The Netanyahus

Summary

Set at a fictional upstate New York college in the late 1950s, the novel follows a beleaguered Jewish historian assigned to host the visiting scholar Benzion Netanyahu and his unruly family during a job interview. Cohen mixes campus farce, polemical lecture, and historical fiction to probe the fault lines between American Jewish liberalism and emergent Zionism. The book leans into slapstick even as it stages a serious argument about the uses of history.