Family Security Matters
Book Review
by Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin
I have known many who have grown up
in assimilated Jewish families where a convoluted kind of subterranean
self-hate flows uninter-ruptedly, the internalization of anti-Semitism denied.
The sense of illusion pervades the psychological world of these families. When
I read Norman Simms’ newest book Jews in
an Illusion of Paradise, I sensed how thoroughly he had captured the notion
and slippery functioning of delusional anti-Semitic thinking through excavating
the unconscious’ seemingly marginalia, which is not marginal nor trivial at
all. The articulating gestures, images, com-ments, slips of the tongue point to
the heart of the problem, which persists as denied terror and dread of death
yet left untreated and intervened leads to death.
Simms frames the entire volume
through the famous Talmudic legend of the four scholars who entire Paradise –
all encounter a different outcome for Judaism. The four fates are death,
madness, heresy and the longstanding tradition of teaching. The question is
really how does one embrace one’s identity as a Jew under the lurking constant
pressure of anti-Semitism – which is a perpetual chronic targeting of the Jew
through brutal scapegoating ranging from daily micro-aggressions to outright
violent persecution like the recent cutting off of a finger of a French Jewish
young man to violent tortured death as in the case of Ilan Halima z”l? The Jew
is at risk of death by ten thousand cuts if let unattended and not fighting
back. All of this unconscious hatred percolates behind the scene that then
erupts into lethal violence. Simms’ particular expertise and one which is
unique and much less explored, is his ability to disclose who, what, where,
when and how such dangerous distortions and manipulations occur lurking behind
the nefarious screen of 19th century European anti-Semitic “Wizard
of Oz”, its alleged secular culture.
The heart of the book traces out and
explicates what it was like for Jews in Europe with references to France and a
bit to Germany who believed that they could assimilate into Western society
leaving their Jewishness behind. Simms characterizes these various attempts as
“foolish, futile and fanciful” even though they were creative and success which
actually promoted the illusion and furthered their own self-delusion of not
being perceived as Other. The core of the book deals with “persons, events,
ideas, images and processes of perception” – here I place emphasis on his use
of the cultural mirror and how, in fact, it does not reflect so much as
distort. Since 94% of what we communicate, we do so nonverbally, the author’s
use of imagery such as the mirror is particularly striking. He shows how Jews
were culturally manipulated, wanting to ardently believe in assimilation. Here are some of the figures introduced in
the book which enhance his use of imagery and perception: a mid-nineteenth
century acrobatic theatre, midrash of the four sages, contrasting Acher (aka
Elisha ben Abuyah the heretic) and Akiva (the teacher), the four who entered
paradise, the four gates to paradise, the entwined names of God, analysis of
Psalm 92:4 etc. This Psalm, in particular, focuses on the perception of sound
generated by various instruments in particular the harp. The idea being that
sound opens an aesthetic experience but at the same time the Psalm itself
introduces the limitations and constraints of language. This is the key that
discloses Simms’ musings on how and why so many Jews deluded themselves into
thinking that they would be treated as equals and how that delusion led even in
some cases to death.
It goes without saying or even
writing that Simms’ work is uncannily timely as Jews are now targeted
alternatingly by both Islamic and Neo-Nazi anti-Semitism which in turn embolden
other forms of anti-Semitic hatred of the Jew. Such hatred continues to be
openly expressed on a daily basis ranging from BDS to the necrophiliac
destruction of cemeteries to the outright murder of Jews. For those of us who
have been not only studying the phenomena for a long time but have experienced
anti-Semitism first hand, experience will also find Jews in an Illusion of Paradise an insightful enhancing experience
which functions as an antidote in part for the pain and suffering already known
that no Jew is immune from anti-Semitism. Should he or she think so, Simms
shows how this is not merely wishful thinking but thinking that may be deadly
in the long run.
In his preceding recent work on
Alfred Dreyfus Simms and anti-Semitism which I have critiqued here,
has helped to pave the way for his current
work. This volume may be read as an important sequel by which he deals with
those such as the art historian Bernard Berenson. As Simms notes the book is a
kind of midrashic meditation on ideation, the mental life of individuals and
the psychohistorical undercurrents that unbe-knownst to the thinker may act
like a dangerous undertow pulling one into the violence and chaos of delusion.
