Authors: Albert Cohen
shame on me that I am not a very Jewish Jew and that it's quite all right for you to like me maybe there is in me some terrible hidden wish to disown the greatest people on earth some terrible wish to be free of them maybe it's a way of hitting back at my unhappiness to punish it because it is what makes me unhappy for it is a constant source of unhappiness not to be liked always to be suspect yes a form of retaliation against the noble misery that belonging to the chosen people brings me or worse still it is perhaps attributable to some ignoble resentment that I feel against my people but no I revere my people who bear the mark of suffering my people Israel who saves, a saviour who saves through eyes, through eyes that know through eyes which have wept tears for the jeers of crowds who saves through its face its face twisted by suffering through its suffering face through its mute face through its face spattered with the lingering spittle of the derision and hatred of men who are its sons oh shame it is perhaps an ignoble unconscious rejection of my companions in misery who partake of the same cruel banquet at which we swallow the same insults and it may be that I resent them for the same reasons that prisoners who share the same cell hate each other no no I venerate my beloved my kind-hearted intelligent Jews it was fear of danger that made them so intelligent it was the ever-present need to be alert to the machinations of the enemy that made them such remarkable psychologists perhaps it is also because I have been contaminated by the derision of those who hate us and am merely imitating their unjust ways maybe it is also an attempt to have a little fun at the expense of my unhappiness and find a measure of consolation it is also because I have been infected by their hatred yes we have been hearing their ugly accusations for so long that they have filled us with a temptation born of despair to take them at their word and it is their most devilish sin to have filled us with the temptation born of despair to hate ourselves wrongfully the temptation born of despair to be ashamed of our great people the temptation born of despair to accept the wicked thought that since they hate us so much everywhere then we deserve to be hated and by God I know that we deserve nothing of the sort I know that their hatred is the inane tribal hatred of those who are different and also the hatred born of envy and also the animal hatred of the weak for in numbers we are weak everywhere and men are not good and weakness attracts excites their hidden congenital bestial cruelty and it is no doubt satisfying to hate the weak when you can insult and beat them with impunity O my people my suffering people I am your son who loves and venerates you your son who will never tire of praising his people Israel a loyal people a courageous people a stiff-necked people who in a holy citadel braved Rome under the Caesars and for seven years made the most powerful of empires tremble O my nine hundred and sixty heroes besieged at Masada who all took their own lives on the first day of Passover in the year seventy-three rather than submit to the Roman conqueror and bow down to his contemptible gods O my starving wanderers held captive in so many foreign fields hauling their dogged hope down the centuries and eternally refusing to disperse and be absorbed by the nations where they lived in exile O my proud people bent on survival and jealously guarding its soul a people who stood firm and resisted resisted not for a year not for five years not for ten years but a people who stood firm for two thousand years what other people stood firm for so long yes two thousand years of resistance a beacon to light the way of all other peoples O my forefathers down the length of the centuries who preferred massacre to betrayal and the stake to apostasy licked by flames and proclaiming unto their last breath the Oneness of God and the greatness of their faith O my medieval kinsmen who chose death over conversion in Verdun-sur-Garonne in Carentan in Bray in Burgos in Barcelona in Toledo in Trent in Nuremberg in Worms in Frankfurt in Spires in Oppenheim in Mainz through the length and breadth of Germany from the Alps to the North Sea all my indomitable resisters who cut the throats of their women and children and then killed themselves or entrusted to the most worthy of their number the task of killing them one by one or set fire to their houses and cast themselves into the flames clutching their babes in their arms singing psalms as they burned O my obstinate forebears who for centuries tolerated lives far worse than death lives of degradation and ignominy sacred degradation holy ignominy which was the price they paid for their stiff-backed insistence on keeping faith with a God who is One and Holy and a Pope Innocent III punished their stiff-backed resistance by requiring them to wear a yellow disc forbade them under pain of death to show themselves