She funnels her earnings into a bank account in Montreal, worried that the family might soon be forced to flee to Canada. Bess takes a job working in a department store. The next day, Evelyn calls Bess to inform her that the rabbi has selected Sandy to work in recruiting for Just Folks. The Roths host the rabbi at their house for dinner, and he and Herman clash.
Meanwhile, Evelyn and Bengelsdorf-who have been having an affair-become engaged. Weeks later, when Sandy returns, he speaks reverently of life in Kentucky and tells Philip that he can’t wait to return. Days after Sandy’s departure, the Roths receive a letter: Alvin has lost his leg in combat and will be returning home. In spite of the Roths’ opposition to Sandy’s going, Bess’s sister Evelyn-who has recently been hired to work as Bengelsdorf’s secretary in his new position with the New Jersey OAA-calls Bess and Herman “Jews afraid of shadow” Eventually, the Roths relent. Sandy, however, signs up to be part of an OAA initiative called the Just Folks program, which pairs young Jewish boys with families in America’s “heartland” for a summer. The president’s administration has created the Office of American Absorption (OAA), whose programs undermine the stability of Jewish families and erase the power of Jewish constituencies across the country. After a confrontation with yet another anti-Semitic man at a diner, Herman loudly sings for all the patrons, displaying his unwillingness to back down from his rights as an American.īack in Newark, the Roths continue to adjust to life under Lindbergh. Herman is determined to finish the trip, and after checking into a new hotel, the Roths continue touring the city. After being called a “loudmouth Jew” at the Lincoln Memorial, Herman tries to keep his head high-but upon returning to their hotel, the Roths find that their belongings have been removed from their room and their reservation has been canceled. Taylor, to take them around the city-but as the Roths tour Washington and Herman loudly speaks about the disgraces Lindbergh has brought upon America, he attracts negative attention from other tourists.
Amid increasing fears among Jewish people as the United States (led by Lindbergh) has all but endorsed Hitler’s authoritarian regime, the Roths decide to take a long-planned trip to Washington, D.C. Alvin has left for Canada to fight for the British in World War II. In June of 1941, six months after Lindbergh’s inauguration, the Roths are reeling from the sudden departure of Alvin, Philip and his brother Sandy’s 20-year-old cousin, an orphan who has been the Roths’ ward for nearly seven years. Philip begins having nightmares in which all of the stamps in his treasured collection are covered in black swastikas. All of the games they play, however, revolve around war. Philip and his friends, including the nerdy Seldon Wishnow and the fifth-grader Earl Axman, try to distract themselves from their parents’ anxieties. Even more confusing to Jewish people in Newark is the Conservative rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf’s support of Lindbergh-and his declaration that as an “American Jew,” his loyalty is to his homeland. Lindbergh’s genteel diplomacy toward Adolf Hitler set Philip’s parents, Bess and Herman, on edge-they begin to worry that the anti-Semitism which has been simmering beneath the surface of American life is about to boil over. Lindbergh’s unseating of Franklin Delano Roosevelt sends shockwaves through Philip’s predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. Philip Roth is just seven in the fall of 1940 when aviator Charles Lindbergh is elected president of the United States, having campaigned on an isolationist, “America First” platform.
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