The Secret of the Jews: Letters to Nietzsche [Hardcover]

David Ben Moshe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2008

More than 100 years ago, Mark Twain wrote about the Jews and asked: "All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" In this seminal book, David Ben Moshe goes beyond generalities to describe how the Jews have re-established a Jewish State in an area coveted by every major power throughout history. Friedrich Nietzsche is as often misunderstood as the Jews. Ben Moshe highlights Nietzsche's admiration for the Jews of the Bible, and looks into the remarkable similarity between many of Nietzsche's writings and Jewish sacred texts.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Ben Moshe, lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Ariel Lester Ben Moshe, founder and director of Tal Torah, a Torah learning center for women. Ben Moshe was born David Morrison in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1941. In 1962, he earned his B.A. in history and then entered the University of Tennessee Medical School, receiving his M.D. in 1965. He served in Vietnam as a Battalion Surgeon, where he was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor. In 1969, Morrison returned to school and completed his residency in Psychiatry in 1972. He moved to Israel in 1992 with his late wife, Jo Ann Hess Morrison. He is also the author of Heroes, Antiheroes and the Holocaust: American Jewry and Historical Choice, Lies: Israel's Secret Service and the Rabin Murder, and The Gush: Center of Modern Religious Zionism.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 278 pages
• Publisher: Gefen Publishing House (March 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9652294322
• ISBN-13: 978-9652294326
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,687,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very thoughtful read, September 7, 2008

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secret of the Jews: Letters to Nietzsche (Hardcover)

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in a town near Leipzig. He died 56 years later, after suffering from a debilitting mental breakdown in his last year, caused by syphilius. Between 2005 and 2006 David Ben Moshe (Morrison), founder of MILAH (Jerusalem Institute of Education), a non-profit institute dedicated to Hebrew language enrichment and providing a large ulpan program, wrote a series of letters to Nietzsche. He explains his logic of writing to the long dead philosopher as being attractive from numerous perspectives. Neitzsche lived in a time when peoplel were still struggling with the concept of modernity, he lived at the time of the birth fo the modern Reform and Conservative movements of Judaism were being launched and Jews were increasingly experimenting with total assimilation into a new secular ethos in Europe. Neitzsche was also searching after the Ubermensch in his writings and he condemned anti-semitism. Furthermore he struggled with his own personal understanding of God and religion and rejects their Christian connections. But Ben Moshe's most important revelation in writing this book is to tackle the controversial subject of Nietzsche who has often been associated, wrongly, with inspiring Nazism. Ben Moshe wants to show how deeply slanderous this association has been and that the great philosopher was not only unconnected to proto-Nazis but that he deeply rejected anti-semitism.

Ben Moshe might have gone further here and questioned the way in which our present narrative has turned Nietzsche into a `pre-Nazi' while the same academics who have thrown him to the trash bin of history in this manner have elevated Karl Marx to the heights of sainthood. Ben Moshe does address the irony of Marx's anti-semitism. While Nietzsche rejected anti-semitism in his own works such as The Case of Wagner (1888), Karl Marx was a deep anti-semite, despite the fact that Marx was himself a Jew. Marx writes in On the Jewish Question (1843) "What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, selfishness. What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling. What is his secular god? Money. Well then, an emancipation from haggling and money, from practical, real Judaism would be the self emancipation of our age."

This volume, and its collection of letters, each as its own chapter, deals with numerous issues. At one point it examines the history of scholarship of the Inquisition and the degree to which there were "mistakes in scholarship often flossed over" until the arrival of Benzion Netanyahu approached the texts anew. Netanyahu questioned why the Inquisition was established since it appeared many of the Marrnos had, contrary to common belief, become fully Christian and the "number of clandestine Jews among them were rapidly dwindling to the vanishing point." But here there is a slight weakness in this text for Ben Moshe does not develop this question, leaving it like the oddity of histories love for Marx and hatred of Nietzsche, to be investigated by the reader.

