Affection: Beyond Philo-Semitism

...Jews are essentially non-artistic...

...His work has appeared in New Republic, Saturday Review, and Worldview...

...The Jewish religion is not merely a religious alternative, a specialization through which a Jew can satisfy a desire for transcendence...

...So consider the following: One of the things we mean by "child-like" is the absence of a clear boundary between mental and emotional activity...

...I suspect it had been...

...But whence, then, the subtle breath of anger...

...It's not that I'm against Scotch-Irishry and often play with a poor approximation of an Ulster brogue when in a liquefied partying mood, when I make like a shicker, I might say...

...they simply made no sense to me...

...The operative word is exclusion—with all sorts of confusion and blatant injustice about who the agent is...

...Not merely a formal, explicit, theological oneness, but an essential, inherent oneness...

...I knew no beleaguered soul indebted to some local Rothschild, so to the confidance that "You know how the Jews are" I could only respond, "No, I don't...

...And a few continue to think so even after meeting me—which pleases me in ways that are difficult to explain...

...It must have something to do with my "heroes"—so many of them, I began to realize years ago, Jewish...

...I don't mean that a Jew is compelled to practice the faith of Judaism— obviously not—but if he does not consciously practice the faith—how should I put it?—the faith nonetheless practices him...

...rather, a more broadly cultural affair...

...Willing history thus so different, I would of course add the proviso that Judaism have had an excellent chance of success in the endeavor...

...it is what I find so attractive...

...My sense of the thing is that a Jew does not, cannot, lose his faith in the same way as a Christian does...

...But what about before—forty years, or four hundred...

...Accompanying the wish that I were Jewish is the recognition that I am not going to try to do anything about it and am even going to apologize for the wish—because I know there is something offensive about it...

...I think...

...But it's long confused me, consequently, that Eliot could find so few places for Jews in his ideal society ("any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable"—"Tradition and Orthodoxy," 1934...

...I'm not talking about becoming a Jew at all...

...It is at the heart of things...

...T.S...

...But in historical Christianity, as it's been practiced, it has been taken to mean, as actions show: Religious morals are one thing and political ethics something else, and that's the way it should be, since this world, this life, is but a passage...

...But the conclusion to draw about that concluder is that he can come to such conclusions only because his own sensibility is dissociated...

...Were I to convert, Judaism could only be a religious alternative embraced, an alternative which makes better spiritual and intellectual sense than others...

...I realize that my discomfort, this pale longing for "assimilation," would be popular neither with those I would willingly leave nor with those I know I cannot really join...

...You come to us now" a Jew might say, "now that we've a State, now that we're truly to be reckoned with...

...But that would be, I think, to subscribe to a lie...

...And Jews have never proselytized for conversions, and have been suspicious—rightly, I think—of most who have even considered it...

...Christianity is one of the religious alternatives available to the gentile, one of the specialized departments in which he may live a portion of his existence—if he so chooses...

...A more just course is to hope that people will learn to recognize the sources of their resentments, their jealousies in fact...

...By contrast, it is impossible to separate Jewish religion from Jewish history, the transcendent from the everyday (except verbally, for the sake of analysis...

...Should I have said "in Judaism" instead...

...I don't know, of course, if Eliot's "dissociation" actually happened, or if it had long been the case for most people, most cultures...

...Then as I grew older, I found none of the heralded explanations convincing—perhaps because of a limitation of my experience, or perhaps because they simply are not convincing...

...I wonder if I'll be believed when I confess I did not know I'd come to them when I began this line of thought, when I began to explore a personal discomfort at not being Jewish—that vague yearning...

...It would also be an act of arrogance: an implicit invitation to Jewry to disappear by total assimilation into a society of the dissociated...

...And the form of the culture's response is not merely in the messages it makes explicit, announces as its program...

...Because it is safe...

...That's what I just told you...

...A great deal of his cultural criticism can be explained by reference to this idea: he desired a civilization in which religion, art, philosophy, science, manners, etc., were all expressions one of the other—an integrity, wholeness, an "associated" civilization instead of a fragmented one...

...What, the Christian wonders, does "Jew" mean anyway...

...John Donne, as I recall, was one of the last who felt his thoughts and thought his feelings, for whom the capacities of mind and emotion were not alien capacities discreetly separate from one another if not actively opposed to one another, for whom ideas had a sensuous texture and emotions the toughness of wit...

