Blog Post #9: Answering the Finkler Question

Summer Reading Creative Project

Text
The Finkler Question by: Howard Jacobson
Essence
No one is born knowing their destiny. Religious identity can be created and realized through significant outlets such as food.
Brief Summary of the Text
The Finkler Question, set in East London, is about a self-righteous yet quite unspectacular man named Julian Treslove, a former BBC producer who now works as a celebrity double to make a living, and his two friends, Libor and Finkler. After becoming a victim of an anti-Semitist mugging, Treslove begins his search for a Jewish identity-through food, research of his family history, and relationships with Jewish women. Jacobson also addresses Finkler's somewhat rocky relationship with his Jewish heritage and fellow Jews. Libor, meanwhile, struggles to find his way after his wife's death, the powerful love he felt towards her mirroring the kind of belonging that Treslove craves to feel.
Prompt
2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes’ observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author’s treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
Thesis
In The Finkler Question, Howard Jacobson addresses the question of what it means to be Jewish in England through his character, Julian Treslove, a man lost in his career and personal life, as he searches for his own identity through the ‘Jewish’ facets of everyday life; what is Jewish food, what is Jewish family, what is Jewish love?
Creative Project
Unleavened baked bread, significant to the Jewish holiday of Passover, which symbolizes Julian’s quest for a religious identity through food.
Quotations (can answer the prompt more generally)
• “Thereafter he gave up on a career in the arts and filed a succession of unsuitable vacancies and equally unsuitable women, falling in love whenever he took up a new job, and falling out of love…” • “Before he met Finkler, Treslove had never met a Jew. Not knowingly at least. He supposed a Jew would be like the word Jew — small and dark and beetling. A secret person. But Finkler was almost orange in colour and spilled out of his clothes.” • “Treslove liked that. The Jews were good at making one occasion not like another, he thought. The protocol alarmed him but he admired it.” -And so the obsession with Jewish culture begins. Treslove is creating his own identity by picking up on things that “the Jewish” all do. • “Though they complained of being without compass or purpose of their own, the three men — the two widowers and Treslove, who counted as an honorary third — enjoyed one another’s company, argued about the economy and world affairs, remembered jokes and anecdotes from the past” • “His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one.”
Explanation
The Finkler Question examines the complexities of identity, loss, belonging, and love, by detailing the lives of Julian Treslove and his two Jewish friends. At the beginning of the book, Treslove is mugged and becomes convinced that his assailant targeted him thinking he was a Jew. He becomes obsessed with the Finkler question or the definition of Jewish identity. Since all of his friends are Jewish, Treslove is “envious, nonetheless…of the life,” (42) believing the Jewish religion to possess a closeness and sense of belonging that he’s never been able to find for himself. Treslove is jealous of the special Jewish connection that his friends have, finding himself jealous of their Jewishness: their closeness, grief, and mannerisms.An important motif in Treslove’s search for himself on the Jewish journey is food. Food is critical to note in literature as it engages all the senses in order to evoke strong sensory, cognitive, and emotional responses. For example, turkey represents the entire emotional response that comes with the holiday of Thanksgiving; just the thought of turkey can make you feel warm inside and appreciate the family surrounding you. Food's symbolic ability is also utilized for ethnic identity and pride, which is what makes it so easy for Treslove to feel excluded. Conversely, specific foods may be held up as distinguishing one group from another and as demonstrating that group's lesser worth. Furthermore, people can also use food to demonstrate their mastery of knowledge about a certain food or preparation needed to belong to a particular social group. For example, being able to determine different sorts of wines can highlight a person’s class status or level of sophistication. In the book, Julian attempts to prove his competence with Jewish food customs, especially dealing with food as he recites the Jewish questions: “Why on this night must we eat bitter foods? Why on this night do we dip our food twice?” (127). According to Foster Chapter 2, eating together is an act of communion and breaking bread represents peace between diners. If Julian can enjoy and be knowledgeable about the food that his Jewish friends enjoy, maybe he can enjoy the same cultural enlightenment and be part of the club. For example, at their dinner with Julian, Hephzibah is offended when Finkler jokes about “trayf” being in her food (176). The Jewish people obviously take the religious customs that come with consumption very seriously, unlike Treslove. For example at Passover, Treslove’s disregard for what it actually means to be Jewish is recognized, as when he is served chicken and potatoes, “which as far as Treslove could tell, symbolized nothing. He was pleased about that” (129). I have baked a traditional Jewish food eaten on Passover to signify the interrelation of food and religion that is prevalent in The Finkler Question. Matzo has special significance on Passover night, as when the Israelite slaves were fleeing from Egypt, they did not have time to wait for their bread to rise. The result was cracker-like, unleavened bread called matzo. Also, leaven symbolizes corruption and pride as it "puffs up,” as opposed to the “poor man’s bread” of matzo. In Julian Treslove’s search for his own Jewish identity, food provides him with a connection to Jewishness with his friends. As he is quite uninterested in the deeper religious meanings behind Jewish rituals, food provides some common ground that Treslove can actually begin to understand. For example, Julian comes to envy the specificity of Jewishness, the references that Jews seem to share among one another, and the “confidence, the certainty of right” (26). And because Julian cannot mimic the mannerisms and confidence that Jews seem to have, he can find this identity via Jewish food.