Réflexions sur la question juive
First edition.
One of the 120 first numbered copies printed on large paper, in publisher's wrappers.
16mo, 199 pp. Paperback, printed cover, untrimmed copy. Publisher's brochure.
186 x 120 mm.
“Reflections on the Jewish Question marks an important moment. It is the work closest to the war. It broke through the conventional silence of the time” (Shmuel Trigano).
“This essay is first directed against anti-Semitism, since Sartre affirms that the Jew is created by anti-Semitism because ‘if the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.’ Only a radical change in society can destroy anti-Semitism” (Dictionnaire des œuvres).
“How can we act against anti-Semitism?” asks Sartre, who, during the summer of 1939, gives an interview on this question to Arnold Mandel for the Jewish Review of Geneva.
While the awareness of the extermination of Jews during the war develops slowly, Sartre very early devotes a study to European anti-Semitism. Between October 1944 and November 1946, he writes Reflections on the Jewish Question, both a combative text, an essay in applied existentialism, and a phenomenological description.
As he affirms to Benny Lévy, “The Jewish Question is a declaration of war against anti-Semites.”
His Reflections follow the pattern of four characters: the anti-Semite, the democrat, the inauthentic Jew, and the authentic Jew, and target two enemies: on the one hand the anti-Semite, whose devastating portrait he draws; on the other hand the democrat, who claims to solve the problem through assimilation.
Anguished by an empty existence, the anti-Semite convinces himself that “his place has always been marked in the world, that it was waiting for him and that traditionally he has the right to occupy it. The anti-Semite, in a word, is fear before the human condition”; “this phrase: ‘I hate Jews,’ is one that is pronounced in a group; in pronouncing it, one connects oneself to a tradition and to a community: that of the mediocre.”
Confronted with anti-Semitism, Sartre continues, what is the situation of Jews in France?
The book ends with a call to fight, with a bold and resounding cry of warning and alarm. Sartre declares: ‘Not one Frenchman will be free as long as Jews do not enjoy the fullness of their rights. Not one Frenchman will be safe as long as a Jew, in France and throughout the world, may fear for his life” (Aliocha Wald Lasowski).
Rare and sought after by bibliophiles in this fine condition.
