Maurice Samuel, the great Romanian-born writer, translator and orator, migrated to England in 1900 and to the U.S. in 1914. He wrote You Gentiles some 20 years after the Protocols of Zion was forged and began to spread its evil; You Gentiles was reprinted five times within eight months, and has now tragically become a cult book for anti-Semites. Such readers would be shocked by what Samuel said here, for he made an assertion no less startling today than it must have been in 1940: "Anti-Semitism is the expression of the concealed hatred of Christ and Christianity, rising to a new and catastrophic level in the western world."

Anti-Semitism, Samuel wrote, cannot be properly understood as a common bigotry. Despite comparisons to racial, religious, economic or political discrimination, it rather "invokes a proliferating diabolism which testifies to a kind of insanity." Other kinds of prejudice involve ordinary statistical inaccuracies and lies, he wrote, but anti-Semitism makes the Jew "the subject of a new and horrible mythology. Therefore, while reminding you that it is sinful and anti-Christian to hate anyone, I charge you to look into the disintegration of the mind which is part of your anti-Semitism and of your anti-Semitism alone, and discover, if it is not too late, what special spiritual disaster it indicates."

Samuel wrote as Hitler launched his diabolical truculence on the world. But he rightly found fault not only with Nazi Germans. Anti-Semitism sprouted in all countries of the world, "the 'haves,' the 'have nots,' the sated and the unsated, those which were victorious in the first world war, those which were vanquished, those which remained neutral and even those which were born of it." Wherever fascist groups arose--and he listed Italy's and England's blackshirts, Germany's brownshirts, Romania's and Hungary's greenshirts, America's silver-shirts and South Africa's greyshirts--they "made the Jew their primary psychic preoccupation, with the same psychic manifestations." Hate literature exemplified by the Protocols of Zion then circulated everywhere. Were Samuel alive today (he died at 77 in 1972) he would undoubtedly have included fascist Islamists as well.

Samuel placed "this lunatic concentration on the Jews" at fascism's core. Wherever fascism emerged, it manifested a fierce, religious anti-Semitic urge. Even in countries with few Jews, anti-Semitism eventually found expression. He cited Spain and Italy as examples, but today Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt would serve as well. Fascism could drop its common bigotries, Samuel posited, but it could never drop its anti-Semitism.

The dehumanization he observed in Hitler's fascism also appeared in the Islamist fascists whose ferocious sense of "rightness" legitimized murdering thousands of civilians on September 11. In 1940, children were seduced into mob moods in kindergarten and school, as they are in fascist states again now. In a "gigantic but fine-woven web" that caught citizens' minds "at every level, building up a world of fantasy incomprehensible to those who live outside the controlled area," Samuel observed darkly that the science of dehumanizing man was still in its infancy.

Samuel identified threads of this anti-Judeo-Christian disease in Friedrich Nietzsche's 1887 Genealogy of Morals, which referred to the Jews' supposedly inferior "terrifying logic" based in what the German philosopher disparagingly labeled "the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness)," namely that the Jewish slaves Moses freed were equal to other men. Samuel found similar anti-Jewish pathology in the work of Augustus Henry Pitt-Rivers, the British Crimean war general and archeologist, who complained that "Jewish mendicants" had extinguished the culture of Rome and "Judaised the whole of Europe."

But Hitler, who condemned the Jews for opposing "the eternal privilege of force and strength," gave the plainest voice to the hatred of Christianity inherent in anti-Semitism. Fascism, Samuel wrote, "says that man exists in and by virtue of the machine; Judeo-Christianity says that a machine must exist for man, or must not exist at all. And everyone who takes this point of view allies himself ultimately with Judeo-Christianity."

Fascists, Samuel concluded, must "spit on the Jews as 'the Christ-killers' because they long to spit on the Jews as the Christ-givers." He saw their belief in Jewish ritual murder as a resurrection of old stories of Christians eating human babies at secret feasts and their mad belief in terrific Jewish power as a mirror of Him whose name caused the ancient Pagan world to collapse. Thus does Judeo-Christian tradition continue to threaten fascists. And in an accidental way, he wrote, fascists rightly feared the Jewish capacity to produce anti-fascist types and philosophies, for the Jewish people had learned Christian doctrines and practices from the same sources as Jesus, though by different channels.

