Bernard Lewis: Why There’ll Always Be An England
March 10, 2008Middle East expert Bernard Lewis was recently interviewed in the Jerusalem Post. The spry nonagenarian is as witty today as 30 years ago, when as an undergraduate at Princeton, I helped him move into his offices at the Institute of Advanced Studies.
“Growing up in England and serving in the British military, was an issue made of your being Jewish? Was it ever an obstacle?
No. When I joined the British army in 1940, I was interviewed by a sergeant who, while taking down all the relevant particulars, asked, “What is your race?”
Well, nowadays, I would say “white” or “Caucasian,” but at the time, that wouldn’t have occurred to me. In England, we never spoke about race. I knew what the Germans meant by it, however. So I asked the sergeant whether I should put “Jewish” in that category.
“Nah,” he dismissed. “That’s your religion, and we’ve already got that on another line.”
At that point, I was completely mystified. “What, then,” I asked, “am I supposed to put?”
“As far as the British army is concerned,” he replied, “there are four races: English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. You are clearly English.”
So, I went to war with documents that said that I was British by nationality, English by race and Jewish by religion.”