I
have been guilty in the
past of giving book review
sermons in which I neglected
to say whether or not I
liked the book, thereby
having to answer that question
over a hundred times at
the Oneg Shabbat. So let
me say it right at the start:
I liked the book. I think
you should read it if you
have not already done so.
It’s a good read.
The Plot Against America
is altogether frightening,
compelling, and profoundly
entertaining; creatively
derived fiction growing
seamlessly out of factual
history.
My
particular interest in The
Plot Against America
stems from a fascination
and personal identification
with Jewish paranoia as
old as the Jewish people
itself, that just beneath
the surface of even the
greatest, freest, most democratic
nation in the world exists
the potential for anti-Semitism
on a moderate or even a
grand scale.
Contrary
to the spirit of the timeless
American Jewish declaration:
“It couldn’t
happen here,” 2,000
years of Jewish history
confirm that it could happen
almost anywhere, and has.
In America, the land of
endless potential and eternal
possibilities, anything
can happen.
The
Plot Against America
is Philip Roth’s depiction
of what American falling
under fascist leadership
in the 1940s might have
looked like. Roth begins
his tale describing what
appears to be his own upbringing
in a neighborhood of Newark,
New Jersey. He then offers
the fictional historic twist
that instead of FDR being
elected to an unprecedented
third term in office, Charles
Lindbergh - renowned aviator
who made the first transatlantic
flight in 1927, whose child
was famously abducted, who,
in actual fact, called Hitler
a great man and was decorated
for his service to the Third
Reich – becomes President
of the United States.
Instead
of Roosevelt taking us
into Europe to fight the
Nazis, basing his decision
on our intrinsic morality,
disdain of fascism and
self preservation against
the growing Nazi threat,
President Lindbergh signs
non-aggression treaties
with Germany and Japan,
and Americans breathe
a sigh of relief their
sons will not have to
go off and fight in a
foreign war.
Lindbergh
continues to realize his
vision of America as the
land of the brave and the
blonde, introducing a set
of subtle anti-Semitic measures.
While they are not on the
scale of Hitler’s
orchestrated pogroms and
removal of civil liberties,
Roth invents eerie scenarios
of creeping anti-Semitism,
American style. President
Lindbergh establishes the
OAA – the Office of
American Absorption, charged
with assimilating the Jews,
offering what is called
its Just Folks program designed
to “deracinate”
Jews by relocating them
into the American provinces
that they might enrich their
Americanness over the generations.
In
Lindbergh’s America,
Henry Ford becomes Secretary
of the interior, and Burton
Wheeler is the Vice President.
The most vocal public critic
of the Lindbergh government
is radio personality and
national columnist Walter
Winchell, who decries Lindbergh’s
associations with the Germans
much in the way the real
life Lindbergh and Ford
were called to task for
accepting the Service Cross
of the German Eagle medal
from the Nazis.
Prominent
Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf,
an ardent supporter of President
Lindbergh, is given a post
with the OAA. He explains
to the Jews that Lindbergh
is good for America and
their forced assimilation
will ultimately be good
for them as well. Rabbi
Bengelsdorf is among the
invited guests at the White
House the night Lindbergh
hosts Nazi Foreign Minister
Von Ribbentrop. Astonishingly,
the rabbi asks: “How
will the cruel fate that
has befallen the Jews of
Germany be alleviated by
our great country going
to war with their tormentors?”
Two
years into Lindbergh’s
presidency the resettlements
have begun, the Roths' neighbors
have been relocated to Kentucky,
killings and riots have
started, and many Jews are
fleeing into Canada.
A
particularly disturbing
earlier section of The
Plot Against America
details the Roth family’s
visit to Washington DC
to tour the nation’s
capitol. While endeavoring
to take in the wonderful
symbols of freedom and
tolerance in our citadel
of democracy, the Roths
discover that their hotel
room has mysteriously
become unavailable, and
they run into some rude
anti-Jewish outbursts
in a restaurant. Herman
Roth screams anti-Semitism!
and the tour guide and
rest of the family try
to pretend that there
is nothing really going
on.
