The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

A quote from the revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and also the book’s epigraph, represents the overall theme of the novel, namely the juxtaposition of a Zionist/Israeli Jewish person with one from the Diaspora: “Eliminate the Diaspora or the Diaspora will eliminate you.” In the case of the novel, the Diaspora is limited to the American Jewish person. The quote addresses the need for Jewish people in general to form a unified nation, culture, and society, otherwise the dream of Zion will remain elusive. Though Jabotinsky died in 1940, and the Jewish state of Israel was created in 1948, the Jewish Diaspora remains because not all Jewish people immigrated to the new nation of Israel, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. The setting of the novel is 1959-1960, so the nation of Israel is barely a decade old during the story. The state is still in a precarious situation economically, militarily, and politically. Most of the massive influx of Jewish immigrants came from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Many American Jewish people, even staunch supporters of Zionism, were reluctant to give up their comfort, affluence, and security in the United States and move to the great experiment of Israel.