Where is it, the Diaspora? Everywhere on earth except, so they say, in Israel; and even then, one would have to look. In any case, if there were only Jews “in Diaspora,” in this spherical country identical to the planet, they would no longer be in diaspora. So that it is not the Jews who make the diaspora, but rather the reverse. For there to be a diaspora, there have to be Jews and Goys (one is supposed to say Goyim, but that sounds pedantic).
Where the matter gets complicated is that the latter do not consider themselves, for their part, as diasporic or, more plainly, as dispersed; they are “at home.” A situation that is, moreover, completely absurd; if Pierre and Paul are both, for example, at Paul’s place, it goes without saying that by definition Pierre too is at Paul’s place, as we have just said. Most fortunately, the majority of Goys could not care less about this sort of problem, of whose very existence they are unaware. Nonetheless, there are those who are quite simply antisemites, even though that is not so “simple.” And then there are the Goys who have lived their whole lives with Jews and frequented Judaism; one day, they find themselves promoted to a strange condition, that of the Goy in diaspora. A Goy because it cannot be improvised: just try changing your name when your name is Martin or Dubois. But “in diaspora” all the same, because in the long run, it is catching; besides, it is a question of pure logic: take any old Goy, make him live almost exclusively in a Jewish milieu, and it is he who will adopt Jewish ways of feeling, of thinking, of acting. Behold him doubly in diaspora. One, as a false Jew among the Goys. Two, as a Goy among the Jews. Suppose now that a review takes up the question of Jewish identity. Perhaps grasping what it is to be non-Jewish may be of use to the non-Goys.
Everyone knows perfectly well, however, that it is more complicated, that it is quite the contrary, and that the relation is far from being symmetrical and reversible. The Jew in diaspora is contested, he is other. People (or he) arrange to put him (himself) in situations where he will have to show himself “non-other,” while knowing, when necessary, how to remain other. For the Goy in diaspora (among the Jews), it is altogether different: should he make the smallest effort to understand the Jewish situation or Judaism, this is joyfully credited to his account. But if he displays ignorances or incomprehensions, after all it is not his fault: it is already so nice of him to have performed a mitswa [a good deed, a commandment fulfilled].
Look at the years of the Nazi occupation: one Jew helps another to save himself, and we find that normal, obvious, banal. A Goy helps a Jew: we sing his praises, we write a book, we make a television program. And yet the one and the other performed the same gesture of solidarity. Provisional conclusion: it is more gratifying to be a Goy “in diaspora” than to be a Jew in diaspora (without quotation marks).
A New York friend once said to me: “I’m Jewish on my father’s side, Jewish on my mother’s side, but not at all on my own side.” (He wanted, moreover, to lead me astray, since it is one of the most Jewish stories I know.) But let us imagine the reverse case: Goy on my father’s side and on my mother’s side, but not entirely on my own side. Not entirely, because one must, despite everything, arrange to remain a little goy, otherwise one no longer benefits at all from this strange reversed-diasporic situation. If the shabbes Goy becomes Jewish, everything collapses, that goes without saying.
Three years ago, my doctor, a Yid of old stock, asked me why I, of all people, had had the idea that one ought to organize “Days of Yiddish Culture.” Since one must avoid answering one’s doctor with any old thing, I told him the truth: having lived my whole life in the plätzl, in the Marais, I was astonished that there should be in Paris Fest noz [Breton night festivals], Basque pelota championships, Auvergnat dances, Gardarem lou Larzac demonstrations, and nothing about “my”—with quotation marks—culture. He had a good laugh, but he treated me all the same.
