Language:
English
Year of publication:
1990
Titel der Quelle:
Romanic Review
Angaben zur Quelle:
81,1 (1990) 130-136
Keywords:
Memmi, Albert
;
Finkielkraut, Alain
;
Sartre, Jean-Paul,
;
Antisemitism History 1945-
;
Jews History 1945-
;
Jews Identity
Abstract:
Describes the attitudes of these two French Jewish writers towards Jewish identity and antisemitism, and examines how Sartre's views influenced their writings. Although Memmi wished to correct the Sartrian definition of the Jew as the person whom Others consider to be Jewish, and presents positive aspects of Jewishness, he believes that the Jews are contaminated by the state of oppression in which they exist. While Sartre's solution to the "Jewish question" is a social revolution that would create a classless society, Memmi's solution is a Jewish state. Finkielkraut deconstructs the Sartrian notion of the Jew as Outsider. He himself did not experience oppression, and does not see antisemitism as a threat in France today. He develops an understanding of Judaism as a transcendence, something beyond the individual's identity. He reaches for a Jewish cultural identity detached from the ghetto mentality. His view of Israel is ambivalent: Israel both negates and perpetuates the myth of the persecuted Jew, for antisemitism has been reborn in the form of anti-Zionism.
Note:
Based on their responses to Sartre's "Réflexions sur la question juive".
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
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