WASHINGTON JOURNAL: His Conservative Connections Help to Put Novelist on Best-Seller List

A year ago at this time, Joel C. Rosenberg was a conservative Republican political operative with a deep evangelical faith, three small children, no connections in the Bush White House or the Congressional leadership and no particular prospects for a steady job.

Just before Thanksgiving last year, his first novel, "The Last Jihad," was published. It begins with a suicide pilot crashing his private plane into the president's motorcade and ends with the president saying a silent prayer as the nuclear bombs he ordered are dropped on Iraq. By December, it was on The New York Times best-seller list, where it stayed for 11 weeks.

Based on those sales, Mr. Rosenberg, 36, received an advance of more than $1 million for a sequel, "The Last Days," which also involves terrorism in the United States and mayhem in the Middle East. It went on sale three weeks ago and is already No. 24 on The Times's expanded best-seller list.

"No one had ever heard of me," Mr. Rosenberg said over lunch the other day. "Now I feel like I'm playing in the major league with the Yankees."

By conventional standards, these are not very good novels. The plots streak along at breakneck speed. But there is no subtlety and no attempt at character development.

The Washington Post review of "The Last Jihad" called the writing "an act of terrorism on the reader's brain."

Publishers Weekly said of "The Last Days," "The author singularly fails to suspend readers' disbelief."

But Mr. Rosenthal has an advantage few writers of fiction enjoy — his friendships in the conservative political network.

The day "The Last Jihad" was published, he was on Sean Hannity's radio and television shows. The next week he appeared on Rush Limbaugh's radio program. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, Mr. Rosenberg said, he was on 160 radio and television programs.

Among those who wrote blurbs for his books were Oliver L. North and G. Gordon Liddy. Last week, Pat Robertson had Mr. Rosenberg on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club."

World Magazine, an evangelical publication based in North Carolina for which Mr. Rosenberg once wrote political columns, said "The Last Jihad" was a book "of which Christians can be proud."

"It was almost like one of the family doing well," Mr. Rosenberg said. His books are published by Forge, a division of St. Martin's Press that specializes in thrillers.

Most authors try to sell their books by going on tours and speaking to small audiences at colleges and bookstores. But why do that, Mr. Rosenberg's publicist, Peter R. Robbio, asked, when millions will see you on television or hear you on the radio?

"We decided to go to the same outlets we would to promote a political campaign," Mr. Robbio said.

When the unfavorable review in The Washington Post came out, Mr. Robbio quickly e-mailed it as a badge of honor to his list of conservative commentators.

Mr. Rosenberg grew up outside of Rochester. His father, an architect, was an Orthodox Jew. His mother, an English teacher, was a Methodist. Both became born-again Christians when he was a small boy, Mr. Rosenberg said. He himself "kind of wrestled through it and became a follower of Christ when I was 17," he said.

He majored in film at Syracuse University and voted for Michael S. Dukakis for president in 1988. But by the time he graduated from college, he was a committed conservative, he said.

He came to Washington right out of college to work for conservative research institutes, first the Heritage Foundation and then Empower America. Then he went to work for Mr. Limbaugh as the broadcaster's eyes and ears in Washington with the title of research director.

After two years with Mr. Limbaugh, he joined Steve Forbes's campaign as a policy adviser and speech writer in the 1996 Republican presidential primaries. Then he opened a political consulting business and worked briefly to spread around Washington the message of the conservative Israeli politicians Benjamin Netanyahu and Natan Sharansky.

By the end of 2000, Mr. Rosenberg said, "I had signed up with the wrong horse for president, Forbes, I wasn't going to work in the Bush White House, and I wasn't going to be the political adviser to the prime minister of Israel. So I decided that maybe now was the time to sit down and write the political thriller that I had always wanted to write."

Nonfiction conservative books seemed to do well, Mr. Rosenberg said, but there was little in the way of conservative fiction. "I figured," he said, "if I could pull off a novel that some of my friends who are conservative luminaries would enjoy, I might have a shot at getting people to hear about it."

