546
PARTISAN REVIEW
The real happening is not over there, but rather here, this is it. And
though this is sometimes a vale of tears and scandalous too, it is mainly the
terrain of work and weekday joys and sorrows. Well yes, the Jews say, one
has to work; it's been this way since Cain; we lost our innocence; we bit
into knowledge, into sensuality and into sin; carefree childhood is no more.
The ethics of adulthood-that is what wiser Jews search for; it is evi–
dent in their estimation that learning is worth more than fighting. Jews
concede the world is powerful, even too powerful, and that unpredictable
forces rage within it, so one must adjust to it, take account of it, acknowl–
edge it, understand it, and after negotiating, one must come to terms with
it, to find the least deleterious among the possibilities, without illusions
about the lesser evil, but all this is not enough, because to this one must
add something more.
Being chosen means that we all suppose it of ourselves, because we
may each be chosen for something, and we try to discover what it might
be. We give ourselves tasks according to the voice of our conscience. Only
with helpful self-discipline is the adult possible. Those who insult others
instead of working are not adults. There are non-adult public opinions.
Being offended is not a realistic spiritual condition, and does not favor
prosperous survival.
Jews would have cause to be offended as an orientation, but more
mature Jews counsel against it; one must not retreat into a shell, but rather
initiate, so that such misfortune cannot happen again. Jews have work to
do; the world is interconnecting, being sewn together; the process must be
promoted, because it is what prevents newer holocausts. The murder of
anyone's child is unbearable, and it must be particularly unbearable to the
Jews. The task ofJews is to learn from Auschwitz, and to reject everything
that is like it, resembles it, validates and excuses it, regardless of who is
presently threatened by genocide.
The
galut,
the Diaspora, is the field of reality; the
galut
is parallel to
globalization, dispersal allover the globe: this means that Jews-while
remaining faithful to themselves-must learn, must come to know this
planet and its inhabitants; they must help in the work of reminding
humanity that it is related.
Transcendence is familial continui ty, pI us self-control, or I might say
the humility that makes it possible. Life subordinated to self-discipline and
purity laws, in which bodily habits gain religious significance, and thus
sanctified are lifted out of the sea of the profane, just as the holiday is an
exception in the row of weekdays. The Jew wants to protect this realisti–
cally attainable worldly afterworld, or to help it to safety in the shadow of
menacing power, to help it survive. The outside should be modest, the
inside rich. To smuggle the holiday into the world, so there can
be
a holi-
