Habitus

by Habitus · 11/21/11

Let’s talk a little about what it means to be a Jew in New York. It’s hard to imagine that “outsider” is really the term one feels as a result of being a Jew living in a place like New York. So, I wonder: what do you think happens to the identity of a Jew when you take out the “outsider” part—the ostracization—from the way that we live our lives on a day-to-day basis?

That’s an interesting phenomenon, and we have to travel around the world to see the difference. In New York, when one Jew meets another Jew, there is a whole series of little signals emitted and intercepted back and forth. It usually takes a few seconds or, at most, a minute or two for one person to establish and to find out from the other that both are indeed Jewish. It’s very simple; we’re not even aware we do it, it’s so automatic. You throw a few hints. It is a way of claiming a sense of brotherhood. In Europe, it’s not that way—at least in Western Europe. It might take weeks for one person to finally disclose or to have the courage to ask the other person, “Are you by chance Jewish?”

This is a fundamental difference in the experience of one’s own Jewishness. In my early days here in the United States, it baffled me. You keep getting these taps that say, “Are you Jewish? Are you Jewish? Tell me, I need to know.” And, of course, the first thing you do if you’re from Italy, as I was at that time, is you just let the ball fall. It just drops every time; you don’t give an answer. But think of how wonderful it is for Jews to feel that it’s okay to be Jewish. I think that there are only two places—one is New York and the other is Israel—where you feel totally comfortable being a Jew, where being a Jew is not a problem. This changes everything.

Do you feel that you are now able to freely participate in that exchange?

I have a slightly French accent, so I have to tell people, “No, no. I’m not French. I’m really from Egypt; but I’m Jewish.” I have to apologize because if I tell them I’m from Egypt, they might think I’m the furthest thing from Jewish. But there’s always a proviso, a parenthesis, a qualifier in everything I say about my Jewishness.

Yet I’ve never felt this at home with my own Jewishness as I have in New York. I may not be a practicing Jew but I am definitely a Jew. This sense of security feels…uncomfortable. Provisional.

Your own sons are born and bred New Yorkers. Do you think they carry some of the baggage of exile that has been passed down?

They are totally Americanized but they bear the residual echo of these displacements. This they manifest by their very, very profound sense of irony. Irony is also a way of understanding that whatever explanation you give your life and however you may feel you belong, every sense of security is essentially a sham. This protective irony manifests itself sometimes as disbelief, sometimes as humor.

One thing that always struck me from reading your work is that it is possible to yearn for a place that you didn’t necessarily like in the first place. You once told me an interesting story about the last paragraph of your book Out of Egypt, about what happened during the editing of the manuscript. Can you tell me about it again?

My editor was a wonderful woman. She said, “You know, the ending is good but it needs something a bit more pointed, more eloquent. Just a couple of pages. Just finish it off.” And I said, “Oh, you want the rising chorus and the cymbals and the big bang.” She said, “Yeah, something like that.”

So I went home and wrote this paragraph. It was about the boy going on a walk at night and looking over Alexandria and saying, “This is my last night here.” And the cadence rises and rises until he says, “I had never realized how much I loved this city.” It makes sense. He didn’t know how much he loved the city. My original version said the same exact thing, with one difference: “I didn’t realize how much I hated this city.”

My editor said, “You can’t do this. We’ve been looking at this city that you’ve obviously loved. Every perfume, every fruit, everything in the city you love. Why do you say that you hate it?” So, I changed it from hate to love.

That facility with which I went from hate to love says a great deal about my deep ambivalence. I thought I hated Alexandria. Yet I spent a lot of time writing about this place that casts a huge shadow on my life and makes me want to long for it. One of the ways that I finally made my peace with this kind of paradoxical ambivalence is to say that I long to be back in Alexandria, longing to be in France. Because those were really beautiful moments when my father and I would sit with my aunt, who had an apartment in Paris, and we would discuss how we were going to live in France. Was the weather that cold in France? Would I have to work, too? No, I would go to school. Suddenly there was glamour about Paris. For months and months before leaving, we fantasized about Europe. That’s what I miss most about Egypt: those moments when we were in Egypt, fantasizing about Europe.

I went back to Egypt and I had no pain or pleasure, no revelation, nothing. It meant nothing to me. I knew it would mean nothing to me because I never liked it. Actually, I hated it, but saying I loved it made more sense. Because how can you write a book that is 330 pages long and so full of life about a place that you didn’t love? It doesn’t make sense.

Do you feel, after all these years, that you’ve allowed yourself to feel at home in New York?

I didn’t even have to try. It came automatically. I always make a joke out of this. Sometimes I’ll take a walk on Saturday afternoon. I’ll walk down Broadway to buy a few things, as we all do. I always run into people I know. And I love this. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. It reminds me of a small town. So the Upper West Side, which is really my universe, allows me to be very much at home. And I didn’t have to try; it came of itself. Having children, having a family certainly helps.

Jews have always looked for New Jerusalems. It’s one of our defining features. We land in a new place and suddenly we’re in our New Jerusalem; we are constantly transposing Jerusalem onto new places. Is it folly for us to think that a place like New York could be, in your phrase, a permanent address?

Well, we have a five-thousand-year-old history. We have always been kicked out of places where people didn’t really like us. We can be pretty obnoxious toward other people, too. The lesson of history is that history repeats itself. I don’t want to say that it will happen here, but you would not be unwise to have a suitcase ready.

I grew up with a family that always had a suitcase packed. In other words, a Jew who does not anticipate a reversal ahead has lost the profound sense of irony that every Jew needs to have. A Jew who is totally at home—what kind of a Jew is that? I don’t want to bandy paradoxes. It’s lovely to feel that one can finally say that New York is where I want to be, this is where I want to anchor my family for generations. It’s a beautiful idea. On the other hand, a Jew who thinks this way loses part of his identity. Which is fine. You lose a part of your identity because it is vestigial; it no longer protects you. So you accept the situation as it is and you become an American Jew.

What does it mean to be an American Jew?

I think an American Jew feels comfortable in the present and does not look back. He anticipates that his great-great grandchildren can grow up in the same city without any problems. It always feels like a fable but it would be a lovely idea.