Irving Berlin

In his Operation Shylock , Philip Roth’s double, Moishe Pipik (Yiddish for “Moses Bellybutton”), advocates a reverse Zionism known as Diasporism. He is encouraging Jews to return to Eastern Europe, and imagines that “People will be jubilant. People will be in tears. They will be shouting, ‘Our Jews are back! Our Jews are back!’”

Roth himself appears as a character in the book, and is at first put off by Pipik. Eventually, however, he takes over the leadership of Diasporism, spinning more insane plotlines than Pipik had. He finds, for example, that Diasporism is anticipates in the work of Irving Berlin, especially “Easter Parade” and “White Christmas,” which turned Christianity “into shlock. But nicely! Nicely! So nicely the goyim don’t even know what hit ‘em. They love it.”