ROY FINCH
291
Like the Phoenix, Israel rose from the ashes, more a miracle than a
calculation. But at the same time this would not have been possible
without the assistance of Europeans and Americans, recoiling from
the horrors of the Holocaust. Contrary to fundamentalism and Mes–
sianic Zionism, there is nothing here which should be "sacralized."
For its own sake Israel should be criticized, not "sacralized." (In a
political context "sacralizing" runs more than the risk of
"totalitarianizing. ")
What about Steiner's Hitler novel now, which called forth
Lionel Abel's comments, and particularly the last few pages in
which Hitler is allowed to express his attitude toward the Jews? He
claims to have learned his basic idea from them and also attributes to
them the perversion of Western civilization.
It is not conceivable that these views about Western history,
which are put into the mouth of Hitler, could be also Steiner's views,
for they are blatantly and grossly false. But it
is
conceivable that, by
not providing any answer to Hitler, Steiner is saying that Jews may
not yet have found a convincing answer. In a phrase more Steiner
than Hitler, the Fuehrer describes the Nazi Master Race as a
"parody-a hungry imitation" of the Jewish idea of the Chosen
People. This connection is not made gratuitously. Fifty years before
Hitler, Dostoevsky, in one of the anti-Semitic entries in
Diary of a
Writer,
had said that there is no room in the world for more than one
Chosen People at a time.
-
Steiner's Hitler goes on then to lump together, as ofJewish in–
spiration or invention (almost, he suggests, conspiracy), the
teaching of Jesus Christ and the communism of Karl Marx. This is
the kind of anti-Semitic ranting in which Hitler did indeed indulge,
but we do not believe that Steiner would. Steiner knows very well
the Hellenic aspect of Christian teaching present in the Gospels
themselves (which, after all, were written in Greek), and he also
knows the anti-Semitism of Karl Marx, who had no love or use for
the Jewish People. In these ravings we have Hitler's Big Lie, cer–
tainly not Steiner's Truth. Why does not Steiner try to straighten
this out? Perhaps because he despairs of correcting such a powerful
myth.
Does Abel have a "stronger myth"? Is it the myth of Israel as
the "voice of God," as he says, "shouted in the streets"? But he
doesn't believe that this
is
a myth. He is, I think, talking about the
real
Israel, created by the "voice of the People" as the "voice of
God." This, it seems, settles the matter for the Jews who live there:
