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Jews and Non-Jews - What are the Differences? A Research Essential for Mutual Understanding
Fernando Terracina

Versatility and Adaptability

A characteristic which it seems can be attributed to Jews, only in a general and selective way of course, is versatility in the field of knowledge. In other words, it points to the tendency to cultivate different branches of learning at the same time. This dispersal of energies can cause inefficiency, but can also sometimes facilitate synthesis; for example, the most general law of physics (the conservation of energy) was formulated by a Jewish physician, Robert Mayer.

The facility for assimilating different cultures and adopting their more specific characteristics is another aspect of this versatility. Examples abound, as for instance Heinrich Heine and Jakob Eberscht (Offenbach); this latter, inspired by comic and Parisian vaudeville, created a new kind of opera, the operetta. He wrote a hundred of them, thus keeping the Parisians of the Second Empire well and truly entertained.

Yet again in the entertainment field, the case of Fritz Lang, the Director of films on German myths, may be recalled. Hitler was so enthusiastic about him that, after coming into power, he told Goering to summon Lang and entrust him with the direction of the new German cinema which he wanted freed from Jewish influence. The following day, Lang, who was a Jew, left Germany.

Naturally this versatility was judged rather unfavorably by the Nazis and deplored by them, seeing in it both a danger for German culture and a lack of strong artistic talent (Richard Wagner had already expressed a similar view) as if to love and understand the cultural and artistic expression of another people might not have been a sign of wealth rather than of weakness.

The Comic

One of the tendencies sometimes attributed to Jews is that of the search for the comical, which is not really a sign of cheerfulness, but rather the opposite — the need for it. It is enough to think of the humor of Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Danny Kaye, Woody Allen and of what has been said already about the music of Offenbach. Mention may be made also of the Jewish flair for jokes and of the sense of humor with which many personalities have been endowed. For example, Golda Meir, who for many years was the Prime Minister of Israel, said that during her life she had laughed more often than she had cried. Among the researchers on the comic idiom of our times we find Bergson and Freud.

A similar aptitude often attributed to Jews is adaptability, an ingenuity sometimes pushed to captiousness, the Spitzlindigkeit so much despised by the Nazis and which indeed could become a serious defect. The practical use of abstract concepts, however, sometimes needs fine distinctions which can lead to important consequences, as for example, is illustrated by the theory of relativity. We wish to mention only one of many instances of this trait: Flavius Josephus records that the Romans recognized their enemies the Jews as possessing a keen and dangerous cunning in warfare. The hundred Jews taken hostage by the PLO and marked for death at Entebbe in July 1976, but who were saved by a courageous operation mounted 3,500 Kms. away, would seem to confirm a certain justification for this.

Saving

A Jewish habit often regarded as congenial is the ability to save, in other words, to abstain from consuming a part of what has been produced or earned against future possible needs. Saving implies the capacity for giving something up, for foreseeing one's needs and of trusting in the possibility of satisfying them in the future. This presumes both fear and trust. The need may result from illness or old age, but there is too the convenience of having the means available to produce better and to pay the worker before the sale of the product. In each case, whoever has saved up finds himself able to put his savings at the disposal of others who need them and who have not been able to save: thence the loan.

The demand for interest on a loan is forbidden by the Torah (Lev. 25:36) which naturally only foresees loans for personal needs and considers them acts of charity. It is interesting to note that beginning with the Fathers of the Church and continuing through the Middle Ages, this prohibition remained in force to such a degree that its infringement was tolerated only by Jews. In this way the prohibition was respected and the commodity was obtained. Then the growing need for industrial capital in the interests of productivity caused any prohibition to fall into disuse, but Jews still carry the burden of their reputation for wealth and usury.

Commerce

An activity generally recognized as being selectively exercised by Jews is that of commerce. The usual explanation for this is normally attributed to historical reasons, but we believe that they go even deeper.

The work of the trader consists in predicting consumption, in providing useful commodities at his own risk, in transporting, preserving and keeping them available for the consumer within easy reach. It is a job which requires enterprise, the will to take risks, a psychological insight into the balance between supply and demand. It is work which, unlike many other jobs, cannot be seen. This is so much the case that the merchant is of ten judged to be a parasite, almost a thief. The Gospels ate not lacking in echoes of this popular point of view.

