Erich Neumann: My wife would urgently like to work with Miss Wolff and I consider this also to be crucially important
Most dear Professor Jung, 30. Jan. 36
I thank you very much for your letter that has shown me once again that you continue to have patience with me and once again have engaged with my problems that I know could not be your own.
I do not even believe that Palestinian soil is so important for the Jew but it will become so if ever this soil absorbs sufficient human beings to be a true ancestral soil once again.
Certainly the Jews have lived much longer in other countries but without the contact to the soil that was not accessible to them due to their being rooted in the Torah.
Now that this foundation of the law is fractured, and I see in Hasidism the revolution of this fracturing, we must come to a new beginning via a regression to the soil, if at all.
Only now that the 2000-year-old law in its role as an artificial psycho-spiritual root soil is broken, is Palestine starting to become relevant and the history of the spiritual productive time is fused with this.
Both Maimonides and Philo are in fact assimilated Jews—but they could afford to be—because the root soil of the law made them independent of mere natural national limitations to which we had to return after the emancipation, while consciously repudiating our sole cosmopolitan supranational stance.
I do not wish to write any more about these matters as things have taken a strong and radical turn for me, which has forced me back into my own problems.
Nothing has happened in the external world, my position on Palestine and on the Jewish problem has remained the same, but this has been put aside because I first need to make some progress myself.
My analytical work is making great demands of me, problems are mounting up that I am grappling with without resolving them, and it is becoming evident to me more often that I urgently need to do some more work with you and Miss Wolff.
The two years of independently accountable work, completely alone, establishing a practice, actually my very first one, an evident transformation that has been set in motion here, all these things together justify me in my desire to go to Zurich, without needing to reproach myself that I am out of touch with reality.
I would very much like to know if it would be possible for you to give me some time, and when this might be.
I would have to bring things to a close here for two months, perhaps May/June, or if absolutely necessary in the autumn—ever in the hope that you could arrange it and I ask you to bear in mind that it will and must certainly be as crucial for me as the time was back then.
My late resolve will be especially comprehensible to you because of my introverted hesitation when I confess to you that, from a practical perspective that I discipline myself to achieve, this Europe trip must seem rather audacious, if not crazy.
The economic situation here is extremely uncertain, my family and my wife’s have partially been blown apart, despite this I have the feeling it is the right thing to do.
My wife would urgently like to work with Miss Wolff and I consider this also to be crucially important, after that it must be decided whether she will work more in this direction.
In short, I believe I have presented the situation to you as it is and would like to now leave it up to you whether you will be able to take this into account.
I will sadly not be able to allocate more than 6 weeks to my visit, but I think I could achieve a decent amount of work even in this time.
When I was with you back then, you said to me “Widen your horizons!”
To a certain degree I think this has happened.
I would have to contradict you today if you said to me that, for me, it was all about the Jewish problem, it is beginning to be about me, the Jewish aspect is the obvious location of my debate.
Europe, Asia, Primitives, there the Jewish part is a small point, albeit an important one for me, and, as I still believe, also one of general importance, but: “Before the end, Rabbi Sussja spoke: ‘In the coming world I will not have to answer for the fact that I was not Moses; I must answer for the fact that I have not been Sussja.’”
With gratitude,
Your E. Neumann
I would be very grateful to you, dear Professor, if you could let me have your reply quite quickly since I must naturally organize everything here well in advance.
Even if I am vacillating, I still have the feeling that I should act in this way, precisely the “actual” risky thing about this seems to me to be absolutely important.
By the way—there are other risks—possible aspects that probably lie dormant in the background. ~ ~Erich Neumann, Jung Correspondence 30 Jan 1936
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