...if Freud has taught us anything, it should be that some of a human being's deepest motivations he cannot put into words and probably could not even if he knew he had them...

...There is something here that a Jew has little trouble with that a non-Jew finds next to incomprehensible...

...That is why he is ready to conceive of the higher human faculties on the analogy of a contemporary university, with its specializations and various departments...

...I don't know whether silently to compliment them on their freedom from physical stereotyping or wordlessly to disdain them for their lack of cultural discernment...

...but I've been unconvinced and still am that that absurdity, however much it may explain some medieval notions, is more than a protective afterthought for the modern anti-Semite, used in desperation when he can think of nothing else to justify his prejudices...

...but, sorry to say, that seems to me to be waiting upon an improbability...

...When is a Jew a Jew and when is he not...

...Does the question itself make any sense...

...Because I know there are Jews, born so, who have no interest in being Jewish and some who actively wish they weren't—and now, not forty years ago...

...That Jews are excessively "clannish," to a greater degree supposedly than other clans, seemed as much an afterthought as the others, it being clear that any clannishness was as much a matter of being excluded as of choosing to be exclusive...

...Now, a popular stereotype of the Jew, not at all a virulent one but nonetheless false for that, is that he is damned good at abstract thought, and at some of its worldly applications, but not so finely attuned to the arts and emotions: Baruch Spinoza and Bernard Baruch but not Beethoven...

...but the Christian doesn't believe it, and he doesn't believe the father believes it either...

...That may mean "Giving pennies to Caesar and the heart to God," may mean that Christ was a revolutionary expecting the swift coming of the Kingdom of God and therefore saw no need for present rebellion or reform, may mean any number of things...

...Conclusion clear: Jews may be the brainiest people alive, but at the expense of the more aesthetic faculties...

...you felt no discomfort at not being one of us...

...Its most important messages are more likely to be subliminal, assumptions too pervasive to be obvious, understandings so fundamental that without them the culture would not be itself, would be inconceivable...

...Specifically: I might wish that centuries ago Jews had been more missionary, proselytizing, even conquistadorial, had actively sought converts...

...in Jewish culture...

...Marx and Spinoza remain abstract thinkers...

...I have wracked my memory to recall having heard some clergyman or some Sunday-school pedagogue refer to Jews as Christ-killers, but it's been a hopeless exercise...

...Even as a child I felt the reasons for its existence to be completely mysterious...

...Eliot was more articulate than most, and he didn't make the connection...

...Einstein, making a new science through being a poet of the intuitions...

...Not explaining, I invite some clever explanations: he has a secret guilt he needs to expiate...

...Consider for a moment the following suggestive example of dissociation, of compartments and fragments: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's...

...Forced to admit...

...it has too much of the vicarious about it...

...I know there are complexities to that famous phenomenon, subtle tones, but I feel nonetheless, how can they, how dare they, when / would...

...Spinoza, mentally swift and cunning, craftsman of more than lenses, making a poetry of concepts...

...What then is the common denominator, and is it really somehow "Jewish...

...Does any of this substantiate my own intuition that the essence of Jewishness is the association of sensibility...

...one cannot will history...

...Marx—the crotchety, car-buncular man more than the Marxist—astride of history in a Promethean way his own theories would deny as a possibility...

...I dislike the conclusions because I do not like to share anything with the anti-Semite—human form and habitation of the same planet is already enough...

...He finds it perfectly normal to describe brain-work as one thing, imagination-work as another, and seldom to never the twain shall meet...

...A worthy pantheon, some might say, but sheer coincidence: they happen to be Jewish, that's all, and surely you'd not exclude, say, Shakespeare or Yeats or William James or...

...It's not just that the Jews are a people in a way that the Christians are not...

...I've heard that theme since, of course, and am aware that certain passages I didn't even know existed in certain liturgies have been excised...

...I agree with Eliot, then, in the spirit while not in the letter of history...

...The Christian may know of some Orthodox father who has said to his apostate son, "You're no longer a Jew...

...Jewish culture, as far as I can tell, is a celebration of the oneness of things...

...I might wish that history had been different...

...In such situations, I've been forced to admit that I'm not Jewish...

...humor is one way of handling, for a passing moment, the more brutal ironies...

...One escape from this embarrassing recognition of the faintest kinship is to convince myself that there's no substance to what I admire and what the anti-Semite fears...