Marx and many Marxists saw the vital social functions of banking and trading as Jewish ones to such a degree that Marx forecast that in a socialist society they would disappear and Jews with them, thereby achieving, not the emancipation of the Jews, but the emancipation of humanity from Judaism. In our opinion, Marxists allowed themselves to be influenced by historical contingent facts and reached conclusions which were quantitatively inexact about the whole thing. Yet today, because of the relative disproportion of Jews involved in commerce, somepeople conclude that Jews dominate commerce and the whole of economy to the detriment of others. Thus two completely different things are confused: Jews are frequently traders, whilst few among traders are Jews, since the number of Jews is minimal.

Optimism

It is difficult to think of such a widespread characteristic as optimism, faith in the future and hh life, as something which typifies a group; Jews especially see it as the certainty of God's interest in human persons. In the Bible, the Jewish people takes its origins from the divine command given to Abraham to leave his country. An unknown land is promised to a people that does not yet exist and the faithful fulfilling of this order by Abraham will not only increase his progeny but will bring blessings on all the peoples of the earth. It is difficult to conceive of a less credible vision than this. Moreover, trust is reflected already in the biblical account of creation, sprinkled with the phrase: "And God saw that is was good" (Gem 1).

But humankind must improve: the prophets foresaw justice and peace reigning between peoples as between individuals. It is difficult, even impossible to make comparisons with other kinds of such high hopes, which, it appears, are totally lacking in any other civilization. This conclusion agrees with the most mature Greek thought from the post-Aristotelians to the Neoplatonists, who maintain that perfection exists already and that, in order to see it, it is sufficient to scratch beneath the surface of the life of the senses. It is a being, not a becoming, which thereby lacks the dynamism of the Jewish concept. According to Greek and Latin philosophers, the gods created the human person in a moment of lassitude. From the inevitability of chance unions the Greeks deduced that by repeating, even accidentally, a situation which had already passed, they would continue the whole cycle of events in an identical way. This myth of the perpetual cycle which already existed in some oriental religions is diametrically opposed to Jewish faith in the unlimited progress of the human race. Even if hope of eternal life might be numbered among the virtues, faith in the future of humanity on the earth survived, at least until the renaissance, only in small Jewish circles.

Dante in Paradiso XXV declared that the psalms instilled in him hope in the after life; but trust in this earthly life reaches its purest and most vibrant expression in the last pages of the diary of the fifteen year old Anne Frank:

"I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, 1 can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquillity will return again. (The Diary of Anne Frank, Pan Books, London 1966, pp. 218f.)

For Jews and non-Jews as well, before Paul, the sense of condemnation post mortem as a consequence of original sin did not exist, neither did the consequent necessity of a savior. Jewish Messianism meant the coining of the reign of God on earth, with its rather vague anthropomorphic configurations, but it has assumed in Christianity a concreteness, a new plasticity and finally a new significance: beginning with the salvific value of the death of Jesus it became the hope of the vision of God after death, supported during life by the constant help of Christ ensured through the sacraments. The desire for God's will to be done on earth passes to a secondary level, even if it preserves its position of primary importance in the Lord's Prayer and awaits complete fulfilment.

While the sufferings of the innocent have been seen by the Greeks for example, to be the work of a fate stronger than the gods themselves, the unlimited faith of the Jews in God has given place to a paradoxical Implication: protest. Already before the struggle of Jacob at the ford of Jabbok, Abraham contended with God: he disapproved of the condemnation of the inhabitants of Sodom. Certain of divine justice, he insistently asked and obtained substantial alleviation in the conditions for the salvation of the city (Gen. 18:22).

In Job's poem the innocent sufferer did not accept the condemnation: God denies him the right to judge, but in the end praises him highly for his sincerity. According to what Mark and Matthew say, even Jesus on the point of death called upon God "in a loud voice", using words of the psalmist, a terrible why? (Mk. 15:34; Matt. 27:46). Socrates, on the contrary, although sure of his innocence, died serenely. He indicated which god it would be good to appease with an offering, but did not know to which one a protest could be addressed.

Morals and Law

We shall not go into differences dealing with morals and the law. This is not because historically there are none, but because they present such variations in time and place that we prefer to limit ourselves to remarking that those which have lasted are perhaps merely the effect of those already indicated.