in the street unless the emblem was sewn to their coats the emblem of infamy which for six centuries was to expose them throughout the whole of Europe to jeers and insults an ever-present visible badge of shame and inferiority which was as an invitation to the mob to heap outrage and violence on their heads but that wasn't enough and fifty years later the Council of Vienna judged that the yellow disc was insufficiently degrading and decided to make us even more ridiculous by making us wear a funny hat which could be either pointed or cocked and thus accoutred did we make our way from province to province and we went in distress in fear obstinate mocked reviled unyielding we went patient grotesque sublime in our pointed or as the case may be cocked hats and the crowd laughed we went branded marked rejected by all stigmatized beaten with sticks a target for every outrage the thought of it makes my stomach heave my eyes sting I feel the nails of it in my heart we went pelted with filth shoulders sunk backs bent eyes wary we went clothed in dirty rags outwardly humble inwardly proud and unbending we went down the centuries the ragged heralds and curators of the true God and the cocked and pointed hats decreed by the Christians' council were our chosen crowns O wonder of wonders the miserable and despised creature that was a Jew became august a patriarch once more in the peace of his home lavished on his wife and his children all the love which the world outside rejected and his home was a temple and the family table an altar and on the sabbath day he was a prince and a member of a nation of priests and on that holy day he was happy for he knew that soon the Almighty would set his feet on the road back to Jerusalem O my living people and while he waited his powerful enemies fell and perished down the length of centuries dead are the peoples who devoured us whole dead the Assyrians so proud of their battle scars so proud in their broad armour dead the Pharaohs and their chariots of war dead the august great-buttocked Whore of Babylon pestle of the protesting earth dead Rome and its legions in grave battle order aligned but Israel lives on and if Rosenfeld exists I claim him as mine as a brother and I give him the limelight and I delight in him and why not he is a good man of business a good father a loving husband a friend always ready to do a good turn enthusiastic ingenious and ebullient no great breeding of course but when would he have had the time the opportunity to become domesticated and learn manners for that requires a modicum of settled contentment it takes roots not expulsions not perpetual upheavals not the drab expectation of misery in each generation not living in an atmosphere of hate not wearing cocked or pointed hats in your heart because insecurity and the habit of humiliation do not breed fine manners the manners which matter so much to you and your kind my darling girl but which are no more than conditioned reflexes and it takes just two or three generations for the reflexes to become second nature see for instance the delightful manners of Disraeli and certain members of the Rothschild family not that such things mean much to me because I know that my lovely boorish brethren are the sons and fathers of mankind's princes are the most luxuriant kind of compost and in any case why shouldn't we have our boors other peoples have them too not all their farmers and workers and shopkeepers are models of refinement we are entitled to our boors I claim our right to have boors for why do we have to be perfect and to be quite frank I secretly dote on Rosenfeld and anyway Rosenfeld isn't any worse than any other nation's undomesticated unfortunates it's just that he's more spectacular more passionate more eager to live life to the full more impetuously and whimsically ill-mannered more inventively and quite brilliantly ill-mannered and no one can deny him a fond combustible heart or cast doubt on the touching concern he shows when his wife whom he calls his capital is ill at the first sign of illness it's quick send for the most famous doctors to attend to his better half or to Benjamin who is his dearly beloved son and close to being his Messiah oh the tender heart of a Jew is beyond compare O Rosenfeld of my heart I was really very happy back there surrounded by Rosenfelds I was part of a family I had come home I loved them and if I exaggerated them caricatured them multiplied their little eccentricities it was perhaps for love of them to enjoy the taste of them just as a man who likes pepper will sprinkle generous quantities will sprinkle too much will sprinkle enough to take the skin off his tongue so that he gets the full benefit but I know that if I exaggerated their outlandishness so that I might savour and love it more I realize that I must also honour it for I know that such strange antics are the sores and wounds of a persecuted people the sores and wounds of an unhappy people racked by centuries of