March 24th 2005

 A talk at the SOAS Palestinian Society 23.4

I am sure that some of you are familiar with the old Jewish joke: What does it take for a Jewish mother to change a light bulb? Then impersonating an elder Jewish mother, applying a high pitch east European accent you spit it out: ”no vorries I vill sit in the dark”. As it seems, the Jewish mother embodies the essence of modern Jewish existence. To be a Jew is to sit in the dark, to be a Jew is to be a victim and to enjoy your symptoms. If we analyse this bizarre tendency in the light of Freud’s pleasure principle, we might mistakenly deduce that the Jewish mother finds pleasure in inflicting pain on herself. Some may even diagnose the Jewish mother as a mythical masochistic figure. In fact, it is the other way around, The Jewish mother doesn’t enjoy her own suffering at all. The Joke is supposed to reveal a very different message. The Jewish mother, instead of improving her general state of being, rather than enjoying reading the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ in the light, she voluntarily offers to sit in the dark, she gains satisfaction initiating some remorse feeling amongst the Other, whoever the Other is. Usually it is her beloved kind (son) but it can as well be her partner, the neighbour, the social worker, the Swiss banker or even the United Nations. The Jewish mother vill sit in the dark as long as someone there is happy to feel guilty for her sitting in the dark.