PARTISAN REVIEW
109
Ham is not branded, struck with leprosy, driven an outcast
over the earth. No, the knowledge itself is a curse because it robs
the penis of its dignity, sex of its power; what is implied
is
that
Ham doesn't know that his father's nakedness is entitled to privacy.
And so the children of Ham don't respect their penises. They create
celibates on the one hand, who have to take refuge in wine when
sex
is
denied them; but much worse, the fools who mutter love, love,
love, everyone share everyone else, and
it
all ends up boring, un–
satisfactory and murderous.
If
you have no respect for your penis you remain a slave. The
sons
of Japheth and Shem, who understood the dignity of father–
hood, threw off the attempt of anyone to use their organs and
demanded the right to propagate in privacy. They refused to be
herded as domestic animals, breeding stock. Ham's children tragically
allowed themselves to be misused and they have all disappeared as
racial stocks. Where are the ancient Phoenicians, Babylonians, Egyp–
tians? Nasser, big-beaked, Semite, tried to instill the spirit of Shem
in
his land. The African asserts that black organs will be proud,
private in America.
Ham is a symbol for a state of mind, a people that will ac–
quiesce
in
their own violation. How much of the oral tradition which
accompanied the Old Testament and was written down in the Tal–
mud did Simone Weil know? The evolution of Judaism is of a
people demanding more and more dignity. The Bible grieves over
the craven spirit in the Jews that demands a king to rule over them.
It is hostile to buildings, institutions, the Temple
is
no sooner built
than corrupted. Japheth fathered the rugged Indo-European tribes
who populated Europe with mutual aid societies of hunters, small
manageable kingdoms, chieftainships, democracies. Shem likewise.
Ham
is
the ancestor of the modern totalitarian state, feeding a pop–
ulation of doped slaves on ritual propaganda. Egypt and Babylon
were the forerunners of today's ant heaps.
The rule of Ham is the rule of slavery and that's why the Jews
had to be hurried out of Egypt, a whole generation with twisted penis
killed
off, a new one with a vision, love of land, law, respect for the
unknown, courage to maintain this
in
the midst of child-burners,
rapists,
murderers, brought into the Holy Land.
I remember Simone Weil, her hunger for nakedness:
