Hitchens and Amis define philosemitism
By: David Labi
The erudite eloquence of the protagonists is indisputable. Luxurious at times. They both lounged languidly smoking possibly more cigarettes than they might have done had it not formed part of their public personae (judging by the frequent coughs), and drinking what, for all we knew, could have been apple juice, in Dean Martinesque stagemanship.
As many of the capacity crowd of Jewish intelligensia had probably guessed, Saul Bellow was merely a hook to get these two fascinating old friends on stage together for a chat. They dealt fairly rapidly with the recently deceased Nobel Laureate and personal friend (at least of Amis) before segueing into various other topics interesting to the ‘philosemite’, especially its antagonistic opposite without which it could never have come into being: antisemitism.
Amis had begun the session with a zippy profile of his own (self-coined) philosemitism. He held up his Jewish wife and ergo Jewish daughters as evidence and quipped about his father’s ‘mild antisemitism’. (On asking Kingsley, the famous novelist, how it felt to be a mild antisemite, his father had replied ‘Mild.’) After this he was somewhat more reserved than Hitchens, which is understandable given his career is primarily as a writer and academic, whilst the Hitch has built himself a solid reputation as someone with an enormous mouth. He delighted everyone with an array of polemical pronouncements, such as his assertion that the Muslims and Christians would never get over the fact that their prophets had both first been rejected as false by the Jews.
One could sense everyone’s pulses a-flutter at mentions of the injustices that Jews suffer daily. George Steiner’s idea that every Jew should have a bag packed under the bed (though as the Hitch pointed out, ‘where would they go?’) is something that many Jewish people relish. We currently live in peace and equality in the UK, but this is supposedly a barely tenable facade that will sooner or later flake and crumble, revealing with a brutal shock Dreyfus’s France, post-Weimar Germany, Tsarist Russia.
I asked a question on this point whose grammar was insulted by the Hitch, and whose meaning was misunderstood by both men. Amis had said that antisemitism is an obsession for antisemites. I pointed out that it is also an obsession for philosemites, and for the particular Semites in question. Isn’t it dangerous, I tried to ask, for Jewish people to identify themselves through their fear and analysis of antisemitism?
Admittedly my question was clumsily phrased, but many people approached me after the talk to tell me that they had understood the question even though Amis and the Hitchmeister had not. One person observed it was ‘telling’ that they had not.
The reason they did not understand the point was because they are not Jews. There, I’ve said it. Ok, Christopher Hitchens is Jewish, but discovered it late in life. I am not saying they cannot comment on antisemitism because they were not brought up as Jews. In fact they can and did comment very perceptively on antisemitism in its different mutations. On Bellow as the first Jewish artist to really enter the Jewish dialogue into the cultural consciousness of a United States that was and is latently antisemitic.
What I am saying is that it is only Jewish people who could be sensitive to the fact that 80% (say) of Jewish reporting, 80% of the comments Jewish families make at their dinner table, 80% of Jewish consciousness seems to be comment or reaction to some symptom of antisemitism; to the glimpse of the leering Cossack under the face of every non-Jew in the world.
With the liberal left agenda so obsessed with Israel, and with many of our contemporaries making no distinction between Jews and Israel, nor between Israel as a country and the actions of its government, philosemitism is actually a political posture. It certainly is for the Hitch, who makes a great figure for himself out of supporting war on Iraq, opposing the crazed union of liberal left and radical fundamentalists that Nick Cohen is busy challenging in his new book ‘What’s Left’.
Don’t think I didn’t enjoy the erudite humour and perceptive points that flowed between Amis and Hitchens. They expertly drew from classical and modern philosophy, from the canon of literature, to garnish their points. They were funny, charming and Hitchens in particular fascinating to listen to for the appreciation of his rhetoric.
But what does it mean for two celebrated academics and polemicists to come before a mass of arty Jews and pronounce themselves philosemites? The only reason they would use that term is as a reaction to antisemitism. And they proceeded to define their philosemitism as just that – a talk supposedly on Bellow quickly leaped into a condemnation of antisemitism, which no doubt warmed the Kosher cockles in the auditorium. For Eliot and Joyce the Jew was an artistic symbol of cultural degradation. But now the Jew seems to be a political symbol of the clash between East and West. Always like to be in the middle, don’t we?
David Labi is a Jewish writer and filmmaker living in Buenos Aires and London.
