The late Jacob Golomb’s final book, Zehut be-loʾ Naḥat (“Identity and Its Discontents”), focuses on certain creative Jews who were active in Europe in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and were influenced by Nietzsche. They may be called Grenzjuden (“marginal Jews”).  In his book Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud, who was a marginal Jew, argued that there is always a conflict between the individual, who aspires to freedom, and civilization, which constrains him or her.  Now, the Jews in Europe had to grapple simultaneously with two civilizations: the European and the Jewish.  Herzl too was a marginal Jew.  Golomb maintains that even though he led a nationalist movement, his emphasis was always on the freedom of the individual Jew.  In a brilliant essay (1986), Golomb had argued that Rabbi Judah Halevi (d. 1141) was a Grenzjude, torn painfully between the hedonistic Andalusian civilization and the traditional Jewish one. Golomb testifies about himself that he too is a marginal Jew.  Could it be that the truly authentic Jew is the marginal one, torn between different cultures, wonderfully creative and profoundly discontented? 

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