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The Jewish Contribution to Western Culture
Renzo Fabris
It must be recognized that present-day Christians are reluctant, at first sight, to ask the question, what has been the Jewish contribution to western culture. It does not provoke much interest because, on the one hand, there is a widespread critical attitude towards our civilization and culture — a culture and a civilization which, after the eastern-centered political crises, can only be seen in relation to one part of mankind, and as involved with the violence, alienation and oppression that characterize our times. To many Christians a positive balance in western culture does not seem possible. The time when certain preachers agreed, in an apologetic spirit, that modern men could not fail to call themselves Christians, seems a long time ago.
On the other hand, the conviction is widespread in the Christian world that faith, if it is seen as the relationship between God and man, cannot be measured in terms of the size, great or small, of its contribution to the cultural and social pattern. Many Christians today vehemently refute the older conception of religion as a support to the civil order, and tend strongly to underline their distance from the world of social and official institutions.
This being so, the Christian easily confuses his own uneasiness when confronted with today's civil structures, and his own resolve to withdraw from certain aspects of his contemporary culture in order to witness to a message that transcends them, with the uneasiness and resolution that, according to him, every man of faith, whether Christian or non-Christian, must feel and make towards the world and culture of today.
Through the identification of the Christian animus with that of the Jew, a true sense of respect develops, as well as the conviction that the Jews, like the Christians, do not want to dirty their hands with the affairs of the world. This identification, however, is not legitimate, since, from the point of view of a critical consideration of the culture of today, Christians and Jews differ in their concept of religion.
The Christian generally understands religion to be a spiritual reality that is involved with the things of the world, and yet is concerned to a great degree with the soul of man, and with his destiny beyond this world. The Jew, on the contrary, sees Judaism as a certain mode of life of a whole people that distinguishes them from others because of their culture, permeated as it is with the idea of a particular relationship with God. We are not saying that the Christian idea we have described is that found in the authentic teaching of the New Testament, but only that it is widely diffused. For the Jew, indeed, Judaism is a religion that combines both the past and present experiences of a whole people, because for him « people » and « religion » are two different aspects of a single entity which is to be found at the point where, for the Christian, the spiritual and temporal planes of human activity meet. In a certain sense we can say that Judaism is not a religion of the spirit because, as an important Orthodox Christian, Vladimir Loloviev,stated clearly some decades ago, « the religious history of the Jews is aimed at preparing for the God of Israel, not only a holy mind, but also a holy body ». 1 And we must take careful note that « the religious positivism of the Jews comes not from unbelief, but from an excess of faith directed towards fulfillment; not from weakness, but from the force and power of the spirit that does not fear contamination with material things, but rather purifies them and puts them to use for its own ends ». 2
For a religion like Judaism that identifies itself with the destiny of an historic community, the resulting problem of rapport with western civilization and culture differs from that of the Christian. When Israel is free to express itself, its influence on culture and civilization is a natural enought fact since, as a religion, it considers spiritual and temporal reality by the same standards. And in fact, Israel, even in biblical times and from her first contact with other peoples has contributed to the civilizing of mankind both in thought and work. One can still return to the time when Israel was in captivity in Egypt, to the time when it had not yet been born as a people endowed with its own identity. It seems to us that we could go back to the times of Joseph, Jacob's son, to recognize the early attitude of the Jews towards the development of human civilization.
Joseph, grateful for the fact that, « the Lord was with him and the Lord made everything succeed that he turned his hand to » (Gen. 39:3), was named chief steward of Potiphar, and then of Pharaoh, working loyally for both, and gaining both happiness and prestige. Joseph is the Hebrew figure that lives among a foreign people, yet is distinguished from them by his rigorous personal moral code (cf. the incident with Potiphar's wife), and by his clear conscience (the interpretation of the dreams). Joseph is, therefore, a Jew in Egypt, yet not swallowed up by the local population. Thinking of his return to the land of his fathers, he makes his brothers promise that when he dies they will take his bones back with them (Gen 37:40). As one modern Jewish commentator on the time of Joseph has said, « We see how they lived in the midst of nations, but were not lost in them; how they integrated the essence of their spirit and the ideas that made up their civilization, yet through careful selection they avoided everything that contained any sign of decadence or death ». Certainly this process is risky! It is not by chance that the ten tribes who clustered around that of Ephraim, one of Joseph's sons, came to an end in being lost among other nations.
For the Jews, forced to live and work with gentiles, exposed to the dangers of assimilation and consequently of extinction, tradition came to involve a particular messianic vision. One could say that there are two messiahs: one, the son of Joseph, preceding and preparing the way for the other, the son of Judah; one for the Jews scattered throughout the world, the other for the Jews gathered into a community.
The Bible also points out the other experience, that of the integration of the Jews with other nations. In the book of Esther, for example, we read of the case of Mordecai, « an eminent man and in attendance at the court of the king » (Est 1:19). « Indeed Mordecai was a power in the palace, and his fame was spreading through all the provinces; Mordecai was steadily growing more powerful » (Est. 9:4).
For Joseph in Egypt, for Mordecai in Persia, for the Jews of our western world, there is a task to be done, so that two cultures — ours and their own — may exist side by side and that both might develop through reciprocal sharing. The Jew would never consider avoiding the risks involved because this is precisely the function of Judaism, and its survival depends on the way this problem is resolved.
Both the western culture and civilization to which we want to pay particular attention in this study, boast that they have received their fundamental values from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and have absorbed these in a secular fashion. Likewise, the West has always had contact with the Jews, and in tracing the Jewish roots of our western civilization, we oughtto span the whole of the last twenty centuries. As this is obviously impossible we can, at least, review the meeting between western culture in its infancy and Jewish culture, then its contacts with Hellenism, Islam, and the Italian humanist Renaissance. Finally we shall dwell for a while on the contributions of Judaism to our modern culture. We do not mean to delay over that which must be obvious — Judaism's contribution to western civilization by nourishing Christianity in experience, faith, and hope. Nor is it possible to discuss other important questions on which much serious work has been done, such as the influence of the Bible on the western world, the influence of the concrete biblical concepts of work, or the value of the sabbath rest that has been described as the greatest gift of Judaism to the world.
• Since we are speaking of the contribution of Judaism, let us state clearly that by this expression we are concerned with the contribution relative to the particular values of Jewish culture. (We do not say « deriving from » because Jewish culture has a process of growth and development from ancient times until the present day.) We are concerned with the Jewish participation in social life derived from specific conditions of the Jewish people at a certain time. We are hot considering the contribution of Judaism that is derived from that of individual Jews in particular circumstances, which do not have any connection with Jewish culture seen in its wider sociological and philosophical meaning.
