632
PARTISAN REVIEW
posthumously-entitled
Gravity and Grace.
{"Gravity makes things
come down, wings make them rise. [But] what wings raised to the sec–
ond power can make things come down without weight? . . .Heaven
coming down to earth lifts earth to heaven."}
Weil's reputation as one of the great spirits, one of the great philoso–
phers, of the twentieth century continues to grow, albeit more on the
fringes of academe than in the main groves. Among her champions is
T. S. Eliot. What also grows unabated, however, is the "scandal" of her
relationship to Judaism. Given that the question itself of what it is to be
a Jew remains in the forefront not only of Jewish philosophy and theol–
ogy but, since the birth of Israel, of geopolitics and national sovereignty
as well, the issue of how to assess Weil 's shocking critique of Judaism is
a pressing one. Yet the discussion has been one sided in the extreme: her
critics see here only an ugly prejudice, while her admirers retreat to an
embarrassed silence. The question, however, cannot be avoided : what
are we to make of Simone Weil's unhappy relationship to Judaism?
To begin with, Weil was not preoccupied with attempting to deny her
family history, though she did express skepticism about our ability to
make sense of racial categories. She was especially concerned to deny
the
importance
of racial categorization. For whom, however, are such
considerations a matter of overwhelming importance? When the anti–
Semite looks at Weil, he sees only a Jew, much as the misogynist sees
only a woman. Yet there are radical feminists who, in company with the
misogynist, would also see in Weil only a woman. Weil, however, was
as resentful of being typecast as a {"mere"} woman as of being a Jew.
Asked once to lead a discussion on feminism, she lashed out, "I am not
a feminist!" Earlier, she had acquired the habit of signing her letters to
her mother, "Your son." Later, she aroused indignation with her pen–
chant for wearing men's clothes (as did her great predecessor, Joan of
Arc). Her untelenting iconoclasm, her fierce rebellion against any con–
ceivable stereotype that sought to tame and limit her, earned her the
nicknames "monstrum horrendum," "the Martian," "the Red Virgin,"
and "a combination anarchist and sky pilot"!
Weil was particularly angered by the tendency of some Jews to see
only what the anti-Semite saw when he looked at her-namely, a Jew.
But was Simone Weil a Jew? For her own answer to this question one
turns naturally to a letter she wrote in
I940
to the Minister of Educa–
tion of the Vichy Government in response to the new racial statutes,
entitled, "What is a Jew?": "I do not know the definition of the word,
'Jew';" she wrote, "that subject was not included in my education.
The Statute, it is true, defines a Jew as 'a person who has three or
