ASSIMILATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
BY BARRY RUBIN
"The wise child asks: `What is the meaning of the rules, laws
and customs which the Eternal our God has commanded us?'...The
contrary child asks: `What is the meaning of this service to you.'
Saying you, he excludes himself....The simple child asks: `What is
this?'....As for the child who does not even know how to ask a
question, you must begin for him...."
--The Passover Haggadah
"I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a
member."
--Groucho Marx (also quoted by Woody Allen)
Rabbi Zusya said, "In the world to come, they will not ask me,
`Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, `Why were you not
Zusya."
--Hasidic tale
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1:
THE MYSTERY PEOPLE
CHAPTER 2:
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE, 1789-1897
CHAPTER 3:
THE BURST COCOON, 1897-1940
CHAPTER 4:
AMERICA's FOUNDING IMMIGRANTS
CHAPTER 5:
SELF-INVENTION, AMERICAN STYLE
CHAPTER 6:
IN DUBIOUS BATTLES: THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT
CHAPTER 7:
OTHER PEOPLE's NATIONS
CHAPTER 8:
THE LAST JEW
CHAPTER 9:
THE CONTRARY CHILDREN
CHAPTER 10: PHILOSOPHY WARS
CHAPTER 11: NATIONHOOD, DIASPORA, GALUT
Notes
Bibliography
1
INTRODUCTION
"If we act like other men, what shall we do on the day of the
Lord?....If thou art of opinion that there is no future world, and
that the dead do not rise to new life, then why dost thou want thy
birthright?
Jacob to Esaui
Many books have been written about Jews and about The Jews,
inspired by the proclivities of a people fascinated by itself and
fascinating to others. The role they played in religion, history,
and culture has been far beyond their numbers; the mystery of
Jewish life and survival in history's long-term and dramatic events
of recent history; and the fact that this group often seemed a
revealing exemplar for so many social and human phenomena.
Yet, surprisingly, the focus of narrow academic studies and
broad philosophical theories has not produced an integrated
consideration of the effect of assimilation on the Jews and of the
Jews on society in the West. Enough history has elapsed and
research has been done to let us understand this story.
personal experience and self-examination, historical study,
and on plane reading April 1991 Vanity Fair: which included no less
than four articles all coincidentally and unintentionally dealing
with the issue and all `dead ends' of the modern sort, creativity,
talent, glamour, at the center of events, yet what running away
from and running toward?: Alfred Stieglitz, the virtual founder of
photography as art in America and husband of Georgia O'Keeffe. rich
German Jewish family, unhappily married to brewery heiress. Lady
Mary Fairfax of greatest Australian publishing empire, Jewish
family emigrated from Poland in the 1920s and degree in pharmacy
and owner of dress shops who became a doyen of Australian society.
(everyone but Madonna and...) Jean Harlow who was married to
Charles Feldman, "dapper" head of Famous Artists Agency and her
great love. (and with Ralph Lauren advertisements) Ali MacGraw, her
father was of Scottish descent, her mother's family was Hungarian
and her name Frances Klein. "`Was she Jewish?" reporter asked, "She
never answered that question," said MacGraw. Listening to the BBC
while working on the book, Muriel Spark, who many thing Britain's
greatest contemporary novelist converted to Catholicism, while her
son decided to become Jewish. she never comments on.
Why should the Jews be preserved. For those who saw no reason,
they would not be convinced otherwise because they saw no value, or
merely something nostalgic or obsolete in the notion.
Let us suppose that African-Americans or some other group
knowing oppression, and external and internal feelings of
inferiority could by an act of will change their skin color. How
many would do it? For even if these "converts" carried some stigma
for a while, they could move, profess such opinions as would tend
to disguise their origins, or at least their children would slip
into comfortable anonymity.
The breakdown and abandonment of the Jews from tradition and
1
attempting to deal with it is a prototype first for the West and
later for Third World intellectuals and culture; the need for
rootedness in balance.
mystery of the Jews. Chr/Moslems want to take over world
through prostilyizing.
Nothing that Jews have done has not been done by non-Jews.
Christians have changed religions or denominations, become
leftists, chosen different identities, supported other people's
causes, and so on, but not so deeply, frequently, and in such large
numbers. These are
characteristics but not the exclusive
possession.
For centuries, the Jews were a tight-knit, autonomous
community and though there was terrible murder, oppressions, and
defectors who often quickly disappeared into the dominant culture.
When started another movement--Christianity, German nationalism,
Marxism--the
remaining
Jews
became
its
victims.
converts
descendants might become anti-Jewish and if trying to protect
themselves certainly did. Hungarian example from 1930s.
If Judaism is only a victim-community than it is something to
flee from and to protect one's children from.
Js saw underside of society, its hypocrisy, and not so subject
to its defensive assumptions and arguments. Middle Ages was not
romantic area of knighthood in flower but of murder and hysterical
slander. Christianity was not the natural religion but bloodstained. Bob Dylan: "To live outside the law you must be honest."
rebel mode and defender mode. ally with upper class against
mob rule or with lower against ruler, allowing Js to be portrayed
as both plutocrats and Bolsheviks simultaneously.
American Jews did not disappear because it was possible for
them to become increasingly translucent.
Js as immigrants, thus not so territorially tied, nor so
intellectually tied.
but if break in culture how does disconnected generation know
what to think.
Key image, The Haggadah story of the four children in their
attitude toward the celebration of the passover and also, more
broadly, toward tradition [what is the origin of this? Talmudic
commentary?] "The wise son asks: `What is the meaning of the rules,
laws and customs" note that the wise is not someone who knows it
all but someone who both wants to know more and participate and who
wants to ask questions. The evil son says, `What is the meaning of
this service to you.' Saying you, he excludes himself." He does not
want to participate, making a breach between generations and
family. He does not deny that it means something to the
participant, but it has nothing to do with him. He does not hit or
harm, he simply walks away in disgust or indifference. The
tradition does not call for his murder or even punishment, as would
others, but says that if he does not want to be included, he will
not--that [quote] he would not have been among those who marched
out of Egypt. The simple son asks: `What is this?' But just as the
wise son is interested in asking questions, so is he, he is not
2
stigmatized even though his knowledge is so limited. These are
three stock characters, the truly interesting is the son who does
not even know how to ask a question, you must begin for him." He
could easily have been conflated with the simple son but not only
cannot he ask "What is this?" he may not even know that this
exists. In short, where there is total ignorance it is the
obligation of teaching. Increasingly, the J community in America-and so dramatically in the USSR--is of that fourth group. This is,
of course, a religious ceremony, commemorating God's action, but it
is
also--like
all
Jewish
holidays--easily
seen
as
a
historical/national/communal event for the exodus is a real or
symbolic historical happening, commemorating the moment when the
tribes become a nation, when the slave become free, the equivalent-on a psychological level--to the American revolution.
