24). Naomis accusations are against Portnoy, but they are nothing new to Roth; they began long before he wrote Portnoy, The Counterlife, or Operation Shylock. By 1975, the accusations against Roth of Jewish self-hatred had become so common that Sanford Pinsker was accepting them as fact, noting a correspondence between the public dimensions of Roths scathing satire and the private realm of his self-abasement. Like D. H. Lawrence, writes Pinsker, Roth is a writer out to shed his sickness in the discipline and pattern-making of art (3). Roth responded to these accusations in essays such as Writing about the Jews (Reading 14969), and Portnoy responds to Naomi by saying that perhaps the selfhating Jew is the best kind. The response itself is, like Roths humorous treatments of Jews and Jewishness, highly subversive. But is Roth subverting the Jews by affirming Jewish self-hatred, agreeing that self-hatred is anathema to Jewishness and then asserting that self-hatred forcefully to alienate that Jewishness? Or is he subverting the Jews who accuse Roth of self-hatred, constructing and affirming instead a new, complex, and complicated Jewishness that is not alienated by, but incorporates or embodies, its own self-hatred? This seems to be what Roth hints at in that passage from The Counterlife: asserting ones not-Jewishness might, in fact, be an assertion of ones Jewishness: One wayperhaps even the best wayto be Jewish is to be not-Jewish. The accusations of Jewish self-hatred originated following the publication of Roths first book, Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959). In fact, preceding his lengthy, novelistic examinations of Jewishness and the Jewish Self is a microcosmic, representative examination in Roths The Conversion of the Jews. Conversion is worth a closer look because, as Roths first story (Roth, Interview 78), it represents his first attempt to deal with the tensions facing the Jew at mid-century, and he deals with those tensions explicitly. Ozzie Freedman
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is the Jewish boy already struggling with his Jewish identity, who may just grow up to be the full-blown (and fully blown) Jew-as-neurotic, Alexander Portnoy. The humor that is present in the story reveals these anxieties, as well as an ambivalence toward Jewishness and a distinct subversion of it. That Ozzie is a pint-sized subversive (Pinsker 13) is made clear in the opening paragraphs of the story; however, it is interesting to note that Ozzie is not unique in his subversiveness. All the kids at the Hebrew school are this way, it would seem. Ozzies best friend, Itzie, for example, although he favors closed-mouthedness, is nevertheless a practitioner of behind-the-back subtleties such as gestures, faces, snarls and other less delicate barnyard noises (Conversion 139). The other children are ready and willing to participate in any subversive activity, as we see by their behavior at the end of the story. Itzies subversive behavior is clearly intentional and humorous in its means, but Ozzies, by contrast, is sincere and unintentional. Ozzie causes problems by asking questionsfor which he genuinely wants answersbut his questions slice at the heart of Judaic beliefs and values. It is perhaps because of this sincerity that Ozzies form of subversion is so much funnier than Itzies. Significantly, Ozzie Freedmans first question pertains to how Rabbi Binder could call the Jews The Chosen People if the Declaration of Independence claimed all men to be created equal (Conversion 141). The humor in the question arises from the juxtaposition of the sacred and the secular, the two seemingly conflicting ideals of what Binder calls spiritual legitimacy and political equality (141). The question articulates one of the conflicts faced by the mid-century Jew (represented by Ozzie) who no longer privileges the Jewish identity over the American, and the question is the source of no small anxiety, for how can the two desired identities be reconciled? Moreover, the question is subversive of Jewish identity precisely because it no longer privileges that Jewish identity. By raising the Declaration of Independence to a status equal to scripture, Ozzie elevates Americanness and diminishes Jewishness. Ozzies second question then regards his mothers lamentation over a plane crash in which fifty-eight people were killed, eight of whom were Jews. His mother calls the crash a tragedy because of the eight Jews, and Ozzie wants to know why the inclusion of eight Jews makes the crash more tragic than it otherwise may have been. When Binders response (having to do with cultural unity [Conversion 142]) is unsatisfactory, Ozzie declares that he wished all fifty-eight were Jews (142). This inquiry, although less humorous than the first, is no less concerned with Jewish identity and more indicative of Ozzies ambivalence, even resentment, toward Jewishness. The death wish, in fact, might be the first sign of a budding self-hatred. Ozzies most significant question, however, is his third, which is crucial to the storys plot. The question has to do with Jesusthat king of all subversive Jewsand Ozzie wants to know [h]ow if [God] could create the heaven and earth in six days, and make all the animals and the fish and the light in six days