It thus provides a unique and unusual “road map” of how to follow the
crisscross through all the seemingly unimportant comments, writings, tracings,
images, nonverbal gestures etc. that create a web of what exists and pulsates
behind the “mirror” of cultural presentation. The denial continues to run deep.
The mirror is always distorted. The subtitle of this volume is sobering --
Dust and Ashes which I read as not only
the images of Auschwitz but the accumulative persecutions of the Jewish people.
Simms is prolific and he will continue this tour de force with volume two
tentatively titled - “Jews Falling out of the Mirror and into History” which
undoubtedly will prove to be just as helpful and insightful. Thus the midrash
of the four who entered Paradise, Norman Simms embraces the fourth – the
teacher who affirms life by teaching. Indeed, you would be wise to read this
opus as he is our consummate teacher. And finally this book begs to be
translated into French and German.
Reader’s Review amazon.co.uk
Paradise as a Collective Group Fantasy
Joan Lachkar
It is wonderful to hear insights from a
scholarly Rabbi, but a Rabbi is not an analyst. It is wonderful to hear
insights from an analyst or a psychohistorian, but they are not Rabbis.
In “Jews in an Illusion of Paradise,” we have the best of both worlds. Norman
Simms, a prolific writer and psychohistorian for decades, brings together these
disciplines. As an analyst and psychohistorian myself, I appreciate Simms’
attempts to bring out underlying unconscious motivations and dynamics. Although
not mentioned but intimated, these artists and playwrights were grandiose in
thinking that their talent and creativity alone would offer affirmation and appreciation
and had no idea that they would be ostracized. Nor did they have a clue how
their brilliance and artistry could evoke envy and sadistic attacks in
others. “We had enough of these ‘chosen people,’ send them back to where
they belong!” It is no wonder that a certain segment of Jews in the late 19th
and early 20th century thought they had a free pass to enter into a secular
world, but they were in for a big surprise. Simms outlines the disaster
awaiting them. His use of the mirroring object displays how these blindsided
artists, with a collective group fantasy of Paradise, would experience betrayal
and annihilation resulting in dust to ashes. Simms brings a realistic view that
anti-Semitism is always lurking in the shadows.
Amazon.com
Review
by Toby
Borroughs
While we see any number of new titles on the history of the Jews and on
the pernicious nature of anti-Semitism, few of them examine the individuals and
the texts involved from the point of view of psychohistory and rabbinical
exegesis (midrash). Even fewer of
these new titles, in a world boiling over with the rise of religious fanaticism
and ideological terrorism, and the increasing incidence of Judeophobic
vandalism and murder, offer a perspective that allows for understanding that
leads towards dealing with the attacks on truth and justice in our world. Yet
here is one book that at once examines a seemingly limited number of
personalities up for analysis, while at the same time probes beneath the
surface of actions and statements to reveal the dynamics of how pervasive and
insinuating the presence of bigotry combined with ignorance can be.
Simms’ new book (he has written more than a dozen others, the last
several on Alfred Dreyfus, his wife, and the Affair that bears the name of
Dreyfus) is about how certain Jews in the late 19th and early 20th century
thought they had made it, had arrived, and were safely set up for the
future. Playwrights and actors,
journalists and critics, poets and novelists, they felt they were not only
accepted, but that they were leading players in the game of popular and elite
culture.
If these artists, critics and intellectuals saw signs of opposition,
the rise of anti-Semitism, and the Dreyfus Affair, they tried to brush it off,
to think that it really had nothing to do with them, for that they were after
all real Frenchmen and women, Germans, Danish citizens, and they believed that
the power of their art and intellect would overcome the attempts to exclude
them and shut them up. They felt their
problems were at most existential, merely psychological quirks, or minor flaws
and that such obstacles actually enhanced the creative act.
