The Girl Who Could Not Kneel: Etty Hillesum and the Turn Inward

Summary

Abstract

Etty Hillesum wrote in her diaries about the process of turning inward and of finding the deepest and best in herself, which she called: her God. In this process, Julius Spier played an important role. But the question remains: did he also have an influence on her discovering and developing the gesture of kneeling which was so important in her expression of herself? That still awaits an answer.

Keywords: kneeling, prayer, Julius Spier, hineinhorchen, hineinhoren, Henny Tideman, inner self

Introduction

In 1941 and 1942, Etty Hillesum filled notebooks with diary entries. In these diaries, the image appears of a young woman who was seeking and struggling in life, and who went through an important transformation. Julius Spier played an important role in that process; it was he who recommended that she start keeping a diary. As she wrote, Hillesum transformed from a person with many physical and psychological ailments to become a powerful, self-assured woman with a deep confidence in life.

A particular aspect of this transformation was that she gradually discovered that she could come into contact with her deepest self through the gesture of kneeling. In October 1942, in the last section of the extan diaries, she wrote that she remembered with tremendous gratitude Julius Spier, who had died in September 1942. She described how she learned to kneel thanks to him.

I think that I can bear everything this life and these times have in store for me. And when the turmoil becomes too great and I am completely at my wits’ end, I still have my folded hands and bended knee. A gesture that is not handed down from generation to generation with us Jews. I have had to learn it the hard way. It is my most precious inheritance from the man whose name I have almost forgotten but whose best part lives on in me.

The fact that Etty Hillesum herself remarked on the connection between Spier and kneeling fuels the assumption that it was Spier who taught her this gesture. It was striking that she – a Jewish woman – learned to kneel, for it is not a Jewish manner of prayer, but rather a Christian one.