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[. . .] why couldnt He let a woman have a baby without having intercourse? (Conversion 14041). Unlike the first question, which inheres a certain humor for its juxtaposition of sacred and secular, this question is not in itself necessarily funny; it is a valid theological question that might be treated in all seriousness. Unlike the second question, which articulates explicitly a certain anxiety over Jewish identity, this questionwhether God could let a woman have a baby without having intercourseostensibly has nothing to do with Judaism or Jewishness per se. It is in Binders (and Ozzies mothers) reaction to this third question that it takes on its humor and its relevance to Jewish identity. In other words, it is because Binder (and Ozzies mother) sees the question as threateningas potentially subversivethat it becomes subversive, and humorously so. Binders reaction, of course, is anger. After Ozzies mother reacts by hitting Ozzie across the face when he tells her about the question at home, Binder also tries to slap Ozzie later, at school, when he raises it a second time. Ozzie bleeds when Binders palm catches him in the nose, and he runs out and up the stairs to the rooftop. At this point, at the shedding of blood, the nature of the question and the title of the story combine to construct some parallels. Ozzie, clearly, is being comically constructed as a kind of Christ figure. Like Jesus, he has no earthly father; like Jesus, he is twelve (or thirteen) and astonishing (or at least confounding) the rabbis with his learning and understanding of theological matters; like Jesus, he is a Jew no longer willing to buy into the traditions of Judaism. In effect, Ozzie qua Jesus becomes a symbol of the mid-century Jew. Like Zuckerman, Jesus is a Jew among Gentiles and a Gentile among Jews, and thus he becomes the perfect vehicle for Roth, via Ozzie, to explore and articulate this identity crisis. That Ozzie is, in fact, involved in an identity crisis is revealed in the question that [shoots] through his brain as he finds himself on the rooftop: Can this be me? he thinks (Conversion 147):
Louder and louder the question came to himIs it me? Is it me?until he discovered himself no longer kneeling, but racing crazily towards the edge of the roof, his eyes crying, his throat screaming, and his arms flying everywhichway as though not his own. Is it me? Is it me Me ME ME ME! It has to be mebut is it! (148; emphasis in original)

The question comes with such force and runs so deep that it suggests a kind of revelatory moment for Ozzie. It reaches beyond him to an identity larger than Ozzie Freedman. Indeed, it is this moment that seems to mark the advent of Ozzie-as-Messiah. Ozzie is not wondering if he is Ozzie, if what he is doing coincides with the identity of Ozzie Freedman as he has known it; he is wondering Is it me? while thinking messianically, wondering if the identity of Ozzie Freedman coincides with messianic identity. He is asking, Am I the Messiah? This is confirmed in the paragraph that follows Ozzies query: It is the question a thief must ask himself the night he jimmies open his first window,
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and it is said to be the question with which bridegrooms quiz themselves before the altar (148). The Bible states that the Messiah will come as a thief in the night (for example, 1 Thess. 5.2) and often is likened to a bridegroom (for example, Matt. 9.15). Ozzies elevation to the status of Messiah, then, connotes salvation, and the final scene plays out like a mass conversion, as he demands that everyone kneel and confess that God could, indeed, let a woman have a baby without having intercourse. The scene is thoroughly comic, and the effect is ultimately subversive. Ozzie undermines all that Rabbi Binder, Ozzies mother, and Yakov Blotnik (the old janitor) representnamely, traditional Judaism and Jewishnessby insisting that they capitulate to his theology and by demonstrating a willingness to die for this cause. In effect, Roth says that the only way that the Jews can be saved is if they are converted. But the conversion here is not, as others have suggested, a