The Shield/Concerning the Ideology of the Jewish Question

by Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov

 

 

⁠Vyacheslav Invanovich Ivanov was born in 1866. A poet of great mastery and a refined critic, his thought, is steeped in hellenism and in the most abstruse mystic lore.

 

 

CONCERNING THE IDEOLOGY OF
THE JEWISH QUESTION

By VYACHESLAV IVANOV

ONE of the wiliest and the most harmful doctrines of our times is, I believe, the fashionable ideology of spiritual anti-Semitism. It attributes to Aryanism, which by the way, is a quantity ethnically if not linguistically enigmatical, many excellent and splendid qualities, while in the Semitic influences and admixtures to the Aryan element it sees nothing but negative energies, which have always hindered the free unfolding of the creative powers of the Aryan genius.

This doctrine would deprive Hellenism of Aphrodite, who came to the Hellenes from the Semites, and would cut the main and most profound root of Christianity, namely its faith in a "transcendental," or, plainly, living God. Spiritual anti-Semitism cuts the body of Christianity into two halves, and keeps only that half whose forms are justified by analogies borrowed from the Greek religious thought, justified, in the eyes of learned dodgers who choose to play the part of Romanticists of Aryanism.

This anti-religious and secretly anti-Christian theory, one of the Trojan wooden horses made in Germany, was clearly intended to "Indo-Germanize" the world, when suddenly the twilight of the Gods swooped down upon the Berlin Valhalla. Nevertheless it has succeeded in seducing many minds, obscured by prejudices. It was hailed by "immanent" philosophers and anti-Semites out of political considerations and psychological predispositions, as well as by Christians mindless of their kin, by anti-church people of all kinds, and even by atheists of Jewish birth, who are ashamed of their kin and who are in the world like salt which has lost its strength.

The more vivid and profound the church consciousness is in a Christian, the more vividly and profoundly does he feel himself, I shall not say a philo-Semite, but truly a Semite in spirit. We have so thoroughly confused, distorted and forgotten all the holy and true traditions, we have so thoroughly lost the habit of applying our reason to the lucid, old truths learned by heart, that this statement may sound like a paradox.

Vladimir Solovyov's touching affection for Judaism is a plain and natural manifestation of his love for Christ and of his inner experience of being merged in the Church. The body of the Church is for the mystic the true, although invisible body of Christ, and through Christ it is the body begotten of Abraham's seed. The latter body, like the curtain of the temple in Jerusalem in the hour of our Saviour's death, was rent in twain, and that half of it which is Judaism passionately seeks the whole, longs and yearns, and pours out its wrath upon the second half, which in its turn longs for the reunion and the integrity of mystic Israel.

Whoever is within the Church loves Mary; and whoever loves Mary loves also Israel whose name together with those of the patriarchs and prophets solemnly resounds in our liturgical hymns. The minds of those who in various times represented the earthly organisation of the Church could be poisoned by hatred of the Jews, in whom they suspected Christ's enemies, precisely because it seemed to them that the Jewish nation was akeady void of the true Jewish spirit and was not of Abraham's seed. But what do all these errings mean in face of the single testimony of the apostle Paul?

I have placed myself, in these lines, on the standpoint of religious thought, and I wish to remind people of the truth that to be a Christian means to be not a heathen, not simply an Aryan by blood, but to become through baptism, which sacramentally includes also circumcision, a child of Abraham, and, therefore, in a sacramental sense a brother to Abraham's descendants, who, according to the word of the apostle, are not deprived of inheritance, and whom, according to Christ's word, we must bless even if they curse us. Personally, I do not believe that the Jews hate Christ, unless it be that they hate Him in spite of their secret, presensuous love for Him, hate Him with that pecular hatred which comes from jealousy and which the Hellenes defined as the negative hypostase of Eros, as anti-Eros.

I think that Providence has appointed the Jews eternally to test the Christian peoples in their love for Christ and in their faithfulness to Him. And when His work will be consummated in us, then their demands and expectations will be fulfilled and they will be convinced that they need not wait for another Messiah. As for us, if we were walking with Christ, we would not fear our examiners: for love conquers fear.

The accounts the Russian soul has to settle with that of the Jew are complex. In spite of the fact they have frequently and most completely been united in suffering, the Jew is loath to love that which is most sacred to the Russian soul. For the benefit of those in whom resound the separate clashing voices of this spiritual dispute, I shall quote in conclusion this final and irrevocable verdict of Dostoyevsky, who had the reputation of being an anti-Semite:

"All that is demanded by humanity, justice and Christian law, must be done for the Jews. I shall add to these words that in spite of the considerations exposed above, I definitely stand for an increase of the Jewish rights in formal legislation and, if possible, for the removal of all the legal disabilities which stand in the way of their equality with the rest of the population (although in some cases they have already more rights than the aboriginal population, or, better, they have greater possibilities to utilise the rights which they enjoy)."

("A Writer's Journal," March, 1877, III, p. 4.)