To connect the “Defender of the Faith” and Passover Steinberg states that defender of faith focuses chronologically and symbolically on the story of passover, and acknowledges that passover has historically been a time of freeing of the enslaved Jews. Steinberg includes the connection that Roth’s use of Passover seder as an excuse that Grossbart employs to separate himself from the rest of the soldiers and claim his special jewishness. Roth’s use of Passover  in this setting emphasizes the connection between the Jewish migration myth and the Holocaust catastrophe. Steinberg also points out that Roth’s stories don’t seem to connect to Judaism “on a deeper level than personal identity versus group identity”.

• Discussed further in class