Bad Jew
A Family's Quest from the Minsk Ghetto to Netanyahu's Israel
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Combining memoir, history, and political essay, an acclaimed French journalist delves into his family's past in this searing, nuanced investigation of Jewish identity and what it means in the diaspora versus Israel today.
What is a Jew? There are as many answers as there are Jewish people.
Written four years ago, and now available in English with a new introduction, Bad Jew speaks intelligently to our current crises. A striking portrait of the identity fever that has overtaken the Israeli right, and a moving family saga, it follows three generations, three Jewish men, each involved in public life in his own personal way: Piotr Smolar's grandfather, a passionate Polish communist, who led the resistance in the Minsk ghetto during World War II; Smolar's father, who opposed the communist regime in Poland in 1968 and had to flee the country; and Smolar himself, confronted with the question of Jewish identity after becoming Le Monde's correspondent in Jerusalem.
Deftly interweaving their stories of activism and migration, Smolar explores how tribalism harms democracy and asks difficult questions: when does loyalty turn into betrayal? What place is left for basic values and empathy? This important book has never been timelier.
About this Author
Piotr Smolar is a French journalist of Polish origin. He is the senior correspondent for Le Monde in Washington, DC. After working in Moscow from 1997 to 2001, he published a book in French on Russia's heartland, Gloubinka. He extensively covered Russia's neighboring countries, before becoming Le Monde's correspondent in Jerusalem (2014-2019). Bad Jew is his first book to appear in English.
Anthony Roberts is a freelance writer, journalist, poet, and prize-winning translator. He currently lives in France.
Reviews
"A poignant, engaging, important, and personal perspective of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, in which Smolar cleverly combines political and historical aspects with elements of memoir." --Library Journal (starred review)
"Solid on-the-ground reporting combines with memoir to offer a revealing look at life in a deeply conflicted Israel." --Kirkus Reviews
"In this powerful and probing memoir, Smolar interrogates the shibboleths of his family and identity. He provides astute analysis of the changed world in which we find ourselves in the aftermath of October 7, 2023. Moving us beyond simplistic binaries, Smolar's story of his family's journey is an allegory for our times." --Rebecca Ruth Gould, author of Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom
"[Smolar is] an excellent and courageous journalist, curious, cultivated, and measured...[In] this wrenching, intimate, beautiful book...he undertakes a captivating journey through time and space, from the Second World War to the present, from Belarus to Poland, from France to Israel." --L'Obs
"Smolar is a strong critic of the current Israeli government, and writes with great empathy about the conditions under which Palestinians are living. All the while, he fastidiously avoids polemic and invective. The tripled structure of his narrative is put to excellent use when he brings his historic and contemporary materials into dialogue...Smolar's elegantly matter-of-fact reporting style only underscores the horror...[He] successfully raises urgent questions of wide relevance." --Haaretz
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