On Obliterating the Jews

...It is we, and the Portuguese, the British, the French—mankind, which under a hundred different masks of reason denies to someone somewhere the right to his difference...

...Why, he wondered, was I connecting myself with something of this kind...

...some of them get rich on matzohs, let's even concede that...

...And I am sure that they do not look in exactly the same way as non-Jews in Russia at this treatment of religious people with whom they have nothing in common ideologically...

...I told him what I had been reading about the treatment of Jews in Russia recently...

...and whether or not there is a public feeling of anti-Semitism in the sense we understand that feeling, I also do not know...

...I am sure that, as everywhere else, the great mass of Jews in Russia are honorable, hardworking people...

...it is there to go on being a university...

...He did blush...

...Why is this...

...I cannot close without voicing my unhappiness at having to make such remarks at these, remembering as I do the darkest days of World War II, when but for the sacrifice and determination of the Russian people in the critical period before the Allies re-entered Europe, the Jews who did survive Hitler would have joined the millions who were destroyed...

...But, admittedly, and I even emphasize this, I am speaking without some facts I wish I had...

...To keep this perfectly straight, I ought to point out that I am not religious...

...I said that I did not know any Soviet Jews, but I have met one Soviet non-Jew recently, and our conversation will perhaps help to throw the kind of light I think is needed...

...of the feelings of the Russian people...

...I am sure it is how it seems to many Jews in Russia, too...

...Israel being tied so closely to the United States, the question of espionage is thereby raised...

...I am sure I do not understand many things about it, but I feel reasonably sure that I do understand this much...

...The tradition of anti-Semitism has, for one thing, been carried on by anti-Semites...

...I expanded the wound...

...And I believe those who claim you single out the Jew because you have long refused to publish Jewish literature...

...Indeed, it is the classic charge of the old Polish dukes, the Tsars, and the Hitler whom you so valiantly held at bay for so many blood-drenched years—the charge that a Jew cannot be patriotic, that he is obsessed with money and will do anything to get hold of it, and that his religion is nothing but a front for his financial manipulations...

...Yes," he said, "they are not allowed to make a profit on religion...

...Perhaps your loyalty to Russia understands...

...I would hate to think that I had done anything, however slight, to damage the chances of peace...

...It is an unhappiness compounded by the fact that while I do not believe as yet that we are faced with a classic antiSemitic campaign, I feel it proper and necessary to protest that if certain Soviet Jews have in fact carried on illegal activities in a synagogue, certain non-Jews have been charged with doing the same in Soviet banks, collective farms and other institutions—but the Soviet press does not mock and degrade those institutions and their members in the way that it attacks the synagogue...

...All men are either intrinsically equal or they are not equal, and it matters nothing whether the disability is laid upon them by a rationalist, a scientific Socialist, or the most superstitious monk in old Russia...

...An anti-Semite who cannot conceive he is an anti-Semite is nevertheless an anti-Semite if he does anti-Semitic things...

...But, you say, these are facts...

...I then asked if it were true that people had been jailed or worse for making matzoh in their own ovens and selling them to others...

...I hope that what follows will in some way reach the desks and the hearts of those who deal with the question of Jews in Russia...

...others make candles, beads, crosses, stars, they bow to the East, they bow to the West—but when it comes time to fight a war you can still rely on them, it does nothing to reduce their love of country or their citizenship...

...I felt encouraged...

...Whether it was an anti-Semitism based on some racist allegation, or on national chauvinism, or simply the primitive hatred of a peasantry, the perpetrators have always either boasted or not denied their feelings and their aims...

...The truth requires one to see, or to admit, that a hammering on such charges against Jews and the Jewish religion, regardless of the fact that all religion is under some disability in Russia, is still in truth, in context, anti-Semitism...

...I speak as one who wants peace with Russia—more, I want friendship between our two countries...

...Naturally, as I expected, he denied that there was any attempt whatever to single out Jews as violators of the economic laws of the Soviet Union...

...This is how it seems to me...

...This is manifestly a whistling in the dark...

...Now it would be simple, if not soothing in a sense, to impute a bland cynicism to the Soviet people, who deny any anti-Semitic feelings or an anti-Jewish campaign...

...What is at stake here for me, therefore, is not a religion but the good name of a people, a people that has in fact suffered beyond all measure of its possible failings...

...From the time of Henry VIII none of the Western countries has been able, either, to move into nationhood without a sharp and most often revolutionary confrontation with the state power which the church had acquired...

