'Be Safe, Israel, as You Guard the Wall'

My middle son was curious about his ancestry, which is largely a mystery as it is for many Americans. On my side, in the most general terms, Polish and Irish; on his mother’s, English and French. A typical opaque hodgepodge, until the arrival of inexpensive genetic testing. Michael sent away for a reading of his genetic makeup, and the results were predictable except for one small contribution to his genome: Ashkenazi Jew. He called it a “trace element.” A surprise but not a surprise. My wife and I haven’t been tested but I suspect the soupçon of Jewish blood is from my side, from my Polish half, though Leopold Bloom may be smiling in the background.

My reaction: that makes sense. Since I was a kid I have ended up with Jewish friends. My ex-wife and oldest son are Jewish. I’ve always loved modern Jewish literature and Yiddish writing in translation (I’m reading Shadows on the Hudson by Isaac Bashevis Singer.) In junior high school I read Martin Buber and Max I. Dimont’s Jews, God, and History (1962), looked into Spinoza for the first time and rooted for Israel during the Six-Day War. To this day, defending the U.S. and Israel are self-evident necessities. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, Jorge Luis Borges wrote “To Israel” (trans. Stephen Kessler, The Sonnets, 2010), and contemplated his own possible Jewish ancestry:

“Who’ll tell me whether you are in the lost

labyrinth of secular rivers in

my blood, Israel? Who can tell me where

my blood and your blood have flowed together?

It doesn’t matter. I know you are in a sacred

book that contains time and that rescues

red Adam’s story and the memory

and the agony of the Crucified.

You are in that book, which is the mirror

of every face that looks into its pages,

and of God’s face, who in his intricate

harsh crystal can be terribly divined.

Be safe, Israel, as you guard the wall

Of God in all the passion of your fight.”

Borges also devoted two poems to Spinoza and announced his intention to write a book titled Key to Spinoza. In a 1974 interview he said, “I am preparing a book on Spinoza's philosophy, because I have never understood him. He has always attracted me, less than Berkeley, less than Schopenhauer, but I cannot understand Spinoza.” Even so, when asked in 1979 to name his favorite historical character, Borges answered, “Spinoza, who committed his life to abstract thought.”

[Go here to read “Borges in Jerusalem” and here to read “Borges, the Jew.”]