Purely Commentary

Jacques Maritain: Recalling the Catholic
Philosopher's Condemnation of Anti-Semites

Lengthy obituaries and several editorial tributes ap-
peared in American newspapers in tribute to Jacques
Maritain after his death in Paris on April 28. It is sur-
prising that no attention was given to the eminent philos-
opher's views on anti-Semitism--opinions that received
preferred notice during the years of the liberation of Jews
from concentration camps and in the period when so much
needed to be done in the survivors' behalf when they
were being rehabilitated from displaced persons camps.
True, there was mention of the fact that Maritain
was reared in an •atmosphere of Liberal Protestantism;
that, in 1904, he married a fellow student, Raissa Oum'an-
coff, a Russian Jewess; that they, and Mme. Mari•ain's
sister Vera, were baptized June 11, 1906.
There were references to Maritain's having been in-
fluenced by Henri Bargson's socialism and philosophy of
intuition. But the stand Maritain took against anti-Sem-
itism seems to have been forgotten.
It is well to recall it because Jacques Maritain
emerged as one of the top Catholic laymen in the world;
because his influence in Catholic ranks gave him the
status of one who was "a pressure group of his own,"
and because Pope Paul VI had said: "I am a disciple of
Maritain. I call him my teacher."
In his day he was in the limelight. He had played
significant roles in interfaith activities and like so many
who propagate "good will" and produce minimal results
become suspect. For example, there was an announcement,
in late 1947:
"Prof. Jacques Maritain, philosopher and French
ambassador to the Vatican, has accepted the co-chair-
manship of the International Conference of Christians
and Jews."
In comment upon this, the Jewish Spectator issue of
January 1948 warned: "The release omitted that Prof.
Maritain is one of the most zealous and capable missionar-
ies of the Catholic church. Since he converted his wife,
Raissa Maritain, who was born into a good Polish Jewish
family, he has carried the message of the cross into many
Jewish groups. His books on the Jewish question likewise
expound It's conviction that the solution to the Jewish
problem Les—in joining the Catholic church. We are
going into these details for the benefit of the suckers.
who support the National Conference of Christians and
Jews. They should know that the conference, in its na-
tional and international setups, defines, by implication,
`good will' as the readiness of Jews to acknowledge
Jesus . . . "
It is too late to debate such points, and there is no
doubt that the branding of "good will" supporters as
"suckers" carries with it an unjustified stigma. Neverthe-
less, the Maritain record is worth reviewing, since he
had really exerted so much influence upon so many, in-
cluding Pope Paul and many statesmen as well as theo-
logians.
of primary interest is Maritain's stand on anti-Sem-
itsm. His views that were published in 1948 in Common-
weal, the Catholic laymen's weekly, were considered of
such great importance that the former Speaker of the
U. S. House of Representatives John W. McCormack in-
- serted the entire lengthy "Letter on Anti-Semitism" in
the Congressional Record, March 11, 1948.
Maritain's "Letter on Anti-Semitism" had been ad-
dressed to Dr. Pierre Visseur, an officer of the Interna-
tional Conference of Christians and Jews, on the eve of
a congress called by the conference that was held in
Seelisberg. Maritain could not attend and he wrote, ex-
pressing his views, at great length. In the course of his
polemic, Maritain stated, to cull just a few paragraphs
from the long letter:
"So long as a world which
adheres to Christian civili-
zation is not cured of anti-
Semitism, it will drag with
it a sin which will stand be-
tween it and recovery. For
the Jews ever remain be-
loved for the sake of their
forefathers, and it is the
mustery itself of the econ-
omy of Redemption—before
which Saint Paul fell to his
knees—that r a cis t hatred
and prejudices attack. Naz-
ism bared to our sight the
true face of anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism hides behind
an infinite variety of masks
and pretexts—but in truth
it is Jesus Christ whom it
seeks to strike, striking at
His race.
JACQUES MARITAIN
"Six million Jews have
been liquidated in Europe. the earth. And this bestial
Other human masses have hatred had eyes that could
been deliberately extermi- see beyond natural things.
nated, and by •the millions For truly it was the chosen
also, in the name of Lebens- quality of the Jews, truly it
raum, or by political cruel- was Moses and the Prophets
ty. They put the Jews to in the Jews, that the perse-
death through hatred of cutors were persecuting. It
them as a people and be- was the Savior who came
cause they wanted to wipe from the Jewish people
their race from the face of Whom the persecutors hat-

