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indeed, why the Church does not demand such" racial solidarity," since
in denying the priesthood to women, it is in effect demanding "sexual
solidarity" with Jesus.
Sadly, however, Stein continues to be pressed into service as a para–
digm to measure the imperfections of Weil. In
Three Women in Dark
Times,
Sylvie Courtine-Denamy, convinced that Weil showed little sym–
pathy for the desperate fate of European Jewry, commends Stein,
against Weil, as the good Jew, the good Christian. She cites the words
Stein spoke to Father Hirschmann just before her death in Auschwitz:
"You don't know what it means to me to be a daughter of the chosen
people- to belong to Christ, not only spiritually, but according to the
flesh."
It
is sad that these deeply moving, mortal words of so great a fig–
ure as Stein should be put into service against Weil, another victim-if
a more indirect one-of the Nazis .
"Must we conclude," writes Courtine-Denamy, "that, far from hav–
ing been led to her grave by an excess of compassion, as certain writers
suggest, Weil had a soul that was insufficiently possessed by Christ, in
contrast to Stein... ?" We in turn must ask Courtine-Denamy: is a
Christian, Jewish by birth, who detested all racial, all collective classifi–
cations including that of being a member of "the chosen people," really
to be condemned as "insufficiently possessed by Christ" for refusing to
accept Hitler's decision to count her one of "the chosen"?
If
it can be
demonstrated-as Courtine-Denamy assures us it can-that Weil did
indeed fail to sympathize sufficiently with the fate of the Jews, should
this not be described as a lack of compassion for humankind, rather
than as an example of a Jew abandoning "her own people"?
Clearly, it is easier for Courtine-Denamy, who admires Arendt, to find
a place in her scheme of things for Stein, than for Weil, who sets her teeth
on edge. Stein and Arendt, for all their bravery and iconoclasm, are safe
thinkers. Weil, by contrast, is a genuinely dangerous one. The "combi–
nation skydiver and anarchist" resists all attempts to domesticate her. A
threat to all complacencies, she will never be your ally; as your con–
science, she will defend not you but your enemy. Two incidents bring this
out especially clearly. A sometime Marxist, Weil arranged for Leon Trot–
sky, in need of a place to stay in Paris, to spend a few nights in her apart–
ment. Their discussions became arguments. "I see you disagree with me
in almost everything," Trotsky told her. "Why do you put me up in your
house? Do you belong to the Salvation Army?"
The second incident concerns Vichy. "I recognized the legitimacy of
the Vichy Government," wrote her friend Thibon, "whereas Simone
Weil was already a wholehearted
'resistante' .
. ..
Later on, in America,
