JUDITH N. SHKLAR
77
often felt repelled by even the most welcoming American Jews, and
stuck to each other or to solitude. (I knew a man who went to the zoo
constantly, because it seemed more familiar than the rest of the
Bronx to him.) Finally, the German Jews often did very well very
quickly in America. These newcomers often found it easier to suc–
ceed in the professions, in science, and in academic life than their
long-suffering American peers. Were these Germans genuine
Jews,
or was their ability to get on in the gentile world not a sign of their
innate disloyalty?
Even their attitude to America was at first a puzzle. They did
not plan to stay. Only the Final Solution finally convinced them that
they had no
Heimat
in Europe. That Arendt did go back and did
choose to find her spiritual home there was probably at the very root
of her
self~inflicted
troubles. Nor can her Hellenism have helped her
to be more realistic. Rahel's contemporary, Ludwig Borne , ne
Baruch, began the German practice of contrasting the Hebrews and
the Greeks, and it did neither him nor anyone since much good,
least of all Nietzsche's heirs. In spite of all this Arendt's detractors
were no more tolerant or generous than she was, and they were,
after all, in a far stronger position. They were not the last members
of a quickly dying culture. American Jewry is a flourishing commu–
nity, while German-Jewish culture died with Hannah Arendt.
While all this was going on, Arendt continued to be an enor–
mous success as a teacher at several universities. Her firmness
appealed to American students starved for authority. They could
also see that her
Bildung
had a depth that could sustain her in a way
that their education never would or could. Most of all she had a
great deal of personal magnetism and her histrionic talents were for–
midable. No one who ever heard her lecture in her rasping, gut–
tural, East-Prussian, German-accented English can ever forget that
voice. She was always a great presence. When she spoke,
all
of her
was
there.
Young-Bruehl has written a full, if not complete, life of Arendt.
She evidently admired her, but the reader is not forced into sharing
her view, and can come away neither liking nor agreeing with
Arendt. That is the sign of an honest work.
It
is the story of aJewish
life, lived as she thought a Jew should live, for better or worse. At
her death only five members of her once large family were alive.
And one is moved by the last photograph taken of her shortly before
she died.
It
is the face of an old J ewess, with two thousand years of
sorrow on it.
