To the extent that the book is a kind of "my life among the great works of art", it has its weak parts, too, however: one wishes there were more life and less literature in it. Steiner's digressive discussion of the classic, for example, circles around several good points without making them well -- except perhaps the one about how classics change us, but even that could have been said far more succinctly (and probably does not pick out a classic in the way in which Steiner would like it to do so). "I define a classic thus", says Steiner, and then follows a long and obscure and convoluted discussion which, if presented as a definition in math 101, would flunk the course.
Jeez.
*
The chapter on Jews and Jewishness is interesting, however, even if its interest lies mainly in Steiner's discussion of Jewish exceptionalism. The Jews, he feels, are an exceptional people.
(Interestingly, Steiner feels the same way about the Greeks, the West, western theater, the cafe-culture, etc. etc. ("Nothing like x anywhere in the world", put for "x" whatever you like). Perhaps his life-long interaction with being exceptionally Jewish has informed his attitudes towards everything?)
The point I would like to make (without hurting anyone's feelings) is that Jews are not exceptional and being Jewish is not an exceptional condition; the idea that the Jews are somehow special is... a kind of optical illusion. First, it is exceptional to be anything - Polish Unitate petty nobility, a descendant of the prophet, a Tutsi. Every person who sees himself as belonging to his tribe first and foremost can't help feeling that his tribe is special and unique and the rest of the world is in some sort of special (usually antagonist) relationship to him. Everyone of us feels that his condition is special and unique and for Steiner to assume this is on account of his Jewishness is silly.
And, secondly, narrowly defined social groups with long-standing religious traditions and endogamous marriage rules are in the old world not an exception but -- a rule. Right off the bat I can name several very similar groups: Gypsies, Karaims, Armenians, Parsis, Banjaras, Rajputs, Sudeten Germans, Transylvanian Saxons, Sikhs, Basques, Polish Tartars, Manchus, Ainus, Japanese Koreans, Alaxandrian Greeks, Sri Lankan Tamils, Kazakhstani Poles, Dalits, Bengali Brahmins (and Catholic Brahmins in Goa), The Amish, South Italian Albanians, Bhils, Tutsis, Ibos, Zulus, Boston Irish, Lemki, Rumelian Turks, West African Ismailis, Qashqa'is, Tekke Turkmen, Kurds, Thai Chinese Muslims, Hmong, Lisu, Akha, Hakka -- must I go on?
True: the Jews can justly claim three thousand year old history of their religious tradition, but Parsis have an equally old one (they use cuneinform script, for Chrissake); as do the Bengali Brahmins (who still carry out Vedic animal sacrifices); Gypsies, Armenians, Paris and Tamils have all lived in their diasporas for a thousand years plus -- and what is the difference between a thousand and three thousand in the history of humanity which stretches perhaps 250,000 years?
True, the Jewish scriptures have had a profound effect on much of the world; but whether this effect has been positive is not as clear to me as it seems to Steiner; and whether he should take pride in it is not clear either: he didn't write the scriptures, after all, someone else did. (The whole premise of being proud of one's ethnicity seems a little silly to me; what does it mean to be proud of being x?)
Nor is Steiner's theory of anti-Semitism (that Jews are hated for having invented superior morals) anything other than feel-good self-stroking.
Romila Thapar's theory of history of inter-group relationships is much closer to the truth: tribes fight until, unable to wipe each other out, they collapse in bloody exhaustion and -- willy nilly -- make peace (in the spirit of Godfather's "I am a reasonable man": the grand mafioso pronounces these words after losing half his family to a war). Then, the peace comes and continues for as long as people who remember the futility of struggle remain among the living; but as soon as the oldest die, the memory dies, and the conflict resumes again. But why, people then say with incredulity. Whence all this warmongering and blood spilling? Have we not lived in peace and harmony for so many hundred years? Well, yes; they have. But they slaughtered each other before that; and before that they had lived in peace; and before that they killed each other.
What I am trying to say is that a tribe does not need to be offended by the demanding morals of another tribe in order to proceed to wipe it out. Wiping each other out is what tribes do. Merely setting oneself up as a tribe automatically generates hostility (theirs against you, yours against them: setting up a tribe means excluding someone, and the excluded per force do not like it). It is therefore the duty of all enlightened men to oppose the creation and maintenance of tribes.
But Steiner's apology for Jewish exceptionalism -- "we are hated because we have invented morals" -- lies squarely in the tradition of tribe-building: to make a tribe one begins by making a nice myth about oneself; then one stokes the feelings of resentment by privileging accounts of past injustice. This sort of conduct is precisely the root of the ethnic problem. How I wish an educated man like Steiner could be enlightened in matters of nationalism, too.
As for me, I refuse to belong to any of my potential tribes: I want all my relationships with other men to be between equals; and this means -- unaffiliated individuals; if you are Ismaili, or Jewish, or Lap -- really and honestly, I do not want to know. Nor ask me what I am, because I am nothing: I am myself, that's all. If I am then killed, at least my killers will not be able to claim to have acted on tribal grounds (and therefore "nobly", because for their nation, or for the love of their country, or their religion, or their race). They will be murderers plain and simple and I will not be part of my nation's eternal hecatomb -- but merely an ordinary dead man.
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