Between the intelligent and the sage

For a long time, there was practically no “Jewish question” for me, nationalist conversations were adopted for me, I was never going to Israel, I always believed that my homeland is here.

Like any Russian intellectual - not by blood, but in language and culture - I was ill for my country. He graduated from the History Faculty of the Pedagogical Institute, went to work on distribution to the Urals, conscientiously taught and raised children, studied with difficult teenagers, and created a pedagogical theater.

I do not regret anything. I’m even sure that everything was not in vain. I have evidence - the fate of my students.

But recently, something very significant has happened that pushed me out of an active socio-political life and made me look at all this through the eyes of an outside observer. And the matter is not only in the objectively increased Russian nationalism, in the abundance of anti -Semitic statements for any reason that the Internet is full of the cynicity of power, in general cultural and moral decline. And more is that in my eyes, in online mode, as it is customary to say today, in a short time of twenty years, most people resolutely turned away, as it seemed to me, from a better fate. Or, conversely, confirmed their own.

Once, in the mid-80s, I spoke to my friends: history will certainly pass through us. In the sense that global events are coming for our country and for the whole world. And then the story went through the first wave, but somehow by the side. Having touched us, of course, having changed being a little, but without violating the stereotypes of consciousness at all. And once again at the historical fork of Russia, the population of Russia behaves the same: he stomps on the spot, constantly turning his head back, then lifting it up. Traditionally, looking for the reasons for their failures on the side and, as usual in such cases, pulling into the light of God the mossed stuffed scarecrow in all the “scapegoat” .

The old song is about the main thing: if our recent past was not very bright, so because Lenin had a grandfather's form, Trotsky made a revolution, repressions began at the berry, the coarse member of the Politburo - Kaganovich, the most cruel and stupid political worker - Mehlis; Gaidar and Chubais are responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the impoverishment of people, and the Gusinsky - Gusinsky, and for theft and corruption, Abramovich, for the fractions of the Russian people, are responsible for the war in Chechnya and the oligarchic power.

All these people played and playing not always a plausible and far from an ambiguous role in Russian history. Eternally passionate, Jews really constantly interfere in the thick of events. Regardless of where they are scattered. And, probably, it is no coincidence that Kuprin once called them the eternal sourdough of world fermentation. Perhaps because it seems to them that they know how better. Moreover, for others. Because they are often forgotten and begin to equalize everyone under one comb. They try to teach, and then just drag people by the hair in a bright future. And those, it happens, do not even feel that they are drowning in the swamp of the present.

In the heat of excitement, they forget that the initiatives are punishable, and the world does not live only with politics and public troubles. He lives with music, literature, scientific discoveries. But it was in these areas of knowledge, cultures that the Jews made a special contribution. And they are appreciated for it. But as soon as they begin to actively invade the socio-political sphere of countries where they live, the local population has fears and evil parodies are born. The image of the ancient people invariably begins to be associated with Shakespearean Shelok or Feikhtwanger Zyuss.

This is due to another feature of the Jews - they never live in the diaspora. They do not consider themselves “aliens”, they are sure that they are the same Germans, French, Americans, Russians ... If they are not driven into a ghetto, they feel at home. But they are constantly reminded that they are visiting.

So in Russia, some idealists believe that Russians and Jews are like a pair of rails along which the latest history of Russia is moving. It means that this is a single whole, the struggle and the unity of opposites. Others believe that these are just parallel lines that do not intersect. Two hundred years together - for some, two hundred years nearby - for others.

Of course, these “parallel” in everyday life constantly intersect, moreover, for the benefit of both peoples, but in politics, in acute phases of public life, most often, except for “concussion”, this violation of the Euclidean axiom does not lead to a core.

Including because Russians and Jews have their deep mental differences. Jews do not recognize authorities, reflection and doubts for them - an image of existence. They are wanderers, constantly ready for movement, for search.

