skygiants | (no subject)

The Jew of Rome, doesn't have quite the intensity of Josephus -- Joseph is still making bad decisions with increasingly catastrophic results, but there was nothing that made me fully put the book down and shout "JOSEPH!" and then google a historical fact -- but it does once again do a really stellar job of setting up seemingly small or personal conundrums that, within the context, feel really tremendously significant and have major consequences.

The main decisions that Josephus are faced with in the context of the story are:

- will he accept the Emperor's suggestion of having a bust of Joseph's head made to hang out with other great Roman writers?
- what will he do about his son's educational curriculum?
- will he mention to the governor that he supports the creation of a second Jewish university in Judaea?
- and, finally, in the climactic sequence, will he accept a humiliating public invitation to walk in a parade?

The bust thing, the first major issue in the book, is simultaneously a great honor and an enormous deal for #representation for Jews in the Empire, and also strictly prohibited by the Jewish law against graven images; Joseph's concerns about his son's education end up leading to a huge custody battle at the same time that Rome is considering targeted legislation against circumcision; the question of the university is tied up in the politics of who is considered to fall within the limits of Judaism and who is not and, most significantly, what is going to happen with the early Christians who still consider themselves Jews. When you're one of the most prominent Jews in the Roman empire, trying to pioneer a method for living in both worlds and frequently failing, all the little things are big things.

Feuchtwanger also remains so, so good at making his characters feel human and individual, which does suck sometimes when it's a casually doomed twelve-year-old that he has just spent several chapters making you care about intensely!

(I admit "Joseph undertakes a huge public court case for personal reasons and accidentally triggers major antisemitic legal action as a result" is not a plot I expected to recur twice and while I think Feuchtwanger could pull it off a third time I have questions about whether he should, but we'll see when I get there!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sovay

"Joseph undertakes a huge public court case for personal reasons and accidentally triggers major antisemitic legal action as a result"

Is this one of the times where there is a real-life case of horrific legal blowback behind the recurring plot device?

From:

skygiants

I went researching and as far as I can tell from a quick Wikipedia-summary it looks like Feuchtwanger took a later law -- a ban on circumcision under Emperor Antoninus Pius which specifically exempted Jews and Egyptian priests but forbade them from circumcising anyone else (so, no conversion) -- and moved it a bit earlier to Titus' time so as to make it more plausible that Joseph's big custody battle could weight the scales in favor of its passage, but perhaps there was also a real law during the Titus time period as well that I'm just not finding!

From:

sovay

it looks like Feuchtwanger took a later law -- a ban on circumcision under Emperor Antoninus Pius which specifically exempted Jews and Egyptian priests but forbade them from circumcising anyone else (so, no conversion) -- and moved it a bit earlier to Titus' time so as to make it more plausible that Joseph's big custody battle could weight the scales in favor of its passage

I was wondering about something from Feuchtwanger's own time, but that's really interesting!

From:

skygiants

ohhhh that I couldn't tell you but would NOT be surprised

From:

chestnut_pod

Oh, another! This man needs to stop going to court!

From:

skygiants

No court for Joseph! No court for Joseph for One! Thousand! Years!

From:

cahn

So I inhaled all three of these books (because they were good! but also because I had a deadline to talk about them with

selenak) and haha, I didn't realize at all that all these decisions in this book are such small ones! Because they are obviously SO IMPORTANT to Josephus! When you're one of the most prominent Jews in the Roman empire, trying to pioneer a method for living in both worlds and frequently failing, all the little things are big things. YEAH.

~~also educational curriculum IS a big deal, darn it~~

Feuchtwanger also remains so, so good at making his characters feel human and individual, which does suck sometimes when it's a casually doomed twelve-year-old that he has just spent several chapters making you care about intensely!

GAH THIS REALLY SUCKED I WAS NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS AT ALL. Poor Mara >:( She desperately needs a fix-it :P

From:

skygiants

I mean, that's one of the things that makes Feuchtwanger so good, I think! He takes these things that seem small and then show you the whole world in them, and how the ripple effects go out and become much greater than their immediate weight in the moment.

POOR MARA I was so mad that she just took him back at the end and didn't send him on his way! She should've gotten to marry Alexi the glassblower, I think. A man who would appreciate her and not constantly throw his whole self into bad decisions that make for great fiction but terrible household management.

From:

selenak

Like I said elsewhere, there's middle book syndrome in this novel, though I wouldn't want to miss it, and in retrospect I can see why Feuchtwanger split up its content with that of novel No.3, "Josephus and the Emperor", instead of making it one novel as originally intended. It does mean that No.1. and No.3 have higher overall stakes and emotional intensity, though. (It also means Titus and Berenice break up twice. I can't prove it, but my theory is that he wrote their parting - which is thematically appropriate and well done - in vol.1 intending it to be finale because at that point he wanted to write only two novels about Joseph, and then when he decided to write three, he needed a bit more non-Joseph content for No.3, and thus we get Titus and Berenice: The Rerun and the far less effectively plotted breakup.)

what will he do about his son's educational curriculum?

I can't remember anymore whether it's in this book or the next, but Joseph being upset that his son gets taught the antisemitic Homer commentary by Apion is also build up to one of the historical Josephus' last works, the "Against Apion" outburst, which is him tackling various antijudaic tropes and refuting them, which is one way we know they existed this early on.

most significantly, what is going to happen with the early Christians who still consider themselves Jews

That's something which I didn't get the significance off the first time I read these novels as a young 'un, but upon every reread, the fatal poignancy affected me more. And of the entire "how do we now define how to be a Jew in this post destruction of the Temple world?" debate.

Feuchtwanger also remains so, so good at making his characters feel human and individual, which does suck sometimes when it's a casually doomed twelve-year-old that he has just spent several chapters making you care about intensely!

Indeed. Mind you, by the time I read the Josephus trilogy I had already read three other novels of his, so I was somewhat forewarned. Are you a Jewish main character in a Feuchtwanger novel and do you have children? Chances are you'll have lost at least one of them before this novel is over. (Feuchtwanger himself had only one child, a daughter, who died after only a few days of life, and he never talked or wrote about this, but given this is really a recurring trope of his, chances are it did have a huge impact.)

Edited Date: 2023-01-31 11:05 am (UTC)

From:

skygiants

This is the book that has the "Against Apion" outburst! And Joseph's whole complex relationship with his son's tutor, a man who he knows despises him and whom he is nonetheless constantly obsessing over in a way that is, sorry Joseph, not at all heterosexual ...

The ways that this is an aftermath book -- that everything in this book is about defining a way to live in the world post-destruction of the Temple, and the ongoing debate about what sacrifices may or may not be necessary to define Judaism in the wake of a kind of world-ending catastrophe -- really struck me! And yet the people go on living and picking up the pieces and rebuilding themselves in different ways; I had not expected to see either Demetrius Libanus or John of Giscala again either (except that

cahn told me John was coming back) and although I think Demetrius especially may also be there to add subplots to a book after getting a fairly final-seeming sendoff in the first book, it does work thematically to see them again in a really interesting way.

Edited Date: 2023-02-06 04:45 am (UTC)

From:

asakiyume

t does once again do a really stellar job of setting up seemingly small or personal conundrums that, within the context, feel really tremendously significant and have major consequences. --this is a quality I really love.

"Casually doomed twelve-year-old" makes me have pangs just reading the sentence.

From:

skygiants

It's EXTREMELY sad and even worse because it comes unexpectedly after we have spent several chapters in the kid's head watching him be a very distinct person!