Jew Like Me

The discourse on racial liberalism at mid-century involved the debate over antisemitism, made more urgent by Hitler’s rise in Germany. Born Jewish but largely assimilated, Hobson protested the complicity of liberals with antisemitism in her post–WW II best seller, which featured a gentile journalist passing for Jewish to write his expose. This novel’s reliance on a discourse of empathy ties it closely back to Stowe’s and looks forward to the philosophy at the heart of Lee’s Mockingbird. Here the protagonist, Philip Greene, passes as a Jew to learn how antisemitism feels. Meanwhile his liberal girlfriend hesitates to rent her cottage in a restricted neighborhood to Philip’s Jewish war buddy. Both protagonists exhibit the limitations of liberalism as they confront systemic as well as emotional biases that threaten their idealism.