Slovak patriots. The only Europeans in the whole of Europe in the 1920s
and 1930s were the Jews. My father always used to say: In Czechoslovakia there are three nations, the Czechs, the Slovaks, and the Czecho-Slovaks, i.e., the Jews; in Yugoslavia there are Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Montenegrines, but, even there, there lives a group of unmistakable Yugoslavs; and even in Stalin's empire there are Russians, there are Ukrainians, and there are Uzbeks and Chukchis and Tatars, and among them are our brethren, the only real members of a
Soviet
nation.
Europe has now changed completely, and is full of Europeans from wall to wall. Incidentally, the graffiti in Europe have also changed from wall to wall. When my father was a young man in Vilna, every wall in Europe said, "Jews go home to Palestine." Fifty years later, when he went back to Europe on a visit, the walls all screamed, "Jews get out of Palestine."
Uncle Joseph spent many years writing his magnum opus on Jesus of Nazareth, in which he maintained—to the amazement of Christians and Jews alike—that Jesus was born and died a Jew and never intended to found a new religion. Moreover, he considered him to be "
the
Jewish moralist
par excellence.
" Ahad Ha'am pleaded with Klausner to delete this and other sentences, to avoid unleashing a colossal scandal in the Jewish world, as indeed happened both among Jews and among Christians when the book was published in Jerusalem in 1921: the ultras accused him of having "accepted bribes from the missionaries to sing the praises of That Man," while the Anglican missionaries in Jerusalem demanded that the archbishop dismiss Dr. Danby, the missionary who had translated
Jesus of Nazareth
into English, as it was a book that was "tainted with heresy, in that it portrays our Saviour as a kind of Reform rabbi, as a mortal, and as a Jew who has nothing at all to do with the Church." Uncle Joseph's international reputation was acquired mainly from this book and from the sequel that followed some years later,
From Jesus to Paul.
Once Uncle Joseph said to me: "At your school, my dear, I imagine they teach you to loathe that tragic and wonderful Jew, and I only hope that they do not teach you to spit every time you go past his image or his cross. When you are older, my dear, read the New Testament, despite your teachers, and you will discover that this man was flesh of our flesh
and bone of our bone, he was a kind of wonder-working Jewish pietist, and although he was indeed a dreamer, lacking any political understanding whatever, yet he has his place in the pantheon of great Jews, beside Baruch Spinoza, who was also excommunicated. Know this: those who condemn me are yesterday's Jews, narrow-minded, ineffectual worms. And you, my dear, to avoid ending up like them, must read good books—read, reread, and read again! And now, would you be kind enough to ask Mrs. Klausner, dear Aunt Zippora, where the skin cream is? The cream for my face? Please tell her, the old cream, because the new cream is not fit to feed to a dog. Do you know, my dear, the huge difference between the 'redeemer' in Gentile languages and our messiah? The messiah is simply someone who has been anointed with oil: every priest or king in the Bible is a messiah, and the Hebrew word 'messiah' is a thoroughly prosaic and everyday word, closely related to the word for face cream—unlike in the Gentile languages, where the messiah is called Redeemer and Savior. Or are you still too young to understand this lesson? If so, run along now and ask your aunt what I asked you to ask her. What was it? I've forgotten. Can you remember? If so, ask her to be kind enough to make me a glass of tea, for, as Rav Huna says in
Tractate Pesahim
of the Babylonian Talmud, 'Whatever the master of the house tells you to do, do, except leave,' which I interpret as referring to tea leaves. I am only joking, of course. Now run along, my dear, and do not steal any more of my time, as all the world
and 1930s were the Jews. My father always used to say: In Czechoslovakia there are three nations, the Czechs, the Slovaks, and the Czecho-Slovaks, i.e., the Jews; in Yugoslavia there are Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Montenegrines, but, even there, there lives a group of unmistakable Yugoslavs; and even in Stalin's empire there are Russians, there are Ukrainians, and there are Uzbeks and Chukchis and Tatars, and among them are our brethren, the only real members of a
Soviet
nation.
Europe has now changed completely, and is full of Europeans from wall to wall. Incidentally, the graffiti in Europe have also changed from wall to wall. When my father was a young man in Vilna, every wall in Europe said, "Jews go home to Palestine." Fifty years later, when he went back to Europe on a visit, the walls all screamed, "Jews get out of Palestine."
Uncle Joseph spent many years writing his magnum opus on Jesus of Nazareth, in which he maintained—to the amazement of Christians and Jews alike—that Jesus was born and died a Jew and never intended to found a new religion. Moreover, he considered him to be "
the
Jewish moralist
par excellence.
" Ahad Ha'am pleaded with Klausner to delete this and other sentences, to avoid unleashing a colossal scandal in the Jewish world, as indeed happened both among Jews and among Christians when the book was published in Jerusalem in 1921: the ultras accused him of having "accepted bribes from the missionaries to sing the praises of That Man," while the Anglican missionaries in Jerusalem demanded that the archbishop dismiss Dr. Danby, the missionary who had translated
Jesus of Nazareth
into English, as it was a book that was "tainted with heresy, in that it portrays our Saviour as a kind of Reform rabbi, as a mortal, and as a Jew who has nothing at all to do with the Church." Uncle Joseph's international reputation was acquired mainly from this book and from the sequel that followed some years later,
From Jesus to Paul.
Once Uncle Joseph said to me: "At your school, my dear, I imagine they teach you to loathe that tragic and wonderful Jew, and I only hope that they do not teach you to spit every time you go past his image or his cross. When you are older, my dear, read the New Testament, despite your teachers, and you will discover that this man was flesh of our flesh
and bone of our bone, he was a kind of wonder-working Jewish pietist, and although he was indeed a dreamer, lacking any political understanding whatever, yet he has his place in the pantheon of great Jews, beside Baruch Spinoza, who was also excommunicated. Know this: those who condemn me are yesterday's Jews, narrow-minded, ineffectual worms. And you, my dear, to avoid ending up like them, must read good books—read, reread, and read again! And now, would you be kind enough to ask Mrs. Klausner, dear Aunt Zippora, where the skin cream is? The cream for my face? Please tell her, the old cream, because the new cream is not fit to feed to a dog. Do you know, my dear, the huge difference between the 'redeemer' in Gentile languages and our messiah? The messiah is simply someone who has been anointed with oil: every priest or king in the Bible is a messiah, and the Hebrew word 'messiah' is a thoroughly prosaic and everyday word, closely related to the word for face cream—unlike in the Gentile languages, where the messiah is called Redeemer and Savior. Or are you still too young to understand this lesson? If so, run along now and ask your aunt what I asked you to ask her. What was it? I've forgotten. Can you remember? If so, ask her to be kind enough to make me a glass of tea, for, as Rav Huna says in
Tractate Pesahim
of the Babylonian Talmud, 'Whatever the master of the house tells you to do, do, except leave,' which I interpret as referring to tea leaves. I am only joking, of course. Now run along, my dear, and do not steal any more of my time, as all the world
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