Against The Evil Of The Banal
You are quite right –– I am not moved by any ‘love’ of this sort, and for two reasons: I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective –– neither the German people, nor the French, nor the American, nor the working class or anything of that sort. I indeed love ‘only’ my friends and the only kind of love I know of and believe in is the love of persons. Secondly, this ‘love of the Jews’ would appear to me, since I am myself Jewish, as something rather suspect. I cannot love myself or anything which I know is part and parcel of my own person. To clarify this, let me tell you of a conversation I had in Israel with a prominent political personality who was defending the – in my opinion disastrous –– non-separation of religion and state in Israel. What [ she ] said –– I am not sure of the exact words any more – ran something like this: ‘You will understand that, as a socialist, I, of course, do not believe in God; I believe in the Jewish people.’ I found this a shocking statement and, being too shocked, I did not reply at the time. But I could have answered: the greatness of this people was once that it believed in God, and believed in Him in such a way that its trust and love towards Him was greater than its fear. And now this people believes only in itself ? What good can come out of that ? Well, in this sense I do not ‘love’ the Jews, nor do I ‘believe’ in them; I merely belong to them as a matter of course, beyond dispute or argument.
Also… from the same publication, an amusing glance at feel-good morality when it contemplates atrocity by persons it disapproves of, Effing the Ineffable.
Of course, the proponents of the antithetical beerier type of incontinent love of folk are the most apt to promote sacrifice for the religious object of love; group, gods, or even person — carefully ignoring the fact that no sacrifice except one’s individual own can have the faintest value howsoever that value is defined… Only an Imbecile God — perhaps Azathoth — can prize the stench of some burnt offering.
‘We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war’.
* Actually, another source gives this as Susanna Bathing *shrugs*
This is one of the most beautiful and inspiring Bible stories that ever instructed happy infants in a Sunday School. ** Still, since the story of the idiot Jephtha is apposite here, I’ll stick to that attribution…
**
The Jewish people had been exiled to Babylon, but their captors allowed them to retain their customs and laws. Two elders who had been appointed judges met to adjudicate disputes in a spacious and pleasant home, where Susanna lived with her husband and children. One day, the two licentious elders spied on Susanna bathing in her garden. Inflamed with lust, they tried to coerce her to lie with them, but the virtuous beauty said she would rather die than offend the Lord by committing adultery.Infuriated, the elders claimed that they had seen Susanna lying with a young man in her garden. She was being led to the execution ground when the Holy Spirit inspired the young prophet Daniel to suggest that the elders be questioned separately. What sort of tree were Susanna and her lover lying under? When one named a mastic tree and the other an oak, Susanna was vindicated and the elders were dragged to execution.
Cursorily, one can say, virtually any act among the Hebrews was liable to get one killed.
