A New Jewish Plotline

For the past century, Jewish American writers have grappled with how to represent the Jewish relationship to power on the page. In the wake of Gaza, is it time for a new story?

- By ANDREW RIDKER

THE PLOT OF every Jewish holiday goes something like this: They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat. On Purim, we revel in the tale of a Persian court adviser who tries and fails to exterminate the Jews. We skip the part where, after he is hanged, those same Jews kill 75,000 Persians as a form of preemptive self-defense. At Seder, we make a meal out of being slaves in Egypt; Hagar, the Egyptian slave owned by Abraham and Sarah, tends to go unmentioned. ¶ These details didn’t make it into my religious education. They would have complicated the larger narrative that many Jews tell ourselves and others about who we are: a powerless, morally infallible minority struggling to stay alive in a world that wants us dead.

I understand the appeal of this story. Telling it keeps us tethered to our past, which all too often has been a history of persecution. As Peter Beinart points out in his recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, “there are still fewer Jews alive today than there were in 1939. It’s not surprising, then, that victim often feels like our natural role.” And it’s not just history: The past year has seen deadly attacks against Jews in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colorado. To some, Hamas’ massacre on October 7 was proof that the story is as relevant now as ever.