The struggle between fascism's ethic of force and Judeo-Christian ethics of man-to-man relationships countenanced no neutrality. In the former, Samuel believed words took the blunt form of weapons and ultimately lost all meaning. In the latter, words served as peaceful instruments, ultimately providing a path to sanctity.

Samuel wrote that the fact that the Judeo-Christian non-force philosophy possesses mythological power over the souls of men--an omnipresence that pursues and persecutes worshippers of force, constituting a sort of universal anti-fascist conspiracy--renders the world ever-susceptible to diabolising the Jewish people.

Fascists transfer to living Jews "all the attributes of the Judeo-Christian episode in human history," concealing from themselves the fact of this transference. Christ and Christianity cannot be attacked by name. But, by adopting anti-Semitism as an ideal, the force philosophy can, and still does, assume the objective of destroying Christ and Christianity's significance and values, via those identified as their creators and representatives.

In 1939, a leading American liberal writer, who repented a year later, wrote that Britain's non-aggression pacts had caused "denial of legitimate German aspirations" and spoke of the German Reich's right to "self-determination" and the need to "rectify injustice." Samuel attributed this grotesque confusion with the liberal world's inability to denounce the dread purpose behind German's ostensible demands. Sound familiar?

It would be funny, if it were not so tragic, how history repeats. Alyssa A. Lappen

This book is a welcome counterpoint to the Buber portrayal of Chasidim as saints or the Sholem Aleichem "Fiddler on the Roof" portrayal of European Jewry as a beautiful dead culture. In Yoshe Kalb, you run into the kind of corrupt Chasidim that you're sadly more likely to run into today. It's a brilliant portrayal of the often corrupt world of Chasidic dynasties where the leader knows little to nothing, the gabbai fights with the community and the women are stuck gossipping.

Nahum marries into an Hasidic dynasty due to the dynastic leader's eagerness to get married. A sensitive soul, he withdraws from the community except for an overwhelming lust that he feels for the chief rabbi's wife. Inadvertantly he sets in motion a chain of events that will destroy two dynasties and ends in one of the strangest trials in literature.

If you have only read Isaac Bashevis Singer, I urge you to seek out Israel Singer whereever you can find him.

Samuel points the way forward (albeit from the 1920s) for discussion of the relations between Jews and non-Jews and particularly their relationship in Western culture. However, Samuel shows his shallow knowledge of the Celtic-Germanic cultures when he asserts that we are a "sporting type." A proper analysis of our history would evidence the Indo-European traits of pride, courage, honour, and our uniquely "Faustian soul" (as Spengler put it), manifested in our longing for the impossible "Infinite". cf Rimbaud, Goethe, Newton, Da Vinci, Copernicus, etc. If the Jewish genius is his sense of gravity towards his life, then the European genius is his desire to understand all things (like Faust), and his need to innovate. The Jewish notion of sin has long corrupted the hardened heart of the "Aryan": Christianized Celts/Gauls were swept away by the Germans, whom were later Christianized themselves, only to be savaged by the Viking's emphasis on pride and courage in death. Anti-semitism, contra Samuel, is not a Western phenomenon, but world-wide and historical: the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Medievalists, the Germans all hated the Jews and their resentment for his conquerors,( or his "slave morality", as Nietzsche proposed) was simply laughed off. How could the great Egyptian or the mighty Roman swallow the Jew's idea of "sin" and "the meek shall inherit the earth" when the opposite prevailed, when they honoured their multifaious gods whom seemed to honour them, while the profounder Jewish god blessed them with servility to other masters? Simply put, the Jewish development of "cultural soul" is alien to the European, whose competitive nature - far, far from being "SPORTING" - is a result of his proclivity towards the strong, excelling types of intellect, art and war, or an exaltation of the "master morality," not the notion that weaker types be elevated by spurious attempts to propagate "the Afterlife" as the reward (reward for what?; hating those whom we could call "great men", self-affirming men?)for the weak and lowly. Pride is a sin in the Bible because the powerful man exalts his life for all the good and evil which is inflicted upon him: such is the expression of the true Graeco-Roman-Celtic-Germanic. It is an expression of nobility towards one's life - a distinctly un-Jewish phenomenon - evident from Homer, through the King Arthur and Beowulf legends, to Camus.

Anyway, do yourself a favour and read THE ANTICHRIST by Nietzsche and (hopefully) realize that all gods are merely CULTURAL expressions of a people, not really the product of spiritual "revelations" transformed by falsification into "religious" texts. Let the Jews have their God, and our Jewish Christianity (for it truly is a more inclusive form of Judaism) will hopefully dissolve to express the true "cultural soul" and will to power of the European peoples.