...It is the worldliness of Jewish religion and the spirituality of Jewish history, this collective and communal association of sensibility that convinces me that the individual associated sensibility I celebrate is no mere cultural accident...

...I speak, I hope it's clear, as a friend, as something more than a philo-Semite...

...I know what I admire, what I love, as well I think as anyone can...

...You even spell it with an/" she says...

...that Eliot's image of the Jew was the negatively "cosmopolitan," vulgar and culturally rootless, and any "exception" was merely an exception...

...But then I draw back in self-mockery: You haven't earned even that anger...

...But whatever proportion they represent, I think they're unresponsive to their own cultural tradition, which is a celebration of the oneness of life and an ethical imperative to embrace it with the wholeness of the perceiving faculties—whereas the believing Christian of dissociated sensibility is perfectly consistent with and responsive to his cultural tradition...

...for I realized the words are poetically just...

...And, not anxious to be thought an egotist who'd shape the world to his own private needs, I add that I think the West would be a great deal better off, both the faithful and the faithless...

...But from what I've suggested is to me the essence of "Jewishness"—the associated sensibility, an integrity of experience and capacity to experience...

...Now that's a remark of a dissociated sensibility...

...No, indeed I would not...

...There are more Jewish scientists than composers (evidently), so...

...other gentiles, recognizing the pains of Jewish history, would consider it a form of masochism...

...This is not the language the anti-Semite would use, obviously...

...you're ignorant of the inside...

...Samuel Hux is Professor of English at York College of the City University of New York...

...I'd think nothing of a freckled towhead drawling an expressive Spanish word...

...But, understand in return: I am not talking about religious conversion...

...Does it refer to race, religion, to some kind of historical experience...

...This does not mean that all Jews are associated sensibilities, really mature, retaining like the members of my pantheon those "child-like" capacities to healthy degree...

...And that is the reason I could nevei seriously consider conversion, even if I felt more religious urgings than I do...

...Few of the Jews I met had very much money, by and large no more nor less than anyone else...

...A Jew who ceases to believe remains a Jew, and not merely because that is how he is perceived in a largely gentile society, nor because "Jew" is an ethnic as well as religious term...

...Some gentiles would consider it sheer insanity...

...I do not like the conclusions I come to...

...One can will faith...

...In that case I might not have now the vague longing and sense of discomfort I confessed upon beginning, whether I now practiced the faith or was practiced by it...

...But it occurs to me that one long chapter of western history began and continued because of subliminal admiration become active resentment...

...Perhaps that is why some people assume, until they meet me, that I am Jewish...

...You're not really one of us," another Jewish friend once said...

...As opposed to being "mature," which means knowing what's what and not mistaking feelings for a reasonable accounting of things...

...AFFECTION BEYOND PHILO-SEMITTSM SAMUEL HUX Over the past few years I have written essays for magazines published by Jewish organizations, or with specifically Jewish editorial considerations, or associated with what is sometimes called the "New York Jewish intelligentsia...

...and a variation of that, that "Jews take care of their own," I first heard from my father, as praise, when he was talking about some relatives of his who seemed to revel in letting one another down...

...Curious...

...Christian belief is not so compelling...

...the son might say...

...it has also been the most terrible upon earth...

...the older I get the less patient I become with life's vicious little ironies, while progressively I have a harder time ignoring them...

...Rather than confused, I feel a great sense of irony...

...It is a curious experience, both disorienting and evocative of insight...

...Shakespeare or Yeats or William James or . ..") one attains to real maturity—the association of sensibility...

...And I am not even ascribing to him a conceptual articulateness...

...A Christian who stops believing is merely a gentile...

...Eliot once wrote about this thing he thought happened to Western man some time in the seventeenth century:' "the dissociation of sensibility...

...My terminology is not very scientific: the key phrase I've used is, after all, from a poet's essay of literary criticism...

...And, yes, I understand...

...This "discomfort-at-not-being" is as awkward psychologically as it looks in print, hyphenated and half disowned by quotation marks...

...Jewish history has been brave and creative...

...but since I am not a part of that historical experience with which it is one, an experience I can know only vicariously, Judaism could only be a specialization, a department within my life: my experience no less dissociated than before...

...There are more Jewish surgeons (perhaps so) than sculptors, so...

...Such as the one to follow...

...one cannot deny culture...

...it is the reason for my vague longing...

