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In the biographical novel, The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kozinski describes the horrendous experiences of a Jewish boy trying to survive among the primitive Polish peasantry after a forced separation from his parents during World War II. The boy was perceived by the peasants as different from them because he appeared to be dark, almost black, in comparison with their own light-skinned features. It was this difference that led to their brutalizing indifference to him.
It has been, for centuries, part of the playful sport tradition among the Polish peasants to seize a bird from a flock, paint its feathers with a color distinctly different from that of the rest of its flock and then send it back into the air. The bird's flock no longer recognizes it as one of their own. This foreignness then unleashes their most vicious and destructive aggressiveness. The painted bird, mortally wounded by its own species, falls out of the sky to its demise.
This manifestation of human depravity, and the ostensible motivation for it, seem incredible. Somehow, I could not fully understand it, or place it in a meaningful psychodynamic and anthropological context. That is, until I read the book under review.
During my reading of Sander Gilman's scholarly, perceptive, and informative book The Jew's Body, I was reminded not only of The Painted Bird but also of a theological dilemma that has been expressed for millennia. It involves the central theological question of theodicy, that is, how does the believer reconcile an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving Supreme Deity with the existence of evil and tragedy in this world? To cope with this dilemma a rather unstable, psychodynamic resolution must have taken place, and the result is glaring in its simplicity. God is not alone. He must have a powerful adversary who is at times even more powerful