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PARTISAN REVIEW
in strength among the Jewish people as a whole? Will there be a real con–
tent for Jewish life, a priceless if elusive spiritual quality which can still be
transmitted to future generations? Will the twenty-first century see the
gradual withering away of the Jewish people in the diaspora, the end of a
great tradition of nearly three thousand years? Or is the messianic hope
that the golden days of Judaism are still before us still valid?
Walter Laqueur:
We listened to a very moving and interesting assessment
which, in my opinion, is based on a number of assumptions that Robert
Wistrich did not make entirely clear. Let me give a few examples: it is per–
fectly true what you said about demographic trends, but the same
demographic trends prevail in Europe, certainly in western Europe.
Projections by most demographers show that, by the following generation,
western Europe will account for a very small percentage of the world's
population. Let me quote my favorite author H. G. Wells once again. In
1900 he was asked by a British journal,
The Fortnightly,
what he thought
about the future of big cities. He had a number of brilliant ideas but his
projections for the future were totally wrong. He was absolutely sure that
in the year 2000 London would have twenty-five million inhabitants, Paris
would have twenty-eight, Rome will have thirty and so on and so forth.
But today we know that London, Paris, and Berlin actually have fewer
inhabitants than they did in 1900. The point I want to make is that the
demographic trend is a fairly universal one. Secondly, and more impor–
tantly, your thesis is based on the assumption that peoples, certain peoples,
have an eternal mission. This may be true but it is not something which
one can take for granted, because the whole of human history is (as
Voltaire once said) a history of people going up the ladder and going
down. The idea that certain people have an eternal mission, an eternal
contribution to one culture cannot be taken for granted. In addition you
pointed to the dangers of assimilation, and this is of course true. When one
says assimilation one means emancipation, so here's a dividing line that is
not always clear. Assimilation always has a kind of negative connotation, it
means giving up. Emancipation of course is thought to be good, assimila–
tion is bad.
Lastly, of course, Israel. Part of me is there, but again we must ask our–
selves what specific contribution this state is likely to make. Will it just be
a normalization of Jewish existence as Herzl and his Zionists sought?
Robert Wistrich:
Let me take these points one by one. Firs t of all demog–
raphy: I agree that all projections need to be treated with caution, which
is why I don't fully share the more pessimistic prognosis made by demog–
raphers about the likely disappearance of the bulk of the Jewish people in
the diaspora during the twenty- first century. That seems to me to be based