Upon returning to New Jersey,
Mr. Roth tells friends:
“We knew things were
bad, but not like this.
You had to be there to see
what it looked like.”
In fact,
the reader feels as though
he is there when it happens,
so vivid is the description,
and so plausible the scenario,
and so realistically is
depicted the American
landscape as it descends
into the abyss of fascism.
The genius
of the book derives from
the manner in which the
author tells the story.
Philip Roth as a narrator
has never been known to
quiet the angry tone of
his outrage. But here
Roth maintains an even,
detached tone as he lays
down the course of events
of a fascist takeover
of America. The impacted
characters behave as one
might imagine in such
a horrific time. The narrator,
12 year-old Phil, who
is devastated as his young
American Jewish life is
hideously altered, dreams
of his stamp collection
with its depicted scenes
of America’s national
parks, swastikas emblazoned
on them.
President
Lindbergh is presented in
a casual almost dreamlike
manner – rarely speaking
more than catch phrases,
not fully fleshed out as
a character, and chillingly
never speaking specifically
about the Jews, unlike his
Third Reich counterpart.
His campaign slogan is decidedly
isolationist: Vote for Lindbergh
or Vote for War!
The
neighbor downstairs, a
policeman, and his family
are sympathetic to the
plight of the Roths, and
they teach Herman how
to use a pistol to defend
themselves should the
anti-Semitic hoodlums
reach their neighborhood.
Phil’s brother Sandy
is swept up in the youth
movement, spending a summer
in the Just Folks
program, and cannot see
the harm in embracing
Lindbergh’s new
America.
As
I read The Plot Against
America, I could not
help recalling the first
time I heard my mother’s
accounts of Kristallnacht
– the night of broken
glass in Germany in 1938
that she experienced as
a young girl. How this orchestrated
pogrom and the other comparable
events to follow insidiously
led up to the death camps.
One is left to wonder, at
the conclusion of the book,
just how these American
anti-Semitic beginnings
would have been ratcheted
up over time and whether
it could ever have reached
the proportions of Europe’s
Holocaust.
The
Plot Against America
may seem a little more than
a fantasy to some, but this
country in the 1940s was
a different place than it
is now. Any of you who lived
in the Twin Cities during
that period no doubt have
your own special recollections
of anti-Semitism at its
most subtle, yet by American
standards, extreme.
The
Twin Cities has a notorious
history of clubs that a
Jew could not join, hospitals
barring Jewish doctors,
neighborhoods that forbade
Jewish homeowners. This
was the era of Father Charles
Coughlin spewing his Jew-hatred
and his fervent admiration
for Lindbergh over the airwaves
in his weekly radio address.
This was the era of Henry
Ford disseminating his conspiracy
theories through the Dearborn
Independent Newsletter
and the thick pamphlets
called The International
Jew, with chapter headings
like How the Jews Conceal
Their Strength, or
the weekly serializing of
The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion - required
reading, by the way, for
his local Minnesota Ford
dealers (I have one well-read,
beat up copy right here).
Henry Ford’s name
was, in fact, submitted
for nomination for presidency
at the 1916 Republican Convention
in Chicago.
I think
of the sublimation and
blurring of history that
is the natural consequence
of passing years every
time I drive to the airport
here. It was as recently
as 1985 that we renamed
our terminal after the
famous Minnesota-born
aviator who once said
– in real, not faux,
history – “There
are too many Jews already.
A few Jews add strength
and character to a country,
but too many create chaos.
And we are getting too
many.”
The Roth
book simply asks: What
if those voices of suspicion,
intolerance and fascism
had been heeded by the
masses significantly enough
to have actually shifted
the political climate?
It is a horrifying prospect,
but presented in this
work as eminently plausible.
The real FDR himself,
we know, was not one to
be rushed into the war,
and though we’d
like to believe that American
Jews were protesting the
plight of our brothers
and sisters in Europe
during that time, there
was not, with some exceptions,
all that much activity.
Some
have suggested Roth makes
allusions to the Bush presidency
and the politics of the
21st century in The
Plot. Well, the book
was released in an election
year, and does include depictions
of the aviator president
taking noontime flights
over the Potomac, landing
in the presence of cheering
crowds, as though to say:
“mission accomplished.”