The use of language "OT" JC, "Talmudic" as criticism
What one might call reasonable or conscientious assimilation
and the products of cowardice and opportunism, the latter almost
always included conversion--since few were persuaded by ideology-playing down, leaning over backwards, and even criticism or
persecution. could mean complete absence of mention or use only to
separate oneself out. Within a single generation, the J ancestry
almost always became forgotten or meaningless as became Chr or--in
Marxist states--good Comms. some residue left, perhaps. Sometimes a
little sentimental attachment, sometimes persecution, but the spark
had died. relig and non-relig elements.
The issue here is not whether exceptions can be found but
whether applies to majority of cases and whether it is useful for
understanding better.
When
peoples
lives
disrupted
by
change:
emigration,
persecution, change of circles, breakdown or breakout of tradition,
much seek new equilibrium. and what will it be? may try more than
one thing before concluding.
Why should one care about survival of the Jewish people?
Not a book about antisemitism, of which there are quite a huge
number already.
people in a boat, one starts drilling, when complain say only
under own seat--check Talmud reference.
Focus on U.S. and Europe, can't include everything, have to
make choices which are hopefully more typical and illustrative,
which also illuminate the specific cases not discussed. Obviously,
generalization, not all modernists were Jews, for example, nor
leftists but why a predilection?
In analyzing literary works, I am not arguing that the
interpretation given here was the author's intention or the only
possible reading but rather on how the characters and plot
illuminate certain issues about the author and environment he lived
in. It is impossible to prove that Kafka was trying--as his main or
one of his goals--to describe the situation of contemporary Jews in
Europe, it is easy to show that there are objectively many
parallels there which help us understand both the situation and the
psychological reactions to it. Kafka, inasmuch as he expresses
3
anything between personal angst and a universal human condition is
explicating the Jewish condition--not a German, Egyptian, Czech, or
Chinese one.
Not everything due to Jewishness or issue of assimilation but
this is what we are writing about. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a
cigar is just a cigar.
pref: thank sources, Max Tichtin
The origin of the "discontent" word may be from Shakespeare's
Richard II [?] opening speech, "Now is the winter of our
discontents," the dissatisfaction of the ambitious Richard at the
moment of victory for his house, a curious contradiction which in
his case was the result of personal ambition and in this study a
comment about the costs and ambiguity of the victory.
Various histories--Sachar, Hertzberg, Silberman--have shown
that America has accepted the Jews to an unprecedented extent, that
antisemitism is relatively insignificant and will remain so, that
the community's individual success stories are legion. The issue
which I wish to study here is what the Jews have accepted in this
process, what is there left to defend.
Civilization and its Discontents civilization requires
compromises required for survival but which--because they only
contain, not dissolve--conflicts are not a solution. Civilization
becomes question of which civilization, a question Freud does not
raise given his time, place, and wish to stress the universality of
the psyche. Still, by doctrine and by experience Freud saw
antisemitism as incurable. Is it only the issue of verbal hatred
and physical harm, or also of capacities and alienation? title:
link to Freud and to Heine's "ticket" statement"
Jews had to decide how they would relate to the community-whether to be Jews at all and what to believe outside the
religiously directed tradition--and to the outside world--could
they be equal while still being Jews or did they want to be and
what strategy should they approach in that regard? Their selfvision as Jews and as humans/citizens.
So many ideas have altered so drastically that it is often
hard to reconstruct them for a non-specialist audience, for example
that those oppressed accepted characterization as inferior.
Theme of the Jewish Variant, ie, the twist, special spin, that
Jews put on any political or cultural concept or movement:
modernism, liberalism, the left, patriotism (AH, only real
supporters) and so on. ie, everyone is equal and should have
freedom to develop their culture but Jews should not speak out
because this would promote discrimination against them., etc, etc
use throughout book.
period as transition from traditional Jewish as religion to
Jews as a national group for those not totally religious; concept
of the Jewish Variant; centrality of the assimilation issue in
modern Western intellectual and cultural life. Events from the
French Revolution through Napoleon's Sanhedrin in 1808 began this
era of assimilation, ending the hegemony of tradition sweeping from
west to east; developments from the new rise of antisemitism in the
4
1880s through the 1897 Zionist Congress marked the renewal of
struggle among Jews. Israel's creation in 1948 through the 1967 war
brought an era in which the national definition was supreme.
i. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews Vol. 1, (Philadelphia,
Pa., 1968) must check reference n. 43 Jacob]
5
CHAPTER ONE
THE MYSTERY PEOPLE
"Nothing can help the Jew. He will never give satisfaction no
matter what he does. If he spends too much, he is ostentatious, a
spendthrift; if he spends too little, he is called stingy, a miser.
If he keeps aloof from public life, he is lacking in public spirit;
if he takes part in political life, he is an impertinent intruder.
(Laughter)."
--Rabbi Bloch to Austro-Hungarian Reichsrat (1890)
0. Intro
The assertion that the Jews had no way of escaping from their
disdained position. Members of parliament could laugh at this
dilemma in 1890 because it was still a relatively optimistic moment
in history, especially in Vienna where much was turned into a joke.
goose But if no longer perceived as Jew, can do anything, can
be anything, at least this is the perception. During the last two
centuries,
one
of
the
great
forces
in
Western
culture,
intellectual, and political life has been the power released by the
exposure of Jews to the strains of assimilating into the larger
society. Like atoms being split in a reactor, this stress produced
remarkably large amounts of power from a relatively tiny mass of
people. And like nuclear power, it often destroyed the individual
atoms being pulled apart. three themes:
--What route to take? escape or adjustment
--Does the route become the message, creating a new
distinctiveness, Jewish Variation
--How
does
this
process
effect--self-rejection
and
transformation--the psychology of the individuals involved as well
as the society. And afterward is something valuable, the very
factor producing creativity and achievement, lost in this running
away.
At times, the route has reject those wishing to pass; at
others it has welcomed them. But we are interested in the attitude
of Jews, not antisemitism against them.
It is not only a question of Jewish cultural characteristics
or religious ideology but also of the situation of choice.
The endless obsession with the essential differentness of the
Jews' history and continued existence--or rather, perhaps, the
perceived need to explain it and make it rational. Yet a lot of
this confusion was generated by the theological framework. For
those assuming the obvious correctness of Christianity, it was hard
to devise a meaning for the continuation of Judaism. Yet in a
national framework, the strength of a mechanism which combined
peoplehood and religion and customs.
goose Judaism always took in foreign influence--Maimonides use
of Greek logic and philosophy learned through Arab sources--but
brought them into Judaism rather than seeing as an alternative.
outer customs--acculturation versus inner customs, assimilation.
