GEORGE KONRAD
Aphori sms on the Durability of Jews
For Jews, there is no intermediate metaphysical station between man and
god, there is no god-man, no man become god.
That which is human should just stay that way.
Moses is a person, David is a person, Jesus is a person, all our fellow–
men, all frail, and the truth of each one is partial.
And the messiah can let people await his arrival, he needn't hurry.
A Jew doesn't need to be religious; if he doesn't believe, well then he
doesn't believe God, who is not human, but rather the eternal presence
which sees and hears a person, even listens, God is spoken to by the religious.
Jews provide the biblical metaphor of the world.
A trans-national people in nation-states! Which direction should its
heart pull? Toward the nation-state, or world Jewry? This is the kind of
question that doesn't need to be asked, because either answer is an unde–
sirable constraint. A person's freedom lies in weighing concrete alternatives
and deciding according to principles, heart, taste, and mood.
There is aJewish global people, which now more calmly considers itself
Jewish, because it has less need to be frightened, yet still, everywhere in the
world, it feels some uncertainty, because there is not only a Jewish global
people, but global anti-Semitism as well. The Israelis cannot feel entirely
secure either; there too, there are neighbors who would kill them just for
being Jews. There was once a renowned, later deified Jew who was killed
for his words.
It
is a Jewish custom to get into that kind of situation. It is
aJewish custom to give words such exaggerated significance, even to die for
them.
It
is Jewish history that a person is killed for being what they are.
The people of most nations can be melted in; it is relatively hard to do
so with Jews. The something that preserves them unveils itself even on Jews
who camouflage themselves-even
if
the disguise is long-standing and
Editor's Note: A version of this article was delivered by George Konrad at
"Writing the Jewish Future: A Global Conversation," a conference convened by
the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, San Francisco, 2nd February, 1998.
