(continuing...)
Robert Flacelière, the Director of the school, tried to advance Lévy’s application for naturalization by requesting the help of Georges Pompidou, then Prime Minister and himself a former ENS student, but his request was rejected. Lévy’s vulnerable status as an unregistered immigrant protected him from participating in the seismic demonstrations of May 1968, but not from political action. Together with some of the leaders of the March 22 movement, he founded the Gauche Prolétarienne (Proletarian Left). His objective: to awake, through symbolic violence, the desire of the masses to take power. The organization was intrinsically of a temporary nature. Its mouthpiece was, La Cause du Peuple (The Cause of the People) and its points of reference: 1793 and the Resistance. Palestine committees were formed in order to mobilize immigrant workers.
But, very quickly, both the organization and its newspaper were banned. Following the imprisonment of two directors, Jean-Paul Sartre was asked to take the helm, since “one does not imprison Voltaire” (De Gaulle). Sartre accepted the offer. A close relationship developed between the elderly philosopher and the young revolutionaries, based on a common desire to meet the demands of their goal and the courage to reject what was obsolete. At no time, did the organization or the newspaper take themselves as an end in itself. In 1973, following the Munich terrorist attack which was condemned by Lévy and by Olivier Rollin, and after the strike by Lip workers in Besancon – the most important movement at the time, led by Christian executives and owing little to the Proletarian Left – Lévy decided to dissolve the organization in February 1974. The failure of revolutionary action led Lévy to return to the study of the basis of political thought – Plato. To this aim he formed, together with a group of fellow travelers, “Socratic circles.”
Lévy’s status was precarious, for he still lacked a work permit. The problem was resolved in September 1973.by Sartre when the latter appointed Lévy as his secretary. The term “secretary” appeared on his salary slips, but it hardly represented the role Lévy was to assume. The young secretary devoted all his strength, fervor and energy to counteract the effects of Sartre’s illness which had left him half-blind, and he helped the aged philosopher avert a fatal decline. In 1975, Lévy was finally granted French nationality by President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing at the personal request of Jean-Paul Sartre.
In 1975, Lévy began to teach at the University of Paris VII. The post marked the beginning of a long obstacle race until he finally obtained tenure. Supported by a few loyal followers, sometimes by ministers, and despised by the teaching corps, it took twenty years before Lévy was appointed assistant lecturer, in 1994. In a stratagem devised to enable him to continue teaching philosophy, he was then accorded tenure by the National University Council of Oriental Languages. His thesis, “Philo of Alexandria in the eyes of the Pharisees,” which he submitted in November 1985, was published under the title Le logos et la letter (The Logos and the Letter) by Verdier.
Following these years of research in the “Socratic circles” and together with Sartre, Lévy became more open to “messengers.” An encounter with Charles Mopsik, a former student of Lycée Yavné, led him to a seminar by Jean Zackland, a former philosophy teacher at the lycée. The subject of the seminar: esoteric texts.
The event was to mark one of many profound experiences which Lévy would undergo: “The world was created with letters.”
Lévy began to read Lévinas, with the same integrity – in his Jewish being – which he had applied to politics: devoting his life to what he believed was true, for the desire for truth dominated all others. He began to study Hebrew and, as of 1978, regulated his life according to the mitsvot (commandments). He shared his discoveries with Sartre who applied them to his own research. The two men collaborated together on a new book: Pouvoir et liberté (Power and Liberty), which aimed to redefine the idea of revolution. When part of their dialogue was published in Le Nouvel Observateur in 1980 (later in the form of a book: L’espoir maintenant. Les entretiens de 1980, Verdier, 1991), it caused an uproar among Sartre’s veteran followers, who assumed the role of tribunal sitting in judgment over the aged philosopher. Lévy was greatly surprised and affected by the hostile reactions, in particular that of Simone de Beauvoir. Sartre’s health then took a turn for the worst and he died in March 1980.
The echoes of the scandal reached as far as Strasbourg and Rav Abitbol’s Yeshiva of Students. Rav Abitbol interpreted the feud as a dispute between gentiles and Jews over how to view old age: as decrepitude or as the domain of wisdom. He made a point of visiting Lévy in his home and the idea coalesced of holding regular seminars in Paris which would be open to Lévy’s fellow travelers, Jews and non-Jews, men and women.
Henceforth, Lévy became even stricter in his adherence to the mitzvot.
In 1984, Lévy’s work, Le nom de l’homme, dialogue with Sartre (The Name of Man, Dialogue with Sartre) was published by Verdier. His unique style of reading a text was already present, as a non-method, as revelation through the process of highlighting fissures, obstacles, gaping holes, and as the desire for the One.