But the author states clearly
that this is not a book
about the current political
climate. It is about 1940s
America. And to be fair,
Roth more than anything
else seems to be issuing
a warning about the dangers
of isolationism. You learn
very little about Lindbergh
as a character in the novel,
but there is no doubt that
his leadership in keeping
us out of the 2nd world
war is a clear violation
of the American responsibility
to build peace, security
and righteousness in the
world. It is also a clear
violation of the explicit
Torah value: Do not stand
idly by while your neighbor
bleeds. No matter who your
neighbor is!
It
is interesting to note that
Philip Roth has never approved
of those who define themselves
Jewishly by their association
with the Holocaust, or those
who fixate on Israel as
the raison d’etre
of their Jewish existence,
or who rally as victims
of anti-Semitism. And almost
every one of his previous
novels have railed against
anyone defining for him
what “all of us Jews”
means. Most of Roth’s
protagonists have been Jewish
characters – many
of them notoriously autobiographical
– who were trying
to escape the confines of
their parents’ ethnicity.
But here, in The Plot
Against America, the
most offending characters
are the Jews who advocate
for assimilation, such as
Rabbi Bengelsdorf and Roth’s
Aunt Evelyn whom the rabbi
marries. The character of
his father emerges as a
hero. Branded a “loudmouthed
Jew,” Herman Roth
is the strongest voice sounding
off in public against this
administration that is seeking
to homogenize the population.
It
is almost as if Roth, in
his eight decades of life,
has discovered that there
is, in fact, some value
to asserting one’s
religious identity with
pride. There can be no mistaking
the parallels with European
Jews who understood themselves
proudly as Germans first,
living in a country that
they were certain would
never turn on them.
Jews who never saw the
skies darkening because
they simply could not
imagine it. Jews who,
in the words of my grandfather
who perished in Auschwitz,
reassured their children
with the words “it
can’t happen here.”
In
a way, this book is an appropriate
description of an America
in which anything can happen.
The eternal possibilities
available to us are both
our great strength and our
onerous burden. Roth’s
novel suggests to us that
the very democratic process
we so cherish can result
almost overnight in a very
different kind of society.
That, I believe, is a message
that is very current, given
the strong emotional, religious
sway we saw taking place
in our last election.
Things
do get back to normal
in the course of the book’s
conclusion, but the scars
remain for young Phil
and his family. The American
dream of a melting pot
of tolerance and religious
freedom has been shown
to be a fragile thing,
one that might be taken
away from them with a
provocative twist of historical
fate.
You come away from this
read thinking, my goodness,
maybe it could have happened
here. Maybe it still could.
And here we find ourselves
shoulder to shoulder with
every Jew in the history
of the last 2000 years,
uncertain about the extent
of our security in a land
that had formerly proven
so hospitable, felt so much
like home, held so much
promise.
But
I also came away from this
book with an appreciation
for what America stands
for at its best. Even as
we celebrate all that this
great country has afforded
us, we must never believe
that we can isolate ourselves
from the troubles of the
world, nor should we isolate
ourselves from our fellow
citizens. One of the extraordinary
ironies of the book is that
even as we breathe a sigh
of relief that this is only
a work of fiction, we must,
as Jews, be ever aware that
the horrors that could have
happened to Jewish Americans
in the 1940s have occurred,
and continue to be the reality
of other minorities, especially
newcomers to our shores,
to this very day.
The
Passover Haggadah
tells us a story of Biblical
Israelite oppression and
bids us over and over again
to remember that we were
once slaves in the land
of Egypt, which was once
entirely hospitable to us,
and we are admonished not
to tolerate that state of
affairs with any people
on the earth. The Plot
Against America reads
like a modern Haggadah,
calling upon us to be aware
of how quickly societies
can change. How subtly the
forces of prejudice can
arise even in the freest
and most progressive of
societies.
Could
it have happened? Possibly.
Could it happen?
Possibly.
Are we responsible as
Jews for seeing that such
things never happen to
anyone anywhere?