And yet: take a newborn in Marseille. Don’t cheat, take him from a non-Jewish family, as they say. Carry him off and raise him in Strasbourg. At eight, at fifteen, he will make an Alsatian in perfect working order. So then? My doctor generally admitted the reality of the phenomenon of assimilation, but in one direction, not in the other. “Schwer tsou sein a Yid,”1 says an old proverb. Oy oy, noch schwerer tsou sein a Shabbes Goy2…
Obviously, the Goy in diaspora still exposes himself to difficulties that it would be dishonest to conceal. Before entering into diaspora, the Goy could have relatively clear certainties, at least about certain things; or it could happen to him to be capable of making a decision. Or else he could keep to his place, even leave others to theirs. Or again, when he found nothing to say about some subject or other, it happened to him to fall silent, and at the limit to listen. There are even Goys who cannot rid themselves of the nasty habit of answering a question with an answer! Or else again, when anything at all seemed incomprehensible to him, without plausible explanation, he did not necessarily make himself sick over it. In short, he was a relatively clear, simple, solid being, a bit frivolous perhaps, but on the whole taking life as it comes. It is alas all too certain that, once he has entered into diaspora (the boors say: once he has been Judaized), he is going to lose these nonetheless precious qualities. Worse: he will come one day to think that these qualities are defects! Little by little he will doubt everything, and himself to begin with. Decisive though he was, he will become hesitant. White seemed to him white, and black black. Finished: white will imperceptibly become for him either a mixture of all colors, or a mere appearance of whiteness behind which is concealed, according to some this, according to others that (I simplify in the extreme), or else white will appear in its intimate essence as the truth of black, just as black is, after all, the truth of white. Besides, it depends on the case: to feel well and to express well this infinite network of relations that are always ambiguous and often absurd is one of the great strides he will have to make to advance in diaspora. And then he will no longer find sleep until he has solved all the problems.
This program, to tell the truth, is weighed down by the fact that henceforth there are no longer, facing him, realities that are definable and masterable, for if each presents one side, that is surely proof that there exists yet at least another, and probably several, without the other side of this other side being for all that the same one that had been taken at the outset for the unique or principal side. But, on the other hand, this other side is itself said to be other than the first, probably in order to deceive us and to sink us into the conviction that the first side is really the first. Unless, as is often the case, some other or other of the other sides, concealed behind the fallacious reductive antinomy of the first two sides, should furtively reveal itself as the other side of any one whatever of the other other-sides, so that the other side is no longer as other as one believed, and there is no longer any side at all that one can, if I dare say so, leave aside. How do you expect, in a situation moreover as crudely simplified as the one just evoked here, not to be at times hesitant? How not to go further still, in order to see clearly one day?
Nonetheless, with a little luck, the Goy will have had, before entering into diaspora, a little childhood in which he will perhaps not have been raised by a yiddishe mame [Jewish mother]. And that, that counts in a man’s life.
I would not wish basely to take advantage of a review that already has its hands full with the question: what is it to be Jewish? in order to pose the inverse and perverse question: what is it to be a Goy? Simply, let the semi-professional Goy that has been made of me be permitted to propose to the question what is it to be Jewish? his partial, provisional, superficial, empirical—but portable and effective—answer: to be Jewish is to gather in twos, threes, tens, or (exceptionally) two hundreds in order to pose the question what is it to be Jewish? One will note that when the Goys organized gatherings of this kind to question themselves about the difference between Jews and Goys, it gave rise to the Inquisition and Adolf Hitler. Because they had power, and that is very dangerous, power.
Before the first round of the 1981 presidential elections there was a great gathering at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, precisely on this theme: what is it to be Jewish? At the podium, Alain Finkielkraut and the television rabbi Josy Eisenberg. It was rather less bad than the acrobatics sessions of the same type I had attended. After two hours of fairly successful pilpoul,3 one arrived at the idea that to be Jewish is not to bow down before idols, is to be the bearer of the message of the priority of moral law over the event, etc. Curiously, the hall seemed astonished by this result: I thus arrived at the conclusion, the proportion of Jews in the hall hardly being likely to exceed 99%, that it was high time the People of the Book set about reading it. But the essential was not there. At the podium as in the audience, evidently—and proof of it was many an intervention on this question—the dominant preoccupation was to know which president was going to come out of the ballot boxes on May 10. A fine demonstration that, exacerbated Zionism and any isolationism notwithstanding, the diaspora situation does exist, and is indeed in touch with reality.