The erudite eloquence of the protagonists is indisputable. Luxurious at times. They both lounged languidly smoking possibly more cigarettes than they might have done had it not formed part of their public personae (judging by the frequent coughs), and drinking what, for all we knew, could have been apple juice, in Dean Martinesque stagemanship.
As many of the capacity crowd of Jewish intelligensia had probably guessed, Saul Bellow was merely a hook to get these two fascinating old friends on stage together for a chat. They dealt fairly rapidly with the recently deceased Nobel Laureate and personal friend (at least of Amis) before segueing into various other topics interesting to the ‘philosemite’, especially its antagonistic opposite without which it could never have come into being: antisemitism.
Amis had begun the session with a zippy profile of his own (self-coined) philosemitism. He held up his Jewish wife and ergo Jewish daughters as evidence and quipped about his father’s ‘mild antisemitism’. (On asking Kingsley, the famous novelist, how it felt to be a mild antisemite, his father had replied ‘Mild.’) After this he was somewhat more reserved than Hitchens, which is understandable given his career is primarily as a writer and academic, whilst the Hitch has built himself a solid reputation as someone with an enormous mouth. He delighted everyone with an array of polemical pronouncements, such as his assertion that the Muslims and Christians would never get over the fact that their prophets had both first been rejected as false by the Jews.
One could sense everyone’s pulses a-flutter at mentions of the injustices that Jews suffer daily. George Steiner’s idea that every Jew should have a bag packed under the bed (though as the Hitch pointed out, ‘where would they go?’) is something that many Jewish people relish. We currently live in peace and equality in the UK, but this is supposedly a barely tenable facade that will sooner or later flake and crumble, revealing with a brutal shock Dreyfus’s France, post-Weimar Germany, Tsarist Russia.
I asked a question on this point whose grammar was insulted by the Hitch, and whose meaning was misunderstood by both men. Amis had said that antisemitism is an obsession for antisemites. I pointed out that it is also an obsession for philosemites, and for the particular Semites in question. Isn’t it dangerous, I tried to ask, for Jewish people to identify themselves through their fear and analysis of antisemitism?
Admittedly my question was clumsily phrased, but many people approached me after the talk to tell me that they had understood the question even though Amis and the Hitchmeister had not. One person observed it was ‘telling’ that they had not.
The reason they did not understand the point was because they are not Jews. There, I’ve said it. Ok, Christopher Hitchens is Jewish, but discovered it late in life. I am not saying they cannot comment on antisemitism because they were not brought up as Jews. In fact they can and did comment very perceptively on antisemitism in its different mutations. On Bellow as the first Jewish artist to really enter the Jewish dialogue into the cultural consciousness of a United States that was and is latently antisemitic.
What I am saying is that it is only Jewish people who could be sensitive to the fact that 80% (say) of Jewish reporting, 80% of the comments Jewish families make at their dinner table, 80% of Jewish consciousness seems to be comment or reaction to some symptom of antisemitism; to the glimpse of the leering Cossack under the face of every non-Jew in the world.
With the liberal left agenda so obsessed with Israel, and with many of our contemporaries making no distinction between Jews and Israel, nor between Israel as a country and the actions of its government, philosemitism is actually a political posture. It certainly is for the Hitch, who makes a great figure for himself out of supporting war on Iraq, opposing the crazed union of liberal left and radical fundamentalists that Nick Cohen is busy challenging in his new book ‘What’s Left’.
Don’t think I didn’t enjoy the erudite humour and perceptive points that flowed between Amis and Hitchens. They expertly drew from classical and modern philosophy, from the canon of literature, to garnish their points. They were funny, charming and Hitchens in particular fascinating to listen to for the appreciation of his rhetoric.
But what does it mean for two celebrated academics and polemicists to come before a mass of arty Jews and pronounce themselves philosemites? The only reason they would use that term is as a reaction to antisemitism. And they proceeded to define their philosemitism as just that – a talk supposedly on Bellow quickly leaped into a condemnation of antisemitism, which no doubt warmed the Kosher cockles in the auditorium. For Eliot and Joyce the Jew was an artistic symbol of cultural degradation. But now the Jew seems to be a political symbol of the clash between East and West. Always like to be in the middle, don’t we?
David Labi is a Jewish writer and filmmaker living in Buenos Aires and London.
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