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PARTISAN REVIEW
Jews, usually too subtle for others to see. Sometimes, without any
religious faith, he embraces another religious faith. There are very
few inauthentic Jews of this kind. They are really inauthentic people.
The main problem of the authentic Jews is to find some rational
basis or ideal fulfillment of their authenticity. Sartre is no guide here.
The genuine problem which confronts those who are regarded as
Jews in the modem world is whether they should regard themselves
as Jews, and what meaning they can give to their lives as Jews once
they acknowledge, as elementary decency and dignity demand, that
in some sense they accept themselves as Jews. This is a problem of
tremendous complexity just because there is no one thing that con–
stitutes Jewishness and because of the ideological imperialism of so
many different Jewish groups which seek to impose their own particu–
lar conception of Jewish life upon all other Jews. Before discussing
this question, I wish to indicate how the problem arises.
Perhaps the best way to do this is to relate one of my experiences
with Jewish and Gentile youth in many institutions of learning.
Plato's
Republic
is an ideal introductory text in philosophy and I
have always read it with my classes. In the concluding book of the
Republic,
and as a profound commentary on his Utopia, Plato re–
lates an interesting myth about a Greek, named Er, who was left for
dead on the field of battle. Er is transported to the meadows of the
other world where he observes how the souls of those about to be born
anew pick out their future lots on earth before they drink of the wa–
ters of forgetfulness from the river Lethe. After a discussion of the
significance of this myth in Plato's
Republic
and an analysis of the
idea of immortality, I would invite (I no longer do so) the students
to partake in a kind of extra-philosophical homework exercise to
motivate the next assignment. They were asked to list on one side of
a card their sex, place of birth, religious origins, vocational inter–
ests and other information they considered relevant to the kind
of person they were. On the other side, they were asked to indicate
under corresponding heads, what they would choose, if, like the souls
in the Platonic myth, they could determine their lot in a future rein–
carnation on earth. The entries were anonymous, and all students
entered into the spirit of it although the results were never disclosed.
The results, however, were very instructive. For example, all students
want to be born again with the same sex in their next reincarnation.
