Identity and Abandonment: Jewish Identity in History and Fiction

by Norman Berdichevsky (September 2017)

 

—at least in Europe—as has Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, the fictional tale (though all too real) of a submissive intellectual class willing to trade more than a thousand years of Christian and national patriotic traditions of the nation-state, as well as fundamental values of Western civilization (including the right to an education free from religious dogma and equality of the sexes), for an Islamist regime in partnership with the traditional “socialist parties” of Europe. This apparently contradictory scenario (by American standards) is now all too real in much of Europe, a fact driven home by the remarkable coincidence of the book’s publication on the very same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacres in Paris.

 

Once in power, the new regime (dominated by the same Muslim Brotherhood which former President Obama favored until it was overthrown by massive demonstrations in Egypt) introduces, with socialist agreement, obligations upon women to wear the veil in public, withdraw from public life, accept polygymy and end any openly secular public education or teaching by non-Muslims.

 

 

The Chosen” (El Elegido), 2016, written and directed by Antonio Chavarrias and produced on site in Mexico, and “Sarajevo” (Das Attentat), an historical drama by Austrian director Andreas Prochaska, starring Florian Teichtmeister and Edin Hasanovic. “Sarajevo” was produced in 2014 by both German and Austrian television to coincide with the one hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I.

 

He knows that he is under a deadline to complete his investigation and find the culprits among the Serbian government and ultra-nationalist Serbian or Pan-Slavic organizations that provided moral, financial, material, and technical support from Belgrade to the perpetrators.

 

 

Genius.” Einstein, like Pfeffer, was under pressure not to give prominence to the work done by Maleva, his Serbian wife. This was also his own attitude and that of his Jewish family members who feared for their position as the “favored” minority compared to the Slavic peoples under domination in both Austria and Germany.

 

 

The local police force in charge of the security arrangements numbered only a hundred and twenty policemen placed along the route that the royal party was scheduled (announced in advance) to follow the military authorities kept 70,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers then in Sarajevo in their barracks. The very day of the visit by the Archduke and Duchess was Vidounan, a Serbian day of mourning that commemorated the day Serbnian loss of the historic battle of Amselfelde in 1358 which lead to five centuries of Turkish/Muslim rule. A visit by the heir apparent to the Hapsburg throne was therefore widely regarded as akin to rubbing salt into their wounds.

 

 

 

 (including his life), in service Stalin. He is taught to ignore every human emotion of compassion and decency. Mercader’s dedication is demonstrated by willingly killing his favorite pet dog on command from the NKVD.

 

 

 

—one, the last gasps of a 19th century empire on its last legs, and the other the ultimate Soviet debasement of their perverse ideals.

 

 

—not for another woman, but for Stalin! She unwittingly becomes an accomplice to the murder of her beloved Trotsky, leader of the idealistic cause to which she was devoted. The crime takes on the character of a double murder.

 

Would events have transpired differently if Sylvia and Pfeffer had not been Jewish? This is a matter of conjecture but the list of misplaced Jewish idealism for remote non-Jewish causes, leaders, and nations is a very long one.

 

My reaction is born of the eleven years I spent in Israel and the realization that Zionism is the one ideal that succeeded due to the incredible devotion and sacrifice of four generations of Jewish heroes and leaders that justified the devotion of their followers.

 

Reading Submission, one is struck by memories of the Vichy regime and the fate of the Jews, notably the many Diaspora idealists who rejected Zionism as too provincial, and believed that their fate was inevitably tied with the success of some grand universalist ideology such as Communism, or believed that their fate depended on complete identification with the culture and national ideals of their adopted homelands.

 

 

Later, he convinces himself that he can nevertheless live a more comfortable life if he simply goes with the flow and reaches the convenient choice that what he gains is much more important at his stage of life than what he could lose by resisting.

 

 

Myriam, pushed by her parents, took the plunge and came to realize where she belonged without apology. She avoided the dilemmas, the contempt or pity that would have been her lot by remaining in a Muslim majority France. She made the right choice, leaving Francois behind to envy her sense of fulfillment in Israel.

 

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Norman Berdichevsky is the author of The Left is Seldom Right and Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language.
 

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Norman Berdichevsky contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Blog. Click here to see all his contributions on which comments are welcome.