The most interesting aspect of this book is its question of modernity and the Jewish, or at least the religious Jewish, attempt to grapple with ths problem, including the problem of those who seek to reform Judaism and make it `modern' and those who leave altogether. For instance Ben Moshe notes that "there is not concept of keeping up with the times" and this is part of the "secret of the Jews." Oddly enough Ben Moshe chooses Yahanan Ben Zakkai as an example of the fact that Judaism does not change with the times. But was not Ben Zakkai the instituter of a revolution in Jerusalem by re-establishing the Sanhedrin at Yavne, thus predicating the creation of the Mishnah and Talmud, saving Judaism but also changing the Jews to a great degree, transporting it from a nation with a king and a land, to a religion capable of surviving with neither in exile. The product of Ben Zakkai was the Jewish sage and talmudic scholar, but gone were the days of the Jewish farmer and Jewish swordsmith, they had died with the Zealots defending the temple, those Ben Zakkai abhored. Gone too were the sacrifices and the temple.

Ben Moshe's most important observation is that modernity has created a great weakness of the mind. One example comes from the observation that whereas the secular student knows little about anything (but is familiar with a little about everything given the modern education system's obsession with `comparative religion' and `world history') the culture of the Beit Midrash inculcates the teaching of the sages to the youth. Nietzsche noted that progress "is merely a modern idea, that is, a false idea. The European of today is vastly inferior to the European of the Renaissance...Mankind does not represent a development toward something better or stronger or higher." Nietzsche noted that in the 19th century, it is all the more true today.

The deepest and most important part of this work is the author's familiarity with modern scholarship, the Jewish sources and European philosophy. He weaves back and forth between Nietzsche's best works, quoting them profusely, and then finding commonalities and interesting observations from the Jewish texts such as Sefer Yitzerah. Ben Moshe confronts modern scholarship's take on Nietzsche and history and skewers it for its weakness and misunderstanding. He addresses such important topics in these writings as the nature of good and evil and the special theory of relativity. These letters are both a treatise on philosophy and a philosophy unto themselves, expressing first and foremost the `secret of the Jews'.

A valuable and important book, one that is both surprising and enjoyable, both for the amatuer who is not well versed in philosophy or the Jewish sources and the expert who is. Both will find this compelling and interesting and find much that will interest them to go further and learn more.

Seth J. Frantzman

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is a thought provoking book, May 31, 2009

By 

Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secret of the Jews: Letters to Nietzsche (Hardcover)

