Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf Character Analysis

A Newark rabbi who leads his congregation in the Jewish Conservative moment, Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf is one of the novel’s major antagonists. In many ways, Bengelsdorf—a tall and genteel widower from South Carolina who talks with a thick Southern accent—is one of the most unknowable characters in the novel. As he throws his support behind Lindbergh’s isolationist and antiwar platform in the election of 1940, insisting that as an “American Jew” he owes his loyalty to America first rather than to the Jews of Europe in need of American aid, his motivations are unclear. Under Lindbergh’s administration, Bengelsdorf is selected to shore up the New Jersey branch of the Office of American Absorption (OAA), a program whose supposed aim is to integrate religious and ethnic minorities more deeply into the “fabric” of American society. In reality, the OAA’s programs are aimed at breaking up Jewish families and reducing the power of Jewish constituencies across America—yet Bengelsdorf himself seems to believe that Jews dwell too far “apart” from American life. Whether Bengelsdorf truly believes such things or is merely parroting the party line is never revealed—yet Herman, Bess, and many other Jews see Bengelsdorf’s words and actions as traitorous. When Bengelsdorf marries Aunt Evelyn, the Roths find themselves even more despairing of Bengelsdorf’s influence not just in their community, but in their own family. Charismatic, opaque, and opportunistic, Bengelsdorf later goes on to pen a memoir detailing the titular “plot against America,” citing the Nazis’ capture of Charles Lindbergh Jr. and their blackmail of the president and First Lady Anne Lindbergh into enacting the Third Reich’s agenda in America. Again, whether any of Bengelsdorf’s claims are to be believed is never really clear—but what is evident is that Bengelsdorf is a man drawn to the spectacle of power and envious of the social and political power wielded by the goyim around him.