In our inquiry we are committed to the basic principle of searching history for the explanation of the facts concerning the Jews during a given period. We think, in fact, that it would be methodologically correct to repeat with Marx that « Judaism has preserved itself, not simply in spite of history, but rather through history »;
yet this history, at a cursory glance, has shown itself incapable of furnishing an exhaustive explanation of the deeper vocation of Israel. Israel is like an iceberg, a reality that emerges only partly in its history, and is consequently only partially open to exploration. However, it is not fair to examine the part beneath, the deeper part, if one has not yet finished the historical investigation. In other words, in the theology of Israel — if, indeed, that is the more profound part of any inquiry which takes Israel as its theme — one works through its history in order to avoid all those useless theologisms rendered worthless and ridiculous by the discovery of a little historical fact.
The Encounter with Hellenism
It is common to view the contrast between Judaism and Hellenism, as well as the opposition of the Jews to the Greek civilization which spread through the Asiatic and Mediterranean world after the conquest of Alexander the Great. To sum up this opposition, one may cite, on the one hand, the events that gave birth to the Jewish feast of Chanukah (the consecration of the temple in Jerusalem after the victory of Judah the Maccabee in 165 B.C.E. over several Syrian armies), and, on the other hand, the horrifying discovery of Greek anti-Semitism when, for instance, Jews were accused of killing a young foreigner (Damocritus) for ritual reasons, and of worshipping the head of an ass (Mnaseus of Patara).
From an examination of all the facts it is obvious that the relationship between Judaism and Hellenism was more complex than one of mere opposition. The first meetings of Alexander with the Jews were probably quite cordial. The Jews were called together with other groups to found the city of Alexandria in Egypt where, in the time of Philo, they numbered more than one hundred thousand. In Alexandria they enjoyed great religious, judicial and administrative autonomy, and they took an active part in local affairs. Nevertheless, the foreigners who came into contact with the Jews of Judea scandalized them by their mode of life and behavior, and it does not appear that they were the best ambassadors for Greece. Moreover, according to Jules Isaac, in order to speak properly of a Greco• Alexandrian anti-Semitism, one must turn to the first century before the common era.
There had been other contacts previous to this period, and towards the second century B.C.E. there were some important exchanges between Greek and Hebrew thought. The famous translation of the Bible known as the Septuagint spanned the second and third centuries. As Giuseppe Ricciotti has said, « It was a magnificent task, one of the most decisive in the history of the human spirit ». 6 The translation was probably commissioned by some Alexandrian Jews who, because of their long sojourn in Egypt no longer knew Hebrew and could neither read nor write it. This was, therefore, the first occasion for pagans to come into close contact with monotheism. Philosophers like Celsus, Porphyry, and the author of De Sublime discuss passages from the Septuagint. « The translation of the Septuagint, the work of a philosopher like Aristobulus, and the cryptic Hebrew prophecies were widely known in Hellenistic circles, and » as Chouraqui continues, « fostered the encounter between the wisdom of Israel and Hellenistic thought (Stoicism, Gnosticism, and Platonism), which is found if not in the Bible itself, particularly in the book of Ecclesiastes, in the book of Maccabees, and especially in the Wisdom of Solomon ».
A legend was widespread among the Egyptian Jews at one time concerning the miraculous character of this translation of the Bible, and it even led to the institution of a feast and a pilgrimage in which both Jews and pagans participated. Even today the Septuagint is the text used in the Greek, Slavonic Orthodox, Armenian, Georgian and Coptic churches.
In the first century before the common era Philo of Alexandria, a devout Jew, attempted a synthesis of biblical revelation and philosophical reasoning — a union between Moses and Plato. Judaism has not exactly treasured the memory of Philo's effort, for the desire to preserve intact the tradition of their forefathers during long periods of anti-Semitic persecution has deterred them from repeating that attempt. The fact remains, as Lehrmann has said, that « Alexandrian Judaism, thanks to the philosophical works of Philo, and to the classical tradition of the Septuagint, occupies a place in the history of universal thought ». 8 The Jewish diaspora along the coast of the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Seas is obvious proof that it merits this position. The Jews had been dispersed in the Middle East prior to the Hellenistic era, but during this period they scattered to the West, outside of Palestine, where they distinguished themselves not only by their commercial enterprises and their industry as farmers and craftsmen, but also by their religious conviction which attracted many gentiles to Judaism. It is estimated that in the Roman Empire and elsewhere were some four million Jews, of whom only half lived in the province of Syria. « The Jews », says the historian Cecil Roth, « were only a small race, but Judaism was already a universal religion ».
After the decline of Hellenism, Judaism continued its dialogue with Greek thought, but under the completely new historical circumstances which arose with the Islamic invasion. The presence of Islam as a new partner in dialogue was to become a determining factor for Judaism. Before going on to discuss the meeting with Islam, however, it is interesting to note that the contact between Judaism and Hellenism seems to have continued until the present day. One small example of this is Ben Gurion's admiration for Plato and his determination to get to know the Greek philosopher directly by learning the original language of The Republic in his old age.
The Encounter with Islam
Nowadays when the dialogue between Arab and Jew seems both difficult and essential for the peace of the whole world as well as that of the troubled areas of the Middle East, is it not strange to recall the great moment in history when Jewish—Muslim dialogue was at its peakin the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries? Today we see Arab and Jew despising each other, whereas, at one time, they fostered mutual respect and esteem. The present circumstances make it impossible to believe that this could ever have been the case! Even discounting the exaggerated position adopted by certain historians, there is no comfort in the thought that such absolute and insuperable barriers should exist between Judaism and Islam today since they once came together for their mutual benefit.
It is well known that from its beginnings Islam was acquainted with Judaism. Taking a more historical point of view, it is quite obvious that Islam has its origins in Israel. Several Arab and Jewish scholars see this link today as something which can be traced back to the friendship of Ishmael and Israel, the two sons of Abraham.
