Dear Colleagues and Friends,
I borrow Ilse Aichinger’s provocative title from an essay written in 1946 excerpted in Volume 9 of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, From Catastrophe to Rebirth, 1939–1973, coedited by Samuel Kassow and David Roskies and available in the Posen Digital Library. This selection is interesting today because of its provocative call to a world only recently engaged in total war.
It strikes me as appropriate to consider this work in our own times as we try to understand our world ravaged by pandemic.
“Is it not precisely mistrust that is the worst and most incurable disease of this probing, injured world shaken by labor pain?” she asks. “Is it not the explosive charge that blows the bridges between nations up into the air, this terrible mistrust, is it not the cruel hand that scatters the goods of this world into the ocean, that overshadows mankind’s gaze and, encroaching on it, obscures it?”
Her questions reverberate today as we contemplate the recent pandemic-initiated disruptions to our lives.
Aichinger continues her litany: “Have we not looked past each other long enough, have we not whispered instead of talking, have we not crept instead of walking? Have we not avoided one another long enough, paralyzed by fear? And where are we today? Do we not sneer at every authority, every agency, every measure we failed to take, every word we failed to speak?”
The Viennese-born Aichinger, daughter of a Jewish mother and Catholic father, survived the war as a forced laborer, labeled a Mischling by Nazi policy. She started writing immediately after the war. In her “Summons,” she calls upon her readers to receive a metaphorical vaccine that will immunize them. “It is yourself you have to mistrust. Well?” she queries. “Do you comprehend that? We must mistrust ourselves: the clarity of our intentions, the profundity of our thoughts, the goodness of our actions! We must mistrust our own truthfulness!”
If we do, Aichinger promises, change will occur. “Let us trust in the divinity of everybody whom we encounter, and let us mistrust the snake in our hearts! Let us become mistrustful toward ourselves in order to be more trustworthy!”
Aichinger’s counter-intuitive call for mistrust resonates at this pandemic moment, reminding us of the wisdom to be found in Jewish culture, especially when we think of that culture as encompassing a broad range of others. Aichinger’s parents raised her as a Christian, but she suffered persecution as a “half-Jew” under Nazism. To read the entire essay, go to “A Summons to Mistrust” on the Posen Digital Library. Registration on the PDL is fast and free.
Lasar Segall’s painting, Eternal Wanderers, conjures some of the same sense of both difference and distrust as Aichinger. Although his background differs radically from hers—he was the son of a Torah scribe in Vilna who studied art as a teenager in Berlin—his immigration to Brazil in 1923 immersed him in a foreign world. This painting from 1919 evokes the antisemitic violence engulfing Eastern Europe in the immediate postwar years, when another pandemic swept the world.
Eternal Wanderers (1919) by Lasar Segall. Lasar Segall Museum. IBRAM/MinC. Photo by Jorge Bastos.
To hear from several of the amazing editors of The Posen Library volumes, put these dates on your calendar:
October 5, 2021 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm PDT; 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT
Jewish Writing during the Holocaust
A Zoom webinar co-hosted with the Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles
Speakers: Samuel D. Kassow, Charles Northam Professor of History at Trinity College and coeditor of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 9: Catastrophe and Rebirth, 1939–1973, and Deborah Dash Moore
October 18, 2021 @ 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EDT
What’s New in the Bible?
A Zoom webinar co-hosted with the Jewish Theological Seminary
Speakers: Jeffrey H. Tigay, Emeritus A. M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the University of Pennsylvania and coeditor of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 1: Ancient Israel, from Its Beginnings to 332 BCE, Alison L. Joseph, Senior Editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Civilization and Culture, and Deborah Dash Moore
November 4, 2021 @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT
Are There New Ways of Reading the Bible in the 21st Century?
A Zoom webinar co-hosted with the Center for Jewish History
Speakers: Alison L. Joseph, Senior Editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Civilization and Culture, and Deborah Dash Moore
Read more about these events on the Posen Library Events page.
Despite some Zoom fatigue, this venue has given us previously unimaginable opportunities to learn.
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Cordially,
Deborah Dash Moore
Editor in Chief, The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization
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