The Jewish problem is not only a problem of the absolute Mathematician; it is one of the whole mankind. The first Christian commentators of the Pentateuch kept calling the attention to the mistake of registering the Scripture to the letter. Certainly, the Jews in Moses' books play their own role in the sacred history, but at the same time they play the role of the whole human race. Briefly put, Egypt is the realm of our bad habits, of our daily murderous sins, Canaan is the heaven of redemption, and the interval between them is the arduous path we all follow when we decide to be "born again", a path strewn with failures, hope, miracles and dangers. On that path, we are all comparable to the Jews, we are Jews: chosen by divine love, unworthy of it, carping, forgetful, punished without mercy (Deuteronomy 28:59: "The Lord will send fearful plagues on you…"); but potentially saved. A people, the Israelites, was chosen to embody the tribulations of a creature forged under the formidable eye of the Creator. Like the Jews, we linger between blessing and curse, between God's tear and His unforgiving sword. From this perspective, anti-Semitism is a very grave sin, for it is pure self-hatred. We look in anger at our own symbol, we boycott the metaphor of our own fate. In the Old Testament, the Jews are the mirror of humankind. The anti-Semite foolishly deems himself entitled to break the mirror and label this suicidal act solution. Reading word-for-word is one way of breaking the mirror of a text, therefore we may say that anti-Semitism is primarily a faulty reading: the incapacity of rising from the letter to the spirit, from extraneousness to substance. In order to amend a faulty reading, the only efficient treatment is to multiply good books. It is also our duty to Jews in general, and to the Jew in each of us, to enlighten, through books, the religion of the Book, and to accompany Jewishness with our perpetual reflection. Well-known personalities of Romanian society have honestly expressed their opinions about the obsessive questions raised by the reality and rhetoric of anti-Semitism: the global judgment passed on a whole ethnic group, the "Judeo-Masonry" stereotype, the Jews' role in Romania's economic, social and cultural life, the rapport Nazism-Stalinism, etc. We are being offered the matter of a salutary debate which, as I said before, we owe to our coexisting Jewish community. We are in debt, as one is in debt to he whom he has wronged. No less are we in debt as Christians, for whom the paramount commandment is to love their neighbor. And we are also in debt to those amidst which this commandment was first uttered: "Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. Do not seek revenge (…), but love your neighbor as yourself." (Leviticus 19:17, 18).
(Excerpt from SEMNAL! [Signal!], Vivaldi Publishers, Bucharest 2000)
by Andrei Pleşu