The reality is that, in the framework of the vast Muslim empire that extended throughout northern Africa, and western and central Asia — Mamlakat-al-Islam, or the kingdom of Islam — the Jews were brought together as a unity, under a single political authority, as had been the case under the Persian and western Roman empires. They found favorable conditions for entering into the social life of the time, and for a kind of examination of conscience that during the ninth and tenth centuries gave, as Chouraqui says, « a new slant to Jewish thought, which for the first time had moved out of its splendid isolation of the biblical and talmudic era, into a confrontation of its fundamental beliefs with those of the Greco—Roman and Arab—Christian intellectual worlds »
It is obvious that the new historical conditions thus favored a Jewish collaboration with Islam, but that this collaboration meant a specifically national contribution to Islam. A Jewish—Arab symbiosis consequently evolved, for the cultural elements proper to the one enriched the autonomous spiritual life of the other. As we have already stated, both Islam and Judaism were born in the East « from the same flesh and bone ». Judaism was disposed to borrow not a few cultural elements from Islamic civilization as long as it was able to preserve its own identity, and at the same time offer all it could to Islam.
It has been said that the meeting with Islam reached its peak in Spain during a period known as the Golden Age, the finest realization of Hebrew genius and spirit since the biblical period. During that time the so-called middle class revolution of Islam accelerated the transformation of the Jews from a people who previously had been famed as manual laborers (agricultural workers and artisans in several crafts such as dyeing, probably because of their knowledge of technical secrets) into a people who concentrated primarily on commerce and business. There is one curious point: precisely because of their involvement in commercial activity, and their gift for organization, the figure of the merchant's local agent evolved that seems to have been the forerunner of the Venetian and Genoese consuls as well as modern diplomatic representatives.
The spirit of tolerance and mutual respect was found at its greatest practical level in the relations between Jew and Muslim in Spain during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. Elsewhere in the Muslim empire Jews turned to public office and received many honors. In the tenth century a Jewish convert, Jacob Ibn Killis, became the vizir of the first Caliph of Cairo and, according to tradition, was responsible for founding the University of Al-Azhar. Hasdai Ibn Shaprut was an unrivalled diplomat. Samuel Ibn Nagdela was vizir to the king of Granada. Jews were also famous in Spain as doctors. It is said that « the Arabs developed the medical arts while the Jews turned them into a practical science which they transmitted to Europe ». " We shall say more later about the Jews and medicine.
The Jews were renowned for their mathematical knowledge. It is principally to them that we owe the rules of multiplication, the introduction of the zero into the decimal system,the establishment of mathematical rules, the finding of the square root, and second degree equations. (We will speak at greater length about the Jewish attitude to abstract reasoning, with regard to our own times.) Jews were famous for their poetry and short stories. Having educated themselves in the stories of the Talmud, they brought to the West and even to certain European countries like France, the riches of Indian, Persian, and Arabian lore.
It was through the politicians, merchants, mathematicians and poets that Sephardic Jews made their contribution to Muslim civilization and to the process of civilizing humanity. Specifically in regard to western culture, Sephardic Judaism merits two other titles. Not only has it transmitted the cultural treasures from the Greeks, but by developing this work of transmission at a higher level, it has also offered to the West an original recasting of Greek and Arabic thought.
Concerning this first activity, we know that, beginning in the ninth century, the Arabs had undertaken the colossal task of translating the Greek philosophers into Arabic. Those Jews who knew Arabic had worked on the great cultural treasure collected by the Arabs. By the end of the twelfth century the Jews and Arabs together had finished giving the invaluable treasures of Greek philosophy and science to Europe. At that time there were several very famous Jewish schools of translation. Putting them together, one can reconstruct a map tracing the influence of the Jews on European civilization through their transmission of culture from the lands under Muslim rule. In certain circumstances the Jewish polyglots had literally saved precious texts. Lehrmann notes that, when the Almohadi persecuted the sciences and burned all books towards the end of the Golden Age, the Jews protected these writings in an ingenious fashion by transcribing all the Arabic writings into Hebrew characters.
As for the second activity, we recognize today the differences between Jewish neo Platonism, Jewish Aristotelianism, and the Jewish anti-Aristotelian reaction. The best known example of a serious attempt at mediation between the differing cultures of the time which is also an original philosophical theory, is the work of Maimonides. He took Aristotle's teaching and created, for western culture, in the light of Jewish tradition, a philosophical theory of incomparable value. There is no point in reminding the reader that the ideas of the Jewish—Arabic philosophers made a great contribution to Christian scholastic philosophy. This contribution is more obvious at some times than others. For example, Thomas Aquinas greatly admired Maimonides, notably for his Guide for the Perplexed, and virtually began a dialogue with him. For many centuries it was not known for certain who was the Avencenbrol, or Avicebron, the author of Fons Vitae which was of such interest to the Thomists and the Scotists. We now know that Avicebron was the Jewish philosopher, Ibn Gabirol, and it seems significant that, at one time, it could have been thought, as William of Auvergne indicates, that Avicebron was either Arab or Christian, since the Jews were then, in reality, the spiritual mediators between the Arab and Christian worlds.
As has been said, the impressive historical era of Sephardic Judaism was terminated once the Muslims were _ driven out of Spain, when the Christian kings decided to annihilate the Jewish community, first by persecution and the auto-dafè of the Inquisition, and then by expelling them from the country. Spain however, had been so penetrated by the Jewish spirit that it was marked indelibly. This imprint contained a certain capriciousness, but not without impressive grounds — it has recently been written that Don Quixote, the Spanish champion himself, was a typically Jewish character. Certainly several great Spanish personages of the spiritual revival, like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross were of Jewish origin. Spain could never rid itself of the Jewish influence. In fact, the expulsion of the Jews marked the historical origin of Spain's decline.
The Encounter with Renaissance Humanism
From the Muslim world we now pass to the Christian. In this world which, in the past, has not shone by reason of its understanding of Judaism, we now arrive at a point where Judaism and western culture have a happy encounter, the results of which have been of extraordinary value for civilization. This is the Renaissance, which in Italy reached its greatest splendor in the fifteenth century. According to Cecil Roth, Judaism of this period made an essential contribution to the Renaissance, and Italian Jewry suffered no corrosive effects on its spiritual life because of this contact with the gentile world. 12
To demonstrate the situation of the Jews in Italy, we cite the example of Jehuda Abrabanel, better known as Leone the Jew. After being expelled from Spain together with his father, the great Isaac Abrabanel, he lived in Naples, Genoa, Venice, and Rome, in close rapport with the greatest exponents of Italian culture, and wrote the Dialogue of Love, a philosophical work which was considered in sixteenth century Europe to be one of the most important of its kind. The Jews in Italy were never as numerous as in other countries, but their closeness to the center of European culture and religion made their activity significant beyond their numbers. During the Renaissance they profitted from particular historical circumstances such as the political fragmentation of the peninsula, which left them the possibility of escape in case of persecution. The benevolence of the Popes must have had some influence on the Christian lords and on the brilliant and learned spirit of their courts. These favorable conditions lasted until the turbulent historical period of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Known only as money-lenders until the fourteenth century, Italian Jews became true financiers with the development of the courts of northern and central Italy. They were usually in league with the local dignitaries — witness the friendship which endured for generations between the Volterra family of Florence and the Medici, or the influence of the Jews of Mantua on the court of the Gonzaga. Families such as the Da Pisa were benefactors to artists and men of letters. They were people of refined taste as well as open minds. It must be considered significant and not just a matter of chance that Jews were among the first to use the handkerchief, an article of clothing the use of which became general among the aristocratic ladies of Venice in the sixteenth century. It is interesting to note that one of the first recorded instances of the use of the handkerchief was in a synagogue, by a rabbi, probably for hygenic reasons.
