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Martyr Complex: Does Jewish Suffering Mean Anything?
Ruth Franklin, Ivan G. Marcus, and Judith Shulevitz in conversation with Jonathan Rosen
APRIL 29, 2007


A Jewish story later turned on the Jews, the narrative of Jesus's suffering has a long and complicated history within Jewish culture. How do Jewish ideas inform the story itself? What role does martyrdom play in Jewish tradition? How do Jewish conceptions of suffering change in the face of Christian domination? How do Jews make meaning out of the unparalleled suffering of the Holocaust? What happens when Jewish characters take on Christ-like characteristics? Ruth Franklin, Ivan G. Marcus, and Judith Shulevitz consider these and other questions in a conversation with Jonathan Rosen.

RUTH FRANKLIN is a senior editor at The New Republic. She received a B.A. in English from Columbia University in 1995 and an M.A. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 1998. She has also studied at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Before joining The New Republic, she worked in The New York Times' Warsaw bureau. Her writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, and the London Review of Books.

IVAN G. MARCUS is Frederick P. Rose Professor of Jewish History, Professor of History and of Religious Studies, and Chair of Yale's Program in Judaic Studies. He has written Piety and Society: The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany; Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Culture and Acculturation in Medieval Europe; and The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times. His long essay, "A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Early Culture of Ashkenaz," appeared in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, edited by David Biale.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ is a writer and editor. The former Culturebox editor for Slate, she wrote the "The Close Reader" column for The New York Times Book Review. She is currently working on a book about the Sabbath.

JONATHAN ROSEN is the Editorial Director of the Nextbook/Schocken Publishing Series. He is author of the novel Eve's Apple; The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds; and most recently, the novel Joy Comes in the Morning. In 1990, he created the Arts & Letters section of the Forward, which he oversaw for ten years. His essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and the American Scholar.