Sublime

In effect, the foreman judged Weil’s status not just as a worker, but also as a human being.

Jewish history is a living testimony to the power of ideas,

The idea of collectivity resembles Hannah Arendt’s later notion of “thoughtlessness,” the condition she associated with Adolph Eichmann.

The Jews, therefore, stand right at the center of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose.”7

Alexis de Tocqueville

The doctor’s reply—“Yes, but it is no reason for giving up the struggle”—at first sounds pat. But instead, it sounds the depths of human purposefulness: the demand, in the face of political or ideological absurdity, for justice and dignity.

Dreyfus was the French Jewish army officer whose persecution made Herzl fear the nightmare that awaited the Jews of twentieth-century Europe.