Survival linked to continued growth and adaptation. Even the ultra-
1
orthodox are highly shaped and relatively frozen in 17th-century
forms not ancient ones (European clothes)
Ahad ha-`Am in everyday life, instruments are a means to an
end and "when the end is no longer pursued, the instruments
automatically fall into disuse. But in sacred matters the end
invests the instrument with a sanctity of its own....and when the
end has ceased to be pursued, the instrument does not fall out of
use, but is directed towards another end. In other words: in the
one case we preserve the shell for the sake of the kernel, and
discard the shell when we have eaten the kernel; in the other case
we raise the shell to the dignity of the kernel, and do not rob it
of that dignity even if the kernel withers, but make a new kernel
for it." brilliant.i
"Society does not create its spiritual stock-in-trade and its
way of life afresh in every generation. These things come to birth
in the earliest stages of society, being a product of the
conditions of life, then proceed through a long course of
development till they attain a form that suits that particular
society, and then, finally, are handed down from generation to
generation without any fundamental change. Thus society in any
given generation is nothing but the instrument of the will of
earlier generations....And no man or generation can tell where lies
the dividing line between himself and them, between his and
theirs."ii
It is good when "past and present join forces in a single
task," but upheavals bring new ideas and desires of which previous
generations had no conception. these new ideas are admitted by
tradition on condition they do not disturb things, but eventually
the take over in contention.iii
Macabees,
Prophets,
Pharisees,
Hasidim
all
anti-elite
movements, rabbinic rule of the wise, intellectual very different
from Christian tradition in which power rules and--except for
Reformation--a more or less continuous elite (and Protestantism
also quickly becomes state religion), especially in practice. But
in Christianity, dissidents were thrown out or left to start their
own movement, in Judaism essential unity was maintained. use of
suasion, not force, within community.
Character: relentless self-criticism much more standard than
in Christianity and Islam but institutionalized by Bible and
prophets and in fact was used against by Christians and antisemites
who pointed out shortcomings and blamed Jews for their sad state or
as proof of inferiority. Where other early cultures cheered their
heroes like partisans at a sporting event, Jewish religious
writings "chronicle the moral faults as well as the military
victories of a David, and prophets invent the literary form of the
parable as an instrument for social criticism."iv But carried into
intellectual life. Jewish tradition never accepted a divine right
of kings since they often acted wrongly and God turned against
them. Like modern democratic dialogue. In contrast, pollyanish
Christian doctrine which is more like a modern totalitarian
propaganda: everything is always right except for denouncing
2
heretics and everyone with other viewpoints.
Jewish pessimism about assimilation comes up again in 19th and
20th century, a combination of attractiveness and bad experience.
dangers of "reason" unconstrained since not all agree on reason,
many people incapable of it or can be mislead, neglects wisdom of
the wisest and of multiple generations and while historically the
virtual dictatorship of tradition had shortcomings, the opposite
extreme was the denial of any value to it.
The service was not a spectacle in a fancy theater/cathedral
synagogue but a participatory experience requiring study and
knowledge. Thus even Jews ignorant of Western knowledge had Jewish
knowledge. Educated Western Jews were ignorant of Jewish knowledge
and thus had no reason not to assimilate from a religion/tradition
they could think superficial and superstitious.
since
opposition
to
emancipation,
and
later
modern
antisemitism, was based on the idea that the Jews were different,
the pressure was on them to prove that they were not by
extinguishing the differences themselves.v This is a critical
historic aspect of assimilation. The differences of which Jews had
been proud became dangerous. the more they pronounced how fully
integrated they were, the more one was reminded of their need to
integrate, ie, their outside origin, the Jewish version of "Catch22. So their only alternative was to be silent and to feel
threatened by those who were not silent.
The community of fear complex: low profile, avoid trouble,
remain invisible yet stay within tradition. survival through
separateness. The stages of Jewish historiography: the national saw
a contradiction, for modernization but also saw much of
modernization as assimilation
not arguing that there is only one position--since Js on
opposite sides--but a common pool of attitudes and wisdom which is
drawn from and which--even though many non-Jews hold similar ideas-there is also a pool of forbidden notions which would not accept.
Also notions are interpreted different ways at different points in
time. Two factors: the Jewish heritage and the Jewish situation.
The
need
to
combat
antisemitism,
for
example,
and
the
assimilationist situation is at the root of liberal or socialist
preferences which, from this standpont and as long as the
socialists are not in power (!) amount to the same thing: justice,
equality, tolerance, anti-tradition, against the forces seen as
antisemitic. This is why the liberalism of American Jews is so
persistent and cannot be undermined--though it can be "capped" on
the left when that position is identified as antis/anti-Is and
anti-democracy.
The great majority of Jews in Europe--and all in America--were
migrants or immigrants one or more times each century. While the
Moslem world was a mosaic, Jews were the only minority group in
Europe.
The assimilated Jews, like the Marranos, socialized and
largely intermarried, carried remnants, but intellectual not
religious ones. A few maintained and returned, most did not.
3
positions:
--Christianity as improvement on its parent Judaism, most
moderate
--Judaism as negative, Christianity as positive, classical
antisemitic
--both negated, Jew's responsibility for Jewish-Christian evil
synthesis, anti-religious radical
duck A. Options of Assimilation
perhaps solved in a thousand years, wrote Schnitzler, "In our
time there won't be any solution, that's absolutely positive. No
universal solution at any rate. It will rather be a case of a
million different solution....Every one must manage to find an
escape for himself out of his vexation or out of his despair or out
of his loathing, to some place or other where he can breath again
in freedom. Perhaps there are really people who would like to go as
far as Jerusalem to find it." and then might still not do so. the
journey out of the problem was internal for each person.vi
Two opposite reactions to insecurity and assimilation: the
eagerly assenting and the self-assertive.
In the first stage, being Jewish was perceived as incompatible
with a full life in the wider community; in the second, it became a
more minor inconvenience but, by the same token, was not worth
keeping or, more often, passing on to children. Only a religious or
national definition can preserve, though an ethnic one can postpone
the collapse.
conversion as the ticket to get on the train or as the
"upgrade" to first class.
theme of encounter with the old tradition by those--Herzl,
Kafka, Buber, Scholem (and through him Benjamin)--who had almost
forgotten it existed
The constant story: whole populations are declined or
murdered, replaced or renewed by immigration: US with Sephardic,
German, EE; France with AL by EE and then N Afr; England with Seph
by EE.
generation of tradition and generation of revolt. one revolt-against Judaism itself? or continuing revolt. tries to be like
others but: affects act of choice; affects who going to choose.
the belief that only punishment and humiliation and threat
came from being Jewish, the victim of discrimination and pogroms,
excluded both from the cultural prizes of the West and also the
material ones. why keep it up? being martyrs to sanctify a name
that meant nothing? and those who could not themselves do so gave
as gifts to children, either through conversion or through teaching
them to separate themselves out.
