"You're Not Any More Jewish Than I Am."

books:


	• Gentleman's Agreement: The World-Famous Novel About Antisemitism in "Respectable America" Laura, Z Hobson- Cherokee Publishing Company, 2007 - 280 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews
	for more information click here

A good book that is, sadly, not dated

Although the book takes place in 1946 and concerns rampant anti-semitism, both overt and subtle, it's a book that trancends time. The book's anti-semitism could easily be replaced by any other kind of racism and feel right at home in 2005. The story concerns a liberal Christian writer who takes on a magazine assignment to write about anti-semitism and his angle is to pose as a Jew so he can find out firsthand. It is a rude awakening for him, whether it is a hotel that does not cater to "those people" or a fiancee making off-hand anti-semitic remarks and thinking nothing of it. Some people might get thrown by writing that was done fifty years ago, but it is a book well worth reading.

for more information click here

"You're Not Any More Jewish Than I Am."

GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT concerns the experiences of one Philip S. Green, an investigative reporter who decides to pretend he's Jewish to get to the heart of modern American anti-Semitism.

Although written in 1946 and concerning the immediate post-World War Two era (the late months of 1945, the peak of New Deal liberalism, and the growing Conservative reactionaryism of the time), GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT still reads well, despite its occasional heavy-handed moralizing.

Though some of the more grotesque evidences of open anti-Semitism have virtually disappeared from the American scene in the last sixty years (avowedly "restricted" clubs and the like), author Laura Z. Hobson's theme that there's an "us" and a "them" in America is unhappily still timely. Replace the word "Jewish" with any other, and GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT is just as illuminating now as it was in 1946.

Hobson spends almost no time on her Jewish characters qua Jews. The Holocaust gets a fleeting one-sentence mention, though the mere fact that Hobson wrote GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT at all in 1946 places it squarely in the realm of "Holocaust Literature." Hobson gives us no discourse with Judaism or Jewish culture as such, but for her purposes as an author none of that matters. The representative Jewish characters in these pages, Dave Goldman and Dr. Lieberman, are thoroughgoing Americans, totally assimilated and non-religious; yet, like Phil Green, the non-Jewish Jewish protagonist, they are battered and subjected to a bewildering array of overt and covert attacks, exclusions, and snide comments. They also demonstrate a sense of identity as Jewish individuals which Green first questions, then admires, and finally adopts.

The shock of his friends and co-workers upon discovering that he is indeed a Christian is palpable. Many of them (including Phil's supposedly "liberal" fiancee, Kathy) are forced to confront their own preconceptions and prejudices.

A fine book which needs to find its place in the American consciousness, GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT comes highly recommended.

for more information click here

The plot of GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT concerns the experiences of a young Gentile writer who poses as a Jew in order to secure material on anti-Semitism for a series of magazine articles. A thesis novel concerning the social and economic aspects of anti-Semitism in American life. Timely when issued in 1947 - timely today. Number 1 position on the New York Times Best Seller List for five straight months in 1947. Film version chosen as Best Picture of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle. "If a masterful work of art is one which probes deep into the consciousness of the beholder to create a lasting impression and to forge and refine the higher human impulses, then GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT deserves such a description. It is a rare combination of absorbing story and statement of a current problem." - The Indianapolis Star

for more information click here