...I am willing to bet that a great many of the Jews whom you do not act against, Jews in your sciences and even in government whom you gratefully honor as Soviet citizens—that even these non-religious Jews believe they are Jews...

...A third hesitation is based on the fact that every religion is suppressed in Russia, so that what might really be called for is a general protest against Russian materialism...

...And I thought to myself, neither do you, Jack...

...In short, there is something about the disabilities placed upon Soviet religious Jews which makes them seem something other than the victims of anti-Semitism...

...I think, too, that there is the Israel implication...

...In other words, all institutions, unless sharply corrected from time to time, have a built-in tendency to become irrational...

...I am not prepared to deny or to affirm this, but I do affirm that you have made a point that they are Jews and that this is anti-Semitism...

...After a while, I found out that it was not my royalties he had come to talk about at all...

...Except, finally, he told me that I did not understand...

...You say that in fact a large proportion of the criminals you have caught happen to be Jews...

...or even an awareness of whatever may have appeared in the Soviet press which credits a Jew as such with some virtues...

...Perhaps there are no such articles...

...I believe, nevertheless, that I am a Jew...

...Begun for perfectly sound purposes, they tend with the years merely to perpetuate and defend their sheer existence...

...it is there to go on being a hospital...

...The next thing," he continued, "is that we will have to manufacture candles for the Orthodox, and God knows what for the Mohammedans, and so forth...

...A hospital, he observed, is not there to treat the sick...

...I repeat that I have not read the entire Soviet press on the subject of Jews, but when I know that Jewish literature and Jewish culture do not have their equal place with those of other Soviet peoples, it seems to me that the time has come for Russians of good will to do what they have done in other fields these past few years—to set ideology for a moment to one side, and to look with open eyes at results, at people...

...I think the gentleman's blush may have been his recognition of the incongruity between the measure of pain and suffering dealt to certain Jews, and the measure of safety the Soviet society can conceivably derive from it...

...The gentleman arrived, an affable and I think intelligent man in his middle 30s...

...they make all the matzohs they want here...

...And I repeat that I do this in a country which has yet to prove its acceptance of equality and freedom for all...

...and I have read charges that Soviet Jews, have shown greater allegiance to Israeli diplomats than is thought fitting...

...With a pathetic attempt at introducing the subject in an offhand way—he wanted me to understand that this was not his reason for calling me, but rather to do his job, which is to interest American writers and artists in travelling to Russia—he finally asked about a conference I was to participate in on the status of Soviet Jews...

...I share this reluctance...

...but atheism there has become institutionalized...

...The truth is impossible to perceive unless the fact is placed in its context...

...I said, "Look at the United States...

...I have never been to Russia or any of the Communist countries and I do not know any Soviet Jews...

...for truth is, above everything else, relationships...

...Most obviously, there is a reluctance to disturb the new climate of political rapprochement with the Soviets by such a protest...

...Expecting that he would soon get down to whatever business had brought him, I meandered with the conversation through the theater, novels and what evidently interested him very genuinely —the trend of writing in America...

...but you, this human being in front of me, do not understand...

...A second source of hesitation, it appears, is that no one outside Russia seems able, by the nature of things, to pronounce upon the truth or falsity of the charges made against the Jews who have been sentenced to prison and, in many cases, to death...

...we do not encourage religious cults and therefore we do not allow State property to be used to supply them with their necessities...

...Indeed, it may help if it is properly put forward...

...It is no good writing vile things in your press about Jews, and then go on and on denying you are practicing anti-Semitism...

...It is no good because the human reality is that the old anti-Semitic archetypes have been so deeply imbedded in the Christian mind that an attack on Jews, regardless of how liberated you think you are from the past, ends up quite the same in its psychic result as the old-fashioned attacks which were made by benighted, ignorant misleaders of the people...

...AN anthropologist I used to study under had a theory of institutions...

...And since the Soviet government controls the press, these articles by themselves appear to prove the existence of a methodical campaign to discredit, degrade and, it would seem, to obliterate the Jew as a Jew...

...how do you know, you might get the religious ones if you stop bothering them...

...Yes, that is true," he replied, "but in our country the bakeries are government property...

...For example, I have seen articles from the Russian press which I think are inflammatory about Jews and Jewishness...

...So I said, "You mean to tell me that the Soviet State is endangered because a couple of Jews make a few matzohs in a stove...