The Jews of the Renaissance were not only financiers, but also philosophers, doctors, translators, and artists, as well as artisans and businessmen. Some of them were held in high regard; a case in point was that of Eliahu del Medigo of Crete who in the fifteenth century was considered the most eminent commentator on Aristotelianism, and was called in by the University of Padua to settle a philosophical dispute. It was he who taught the doctrine of Aristotle and of the Kabbala to Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino, at Florence.
As with many other Jews noted for their intellectual activity, Eliahu del Medigo was also a doctor of note. The Jewish contribution in medicine to the civilization of man was always of the greatest. This is not surprising when it is considered that Jews at one time were able to consult in the original the great Arabic treatises, and that Jewish medicine was subjected to ritual. norms which, by imposing certain hygenic principles, demanded an exact knowledge of the human body. It is rightly noted that in the Bible moral and physical purity were not separated. To this is added the fact that the medical profession could be transmitted from father to son together with the family library, a formidable instrument of work and knowledge. The historian Milano has said that « the diploma in medicine was almost the emblem of the intellectual Jewisl, aristocracy, transmitted by heredity ». 13 The Christian councils, as in a former age the Muslimlaws, refused to allow a Jew to cure a Christian or to be nominated « public doctor ». (Some Jews had the same idea regarding Christians.) However, popes, kings and princes preferred to have Jewish doctors when they themselves were ill. In Rome, for example, Elijah Sabot of Fermo was the doctor of Popes Innocent VII, Martin V, Eugene IV, Duke Philip Mary Visconti, and was called in as a consultant by Henry IV of England. The work of the Jewish doctors was authoritative in the study of medicine and, although it was exceptional, the universities were open to them. The work Curationum Medicinalium Centuria by Amato of Portugal, published at Ancona in the sixteenth century, is one of the greatest witnesses to the state of medicine at the time.
The interest in speculative activity such as philosophy, medicine, and translation, drew the attention of the Jews to the new means of communication afforded by printing. The Jews had always brought reverence to the activity of transcribing biblical texts and traditional literature. Milano has written, that for them, copying was « a type of spiritual exercise ». 14 In the fifteenth century this reverence was transformed into a relish for exercising the so-called « art of writing with many pens » or « art of artificial writing ». A notable document going back to 1454 — ten years before the Gutenberg Bible — mentions David of Caderusse, a Jew of Avignon, who experimented with printing. It is certain that Jews were pioneers of printing in Africa, Asia (but not China), and in some European countries, including Italy and Portugal. In 1475 the first two printed Jewish works appeared in Italy, produced by the printing house of Piove di Sacco, near Padua, and by another in Reggio Calabria. Of the 113 Jewish incunabula known, 93 were printed in Italy. However, it must not be thought that Jews limited themselves to printing Hebrew texts: in 1477 a Neapolitan Jew printed a much better edition of the Divine Comedy than had hitherto been produced. To show the Jewish contribution to the printing and publication of books in this period, it is enough to note the family of Soncino, which was established near Cremona in the second half of the fifteenth century and became famous for the ardor and refined taste which they brought to their printing.
Judaism of the Italian Renaissance could also boast of cultural contributions in other sectors. Concerning geography, one might note Abraham •Farissol and his Epistola sulle vie del mondo (Epistle on the Roads of the World), a geographical and cosmographical treatise which was among the most frequently consulted of the time. Concerning scenic art, music, and dancing, it is on record that Jews produced the first scientific treatise on the matter, in a work entitled Dialo ghi in materia di rappresentazioni sceniche (Dialogue on the Question of Theatrical Scenery), in the middle of the sixteenth century. It is notable that in the study of geography and the scenic arts Jews were reacting to particular stimuli. The fifteenth century Jew who was an ardent geographer, revived the hope of clarifying the mystery of the disappearance of the ten tribes of Israel which could be traced back to the time of the kings of Assyria. A Jew enraptured by the theatre and the dance seized the opportunity to support publically that spirit of celebration and recitation which in the past had been expressed by the Jewish people.
Actually the Renaissance was merely a happy interlude, for some decades later the Jews lost the freedom and public regard which had made possible their actual participation in the process of civilization. But the spiritual fruits of this Renaissance encounter, which were integrated into the patrimony of western culture, were not wholly lost. The people of Italy have kept a memory of these shining years which, obscured by the passage of time, was translated into an intuitive attachment of sympathy and tolerance for the Jews, in the conviction that Jewish culture and their own can live together and be reciprocally integrated. This attitude has never weakened, even during the recent difficult times, when some attempted to raise the barrier of racial prejudice between Jew and Italian.
The Encounter with the Modern World
In order to discover conditions favorable to the dialogue and participation of the Jews in the social and cultural life of the western world, one needs to pass from the Italian Renaissance to the threshold of the modern epoch. It cannot be doubted that modern western society, characterized generally by large-scale financial accumulations, by industrial production, scientific research, technical development, the spread of mass communication, and by a politico-social regime open to the participation of the people, has received a formidable contribution from the Jews. It has been stated quite categorically that the modern age has its titular gods in the Jewish triad of Marx, Freud and Einstein, and this precisely represents the fundamental contribution of the Jews to western culture. One must immediately add, however, that the Jewish contribution to civilization has never been contested by anti-Semitism to the same extent as it has been in modern times. In fact, our age can boast a sorry primacy in its scientific persecution of the Jews and in the furious propaganda campaign aimed at seeing them as parasites and as the cause of modern decadence. Yet in combatting this sad record, the twentieth century is not lacking in attempts to take stock, to underline the Jewish contribution to western civilization.
