PALLE YOURGRAU
637
For an authentic example of anti-Semitism we need only turn
to
Wittgenstein, another "assimilated Jew," who wrote that:
Among Jews "genius" is found only in the holy man. Even the great–
est of Jewish thinkers is no more than talented... .It might be said
(rightly or wrongly) that the Jewish mind does not have the power
to produce even the tiniest flower or blade of grass; its way is rather
to
make a drawing of the flower or blade of grass that has grown in
the soil of another's mind and to put it into a comprehensive picture.
Weil, by contrast, is not concerned with pronouncements about the
"Jewish mind" (and its supposed limitations). What are we
to
make,
however, of her concerns about elements of the Jewish
faith?
Michael Wyschogrod, in his account of Jewish philosophy,
The Body
of Faith: God and the People Israel,
while distancing himself from some
of the great Jewish thinkers of the past, from Philo to Maimonides to
Buber, addresses this question in a forceful way. David Novak, indeed,
in
The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People,
while harbor–
ing some reservations, writes that: "Wyschogrod's work is an important
revival and it is the work of...one who is theologically serious and
philosophically astute.
It
also comes closest to what I would consider to
be the authentic teaching of Biblical-Rabbinic Judaism."
What is this authentic teaching? "The holy," writes Wyschogrod,
"transcends the ethical; it can even contradict it. God must be obeyed
whether or not his commands are in harmony with the ethical; the sac–
rifice of Isaac proves that point." "God," he affirms, "could have cho–
sen a spiritual criterion: the election of all those who have faith....The
liberal mind would find such an election far more congenial." Further,
"at the root of [the] substitution [of Ethics for authentic Judaism] is a
spiritualizing heresy [!] for which the body of Israel is of very little sig–
nificance." Weil, however, undisturbed by this particular "spiritualizing
heresy," was deeply concerned with what she saw as the self-appointed
"spiritual election" of the Catholic Church, and it played a significant
role in her lifelong resistance to baptism.
Weil stands here in sharp contrast
to
Edith Stein, who acknowledged
what might be described as a "double election"-the voluntary, spiri–
tual election of the Catholic Church and in addition the racial bond
that, she pointed out, tied her
to
another Jew, namely, Jesus. Should
Stein really be praised, however, for announcing, in effect, her "racial
solidarity" with the Messiah?
If
praise is due, then consistency surely
demands that there never be any but Jewish Popes!
It
is a mystery,