conversion to American assimilationism,1 and it certainly is not a conversion to Christianity. Rather, it is Ozzies coercion of the Jews toward a new Jewish identity. The conversion is the subversion of traditional Jewish identity and the forced acknowledgment, among Jews, not of Jesus as the Messiah but Jesus as the king of the Jewsthat is, the epitome of Jewishness. The great tradition of Jewishness, via Jesus, is the subversion of traditions. (Just think of all of the great figures in the history of Jewish subversiveness, from Abraham to Spinoza to Derrida.) Ozzieas-Messiah has come to save his people by undermining their sense of stasis, revealing to them their thoroughly messed-up, problematized, and problematic identity, because it is only by loosing the bands of traditional Jewish identity, by making a space for this new, mid-century kind of anxiety-ridden, sometimes self-hating Jew that some semblance of Jewishness can survive in the postmodern, post-Holocaust world. This brings us back to Portnoys response to Naomis accusations, when he says that maybe the self-hating Jew is the best kind. What is the object of the self-hating Jews hatred if it is not the calcified, traditional notion(s) of the Jewish Self? In a sense, to be self-hating is to be a revolutionaryand vice versa. Roth, via Portnoys response to Naomi, via The Conversion of the Jews, via Portnoy and the Zuckerman novels and all his examinations of Jewish identity, works to (de-/re-)construct a new Jewishness that not only incorporates what often is referred to as self-hatred but even necessitates it. That is, he is working to make a space for the mid-twentieth-century Jew, the Jew who is a Jew without Jewishness, the Jew who is a Jew although he or she lacks or even rejects all the traditional markers of Jewish identity. And to do this, to save the midcentury Jew, requires the subversion of traditional notions of Jewishness. This, in effect, is what post-World War II Jewish American writers such as Allen and Roth accomplish: the articulation, the (de-/re-)construction of a Jewishness that is even more complicated and more complex, more conflicted, than previous incarnations. Like Allen, Roth continues in his later work to struggle with traditional Jewish identity and with the newer, emergent Jewish
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identitiesZuckerman, for example, in I Married a Communist (1998), continues in his ambivalence toward his Jewish identity, claiming he didnt care to partake of the Jewish character, that he didnt even know, clearly, what it was and didnt much want to (39), and he discusses with his friend and former high school teacher, Murray, the taxonomy of contemporary Jews and their multiple identities (16364). It is worth noting, however, a seemingly significant turn in Roths latest novel, The Plot Against America (2004). Whereas in nearly allif not allof Roths previous novels there has been a great deal of animosity expressed toward traditional Jewishness, often represented by (negatively) stereotypical Jewish parents, Roth seems to reverse his polarities in this new novel. In other words, as Joan Acocella points out in her New Yorker review of the novel, Many people are going to see this story as a recanting (99). The novel is about a Jewish familys experiences during the Lindbergh administration. That is, the novel proposes, in a fantasticalyet disturbingly realisticimagination of revised history, that in 1940 the United States elects aviator Charles Lindbergh as its president instead of reelecting Franklin Delano Roosevelt; then, Lindberghan anti-Semitic fascist appeaserproceeds to align the United States with Hitlers Germany and to enact anti-Semitic policies that promote the dissolution of the Jewish community, primarily through the aggressive Americanization of the Jews. The Jewish family at the center of the book is named Roth and consists of father Herman, mother Bess, older son Sandy, and younger son Philip. This pseudo-autobiographythe family names, the house, the neighborhood, all of it resembles the early life of the real Philip Rothsuggests a kind of self-exploration, or self-exposition, and in many ways the novel might be more autobiographical than any Roth has written, simply because it goes furthest in, and is perhaps the most deliberate attempt at, clarifying and explaining the sources of this new, mid-twentieth-century Jewish anxiety over Jewish identity with which Roth has been struggling for nearly fifty years. But, in typical Roth fashion, these autobiographical explorations and explanations are made in and through a fictional alter-reality. In the novel, Herman and Bess Roth are just as paranoid, overbearing, domineering toward their children, and hypersensitive