Suffering and oppression can only be sentimentalized by those
who don't suffer it; the victims want to discard that state as soon
as possible.
J was all that was old and restrictive, associated with the
Christianity that secularists also wanted to discard, but to attack
that would have been more difficult. At the same time, it was
4
attacked by the traditionalists who were horrified by social
change. The conservatives attacked secular Jews, the modernists
attacked traditional ones. The attacks melded together. Like a
tribal member was supposed to learn from the universal civilization
of England or France, go to Oxford or the Sorbonne and stop
dressing funny and sacrificing goats.
"pragmatic" assimilation for one's career advancement and
financial well-being as common or more common.
monopole versus pluralist societies
Christians may disagree about how much effort to put into
converting Jews but can scarcely be unhappy at the conversion of
individuals. Yet did they want?
Alternate
identities/masquerade
generational
choices:
conservative [Disraeli, Dice Clay], left, nat, Z, religious
(conversion), lib, profitable professional posturing points in
time: central Europe 20th c; 19th c; cultural innovation: Susan
Sontag?
During the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, the
struggle of Jews with the question of assimilation in Western
societies was a central factor in intellectual, political, and
cultural development to a remarkable extent. Like the core of a
nuclear reactor, this relatively tiny group produced an incredible
amount of energy. Yet contrary to its antisemitic enemies, this
chain reaction was never coordinated. Much of it--probably most of
it--was devoted to the bloodless self-destruction of the community
which had existed, rather than its rise to some kind of power by
conspiracy. Those most involved in the world outside the community
were seeking personal or collective assimilation, albeit by very
different paths. Their actual situation and the choices they made
had a very big impact on what they said and did. In many cases,
their symbolic self-immolation turned them into real victims; in
others, they were the material beneficiaries of their own acts.
conversion is a form of suicide though it is attended by more
hope off immediate rebirth than most suicides. Otto, in practice
Weil, Koestler, Benjamin, Zweig? the purged by Communism in show
trials.
protection by masses or by government?
identification with national group or sep
constant look for heroes and decent figures, exaggeration of
gestures of friendship or sympathy
assimilation as: --mainstream, aristocracy, respectable bourgeoisie
--rebel, revolutionary, against hypocritical front to which
they are outsiders
assimilation as: --mainstream, aristocracy,
respectable bourgeoisie
Hollywood stars
The assumption of those tied to tradition and/or privilege was
that authority was just and the order was right but from those
oppressed by it and standing outside it with their own alternate
tradition, such a presumption was not acceptable.
Jews as alternative elite, dethroned from their own value
system.
5
Blessed is the Match and Candle Burns at Both End
Mao Ze Dong Mount Tai. have to know cultural references.
generational factor. couldn't communicate to children and
couldn't live by precepts so became empty symbol which rebelled
against but in others' case loved through nostalgia. my family
determined to cut off memories and to live without meaning.
Intermarriage
The Jewish Variant is something that proves itself Jewish in
being non-Jewish, like Scholem's remark about the Frankfurt school
as a "Jewish sect."
duck B. Acculturation and assimilation
Most Jews in Europe and all those in America of course were
migrants if not in their own lifetime than in their parents.
psychology, like nature, abhors a vacuum of identity.
all Js assimilated to nation, culture and language no matter
how insulated. within Israel ethnic community "Polish" different.
Give me a lever and a place to stand and I'll move he world--two
parts needed, standpoint as well as means.
changing language, changing clothes, studying "secular"
subjects other than Talmud
struggle between tradition and modernity but modernity also
brings a reform tradition (Samson Raphael Hirsch, Conservative,
Reform movement and even a reform of ultra tradition--Agudat) and a
new, secular-cultural tradition.
assimilation/acculturation. economic and social development,
not intellectual thought, was the main impetus, especially at the
start. different conditions in different areas.
acculturation as opposed to assimilation, those seeking
emancipation and modernization were opting for the community's
rights, not its disappearance, advocating a continued religious or
nationalist or ethnic identity. As opposed to those seeking
individual salvation by assimilation (opportunists and self-haters)
or by merging the community with an existing nation (others
nationalism) or class (the left) or as citizens of the world.
centrality of the debate--and confusion--between acculturation
and assimilation. emancipation was thought to relieve the pressure,
making it easier to remain Jewish and enjoy the fruits of the
society. difficulty in designing a secular identity, especially in
the years between 1881 and 1948.
assimilation defined as a self-willed process, not speaking
the language or knowing the customs of the country--which comes
with birth--but actively trying to fit in to a greater extent by
surrendering one's heritage and adopting another one. It is the
conscious, active aspect which is the key here. One kind of
assimilation is Abandonment: leaving one's own tradition for
another, an extreme form is Rejection--open attacks or trying to
hide, embracing conversion. A third is Co-existence, maintaining
both large elements of one's identity plus the derech ha-eretz the
way of the land. A fourth is Embracing, staying in completely
requiring either Orthodox/ultra-Orthodox (in place) or Zionism.
6
Almost all can be put in this classification. The Bolsheviks, selfhaters and converts were Rejectionists; many Jews--perhaps the
norm--were Abandoners; the surviving rank and file were mainly Coexisters, till the Holocaust or other persecution made them into
Embracers. Isaiah Berlin said Js behaved like hunchbacks: some
denied they had a hump and those suggesting differently were
prejudice (Aband); others said it was true and they were proud to
be despised (Coexist); others that it was getting smaller and if no
one ever mentioned would believe it didn't exist; fourth said if
they went to Israel it would fall off.vii
Unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism does not teach a
specific way of looking at people outside the group. The two larger
religions look at non-believers as either inferior to be hated or
as those without the Truth to be pitied and rightfully converted.
They tend to expect Jews mirror these beliefs, such expectation
being a major cause of antisemitism historically in that Jews were
seen as acting to conquer the world or to exploit those who it saw
as inferiors. In fact, Jews are largely unconcerned about the
beliefs of the Other, an attitude better understood by early
Christianity which thought this to be a selfishness with Truth
which should be remedied by preaching to the Gentiles. If Jews in
Eastern Europe looked down on the surrounding peasants it was not
because of their religion but because of their lack of discipline
and principles (this is an important point since it suggests the
Jew who had left the tradition is searching for the renewal of such
a system and has much to do with their system-building propensities
and search for an all-explaining ideology based on intellectual
principles. At any rate, living in a society which is ruled by
principles which one has no way for interpreting in view of one's
own identity is a recipe for alienation and for searching for some
means of understanding. Intellectual endeavor, search not just for
personal but also social meaning, alienation, seeing things from a
different angle, all the outsider principles but outsider without a
set of firm beliefs, makes one tend to overestimate the
malleability of others whose beliefs are deeply set (Marx not
comprehending the importance and comfort of religion, tradition,
nationalism) or lack of fear about challenging them (Freud).
