Alterity, Authenticity, and Jewish Identity

The crisis of modern Jewish identity is a reflection of the erosion and instability of all cultural identities and the difficulties they encounter preserving a boundary between themselves and others. The dimensions of Jewish difference, or alterity, are central elements within modern constructions of Jewish identity, though the nature and substance of that difference has become increasingly problematic. Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of Jewish identity fifty years ago embraced Jewish alterity as an oasis of existential authenticity that symbolized a challenge to the dominant essentialistic identities of European societies. More recently, American filmmaker Woody Allen as well as French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut have presented contrasting depictions of the place of difference within Jewish identity that derive from Sartre's analysis. Whereas Allen's Jewish characters represent updated versions of Sartre's portraits of authentic and inauthentic Jews, Finkielkraut identifies an element of Sartrean bad faith in those post-holocaust Jews who had hoped that proclamations of Jewish difference would be sufficient to provide them with proud and secure identities.