about their Jewishness as are the elder Portnoys. However, this time, their portrayal is positive rather than negative. After decades of lampooning and lambasting Jewish parents for their overzealousness and paranoia, for their over-Jewishness, so to speak and after decades of condemnation by old-guard defenders of the faith for doing soRoth seems to be saying in The Plot Against America that the parents were right. He seems to counter Alvys flippant dismissal of his parents teachings and Portnoys hostile rejection of all that his parents represented and instead suggests that their warnings were warranted, their paranoia is justified, and their adherence to Jewish traditions is admirable. In The Plot Against America, we do not laugh at the parental figures in mockery and ridicule; on
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the contrary, we shudder with sobriety and reverence for the ways in which they respond to the world around them. Nevertheless, the novel is not exactly a recanting, because Roth never really says in his other novels that the parents were wrong. As Acocella notes, Roth once told an interviewer that he never felt threatened as a Jew, yet he was surrounded from birth with a definition of the Jew [. . .] as sufferer, the Jew as an object of ridicule, disgust, scorn, contempt, derision, of every heinous form of persecution and brutality, and that it was out of the gap between those two experienceshis sense of safety versus the constant warnings that no Jew was safethat Portnoy was born (qtd. in Acocella 9698; emphasis in original). On the surface, it does seem that, given these circumstances, the parents are the ones to blame for Portnoys neuroses. But this conclusion can only be reached if one privileges the sense of safety in the child over the warnings of the parents; in other words, if the sense of safety is taken as the center, against which the warnings are cast, then the gap between the two that spawns the anxieties that wrack Portnoys identity would seem to be the result of the interference of the parents paranoia. The accepted implication, then, is that the parents are Other and are to blame (that is, wrong), and readers reading under the influence of these assumptions might then read The Plot Against Americain which the parents paranoia turns out to be rightas a recanting of that previous condemnation. But what if we de-privilege that sense of safety? What if, in other words, we take the parents paranoia as the center, the norm, against which the childs (false) sense of safety is cast, producing that same gap that gives rise to anxiety? This seems to be Roths project in The Plot Against America: to show that this feeling of safety was equally contemptible in a mid-twentieth-century world wracked with anti-Semitism and equally to blame for the advent of the new Jewish anxiety. Roth, now in his seventies, shows us that the childs sense of safety is every bit the Other to the parents paranoia as the parents paranoia is to the childs sense of safety. One is not more to blame than the other for the emergence of the new Jewish anxiety, because the new Jewish anxiety emerges out of the gap between the two. Roth makes it clear that the childs sense of safety during the mid-twentieth century was largely the product of Jewish assimilation. For the novels (and presumably for the real) Philip Roth in the 1930s,
Israel didnt yet exist, six million European Jews hadnt yet ceased to exist, and the local relevance of distant Palestine [. . .] was a mystery to me. [. . .] I pledged allegiance to the flag of our homeland every morning at school. I sang of its marvels with my classmates at assembly programs. I eagerly awaited its national holidays, and without giving a second thought to my affinity for the Fourth of July fireworks or the Thanksgiving turkey or the Decoration Day double-header. Our homeland was America. (Plot 45)

Then President Lindbergh comes along with his assault on that huge endowment of personal security that I had taken for granted as an American child of American parents in an American school in an American city in an America
