Among the most famous Jewish literary characters ever created by non-Jews, none are as compelling as Leopold Bloom, antihero of James Joyce’s landmark novel Ulysses. Roman Catholic Joyce used his protagonist’s Jewishness to symbolize Bloom’s status as a wanderer and perpetual outsider – a status Joyce himself keenly felt.

We’ll read a few “Jewish” passages from Ulysses (references to Zionism and a vicious anti-Semitic attack, among others), and consider why Joyce chose a Jew to represent alienation and be the archetype of the “modern man.” Are we still perpetual outsiders, wanderers never entirely at home wherever we live? And why does what is arguably the most influential novel of the 20th century have a Jew as its center?