ABOUT HANNOUKA

The festival of Hanukkah, commemorating the rededication of the Second Temple on the twenty fifth day of Kislev in the year 3622, is rich in meaning. One may interpret this event as one of the earliest victories over anti Judaism, but also, conversely, as a foretoken of the enduring nature of relations between Jews and Gentiles. Over the centuries, the refusal to accept Israel’s otherness first manifested itself as a strictly theological position, anti Judaism, then as anti Semitism, infused with secular racist theses, and eventually took a more perverse political form in anti Zionism. Our own age, avid for imprecise concepts, too often and dangerously conflates these three theses directed against the Jewish people.

La destruction du second temple par Francisco Hayez Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Venezia

However, at all times there have been among Gentiles a number of philo Semites, men and women awakened to the human condition and unable to accept the treatment inflicted upon their Jewish brethren. It would take too long to list both the philosophers and the well known advocates who allied themselves with the cause of Israel.

The very first mention of this broadening of Gentile conscience in the face of the iniquity perpetrated against the Hebrews appears in the Book of Exodus, in the verse stating: “A mixed multitude of people of every kind went up with them” (Exodus 12:38).

There are, nevertheless, two philo Semites who deserve particular attention. John Toland, regarded as the father of modern pantheism, came from a family of Irish scholars, the U Thuathallain, who declared: “the sun is my father, the earth my mother, the world my country, and humanity my family”. Born to Catholic parents, he converted to Protestantism before defending a deistic point of view. Toland conceived of humanity as one, thus recasting the biblical myth of the primordial couple.

John TOLAND 30 November 1670 to 11 March 1722

In 1714 he wrote a work that has since fallen into obscurity, Reasons for Naturalising the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland on the Same Footing as All Other Nations, which he addressed to the “Most Reverend Archbishops and the Very Reverend Bishops of the two provinces” of England.

He addressed the clergy in these terms: “ By them you are undeniably come to the knowledge of one God; from them you have received the holy Scriptures; of them is descended Moses and the Prophets, with Jesus and all the Apostles [...]Your Learning convinces You, that this people deserves not that Contempt under which they so generally labor at present; since no other Nation can produce more authentic monuments of its rise and antiquity, of its religious and political State, nay, or of its military and heroic exploits..”

These remarks caused a scandal, his book was burned in a public place, and Toland went into exile. Today only seven original copies are said to remain, one of them at the University of Jerusalem. Toland pleaded for the political emancipation of the Jews seventy years before the Abbé Grégoire. Thus the father of the movement for Jewish political emancipation fell into oblivion until the recent republication of his works in French in 1998.

The other, far better known philo Semite, to the point that many believed him to be Jewish, is Charles Chaplin. His film The Great Dictator displays such foresight that one might think it had been made after the Shoah. The confusion was sustained, among others, by the FBI, which began all its reports as follows: “Israel Thonstein, alias Charles Chaplin.” In fact, the Who’s Who of the American Jewish community had previously claimed that Chaplin came from a family named Thonstein, which emigrated from Eastern Europe and had been established in London since 1850.

Sir Charles Chaplin 1920

The Third Reich made Chaplin a target. The Gold Rush was banned in Germany, and a portrait of him was circulated bearing the caption: “The small, repugnant and revolting Jewish acrobat.”

Charles Chaplin, however, had no Jewish origins, as one of his biographers attested in 1987.

It should nevertheless be noted that Chaplin never denied the claim that he belonged to Israel, except in 1915, when he stated: “I have not had the good fortune to be Jewish.” He even went so far as to say publicly, following The Great Dictator: “Whoever denies being Jewish in order to protect himself is playing the antisemites’ game.”

To deny, or not to disclose, one’s Jewishness in order to save one’s life or to bring an antisemitic assault to an end is perfectly understandable for those who have experienced it, that is to say for the great majority of Jews in the diaspora.

I believe that no Jew would have reproached another Jew for not disclosing his Jewishness to Gentiles in order to save his life, since one of the central points of Jewish theology rests precisely on the preservation of life before any practice, or any recognition by others, or, more emphatically still, by Gentiles. It seems that Chaplin must have been unaware of this essential point of Judaism when he made that statement. This is precisely one of the major teachings of the Book of Esther.

Nevertheless, these two great philo Semites played a key role, at the cost of scandal and personal hardship, in making many Gentiles aware of the condition of the Jewish people.

Jean Marc Cavalier Lachgar

Article published in the newspaper Maayan of the CJL