But there were premonitions of
disaster ahead: a fleeting or persistent dream recalled here, a casual comment
or slip of the tongue recorded there, or a newspaper report of an accident
occurring while on the railway home late at night. By carefully combing the extant
texts—letters, journals, diaries, autobiographies—Simms picks out such details,
seemingly trivial or irrelevant, yet the very kind of specific point of entry
into a discussion of underlying motivations and psychological aberrations, that
the rabbis saw as the best way to open up knotty problems of moral and ethical
issues. Not only do these minor details
form into patterns of analogy, but they weave themselves into powerful rays of
influence passing through a variety of mirrors and lenses. Each of the subjects Simms deals with is in
this way connected with the others, connections that for the most part to them
remained unconscious or at best inadvertent or accidental. The new book shows that such connectivities
are illuminating and explicative.
To be sure, a few of these Jewish artists and intellectuals, to be
sure, reached the end of their lives not knowing what lay ahead, not realizing
their achievements would be airbrushed out of history and their reputations
forgotten. Yet there are again tell-tale
details, pattern of behaviour and causal remarks, that lead us to see something
ominous in the way these people lived out their lives, Catulle Mendes’ death
getting off a railway carriage, Sarah Bernhardt going for a holiday by the sea
and descending into a cave only to be frightened by the vision of undersea
monsters, Georg Brandes as a child chased home by anti-Semitic bullies and told
by his mother to look in the mirror to find out who he really is…
All of them, in one way or another, like Lewis Carol’s Alice, passed
through the looking glass, yet not to an other side where they could
objectively observe the world of common sense they actually worked in, but to
be caught betwixt and between, divided and confused, like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
or Dorian Grey and his aging portrait in the attic.
Others lived long enough to see the dark future looming. They tried to run away and to warn others,
but it was too late. Their closest
friends tended to abandon them or betray them.
Their world, in other words, crumbled away into dust and ashes
This new book by Norman Simms is about Sarah Bernhardt, Bernard
Berenson, Georg Brandes, Catulle Mendès, André Suarès, Arthur Meyer, Aby
Warburg, and a cluster of similar Jewish artists and intellectuals. If most of the names seem unfamiliar to you
that is the point: they were once at the top of their game and were celebrated
throughout France and Europe, as well as in America and Australia.
It is not just another history book or sociological treatise on an all
too familiar phenomenon—the Jew who thinks he or she is acceptable to the world
but is never quite fully tolerated--a subtle and deep analysis of what it was
like to grow up in illusions and delusions, how it felt to feel the pressures
of bigotry masquerading as condescension and empathy, how the experience of
being born as one thing and treated as another, even by oneself, and then the
delayed shock of realization, or the implicit shock without that realization.
Amazon.com.ca
Customer Comment
Samuel K. Sussman
This
volume has the distinction of catering to the layman and erudite scholar. It is
multilayered and a pleasure to study and/or read! As such one could describe
this volume as being multilayered.
No matter the above distinctions it is and will be considered a monumental work
.
Journal of Psychohistory
New Book Notice
There are certain moments when a person’s
place in history is suddenly revealed, when their relationship to the major
themes and images of the age and the long hidden mainsprings of their
personality are disclosed. For example,
actress Sarah Bernhardt leaves her child on the beach and descends by rope down
a cliff to observe the monsters among the whipping weeds, an event recalled
later in several oblique reports on her theatrical career. Poet and playwright
Catulle Mendès awakens late at night on the way home from Paris, becomes
confused, and steps out into the railway tunnel where he is crushed under
wheels of the carriage, just as he had dreamt a decade earlier. These and other Jewish artists,
intellectuals, scholars and performers (comedians in the broad sense) believe
they are accepted into normal society, but lose their way, hallucinate and fall
into oblivion. Like a psychohistorian or a rabbinical exegete creating a
midrash, Simms teases apart the surfaces of everyday life, gradually weaves the
fragments together, and creates a new insightful picture of how intelligent and
sensitive men and women deluded themselves. They clutched at fame, and it all
turned to dust and ashes.
