Antisemitism directed at oneself was an original Jewish creation. I don't know of any other nation so flooded with self-criticism. Even after the Holocaust...harsh comments were made by prominent Jews against the victims...The Jewish ability to internalize any critical and condemnatory remark and castigate themselves is one of the marvels of human nature...Day and night...that feeling produces dread, sensitivity, self-criticism and sometimes self-destruction. —Aharon Appelfeld (New York Times Book Review, February 28, 1988)
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Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at University of Washington in Seattle. This article is reissued by permission of World Affairs/The American Peace Society. His most recent publications are:The Jewish Wars (Southern Illinois University Press, 1996);Irving Howe—Socialist, Critic, Jew (Indiana University Press, 1998);Classical Liberalism and the Jewish Tradition (Transaction Publishers, 2003); scholarly editions ofLionel Trilling and Irving Howe (New England Review, 2004) andThe Subjection of Women (transaction).
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Alexander, E. Israelis against themselves. Soc 43, 22–28 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02687350
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02687350