Lucas van Valenbroch, View of Antwerp with the Frozen Schelde 1590. Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt
I previously published an interview with Isaiah Berlin where he quotes Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier AKA Ludwik Niemirowski: “Eastern European Judaism was a frozen mass until the rays of Western Enlightenment began to beat on it. Then some of it remained frozen, some evaporated – that meant assimilation and drifting, and some melted into powerful streams: one was Socialism and the other Zionism”.
I have been thinking about this quote for the past six months. This must be the perfect metaphor. Firstly in a liquid stream the connection to the frozen source is still visible. And so was the case with Zionism and to an extent even Socialism (Communism), both still carried the familiar Jewish markers. But the vapor is no longer visibly connected to the source. The important realization is that both Communism and Zionism are the direct result of the classic judeo-christian meltdown.
Judaism functioned for two thousand years as a deliberately frozen mass. Has anything changed since Sir Lewis Namier’s quote? You are exactly right, the temperature gone up. At the present moment the frozen mass exerts all it’s energy on refrigeration. All the creativity, smarts, imagination, intimidation and indoctrination dedicated to the single task of cryonics.
To complete the metaphor, possibly that some liquid and vapor floating around the peripheral edges of the frozen mass will again transform into the frozen crystals, but the re-frozen ice pellets retain the tactile memory and even the shape, stubbornly hoping that the refrigeration is just a temporary transport into the certain fluid future. And although I am not in the prediction business, at some point the refrigeration will give out, the iceberg will crack, the ice age will recede and melt away at once forming a mighty river. Where will this river flow? No one knows…
Disclosure: This post is inspired by my refrigerator suddenly melting under the strain of the abrupt summer humidity and heat.
Further reading:
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