The last words people leave behind often carry profound meaning, revealing the deepest truths about their lives, relationships, and identities. In times of final reckoning, the human desire to be remembered becomes a testament to our existence, weaving personal histories into a broader tapestry of family and collective memory. In Last Words, Philip Schlesinger delivers a deeply personal reflection on his parents’ lives and their legacies, anchored by the poignant moments of their final conversations. As Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi persecution in Austria, Béla and Martha Schlesinger’s life stories are marked by exile, loss, and survival. A powerful meditation on memory, identity, and the legacies we inherit from those who came before us.
The Jews’ point of entry into political modernity, their emancipation à la française, is marked by doubt and ambivalence: will they be able to integrate into the nation without renouncing their obstinate particularism? We know that it was the Count of Clermont-Tonnerre’s perspective that ultimately triumphed over that of Father Grégoire: yes, they could, because they would integrate as individuals. But we know that the hesitation was not definitively resolved… It is on this future, which raises the question of the relationship between the Jews and the Republic, that historian Pierre Birnbaum has chosen to return. What perspective emerges from the history of Jewish emancipation in France, when viewed from the perspective of current problems?
While it is vital that social and political criticism be expressed in our democratic societies, there is also a tendency for this criticism to go astray, in a way that is surprisingly regular. What characterizes this deviation of criticism is that it replaces the normative support it lacks with an evil intentionality. If it is necessary to criticize, but we no longer know in the name of what, then nothing is more convenient than to target monstrous entities. The text by Balázs Berkovits that we are resharing this week contradicts those who would like to excuse this conspiratorial tendency, on the pretext that it is the inevitable, if not legitimate, manifestation of salutary criticism. For to reason in this way is to forget, or not to want to see, that within the list of providential culprits, the Jews always end up as champions. But what explains this bitter victory? Could it be a kind of inability to conceive of Jewish agency, if not as synonymous with crime?