: Orthodox Jews keep
Kosher homes,

check

wear yamulkes (skullcaps) or keep their heads covered at all times,

check and that is only for men.

and do not ride, turn
on electric lights, light fires, etc. on Saturday,

Actually from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday and it is permissible to have electric timers that do it for you and check

among many other things.

My cradle language was Yiddish. My entire family spoke it until we became old enough to attend school, at which time they encouraged English so we wouldn't be considered greenhorns. I was not allowed to have pierced ears because "only greenhorns pierced their ears".

We had 4 sets of dishes and dishtowels. I did not even see pork until I was in college. I never ate milk and meat in the same meal or milk w/in 4 hrs of a meat meal until I was on my own. There was a yahrseit (memorial) candle burning for someone so often that our water glases were the empty
candle holders. Our synagogue was mixed, orthodox and conservative, but the rabbi's wife, my grandmother and many of the older women sat in a balcony area until the 1960's when the new shul was built and the congregation officially became conservative.

Only ultra-orthodox men keep payess (uncut sideburns)and beards. My grandfather used a depilatory in order to be clean shaven, but technically not use a razor. He was a chazen (cantor or chanter of the prayers). He spoke 5-6 languages and had lived on 3 continents and he tended to an intellectual form of orthodoxy, his teacher was a student of the Gaon of Vilna, in Lithuenia. He considered the Hassids to be a more emotional form of orthodoxy. The only reason my father was not a cantor was because he could not carry a tune. The only reason we were not Hassid was that my mother considered them a cult and refused.

My father did not continue the practice of not touching a woman he wasn't related to. This is because that was based on women being unclean becasue of menses and my mother was horrified by it, but I never saw him dance w/another woman and he was uncomfortable shaking hands w/one if it wasn't a family memeber, who presumably would refrain if she was menestrating.

My father and later he and my brother attended prayers at synagogue mornings and evenings on days other than Shabbos or high holy days; my mother used a mikva after menses and childbirth; and the rest of what I can recall was all related to various practices in observance of holidays. My father went thru WWII in 2 theaters keeping kosher in that he did not mix milk & meat or eat pork. It was impossible to obtain kosher rations. He traded his pork & beans and other
treyf (non-kosher)foods for cigarettes and used the cigarettes to obtain extra rations of whatever he could eat, even though he would have been allowed to eat treyf if there was no other choice. He was so conditioned, he was not capable of eating pork or seafood w/out vomiting and couldn't even stand being around them in resturants. He was in the Army for over 3 years and AFAIK, fasted for Yom Kippur as much as possible.

They do not marry non-Jews

This is the 21st century and they absolutely did marry goyim in the 20th century, as I can attest to. Probably even before that. Now, was it encouraged? No. Did parents/grandparents threaten to sit shiva (observance for the dead, like a wake, but lasts a week) if we did so? Absolutely. Did they change their minds after lots of anguish and tears? Mine did. My father did not consider any of his grandchildren Jewish, even though my son identifies as such. It was a great pain to him.

unless they convert to Orthodoxy.

Othodoxy is difficult to convert to and in some congregations, almost impossible. I have an Evangelical male friend who fell in love w/an Israeli and did convert, in Israel in the 1960's, including the blood sacrifice, as an adult. Even after that, the marriage did not take place. He identifies as a Christian, but legally, except for his acceptance of Christ, he is a Jew. I knew someone who did convert to Hassidism and then spent decades listening to her MIL complain about her goysha kopf (non-Jewish head or stupidity) in Yiddish as they lived in the same family-owned building in Chicago. Her husband was a rabbi. The wife was actually born Jewish, never practiced it and was not considered Jewish enough before conversion. I spent my 11th summer living w/them and was not allowed to even carry a handkerchief on Shabbos. We would tie one to our wrists instead. But, it ws not common to marry out.

Are you Jewish?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.