The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

Of the people of Israel. Among the spectacles to which the next century invites us is the decision on the fate of the European Jews. . . . Every Jew has in the history of his fathers and grandfathers a mine of examples of the coldest composure and steadfastness in terrible situations. . . . There has been an effort to make them contemptible by treating them contemptibly for two thousand years and by barring them from access to all honors and everything honorable, thus pushing them that much deeper into the dirtier trades; and under this procedure they have certainly not become cleaner. But contemptible? They themselves have never ceased to believe in their calling to the highest things, and the virtues of all who suffer have never ceased to adorn them. The way in which they honor their fathers and their children and the rationality of their marriages and marital customs distinguish them above all Europeans. In addition, they knew how to create for themselves a feeling of power and eternal revenge out of those very trades which were abandoned to them (or to which they were abandoned); one must say, in excuse even of their usury, that without this occasional, agreeable, and useful torture of their despisers they could scarcely have persevered so long in respecting themselves. For our self-respect depends on our ability to repay the good as well as the bad. Moreover, their revenge does not easily push them too far; for they all have that freemindedness, of the soul too, to wh...