Defender of the Faith (1959). Content and Description

One of the most controversial short stories collected in Goodbye, Columbus, “Defender of the Faith” relates the tale of Sergeant Nathan Marx, who has just returned from World War II, in which he has been “fortunate enough to develop an infantryman’s heart, which, like his feet, at first aches and swells but finally grows horny enough for him to travel the weirdest paths without feeling a thing.” Despite his newly benumbed state, Marx soon finds himself annoyed by a series of incidents involving the soldiers whom he has been appointed

to lead. The strident Jewish private Sheldon Gross- bart introduces himself to Marx and begins asking questions intending to ferret out whether the new sergeant is Jewish, like Grossbart and his fellow privates, Fishbein and Halpern. After agreeing to help Grossbart and his friends attend Jewish services on Friday night, Marx increasingly finds himself required to grant special privileges to the men because of their shared Jewish heritage. He is often called upon to act as a translator to the platoon leader, Captain Barrett, who marvels at the demands of the Jewish soldiers.

Despite resenting the role of mediator and spokesperson placed upon him, Roth suggests that Marx often feels powerless to refuse them. Marx has witnessed the destruction of once-great European cities and people. Without any way of making sense of the devastation that he has seen and the decimation of European Jewry, he turns to an atavistic sense of his Jewishness for comfort. He is moved by the way Grossbart and his friends “touched a deep memory. . . . It was a pleasant memory for a young man so far from peace and home, and it brought so many recollections with it.”

Gradually, however, Marx begins to doubt whether his Jewish soldiers possess any authentic Jewish feeling or are merely trying to gain favors from their Jewish superior. After finding out that Grossbart has managed—through his incessant cronyism and expectation of personal favors—to exempt himself from being sent to the Pacific along with the rest of his squad, Marx decides to exact revenge. Roth’s story was poorly received by many members of the Jewish community, who saw his critique of Jewish nepotism and tribal unity as an embarrassment and an incident of Jewish self-hatred, a frequent critique of Roth in future years.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Although it is not explicitly discussed in “Defender of the Faith,” the Holocaust pervades the story. Research the effects of the Holocaust on American Jewry. How is the relationship between Marx and Grossbart informed by this catastrophe?

2. In “Writing about Jews,” Philip Roth takes exception to Jewish critics of his work who emphasize the need not to shame the Jewish people in front of “the goyim.” Read “Writing about Jews,” published in Reading Myself and Others (1975). How does it reiterate or abandon the themes introduced in “Defender of the Faith”?

3. Why is Roth’s short story called “Defender of the Faith”? Is anyone in the story actually “defending” the faith? How does it compare to other stories in Roth’s volume, particularly “Eli, the Fanatic”?

4. How does Marx’s experience of war affect his response to Grossbart? In what way does Roth describe the effects of war on the soldier? How can the contemporary phenomenon we refer to as posttraumatic stress disorder be applied to “Defender of the Faith”?

5. In this short story, Roth manifests a profound interest in ethical questions. How are Marx’s acts ethical or not ethical? How does he rationalize his behaviors?