Too Good to Last

Michel Gurfinkiel is in the tradition of the great French essayists who put the issues of the day squarely before the public. It is a bold thing to do, especially when the subject under discussion is the fate of the Jews.

“You Only Live Twice” argues that, in the relatively short term, Jews are likely to have left Europe. The Jewish contribution to European civilization has been “a crowning glory of the human spirit,” but now the majority of European Jews and also those non-Jews who are paying attention to the march of history “insist that catastrophe may lie ahead.” The causes of this coming catastrophe are already evident to Gurfinkiel, and they tend toward an unhappy ending. In any case, the wise will not linger, awaiting certain submission. The time has come to pay our respects to what was once but is no more, and for Jews to move elsewhere as they have done through so many centuries.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Europeans adopted the phrase “Never Again,” implying shame for the perpetrators and at least a shading of guilt for the many who had stood by and taken no notice. For some years, survivors of the Nazi genocide, along with Jewish refugees expelled from the countries of the Middle East, were able to remake their lives everywhere across the continent. This was all too good to last.