So far no mention has been made of Judaism

So, Paul Auster is Jewish. That has been established. But his book is not necessarily a "Jewish text" though of course it's way more Jewish than anything by Ayn Rand... Anyway, Auster was raised in a Jewish family, and although that doesn't necessarily make someone Jewish or mean that their work has that classification, people's upbringings always influence their work. Just look at Auslander. He's written entire books about his past, disguised as short stories and vaguely fictionalized biographical vignettes. But Auster does broach topics that often come up in Jewish lit, or topics that have at least come up in class, anyway. The whole trilogy focuses heavily on identity, and City of Glass especially deals with this. Quinn pretends to be Auster, a detective, and someone whose past doesn't haunt him as much as his does. We learn early in the book that Quinn had a family and that the family is now dead. This is sad for Quinn, but it helps explain his lonely life and his almost apathetic approach. He pretends to be Auster hoping that will lead to a more interesting life, or at least an interesting diversion from his subdued life. So Auster acts like a different person and then totally expects that other persona to live a different life than he does. He thinks he'll get special treatment from Mrs. Stillman because he's now a detective and that's what happens. Identity has been a recurring theme in the class. Horrible Cannibal Galaxy even incorporated it when the main character whose name I've forgotten because the book sucked so much (Brill? never mind, I remembered accidentally) can't pick between two halves, being Jewish and being French, and then kind of being American. Brill also has to figure out who he is when his kids are somewhat disappointing, he hates his poor, innocent wife, his crappy school abandons him, and it turns out that the only person who ever loved him is an equally insignificant, crazy, pretentious woman who has completely disappeared from his life. Auslander's entire Beware of God is about meshing his weird childhood with his new life of relative secular existence. So yeah, identity.
Death is something that comes up a lot in Ghosts, the second book in the trilogy. The character is also confronted with a very strange mystery and lets himself muse on suicide and murder. Page 146 includes a rather detailed description of a man jumping from a bridge. And I believe it's in that book where the main character is oddly focussed on the unsolved death of a small boy, but that could have been The Locked Room. Death has been something basically everything we read in class has incorporated. In the Metamorphosis, Gregor dies to be less of a burden, but also they kind of want him to die. In that story about the giant book about everyone, the entire life and death of the narrator's dad is chronicled in creepy detail. People died in Cannibal Galaxy. In Beward of God, many people (and animals!) die- that guy who kept not dying and God had to hit him with his car, the dog who kept judging the boy for masturbating, a lot of pets in the story about the guy who God was speaking to, and actually a few other people in that story, etc. So death is kind of a big thing. I'm sure there are good reasons for this that can't entirely be chalked up to survivor's guilt, but not being particularly knowledgeable about Judeo-Christian beliefs, I would feel weird speculating. But basically, this book totally applies to this assignment and anyone who says otherwise is just being mean.

See? Pretty sure Jewish people don't say things like that. 

I should say, it definitely, definitely, definitely applies more than Ayn Rand, because seriously that bitch was crazy and aside from the fact that her philosophy was bogus, she abandoned her heritage to the point where she changed her name and advocated ignoring organized religion. So there.

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