Joshua Cohen

Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not a historian of the Jews—is reluctantly drawn into the politically charged world of academic hiring. He is co-opted onto a committee tasked with reviewing the application of Benzion Netanyahu, an exiled Israeli scholar specialising in the history of the Spanish Inquisition. From the moment Netanyahu arrives for...