Anti-Semite and Jew
“It has become evident that no external factor can induce anti‐Semitism in the anti‐Semite. Anti-Semitism is a free and total choice of oneself, a comprehensive attitude that one adopts not only toward Jews, but toward men in general, toward history and society; it is at one and the same time a passion and a conception of the world.”
(Sartre, Jean-Paul (1949), Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, p11)
While only published in 1949, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote these words in 1944, at a time when French people were celebrating the end of the war, the victory of the allies and the heroism of the resistance. There is no mention, however, that of the nearly eighty thousand Jews living in France at the time, including eleven thousand children who were deported from France during the war, only about three thousand of these French Jews survived. Sartre, commendably, felt that it was important to confront the fate of the Jews in the war and bravely wrote one of the first books to try and directly challenge European antisemitism post WW2.
Claude Lanzmann, a French filmmaker, who wrote and directed the movie Shoah (Holocaust), a documentary film with nine and half hours of testimonies from Holocaust survivors, knew Sartre. After having read Sartre’s book, he told Sartre he was able to walk out on the streets and for the first time feel like he could breathe.
The book Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate was written by Sartre very quickly, using little research. As such, it was quite problematic and was subject to scrutiny, controversy and led some to even accuse Sartre of being an antisemite himself. To completely scrutinize this concept, let’s delve into the parshah first.
Our Torah portion this week is Vayetzeh. This portion primarily revolves around Jacob and his whereabouts. Encouraged by his mother and fearing being murdered by his older brother Eisav (from whom he stole his birthright as the eldest son), he runs away from home. The Torah describes that when night falls, Jacob lays down and puts his head on a rock.
וַֽיַּחֲלֹ֗ם וְהִנֵּ֤ה סֻלָּם֙ מֻצָּ֣ב אַ֔רְצָה וְרֹאשׁ֖וֹ מַגִּ֣יעַ הַשָּׁמָ֑יְמָה וְהִנֵּה֙ מַלְאֲכֵ֣י אֱלֹהִ֔ים עֹלִ֥ים וְיֹרְדִ֖ים בּֽוֹ׃
…And he had a dream; a ladder was set in the ground and its top reached to the sky, and messengers (angels) of God were ascending and descending on it.
וְהִנֵּ֨ה יְהֹוָ֜ה נִצָּ֣ב עָלָיו֮ וַיֹּאמַר֒ אֲנִ֣י יְהֹוָ֗ה אֱלֹהֵי֙ אַבְרָהָ֣ם אָבִ֔יךָ וֵאלֹהֵ֖י יִצְחָ֑ק הָאָ֗רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֤ר אַתָּה֙ שֹׁכֵ֣ב עָלֶ֔יהָ לְךָ֥ אֶתְּנֶ֖נָּה וּלְזַרְעֶֽךָ׃
And standing beside him was יהוה, who said, “I am יהוה, the God of your father Abraham’s [house] and the God of Isaac’s [house]: the ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and to your offspring.”
וְהָיָ֤ה זַרְעֲךָ֙ כַּעֲפַ֣ר הָאָ֔רֶץ וּפָרַצְתָּ֛ יָ֥מָּה וָקֵ֖דְמָה וְצָפֹ֣נָה וָנֶ֑גְבָּה וְנִבְרְכ֥וּ בְךָ֛ כׇּל־מִשְׁפְּחֹ֥ת הָאֲדָמָ֖ה וּבְזַרְעֶֽךָ׃
“Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants.”
There are a variety of interpretations to these words in this dream. The angels going up and down, have been interpreted to symbolize earthiness and spirituality, higher and lower moral ground, halacha and agadah, transcendence and immanence, etcetera.
For this D’var Torah, the interpretation of this dream will be used to explain the fate of the Jewish people as a whole, as a people, and as a nation.
Jacob himself, whose name was changed to Israel, whom we, as a nation, are called after, had experienced in his life many ups and down, moments of success to moments of calamity and back again. From being his mother’s favorite, safe and cared for in his own home, Jacob descended to a low moral point of cruelty and trickery to then find himself homeless, and dependent on the mercy of another deceitful person, Laban, his future father-in-law. For twenty years Jacob worked for Laban, not only to improve his financial situation, but also as the midrashim indicate, to study Torah and to repent. When he runs away again, this time from his father-in-law, he encounters more moments of fear, but also abundance and blessings. Like Jacob, or Israel, one can draw a parallel between our ancestor Jacob or Israel’s sojourns and our nation Israel’s meanderings world-wide for the past two thousand years and our more recent struggles.
Automaker Henry Ford wrote in his antisemitic essay from the early 1920s the following:
“The Jew is the world's enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world's finances. Scattered abroad without country or government, he yet presents a unity of race continuity which no other people has achieved. Living under legal disabilities in almost every land, he has become the power behind many a throne.”
What Henry Ford observed was not without merit. Our nation has indeed managed to not only survive severe persecution throughout the centuries, but, on more than one occasion, to also thrive, influence and tremendously contribute to the societies we have settled in. Just as in Jacob’s prophecy-like dream, we as a nation continuously ascend and descend in our feats.
In his book, Sartre described the antisemite as a middle-class person, who is no longer certain in his or her prospects. To Sartre, antisemitism always blossomed in times of insecurity and doubt. The existence of the Jew as a peculiar minority was undeniably a certainty the antisemite could rely on - the reliable continuous cause for their life’s disruptions.
Sartre (1949) wrote:
“In effect, we have just seen that, contrary to a widespread opinion, it is not the Jewish character that provokes anti‐Semitism but, rather, that it is the anti-Semite who creates the Jew. The primary phenomenon, therefore, is anti‐Semitism, a regressive social force and a conception deriving from the prelogical world.” (p103)
This sentence “…it is not the Jewish character that provokes anti‐Semitism but, rather, that it is the anti-Semite who creates the Jew” is perhaps the main cause for controversy and criticism for this book. With this, I agree. By claiming that antisemitism created the Jews, Sartre displays not only a tremendous lack of knowledge of Jewish history, but also ignores an incredibly rich tradition of culture, knowledge and practice which persisted and was even strengthened in times of safety and prosperity.
However, the second part of his statement, “The primary phenomenon, therefore, is anti‐Semitism, a regressive social force and a conception deriving from the prelogical world.” is important. This prelogical world can best be clarified by Slavoj Zizek. Zizek explained that if you attempt to debate with an antisemite whether Jews in fact have a lot of control and influence etc, you will have sold your soul to the devil. While some of it may be true, antisemitism is formally apriori wrong. The question, Zizek poses, shouldn't be whether Jews have too much money or influence but rather why the Nazi universe needed the figure of the Jew to maintain its identity.
Recently many of us Jews feel that the nation of Israel has unfortunately been descending Jacob’s ladder, and maybe the decades of ascension have ended. Sartre and Zizek, both not Jewish, were occupied with the Jewish hatred phenomenon as a way to understand society as a whole. Perhaps, this story of Jacob with angels descending and ascending, is an important allegory to the understanding of all of society and the plight of the individual and people as a whole.
Watch the Hebrew version of the video:
