To the Editor:

George Steiner has written a frontal attack on nationalism while defending Jewish nationalism as qualitatively different and infinitely purer [“A Kind of Survivor,” February]. . . His article reflects the dual personality that we secular, non-Israeli Jews possess. . . . It is absurd today to demand a separatist Jewish nationalism and, simultaneously, political equality and social integration. . . .

The danger of anti-Semitism has not diminished with the founding of the State of Israel. This small state cannot ever offer us any real protection other than as a place of refuge. However, if we should tie ourselves uncritically to the admittedly “venomous” and “bitterly” archaic nationalism of the present Israeli regime, are not the objective bases of anti-Semitism strengthened?

We diaspora Jews cannot have our cake and eat it too. We must decide to face the fact of our eventual assimilation, develop a non-national Jewish religion (if this is not really a self-contradictory term), or build our futures in Israel as Israelis who could fully participate in Jewish nationalism and fully share the responsibility for halting the hyper-nationalism and militaristic tendencies developing today in that young country.

Donald S. Malament
Princeton, New Jersey

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To the Editor:

. . . George Steiner brings up the question of Jews who have turned Unitarian. As one of those “halfway house dwellers,” with equal dollar donations regularly to the Unitarian Church and the local temple . . . for memberships in each, I feel some sort of rejoinder is required.

As a rational American, living in this century, the only other alternatives, it seems to me, are the Williamsburg ghetto—i.e. a retreat to medieval mysticism—or . . . an attempt to maintain very expensive membership in an organization whose basic ideas I only partly believe in. Maybe the Reform movement as it existed from 1925 to 1940 was a reasonable answer. Certainly it seemed more sensible than . . . the cheder and shul of my first decade and a half. . . .

Currently for me and my children . . . the only choices open are a return to the shul slightly prettified, with an English sermon but the same theology and an unchanged basic service, or the Unitarian approach. . . . My membership in the local Jewish congregation assures my ethnic group participation . . . with the others who attend only on High Holy Days. . . . For religion, I prefer the Unitarian answer. It speaks my language. The synagogue does not.

Mr. Steiner’s context was that “America is no more immune than any other society from anti-Semitism. To deny this is to assert . . . a Utopian claim which . . . the actual development has rebuked.” I don’t deny this. However, I feel confident, as sure as God made little apples, that in the concentration camps (if and when) I will find plenty of good non-Jewish liberal neighbors. To deny this is to neglect the history of all anti-libertarian movements of the 20th century and of popular responses to them. . . .

Allen Bernstein
Augusta, Maine

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To the Editor:

I am a Jew of the American brand of which Mr. Steiner speaks. . . . I am as well educated as he is, though no as distinguished. And I agree with most of his description of the Jewish “outsider.” But what does one say to one’s children when they talk about the grandeur of a church interior, the organ music, and the splendor of the Christian ritual? When they—college educated—speak about the great traditions of Christian art and Christian music? When they ask why Jews have no comparable traditions, no splendor, no requiems and masses, no stained glass and monuments in stone? When they lament that Jews are smart and solve mysteries of the mind, but that this cannot eradicate their own feeling of not belonging to the great Jewish tradition?

Does one answer: go to the texts and resuscitate our great tradition? Or do I say, I, too, am a mere survivor, and you are my son?

G. S. Rousseau
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey

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To the Editor:

George Steiner . . . appears to be . . . an intellectual romantic. . . . Though his argument for the end of national states . . . may be a convincing one, there is no sign in the near or remote future that the national state will yield to the international state envisioned by good men like himself, Clarence Streit, and others.

To compare the state of Israel with the nations of Europe born out of the rising tide of 19th-century nationalism is equally absurd. The nations of Europe had several centuries of preparedness for their roles as sovereign nations; centuries of political, religious, and social changes prepared the way for the ultimate thrust. And if we look at the current scene: what state, other than Israel, has the guns of four nations trained on it? What other country will have to live as a crisis state for so long, unless the Arab nations give up their schemes for its destruction?. . .

David Antman
Forest Hills, New York

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To the Editor:

Mr. Steiner defines the Jews as “. . . a people whom totalitarian barbarism must choose for its hatred.” But this is not a definition. Nor is the fear that lies “near the heart.” Totalitarian states have chosen others. And since when is fear the exclusive legacy of the Chosen People? It may be true that any definition of “Jew” must include the taint of alienation: it is certain that the alienated European Jewish intellectual did help define and nourish the “Central European humanism,” and that we did produce some of the great outsiders.

But is the task of the Jewish people to provide a “Jewish leaven,” to create an atmosphere “both quintessentially European and off-center”? Is that all that is left for us? Does poetry come only from the furnaces of death? Is diaspora literature really that good? Can we create only at the threat of extinction?

“By proclaiming himself a Ghanaean, a Nicaraguan, a Maltese, a man spares himself vexation.” What nonsense! Are the Jews the only alienated people in America? Does the Italian immigrant to Manchester become one of the “armed, coherent pack”? Is American or British society so homogeneous that it is only the Jew who stands apart from the mob? . . .

John R. Garson
Cambridge, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

. . . George Steiner’s powerful essay will probably cause shouts of annoyance . . . but I can only thank the author for expressing a fear I feel deeply and would like to ignore, but cannot.

Leonard J. Epstein
Manhattan, Kansas

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To the Editor:

George Steiner eloquently contends that the special civilizing contribution of the Jew . . . makes him an object of hatred to the barbarian elements in the culture . . . thus raising disturbing questions about the basic value of that culture. But applied in another context, doesn’t this same thesis raise disturbing questions for the Jew as well?. . .

“Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent,” Mr. Steiner writes. What, then, are the implications for the American Jew of his attitude, which historically has been largely one of indifference (if not worse), toward the situation of the American Negro?

David Shaber
New York City

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To the Editor:

. . . George Steiner’s article is one of the most moving documents I have come across in recent times. It is a work of art and as such it proves once more that only by speaking deeply out of himself and for himself can a man speak for all of us.

William Pachner
Clearwater Beach, Florida