Elsewhere by Doron Rabinovici (review)

In the late twentieth century, there was a revolution in Austrian literature. Perhaps beginning with the writings of Thomas Bernhard, Austrian authors began to throw off the conventions of the midcentury era and to reexamine the country’s history. Within this movement was a group of Jewish authors who wrote explicitly about the role that Jews played in postwar society and the challenges associated with being outsiders and yet fundamentally Austrians. Among those authors a few names have endured—Robert Menasse, Robert Schindel, and the writer whose work is under consideration here, Doron Rabinovici.

Like his previous works, Elsewhere (Andernorts) is really about divided identities. The main character, Ethan Rosen, is both Israeli and Austrian. In many respects this story parallels Rabinovici’s personal history. Born in Tel Aviv in 1961, his family relocated to Vienna in 1964, and he identifies with both Austrian and Israeli culture. This is not the only duality in the book, though. Throughout the story there is the underlying question of Jewish identity. Who is a Jew? Does the answer to this question depend on the context in which it is asked? Or does Jewish identity change when you are dealing with Gentiles rather than other Jews? Many of the characters in this text struggle with what it means to be Jewish. Can people who largely reject religious practice consider themselves to be Jewish, or do you need those rituals to connect you to Judaism? These are all questions Rabinovici rasises in Elsewhere. The book begins with Ethan Rosen traveling from his family home in Israel to Vienna, where he works as an intellectual. He has been asked by an Austrian newspaper to write an obituary for Dov Zedek, a fellow intellectual and close family friend, but Rosen does not feel able to confront the task. This sets in motion a series of events that shake Rosen both personally and professionally and form the basis for the plot of the book.

Another issue that lies at the heart of this novel is the relevance of the Holocaust to contemporary Austrians and Israelis. Rabinovici, through his characters, is asking how we can keep the memory of the mid-twentieth-century genocide alive as, increasingly, the people who experienced it are no longer with us. This is where you can see Rabinovici’s background as a historian and an intellectual as well as a second-generation survivor of the Shoah shining through. He is interested in this topic as a deeply emotional aspect of family history as well as a matter of public discourse. Once again we are presented with a duality. How do we commemorate the lives lost and those forever altered in a way that respects individuals and also acknowledges that, for young people in particular, this is no longer Zeitgeschichte?

In the end, people in the intellectual class are at the heart of this story. Much of the action of this story happens in academic contexts, and the characters, many of whom are intellectuals of some kind, represent different archetypes within academia. Rabinovici identifies Rosen as a “peddler of academic ideas who profited from floating between continents and continuities, between regions and religions” (2). Again, he is emphasizing the divisions in Rosen’s identity, but he is also situating Rosen within a Jewish tradition. Describing the character as a peddler evokes the image of Eastern European Jews who lived peripatetic lives. The shtetl may be gone, but that does not mean that Jews are rooted. The transnational academic has replaced the peddler, but his reasons for being remain the same. Even the existence of Israel, a Jewish state whose formation was, in large part, meant to address the rootlessness of European Jews, has not been enough to keep Rosen anchored and, in that sense, Rosen represents many post-Shoah Jews who struggle to find their place.

Overall, this book was an enjoyable read. Tess Lewis’s translation is very good, capturing the spirit of Rabinovici’s story without any awkward phrases. She allows the reader to get lost in...