Two new novels and one political critic examine apostasy
The ancient Jewish horror at apostasy is nicely captured in The Forsaken, a new novel by the Israeli-American writer Benjamin Kerstein. The Forsaken opens with a pseudoscholarly preface, which explains that the narrative we are about to read is a newly discovered manuscript from the 14th century. …
If you were looking for a quick way to disprove Finkelstein’s claim that there is nothing Jewish about Israeli culture, all you have to do is open the pages of another new novel about the theme of sons, loyal and disloyal: Elsewhere, by the Israeli-Austrian writer Doron Rabinovici, which turns the subject into a kind of emotional burlesque.