But if the Jews wanted to assimilate, to be accepted, to blend
into those around them, to whom would they assimilate? First, there
was the question of nation. They could, of course, be
internationalists but that only made them hated--cosmopolitans. Or
they could pick a specific nation. In Austria-Hungary they became
the first German nationalists, being hated in Czechoslovakia as
German-speakers,
pioneering the
idea of a greater German
nationalism that would destroy them. Aside from the choice of
nations, there would be the choice of classes: the upper classes,
the
ruling elite (which made them considered plutocrats,
capitalists par excellence and hated by the left and the fascist
right, the peasants as agents of the landlords and aristocracy
which hurried to deliver them to the peasants vengeance), or of the
"masses" which pushed them to the left and again made them hated by
7
the elite and by the very people who opposed those Communist,
anarchist, or Socialist forces which claimed to speak in their
name. Or if to the society as a whole, they became doctors,
lawyers, professors, which made them hated by the middle classes
who they competed against and was a key factor in the fascist and
anti-semitic nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In short, assimilation appeared to be the safest of courses and
became the one most fraught with danger. the Marranos, by appearing
to go underground they became more dangerous then when they wore
caftans. They were "taking over" German art and culture by
synthesizing it with their own insights or tendencies like
modernism.
importance of right to study/do other things: J playing non-J
parts as actors; studying non-J subjects (Trilling) conflict: bring
something new or prove selves by fitting in.
Ultimately, in joining Western civilization, individual Jews
had to make a choice of ancestors: Jews, Christians (conversion) or
Greeks (intellectual assimilation).
duck C. Counterforces
rather than see this as a wonderful step toward the
brotherhood of man and universalism, it is a historic catastrophe.
candle burning at both ends. (symbol of candle, sabbath and
chanukah, discussion of ultra-orthodoxy as not answer. The cultural
equivalent of unilateral disarmament. Instead of Abraham being
willing to sacrifice Isaac to show his faith in God, the Jews were
to sacrifice themselves to show their faith in the sincerity of
Western civilization's offer. "suffering servant" of humanity.
Mystery people theme. Jews are a people who historically got
high not by alcohol or heroic violence but by intellectual activity
and interpretation of life's purpose. Yet their very behavior made
them all the more suspect--where was their violence and lust for
power? they must have it in some form and not being visible, it
must be hidden by opposite: murder of children, protocols of elders
of Zion. similarly, assim must hide a refusal to assim, that
perhaps even converts and politically involved have secret agenda.
from religion to race to nation in defining it.If thieves steal
everything of real value that one possesses, is it a cause for
rejoicing?
The right-wing nationalist, and later fascist, and the leftwing critique of liberalism and capitalism equally threatened Jews
who participated in the latter. But liberalism and capitalism were
to be means of assimilation, nonetheless generated opponents as did
the leftist Jewish activity designed for the same purpose.
almost feel like there is a law of the conservation of
antisemitism, no matter what happens--how politics and society
change--it is still there in some new form. Czarist Russia, USSR,
post-Communist Russia; religious, racial, "anti-Zionist"; white
racist and black nationalist...etc., etc.
Arendt Origins of Totalitarianism xiii-xiv: "If Jews had
anything in common with their non-Jewish neighbors to support their
8
newly proclaimed equality, it was precisely a religiously
predetermined, mutually hostile past that was as rich in cultural
achievement on the highest level as it was abundant in fanaticism
and crude superstitions on the level of the uneducated masses."
Jewish dissociation from the Gentile world more important for
Jewish history than exclusion. voluntary separation. antisemitism
really becomes important for conservation only after emancipation.
xv: Zionism was a counterideology "the `answer' to antisemitism."
but this contradicts earlier assertion. tries to show that Tot not
a form of nationalism but a myth-based view of world, tends to peak
when Js have relatively little power, influence decline. wealth
without power. critiques, eternal antisemitism idea [ matter of
proximity? conflict over modernism? the ideas assimilationist Jews
were putting forward whether they were liberalism, socialism,
communism, modernism in the arts, democracy or dictatorship of the
proletariat. secularism.
A few proud ex-Jews manifesting transition from religion to
nation, Disraeli and Heine, still Jews though converted but also
Last Jews.
duck D. The Great Defection
Reason, universalism, and the Enlightenment allowed the escape
from the ghetto and thus seemed worth continuing to follow. To
honor someone is to raise him on the universal stage, as person,
citizen, to broaden out the picture. Blum, For All Mankind: p. 2425 France's defeat, Js accused themselves when defeated with having
acted wrongly toward God. "The instinct of a people leads them to
believe in justice. When they have been injured, they need to
believe that they have not been wrongly injured, and they examine
their own hearts to discover the guilt within them."
for intellectuals, J tradition not interesting in terms of
great art and literature. Often saw West as Greek/Christian.
Judaism a religion improved on by Christianity but now passed to
secular times. That bad "Old Testament" as opposed to good "New"
Testament and secular rejection of "Judeo-Christian" heritage.
Partly because by the late nineteenth century the Jewish tradition
had very much narrowed--only Tanach studied, not Prophets. didn't
know about medieval Jewish philosophy, only more legalistic part of
Talmud.
How to compare: parallel 1870s on, rejecting lack of a
modern culture while others--and sometimes those ignoring or
rejecting--were building up. indifference more important than
rejection. J didn't have much to offer without religion, it was
holding them back. These were the internal factors. There were also
external factors, pressures and opportunities.
duck E. Construction of ethnic/national identity
The Jews as the Old World's Indians who the settlers would
wipe out to expropriate their identity. But did not fall apart from
massacre and exclusion but proved adaptive so much so that they
came to symbolize modernism, especially for those who detested it.
Industry, banking, department stores, speed, secularism and
9
abstract painting, urbanism, socialism, and abandonment of
traditional assumptions. every interstice penetrated.
formation of Jewish national/ethnic identity for much of last
century idea of secular Jew inconceivable largely with Israel
creation and post-1945. Thus assimilation and acculturation partly
equal to conversion, partly to vacuum and partly to building a
secular Jewish identity--Israel as surrogate homeland, Jews as
nation or as ethnic group (an autonomous portion of a nation whose
primary identity is as a sub-group within the country) note on move
from black/race to Afro-American (ethnic group) parallel.