The Russian man, on the contrary, for years and decades silently accumulating his feelings, without a trace, is then ignited from one match, but he also goes out quickly. It is implicitly in constant temperature stress, the amplitude for it is the norm of the vestibular apparatus; He is both the king and the "bomb" in one person; He is not an individualist, but rather a hermit, an internal emigrant; He either crowds under general banners, or settles in the very extreme hut.

The Russians are always “culturally anxious” and do not calm down until the heterogeneous parts lead to the common denominator. The Jews, on the contrary, strive to divide any whole phenomenon into parts and balance the resulting components so that they can make as many different options as possible.

Some have soil underfoot, others have a centuries -old observation experience.

I dare to assume that Jews are really not sensitive enough to the soil, of course, they are not indifferent, but still not like Russians. (Although sometimes it seems to them that more.) Russian people say that when they criticize themselves and the country, they are driven by pain. When Jews talk about this, there is a taste of bitterness. Maybe this is because Jews are still perceived as looking a little from the outside. And when nevertheless from the inside, they immediately resemble their place. In the best case, "Jews under the governor."

Because Jews among Russians are perceived, mainly, as a context. And if they begin to claim the role of the text, confusion comes out and conflicts form.

Especially, as now, when the pendulum swayed towards the national identification of Russians. When the Russians begin to self -identify themselves as Russians, Jews begin to remember that they are Jews. Because the process of nationalization of consciousness in Russians rarely does without the alienation of Jews. Russian Jews always recall themselves as Jews only when in society, as the smell of Gary this summer, the smell of anti -Semitism is felt. Although he has always been less or more, because the “peat bogs” of anti-Semitism continued to smolder somewhere in great depths. And no one made a difficult, but radical decision to flood them.

In fairness, we note: a Russian person is a nationalist only at a moment of weakness, his normal state, rather, imperial. He will identify themselves primarily with the empire, and not with his nationality, which is ready to even sacrifice in the name of this empire.

At the same time, in an ordinary imperial state, many Russian people are not ready to do without the "friendship of peoples." And, of course, without Jews: some cannot without those “scapegoats”, others - without their smart jesters. And others sincerely love Jews and even bow to them.

In their common mass, the attitude towards Jews is not evil, but almost always not indifferent. Today - they are blamed (albeit not in the first place), tomorrow they will again accept the imperial family in the bosom.

But it is difficult to stay hostages of emotional impulses and a changeable mood all the time. The only way to the true, conscious unification of all peoples is not the reconstruction of the empire as an end in itself, but, first of all, the creation of civil society. But most people are still preoccupied only with the grandeur of the country, which are by no means understanding civilian freedoms and sometimes not even a well-fed life.

And until the “title nation” itself itself will come to the primacy of the idea of ​​civilian patriotism, in my deep conviction, the Jews are not at all time to “sew livery”.

I understand how my point of view can annoy, how they can offend those Jews that have long and deeply assimilated and have the right to calculate my words with discrimination addressed to their address, and those Russians who are tired of listening to “fairy tales” about their “slave-imperial” history and prove their complete loyalty and in aggressiveness to all nations.

But I do not want to disconnect anyone. That is why I risk saying: maybe Jews are nothing more than the eyes of God on earth? And if these eyes are clouded by active complicity, then what is seen can be distorted, and the unspoken covenant will be broken?

I do not call for elect or assimilation, I do not call at all - I just remind of wisdom and caution.

Those who left for Israel chose blood and soil, and with this active intervention in the world around them. And those who remained and stuck in their souls to the Russian land, the Soviet past, friendly feasts, kitchen conversations, their mission is to reflect and enlighten. Whatever degree of rootedness provokes a full-fledged active participation in socio-political life.

Although - it’s easier to say, it’s easier to warn, it is more difficult to realize and fulfill the “covenant”.

The Russian Jew-inteligent is in constant contradiction. “Do not interfere” - tells him something deep, responsible for the mind and “sixth feeling”. But “something needs to be done”-the civil conscience brought up in Russian culture whispers.

Fatal, but in this confrontation the Russian intellectual often defeats the Jewish sage.