By GEORGE STEINER [Telerama] – Between August 1914 and May 1945, Europe, the area that extends from Madrid to Moscow, and from Copenhagen to Palermo, lost close to 80 million human beings to wars, deportations, concentration camps, famines, and bombardments. The fact that it continued to exist is a miracle. But its resurrection was only a partial one.
Today Europe is undergoing a dramatic crisis; it is in the process of sacrificing a generation, a generation of young people, who do not believe in the future. When I was young, people had all kinds of hopes: communism and how it was to be achieved. Fascism, which, let’s make no mistake, is also a hope. And for Jews there was also Zionism. There were so many hopes, and we no longer have any of them. And if in your youth you cannot be inspired by hopes, even illusory ones, then what is left? Nothing.
The messianic dream of socialism brought us the Gulag and François Hollande – I am referring to his name as a symbol, no personal criticism intended. Facism degenerated into horror. The survival of the state of Israel is imperative, but its nationalism is a tragedy that is profoundly opposed to the Jewish spirit, which is cosmopolitan. As for myself, I want to be a wanderer. My life has been inspired by the great 18th century rabbi, Baal Shem Tov who said: “Truth is always in exile.”
Continued in abridged translation at Presseurop | Original at Telerama | More Chronicle & Notices.