It is symptomatic of a certain development of mind that, until thirty years ago, these efforts were conducted mainly by Jews who were aroused by the anxiety to attain a recognition which was also a legitimization of a definite participation in western society — one thinks of such works as Germanesimo ed Ebraismo (German Nationalism and Judaism) by Hermann Cohen — whereas, now that the Jews have their own national state and feel less insecure, it is the non-Jews who endeavor to extend this inventory as if they wanted to pay a debt of long-neglected recognition; as if they had to sing what the historian Leon Poliakov bitterly called a « requiem » for the Jewish community which, having lavished its contributions on civilization and culture, was brutally destroyed by the gentiles. Some of these analyses, such as that undertaken by the Bavarian State Television Company in the winter of 196061, are undoubtedly true; others are less so — for example, the famous book of Roger Peyrefitte Les juifs s (The Jews), which aimed at being a « summa » of the contributions and the presence of the Jews in our western world. It would be worthwhile if those who put their hand to this task would bear in mind that one does no service to Judaism either by stupidly denying its contribution, or by seeing it exaggeratedly as the most important one. For their part, Jews well know that very often there is latent anti-Semitism when the gentile tries to exalt Judaism by exaggerating, as if such exaggeration could absolve the Jews from any blame or defect which they might, in fact, have. It is because of this experience that the Jews suspect that anti-Semitic prejudice underlies the praise of some and so they distrust certain friendships. Of Peyrefitte's book, the least one can say, commented a Jewish critic, is that it demonstrated a friendship towards the Jews — a rather strange one. 15
In the early months of this year there appeared in France a book by two non-Jews, Thierry Maulnier and Gilbert Prouteau, with the fine title of L'honneur d'être juif (The Honor of Being Jewish). It set out to « make reparation for an injustice », to « restore to the Jews their title to the gratitude of the world ». 16 Notwithstanding the nobility of the intentions, even this book is not without careless exaggerations and real errors which do not benefit the seriousness of research and the consolidation of a new and widespread approach to Jews by Christians.
We shall look for the major Jewish contributions to our present-day civilization, making a determined effort to avoid the dangers of anti-Semitism in reverse, and of an « inverse racism ».
It seems to us that one must start by remembering that the Jews played a decisive part in the establishment of the socio-economic structure of our world. In fact, even if one does not agree with W. Sombart, who claimed that the Jews ofthe seventeenth century were the founders of modern capitalism (although none were numbered among the first great leaders of industry), and even if one recognizes with M. Weber that the protestant and more particularly puritan ethic has developed an important function in the origin of capitalism, one must, nevertheless admit that in the building of the financial framework of the capitalist economy the Jews developed a role « as pioneers and catalysts par excellence », as the historian J.L. Talmon says, 17 through banking, limited companies, telegraphic agencies, railways, chains of shops and stores, theatres, technical experiments, mediating what J. Addison called the assembly line of the economy.
One would be able to object that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Jews were at the center of the world scene as contemporary men and not as purveyors of Jewish spirituality. However, from that point of view, one would need to see if this presence secularized Jewish spirituality, or if it reflectd a profound harmony in the Jewish spirit through its contractual concept of life which is indeed part of modern society. The problem always remains, why a small people should be so singled out in certain key activities of modern man. The anti-Semites have shown that they are concerned with this problem, and have pretended to resolve it by inventing the scarecrow of the « Jewish capitalism of Wall Street » or the international power of Rothschild. 18 A minimum of historical and sociological analysis would suffice to destroy these pathetic inventions.
However, before seeking an explanation for the Jewish presence in the socio-economic world, one must note that the Jews of our time have distinguished themselves in all intellectual pursuits. During the last century people often described the typical Jewish occupation as commercial — Abraham Leon's Marxist theory on the alleged constant commercial function of the Jewish people is a development of this idea. Today, on the other hand, people assert that their typical profession is intellectual and claim to see a pair of spectacles on every Jewish face, with the consequent risk that Miller's character Lawrence Newman of Focus knew so well.
It is fairly easy to remember the name of some Jew who was, as Ruppin says, « among the original creators » of the most important modern inventions, from the telephone to invisible rays, from the airplane to the atomic bomb — men like Edison, E.R. Hertz, Lilienthal, and Oppenheimer.1 Moreover, it is frequently observed that the top Nobel prizes for the exact sciences (mathematics, physics, etc.), are awarded to Jewish scientists at the rate of about ten to fifteen per cent: we recall the names of Albert Einstein, N. Bohr, J. Franck, O. Wallace, R. Willstatter. One seeks to explain this fact by indicating that, although in western Europe Jews do not constitute more than 1.1 per cent of the population, after the emancipation they were almost all integrated into the middle class, the class from which the scientists emerged and of which the Jews constituted about ten to fifteen per cent. Seen in this context, the success of the Jews in the exact sciences would not seem disproportionate.
Further discussion should be pursued on the so-called life sciences (medicine, pharmacology, etc.), which bring to mind the illustrious names of A. Wassermann, P. Ehrlich, K. Landsteiner, O.F. Meyerhof, and C. Sabin, and the human sciences (sociology, psychology, political economy), which recall the names of Sigmund Freud, A. Adler, Karl Marx, and K. Mannheim, and in which Jewish successes could be explained by characteristics inherent in their historical condition. We have already said something in reference to medicine. In the « new » human sciences like psychoanalysis and sociology, the pressures encountered in the activity of social minorities would have been at work. These minorities would be denied ready access to participation in the organized and recognized sciences. Nevertheless, Jewish success in these sciences must not be seen only as resulting from a tendency to found a new social profession but also a psychological availability to involve themselves in fields of science generally unappreciated. Freud admitted: « Because I wasa Jew, I found myself free from many prejudices which burden others in the use of their intellects. In as much as I was a Jew, I was completely prepared to go into opposition and renounce the united majority ». Having said this much, one might add, as has been suggested, that among the Jews there is revealed a certain roguish attitude which sees things doubly and differently, from within and without. This roguishness, particularly when accompanied with an acute . critical sense, which is frequently the case for Jews because of their historical experience, would be excellent in confronting sociological and psychoanalytical problems.
André Siegfried, after hinting at a type of « intellectual disassociation, undoubtedly acquired in exiles and constant moves », 21 further describes this critical sense of the Jews as something ruthless, a self-scrutiny that is unmerciful and even sadistic.
