(Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters: L. B. Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)
The huge pork kidney, representative of Bloom’s guilt for not practicing Judaism while being Jewish, serves as a source of self-flagellation to be overcome throughout Ulysses. Bloom’s introduction comes with a retroactively assigned sense of irony, as Joyce chooses “to introduce a “Jewish” character through his taste for offal, which in the very next scene becomes an un-kosher pig kidney;” his taste pallet becomes even more contradictory given that “organ meats were not a very common dietary staple of lower-middle-class and working-class Dubliners in 1904 (Davison 200). Deciding between a mutton kidney and a pork kidney, Bloom eventually chooses the pork kidney on the grounds of freshness, as “Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at Buckley’s…Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz’s” (Joyce 46). Although Bloom’s initial characterization would not suggest that he is of Jewish heritage, his eventual reveal to have Hungarian-Jewish ancestry but not practice kosher introduces a sense of irony to his preference towards pork kidneys. His “‘relish for the inner organs of beasts’ is a cultural marker of Jewish identity — one which becomes completely secularized with the pork kidney (Davison 200 - 201). Thus, the creation of his “new Bloomusalem” in the shape of a pork kidney represents his reconciliation between his guilt of not practicing Judaism while remaining culturally Jewish.
Although his father had practiced Judaism even as an immigrant, “Bloom’s satisfying pork kidney suggests the rationalization of Levitical law that was, and still is, an element of Jewish assimilation throughout the West” (Davison 201). Bloom’s assimilation, however, comes with a series of uncertainties regarding identity, as he is a Jew but does not practice Judaism and is an Irish but is perceived by others to be an “‘un-Irish’ Jew” (Davison 200). But such a characterization of Bloom is “necessary to define the type of Jew Joyce wants to represent — one who is marginal to Judaism yet has been formed in part through Jewish culture” (Davison 201). In many ways, Bloom’s experience with rejection of Judaism mirrors Joyce’s rejection of Catholicism, as being “born a Catholic Irishman, reject the Church, and then to call oneself the great parallel in Joyce’s mind to being uncircumcised, unkosher, agnostic, and still thinking of oneself as a Jew” (Davison 201). While Bloom the concept of practicing Judaism “is archaic to him, the plight of his father as an alienated, immigrant Jew is not” (Davison 204). Even without the a verbal reminder of his inadequacy in keeping Jewish heritage, Bloom creates his own flagellation.
Through constructing his “New Bloomusalem” in the shape of a pork kidney, Bloom reclaims and glorifies his ability to assimilate into Irish society while retaining his Jewish roots. His consumption of pork kidneys, formerly a point of shame in his life, becomes an accept part of his understanding of his Jewish identity. Even the Citizen, who had been a source of contention towards Bloom’s Irish identity throughout Ulysses gives him his blessing, saying, “May the good God bless him!” (Joyce 386). Through constructing the “New Bloomusalem,” Bloom empowers his Jewish identity to become “astoundingly multivalent, and his selfhood has been redefined into a much less self-defeating shape. A source of shame in his conception of himself earlier in “Calypso,” the pork kidney has “transmuted” into “ a symbol of the potential harmony of assimilation” through the construction of the “New Bloomusalem” (Davison 201). Through reframing his perception of the pork kidney, Bloom cohesively reconciles his Irish and Jewish identity, something he could not do until the creation of the “New Bloomusalem” in the shape of a pork kidney.
Works Cited
Davison, Neil R.. James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Construction of Jewish Identity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter. Gabler, Garland, 1986.
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