In what concerns law, the Torah was, for the Jewish people, the only legal authority which they would recognize — kings included. They were merely to interpret it. As for the contents of laws, it is well to remember that Christianity gave to Roman law a character which it had received from Judaism, a character which displayed a great respect for life and dignity, especially in what concerns statutes regulating the treatment of servants and strangers and the limits placed on capital punishment. Justinian sees it as a passing from duritia and asperitas to dementia and humanitas. To give one example: places to which criminals are sent are common to all civilizations; nevertheless, places of refuge provided for by Jewish law seem to be unique. Their purpose was to protect those who had accidentally killed someone from the revenge of relatives of the person killed, or again, to shelter those awaiting trial.

Two False Differences

We wish to point out two instances where differences are mistakenly thought to exist.

The first concerns the treatment of sojourners. It is repeatedly recommended in the Torah that the sojourner should have absolutely equal rights (Deut. 10:19; Lev. 19:34; 24:22) including financial help and interest free loans (Lev. 25:3M). The second is the dichotomy between justice and love of one's neighbor that some consider linked to theological divergences. Justice is the adherence to a principle, to a general norm which of necessity cannot deal adequately with the conditions of the individual. Love of one's neighbor must be ever present in all men's relationships. It is essential for justice to be done to one's nearest even if damage is done to oneself, but only he who loves his neighbor is capable of this.

Observance of the law and freedom do not alternate but intermingle in the spiritual history of the Jews as in the history of other peoples, even if sometimes they appear singly. Various passages of the Pentateuch and of the Prophets, references to the Pharisees and to Jesus, quotations from St. Francis and from Hasidism may be called to mind. The danger of crystallization and hypocrisy is an everpresent threat for everyone. It is perhaps not by chance that language has given judgment against such a false comparison: Pharisee and Jesuit are almost synonymous in popular idiom.

The biblical expression, justice (mishpat) almost always goes hand in hand with righteousness (zedakah) meaning charity. The fundamental teaching given to Abraham uses exactly these two words: 'Keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice (zedakah and mishpat)" (Gen. 18:19). Zedakah is not a law to be applied but rather a principle to live by, and as such, is part of Christian teaching.

The truth is that in every person the need for unity and consistency is always present; the practice of charity in the mature adult must be necessarily guided by reason. Jesus showed the deepest love for the suffering, the poor, for children, but wanted also to refer to general principles, hence to logic and consistency. To those who criticized the healing on the sabbath day he replied:

"What man of you, if he has one sheep, and it falls into the pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?" (Matt, 12:11).

To whoever asked him on what authority he based his teaching, he answered:
"The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or from men?" "...we do not know." And he told them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things" (Matt. 21:25-27).

He bitterly condemned the hypocrisy of those Prarisees who put weights on others which they themselves would not lift, while recommending them to follow the rules which they taught: such fundamental morals as those on tithes, cf. Matt. 23:23.

The rule of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is also subject to misinterpretation when it is looked upon as a principle of revenge opposed to a principle of forgiveness. This formula, found in other eastern civilizations, is recorded in Ex. 21:24. This same chapter regulates, among other things, the compensation and punishment to be applied in various cases, such as damage caused by the goring of an ox. The criterion to be applied in such juridical questions is the assessment of the damage and the punishment according to the gravity of the offence. In some cases of physical damage caused by one person to another, it legislates for the same damage to be inflicted on the guilty party (Lev. 24:19).

Considering the non-existence of detention at the time, the principle even in its crudeness sets a limit to the desire for revenge. Ilowever it really is certain that the principle of punishment as such was not contested by Jesus when he spoke in favor of the woman taken in adultery. Nobody understood it in that sense, neither then nor later. Since adulterers continued to be condemned, Jesus' words must be interpreted in a very much higher way: when you see the faults of others, think about your own.

Paul's idea of the justice — love, justice — grace duality as the essential discrepancy between Christianity and the Mosaic law, degenerated in the second century into the heresy of Marcionism. Its aberrant theories of two divinities, while condemned by the Church, are not completely dead, and it can be seen that they survive successfully to provide pseuclo-theological foundations for every kind of anti-Jewish feeling.

