[Marxism] Jewish history

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nation Magazine (December 19, 2005 issue)
The Chosen People
Daniel Lazare

REVIEWED HERE:

The Jewish Century
by Yuri Slezkine
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A History of the Jews in the Modern World
by Howard M. Sachar
BUY THIS BOOK

Eventually, nearly every discussion of the Jews, pro or con, sympathetic or 
hostile, gets around to their alleged singularity. Twelve or thirteen 
centuries ago, when everyone from the Indus to the Atlantic was choosing 
sides between the crescent and the cross, the Jews were sticking to a path 
all their own, studying their own books, formulating their own laws and 
rejecting everyone else's. They were stubborn, clannish and standoffish, 
and even when they stopped wearing those funny clothes in the modern era 
and tried to blend in--especially when they tried to blend in--something 
about them remained at odds with the larger society. In W. Somerset 
Maugham's marvelous short story "The Alien Corn," the narrator finds 
himself at lunch with a wealthy Jewish family in their picture-perfect 
country estate:

    I was the only Gentile at the table. All but old Lady Bland spoke 
perfect English, yet I could not help feeling that they did not speak like 
English people; I think they rounded their vowels more than we do, they 
certainly spoke louder, and the words seemed not to fall, but to gush from 
their lips. I think if I had been in another room where I could hear the 
tone but not the words of their speech I should have thought it was in a 
foreign language that they were conversing. The effect was slightly 
disconcerting.

Outwardly the Blands (né the Bleikogels) were very much the same, but 
inwardly they were not. Of course, one might reply that it was the English, 
with their elaborate class distinctions, who were slightly disconcerting. 
But Fitzgerald and Hemingway made more or less the same point, so there had 
to be something to it. All agreed that the Jews were out of place wherever 
they went. They were nowhere at home because nowhere was their home. They 
were different.

full: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051219/lazare

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