2 Friday, May 18, 1973

—

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

ed. It was Israel's dignity,
into which the Catholic
Church prays God to per-
mit all nations to enter,
that the persecutors insult-
ed in the bodies of those de-
spised Jews whom they
treated as the vermin of
the world. It is our God they
buffeted and flagellated in
His human lineage, before,
openly, they persecuted Him
in His church."
According to the profound
observation made by the
Jewish writer, Maurice Sam-
uel it is not because they
killed Christ, it is because
they gave Christ to the
world, that Hitler's anti-
Semitic rage dragged the
Jews over all the roads of
Europe, through excrement
and blood. and tore children
from their mothers, from
that moment deprived even
of their names and under-
took to drive an entire race
into despair. . . .
"Will the Christians un-
derstand? That is the ques-
tion which now arises. How
long still will they sleep?
For how long still will many
of them repudiate, in fact,
St. Paul's teaching which
instructs us that we have
been grafted on the olive
tree of Israel, and that we
have become, with Israel,
participants of the roots
and the sap of that olive
tree? 'Spiritually we are all
Semites,' said Pope Pius
XI. Before being a problem
of blood, of physical life and
death for the Jews, anti-
Semitism is a problem of
the spirit, of the spiritual
life and death for Chris-
tians.. Israel has a long hab-
it of suffering and of perse-
cution, it has borne them
through the centuries; it ex-
pects them the while it fears
them; it is well aware that
its God, Who compels it to
walk through the abyss, will
lift it high above the abyss,
and then plunge it into the
abyss once again and lift it
high above it once again. It
is a thing strangely moving,
and highly conducive to our
looking back upon our own
past in a spirit of humilia-
tion—Christians of the Gen-
tile race — to contemplate
the sort of tragic sereneness
with which a Jew, who has
meditated upon the history
of his people, speaks to us
his certainty that Israel will
never find either rest or
pity..
But there is something
that the anti-Semitic fury
wounds and irremediably
corrupts, and that is the
Christian conscience. The
despair of those who killed
themselves because injus-
tice triumphed itself is an
image of a thing still more
terrible: the corruption of
the human soul within those
who persecuted, and the
gulf of perversion into which
they risk hurling the human
race. If Plato and St. Thom-
as Aquinas are right when
they say that it is better '-
suffer unjustly than c!
nally to make others stiller,
and that the evil in the exe-
cutioners is worse than the
evil suffered by the victims,
then we are obliged to con-
clude that the r a v ages
caused by racism in the
heart of the racists and the
anti-Semites have been even
more abominable than the
tortures they inflicted upon
a multitude of innocents ...
"Now, once again in the
course of world history, the

Jacques Maritain's Role in the International Good Will
Movement and the Eminent Catholic's Attack on Bigots .. .
Shakespeare's Jew and Continued Rejection of 'Merchant'

fundamental elements in the
question of Israel's position
among the nations have
been profoundly altered. In
our day the question has
entered a new phase. For
who among the Jews were
more assimilated than the
German Jews? And yet it
was in Germany that the
anti-Semitic fury burst out
with unequaled ferocity.
Faced with the bankruptcy
of assimilation, the Jewish
conscience turned in despair
to the promised land. The
movement which is urging
the survivors of the Jewish
masses of central Europe,
horrified by the abomina-
tions that they have suf-
fered and haunted by the
clamor of their dead, toward
Palestine is an historical
phenomenon—and it is ir-
resistable. In one form or
another, and implying
agreement (which in itself
does not seem to be impos-
sible) with the Arab inhabi-
tants of the land, it appears
that the solution of a He-
brew state in Palestine, in-
evitably, will be the next
solution attempted by the
angel of an ever-sorrowful
and frustrated history.
"However necessary and
justified this solution may
be, we must not hide from
ourselves the fact that it
risks being exploited by
anti-Semitism to the harm
of the Jewish citizens of
other nations. We shall have
to make people understand
that the existence of a Jew-
ish state no more separates
from their respective na-
tionalities Jews who are
members of other states,
than the existence of an
Irish state separates the
Irish people in America
from their American nation-
ality. To cover anti-Semitic
prejudices there will be a
new crop of invalid pretexts
to add to the invalid pre-
texts which drag about ev-
erywhere, aid we shall have
to refute these new ones as
we have the old. But the
clearest rational arguments
will never be effective since
they face a collective and
irrational psychosis drawing
its strength from its very
irrationality. That which is
better and higher than r•a-
son, alone is capable of de-
scending into the under-
ground world of unreason,
and of mastering it. . . .
"And here there stands
before us the peculiar re-
sponsibility of the Christian
conscience: It alone can
free the soul from the poi-
son of anti-Semitism, if
aware truly of its own spir-
it, and if it truly carries into
the substance of man's his-
tory the understanding and
the testimony of its faith in
Israel's mystery."
He wrote much, much
more, and it was in the
Catholic spirit. Some could
even interpret it as prose-