Along with all these reasons, one must not forget that Jewish success in speculative activities is, in the last analysis, linked with certain profound characteristics of Judaism. Albert Einstein thought the Jews passed down from father to son certain traditional elements. « I am convinced », he wrote, « that at the root of the Jewish contribution to knowledge, in the broadest sense of the word, one finds, and justly so, their great respect for intellectual work ... It is my opinion that this does not depend on a singular richness of quality but rather on the fact of their consideration for intellectual work which creates an atmosphere particularly suited to introduce them to all possible qualities. At the same time a clear critical spirit serves to hold them back from a blind submission to any earthly authority ». 22 To understand the constant respect of the Jews for intelligence and knowledge, we like to remember that at the great fairs in Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a type of market of marriageable men, at which the rich Jews used to choose husbands for their daughters from among the poor young men, who, in debate, showed a good knowledge of the Talmud and the Scriptures in general. Albert Einstein, in order to explain the Jewish taste for speculative activity, also wrote that in the Jewish tradition, so significantly expressed in the Psalms, one finds « a sort of joyous drunkenness and stupor before the beauty and grandeur of this world ... a feeling in which true scientific research arises from the proper intellectual substance ». 23
From a broader viewpoint, the historian Talmon presented a fine lecture which depicted the conditions of the Jews from the beginning to the modern era, further developing the theses and motifs already known through others. It is worthwhile to quote at length: « This people, long consumed by intellectual speculation, acquired more rapidly than others the abstract links and rational connections which unite the concrete and disparate particulars. The emancipated Jew with no local ties was free from routine and conservative habits. His international relationships helped him to set up new international circles. Marginal communities have the tendency, especially when living in large urban centers, to attain the extreme sensibility of an exposed nerve, in such a way that they are the first to anticipate the stream of events. From this comes the relish and courage to attempt new experiences. They were officially emancipated even if, in fact, their equality was not fully recognized. Desperately wanting a place in the sun in as much as their prestige of descent and age failed them, the Jews were upset and dissatisfied as are people who find themselves in an ambiguous position. All their energy was channelled into the two paths open to them: economic activity and intellectual labors. The discipline, sobriety and foresight by which they had existed through the ages impeded their ambition to disperse in a chaotic and disorganized manner. Their vitality served to feed a strictly rational mechanism, devised to obtain the maximum results at the lowest cost ». 24
Recently Leon Poliakov put forward the theory that there was a Jewish style of thought formed by the Old Testament and the Talmud, a style which could be passed on by maintaining a kind of hidden deference towards certain principles of life. These principles would befound in Scripture: the modern sciences could be discovered among these rigorous methods, and in this discovery Jews would have an advantage over non-Jews because of their correspondence of thought with scientific truth. According to this Jewish—French historian an example is found in the persistent rejection by the Jews of the pseudoscientific theories of interbreeding and transmutation of animal species which, until the seventeenth century, were almost unanimously accepted by men of science. 25
We do not know how consistent Poliakov's theory is. However it seems that the intellectual education traditionally imparted by Judaism has predisposed men to continue to search for the truth even in the face of that which is proclaimed as untouchable and unmodifiable in certain historical instances by science, universities, churches, books, etc. Judaism has in fact always taught man not to confuse contingent reality (the partial truths found by him at any given time), with the absolute truth. It has, therefore, perfected throughout its history the function of discrediting partial truths and denunciating prejudices. In this regard the words of Einstein are significant: « the God of Israel, is no more than the negation of superstition, he is the invention resulting from its suppression ». 26 Science is born from this mode of thought.
What can one say of the Jewish contribution to the work of civilizing humanity, sparked by their strength in creating a community inspired by justice, freedom, and dignity of the person? A few decades ago there was a tendency to underline, with defamatory intent, the part played by Jews in revolutionary movements and, particularly, the Russian revolution. There is no doubt that the situation of an oppressed minority has stimulated the participation of Jews in projects attempting social change and reform — a reform which, given the high cultural level of the Jews, could not but lead to the emergence of reformers and revolutionaries. It is not necessary to recall the Russian revolution for proof of this; let it suffice to recall the English liberal and phil anthropic movements. One thinks of Dr. Barnardo, founder of orphanages; of General Booth of the Salvation Army; of Louis Gompertz, founder of the R.S.P.C.A. One remembers the international ideals of certain enlightened Jews such as Zamenhof, inventor of Esperanto; David Lubin, organizer of the international institute of agriculture; De Bloch, organizer of the first international conference of the A.J.A. in 1899. Or again, one recalls the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia at the end of the nineteenth century; in the years 1873-77 Jews constituted seven percent of those under special surveillance, fifteen percent of those deported and four percent of those under trial.
This, however, is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon. To our mind the deeper truth lies in this: in the attempt to transform society and the world itself, the Jew — even if he rejects the Jewish tradition — gives new life to the messianic expectation, his great prophets' desire for justice, and the whole desire of liberty which derives from his people's thirst for the absolute. He speaks, obviously, of the permanence of certain great values of Judaism which makes the Jew consciously place himself at the outer boundaries of official truths and the frontiers of social conventions. He inadvertently makes Judaism the norm for overcoming the particular convictions of a certain period in the search for a greater justice and liberty, and, finally, the norm of overcoming Judaism itself. Isaac Deutscher recognized himself and other « non-Jewish » Jews including Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, as heirs of the talmudic heretic, Elisha ben Abiyuh (called Aker). Precisely because they are on the confines of Judaism, all belong to the Jewish tradition in the very tension of transcending Judaism itself. 27
We must now make some remarks referring to the Jewish contribution to the artistic developments of our age. In the world of letters the names of H. Heine, F. Werfel, A. Zweig, F. Kafka, U. Saba, I. Svevo, S. Bellow, B. Malamud, J.D. Salinger, P. Roth, S. Agnon, N. Sachs, I. Babel, I. Erenburg, as well as M. Proust and B. Pasternak, give evidence of the Jewish presence.
We must acknowledge that, although particularly brilliant endeavors on the part of individual authors are not lacking — Kafka, for example — it is difficult to define their common Jewishness. It seems that one can almost say that Judaism lives in literature through its concern for the absolute which is so difficult to pacify, and which ultimately expresses itself in the restlessness, dissatisfaction, and loneliness of certain characters; through its feeling for a past which is one with its memory of suffering; through its sense of irony which is born from the meeting of the absolute and the contingent; through its search for a logical explanation of evil which, once found, never satisfies; finally through its strange mixture of pessimism and optimism, the one born of the past and present, the other enduring into the future.
