A man from a small island at the periph­ery of an unnamed coun­try close to Europe builds a boat and voy­ages to the cap­i­tal of his king­dom. There are appar­ent­ly no Jews on the island where he was born and he has no sense of his own pos­si­ble Jew­ish his­to­ry. In the cap­i­tal, he encoun­ters for the first time both deeply root­ed anti-Semi­tism and a rad­i­cal move­ment that mix­es racial hatred and fanat­i­cal reli­gious beliefs. When this volatile com­bi­na­tion erupts in vio­lence, the islander must con­front the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his own Jew­ish iden­ti­ty and make a fate­ful choice.

Read John Ben­dit­t’s Vis­it­ing Scribe Posts

Who Is Jewish?

Was Proust Jewish?

Street-Cor­ner Soci­ol­o­gy in South Williamsburg