Professor David Peimer
Jean Paul Sartre’s book “The Anti-Semite and the Jew”
Summary
The philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the book “The Anti-Semite and the Jew”, which examines his understanding of the relationship between anti-Semites and Jews. The context is post-World War II, with the book being published in 1946, after the liberation of Paris and most of France. Sartre’s famous phrase, “If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him,” encapsulates the essence of the book.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Maybe because he was very friendly with Jews, intellectuals, artists, many who had fled to Paris from Germany and Eastern Europe. They never thought France would be conquered by the Germans. And I think also from a philosophical understanding, perhaps because his uncle was Albert Schweitzer.
He says that the anti-Semite hasn’t really thought through. What if all the Jews are exterminated? Who’s the scapegoat? He actually writes about that in late ‘44, and nobody else is even thinking of this.
The Romans saw them as an obstinate, stubborn, difficult bunch, but they saw other tribes, other groups as well. They would’ve seen tribes, barbaric, more stubborn, but certainly Hannibal and the Carthaginians were far more, I mean they nearly destroyed Rome.