I had a strange dream…

I don’t know what happened. But I woke up today, and the only thing that kept spinning in my mind was a metaphor. It was a motion picture. Of mostly dark-skinned people fussing around in an overcrowded corridor of some really Soviet style, with green and white walls and nothing on them. Very narrow. People are sitting and standing, and chatting, and I get the feeling that it lasts, lasted and will last forever. Some are running past the others. Noise. Rush. Turmoil.

The metaphor – you are thinking. What was the metaphor about? And it was pretty clear in my sleep-shaken mind: it was a metaphor for the state of Israel and the eternal fate of its people. Jammed into this very narrow space, where they have to solve all their internal problems, they are passed and surrounded by the Arabic states and people. They are not really enemy-like, but they are different from them. So they have to put up with it. Till the end of time.

Disraeli Trip

I was shortly researching on Benjamin Disraeli, or actually D’Israeli, and I found several interesting things which were relevant to my own, personal answers-search.

Benjamin Disraeli, the first Jew in the British Parliament, though he wasn’t really involved into any Jewish social work in the narrow sense, surely occupied himself with Jewishness. After all he was confronted with the fact that it wasn’t really easy to come further being a Jew in a British society of the 19th century.

He was baptized. But after that he still remained a Jew…

Disraeli mocked “Christians” and their “antisemitism” by saying,

“Half of Christendom worships a Jewess, and the other half, a Jew.”

I loved that!

What is being Jewish?

Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me this “eternal question”, WHO in your opinion IS JEWISH? In the sense of the definition. What is the definition of a Jew? Have you ever looked into some dictionaries? That must be really interesting. But it will be the NEXT thing I do.

Now, I wanted to show you one passage from a book I was by chance having in my hands searching for some other issues. The author touches this topic in a scientifically-poetic way, at least my perception. I had to read it several times and I am still not sure I understand every idea.

“In einem strengen Sinne gibt es für jüdisches Bewußtsein weder einen Gottes- noch einen Menschen-Begriff. Die Zukünftigkeit des Messias ist nichts anderes als die temporalisierte Form der Unsichtbarkeit des menschlichen Antlitzes Gottes. Man kann sehr wohl mit dem Ewigen sprechen; aber ihn begreifen, gar theo-logisieren zu wollen wäre absurd. Und ebenso bleibt dem Judentum das Delphische gnotiseauton radikal fremd. Exakt hierin liegt u.a. die Bedeutung der Rede vom „Gottesvolk“. Es gibt keinen Juden „an sich und für sich“. Jüdischsein heißt, in die Schicksalsgemeinschaft des Gottesvolks hineingeboren zu sein. Wer als Jude sich selbst erkennen, einen Begriff des reinen, absoluten Selbst gewinnen und bloßer Mensch unter Menschen sein will, der wird als Jude zum Jesus Christ. Und er wird es nur dadurch wirklich, dass er an die Stelle der vorschriftlichen „autobiographischen“ Synthesis der Liebe eine Liebesbothschaft und den Willen zum Gekreuzigtsein setzt.”
(Christoph Miething. Zeitgenössische jüdische Autobiographien in Italien. In: Zwischen Adaption und Exil,Brigitte Sändig. Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001, Wiesbaden)

That would be one of the possible answers to this question, where I would humbly agree.

Layla tov!

Why?

This is the first question I am asking myself… Why am I so interested in Jewish… Jewish…? I even don’t really know what. Jewish-ness… I called the abstract thing this way. Jewish history. Jewish culture. Jewish mentality? I am starting this in order to find out myself WHY… Shalom!