One of the consequences (not the most troubling), of nearing a time when you will be referred to (if at all) in the past tense, is the regret that there are matters you should have considered long ago.

One is the Jewish affinity for German culture, more almost than acculturation, but not full assimilation. My NYC Jewish neighbor contemporaries, who were descended from immigrants of a generation or two prior to WW II, were largely secularized and liberal (their parents and grandparents having been socialists, if not communists). Of those still around, they are at a loss to understand Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The descendants of their relatives—who had remained in Europe, survived the Holocaust, and emigrated to Israel—are in a quandary whether to remain.

Having encountered a number of Jewish German professors in grad school, I am aware of their pride in the rigors of German scholarship, likely dating to the “higher criticism” of the 19th century. My impression is that movement was largely Protestant; but there is the coincidence that it occurred during the same period as the Prussian emancipation (at least legally) of the Jews, who were admitted into the professions, including academia.

“Higher criticism” focused initially on the Bible, with the Torah relegated to the status of “Old”Testament (the nomenclature  around since the early CE). Talmudic studies—disputations from at least medieval times—seemed to have supplanted scriptural concerns. Spinoza, after all, presaged “higher criticism” by two centuries.

There are rumblings of genocide and Lebensraum in the Torah, later echoed by Germany since the early 1900s, and then by Israeli leaders from Ben Gurion to Bibi. The question that I will never get to answer for myself: Did the Jews learn from the Germans or vice versa?

John A. MacKinnon

Lackawaxen, PA