Sunday, April 4, 2010
On Elon's _The Pity_
Reading the beginning of Amos Elon's _The Pity of It All_ begs several questions the most pressing of which might be related to his title. Just what can you determine (or decipher, your call) about his understanding and perception of German-Jewish history from what he has chosen to call his book? Add your reflections and considerations in the comments.
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The very title if _The Pity of it All implies a collective heartbreak whose wheels were set in motion by a complex history. The title suggests the irony of the holocaust happening in a place where Jews had achieved extraordinary success and influence. This very success and integration that German Jews attained (Moses Mendelssohn being a chief example) and seems to lay the ground work for Elon to explain it with the end-game in sight: the disintegration of German Jewish life. For Elon, the trajectory of German -Jewish relations seems to be the explanation of a love affair gone awry. This love affair perhaps had a very slow and tortured beginning, a golden euphoric age, and a terrible denoument.
ReplyDeleteAdding to what Sara has said, it seems that the title, The Pity of it All, also implies a sense of sadness and longing for what could have existed had German Jewry continued to flourish. With the intense emphasis on the Enlightenment and the intellectual accomplishments of prominent German Jews, there is a definite sense of loss conveyed by the title. Not only the staggering loss of human life, but the loss of intellectual, philosphical, and artistic works that had not yet been produced.
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