SLEEP NO MORE
243
"She was a Catholic, wasn't she?"
"I don't know, but the rumor was that she was at least partly
if
not entirely Jewish."
"Why should a Jew or part-Jew be anti-semitic?
I was surprised and not a little shocked by the question. Could
it be that Intelligence was taking a purely human interest in Miss
Caruso, or the problem of anti-semitism, having nothing to do with
the investigation?-in which case my confidence in the power and
objectivity of Intelligence was bound to be shaken.
If
Intelligence
were
to
stray into the affairs of the heart and the mind, it would
become lost
in.
the limitless possibilities of human error. Already, my
inquisitor was betraying the ignorance of Intelligence in matters of
belief and conscience, when he deviated by a hair's breadth from
the strict line of inquiry. Nevertheless, I could find no principled
reason for refusing to answer his question.
"It is a very complicated problem," I began hesitantly but with
the
security that comes from knowing there are no real consequences
to
what one says. "First of
all,
the anti-semitism of a Jew is something
vastly different from the anti-semitism of a Gentile. Jewish anti–
semitism arises out of insecurity, and expresses itself mostly in self–
pity or self-hatred. A rabbit, for example, no matter how much it
may despise and resent its own weakness, cannot be said to have the
same attitude toward itself that, say, a dog has toward it. The anti–
rabbitism of the rabbit is hardly the same thing as the anti-rabbitism
of
the dog."
"But isn't it confusing to call it anti-semitism?" he asked, with
his
unerring instinct for coming to the point.
"Not really, for the Jewish rabbit, out of extreme distaste for
his
precarious existence, sometimes tries to escape
his
birthright, and
gives himself the airs of a dog. This is, of course, from the point of
view of the rabbit, very dangerous, and can lead only to further
persecution of the entire species. That is why it can be called a kind
of
anti-semitism."
"But how about the half-Jew?"
"That is simply a case of the racial tensions of society as a whole
being contained within a single person. Have you ever noticed how
the tiglon in the zoo, the offspring of a male tiger and a female lion,
is
uneasy and unsure of itself-one might say it is at war with itself
