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What Is The Theme Of The Conversion Of The Jews

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1. Introduction
Philip Roth´s 1959 short story “The Conversion of the Jews“ appears to be the study of a young boy´s religious self-finding process, but it is also a study of the orthodox post-war Jewish society that this boy lives in. The major theme of the story is an ideological struggle, or more precisely the attempts of a free-thinking individual to break free from the restrictions of Jewish society in order to gain self-determination and an own identity. The story´s protagonist, a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy named Ozzie Freedman, constantly challenges the authority of his religious teacher, Rabbi Binder, by asking him rather provocative questions about religion; Binder cannot answer these questions satisfactorily but instead resorts …show more content…

Secondly, it clearly shows that Roth´s sympathy lies exclusively with Ozzie, since he divides clearly between good and bad. Thirdly, the “vastness of space“ is generally associated with freedom and nearly unlimited possibilities, which shows that Roth deems Ozzie free in the end. This falsifies Tony Tanner´s argument that the net held out by the firemen can be seen as a trap that eventually catches Ozzie. Tanner views Ozzie as a classic American hero, a strong individual who tries to break free from the restrictions of the society he was born and raised in. Theodore Solotaroff views the short story similarly , adding that the theme of emancipation from society recurs in some of Roth´s other stories. Both Tanner and Solotaroff thereby suggest a strong generalisation of Roth´s criticism, claiming that he adresses general social issues rather than problems he sees particularly in Jewish society. “The Conversion of the Jews“ can surely be read as a general social criticism, and Roth´s aforementioned plot summary is, apart from the use of the word rabbi, very un-Jewish. But the themes treated in the story, like the confrontation of Jewish and American ideology, the Bar Mizvah and Jewish religious education, are too specific for the story to be limited to a broader social criticism. Another Jewish theme Roth adresses in the story is martyrdom. In his essay “The Sadness of Philip Roth: An Interim Report“, Joseph Landis suggests that Roth sees Judaism and martyrdom as being deeply connected in so far as that martyrdom is a part of the Jewish identity . Bearing that connection in mind, the crowd´s misunderstanding of the word martyr appears even more ironic, especially because the majority of the crowd is ignorant of its actual meaning. This can be understood as an implicit comment on the

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