Britannia Radio

Hecht and Nietzsche on Jews

Paul Eidelberg

Ben Hecht said he was “fascinated by the curious animation of the living Jews,” which struck him as something miraculous. He writes in A Guide for the Bedevilled:

“During the eighteen centuries in which hate, humiliation, and massacre boil constantly around them, my kinsmen, the Jews, reveal a single, unwavering characteristic. They are not impressed. Let alone they are not exterminated or driven into lunacy or filled with an incapacitating sense of horror; they are actually no more impressed than if it were raining. For centuries the Germans clap horned hats on them to distinguish them as scurvy people; the French and Spanish — but I will not go into more of their troubles. Suffice that they are endless, bloody, and fantastic. Yet, surrounded by a demented Europe, by the hate and contempt of a perpetual lynching mob, the Jews perform neither as victims not pariahs. They fill the lands with universities. They invent new sciences. They widen the fields of medicine and law. They open trade routes. They write great books. They are busy as beavers attacking each other as if there were no enemies at all baying at their heels. They are as industrious, sprightly, and inquisitive as if a sun were shining and not even a rain falling. They remain part of the world toiling to disgorge them. They remain its friend.

Not only is their victory one of survival, in itself a notable one, but one of intellectual increase. Their troubles seem only to improve them.

Christendom is a jungle full of Papal tigers and Lutheran anacondas. Yet Israel flourishes. Murder and calumny are its constant neighbors, and yet Israel grins, exults and makes its mark on all the eras. It is not the mark of martyrdom but of scholarship and of bewildering genius. Robbed, it is always rich; blasted, it is always exuberant; hounded, it is always full of baffling poise.

Now let us turn to Friedrich Nietzsche. In his Dawn of Day—the title resonates with the dawn of Israel's rebirth—Nietzsche speaks of "The People of Israel" in these words:

In Europe they have gone through a school of eighteen centuries, such as no other nation can boast of, and the experience of this terrible time of probation have benefited the community much less than the individual. In consequence whereof the resourcefulness in soul and intellect of our modern Jews is extraordinary. In times of extremity they, least of all the inhabitants of Europe, try to escape any great dilemma by recourse to drink or to suicide—which less gifted people are so apt to fly to. Each Jew finds in the history of his fathers and grandfathers a voluminous record of instances of the greatest coolness and perseverance in terrible positions, of the most artful and clever fencing with misfortune and chance; their bravery under the cloak of wretched submissiveness, their heroism in the spernere se sperni[despising their despisers] surpass the virtues of all the saints.

Nietzsche continues:

People wanted to make them contemptible by treating them scornfully for twenty centuries, by refusing to them the approach to all dignities and honorable positions, and by pushing them all the deeper down into the mean trades—and, indeed, they have not become genteel under this process. But contemptible? They have never ceased believing themselves qualified for the highest functions; neither have the virtues of all suffering people ever failed to adorn them. Their manner of honoring parents and children, the reasonableness of their marriages and marriage customs make them conspicuous among Europeans. Besides, they know how to derive a sense of power and lasting revenge from the very trades which were left to them (or to which they were abandoned) ... Yet their vengeance never carries them too far, for they all have that liberality of the soul in which the frequent change of place, climate, customs, neighbors, and oppressors schools man; they have by far the greatest experience in human relationships ...

Now Nietzsche concludes his encomium:

Where shall this accumulated wealth of great impressions, which forms the Jewish history in every Jewish family, this wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations, struggles, victories of all sorts—where shall it find an outlet, if not in great intellectual people and accomplishments? On the day when the Jews will be able to show as their handiwork such jewels and golden vessels as the European nations of shorter and less thorough experience neither can nor could produce, when Israel will have turned its eternal vengeance into an eternal blessing of Europe: then once more that seventh day will appear, when the God of the Jews may rejoice in Himself, His creation, and His chosen people—and all of us will rejoice with Him.