In Search of Memory – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “In Search of Memory” by Eric R. Kandel, published in 2006. This book was mostly about neurology and psychoanalysis. The autobiographical parts included descriptions of how and why the author’s family fled Austria for the United States in 1939, and his role in reconciling psychology and biology.

Kandel identified himself as Jewish. He explained that “racial anti-Semitism” is the idea perpetrated by the Catholic Church that the Jews killed Christ and therefore, they are members of “… a race so innately lacking in humanity that they must be genetically different, subhuman.” Such idea was used to justify genocide during the Spanish Inquisition and of course, the Holocaust. Gentiles in Germany, Poland and Austria especially, took up the cudgel of racial anti-Semitism during the Holocaust.

However, what is interesting is, that while the Catholic Church calls the Jews a “race” as a putdown, the Jews think of it as a point of pride.

When American Jews use the term”born Jewish” ironically, most are unaware of the belief that Jews as a group are thought by anti-Semites to have genes in common that bring out their stereotyped, negative traits. By born Jewish, they mean to say, they, like religious Jews, believe that Jews are automatically Jews regardless of their beliefs or observances, because their mothers were Jewish. Not in a derogatory way.

But wait. If people can convert to or from Judaism, it’s not genetic. Hindu people could actually call themselves a “race” because they allow no conversions. That’s the difference. The Hindus were a group of people who did all share the same genes up until the time they started marrying non-Hindus and having children.

By the way, read the book to learn about the progression of the fields of neurology and psychology in the twentieth century.