Philip Roth receives an honorary doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s commencement in New York on May 22, 2014. (Ellen Dubin Photography)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Early in his career, Roth drew outrage with sometimes stinging depictions of Jewish life, as well as his graphic portrayal in his 1969 novel \u201cPortnoy\u2019s Complaint” of the protagonist\u2019s sexual desires. Some worried that his work would endanger American Jews, providing fodder for anti-Semites.<\/p>\n
In one notorious incident, Roth was shaken by a hostile reception he received at a 1962 literary symposium at New York\u2019s Yeshiva University. Recalling being shouted at by hostile students after the event, Roth vowed to \u201cnever write about Jews again\u201d — a promise, of course, that he did not keep.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a certain amount of poetic justice, an aesthetically satisfying irony, in Philip Roth’s beginning his career with a brouhaha at Yeshiva University and ending it with an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary — an honor perhaps more significant than the Nobel Prize that eludes him,\u201d Michael Kramer, associate professor of literature at Israel\u2019s Bar-Ilan University, wrote in an email. \u201cWould Roth himself have imagined such a plot? His endings tend to the tragic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now the 81-year-old Roth\u2019s own career is itself at an end. In 2012, Roth announced that he would not be writing more books. Earlier this month, he declared after a reading at New York\u2019s 92nd Street Y that he was done with public appearances.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was absolutely the last appearance I will make on any public stage, anywhere,\u201d said Roth, although on Wednesday news broke that he will appear as an interview guest on Comedy Central\u2019s \u201cColbert Report\u201d in July.<\/p>\n
Roth, in his books, poked fun at the wrath he incurred from some in the Jewish community. One of his recurring protagonists, Nathan Zuckerman, is a novelist whose own writings have similarly upset many Jews.<\/p>\n
But after decades as one of America\u2019s leading literary lights, the anger Roth once evoked has been eclipsed by acclaim.<\/p>\n
In a phone interview, the seminary\u2019s chancellor, Arnold Eisen — a sociologist and the only non-rabbi to lead JTS since World War II — called Roth the \u201cgreatest sociologist on American Jewish life, without doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eisen said that in his previous job at Stanford University, he frequently assigned Roth\u2019s books to students in his classes on American Judaism. Eisen noted his admiration for the Roth novels that examined the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, such as \u201cThe Counterlife\u201d and \u201cOperation Shylock,\u201d as well as works that explored the American scene, like \u201cThe Human Stain\u201d and \u201cAmerican Pastoral.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a community that treasures someone who holds up such a penetrating and insightful mirror to who we are and reveals the dilemmas and contradictions and aspirations of the community,\u201d Eisen said. \u201cWe are grateful for the mirror even if not everything you see in it is easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elisa Albert, a fiction writer and the author of an epistolary short story in which her alter ego offers to have a baby with Roth, called the JTS recognition \u201ca small honorary justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d imagine it’s an irresistible offering: a major institution of the very community that once upon a time so narrow-mindedly shunned him and his work now honors him, decades later,\u201d she wrote in an email.<\/p>\n
Roth, however, has not exactly been a communal pariah over his long career. Three of his books were honored with the American Jewish Book Award, and in 1998 he won the Jewish Book Council\u2019s Lifetime Literary Achievement Award.<\/p>\n
The JTS honor seems to have elicited little controversy. Though Roth has faced criticism from feminists over his depictions of women, a query from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg to the listserv for female Conservative rabbis soliciting reactions to the honorary doctorate yielded no responses.<\/p>\n
The president of the Philip Roth Society, Aimee Pozorski, said that Roth and JTS are not so different in their values.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, for the last 50 years, and despite opinions to the contrary, they have fought for the same ideals all along,\u201d Pozorski added. \u201cFrom the very beginning of his career, he has been deeply invested in representing the lives and fates of Jewish youth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roth, however, has demurred when it is suggested that he should be defined as an American Jewish writer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not want to, did not intend to, and was not able to speak for American Jews; I surely did not deny, and no one questioned the fact, that I spoke to them, and I hope to others as well,\u201d Roth wrote in his essay \u201cWriting About Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
At JTS, though, appreciation abounded for Roth\u2019s contributions to the Jewish world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the Western world views itself through the lens of the modern Jewish experience, it is in large measure due to the novels, novellas and short stories of Philip Roth,\u201d wrote David Roskies, a JTS Jewish literature professor, in a note to the class of 2014.<\/p>\n
He added that Roth “has done more than anyone to further the literary exploration of the Holocaust, in his own writings, and by promoting great works and writers throughout the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the JTS commencement, the honorary doctorate recipients received their hoods, tribute to their various services to the Jewish people: Ruth Calderon, Knesset member and Talmud teacher; Rabbi David Ellenson, chancellor and former president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion; and Stanley Fischer, former governor of the Bank of Israel.<\/p>\n
When Roth was given his hood, he received a sustained standing ovation.<\/p>\n
And at the ceremony\u2019s end, Roth walked off stage in the final procession, bareheaded among the kippah-clad crowd.<\/p>\n
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