...In short, the past can be said to have had a viable issue with organized religion in Russia...

...So much so that I am writing here to protest the vulgarity, the travesty of human feelings which those articles seem designed to generate...

...When my visitor from the Soviet Embassy blushed at my pressing the question of Soviet Jews being allowed to make matzoh, I wondered if systematic antireligious principles had not finally produced absurdity in Russia...

...But for reasons I hope to make clear, I do not think a protest need in any way damage American-Russian understanding...

...to support a Jewish theater, once one of your announced glories...

...With the usual author's avarice, I agreed, thinking I would at least get my house painted with all those rubles...

...Did you ever think of just leaving these people alone...

...A library is not there primarily to lend books...

...And I must say at once that he was as much baffled as anything else...

...it is finally expressing itself in this righteous high dudgeon about people baking matzohs in their kitchens and selling what they can to others...

...It is no good saying you do not believe this and that this unbelief entitles you to go after Jews...

...indeed, his bafflement is my point here...

...To begin with, I have to explain that about a year ago, in a fit of optimism, I wrote a letter to the Union of Soviet Writers, asking, quite simply, whether there was any truth in a rumor I had heard that Russia has decided to pay foreign authors the royalties due them...

...So I address myself to a great nation and a valorous people, and not as one who is unaware that perhaps the most explosive racial struggle in the world is taking place right here in America, and right now...

...I am sure that, as elsewhere, the believers among them find in Judaism the values of civilization, good conduct, and social responsibility...

...So I told him I had read that the government had prohibited the manufacture of matzoh...

...Finally, one is put off by the knowledge that despite everything there are Jews in high positions in the Soviet government, as well as in the arts, education and the professions...

...Yes, it is not only you the Russian who must free yourself of ancient and archaic fears, however rationalized they may be, it is we who must move with you...

...But I feel that a protest, if it is to do more than arraign Russia once again, must seek to shed what light we believe we have among the Russians...

...I should first like to deal with this hesitation...

...because for 2,000 years the Jew has been imprinted into the gentile mind as the principle of social wreckage, whether the society be feudal, capitalist, or now—evidently—socialist...

...But I do read newspapers, and unless I am merely projecting my own state of mind, there is a certain difficult-to-define hesitation in many people about protesting with any force what evidently is a campaign against at least certain elements of Soviet Jewry...

...He insisted that while of course there are vulgar and stupid people in all countries, and the Soviet Union had its share, it was not only untrue, but inconceivable that a Communist could, in effect, be an anti-Semite...

...In the present case, the disabilities, the contempt and mockery laid upon the Jews, are carried on by people who are the heirs of a long Socialist tradition which, whatever its twists and turns, consistently branded anti-Semitism, like racism and chauvinism, as a weapon of reaction...

...I know, if only from Tolstoy, what a lifeless and reactionary force the Orthodox Church was under the Tsar...

...I am not suggesting that you must award the Jew a special dispensation to violate law, but I am bound to protest your singling him out as a violator...

...Clearly, however, the official condemnation of Evtushenko's poem, "Babi Yar," which at a minimum sought to identfy the martyrdom of Jewry with the martyrdom of Russia, can only have been made by people who in effect are anti-Semitic...

...And I have to tell you that there is a great difference between facts and the truth...

...perhaps your duty understands...

...I do not believe in Jehovah or any being in the sky...

...You admit yourself that a lot of Jews are treasured Soviet citizens...

...I mean, just make believe it's not a problem and see what happens...

...Yet what I have not got is an experience of Russia itself...

...or to permit a Jewish press to take its proper place alongside the press of other, and frequently smaller, nationalities...

...it is there to go on being a library...

...I think that it is time to talk as frankly as possible about this problem, for I believe it can become an important source of friction between us...

...I received no reply, which was not supprising, but about five months later a man did call me from the Cultural Section of the Soviet Embassy, asking for an hour with me...

...What I am talking about is not merely freedom but the higher degree of reliability of free people...

...I owe it to the gentleman, and to the situation, to say that he had no answer...

...Up to this point we may well have been at the United Nations in 1949...

...Not only a Communist state but quite probably a development into any technological civilization would seem to have required the overthrow of the feudalistic atavism which the Church stood for, its positive values to the contrary notwithstanding...

...His passion was such, however graceful he was in expressing it, that I saw it was fruitless to argue in generalities...

...A university is not there primarily to educate...