Figures of Conversion: "The Jewish Question" and English National Identity (review)

168 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 About halfway into the memoir the story becomes an intriguing mystery as Louise like a detective tries to trace her father's past. Much to her surprise-because she was brought up in a non-religious, indeed, antireligious , household-she discovers after his death that her father was a Russian Jew whose family of origin perished in the Holocaust. From this she concludes that much of her father's inexplicable behavior can be traced to the guilt he felt over having abandoned his own parents. In a seeming act of reconciliation she then officially converts to Judaism and goes on with her life. The book is fascinating and reads like a novel, but its conclusion is psychologically unconvincing. There is no logical or psychological connection between having lost one's parents in the Holocaust and having to deny one's Jewishness, on the one hand, and becoming a tyrant to one's children, on the other. To the contrary, some survivors with similar pasts became strong Jews and doting parents. Neither does Louise's becoming a Jew seem like reconciliation with her monstrous father. It seems like something much better and healthier: her becoming a Jew is a denial of his whole life including his self-hatred and cruelty. like many writers ofmemoirs, Louise presides over a just retribution for a cruel past. Robert Melson Department of Political Science Purdue University Figures of Conversion: "The Jewish Question" and English National Identity, by Michael Ragussis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. 340 pp. $49.95 (c)j $16.95 (P). Although it is true that the Jews have always been a small minority within England, historians have too often taken their percentage of the total English population as an indicator of their actual significance to English history. The story of the Jews in England, however, serves as a proof-text ofArchimedes' assertion that with a long enough lever one can move the world. In recent years scholars have discovered that the Jews have had a significant impact upon English history, both in actual events and in their perceived role within English popular culture. The picture that emerges from such studies should lead to a rewriting of some of the basic assumptions about English history. For example, David S. Katz's recent The Jews in tbe History of England, 1485-1850 (Clarendon Press, 1994) demonstrates that every major event in English history between Henry Book Reviews 169 VIII's divorce and the middle of the nineteenth century had a Jewish dimension. Frank Felsenstein's Anti-semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1660-1830 Oohns Hopkins Press, 1994), reveals that the Jews represented the quintessential "other" in the English popular mind. Following through on this trend is Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion: "!be Jewish Question" and English National Identity. Ragussis sees the Jews, those who were real and those who served as axiomatic stereotypes, as being at the center of the nineteenth-century movement towards English self-definition, or as he calls it, national identity. The nineteenth-century witnessed the early development of pseudo-scientific notions about racial, and national racial, stereotypes that still linger into our own day. Ragussis argues that it was these concepts of racial imagery that provided one end of the spectrum for the English to define their national identity. At the other end of this spectrum, those whom some regarded as being quintessentially "non-English," were the Jews. What joined the two ends? What enabled the English to define themselves in national terms using the Jews as a foil? Ragussis makes a compelling argument that it was the study of history. In the early nineteenth century the popular histories ofthe Romantics, such as Sir Walter Scott, helped set the basic definition of "Englishness." For example, Scott's Ivanhoe, a famous story of love, honor, and chivalry, used the Jewish characters ,Rebecca and Isaac as a tool to explain the fusion of the "Norman" race with the"Saxon." Scott popularized the idea that this event, occurring during the reign of Richard the lionhearted, saw the beginnings of the English nation. Because they witnessed the joining of these...