by Daniel Kieval In Howard Jacobson's Booker-prize winning novel, The Finkler Question, Jewish residents of London are increasingly alarmed by the growing number of anti-Semitic attacks worldwide. The characters receive streams of news reports in which anger or hatred toward Israel fuels violence toward Jews everywhere, regardless of their connection to the country. One woman, the curator of a new Museum of Anglo-Jewish Culture, worries, "There had been spillage, from regional conflict to religious hatred, there could be no doubt of that. Jews were again the problem. After a period of exceptional quiet, anti-Semitism was becoming again what it had always been–an escalator that never stopped, and which anyone could hop on at will." The "spillage" of anti-Israel sentiment into anti-Jewish sentiment pervades the novel. The only characters sometimes able to grasp the distinction are a group...

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