Jewish Mothers Never Die by Natalie David-Weill

Author:Natalie David-Weill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

8

Jewishness Is Generational

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.

Woody Allen

God exists but is so inconspicuous that I feel ashamed on His account.

Albert Cohen

What I am really interested in is knowing whether God could have created the world in a different way.

Albert Einstein

“How did you instill a sense of Jewishness in your sons?” Rebecca wanted to know.

“In those days, unfortunately, being Jewish was determined primarily by the anti-Semitism that we had to live with daily,” Amalia answered. “In Vienna, we had to vote for Karl Lueger, who was elected mayor in 1895, even though he accused Jews of ‘unprecedented terrorism.’ Many Jews settled in Vienna after the Emancipation Edict came into effect in 1867. Lueger said: ‘We refuse Christian oppression and will not allow Austria’s ancient Christian kingdom to be replaced by a new Palestine.’ I can remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. He didn’t like the fact that thirty percent of students were Jewish, almost half of the lawyers, doctors and bankers, as well as many artists. Whether they were baptized or assimilated changed nothing in his eyes: ‘It’s their race that’s obscene,’ he used to say. He was reelected.”

Amalia was still stunned by the mix of superficiality and lurking anxiety that had been the norm in Vienna. Like many Viennese, she was passionate about the arts. People were ready to come to blows over who was the more talented between Arnold Schoenberg or Gustav Mahler, and they traded the latest books by Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal and discussed them endlessly.

“Nevertheless, the political atmosphere was oppressive; you always felt you didn’t belong,” she continued. “Sigmund had to wait seventeen years to become a tenured professor, even though he had published numerous scientific articles and a half-dozen books. By that time, he had already laid out the proof for his theory of male hysteria, he had invented the ‘free association’ method, developed his theory of seduction, which he would later abandon, described the Oedipus Complex and discovered the importance of dreams. Despite all that, he remained a lecturer at the university, which was a bitter pill for him to swallow.”

“Was anti-Semitism the cause or were his theories on sexuality too shocking?”

“Both, but you have to realize that, when he started at the university, he hadn’t done anything to be named professor because he thought it would come naturally. He finally had to contact some influential friends and still he had to wait sixty-four years to receive the official title, the same year he stopped teaching.”

Mina appeared, wearing a particularly flattering light pink suit. She looked younger somehow. She suggested they all go out for a while; she couldn’t stand sitting all day and she needed some exercise.

“Go out? Where?” Rebecca asked, surprised by the idea.

“Do you like the forest?”

Rebecca followed her into a dense wood of oak and beech trees. She was so happy to be walking in nature that she had a hard time concentrating on what Mina was saying.

“I don’t mean to wrongfully compare my Romain to Sigmund,” she was explaining.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.