The Jewish Century

[Joel Katz]

yes.  and we eat pussy better than gentiles.


>From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: The Jewish Century
>Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 13:59:44 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Slezkine, Yuri.  The Jewish Century.
>    Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2004.
>
>This masterwork of interpretative history begins with
>a bold declaration: The Modern Age is the Jewish
>Age--and we are all, to varying degrees, Jews.
>
>The assertion is, of course, metaphorical. But it
>underscores Yuri Slezkine's provocative thesis. Not
>only have Jews adapted better than many other groups
>to living in the modern world, they have become the
>premiere symbol and standard of modern life
>everywhere.
>
>Slezkine argues that the Jews were, in effect, among
>the world's first free agents. They traditionally
>belonged to a social and anthropological category
>known as "service nomads," an outsider group
>specializing in the delivery of goods and services.
>Their role, Slezkine argues, was part of a broader
>division of human labor between what he calls
>Mercurians-entrepreneurial minorities-- and
>Apollonians--food-producing majorities.
>
>Since the dawning of the Modern Age, Mercurians have
>taken center stage. In fact, Slezkine argues,
>modernity is all about Apollonians becoming Mercurians
>--urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually
>intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally
>flexible. Since no group has been more adept at
>Mercurianism than the Jews, he contends, these
>exemplary ancients are now model moderns.
>
>The book concentrates on the drama of the Russian
>Jews, including émigrés and their offspring in
>America, Palestine, and the Soviet Union. But Slezkine
>has as much to say about the many faces of
>modernity--nationalism, socialism, capitalism, and
>liberalism--as he does about Jewry. Marxism and
>Freudianism, for example, sprang largely from the
>Jewish predicament, Slezkine notes, and both Soviet
>Bolshevism and American liberalism were affected in
>fundamental ways by the Jewish exodus from the Pale of
>Settlement.
>
>Rich in its insight, sweeping in its chronology, and
>fearless in its analysis, this
>sure-to-be-controversial work is an important
>contribution not only to Jewish and Russian history
>but to the history of Europe and America as well.
>
>http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7819.html
>
>Ch. 1, "Mercury's Sandals: The Jews and Other Nomads"
>
>http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s7819.html
>
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