torment bravely borne sores and wounds which are the sorry products of the unkillable steadfastness of my people and that they remind me of this remind me of their staunch refusal to accept arinihilation remind me of how they were condemned to perform daily acts of heroism to react with the ingenuity on which life itself depended to devise uneasy torpid strategies for enduring and surviving in a hostile world so sing praises to the sores of my people they are the unsightly jewels in their crown I will treasure my people and everything about my people even the large and lovely much-mocked noses of my people yes noses that bristle with panic so keen in scenting danger and I will treasure the bent backs of my people their backs bent by fear by flight by desperate wandering backs bent to make them less visible smaller as they venture down dangerous alleyways backs bent too by centuries of heads lowered over the holy book and its Commandments noble heads of an ancient people forever reading the Testament O my Christian brothers you will see how my people will regain their youth when they return in freedom to Jerusalem and they will exemplify justice and courage they will be a witness for other nations who will look and stand amazed and beneath the sun in that sky there will be no more boors my lovely pathetic boors the luckless offspring of centuries of pain and you will see how the sons of my people restored to the land of Israel will be serene and proud and handsome and noble in bearing and brave in war if need be and when at last you see our true face Hallelujah you will love my people you will love Israel which gave you God which gave you the wisest of books which gave you the prophet who was love and in truth why should it be a cause for astonishment that the Germans a people who live under the sway of nature should have always detested Israel a people who live under the rule of anti-nature for behold the German has heard and he has listened more attentively than others he has heard the youthful forceful voice which speaks in the fearsome forests of the night in the silent rustling forests a siren voice feral as the dawn sings beneath the moonbeams sings that nature's law is arrogant might and rampant egoism and rude health and youthful grappling and assertiveness and domination and quick cunning and sharp-toothed malice and unbridled lust and the joyous cruelty of the young who destroy with a smile on their lips the insistent voice sings sweetly frenziedly of war and its overlords sings of strong naked bodies tanned by the sun of muscles like coiled serpents writhing in the athlete's back sings of beauty and youth which are might the might which is the power of life and death all alone and crazed it sings on it glorifies noble conquest pours scorn on women and contempt on the needy it sings of callousness violence the warlike virtues of military supremacy which is the daughter of might and cunning the exuberant splendour of injustice the sacredness of blood spilt for the cause and the nobihty of arms and the enslavement of the weak and the slaughter of the infirm and the sacred rights of the strong in other words of those best equipped to commit murder ' sings and glorifies the man of nature who is pure ravening animal the beauty of the wild beast which is a noble and perfect creature a lord unfettered by the hypocrisy that is born of weakness on and on sings the alluring irresistible voice in the German forest it sings the praises of the dominant the intrepid and the brutal harden your hearts the voice sings blithely be like beasts comes the Bacchic echo and the Germanic voice accompanied by a chorus of voices of poets and philosophers mocks at justice mocks at pity mocks at freedom and it sings sweetly beguilingly of the tyranny of nature of the inegalitarianism of nature of the hatred endemic in nature behold it says I bring you new tablets and a new law which decrees that there is no law evoe! the Commandments of the Jew Moses are rescinded and everything is permitted and I am beautiful and my breasts are young cries the Dionysian voice in a howl of drunken mirth that rings through the forest where now the puny bustle of creation begins to stir and with the rising sun all the scraps and crumbs of nature irresponsibly writhe and rise to murder and survive oh yes that is the voice of nature and Hitler sheds a tear for animals and says they are his brothers and he tells Rauschning that nature is cruel and that man must therefore be cruel too in truth when Hitler's henchmen worship armies and war what are they worshipping if not the threatening teeth of the gorilla who stands squat and bow-legged squaring up to another gorilla and when they sing of their ancient legends and of their ancestors with long blond hair and horned helmets oh yes horned for it is vital to look like an animal and it is doubtless a most pleasant thing to go forth in the guise of a bull what are they celebrating if not a cruel past to which