Language:
English
Year of publication:
2015
Titel der Quelle:
Modern Judaism
Angaben zur Quelle:
35,1 (2015) 42-65
Keywords:
Sebastian, Mihail,
;
Ionescu, Nae,
;
Antisemitism History 20th century
Abstract:
When writing his novel "For Two Thousand Years", in which he pondered on the possibility of maintaining a double identity - Jewish and Romanian, Mihail Sebastian asked his mentor, Prof. Nae (Nicolae) Ionescu, to write the preface. Toward the time that the novel was published (1934), Ionescu changed his political orientation and joined the extreme right Iron Guard. Therefore, the preface was coarsely anti-Jewish, contrasting with the contents of the novel. Ionescu denied the possibility of being Romanian to the Jews and, in theological terms, argued that the Jews were doomed to suffer and were denied redemption. He claimed that the incompatibility between Christians and Jews would end only when one of the two religions disappears. The preface triggered a fierce literary controversy, in which several leading Romanian intellectuals took part, among them Mircea Eliade, Gheorghe Racoveanu, and Mircea Vulcănescu. Despite the fact that Sebastian in the novel shunned religious matters, the controversy went along theological lines. All of the participants in the controversy, including Sebastian himself, showed an ignorance of Judaism and contemporary Jewish culture. Believes that, as a Jew remote from Jewish tradition, Sebastian could not be regarded as a spokesman for all of Romanian Jewry. His attempt to defend publicly his right to a "hyphenated" identity in Greater Romania, where the intelligentsia endeavored to create a homogenized Romanian culture, was doomed to failure.
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