They Warned Her Not to Write About Anti-Semitism
I was preparing to teach the 1947 novel Gentleman’s Agreement to my students at the University of Florida, where I hold a chair in American Jewish culture. In the midst of writing a book about that novel-turned-Academy-Award-winning film, I read Jill Kargman’s essay about her son’s experience with anti-Semitism.
Having spent so much of the summer thinking about the 1930s and 1940s experiences that led novelist Laura Z. Hobson to write Gentleman’s Agreement, I was stunned (although “stunned” might be too strong so soon after the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville) by how much of Kargman’s experience resonates with the 1940s, fast-talking, cigarette-smoking world of Gentleman’s Agreement that—serendipity—also just so happened to be Tablet film reviewer Alexander Aciman’s film pick for last week.
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