Why have Jews been able to survive for several thousand years when virtually all other civilizations, nations and culture disappear after about five hundred years? Does its existence depend on the observance of traditional Jewish practices? Do assimilated Jews who have abandoned these practices, many of whom are Nobel prize winners, contribute in any way to the endurance of Judaism? Does the overrepresentation of Jews in colleges, among professors, among the leaders of culture and art contribute to its continuance?
David Ben Moshe, a psychiatrist, addresses these questions in The Secret of the Jews by means of sixteen imaginary letters to the non-Jewish philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Many people today think of Nietzsche as an anti-Semite, as a man that Adolph Hitler admired, but Ben Moshe shows that this is not true. Indeed, our author shows that Nietzsche despised Christianity and the New Testament and its concept of how life should be lived because he felt that Christian morality weakened the humanity in men and women. However, he extolled the heroic human figures he found portrayed in the Hebrew Bible. He also liked many Jews, albeit assimilated Jews, and respected their religion. It was not he who hated Jews, but his sister, a bigoted woman who Nietzsche disowned. Unfortunately while Nietzsche made his mother his literary heir, his sister wrenched control over his writings from their mother when she was ill and distorted Nietzsche's writings to reflect her obnoxious understanding of life.
Nietzsche's hatred of Christian morality was violent. In Ecce Homo, he writes that the Christian is "more absurd, more mendacious, vain, frivolous, and harmful to himself than even the greatest despiser of mankind could have allowed himself to dream." Nietzsche's greatest wish was to see the death of the Christian god.
But, Ben Moshe states, Nietzsche only knew assimilated Jews and had little knowledge of the Hebrew Bible beyond its stories. If he would have known observant Jews and knew more about Torah laws and Jewish ceremonies, Nietzsche's admiration for Jewry would have increased. For Ben Moshe contends Judaism has survived because of observant Jews, Jews who never attempt to modernize, whose only desire is to observe the words of God contained in the Written and Oral Torahs.
Ben Moshe has a keen understanding of Nietzsche. In his letters, he informs the dead philosopher of his, Ben Moshe's, understanding of Jewish history and Jewish thought; he quotes Nietzsche's writings frequently and compares them to the writings of Jewish sages, whom he quotes, both modern and ancient, showing that Nietzsche's opinions and Judaism mesh well.
Nietzsche criticized parts of the Hebrew Bible, especially its laws concerning priests. Ben Moshe offers an explanation of these laws that he feels Nietzsche could accept. He explains that contrary to the notions of Julius Wellhausen who derided Judaism as "priestly Judaism," that no priest ever exercised "a significant influence upon the development of his community by virtue of his priestly office." Jews, he repeats, survived, not because they followed the dictates of priests, but because some of them strictly observed Jewish practices.
One of Nietzsche's ideas is that of the ubermensch, commonly translated "the superman," the ultimate human being. This is the mentally and physically strong individual who is not dispirited and bogged down by Christian morality, who is able to live life based on his or her intelligence. Ben Moshe lists a long line of rabbis and tells Nietzsche that he is certain that Nietzsche would surely consider them as ubermenschen. Readers can make up their own mind whether they agree that a scholar or pious person is an ubermensch.
Ben Moshe writes in an unusual manner. He calls observant Orthodox Jews, whom he admires, Bayt Meedrash Jews, referring to what is generally spelt Beit Midrash, the study hall in synagogues and schools where Jewish texts are studied. He prefers his own spelling to transliterate Hebrew words, as seen above, and as seen in Yohm Keepoor for Yom Kippur, M'zoozah for Mezuzah, Pehsakh for Pesach, Pooreem for Purim, and Shahbaht for Shabbat. He is certainly not wrong, but he has decided not to follow the accepted transliteration of these and other words because he feels that his spelling captures the correct sound of the Hebrew better than the accepted usage. Some readers will find this style very enlightening, others may be put off by it, and still other may find it simply curious. But agree or not, this methodology aside, Ben Moshe's interpretation of Judaism is certainly provocative and interesting.
His understanding of Judaism is reflected in his rejection of the term religion. He feels that it tends to denigrate his view of Judaism. "The term `religion' lends itself to comparison with other `religions,' whereas there is no culture comparable to that of the Bayt Meedrahsh. Nor does the lifestyle of assimilating Jews compare to that of Jews of the culture of the Bayt Meedrahsh."
Ben Moshe's primary purpose in writing his book is to present his opinion of Judaism, a culture devoted to "something higher... committed to ethical and moral values ... values it has upheld for millennia." He has succeeded in doing this in a thought provoking manner.

4.0 out of 5 stars Got the book and the armchair, all I need is a pipe., November 5, 2008

By 

Avigai - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret of the Jews: Letters to Nietzsche (Hardcover)

After getting into this book, I showed it to a few people. Three people, three reactions (a little under par- you'd expect four opinions from three Jews). These "letters" were a delight for me, an escorted stroll through the back alleys of history. It illuminated little-known relationships (and almost relationships) between important figures in different worlds that aren't often studied in the same context (e.g., secular philosophy or psychology and Torah law).
Someone else I showed it to asked, "Who cares?" Indeed, it is a valid question for some to ask of such an esoteric topic as this, but ultimately, this is an important book in its depiction of the dawn of the modern (Modern?) Jewish identity and different attitudes towards historiography.
A relative I showed it to, who is a longtime scholar of Nietzsche, dismissed the book. While he didn't dispute the distortions that have been made of Nietzsche's views, he felt that the author carries his fantasy of letters to the philosopher too far, and imbues in him ideas that conflict with some of Nietzsche's doctrines. I can't speak to this issue, as I am a Nietzsche newbie, but in the end, I can look past this, as the audience of these letters is not the long-gone philosopher. This correspondence is a useful, if occasionally awkward, device to engage the reader
This book will not have a wide audience, but I suspect it will have a deep one.