Jews are a nation with their own religion, religion alone
being an insufficient explanation of their history. The nation was
formed in Biblical times and kept over almost two millennia of
exile. It is common for a nation to have its own distinctive
religion--In east and southeast Europe with national Eastern
Orthodox churches (Russian, Armenian, Greek); in Western Europe
with Catholicism (Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Ireland) or
specific Protestant sects (England/Anglican, Swedish/Lutheran) yet
have secular/national identity, too. Term Israelite or Hebrew would
have cleared up this distinction for Jews (some effort but never
caught on.) and religion usually came first. And ME where
communities defined by religion for many centuries. Arab
nationalism tightly tied to Islam. Japan and China, too. (whether
non-communicants can be equal citizens is a question which Jews
have frequently suffered from--but this only reinforces the point.
The idea of pluralist states is new in human history. Jews were
typical of the ancient world that formed them.
Jews accepted definition as religion and as nation--but not as
race--and as ethnic group where that acceptable, either in ME or
Russia (Bund) or America but not in Western Europe.
Consider the two polar opposite aspects of the Jewish
condition. On the one hand, the first nation and first religion
tied together with very strong bonds, on the other an easily
escapable condition in the age of emancipation: no skin color, few
physical marks for many, even no distinctive accent. one can walk
away and pass, change name, conceal easily and be freed from a
burden either oppressive or unwanted.
Duality of Jewish civilization for while religion also a book
like Talmud is a code of law, manual of behavior, philosophy. Those
with background in this study had a common language and could
secularize it--as was done in the nineteenth-century revival of
Jewish culture in Yiddish and Hebrew. Method linguistic and
comparative
analysis
emphasizing
linkage
between
seemingly
dissimilar points. The structure had become cultural, as seen in
Jewish humor.
Arendt saw secularism as transforming religious concepts into
new forms: faith into Culture, religious sect into nationhood.viii
me: partly true, but this had already existed. for her, it was so,
having not seen them before but now recognizing them in the
reaction to the pressure of antisemitism and how modernism had
freed and expanded and converted their expression.
10
The key issue is the public avowal, Herzl explained, refusing
to give way to severe persecution, but only in second half of
century have made it "appear not customary, not proper, and not
desirable to emphasize one's Jewishness." "One could say that
nationalism is worthless, that we ought to endeavor to strive
toward a higher stage, one in which national differences have
disappeared. I do not dispute that point of view. I simply believe
that if all our contemporaries actively espouse nationalism to our
detriment, it would be foolish of us to reject this idea which
could afford us protection." "But even if your present situation is
satisfactory and you can eat your supper in untroubled leisure,
this does not mean that this situation will always be favorable or
that things will be just as good for people who are not in Vienna,
who are in exposed positions as Jews."ix
A religious background is useful for knowledge of self,
philosophy, history, even if only to be abandoned.
The centrality of Israel as source of identification in a
post-religious world, having become not only a political center as
the largest Jewish community in the world but also as a cultural
center for those remaining outside. the transformation from
religious to national question, shouldn't be overstated.
duck F. J "angle" in Western civilization
The significance of Biblical episode: you have life and death
set before you, therefore choose life. Voluntarism is strong in
Jewish thought even when put in doctrinaire framework--the 613
commandments, the Shulhan Arukh--in fact it is by following a
system that one becomes free. Optimism rather than pessimism about
humanity in place of original sin and innate imperfection,
transference to thought. Change becomes acceptable--embrace it-because it is the essence of the process they want and are
undergoing.
In the Jewish tradition, there is no Original Sin to hold
back, to make conservative as being a natural limit for humanity.
This has had advantages and disadvantages--a greater willingness to
break with that which exists to create something better but also a
greater capacity perhaps to create something worse.
For those who recognize that the faith and structure of their
communities had ossified or that felt no part and emotion from
them, anger at hypocrisy, hollow beliefs and laws. not likely to
arise from a Protestant, for example, as a principal reaction. So
desire to be iconoclast (the original iconoclast was Abraham) and
if applied to own people, even more so to a society which
hypocritically does not live up to its promise of equality and
emancipation and to which one feels less committed and less totally
tied to its myths--even if only marginally--than the great majority
of the population. who can imagine another existence. and if
majority hates for doing it, then that is a situation not so
unexpected or not experienced.
what
is
J:
passion
for
social
justice,
midrashic
interpretation? mysticism? can be from critic's own mind but the
11
question is this: anything different, not present in the immediate
society or secondary elements made primary.
While Judaism itself is communal, not individualistic, it lent
itself to individual intellectual interpretation because it was not
rigidly hierarchical, rabbis opinions, majority rule. Leaders were
qualified by intellectual attainments in religion but this model
could be duplicated by secular intellectual achievements.
It is much harder for those coming from the Jewish tradition
to see nature at the center of the world, for the world was created
by God for man, on the basis for a plan. And even when God has been
stricken from the equation and the Jewish view point explicitly
expunged, the heirs go on looking for man and seeking to know the
plan. Thus, the secular/assimilationist still argues that humanity
can/should shape and change the world, build and develop it. Not
anti-industrial,
pastoral--unlike
much
of
Christian
politics/intellectual including many who would later become
antisemitic, saying the Jewish indifference to nature has been used
to attack as a lack of attachment to the nation. Freud and other
German Jews did like nature wandering and hiking, how to deal with
that? Of course, in Israel the bond with nature has been rebuilt as
part of reestablishing nationhood but it is also part of the
tradition since special laws--studied in Galut--applied to nature
in eretz Israel, the fruit trees, the resting of the land, etc.
A man for whom a church, say, is not a font of memories of
happy youth--or a hostile encounter with nuns in school--but a
place of foreboding, either indifference or threat. The word
"Germany." Symbols multiplied a thousand times though there are, of
course, differences among generations. The analysis of names for
ethnic origins; historic events take on different meanings and
heroes (but Oliver Stone and A la bout de la Nuit and other
examples...)
even for those who conceal it sets their intellectual and
political agenda. Erik Erikson, expert on identity who concealed
his Jewish identity. Marx, even the educator must be educated.
having been the first to lose their belief systems, being
surrounded by assumptions which they did not accept, they felt that
something must explain the world and sought those principles more
actively and in larger numbers than others who had the comforting
framework of answers--even if partly rejected ones. to live one's
assigned role at birth not enough. one must choose, comprehend, and
explain (perhaps switching several times). Having chosen, throw
oneself into it but with that extra edge which newness, critical
distance, and the passion of choice endows.
The Jewish strategy (from outside to inside, from passive to
active) is to win the support of the masses and make society more
comfortable for them by supporting reforms or revolution. [The J
focus on media as both participation and social factor for early
knowledge that images were changeable, not set, from own
experience. That politics mattered because non-expulsion or
survival as well as rights dependent on them, hence not some hobby
or something external but the very foundation of security.] But
12
these efforts interfere with ongoing conflicts and attitudes. In
Germany and Russia, this required opposing the status quo as
liberals or leftists--in France or America the symbols of society's
which had already undergone democratic revolutions could be used
and this permitted patriotism. The king and the mob as both
threats. Replacing the old approach of court Jews and protection,
no appeal to masses possible.