YOU GENTILES is about Maurice Samuel's percieved differences between Jews and Gentiles. This is true however it is looked at, but I am uncertain if "Gentiles" here means Western-Europeans only or anyone who is not Jewish, so this adds to the book's confusion considering the orientation of the publishers and distributers of this book.

Samuel says in his conclusion that he "may have erred here and there." In fact Samuel errs a lot. He repeats the myth that the Jews are the chosen Israelits of the Old Testament, and that the characters and events in the Bible are of the utmost importance to Jews. This more readily applies to Christians. Also, Samuel says the Jews are harshly bound down and follow the creed of monotheism while the gentiles are polytheistic (Read JEWISH HISTORY, JEWISH RELIGION by Israel Shahak which rebukes both these claims).

Samuel criticizes the way gentiles look at life--as a kind of sport or game. Furthermore, nothing makes gentile happier then when thier nation goes to war (witness the glee and excitement that followed when the US bombed Afghanistan). I come closer (like another reviewer here) to the Jewish mentality in these regards: that life is Dead Serious, to "lack vitality," and only fight when one needs to (which includes having a God of War).

But Samuel also shows where Jews come into conflict with gentiles, and how the gentiles make spurious claims against them: usury, the blood libel, etc. Samuel claims that these things are made up by "anti-semites" to persecute Jews, but further investigation and research into them proves some of the "anti-semitic" claims to not be completely baseless.

I liked the part where Samuel castigates those who believe that objective science can prove spiritual truths and give us a meaning of life. Sure the moon may be a quarter million miles from earth, but what spiritual insight does this dry figure give?

At the end, Maurice admits one thing: "Whatever we do we are damned--and I would rather be damned standing up rather than lying down." I could not agree with Mr. Samuel more.

Maurice Samuel, the great Romanian-born writer, translator and orator, migrated to England in 1900 and to the U.S. in 1914. He wrote this book in 1924. Reprinted five times within eight months, it contains not one anti-Semitic word. Rather, Samuel's definition of anti-Semitism--penned some 20 years after the Protocols of Zion was forged and began to spread its evil--within 20 years proved prophetic. It remains startlingly valid today.

While Jews reject the gamesmanship of those who cannot understand their relationship with God, Samuel calls Jewish dislike of gentiles "incidental only to our way of life" and in any case peaceful.

Gentiles, on the other hand, have robbed, slain, and driven Jews from their lands, while other countries shut their gates. "There is at least one clear note in gentile world-history, one consistent theme: the note of our agony--the theme of your cruelty." It is why the Jewish people need Israel.

Gentiles have fought dirty. "From the dawn of civilization you have lied about us; you have accused us of murdering children that we might use their blood for ritual purposes; you have accused us of poisoning wells; you have accused us of precipitating wars (you! And war is the breath of your nostrils!); and you accuse us to-day of fomenting a world-wide conspiracy to seize the government of the world."

Samuel wouldn't hear of the gentile majority's innocence. "Does it matter that a minority of America preaches in the Klan virtual disenfranchisement of the Jew, that a minority in Germany preaches death to the Jew, that a minority in Poland slew hundreds of us? ... For this minority which spreads these lies there is a complacent majority which tolerates or accepts them. And it is because...you stoop to such lies that your masses respond with physical force. I care not how ignorant a Jew is: you will not get him to believe of one of you such foul untruths as millions of you believe of us; yet we have more cogent reason for hating you. As I hold you all responsible for these lies, so I hold you all responsible for the cruelties in which they issue."

He predicted that "crimson sluices will be opened again, and we shall bleed from a thousand wounds as we have bled before. In the Ukraine, or in Russia, in Poland or in Germany--and who knows when the same will not come to pass in England, in America, in France?" In a world accepting of the slaughter of blacks, Samuel saw no benefits in public opinion.

He has proved right. The blood libel has moved to Arab society, where "its companion viper," The Protocols of Zion is a bestseller. We can still ask: "Will poison work forever in the blood and never work out?....'Kill the Jews, the Christ-killers,' does ring strange these days. But does 'a damn good does of lead for the Jewish Bolsheviks' sound very remote?" ... Samuel writes: "Where the old ostensible reasons for disliking the Jew collapsed, new ones, more self-conscious, were substituted." He expounds on such rationalizations in a 1940 book called The Great Hatred.

