Yesterday, after posting my review of Alexandra Popoff’s new book, Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success, there was a spirited discussion on my Facebook timeline concerning some of the issues raised. The engagement enabled me to incorporate a few corrections to my review and I was happy to give credit where credit was due.
One of the most interesting aspects of Popoff’s book was her emphasis on how discrimination against Jews over the centuries and in her native Russia may have shaped Rand’s worldview. In The Fountainhead, Rand presents us with the character of architect Howard Roark, who lives with an integrity reflected in the forms and functions of the buildings he creates. Knowing of Rand’s own struggles as an immigrant to this country, Popoff observes: “Through Roark, Rand tells the story of the marginalized beating the odds, and of her own trials and triumph as an immigrant” (p. 107).
How apropos given the current environment so full of contempt for the marginalized.
In my review, I referred to a passage in Popoff’s book, which Paul Crider highlighted in today’s Facebook discussion. The passage resonated with me. Popoff writes:
“Harry Binswanger, a descendant of a prominent Jewish family that had founded Binswanger Glass Company in Richmond, Virginia, first met Rand as a freshman at a lecture at MIT. Later he worked with her on The Ayn Rand Lexicon, a concise encyclopedia of objectivism, and also edited her final nonfiction book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. There was an incident, he recalls, involving a mutual female acquaintance, Jewish by birth, who failed to respond to anti-Semitic vitriol at a gathering. ‘Ayn held that it was morally obligatory to say you were Jewish, and that she had done so herself, even though she was an avowed atheist.’ Binswanger remembers Rand’s illuminating remark: ‘The only time I’m Jewish is when I hear anti-Semitism’.” (p. 203)
In my notes on the book, as if in virtual reply to Rand’s remark, I wrote: “Me too!”
My response has its own personal backstory.
I didn’t read my first Ayn Rand book until I was 17 years old. And I knew nothing of Rand’s advice that it would be morally obligatory to confront antisemitism if one were Jewish. Half-Sicilian, half-Greek, having been baptized Greek Orthodox, I wasn’t Jewish!
However, I was 14 years old when I first encountered one of the most virulent antisemites I’ve ever known in my life. His name was Mario. For all the years that he was a friend of the family, I had no clue that he was antisemitic. But one day, I had finished watching an episode of the BBC-produced series, “The World at War,” narrated by Laurence Olivier. The episode was entitled “Genocide,” and it provided horrific details and graphic images of Hitler’s Final Solution.
Discussing the episode with my family, I was rudely interrupted by Mario, who scoffed and said: “Oh, please! Hitler didn’t go far enough.”
I was shocked.
“Mario! What are you talking about?”
And he went on and on about how the Jews had caused World War I and they were the bankers and businessmen and landowners who strangled Germany. And Hitler had to do what he had to do! The ghettos and concentration camps weren’t enough. “He should’ve gotten rid of them all!”
I tried not to create a family meltdown in our dining room. So, I replied: “Even if you’re right that those Jewish bankers and businessmen were responsible for Germany’s problems—and you’re not, by any stretch of the imagination—you’re talking about little Jewish children being thrown into gas chambers and ovens!”
“Children!?” he barked back. “They grow up!”
They. Grow. Up.
I don’t think I’ve heard anything so repulsive in my life, before or after Mario uttered those words. I stared at him for a moment. Shook my head. And walked away. My family was silent. After that day, Mario never made it back into our apartment.
Years later, while attending John Dewey High School, I took the first high school course about The Holocaust ever offered in the United States. Taught by one of my earliest mentors, Ira Zornberg, it was a life-altering experience. Ira was also advisor to “Gadfly”, the social studies newspaper that I wrote for and would go on to edit.
In 2012, when Ira lost his course notes due to the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, I was happy to send him copies of my own notes and papers from that class.
Ira published several insightful books throughout his career, including Classroom Strategies for Teaching About the Holocaust: Ten Lessons for Classroom Use; Forty-Eight Years in the Trenches: The Accounts of a Teacher in the City of New York; Jews, Quakers and the Holocaust: The Struggle to Save the Lives of Twenty-Thousand Children; and Immigration Wars: The History of U.S. Immigration Policies. I honor him and owe him an enormous debt of gratitude for being such a wonderful teacher and to this day, a loving friend.
But antisemitism still lives. Ironically, just two years ago, I confronted another round of antisemitic views in our apartment. One of our home health aides, who was assisting with the care of my sister, was listening to a discussion that I was having about the Jews and the Holocaust. The aide interjected: “Well, I heard they did things.”
This wasn’t said with the mocking tone of Mario. So, I kept my cool and decided to make it a teachable moment. I explained some of the facts surrounding one of the darkest chapters in human history. I don’t know if it ever really altered that aide’s views, but I never heard her say another word about the subject again in our presence.
All this is my way of saying that when I read Rand’s utterance, as reported in Popoff’s book, that ‘The only time I’m Jewish is when I hear anti-Semitism,” my response of “Me too!” clearly did not arise from my ethnic identity. It came in solidarity not only with my Jewish friends and colleagues, but in solidarity with any group marginalized by racism, bigotry, and intolerance—in solidarity with the principle of inclusion, so crucial to a liberal cosmopolitan culture and to the achievement of a free and open society.
Notablog 