middle-eastern-studies

"If you take away from the Latin, German, and Slavic nations of our day on both sides of the ocean that which they owe to the peoples of Greece and Israel, a great deal would be gone. But we can’t even finish this line of argument; it is simply impossible to deprive these nations of that which was borrowed and to separate it from their very being. It has so permeated their blood and sap, that it constitutes part of the organism itself, which in turn has become its carrier and transmitter. It was the ladder by which these nations ascended to the top, or even better: it was the electrical current which unleashed the slumbering forces within them. Hellenism and Hebraism or — to speak without affectation — Judaism, have together created an atmosphere of ideas without which civilized nations would be unthinkable.... The part played by Hellenism in the rebirth of civilization is acknowledged freely and without envy. It dispersed the flowers of art and the fruits of knowledge. It unveiled the realm of beauty and illuminated it with an Olympian clarity of thought. And a regenerative power continues to pour forth from this literature and the legacy of its artistic ideal. The classical Greeks are dead, and toward them deceased posterity behaves properly. Envy and hatred are silent at the grave of the dead; their contributions are, in fact, usually exaggerated. It is quite different with that other creative nation, the Hebrews. Precisely because they’re still alive their contributions to culture are not generally acknowledged; they are criticized, or given another name to partially conceal their authorship or to dislodge them entirely."