Even the tolerant among us can learn from this classic. Alyssa A. Lappen

This book is a long gospel.

It is unbelievably well-written and truly fascinating. The desriptions are vivid and colourful; Sholem Asch is simply great at revealing the mysticism of Judaism. I can only agree that it feels as if he has seen the events with his own eyes; his interpretation is well thought out and and well 'felt out'.

To me this book was a spiritual experience comparable to few others - like the Bible and 'The Glass Bead Game', perhaps.

I read the Brazilian-Portuguese edition, translated by Monteiro Lobato, a well known brazilian writer. He has done a great job, too. The book is absolutely beautiful, captivating, magic. It transposes you in time and space. People and facts are presented with such clarity that it's almost if you were there, watching things happening. It provides an important lesson in the end, too.

Just as the reading of Josephus's 'Works' illumined my understanding of, and appreciation for, the Old Testament and the Jewish heritage of my Christian faith, so did reading 'The Nazarene' inform my understanding of 1st century Jewish life, culture, mores and religious practice. Seldom have I felt so utterly absorbed in the world of an author's creation (A possible exception being 'City of Joy'). I'm having a harder time convincing myself Mr. Asch wasn't a first-hand witness to the events he describes than I would convincing myself he was. For 600-odd glorious pages, I was there amidst all the political and spiritual tumult of the times and the confusion and emotional chaos of those grappling with the life and words of Yeshua of Nazareth, both from within and without the Messianic camp. In 'The Nazarene' I didn't read a book, I had a spiritual experience that - once I've had a chance to distill and absorb it - will profoundly affect the way in which I believe and, therefore, live and exercise my faith. I wish there were ten stars.

Trendy revisionist garbage as to be expected from the Yale imprimature. This edition is strictly for collegial faculty club bores. Get the edition edited by Stefan Collini instead he's less interested in himself.

[From the Plains of Troy...
awakened from the dream]

[in his own words...]

"The whole scope of the essay is to recommend
culture as the great help out of our present
difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our
total perfection by means of getting to know,
on all matters which most concern us, the best
which has been thought and said in the world,
and, through this knowledge, turning a stream
of fresh and free thought upon our stock
notions and habits, which we now follow

staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining
that there is a virtue in following them
staunchly which makes up for the mischief
of following them mechanically."
* * * * * * * * *

"Culture, which is the study of perfection,
leads us, as we in the following pages have
shown, to conceive of true human perfection
as a HARMONIOUS perfection, developing all
sides of our humanity; and as a GENERAL
perfection, developing all parts of our
society. For if one member suffer, the
other members must suffer with it; and
the fewer there are that follow the true
way of salvation, the harder that way is
to find."
* * * * * * * * *

"Now, and for us, it is a time to Hellenise,
and to praise KNOWING; for we have Hebraised
too much, and have over-valued DOING. But the
habits and discipline received from Hebraism
remain for our race an eternal possession;
and, as humanity is constituted, one must never
assign them the second rank to-day, without
being ready to restore them to the first rank
to-morrow. To walk staunchly by the best
light one has, to be strict and sincere
with oneself, not to be of the number of
those who say -- and do not; to be in
earnest, -- this is the discipline by which
alone man is enabled to rescue his life
from thraldom to the passing moment and
to his bodily senses, to ennoble it, and
to make it eternal."
* * * * * * * * *

This edition is preferable to the gimmicky version published by Yale, where the original text is lost beneath the imposition of leftist ideologues.

This book is a collection of correspondence, and like al collected correspondence, it must be taken with a grain of salt. Samuel Beckett was a brilliant, albeit incredibly self-indulgent author, and in this collection his personality is on full display. For example, he disregards bad reviews and cold audience reaction to his plays, because by and large he felt that they were not getting the joke, and that his writing was too complicated for the Philistines in the audience to appreciate.

Fans of Beckett will enjoy this book becuase it will help them understand who he was and where he was coming from in his absurd plays. Also, people who work in theater will be able to relate to the author-director relationship and understand how both artists shape what appears on stage. For those who are not Beckett experts (like myself), there is still much delight to be obtained from Beckett's prose. He won the Nobel Prize because he was an excellent writer, and this book provides otherwise unavailable pieces written by him -- his correspondence. However, unless the reader has a deep interest in one of the two corresponders it can get a little dry.