Thinking the Twentieth Century: Intellectuals and Politics in the Twentieth Century

by Tony Judt

in your Christian version of Jewish history, Jews—Christ-like—can only truly win when (or rather, after) they lose. If they appear to be victorious, to be gaining their ends (at someone else’s expense) there is a problem. But this otherwise elegant European appropriation of someone else’s story for quite other purposes raises complications. The first of these, as you rightly note, is that Israel is there. This is rather as though—allow me to offend you—Jesus Christ had been reincarnated as a rather venal but otherwise talented version of his former self: installed in a Jerusalem café, saying much the same things as he always used to and making his erstwhile persecutors feel guilty for crucifying him—even as they resent him deeply for reminding them of it. But think what that would mean. It would suggest that within short order—a mere generation or two—the uncomfortable recollection of Jesus’ suffering would be altogether effaced by the irritation aroused by his endless invocation of it.