Making some friends--but not necessarily reliable ones--made
others' enemies. Those joining the elite followed the same pattern
in the opposite way. Efforts to save others who may not want to be
saved, at least in the Jewish Variant way, where Jews were a very
high percentage of liberal or left movements. Also, the leaders or
movements themselves reacted--opportunistically or from conviction-as in Communism or German nationalism--to fight "takeover."
the example of names: "Jewish" names are actually late
medieval German colors (Blau, Gruen, Schwartz, Weiss) nature, and
place (Berlin, Wiener, Frankfurter, Konigsburg). but became Jewish.
Just as immigrants to America took very Anglo names--Milton, Max
Shelly, Irving, Morris--which became identified as Jewish. How the
names of assimilation become the names of Jews.
for those "assimilating" their activity in breaking away and
forming new ideas and cultural forms was highly influenced by their
Jewish background, their role as Jews in society, and the very act
of assimilation. The most assimilated usually associated mostly
with Jews and their endeavors often had their coloration no matter
how far removed from it they were.
The ability to critique God in Judaism leads to a more
flexible secularism, being supple rather than brittle. If God's
acts are not perfect, than a bad world does not inevitably mean God
does not exist, and even atheists can leave open the possibility.
Lessons learned in battle for fair treatment: assim/ag
antisemitism: open society, against demagoguery, for scholarly
truth (against slander), distrust of totalitarianism since it uses
scapegoating and enforces homogeneity and paradoxically in favor of
totalitarianism which promises equality and integration with
masses. mistrustful of the political right, friendly to the
political left or at least moderately left of center. in favor of
equality and against prejudice.
The search for something to believe--in other words, about how
the world works, the purpose of existence--a personal creed, a way
of thinking and acting.new concept of chosen people: from religious
to idea that as unaffiliated with nationalism could be a light unto
the nations of the new society, break with tradition, global, etc.
most seen in Reform but usually by Jews having broken with
community.
That strange blend of intellectualism and romanticism that one
finds in Arendt and Marx Disraeli and Trotsky and others; of dry
rationalism and utopianism, the last remnant perhaps of the Jewish
cultural character. but also Anglo-Jewry, German Jews, Lippmann-uprooted by an extreme coldness and mimic of the society around,
perhaps why acculturation and assimilation were so closely linked
13
in those two societies--forced a change of character.
J men were masochists at a time when men were invariably
sadists. It was this character which made proto-fascists hate them
since they had the liberal or a non-macho sensibility.
The hypercritical, passionately emotional liberal intellectual
reaction against conservative views in America is partly due to the
Jewish view and experience of the right as really the party of
antisemitic pogromists or even Nazis, a European attitude
transferred across the Atlantic. An attitude which, despite neoconservatism, never took hold toward the radical left, which was
much more often the enemy in the modern world and the depredation
of Communism.
Waiting for the miracle--both in terms of utopia and a
changing system since they had joined it, or a return on their
investment in joining or since new to them exaggerated its
malleability. Marxist or humanist brotherhood and equality would
triumph; Christianity would fulfill its promise; culture would make
freedom; war would end. Either Western civilization would be made
worthy of joining or Jewish joining would change.
dissociate from political analysis, simply turning on own self
the tools. Jews lack blockages others have: own sometimes antis
tradition, devotion to people and region, etc., and thus are
astonished when the golem of, say, communism or German nationalism
turns on them. Freud tried to guard against which explains handling
of movement having experienced German nationalism. Trotsky,
something Orwell grasped well. when utopianism turns to ashes.
naivete.
Darkness at the break of noon, shatters even the silver
spoon," check exact wording did not emerge from a reading of Arthur
Koestler but rather at a feeling that these contradictions between
what is told and what one sees, makes one unable to accept the
existing society, response to 1950s vision which over-sold America
but also to J experience.
Bloom, Canonical, vi: "At however great a personal cost, the
modern Jewish writer is empowered by virtue of a rupture from
normative tradition. Rupture engenders the terrible freedom that is
exile, without either the hope or the desire for a homecoming, and
yet the various paths of modern exile are circumscribed by the
world of Jewish memory." Paul Sherwin. 1: [Kafka can sound like
Woody Allen]: Creation, he said, came from one of God's "bad moods.
He had a bad day." Was there hope? asked Max Brod, "Plenty of hope-for God--no end of hope--only not for us." 12: "What is the Talmud
if not a message from the distance?" wrote Kafka. (Kafka and Rabbi
Nachman). Canonical, 29: [me] pretty amazing that Freud saw all
religion as the longing for the father. Christianity very tied up
with the son, first of all, pushing the father to the background to
the--to use that despicable loaded term "Old" Testament. [other
earlier forms arguable a longing for the mother, as Catholicism,
too, has sometimes been] But more important for Freud religion is
identified with the father--the past, the inheritance which he has
refused. it certainly applies to his situation, to the Jewish
14
situation in an age of assimilation but a universal law? [killing
the father as the start of culture and religion was certainly an
analogy for assimilation; pinned this sin on the Jews in Moses and
Monotheism.
30: "Nothing in the Hebrew Bible proclaims the holiness of
study, or sees the Jewish people saving themselves, as a people, by
Torah learning." [not exactly, but an interesting point]. sees
whole school movement as influenced by Plato. 30-31: "Because the
intervention [of God] is for our response, we can be tempted to
believe we are everything; because the intervener is incommensurate
with us, we can fear that we are nothing."
32: visual less
important given second commandment, what Bloom calls "extreme
interiority" not told how Ark, etc., look but how they were made
nor descriptions of people. [what of Freud's view that most of the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in life are not so much
real as they are felt, they are imaginary or at least blown up.
perhaps response to a Jewish condition during most of his lifetime
in which the slights were imagined or abstract Freud/Kafka rather
than the real ones of the oppression and Holocaust. Freud's
philosophical idealism. 36: the concept of repression is profoundly
Jewish [certainly ain't Greek]. [what has been repressed should be
let out and then the fragmentation of the person will be healed.
36: from everything in the Bible is meaningful to everything in
dreams, slips, etc., meaningful.
Abraham's arguing with God--and that is God, but one cannot
imagine arguing with Jesus in the Christian tradition. and her the
attitude to authority is born. Jewish respect for authority in
terms of past rabbinic authorities but also open acceptance of the
need to reinterpret over time.
It was, not accidentally, Marc Bloc who said that the way a
society treats its criminals said so much about it.
duck G. Jews in Modernization and Rebellion
The stone the builders of Western civilization had rejected
became the corner stone of modernism.
Js role often attributed to marginality but there have been
many racial, religious, ethnic groups in that situation without
anything near such an impact. End of phenomena because has gone so
far, Israel as counter, acceptance of pluralism, goes on at lower
level. First to confront a situation many groups would do
afterward.
