The Enemies

IT SO HAPPENED THAT, during the World War, two mortally wounded Jews were brought into a hospital, both within the same hour. One was a German —the other was a Frenchman. Their beds adjoined each other. For a long time they lay tossing about, wracked by fever and pain. The Jewish chaplain fluttered from one to another, trying desperately to get them to accept each other as Jews. Before he left them, he said:

“I cannot possibly spend anymore time with you. Therefore I beg of you — talk to each other. Both of you are Jews, even though one is French and the other is German. Surely, as Jews you both share the same whole-hearted devotion to your fatherlands and to your parents, you are tormented by the same longing for your wives and children at home, by the same anxieties, and the same suffering, and soon both of you will stand before the same God. There certainly must be some virtues as well as vices that you both have in common. Therefore, I must plead with you — unburden your hearts to each other.”

The Rabbi went away. The two Jews lay silent for a long time. The Frenchman, who began to feel somewhat better, moved his parched lips: “What have we got to say to each other anyway?”

The German did not answer.

“No doubt you are right for not talking to me. But I believe I am justified in wanting to talk to you. Therefore I say: ‘A curse on you Germans for attacking us! A curse on your Hun Kaiser who has ravished Belgium, whose soldiers murder little children and rape women! A curse on all of you!’”

After saying this, the Frenchman sank wearily back on his pillow. Then the German replied:

“You sound like one of your newspapers. Could I expect you to be otherwise? I never had any great love for our Kaiser, nor for what he said and did. I also never really believed very much in what our newspapers wrote. But if I have to believe any of them, I certainly choose to believe our German newspapers more than yours. If I have to obey and sacrifice myself for anybody, then I certainly prefer to do it for the Kaiser rather than for any one of you. For after all, he is a German. His language is my language, his virtue is my virtue, and his guilt is my guilt, and for it alone I am prepared to atone.”

So the two wounded men fell silent again. Night fell, and when the dawn broke, it found them both in a weaker condition. Once again the Frenchman began to speak:

“What do you fat Germans know about our crystal dear ideas? I know that I am dying now, but even in this hour they still flash clear in my mind. I experience the forked lightning of the soul. It illuminates the whole world, which is thus made endurable, civilized, and free!”

“I too am dying,” murmured the German. “The twilight envelops me. I am getting lost in the mist. I feel so much alone! But I will return home now. I will be home soon. It is quiet and warm there. I do not want to think anymore — only to continue feeling — to feel like a German.”

The Rabbi, who just entered, overheard these last words, and he said to them:

“Why do you persist in quarreling in this last hour? Can’t you find something kind to say to each other? You are both Jews.”

At this the Frenchman said:

“Don’t Christians murder one another?”

And the German, his voice already sounding lifeless, added:

“They have drummed into our heads for too long a time already that brotherly love is an achievement of the Gospels. … ”

Several hours later, one followed the other into the slumber from which they would never awaken.

“Can’t you find something kind to say to each other? You are both Jews.”

A young blond medical assistant who had been listening to the discussion of the two dying men approached the Rabbi and said:

“Please explain to me … ”

“What?”

“The Jewish riddle.”

The Rabbi turned away from the dead, and followed by the doctor, left the barracks and went out into the fresh air.

“To be a Jew means to live another life not your own. To begin in another, to be fulfilled by another until completely possessed. At times it seems to me as if we were not at all ourselves. No sooner does the Gentile smell something than we begin smelling it too. Just look at the landscape about us, at the vegetation, the animals, the people and the city and surely you will become strangely enchanted by it all. Now who do you think experiences this landscape better and more thoroughly — the native who since childhood has lived in it, who perhaps knows no other, or the one who in passing derives pleasure from it in the sudden recognition of a newly experienced charm? His own charms are hardly revealed to the native. Woe to him if they were! He lives according to the genius of his climate. What he experiences and creates takes place in the style and the tradition of this climate. Because the commonplace and the insignificant are at work within him, therefore the unusual and the great must emerge, opening up new sources of self-development. The alien, on the other hand, cannot react the same way. He can only have impressions of this world that is so alien to him, he can only describe it, translate it, write about it, sing of it.

“We Jews are everlasting strangers everywhere. There has never been a people in the world that has produced in ratio to its population so many musicians, actors, artists, writers as have the Jews. And yet there has never been a people in the world, having such a large number of musicians, actors, artists, and writers that has produced so little for itself. When we Jews sing about other peoples and other lands, we sing with a painful devotion, a deeper fervor, and a more dusky passion than when we sing about our own. Indeed, it appears as if all things achieve their fullest expression and their greatest charm through our efforts. The entire world concedes this and therefore cannot dispense with us.”

“And how do you think it will be when the Jews return to Palestine?”

The Rabbi smiled and said:

“Boring, my dear doctor.” 

Excerpted from Never-Ending Tales: Stories from the Golden Age of Jewish Literature (2026) edited by Jack Zipes. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.