How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"I'M AMERICAN!" I shouted. My mother blinked. [...] From the corner of the room where he was looking at the pictures in a magazine, Bird muttered, "No, you're not. You're Jewish." (5.4)
Is she, though? Is Bird referring to Jewishness as a religious or a cultural affiliation?
Quote #5
Once my father told me: When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end. (10.40)
Leo's faithlessness is indicative of his reluctance to take on any more unanswerable questions.
Quote #6
The more sadness he sees, the more his heart begins to turn against God. [...] When he asks God why He's made him so useless, the angel's voice cracks trying to hold back angry tears. Eventually he stops talking to God altogether. (1.94)
This description of one of Isaac Moritz's stories can be seen as one of the novel's indirect allusions to the Holocaust. Having seen inconceivable human suffering, Leo (and others) lost faith in God.