Something else I heard about Avrahum Burg and his new book on Jewish history, due out in 3 weeks, translated from the Hebrew: that it's blurbed by John Mearsheimer. This is remarkable because it is almost impossible to imagine an American Jewish writer getting a book blurbed by John Mearsheimer. He's been anathematized by Jews, including the several prominent writers who smeared him as an antisemite at Yivo last November. And as I have noted, by my friend Zack Karabell, who said Walt & Mearsheimer wrote a "terrible book" at the LA Book fair. (I'm going to keep saying this till I get an email–c'mon Zack.) I insist that Mearsheimer and Walt are scholars of Jewish history, they have chronicled so completely one of the most important institutions of diaspora life, which even the Forward has tried to convince the rest of us does not exist, but which nonetheless pops up in the writings of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Alan Dershowitz.
In journalism you learn the obvious truth that the further you are away from something geographically the easier it is to be detached about it. And Burg demonstrates that. The lobby is surely crucial to his understanding of the unfolding of the Holocaust in Jewish consciousness (as it is for mine and for Mike Desch's). Maybe it's not just geography. Burg served in the military (like Mearsheimer) and his father was a religious leader and he was a former speaker of the Knesset. That's something admirable about the Israelis: they're tough.