RESEÑA
Historia
y Debate
https://www.facebook.com/HistoriaDebate
Aunque
cada año siguen apareciendo nuevos títulos sobre la historia de los judíos y
sobre la naturaleza perniciosa del antisemitismo, pocos examinan los individuos
y los textos invol-ucrados desde el punto de vista de la psicohistoria y la
exégesis rabínica (midrash). Un número aún menor de estos nuevos títulos –en un
mundo que hierve con el resurgimiento del fanatismo religioso y del terrorismo
ideológico–, ofrecen una perspectiva que permita la comprensión que conduce a
lidiar con tanta violencia. Sin embargo, este es un libro excepcional por su
erudición y por su monumentalidad que, a través del análisis de un número
aparentemente limitado de personali-dades, revela cómo bajo la superficie de la
realidad se desliza la penetrante e insinuante presencia del fanatismo
combinado con la ignorancia. La cuestión de fondo que aborda Simms es cómo
abraza uno su identidad como judío bajo la constante presión del antisemitismo,
que va desde las micro-agresiones diarias hasta la persecución más violenta. Un
odio inconsciente que puede emerger en cualquier momento y entrar en una fase
de violencia letal.
El
nuevo libro de Simms –que ha escrito más de una docena, los últimos sobre
Alfred Dreyfus, su esposa y el Affaire
que lleva su nombre– nos muestra su habilidad para revelar quién, qué, dónde,
cuándo y cómo ocurren tales distorsiones y manipulaciones peligrosas detrás de
la nefasta pantalla del antisemita europeo del siglo XIX y principios del siglo
XIX. A través de una serie de personalidades judías del mundo de la cultura que
pensaban que habían superado las viejas barreras del estigma, que lo habían
conseguido, que habían llegado, que habían sido aceptados y que les esperaba un
prometedor futuro. Dramaturgos y actores, periodistas y críticos, poetas y
novelistas, sintieron que no sólo eran aceptados, sino que eran protagonistas
en el ámbito de la cultura popular y de élite. El libro traza y explica lo que
significaba para estos judíos en Europa, con referencias a Francia y a
Alemania, el creer que podían asimilarse a la sociedad occidental dejando atrás
su judaísmo. Simms caracteriza estos diversos intentos como “insensatos,
fútiles y fantasiosos”, a pesar de que fueron creativos, porque el éxito en
realidad creó y fomentó la auto-ilusión de no ser percibido como Otro. Trata de
personas, eventos, ideas, imágenes y procesos de percepción, usando la noción
de “espejo cultural” y cómo, de hecho, no refleja tanto como distorsiona.
Teniendo en cuenta que la mayor parte de lo que comunicamos lo hacemos de
manera no verbal, el uso del autor de la noción de espejo es particularmente
ilustrativo. Muestra cómo los judíos fueron culturalmente manipulados
provocando en ellos el ardiente deseo de creer en la asimilación. Simms
reflexiona sobre cómo y por qué tantos judíos se engañaron a sí mismos pensando
que serían tratados como iguales y cómo esa ilusión llevó incluso en algunos
casos a la muerte.
Personal letter from a reader in California:
We both enjoyed reading … your book
and discussing all the amazing insights into anti-Semitism. Oddly enough the next day the subject came up
in the Torah portion at his shul and it was discussed at great length.
A reader in Melbourne, Australia commented:
I have read your
latest book and it rolled me back to my early years in Germany. My father
was the typical yekke who attempted to out German the Germans. He did
not see it coming till it came. There were many like him with illusions too
good to be true.
IRA BING
shalom.kiwi
An Illusion of Paradise
Dr Norman Simms has taught in New Zealand, Canada,
France, and Israel for over forty years as a specialist in literature and in
Jewish thought and Identity. His latest work, Jews in an Illusion of Paradise: Dust and Ashes
Vol. One focuses
on a small group of late 19th and early 20th century European Jewish intellectuals
who believed they had entered a new secular and tolerant society in Western
Europe, but discovered that there was no escape from their Jewish heritage and
way of seeing the world.
