SPEAKING VOLUMES BY RACHEL KADISH

Whose Parable Is it Anyway?

KGB-like police, defy the Stalinesque Gen­ I can’t deny that I’ve eral Woundwort and set free the entrapped (Soviet Jewish?) females. Everyone goes long cherished the back to the new warren high on the hilltop, notion that Watership where life isn’t cushy but the rabbits live in Down begs to be safety and freedom, fruitfully multiplying. The original band of rabbits die happy, their read through Jewish- dream fulfilled. Cue strains of Hatikvah. colored glasses. Surely growing up around Holocaust refugees predisposed me to read epic wan­ wholly unique risks setting off a dangerous derers as Jews. In fact, characters in fantasy mindset—and while I may be discussing novels who are cursed to walk the earth in a book about rabbits, this mindset raises the aftermath of a great loss often seem pow­ questions that have real-world ramifica­ erfully familiar (Aragom in Lord of the Rings-, tions. Is Jewish suffering necessarily worse the ever-outcast Remus Lupin in the Harry than everyone else’s? Worse than other Potter series, whose melancholy wisdom people’s slavery, oppression or genocide? sounds here and there in Harry’s tale like a Is there a ranking system for suffering? minor chord). Seeing these characters as just And what happens to us if we win? I step a tiny bit Jewish—or at least suspecting them into these issues knowing, as a grand­ of being Good for the Jews—isn’t necessarily daughter of survivors, how dangerous it solipsistic. The story of the Jewish diaspora can be to minimize the uniqueness of the and the return to Israel has been compelling Holocaust—yet also aware of the dan­ enough to be adopted and adapted world­ gers of seeing only our own history. And wide by ministers, street preachers, histo­ because I think if we Jews always win the rians, politicians, slaves—anyone in need suffering game—if our story is de facto the of fortification, justification, assurance that most powerful one out there—then telling I don’t tend to spot Jews under every liter­ they can endure and even prevail. the story of the Jews can feel like looking ary rock and tree. I like to think that I can Jewish texts are among the central writings up at the stars at night, with their mysteri­ appreciate Serbian and Bangladeshi and that have shaped the world’s understanding ous planets and moons, and wondering: Is Antiguan writers, and Shakespeare too, of itself. Why, then, should it be a surprise there anyone else out there? Anyone who without conflating their works and themes to find echoes of them in literature? These might remotely understand? with Sholom Aleichem’s. Yet I can’t deny echoes needn’t be deliberate—and as a writer, Evidently there is. that I’ve long cherished the notion that I know better than to spend too much time Continues on page 19 Watership Down, the 1972 English novel by speculating over whether Adams (or Tolkien Richard Adams, begs to be read through or Rowling) had usjews in mind. While noth­ Jewish-colored glasses. ing in Richard Adams’ biography leads me to Here’s a quick plot summary: Rabbits are think he has any particular interest in the Jew­ living complacendy in their warren (Eu­ ish narrative, I do assume he’s familiar with rope?) when one of them, Fiver, has a vision Genesis. And when the sun-god Frith says of impending destruction. Few of the war­ to the progenitor of all rabbits, “All the world ren’s residents wish to believe in the impend­ will be your enemy, Prince With a Thousand ing danger—still, Fiver and Hazel (Herzl?) Enemies, and whenever they catch you they lead the small band of believers out of their will kill you. But first they must catch you,” doomed warren. Shortly after their depar­ and when Frith goes on to make a promise ture, the warren is bulldozed, and all of the (covenant?) with the rabbits that they’ll never rabbits who stayed behind—bucks, does and be destroyed—I want to pull out a copy of kits—are gassed. The struggling band of sur­ Genesis and start comparing lines.

o vivors search for a new home, where they’ll How easy, then, to spy the watermark o c have safety and self-determination—and, af­ of Jewish history in a book like Water­ XI C/5 -< ter passing through a warren where worldly ship Down, or to spot characters who seem o > goods are in abundance but the rabbits based on Jews. But on a deeper level, it z C5 have lost their native culture and souls (the can be hazardous, in that it compounds 33 St Golden Medina!), they establish a scrappy a sensation I find all too familiar: a feel­ m p i homeland. But they need to populate! So ing that our exceptional history is coveted co O -j: they send undercover agents to the repres­ property, our tragic sense of purpose the CD z sive warren nearby, infiltrate its distinctly envy of the world. Seeing our suffering as zc

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 / MOMENT 77 MOMENT CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Welcome to the Moment Cartoon Caption Contest. In each issue, we publish a cartoon drawn by New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff. Suggested captions for this cartoon must be submitted by October 10,2011, at momentmag.com/cartoon.html. Finalists will appear in the November/December 2011 issue. To vote for the winner of the July/August contest (see finalists at right), email [email protected]. The winner will receive a free subscrip­ tion to Moment to give to a friend. Any U.S. resident age 18 or older can enter.

THIS ISSUE'S CONTEST

Recently I read a new introduction by massacres. A quick online search for “Water­ tion, they compensate for in sheer scale of Richard Adams to his 2005 edition of Water­ ship Down, allegory” definitively proves that ambition—vaulting us into orbit so we get a ship Down. “I want to emphasize,” he wrote, the book is actually an adaptation of Homer satellite view of something we’re otherwise “that Watership Down was never intended and Virgil, or of the life of Jesus, or of Native too close to see properly. to be some sort of allegory or parable. It is American religion. How lovely, to be put in Displacement and wandering, proph­ simply the story about rabbits made up and my place by a search engine. ecy and faith, terror and struggle and peace: told in the car.” Reading Adams’ protest, I So let me pause here to sing a song of These motifs hit home in every culture. If realized what should have been obvious all praise to the good old-fashioned fantasy Watership Down is Good for the Jews, maybe along: that I wasn’t the only one laying an­ novel, a genre that’s often scorned by liter­ it’s simply because it’s reflecting the basic other template atop the story of Watership ary writers, but that I like for the same rea­ myths that fortify humanity and, like any Down. Turns out plenty of other people have son I’m fascinated by myths, fables and fairy good fantasy novel, carrying the watermark seen their histories in that book Turns out tales: their redemptive universality. If that of our biggest cultural concerns. And all some people see it as an allegory for strug­ sounds grandiose, then I suppose I mean it passersby are welcome to bring their own gles against the Cold War, fascism, extrem­ to be. I think fantasy novels do something subplots and plug into the archetype. ism. Or a protest against materialism, against good for people—something that’s hard to What a relief, then, to set down our iso­ the corporate state. Watership Down can be achieve in other forms. What these stories lation for a moment and see: We’re all in Ireland after the famine, Rwanda after the sometimes lack in nuance or sophistica­ this storyline together.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 / MOMENT 79