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at peace with the world (7), and suddenly the parents paranoia becomes prescience, the gap between feeling safe and feeling not-safe is exposed, and a new Jewish anxiety is born. Of course, President Lindbergh never existed, but he did not need to. Roth simply uses this premise as a means of exposing and underscoring the threat of assimilation to Jewish identity. The Plot Against America shows us that assimilation is just as bad for the continued health of Jewish identity as alienation (that is, anti-Semitism) ever was. That is, we cannot simply point our finger, as Alvy does, at the anti-Semitesat Father Coughlin, Henry Ford, and Nazi Germanyas explanation for the emergence of a new Jewish anxiety during the mid-twentieth century; we also must point our finger at the overwhelming success of Jewish Americanization. Roth simply uses the villain, Lindbergh, to emphasize this point; the fact that Lindbergh pursues assimilation rather than extermination of the Jews is the nature of this emphasis. (This vilification of assimilation also substantiates the reading of The Conversion of the Jews as a push for a new American Jewish identity, not as a push for Americanization.) In effect, whereas most of Roths previous novels offer explorations and expositions of the new Jewish anxiety and its attendant new Jewish identities, this latest novel offers what appears to be an explanation of where this new Jewish anxietyand its attendant new Jewish identitycomes from. Roths previous work seemed to indicate that the new Jewish anxiety of the midtwentieth century is the result of a combination of overbearing parents, Jewish paranoia about being Jewish, and anti-Semitism. The Plot Against America shows us the other half of the equation, that the emergence of a new Jewish anxiety during the mid-twentieth century is the result of all of the above in conjunction with the profound and pervasive phenomenon of Jewish assimilation. Out of the gap between assimilation and alienation, between feeling safe and feeling not-safe, anxiety arises, and it is during the mid-twentieth century that these two phenomenaAmerican Jewish assimilation and American (and global) anti-Semitismare perhaps at their zenith. Indeed, it is as much Portnoys desire to be normalwhich is to say, American, or not Jewishas it is the threat of anti-Semitism or the overbearing nature of his parents that drives him to the therapists couch, or to the shikses bed. In The Plot Against America, it is Sandy, Philips older brother the one who participates most fully in President Lindberghs assimilationist Just Folks program and becomes a spokesperson for the Office of American Absorptionwho seems thoroughly on track to become Alexander Portnoy. Hints of this are in Sandys aspersions of his parents (particularly what he sees as their paranoia), including his reference to them as you people (230), and in his turn away from Jewish concerns and toward sexual exploits. In the end, The Plot Against America is about the mid-century generations of American Jews and how they have been shaped by assimilation and alienation, the sources of the new Jewish anxiety regarding Jewishness; and it offers insight into the mid-century emergence of a new Jewish identity that involvesand
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perhaps even requiresthe rejection of traditional Jewish identities that now include the Jewish tradition of assimilation. Postassimilationist, Postethnic Jewishness David Biale writes:
The indeterminacy of contemporary Jewish identity is often the cause of much communal hand-wringing. But instead of bemoaning these multiple identities, Jews need to begin to analyze what it means to negotiate them and, by so doing, perhaps even learn to embrace them. Reconceiving of Jewish identity along postethnic lines would require a sea change in Jewish self-consciousness, since Jews often continue to define themselves according to the old fixed categories. [. . .] Such moments of revolutionary transformation are always fraught with peril, but whatever ones view of it, the task for those concerned with the place of Jews in America is not to condemn or condone but rather to respond creatively to what is now an inevitable social process. (3132)

The relevance of what Biale is talking about here to the projects with which both Roth and Allen have been engaged seems obvious. Both Roth and Allen have been, in Biales words, responding creatively to the inevitable social process that resulted in the shifting of Jewish identity through the mid- and second half of the twentieth century. Despite Biales hint of future tense regarding these analyses and negotiations of new Jewish identities, both Roth and Allen have been analyzing and negotiating a postethnic Jewish identity for some forty to fifty years. In effect, they have been enactingor, at least, attempting to provoke Biales sea change in Jewish self-consciousness by subverting the old fixed categories of Jewish identity to which most Jews adhere. Indeed, they have consequently provoked much communal hand-wringing. Nevertheless, their work is having an effect. This is evident in the simple fact that Allen and Roth both consider themselves and are considered by most others in the Jewish community to be Jews. When Roth started his writing career, he was roundly dubbed an