Although
not mentioned but intimated, these artists them. His use of the mirroring
object displays and playwrights were grandiose in thinking that their talent
and creativity alone would offer affirmation and appreciation and had no idea
that they would be ostracized... Simms outlines the disaster awaiting how these
blindsided artists, with a collective group fantasy of Paradise, would
experience betrayal and annihilation resulting in dust to ashes. Simms brings a
realistic view that anti-Semitism is always lurking in the shadows.
Simms’
scrutiny in this work, as with his others, is both literary and psychological.
He demonstrates the paradoxical nature of accusations against the typified Jew:
at once 'the source of' and 'the threat to' Christianity, Capitalism, Marxism,
humanism, monotheism, science, health, comedy, film, finance and economics,
medicine, pedagogy, law, music, art, curation, literature, and, ultimately
identity itself.
Unlike
the more systematic approach to exposing anti-Semitism that, for example Sir
Anthony Julius took when exposing T.S Eliot’s hatred of the Jew, Simms
takes a more analytical/rabbinical- approach to his reflection on Jewish
identity in Western arts and letters. He instead compares texts and images for
meaning and delves fascinatingly in his consideration of the possible
psychological motivations of authors and actors.
Simms
work clarifies our comprehension about attacks on objective standards of truth
and history and evidence. He draws our attention to the perverted parallels
between ancient and con-temporary bigotry, whether they are ancient blood
libels or the equivalent reincarnation - false equivalencies used at the
United Nations, or in the media and political defamation of the Jewish State in
lieu of Shylock or Dreyfus. Dr Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin wrote that
Simms’
particular expertise and one which is unique and much less explored, is his
ability to disclose who, what, where, when and how such dangerous distortions
and manipulations occur lurking behind the nefarious screen of 19th century
European anti-Semitic “Wizard of Oz”, its alleged secular culture...It goes
without saying or even writing that Simms’ work is uncannily timely as Jews are
now targeted alternatingly by both Islamic and Neo-Nazi anti-Semitism which in
turn embolden other forms of anti-Semitic hatred of the Jew. Such hatred
continues to be openly expressed on a daily basis ranging from BDS to the
necrophiliac destruction of cemeteries to the
outright
murder of Jews.
An
adventurer in ideas, identity, and textual meaning, Simms’ diverse foci are
bound together by the central theme of Jewish identity, and both philo and
anti responses to this identity by non-Jews and by Jews them-selves.
Simms’ output has been prolific over his 40-year career. He is the author of no
less than 10 books, dozens of critical essays, and as many comedic narratives -
some of which are autobiographical.
Simms
was born into a vibrantly Jewish New York environment comprising emigrés and
refugees from European persecution. In this sense, Simms began his life in
1940s Brooklyn straddling a lost world devastated by old Europe and the
possibilities of America’s new world.
He
benefited from the liberal schools of New York and then went on to study at
Washington University in Saint Louis–the so-called Harvard of the Midwest with a partic-ular strength in literature and
liberal Arts —where he gained a Ph.D. in
medieval literature. In 1970, after the completion of his Doctorate, Simms
moved to New Zealand and based himself and his young family in Hamilton,
becoming a senior lecturer in English literature at Waikato University.
In
recent years Simms has completed major surveys of Alfred Dreyfus,
studying his personal letters to provide a new vantage point for understanding
Dreyfus as a husband, father, son and writer artist. In revealing the human
qualities of Dreyfus and his often touching dialogues with his closest family,
Simms makes cleverly apparent the dark psychological facets of anti-Semitism
and how these metamorphose mysteriously through language but have the same base
origins as all racism: fear, jealousy, and resentment of the unusual other for
doing well, for doing badly, for doing the same, for doing differently - for
being.
The
permutations of European antisemitism over centuries and decades are evidenced
in paintings, theatre, and literature. These 'arts' express the evolution and
devolution of variations of the ‘European self' -
the various identities that contribute to the sense of 'we'. Simms’ recent
publications reflect on how Jews have been and are variously depicted in
Western narratives through the reinvented typification of the Jew as the ‘witch
of the global village’ to serve the contra-definitional purpose of European’s
need to depict an increasingly shaky sense of itself as the font of virtuous
intentions and deeds.
Reprinted Reviews
and Notices
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