We must say something on similar lines to understand the Jewish presence in the world of cinema and theatre, but perhaps in these particular cultural sectors the facts are even more difficult to understand because in the performing arts there are strongly social elements as well as important new technical factors. We must, therefore, turn back somewhat to what we have previously said of the new sciences and of the Jewish attitude to social reform. Therefore, in the performing arts as well, the names of several illustrious Jews are outstanding: the directors L. Bakst, M. Reinhardt, S.M. Eisenstein, and the actors Rachel, Sara Bernhardt, and C. Chaplin.
It is also difficult to explain of what the Jewishness of certain painters like C. Pissaro, A. Modigliani, C. Soutine and M. Chagall consists. There have been interesting attempts, particularly regarding Chagall, but when all is said and done the answer does not go beyond certain slightly elaborated hypotheses. Jacques Sabile, for example, remarks that there is a deep resemblance between modern painters whose art, according to one of its greatest creators, Paul Klee, « depicts the forces that create the appearances rather than the appearances themselves », and Jewish thought that « seems to condemn depicting images since they are arbitrarily fixed in appearance beyond their duration, thus blaspheming the majesty of time ». 28
The attempts to define the specifically Jewish contribution to western music are almost entirely fruitless. We can easily cite the names of several eminent composers and interpreters. Of the former it is sufficient to recall Salomone Rossi Ebreo, who lived during the Italian Renaissance, as well as B.F. Mendelssohn, G. Meyerbeer, J. Offenbach, G. Mahler and A. Schoenberg; and among the latter the conductors B. Walter and F. Reiner as well as the pianists V. Horowitz and A. Rubenstein, and the violinsts M. Elman and I. Stern.
One still does not know what the Jewish element in music is, in spite of certain axiomatic definitions, clearly anti-Semitic in tone, which come from none less than R. Wagner, who wrote Il Giudaismo nella musica (Judaism in Music), one of the foremost modern anti-Semitic works, in 1850.
One can no longer define with any real certainty in what the contribution of Judaism to the arts of our civilization consists. It seems important to us to establish at least, that Judaism, as we have seen, has certainly participated in a most relevant manner in the cultural development of the West both in the sciences and in politics. It has never restrained the spirit of literature, music, or the arts. If one considers the Jewish composers endowed with genius, the critics, patrons and collectors, the contribution offered to the development of artistic knowledge by Gertrude Stein, B. Weil, B. Berensen, Lord Duveen and L. Mond, one can say that Judaism has, in a general way, fostered all the arts.
Israel and Civilization
This brief look at the happier years of the encounter of Judaism with western civilization and, in particular, the examination of the present situation, shows the impressive contribution of Judaism to culture. We have sought for an historical explanation for the situation of the Jews at given moments of time. This was our intention, but having arrived at our goal we cannot pass up the opportunity to search for more general reasons which will explain in toto the relationship between Judaism and culture. Considering the various ages of history in a single glance, and recognizing the contribution of Jewish activity and thought, the question is whether we can speak of the function of Judaism in the process of the civilization of man.
Naturally we do not intend to answer these questions by dragging out the hoary themes of the « nature » and « level » of Jewish intelligence. Much has already been written on these pseudo-problems: while Voltaire asserted that Jews are « the most imbecile people that have been put on this earth », " Sartre attributed to them « the relish of pure intelligence »; 30 while the Muslim thinker Al-Jahiz held the Jews to be inept for abstract thought because of their long history of in-breeding, 31 the noted American sociologist Veblen held the contrary view that the hybrid nature of the Jewish people of the diaspora had assured them of exceptional intellectual gifts. 32
Posing the problem of Jewish intelligence in abstract and general terms is to define badly the problem of Jewish presence in the world. The true position of the problem demands a correct correlation with historic, social, geographic and other determining circumstances, with reference to which the intelligence of the Jews is concretely shown.
For their part, the Jews cannot fail to answer these questions. If one is attentive one can find a particular interpretation of the Jewish contribution to the growth of humanity in the philosophies of the greatest Jewish thinkers of our time: M. Mendelssohn, H. Cohen, F. Rosenzweig, M. Buber, A.J. Heschel, and even H. Bergson, E. Husserl, and M. Scheler. The more or less declared religious inspiration of their philosophy which runs through their theology, history, and metaphysics, does not reduce Israel exclusively to the dimension of the relationship with God, but also underlines its relationship with the whole of humanity. Jewish universalism, frequently miscontrued by gentiles, acquires its true significance in the recognition of Israel's function for the world.
It would be interesting to find a new proof of what we have already said in the philosophy of those Jews (for example, the Frankfurt school: W. Benjamin, E. Fromm, T.W. Adorn, M. Horkheimer, H. Marcuse as well as A. Szaff and E. Bloch), who explicitly reject the title « Jewish philosopher », but still reveal certain Jewish features such as messianism and a love for critical introspection (sic Siegfried), using the combined results of such disciplines as psychoanalysis and dialectics.
For us it is enough to make some modest general observations which avoid sliding down the slippery path of theorizing, which would not be consistent with the above considerations:
1. Observing the historical moments in which the Jews made a particularly important contribution to western culture, we notice a strict relationship between the adhesion of the Jews to their Jewishness, expressed in their conviction, depth, and operative discipline, and in their active participation in the civil and cultural life of their time. In other words, the more Judaism is accepted and lived out by the Jews, the more relevant is their contribution. According to A. Neher in a fine essay in Rassegna Mensile di Israel, the acceptance of Judaism is the way Jews answer the challenge of history. 33 The Sephardic Jews of the Golden Age and the Italian Jews of the Renaissance, though differing greatly in their contribution to civilization and culture, still felt themselves to be profoundly Jewish. From this point of view, so-called assimilation is a bad business for western civilization and culture, even if the first generation of Jews assimilated give rise to notable contributions to the phenomenon of secularization.
