uoi de neuf?  L’antisémitisme en France.  On peut très bien dire que l’antisémitisme fait partie de la vie en France.  C'est-à-dire tout simple qu’un juif doit être attentif.  Il ne peut pas se mettre complètement à l’aise.  La raison ?  Une hostilité sans fin parmi les Musulmans contre les juifs.  Pas tout Musulmans, bien sûr.  Ce n’est jamais tout qui fait quelque chose.  En France, le juif doit être conscient d’être juif.  Alors, Jean-Paul Sartre avait raison lorsqu’il a dit qu’il est l’antisémite qui fait le juif. 

D’une part, un juif ne sait jamais quand cette hostilité va se déclencher.  D’autre part, il ne sait jamais si les Français seront là pour lui—même s’ils vont reconnaitre telle ou telle acte d’agression contre lui.  D’une certaine manière, j’ai l’impression que la France pour les juifs aujourd’hui est devenue comme l’Amérique était pour les noirs pendant les années 50.  À vrai dire, c’est mieux pour les juifs en France.  Mais pas assez mieux.  Donc, celui qui peut faire un allez et retour da sa domicile, même s’il le fait en pleine ville, sans devenir une cible de l’antisémitisme peut très bien dire « Bénit soit son Nom ». 

~    ~     ~

In the space of just a few days, there have been two quite horrendous antisemtic attacks: one against a female in Marseille, the other against a rabbi in Paris itself.  These attacks took place in broad days light.  And that is, in part, precisely what makes French antisemitism so worrisome. 

Nowadays, we all have the commonsense to be careful in moving about at night.  This is especially so if we are alone.  However, there is that we have difficulty abandoning the idea that broad day light provides a measure of protection because no one would really be so bold as to do that which is horrendous when it would be readily visible to the naked-eye.  That is the thought that anyone naturally has in the United States.  That is the thought that anyone naturally has in France. 

Alas, it would seem that in both countries the thought needs to be abandoned.   And in France this holds more so for Jews than for any other group of individuals. 

Thus, it is particularly significant that a rabbi was attacked at a major train station.  Gare de Nord in Paris is roughly the equivalent of Grand Central in New York City.  If a rabbi, no less, is not safe walking about in Paris’s Gare de Nord during the middle of the day, then France has a major problem.  After all, even little old ladies, if you will permit me a stereotype, typically suppose that it is safe for them given that social context. 

But rabbis are not little old ladies.  And that, painfully, is just the point.  In all likelihood, a little old lady would be safe, whereas a rabbi has to wonder.  The rabbi’s attacker is a black man.

The woman in Marseille, in addition to having her Star of David necklace ripped from her neck, had a swastika painted on her stomach.  This should explain my remark in French (paragraph 2) that life that for Jews in France nowadays reminds me of what life was like for blacks in the United States during the 50s. 

Together, the present hostilities in France and the United States point to something extremely terrible and frightening, namely the fact that victims of oppression seem to have no qualms whatsoever about oppressing others.  And this truth, in turn, raises very deep questions about the moral psychology of human beings.

It was once thought that being a victim of suffering pretty much insured that one would stay one’s hand against harming others, precisely because one was so utterly repulsed by gratuitous suffering.  Hence, one would never want one’s own body to be an instrument of such violence.

Unfortunately, this would appear not to be the case.  Most of the horrendous acts of violence perpetrated in major cities nowadays is perpetrated by individuals who have themselves in one way or another known suffering.  It is this reality that I cannot fathom.