Why I Am a Jew Book

WHY I AM A JEW BY EDMOND FLEG TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY LOUISE WATERMAN WISE VITH A FOREWORD BY STEPHEN S. WISE NEW YORK BLOCK PUBLISHING COMPANY Tbe Jewish Book Concern 933 DEDICATED TO MY GRANDSON who is not yet born FOREWORD From time to time Jewish books come out of France which arrest the attention of the Jewish world. Such a book was Darmesteters Hebrew Prophets, the richness of the content equalled by the beauty of the style. Pallieres Unknown Sanctuary, not written by a Jew, came not very long ago as a revelation to those who had not heard of the thrilling quest of a sanctuary by one pre paring, as he imagined, for the Catholic priesthood. Each of these a document of the first importance The one an involuntary tribute by one Jewishly self exiled, the other the passionately eager song of a soul finding home at the altar of Judea. And recently another of the sons of French Jewry, Edmond Fleg, has renewed the unfading glory of the Franco-Judean literary tradition, which includes the immortal name of Rashi of Troyes. This glory seems to shine most brightly when Jewish life is at its darkest, for literature meaningful and rich is not so much the utterance of fullness of life, as the prophecy of a happier by a poorer age. Why I am a Jew, by Edmond Fleg, belongs to vii viii FOREWORD a series of little books published under the general title, Leurs Raisons. It is a chapter in an auto biography which includes The Child Prophet and, strange though this may sound, The Life of Moses. For Edmond Fleg is another of the Shomerim watchmen upon the tower, prophets of an unex pected renaissance in one of the oldest and, as it seemed, least vital of world Jewries, France. Why I am a Jew is an atypical narrative of a Jewish experience. The tale, written with Gallic charm and Hebraic warmth for an unborn grand child, is of the life of a Jewish child reared in the alienative atmosphere of an outwardly Orthodox but basically unobservant Jewish home. Comes the environment of secularism in school and college, which in a dominantly Christian world is deeply and pervasively Christian, and then LAffaire, the testing of France, though France knew it not, by the Dreyfus trial to France a test and for some great Jews, such as Herzl, Nordau and Fleg, revealing and cleansing. And yet for Fleg this was not enough, and in the arena of his innermost life battles remained to be fought, battles of the intel lectual life, wars of the spirit with the tempting hosts of doubt and cynicism. It was not easy to make his way back to that which in essence lay behind him. Escape tempted. Freedom beckoned. But the call of FOREWORD ix truth was most imperious to his soul. And in the end he suffered no lesser considerations than those of truth to govern his decision to take his place once again with his people. Since his return, he has given much to his peoples cause in a series of books, which are as vital as his re-born faith and his re-won loyalty. While yet a very young man, Fleg became eye witness in one of its earlier Congresses of the Zion ist, what shall we call it movement or cataclysm. And Fleg, prepared by much that had gone before, found therein not so much reason as justification, not so much proof as prophecy of the ultimate faith that became his own. There are books which are called epochal because they give rise to epochs. Why I am a Jew is epochal in another sense, in sum ming up an epoch in the life of Westernized, de ghettoized Jews who think as humans, philosophize as Westerners, feel as Jews. Over and beyond the closely knit reasoning for the faith that is in Fleg, his is a lyrical exultation over the faith that, finding good, he longs to hand on to childrens children. Mystic is his exaltation of a faith, which, because most simple and free from complexities and subtle ties, allows fullest play for that direct, immediate, unimpeded access to the Truth of Truths, which is the religion of his people...