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PARTISAN REVIEW
antisemites with another charge. We can expect to hear references to
Jews as "hyphenated Americans." Sartre here sees truly and sees what
some Jews themselves do not see.
It
is pathetic to observe how many
Jews seek to pin on other Jews, those who differ in some perceptible
manner from themselves, the blame for a discrimination whose ex–
planation lies not in them, save in the tautologous sense that if there
were no Jews there would be no antisemitism, but in the beliefs and
habits and culture of the non-Jews. A whole volume can be written
about the illusions Jews harbor concerning the disabilities imposed
upon them by public disapproval of
other
Jews- non-believing Jews or
rich Jews or radical Jews or second-generation Jews or what not–
and the resistance they set up to recognizing the truth that in the eyes
of those who "don't like Jews" these differences are utterly irrelevant.
II
What, then, is antisemitism? This is Sartre's first question.
What is a Jew? is his second. What is an authentic Jew? is his third.
Sartre's metaphysics muddies all his answers but he has something
psychologically illuminating to say about each question.
Antisemitism is not so much an opinion as a
passion.
This passion
is not a result of a personal or direct experience with Jews but is
a "predisposition" which lies in the psyche of the antisemite, his
uneasiness about himself, his mediocrity. The idea that the antisemite
has about the Jew is not explained by "any social fact." "It precedes
the facts that are supposed to call it forth." Although Sartre contra–
dicts this by his Marxist derivations of antisemitism, this is his deeper,
underlying thought. He even goes so far as to say that,
"If
the Jew did
not exist (today), the antisemite would invent him."
But why would he invent the
Jew
and not someone else? One
would imagine that some historical answer to this question is neces–
sary. Sartre boldly denies it. The
idea
of the Jew as a special and
detestable creature must first be present in the antisemite before he
lets historical facts influence him. Consequently "no external factor
can induce antisemitism in the antisemite."
It
is an idea or passion
that has no adequate cause
in
its object.
Whence,
then, does it spring?
Instead of answering this question Sartre gives us a phenomen–
ology of the antisemitic consciousness. And here he is at his best. He