By Philip
Slomovitz

lytizing. For example, in a nortion of the letter not quoted
here he wrote about St. Paul having foretold of the day
"when the synagogue and the church shall be reconciled,
and which will be for the world as a resurrection from
the dead."
Reconciliation can be spoken of either as genuine
good will, which means cooperation and brotherhood on
a basis of friendship as citizens or it could be aimed at
as a means of absorbing the minority. As the minority
we resisted and resist. But Maritain, as a Catholic de-
votee, had a perfect right to preach, we have the obli-
gation to deny temptations from the majority.
Yet is was good that Maritain spoke as he did—
except that he had not fully understood Israel's emergence
into statehood even at the late date of February 1948.
He was responsive to the call to Palestine and he called
the clamor "irresistible." Yet he feared another anti-
Semitic outburst.
There is no doubt that Jacques Maritain had become
an extremist in orthodox Catholicism that alone—not nec-
essarily the Jewish background of his wife and sister-1n-
law—undoudtedly influenced his philo-Semitism. It was
the friendship for Jews as the legators of his faith.
That is why, in his way, he left an idelible mark in
Catholic ranks as a defier of antagonism to Jews and
as an opponent of anti-Semitism. He had written an in-
teresting chapter as a convert to Catholicism, linking his
activities with a rejection of hatred for the Jews.

*

'The Jew That Shakespeare Drew' Still Damaging

A trend that has led to the revival of staging Shake-
speare's "Merchant of Venice" has created a renewed
controversy over the anti-Semitic aspects of the play.
Generally acknowledged as one of Shakespeare's weakest
products, the story of Shylock has nevertheless drawn as
much interest as •most of Shakespeare's most popular
dramas.
Recent showings of "The Merchant" in New York
inspired many new comments and extensive discussions.
Among the more impressive warnings of the play's effects
on the audiences was a letter to the New York Times by
an eminent historian, Dr. Morris U. Schappes. The liberal-
ism of Dr. Schappes, who is adjunct professor in the
department of history at Queens (N.Y.) College, and his
authorship of numerous Jewish history books and essays
on problems affecting Jewry, give his attitude special
status. Prof. Schappes stated in his letter to the NYTimes:
"Recently I saw the Repertory Theater of Lincoln
Center's new production of "The Merchant of Venice."
I went with many misgivings, believing that the play's
anti-Semitic impact upon our audiences is built into
its very structure. I recognize that Ellis Rabb, the
director, made an earnest, even desperate, attempt to
mitigate this anti-Semitic impact. He failed. As I was
leaving the theater, I passed a cluster of schoolchildren
grouped arouid their teacher. One girl said, "Antonio
sure wasn't afraid of losing his chips." The teacher
commented, "That's right. That's the Christian way of
doing business, not the Jewish way."
So all of Ellis Rabb's resourceful effort went for
naught, because Shakespeare's built-in message in-
evitably came across: There is a Christian way of do-
ing business( without taking interest for money lent)
and there is a Jewish Shylockian way of doing busi-
ness, exacting even unto a pound of flesh, until Chris-
tian resourcefulness brings the unsurer to heel (and
to conversion to merciful Christianity).
Shakespeare was so skillful in imbedding the anti-
Semitic impact of Shylock into the very structure of
the play that neither Mr. Rabb's production nor any
other of the many others I have seen have been able
to obliterate that impact.
And now we learn that the American Broadcasting
Company is preparing to broadcast a production of
"The Merchant of Venice" so that Shylock will be piped
into the home of every Archie Bunker in the country
to reinforce his prejudice about Hebes!"
Dr. Schappes is not an emotional student of history.
Neither are many others in the ranks not only of Jews
but of Christians as well who are horrified by the anti-
Semitism in the Shylock story. Depicting the Christians as
homosexuals and hoodlums is not sufficient to overcome
the damage the play has done and continues to do among
the unknowing and the bigoted.
It is primarily in the high schools, where Shakespeare
is studied, that proper educational material should be pro-
vided to overcome the effects of the prejudice in "the Jew
that Shakespeare drew." Much has been written on the
subject, and the refutations are available. Let them be
utilized properly in the interest of a truthful image of the
Jew in Shakespeare's time.

'Disengagement' From Liberalism and 'Betrayal of Heritage' Charge

Have we so thoroughly "disengaged" from liberalism that it has 'became a
"betrayal" of our heritage? Rabbi David Polish, who heads the Reform rabbinate as
president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, warns that the new attitudes
of American Jews are bringing danger to themselves and to America. Because his
thesis is based on the political aspects of the issue—the Israel involvement and the
Nixon image vis-a-vis Israel—his statements will not be ignored.
Neither can his views be accepted in their totality because there are other
elements to be considered and there is another side to the coin he has tossed at us.
Not to be ignored is the racism-in-reverse at universities that has embittered many
Jews, or the terror that stems from the violence that has made Jews co-sufferers
with other Americans who may have similarly "disengaged" from liberalism, as the
1973 election results proved.
We dissent because we do not yield to generalization. We have not all be-
come illiberal. We believe youth retains many loyalties to high social standards.
Therefore Dr. Polish's warnings must be weighed on a limited scale. It won't do to
exaggerate.