The Goy “in diaspora,” for his part, is in touch with the imaginary (without being an imaginary Goy). But this in a rather paradoxical way. Indeed, if he dreams that he is becoming Jewish, it is over, the charm is broken, nothing works anymore. He will be like those “fellow travelers,” of old, of the communist party; they had signed the Stockholm appeal, they were all nice and pretty. But should one of them, by aberration, join the Party, from one day to the next he found himself bawled out, exploited, muzzled, suspected on all sides. The important thing is to remain a Goy.
Or else then, our Goy in diaspora dreams that everyone becomes a Goy. Well then the whole world turns dull, insipid, banal, conformist. It is universal dishwater, such a catastrophe that it is better not to think about it. The salt of the earth, yes. Salt without the earth is already a bit hard. But the earth without salt, what on earth could that be? Fortunately, it does not exist. Go on, deny God!
There remains, then, only one solution, the messianic dream. Renewed, renovated, modernized of course (and even post-modernized, if possible), but always messianic at bottom. Remember—and I address myself here to my Jewish readers, if I am to have any—remember that our Goy was born a Goy. You cannot imagine what that is. If by an additional misfortune he was raised in a Christian family, it was explained to him that the world is saved, that the Messiah has come. Make an effort to understand that. It is difficult, but one must. If, then, our Goy manages to convince himself that all is not for the best, if despite everything he continues to hope (and that, that is typically goy), he is going to find in Judaism exactly what he is looking for, with a few adjustments, whether in religious thought or outside it: an expectation ceaselessly prolonged, and moral certainties that the denials brought by reality reinforce instead of undermining (and that, that is typically Jewish). Committing then an error akin to, but in the opposite direction from, that of the antisemites—who confuse Judaism as culture with Jews taken one by one as persons—he is going to settle quite contentedly into his diaspora, become the site of a manifold comfort.
Non-Jewish, he is the object of no segregation in society at large. But neither is he ever charged with marginalism, still less with treason, in his milieu of adoption. Non-Goy, he knows where to find the best gefilte fish, he is excused from working on Saturday, and if he gets blisters on his feet at the Copernic demonstrations, his Jewish friends will offer him talcum powder. The right to difference is transmuted for him into a right to identity; this identity that he changes without changing its card; this identity that he usurps without ever incurring indifference.
Plurielles is doubtless not the ideal platform from which to launch an appeal to the Goys. But where else to do it? Since a Goy you are and a Goy you will remain, come into diaspora, you will have all its advantages, and none of its drawbacks. Read the Torah, Spinoza, Freud, Cholem Aleichem and Bashevis Singer, Levinas, Konopnicki or even Adorno, go see the films of Woody Allen, listen to Schönberg, Yehudi Menuhin and Ben Zimet, ask for more goose sausage (without forgetting the gherkin), learn fifteen words of Yiddish and, out of courtesy, at least three of Judeo-Spanish. You will see, it is not so difficult, you will manage it. Mazel tov! Mazel tov!
[Excerpt from the review Traces, no. 2, 2nd half of 1981.]
Postscript: I reread this little text twenty-three years after having written it. There is nothing to change. Perhaps two small things to add.
The first: why did “our” Goy put himself in diaspora? Answer: does he hope to meet fewer antisemites in non-goy circles? That is probable; even though…
The second: it would be dishonest not to point out that the Goy in question does not always share the attitude of the non-Goys he frequents, with regard to the State of Israel. He (the Goy) has the unfortunate propensity to consider that this State is a State like the others, that is to say with its military men, its geniuses and its idiots, its sages and its whores, its right and its left, its flag and its embassies, etc. It is quite obvious that the non-goys think all this too, but with one nuance: for the Goy, Israel is, on all these points, a country like the others. For the non-goys, at least those of the left, Israel would be rather the only country to be like all the others. This can be felt, but it cannot be explained.