REFLECTIONS ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
477
only to the Jew who imagines that he can identify himself with non–
Jewish experiences so completely that he can avoid the pains and
penalties and discriminatory regard suffered by other Jews whose
affirmations and behavior seem to him to be the main source of
disabilities imposed upon Jews. According to Sartre, the Jew who
is a socialist or liberal or anything else that a Gentile can be is an
inauthentic Jew- a fantastic assumption which can only make sense
on the notion that there is a metaphysical Jewish essence irreducibly
different from a non-Jewish essence, so that the Jew appears to be
another
kind
of human being, perhaps not a human being but some–
thing above or below him.
In describing the psychology of what he calls the "inauthentic
Jew" among Gentiles, Sartre does not distinguish between the psy–
chology of what I call the "inauthentic" Jew-the Jew who desires,
so to speak, to pass himself off as a Gentile, and the psychology of
what I call "the authentic Jew" who accepts himself as a Jew for
any reason whatsoever.
La mauvaise foi
or inverted self-consciousness,
as Sartre describes it in the few illuminating pages of his turgid and
boring
L'etre et le neant,
is different in both cases.
The "inauthentic Jew," in my sense, is afflicted with an additional
dimension of self-consciousness. No matter how impeccable his con–
duct, he is always on guard in predominantly non-Jewish company,
exquisitely conscious of the possibility that at any moment something
he says or does will be regarded as a telltale sign. He feels that there
are some things that are appropriate for him to do, and others which
are not appropriate,
merely
because he is regarded as a Jew. Whether
he is active in public life or in the professions, wherever his words or
deeds affect his fellowmen, he is pursued by a nagging consciousness
of the specific effect activity as a Jew has on others. In his utterances
he must think not only of whether what he says is true or false, but
of how, as coming from
him,
it will be received. He finds that he
is bothered by what Jews do or leave undone in a way
his
own at–
tempted escape makes it difficult for him to understand. He develops
a guilty sense of Jewish responsibility despite the absence of any con–
sciousness of Jewish loyalty. When he is pretty far down in the scale
of creation, he does not overhear antisemitic remarks, and touches
bottom when he regales the company with antisemitic jokes, told
with an air that suggests the difference between himself and other