...And I cannot protest that forty years ago I was a babe, and four hundred not here at all...

...I've met Jews as disassociated as anyone else, and they may represent a majority of Jewry...

...and I know I can trust myself not to yield to that peculiar human chemistry whereby one often comes to resent that which he admires...

...It's not so easy as that...

...In part this stereotype is a function of a profound ignorance of Jewish (Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino) culture, and in part—and more revealing— it is a function of the dissociated sensibility of the observer who makes that stereotypical judgment...

...or, he thinks he's a gentile "Just Man" who would atone for the sins of history...

...The truth that's lost: Marx's Das Kapital is...

...If, as we grow older, we retain our child-like capacity to some strong degree (impossible to measure, of course, but suggested by "Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Einstein...

...I repeat: I'm talking about a discomfort at not being one...

...Well...

...There are more Jewish social critics than poets (assume so for the sake of argument), so...

...So .. . I'd best try to explain...

...But coincidence...

...A culture can encourage that retention, or it can discourage it...

...And then, a subtle breath infusing both wish and recognition: there is a certain mild anger and impatience...

...You didn't want in then...

...One can deny faith...

...Being a Jew" means something culturally, and a culture, unlike a faith, cannot simply be set aside, discarded...

...that is, to convince myself that Jews are just like anyone else, or rather that Jewishness is just like any other -ness, simply containing a different religious alternative, a "denomination" among many, and a different ethnic accident...

...But what if that's true, and true as well that Einstein's remarkable physical intuitions were aesthetic in nature, or that Freud's scientific method is so elusive for subsequent analysts because it was, as I think, a private artl After all, I've been talking about giants who might have been what they were even had they different cultural roots...

...at its very core, conceived like an inexorable tragic drama by Marx's beloved Aeschylus, seeds of destruction carried by what's to be destroyed...

...My sensitivity about the use of Jewish words is a function of what I'd like to explore and share: my ridiculous discomfort at not being Jewish, at not having, as a friend tells me I don't, a Yiddishe kopf...

...It's what I most miss in the particular culture into which I was born...

...But I have yet to explain the discomfort and displaced longing, as if I've assumed their reasons, their resources, should be patently clear...

...it is an inescapable expression of Jewish history, in some sense at one with it...

...How, offensive...

...For my image, at bottom, of Jewishness is the association of sensibility...

...There is so little differentiation between the secular and the religious in...

...Freud, insistently pursuing the darker impulses, even when they lead him to conclusions he'd rather not come upon, and able, even given his enormous pride, to admit that there are writings beyond his understanding...

...But when the anti-Semite says, "The Jews are different from us, you know," when he thinks Jews think themselves superior (and suspects that they are), when he, who would exclude, feels excluded, then I suspect that he's really saying that Jews know something, have something, that he knows he doesn't have, without his quite knowing what it is...

...A culture does not say either "Think your feelings and feel your thoughts" or "Keep your faculties compartmentalized...

...I have a mild contempt for non-Jews who use such words as if they were really natural to them—meshug-geneh this, cockamamy that, and what chutzpah!—although I, obviously, sometimes do it myself, hoping that no one turns the eye on me that I'd turn on another for using a linguistic license he has not earned...

...I hesitate...

...thoughts have a sensuous texture, feelings have an intellectual toughness...

...Not from Judaism, or from being Jewish: clearly, few desire it...

...But who would not, to some degree...

...I've not earned something...

...If there's something absurd in this last bit of dreaming, something even humorous, then...

...Yes, I know...

...And he is confused by not believing it, for he knows that a similar verbal banishment by a Christian father of an apostate son would make absolutely perfect sense and compel agreement: "No longer a Christian...

...Spinoza's Ethics is a rhythmic drama of the intellect, its Demonstrations, Corollaries, and Scholias like Strophes, Antistrophes, and Epodes...

...No matter how much excluding gentile anti-Semites have practiced (as well as gentiles who would never consider themselves anti-Semitic), I am convinced that the truth is that they feel excluded...

...As long as I can remember I've been confused by the existence of anti-Semitism...

...The apostate son of the Christian father is almost casual in his response, and that may be because in a particular sense...

...I'm not really confused, for it's clear ("Bleistein With a Cigar," "And the Jew squats on the window sill, the owner ...," "Rachel nee Rabinovitch / Tears at the grapes with murderous paws...

...But, nonetheless, we're getting closer to the truth...