Nietzsche of Blessed Memory to Jews

On August 25, 1900, the man who famously declared the death of God died. As the body of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was laid into its grave three days later, one of the mourners declared that one day the world would consider Nietzsche’s name sacred. He spoke more from bereavement than wisdom: Nietzsche himself had written that he was afraid people might one day make him holy.

When I asked Israel Eldad to sign his translation of one of the philosopher’s books, Eldad, the extremely ideological former commander of Lehi, surprisingly quoted from Nietzsche: “If you want to follow me, be loyal to yourselves.”

Vladimir Jabotinsky, supreme commander of the Irgun in the 1930s, urged his followers to carry but “one flag” – that of Zionism. Yet he wrote that he himself refused to be branded or categorized but preferred to think freely as a Nietzschean “superman” would.