It may not yet have been reviewed in this country, but Waterstones has a good reason for putting Andrew Sanger's novel "The J-Word" on a table in one of its north-west London branches labelled "Books people are talking about".
This new book, whose protagonists are three generations of males from the same family struggling with their Jewish identity, has particular resonance in light of the recent rise in anti-semitic incidents.
Although on the surface it seems unlikely that those who have chosen not to identify would change their minds after a lifetime of cultural conditioning towards assimiliation, a story the author - like me
an occasional writer for the JC - told me at a recent meeting of travel journalists proves that blood will probably always "out" under adversity.
I was surprised to hear that Andrew, who tells me he was brought up, like one of his principal characters, without a mezuzah on the front door, went to the pro-Israel rally last month. But I was even more surprised to hear that the seemingly mild-mannered author suddenly snapped when a protestor behind him tried to disrupt the proceedings, and promptly upended him into one of the Trafalgar Square fountains.
He is not the only assimilated Jew to have actively demonstrated his sense of identification under pressure. A book soon to be published of the diaries of Ruth Maier, a young woman brought up without religion in Vienna, records that she proudly registered as a Jew in Norway in 1942,which certainly led to her deportation to Auschwitz, where she died later that year. This is particularly surprising since she made a point of entering a synagogue for the first time in her life that year and experienced no bond with the people she encountered in shul - in fact she felt quite alienated. Nevertheless,she expressed a sense of identification after as well as before the visit, and embraced her fate with zeal upon capture, according to a letter smuggled out on the ship carrying her to the cattle wagons.
Perhaps the message is that blood will always out for even the most assimilated when it comes to the crunch.
