Simone Weil: Letters from Harlem
Publication Type |
Book Chapter |
Year of Publication |
2000 |
Author |
|
Book |
Émigré New York : French Intellectuals in Wartime Manhattan, 1940-1944 |
Pages |
85-103 |
Publisher |
Johns Hopkins University Press |
Place Published |
Baltimore |
Language |
English |
Chapter |
5 |
Keywords |
|
Annotation |
Mehlman offers an interesting reflection on Weil’s thought during her brief period in New York in 1942. He is especially interested in the juxtaposition of her anti-Semitism with her sympathy for and admiration of African Americans, noting in many way she was “a living anticipation of the black-Jewish tensions that would not explode on the Upper Westside until many years later”. (90). Drawing on her idiosyncratic exegesis of the story of Noah in the Hebrew Bible, Mehlman goes on to identify and discuss the anti-Semitism that emerges in the letters Weil wrote during the period of her stay in New York. |