Upon its publication in The New Yorker of March 14, 1959, “Defender of the Faith” provoked strong criticism from some Jewish organizations and rabbis, who denounced its relatively unknown, twenty-six-year-old author as an anti-Semitic, self-hating Jew. Since then this controversial narrative—collected in Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Best American Short Stories 1960—has become the most frequently reprinted Roth short story and a major work in the Jewish-American literary canon.
“Defender of the Faith” is set on a military base in Missouri during the early summer of 1945, a period when the European war had just ended but the war in the Pacific was still producing appalling American casualties. Sergeant Nathan Marx, the story’s narrator, has recently returned to stateside duty after two years overseas including twelve months in combat. But Marx’s participation in the fight against...
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Citation: Chura, Patrick. "“Defender of the Faith”". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 June 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30478, accessed 09 June 2026.]
