According to Rubenstein, however, Nietzsche’s crucial insight for modern Jews was that he helped them to see something latent in their own faith and history: the Jew as eternal wanderer. Rubenstein not only argued that Auschwitz simply laid bare the terrible vision Nietzsche presented of a world adrift, of a people cut loose from the anchors of faith and scripture as hallmarks of modernity, but also asserted that this was part of the Jews’ diasporic experience, deep in their own history. Furthermore, unlike Christians, Jews had been theological wanderers all along: their messiah never came.