outcast by what several theorists would call the incontrovertible core of the Jewish collective identity.2 That is to say, although Roth may have considered himself to be Jewish (albeit a Jew without Jewishness), his apparent self-hatred was enough to keep many other Jews from ascribing him as such. In their minds, a real Jew would not do and say what Roth was doing and saying. But today, one is hard-pressed to find many other Jews who would go so far as to proclaim Roth, or Allen, to be not-Jewish. This is largely thanks to Roths and Allens creative responses to the mid-century emergence of a new Jewish anxiety and its attendant shifts in Jewish identity. To a great extent, the creativity of these responses has exhibited itself in the form of humor. It has been primarily through humor, which is so often a complex and complicating, anarchic, (de-/re-)constructive force, that Roth and Allen have subverted traditional notions of Jewish identity and (de-/re-)constructed them to include that very subversiveness. Whereas subversiveness was once on the fringe of traditional Jewish identity (as in the cases of Jesus and Spinoza, for
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example), Roth and Allenalong with that other post-World War II subversive Jew, Derridawork to bring subversiveness, ironically and paradoxically, to the center. Largely through a new variation of Jewish humor, which often takes the form of the Jew-as-neurotic, Jewish self-hatred is no longer anathema to the Jewish Self but rather a revolutionary force for remaking the Jewish Self. This socalled Jewish self-hatred is necessarily more violent and disruptive in Roths and Allens earlier works, as it strives to carve out a place for the new Jewishness that includedand even embracedthe subversion of traditional Jewish identity. But these creative responses to this inevitable social process continue, even in Roths most recent work, which seems now to be concentrating its attention on subverting that other great Jewish tradition: assimilationism. Brigham Young University, Utah
NOTES 1. See Baumgarten and Gottfried, who seem to endorse this reading (46). 2. I am referring specifically to the essays by Asa Kasher, Leon J. Goldstein, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Krausz, in Goldberg and Krausz. WORKS CITED
Acocella, Joan. Counterlives. New Yorker 20 Sept. 2004: 96100. Allen, Woody. Annie Hall. Dir. Allen. Perf. Allen and Diane Keaton. United Artists, 1977. Four Films of Woody Allen: Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories. New York: Random, 1982. . Bullets Over Broadway. Dir. Allen. Perf. John Cusack and Dianne Wiest. Miramax, 1994. . Celebrity. Dir. Allen. Perf. Kenneth Branagh, Melanie Griffith, and Winona Ryder. Miramax, 1998. . Mighty Aphrodite. Dir. Allen. Perf. Allen, F. Murray Abraham, and Helena Bonham Carter. Miramax, 1995. . Oedipus Wrecks [A Segment of New York Stories]. Dir. Allen. Perf. Allen and Mia Farrow. Touchstone, 1989. . The Scrolls. The Complete Prose of Woody Allen. New York: Wing, 1994. 3337. . Zelig. Dir. Allen. Perf. Allen and Mia Farrow. MGM, 1983. Baumgarten, Murray, and Barbara Gottfried. Understanding Philip Roth. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1990. Biale, David. The Melting Pot and Beyond: Jews and the Politics of American Identity. Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism. Ed. David Biale, Michael Galchinsky, and Susan Heschel. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998. 1733. Cooper, Alan. Philip Roth and the Jews. Albany: SUNY P, 1996. Goldberg, David Theo, and Michael Krausz, eds. Jewish Identity. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993. Nichols, Mary P. Reconstructing Woody: Art, Love, and Life in the Films of Woody Allen. New York: Rowman, 1998. Pinsker, Sanford. The Comedy That Hoits: An Essay on the Fiction of Philip Roth. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1975. Roth, Philip. The Conversion of the Jews. Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories. 1959. New York: Vintage, 1987. 13758. . The Counterlife. New York: Farrar, 1986. . I Married a Communist. Boston: Houghton, 1998. . Interview with Jerre Mangione. Conversations with Philip Roth. Ed. George J. Searles. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1992. 313. . Operation Shylock: A Confession. New York: Simon, 1993. . The Plot Against America. Boston: Houghton, 2004.

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. Portnoys Complaint. New York: Bantam, 1970. . Reading Myself and Others. New York: Farrar, 1975. Workman, Mark E. The Serious Consequences of Ethnic Humor in Portnoys Complaint. Midwestern Folklore 13.1 (1987): 1626.

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