We shall not continue with strictly religious differences, except to observe that disagreement on some basic points has been seen by both groups as an inability in the other to reach the purest concepts. Some Christians think that Jews do not recognize the sacred as applied to special objects and people; Jews on the other hand find that attaching holiness to people, gestures or things is mistaken, and a deviation fromthe highest concepts. The attitude of the one appears to the other incomplete and seriously mistaken.

We think that probably to a great extent differences of the kind we have tried to specify, lead to or at least form the basis of, the divergencies of a religious nature, consistent with the psychological law which seems indisputable and is so clearly and simply expressed by Baruch Spinoza in his Theological — Political Treatise (Chapter XIV):
"Human minds arc so varied that all cannot have faith in the same beliefs; these have different effects on people; what arouses devotion in one individual provokes amusement or contempt in another."

Spinoza held firmly that each has the right, even the duty, to adapt the dogmas of faith to his own understanding and to search for interpretations which enable him to obey God with all his soul, acting according to justice and charity. This affirmation which is sacrilegious for many may be the height of human wisdom for others. Thus the same message can be variously understood, so that each one feels and witnesses to it in his or het own way.

The After Life

In what concerns the Jewish attitude to death, the immortality of the soul occupies a negligible place in the Hebrew Bible. The Jews assimilated it late from the pagan world where it was well known. A person's fate after death remains vague and abstract for them, although related to behavior in this life. It is noteworthy that there is a complete lack of interest in the preservation of bodily remains, although of course tombs are respected.

Two Poles

The history of the Jews and of the peoples among whom we have looked for comparisons are so long and complex and the differences so varied and numerous, that any attempt at synthesis certainly runs the risk of errors and grave gaps. We think nevertheless that it can be said that, at least in most cases, these gravitate around two poles, one of an intellectual, the other of an affective nature.

The first of these poles is a clear disposition to use for the progress of knowledge and ethics those concepts which cannot be reduced to visual and sensory perceptions without deforming and betraying them. The other is hope, that is, faith in a person's actions, directed by God's will to overcome every obstacle in the quest for truth and the accomplishment of justice.
In the history of the Jewish people these two poles have acted together, but nonetheless it seems to us that they ate quite distinct. Perhaps the two elements of the pavane definition of faith can be seen in them:
"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1).
While the first can give place to practical advantages, the second can lead to a blindness capable of annihilating every advantage.

Conclusion

After the research we have tried to carry out, it would be superfluous but perhaps not lacking in interest to examine the considerations which have been made, on the assumption that differences exist and can be identified. Let us indicate only a few typical attitudes.

Freud affirmed that the mysterious thing which makes a Jew a Jew is all the more powerful as it is the less possible to express. According to Sartre, the Jews on the other hand would be none other than those who "are called Jews"; antisemitism would be a mere consequence of this description. Afterwards however, he recognized the positive nucleus of Judaism. The historian Poliakov, though he speaks about "a garish quality of Judaism", avoids defining it. He very much doubts whether constant hereditary factors exist, and prefers to see historical and environmental ones.

The claim can be made that the essential nucleus, monotheism, consistent with the biblical account, hada personal and individual, rather than a collective beginning. Since it was first expressed, however, it has always exercised a selective attraction which gained it the adhesion of various groups, sometimes endowed with their own ethnic traits. The ever prevalent endogamy and, paradoxically, the freedom to separate from the group, would have determined the preservation if not the shaping, over and above any ethnic element, of a nucleus, a shell, which no amount of persecution can break.

It seems to us, however, that any uncertainty concerning both the ancient and present basis of Judaism and its causes does not remove, but rather increases the interest in the search for what distinguishes the Jews, even in what concerns the never-ending problem of antisemitism.

It is perfectly natural and logical to consider one's own religious or spiritual beliefs to be superior to those of others. With such a disparaging attitude, however, we all run the risk of it being transferred to people, and thus becoming an antipathy or a hatred. We do not know any other remedy fur this danger than the understanding of what is the difference between peoples of various faiths or convictions. Everyone longs so much for this understanding that it is a duty of charity to give it. But each one fulfils and understands himself or herself by comparing self with others by means of similarities and differences. To understand others is also the way to understand oneself. We think therefore that looking for and recognizing differences follows at the same time the golden Jewish-Christian rule and the advice of Greek wisdom: know thyself!