Joshua Cohen Might Have Been a Great Writer.

I first encountered Joshua Cohen through his novel Book of Numbers (2015). The biblical references drew in me and I stayed for the excellent, dare I say, prophetic writing.

I felt like I was reading a Jewish James Joyce. Cohen, like Joyce, has a masterful command of English: He fuses description, narrative, and dialogue with wit, social commentary, and playful exploration. It’s a rare talent.

So, a year later, I picked up The Netanyahus (2021). The subtitle is; An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. I was hoping for a fun read. At minimum, an anecdotal introduction to Bibi Netanyahu’s revisionist- Zionist intellectual and family background.

According to Cohen, this idea for the book arose from conversations with the great literary critic, Harold Bloom, who had once related a story about hosting Ben Zion Netanyahu (father of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) at Cornell University in the late 1950s. In Cohen’s fictional version, the visit takes place at the WASP-ish “Corbin College,” and the host is one Ruben Blum, a Jewish professor navigating the precarious position of being the school’s “token Jew.”

Cohen’s linguistic virtuosity shines. He sets the scene with detailed and often comical descriptions of the campus, Blum’s family life, and the absurdities of academic politics. Yet with the Netanyahus, I realized Cohen had taken the low road. Instead of offering a balanced or nuanced portrayal of Netanyahu and his family, he launches into a caricature that is biased and even outright derisive:

Without evidence, Cohen depicts Ben Zion and his wife as a typical Israeli: Loud and boorish. His sons—Jonathan (Yoni), Benjamin (Bibi), and Iddo—arrive in tow, creating chaos and cultural clashes that veer into the farcical. The most jarring moment involves the alleged rape of Blum’s teenage daughter by Yoni. That’s the same Yoni who lead the famous Israel raid on Entebbe in 1976. Yoni paid with highest price – his life – to save many American and Jewish lives. But Cohen saw it fit – for his story – to make this unjustified and unsubstantiated accusation against a dead Israeli hero. If ever I have seen a poison pen, this is it. Cohen uses the veil of fiction to accuse Yoni rape while also hiding behind fact that his is dead – and so cannot answer the slander.

Venomous! But even this proves insufficient for Cohen. He uses a PostScript to further attempts to aggrandize himself.

Rather than provide “behind-the-scenes” glimpses into his research, he mentions his extensive talks with Harold Bloom (who died in 2019) about American literature, as if to certify his own importance within that scholarly circle. But these anecdotes are at best self-serving – designed to align Cohen with literary giants. In the worst case, Cohen is just trying to flatter his way into acceptance by important figures in his field.

And then – as if that it’s not enough that he has slandered Ben Zion, Yoni and Bibi, he makes a point of telling the reader that he tried to contact Iddo Netanyahu, who is a radiologist and a writer in real life, to discuss family history. Iddo refused—understandably, given how the novel portrays the family.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that I believe Cohen might have written a significant novel on this subject:

The meeting between Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a distinguished scholar of Judaic history, and a revisionist Zionist, with the American academic landscape of the 1950s, and a liberal Jewish family, seeking to find acceptance in America is a multi-layered and rich premise. It could have shed light on post-war American Jewry – seeking acceptance, and the nascent State of Israel seeking to survive. It could have peeled off the layers of those competing ideologies. The novel might have explored each protagonist’s perspective, showcasing their respective triumphs and tragedies. Instead, Cohen reduces grand themes to petty insults and comedic set-pieces.

Yes, the language is Joycean. But the substance remains too preoccupied with mocking the Netanyahu family to deliver a deeper insight.

In the end, The Netanyahus shows off Cohen’s verbal virtuosity while revealing a willingness to settle for cheap shots. It is a missed opportunity. A brilliant writer who went for a quick satirical jab.

It’s a shame. Despite his immense gifts, Joshua Cohen crafted a story so mired in partisanship and caricature that it sacrifices the grandeur and complexity of its subject. He clearly masters the English language, but the novel’s enduring legacy will have less to do with Cohen’s prophetic, Joycean experimentation and with his partisan, servile sniveling towards literary establishment at the expense of those unable to defend themselves.