2. If we notice the various cultural sectors in which Jews made themselves known for their contribution to civilization, we find a succession: at first the Jews shone in philosophical reflection (neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism of the Arabic—Jewish symbiosis); then in the life sciences (medicine in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance); then in the social sciences (sociology, socioeconomic scholarship, etc.); and finally, in the exact sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.). This order is only tendentious, for a philosopher like Maimonides was also a doctor, and a physicist like Einstein was, in his own way, a philosopher. But the succession is real, and exhibits a sort of secularization of Jewish speculation which, starting on the religious plane, moves on to the sphere of human reality, and finally to that of the reality of things. Thus, as Poliakov has suggested, we refer not so much to a process of moving away from the original roots, but to their rediscovery at an ever greater distance. 34 We deal in a way with a Jewish effort to unify and reconcile humanity with God through men and things, which reveals to us the ultimate nature of the function of Israel in the world and for the world. In fact, this unificatior is achieved even through the secularization of Judaism. One recalls that the theologian Sartori recently stated that « secularization is a phenomenon of looking for a principle of radical unity within humanity ». 35
3. Considering the constant mode of Judaism',. action in history, we must go to Maritain who spoke of its action in the ethical promotion of humanity: « Israel, in the order of temporal history and of its own finality, is set on a task of earthly activation of the mass of the world. So, not being of the world, Israel finds itself more deeply involved in the warp and woof of the world, irritating, exasperating, and moving it », 38 teaching it not to be content until God is found.
In working out this problem, Israel shows all its passion for the absolute and the stimulus which this passion gives, expressing its hope for complete and universal fulfillment. Working in this way, Israel arouses itself and all other peoples, wanders through the world to raise up hope, light up interest, and discover old memories, often appearing as an intermediary between the world and various ages. Lehrmann says of the wandering Jew: « across time and space, he effects a trait d'union of the peoples at such a point that his history becomes the same as universal history ». 37 Political commentators say that the State of Israel must make the trait d'union between East and West because of its geographical position and its culture. One says fancifully that Israel is situated symbolically on the crossing of the Los Angeles parallel and the Leningrad meridian — but always mediating between some last absolute realities, to which it is intimately committed.
4. In our age Judaism lives in the diaspora, as it has done for thousands of years, and in Eretz Israel (the land of Israel). Despite the presence of a Jewish State, Jews are still dispersed throughout the world, and will probably remain so for some time. The world Jewish community, conscious of its Jewish identity, is a unique community which lives with and among the other communities of men.
We live today in an age in which we work for the social unification and integration of all humanity, but at times the difficulties caused by the co-existence of different cultures and the tendency for local forces to become hidebound by monolithic social structures, seem to increase rather than decrease. But the ideal is that of a social integration of all men, without extinguishing the vitalizing, catalystic impulse of pluralism — the ferment of the interaction of various cultures. For these, Judaism shows that two cultures, Jewish and western, can live together historically, mutually integrated, without the one violating or absorbing the other. Basically, as the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss has said, the discrimination against a culture thought to be inferior which is taught by racism, is the sign of insufficient culture in a community, while the integration which maintains autonomy is a sign of maturity and vitality. 38
1 SoLOVIEV V.S., L'ebraismo e il problema cristiano. Guanda Ed., 1944, p. 52.
2 Ibid., p. 53.
3 BLOKOR G., « Joseph ou l'anti-ghetto ». Les Nouveaux Cahiers, No. 8, p. 18.
4 MARX K., « Sulla questione ebraica, II » in Opere Scelte di Karl Marx e Friedrich Engels. Ed. Riuniti, Roma, 1966, p. 106.
5 ISAAC J., Genèse de l'antisémitisme: Essai historique. Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1960, pp. 74 and 93.
6 RICCIOTTI G., Storia d'Israele. Vol. II, pp. 238-240.
7 CHOURAQUI A., La pensée juive. P.U.F., Paris, 1965, p. 59.
8 LEHRMANN CFI., L'élément juif dans la pensée européenne. Ed. du Chant Nouveau, Paris and Ed. Migdal-Genève, p. 45.
9 RoTH C., Storia del popolo ebraico. Silva, Milano, 1962, p. 143.
10 CHOURAQUI A., op. cit., p. 64.
11 LEHRMANN CH., op. cit., p. 37.
12 ROTH C., The Jews in the Renaissance. Harper and Row, New York, 1965, p. XI-XII.
13 MILANO A., Storia degli ebrei d'Italia. Einaudi, Torino, 1963, pp. 626-627.
14 Ibid., p. 636.
15 BAUDY N., « L'almanach Peyrefitte ». Les Nouveaux Cahiers, No. 3, pp. 44-47.
16 MAULNIER T. and PROUTEAU G., L'honneur d'être Juif. Ed. R. Laffont, Paris, 1971, p. 18.
17 TALMON J. -L., Destin d'Israël, l'unique et l'universel. Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1967, pp. 31-32.
18 FORD H., El judio internacional. Ed. Orbis, Barcelona, 1944, pp. 232f.
PREZIOSI G. Giudaismo-Bolscevismo, Plutocrazia Massoneria. Mondadori, 1944, pp. 119f.
19 RUPIN A., Gli ebrei d'oggi. Bocca, Torino, 1922, p. 288.
2° POLIAKOV L., « Requiem pour une civilisation ». L'Arche, November, 1962, p. 35.
21 SIEGFRIED A., « L'Occident et Israel ». L'Arche, November, 1957, p. 24.
22 EINSTEIN A., Idee e opinioni. Schwarz, Milano, 1957, pp. 183-184.
23 Ibid., p. 176.
24 TALMON J. -L., op. cit., p. 30.
25 POLIAKOV L., « Le Judaisme est-il une profession liberale? ». L'Arche, July-September, 1970, p. 30.
26 EINSTEIN A., op. cit., p. 175.
27 DEUTSCHER I., L'ebreo non ebreo. Mondadori, 1969, pp. 38-39.
28 SABILE J. « Les Juifs dans la peinture française moderne ». Aspects du Génie d'Israël, pp. 284-285.
29 VOLTAIRE, La Bible enfin expliquée, Rois IV. Cited in F. Lovsky, Antisémitisme et mystère d'Israël. A. Michel, Paris, 1955, p. 266.
3° SARTRE J.P., op. cit., p. 112.
31 GOETEIN S.D., Juifs et Arabes. Ed. de Minuit, Paris, 1957, p. 135.
32 VEBLEN T., « The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe » in The Portable Veblen. The Viking Press, New York, 1948, pp. 467f.
33 NEHER A., « Entro quali limiti possa esserci una storia ebraica non teologica ». La Rassegna Mensile d'Israel, May, 1966, p. 190.
34 POLIAKOV L., op. cit., p. 57.
35 SARTORI L., Humanitas, January-February, 1971, p. 204.
36 MARITAIN J., Il mistero d'Israele e altri saggi. Morcelliana, Brescia, 1964, pp. 30, 61, and 119.
37 LEHRMANN C., op. cit., p. 23.
38 SAN SA G., Talk given to UNESCO on March 28, 1971 in Paris, printed in Corriere della Sera, March 29, 1971, p. 17.
