Literary Fiction · ThoughtfulA small college in 1959 considers hiring an Israeli scholar who arrives with his whole family
The Netanyahus
by Joshua Cohen
A job candidate arrives for his interview with his whole family, in the winter of 1959
At Corbin College, in a place not quite upstate New York, Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian who does not study Jewish history, is put on a committee reviewing an exiled Israeli scholar of the Spanish Inquisition for a job. When the candidate, Benzion Netanyahu, arrives for his interview with his family, Blum has to host them, and they challenge his comfortable American assumptions. A comic novel about identity and politics that blends fiction with nonfiction.
More about this book
Who
Ruben Blum, a historian and the first and only Jewish person at Corbin College. His department chair, Dr. Morse, keeps slighting him and assigns him to the committee considering Benzion Netanyahu, a Jewish historian, for a job. Benzion shows up unannounced for lunch at Blum's house with his wife and three sons.
World
The late 1950s at the fictional Corbin College, in a town in upstate New York.
What makes it different
The subtitle calls it "An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family." It blends history, fiction and humor, and draws on a real episode in which Harold Bloom met Benzion Netanyahu and his family at an upstate New York college in the late 1950s. The family members portrayed include Benjamin Netanyahu.
Feel
Historical satire, 248 pages. It won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.