Maurice Samuel and You Gentiles

 A Jewish intellectual and writer, Maurice Samuel was known for his role as a polemicist and campaigner against anti-Semitism. Most of his work concerns itself with Judaism or the Jew's role in history and modern society, but he also wrote more conventional fiction, such as The Web of Lucifer, which takes place during the Borgias' rule of Renaissance Italy, and the fantasy science-fiction novel The Devil that Failed. Samuel also wrote the nonfiction King Mob under the pseudonym "Frank K. Notch". 

He and his work received acclaim within the Jewish community during his lifetime, including the 1944 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his non-fiction work, The World of Sholom Aleichem. He received the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish literature posthumously in 1972. Samuel died in New York City in 1972 at the age of 77.

Samuel's awards:

• the 1943 Anisfield-Wolf Award for The World of Sholom Aleichem;
• the 1944 Saturday Review of Literature Award; 
• the 1956 Stephen S. Wise Award; 
• the 1967 B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award. 
• In 1964 Brandeis University awarded Samuel an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters. 
• On the day of his death, in 1972, Samuel was to have been in Israel to receive the Manger Prize for Yiddish Literature, for which he had been nominated by Israeli President Zalman Shazar. The prize was awarded posthumously in June, 1972.

Here are some excerpts from his book, "You Gentiles"  (1924):

There are two life-forces in the world I know: Jewish and gentile, ours and yours...I do not believe that this primal difference between gentile and Jew is reconcilable. You and we may come to an understanding, never to a reconciliation. There will be irritation between us as long as we are in intimate contact. For nature and constitution and vision divide us from all of you forever.

A century of partial tolerance gave us Jews access to your world. In that period the great attempt was made, by advance guards of reconciliation, to bring our two worlds together. It was a century of failure. We Jews, we, the destroyers, will remain the destroyers forever. Nothing that you will do will meet our needs and demands. We will forever destroy because we need a world of our own, a God-world, which it is not in your nature to build.... The wretched fate which scattered us through your midst has thrust this unwelcome role upon us.

We Jews are accused of being destroyers: whatever you put up, we tear down. It is true only in a relative sense. We are not iconoclasts deliberately: we are not enemies of your institutions simply because of the dislike between us. We are a homeless mass seeking satisfaction for our constructive instincts. And in your institutions we cannot find satisfaction.

When Germany and England and America will long have lost their present identity or purpose, we shall still be strong in ours.

Jew and Gentile are two worlds, between you Gentiles and us Jews there lies an unbridgeable gulf...There are two life forces in the world Jewish and Gentile...I do not believe that this primal difference between Gentile and Jew is reconcilable...The difference between us is abysmal...You might say: 'Well, let us exist side by side and tolerate each other. We will not attack your morality, nor you ours.' But the misfortune is that the two are not merely different; they are opposed in mortal enmity. No man can accept both, or, accepting either, do otherwise than despise the other.

Our Jewishness is not a creed, it is ourself, our totality. Indeed, it may be fairly said that the surest evidence of your lack of seriousness in religion is the fact that your religions are not national, that you are not compromised and dedicated, en masse, to the faith.

Years of observation and thought have given increasing strength to the belief that we Jews stand apart from you gentiles, that a primal duality breaks the humanity I know into two distinct parts; that this duality is a fundamental, and that all differences among you gentiles are trivialities compared with that which divided all of you from us.

In the heart of any pious Jew, God is a Jew. Is your God an Englishman or an American?

We belong to the One mastering God: you belong to the republic of playful gods.

You have your way of life, we ours. In your system of life we are essentially without 'honor.' In our system of life you are essentially without morality. In your system of life we must forever appear graceless; to us you must forever appear godless.

To say that a schlemiel is a luckless person is to touch only the negative side. It is the schlemiel's avocation and profession to miss out on things, to muff opportunities, to be persistently, organically, preposterously and ingeniously out of place. A hungry schlemiel dreams of a plate of hot soup, and hasn't a spoon.

If this sounds obscene, it isn't. You must remember that Jewish moral theology is NOT Christian moral theology. Despite what Christians assert, the two moral systems actually share very little in common.

 The Talmud discusses the dilemma of two men stranded in the desert, one with just enough water to survive and the other with none.  What should they do?  If one drinks, the other dies.  If both drink, both certainly die.  The conclusion, taught by the pre-eminent rabbi of all time, Akiva, is that the person with the water must drink and survive.  Tragic though it may seem, he may not forfeit his life for another, and he may not forfeit both lives for the sake of principle.  His claim on life in a time of scarce resources is non-transferable.

Here's another discussion that quotes the same conclusion. In fact, doing your laundry takes precedence over other people's lives:

If they must choose between their own animals and the animals of others, their own animals come first, before the animals of others. 

If they must choose between their own laundering and the laundering of others, their own laundering comes first, before the laundering of others

If, however, they must choose between the lives of others and their own laundering, the lives of others come first, before their own laundering.  However, Rabbi Yosei says that their own laundering comes first, before the lives of others.

Keep in mind that "Judeo-Christian morality" is a nonsense phrase. Jews consider Christians to be heretics. From the Jewish point of view, that phrase sounds like "Judeo-Heretical morality". Consider, for instance, how easily a Jew can accept abortion:

While the Talmud gives the full status of humanness to a child at birth, the rabbinical writings have partially extended the acquisition of humanness to the 13th postnatal day of life for full-term infants. The Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 69b states that: “the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day.” Afterwards, it is considered subhuman until it is born. ...After the forehead has emerged from the birth canal, the fetus is regarded as a person....

While the Talmud gives the full status of humanness to a child at birth, the rabbinical writings have partially extended the acquisition of humanness to the thirteenth postnatal day of life for full-term infants. This designation is based on the viability of the infant, so the acquisition of humanness occurs later for premature infants, because the viability of premature infants is still questionable after thirteen days. Rashi, the great twelfth century commentator on the Bible and Talmud, states clearly of the fetus ‘lav nefesh hu—It is not a person.’

Even a born child is not considered viable until the 30th day of life:

Since an infant is not considered viable until after his thirtieth day of life, the redemption ceremony must take place thirty-one days after birth.