From Abraham Rotstein (17 December 1955)

Dec. 17, 1955
8575 Outremont
Montreal

Dear Professor Polanyi,

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[213] […]

[215] It seems that economic statistics, particularly the construction of indices and national economic aggregates, must rest on prices, or some kind of interchangeable valuation or all-purpose money, which in turn needs some kind of market. Now an important feature of statistics in a market economy or mixed economy, is that prices bear a fairly consistent relationship to real coast (although I' not completely clear as to what that depends on), supply and demand notwithstanding.

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[216] May I, as final item try and bring together some of the strands of our conversation on Jews? Your remarks were by far the most illuminating I have heard. The two concepts, that the Jews have remained outside the human community, and the chosen people concept are, I now think, the key factors. (Or are these two sides of the same coin ?)

However, I am more inclined to think that the matter rests on a condition, rather than a doctrine or belief. (I think this may be getting into the chicken-and-the-egg dilemma, but impotent people and children are generally known to regard themselves at the center of the universe - as a defensive belief following the opposite feeling or condition). I think that the doctrine of chosenness carries little weight, if it is not entirely repudiated by most Jews today. Ethno-centrism is not a popular doctrine… But the condition of apartness or chosenness seems to hold. Certainly their position in history has been unique. The psychologists' view of the matter, particularly the picture of general Jewish hyper-actitvity ("Jews are like everybody else only more so") and marginality might be that this was essentially guilt behavior. And in answer to the question of whence the guilt, your views on the death of Jesus and the failure of the Jews to accept their Christian heritage would have great meaning.

But if this would solve the problem, I don't know whether it would explain it, since Jewish marginality is pre-Christian (Jews have lived continuously outside Palestine since the destruction of the first temple) and extra-Christian, e.g. the Cochin Jews in China, the B'nai Israel in India, The Falasha Jews in Ethopia, and the Yemenite Jews. One is reminded at this point of Freud's hypothesis that the Jews killed the Egyptian, Moses, which would pre-date the source of guilt to the very origins of the people.

And then I wonder whether the solution is really workable? There are today inhabitants of Catholic villages in Spain whose ancestors were Jews who converted at the time of the Spanish Inquisition, that are still known as the Jewish Catholics. And will not the baptised Marx and Disraeli always retain their primary designation as Jews? Is "unjewing" really possible?

The whole question is to me an enigma wrapped in paradox. On the one hand we have a nation of pawnshopkeepers, speculators, versatile 'luftmenschen', restless, lacking roots an often depth and dignity - a wretched parable of alienation. Their transformation " as unto other nation" was essentially the object of the Zionist revolution in Jewish life.

On the other hand we can say that the Jews by their very apartness, have been a witness against idolatry - most recently against the monolithic subjugation of the totalitarian state?

Your work has in its way, been a testament to the existence of the human community. The human community takes one of its concrets forms principally in the nation-state, territorially based and historically defined. Jewish history is the precise opposite and so has remained outside.

But can we believe that this history itself points to a oneness or community of man, beyond a given place and a certain time? If shorn of this, does it remain a pitiable absurdity?

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