Kosher Bookworm: Self-hatred: the Korach legacy today

The headlines are blaring and talk radio is shouting of the recent conversion of noted award winning playwright and author David Mamet from political liberal to activist conservative, a rare commodity among the Hollywood elite.

Reams of print and hours of airtime were devoted to this and the Kosher Bookworm is no less fascinated, especially when there is a Jewish literary spin to this whole issue.

Mamet’s political swing has been evolving for some years however, the spiritual component became apparent with the 2006 publication of his book, “The Wicked Son” [Schocken Books] subtitled, Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews.

This little volume deals with the whole issue of Jewish self-hatred, and with this week’s Torah reading of Korach, I thought it most appropriate to give this book and the issues it so eloquently deals with its proper recognition.

In a betrayal from within, as writer David Solway so accurately terms it, “The rebellion of Korach, Dathan and Abiram against Moses and his mission to create a unified and cohesive people set the tone for much of what followed in the history of the Jews.”

This history includes an exhaustive sad and tragic litany of betrayal from within especially, in recent times, from the political left.

“There were many Jews who have turned against their own compatriots for ostensibly ‘noble’ reasons, like the Yevsektsiya or European and Russian Jews who joined the Bolsheviks and were instrumental in the formation of the Soviet Communist Party, until they were duly liquidated.

“Today, these are the Jews who embark on flotillas to abet a terrorist regime in Gaza, validate the Palestinian narrative, practice outreach and dialogue with Islamic murderers, vote ‘liberal’ and pride themselves on their pacific and ecumenical ideology.”

What Solway wrote this past week was foreseen by Mamet in his book six years ago.

In his review back then, in The Jewish Journal, Tom Teicholz accurately states that “In ‘The Wicked Son’, Mamet identifies the many contemporary forms of anti-Semitism, unmasks those who support it or who, passively, refuse to stand up against it. ‘Anti-Semitism is a sickness, and its playbook is extremely limited,’ he told me. In ‘The Wicked Son’, he exposes several canards used by anti-Semites of all stripes – double standards, faulty logic – demonstrating that the arguments used by today’s anti-Semites haven’t changed much throughout Jewish history.”

The one thing that flows throughout the book is the rabid self-hatred, and self-loathing that has animated and motivated the actions of Jews since the time of Korach to this very day.

Consider closely the following observation by Mamet:

“Here we may find the proud inheritor of millennial traditions, happy to announce that he is ignorant of all observance, happy to indict the State of Israel in ignorance of its trials, and blind to the fact that it is a country and, like any country will make mistakes. This ex-Jew, like the member of any hermetic or oppressed group will unerringly and automatically seek out his own, with whom he may share his fantasy of individuality.

This person, who likely has never felt the warmth of Shabbos, the purity of Yom Kippur afternoon, the beauty of ‘Eishet Chayil’, who will not marvel at the courage of his immigrant grandparents, or weep at the death of his cousins in the Shoah, and of his cousins on the boardwalk in Tel Aviv, confuses the ideal with the real.”

From this rediscovery of the reality of the Jewish destiny evolved within David Mamet’s soul his evolution to political conservatism, free market capitalism and the virtues of freedom and limited government. This is an awesome experience to read about and behold.

Read this little book, take to heart his message of both return and hope, “teshuvah and hatikvah” and then consider his new book, “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture” for your edification.