Intellectual paradise lost, a set of ideas which explained the
meaning of life which--no matter how fiercely rejected--could
either be replaced by a new set of answers by a new system
(radicalism or aesthetic theory or rejecting any structure of ideas
for a continual search (liberalism and scientific method).
Jews having been the earliest and more thoroughgoing of rebels
against the Old society of their own, became the most thoroughgoing
advocates of these ideas: secularism, liberalism, the shattering of
myths, the rights of the individual, Darwin, Freud and Marx, modern
art. scholarship and science and even business and banking
15
techniques. What did the old society offer them in its religion
which vilified them, its nationalism which attacked them, and its
tradition which excluded them. The conservatives rightly saw them
as threatening--though they did not understand that many or even
most Jews stayed in the Old society, because they were the ones who
had no effect and the least interaction but seemed to be producing
children who acted differently. Their relentless energy seemed a
threat. A major factor fueling antisemitism. If the Jews rejected
their own civilization, religion, and national loyalty, why
wouldn't the others do the same to theirs?
Instead, the others were not so willing to yield up their
identity. And they could not agree on what to do any way. Rather
than accepting the idea of assimilationist altruism. The natural
assumption of others was that Jews would use their power to their
group advantage, thus the large Jewish presence in say films and
newspapers was expected to be used to promote Jewish causes. Often,
the truth was the exact opposite because very presence set off
efforts to avoid any hint of it while in the hands of
assimilationists made them most eager to avoid any imputation of
Jewish presence or issues. ingredients of anti-Jewish feeling:
identifying Js with destabilizing capitalism, traditional Christian
attitudes; German romantic nationalism, cultural decadence, fear of
revolution, fear of being overwhelmed by immigrants, fear of
conspiracy, fear of erosion of tradition, and mystification at the
Jews themselves: who were these people? what did they want? which
of their many postures should be taken as their essential one?
The Jews as a chemical catalyst in suspension among "the
other" the tendency to assume that hatred was the only relationship
but the other has many other uses--protection, anonymity, services,
to permit one's own diversification of roles, as an audience, as
social cadmium rods, as a mediator to reduce one's own intensity of
identity. One can be addicted to the other. Modern Orthodoxy:
integrate in all areas where does not contradict. Ultra: stay in
own sphere, assimilation is dangerous, unstoppable, mutual
avoidance, a negative social contract. Not say religion in steady
decline, one could argue that there were many defections in the
1860-1920 period and that those in orthodoxy remained relatively
stable thereafter. virtually none of those who came to America in
this period.
Thus, to some extent the Jews within each movement flavor by
their involvement the outcome: Jewish socialism, Jewish feminism,
Jewish liberalism, Jewish modernism, the Jewish variety of German
nationalism. The antisemites played up this idea, saying this
Jewish factor both dominated the movements and made them poisonous.
Actually, this involvement usually made the movements better, more
tolerant--although it sometimes made them more unrealistic and
theoretical, detached from the real conditions of the society. Even
the conscious, strenuous attempt to escape the Jewish condition had
an equal impact--running away from Jewish peoplehood, Rosa
Luxembourg extended that attitude to all nationalism. Von
Heisenberg theory. To intervene is to influence.
16
duck Conclusion
The two terribly contradictory models. we are the prophets of
cultural misogyny, to beat nationalism not to imitate it, to stand
above all parties and peoples and--contradiction--to choose our
personal favorites to champion
(Kurds)--as long as they are not
ourselves. To learn to be the other, the chameleon as ideal? but
the chameleon is a hypocrite, an opportunist, the universalist, the
liberal; the taking into oneself of the role of suffering servant.
J model useful for other groups including women, racial,
national, religious. but one studies it first not because it is
useful or universal but because it is one's own. Cultures start out
studying the dominant one before can build up a study of
themselves, applying the superior methods learned, and than their
part in the wider picture. One affirms one's own culture--if one
didn't think it was the best why accept it?--without assuming this
is the only choice in the world.
compare to Salman Rushdie to
blacks, to Christian society where generations later remain
Christian while the children or grandchildren of leftist atheist Js
are also likely to be Chr. Unlike the others, the door out of J is
almost
exclusively
one-way.
pressure
of
majority
society,
purposelessness and lack of knowledge.
Discussion of the four sons--repeat opening quote--and
historical characterizations of each. how ignorance is the root of
evil--a typical Jewish formulation. But the son could be wise in
all areas and ignorant in that one. "This above all, to thine own
self be true and..." "Know thyself."
Basic positions, each with its own spectrum: religious/Orth
with various degrees of reform; assimilationist ranging from
conservative social elite to humanists; radicals saying align with
masses and antisemitism appear with socialism; Zionist saying be a
nation; and conversionist saying disappear altogether.
Yosef Yerushalmi, professor and author on Freud, "The Jewish
tradition is for me an infinite well out of which I draw what I
need in order to live, or be, existential, a Jew. What we seek is
not authority, what we seek is sustenance--Jewish sustenance. And
whatever nourishes us as Jews, that is, for us, part of the
tradition. It becomes part of the tradition."x
A few noble humanist spirits--Lessing, for instance--wanted to
admit the Jews as brothers and the Jews seized on them as the main
but they were always a tiny minority. the admission of the Jews was
a matter of practicality not strong democratic or humanist ideology
and that is why the "idealists," the romantics on the continent,
were so anti-Jewish because they saw it as a grubby compromise
emancipation: to abolish nation within nation and thus to
demand integration at the price of sacrificing everything
distinctive, but two problems: to give up what had, to meet
standards so high that as long as there was a consciousness of
imitation it could be denied. and third, to make entire
consciousness of Jews be other-oriented--what did goyim think-rather than oriented to themselves or to their own community.
17
Assimilation as individual--and hence in a real sense Jews had to
compete against each other (the backward and immigrants holding
back image) and move away from each other--and it was to be granted
at the end not the beginning. As long as Jews would be viewed as a
group they would suffer, as long as they were seen as different
suffer, hence the pressure to prove otherwise leading to the
responses of Reform and ideology.
The difference between denying being Jewish and forgetting
about it or not knowing what to do about it.
Obsession with suffering and victimization after the creative
intellectual Jewish (not Jewish intellectual) side has gone.
defeat did not convince they were wrong, being downtrodden was
not a shame.
Josephus and Philo as examples from antiquity.
both gratitude for better treatment and fear that it might be
withdrawn--personally or collectively--led to super-patriotism,
liberalism or nationalism or science or something else as
salvation. To say, religion was a private matter was one thing but
then had to define the scope of religion and becoming private also
implied becoming more limited. reinterpretation of Judaism. Thus,
yet
only
a
few
decades,
after
all,
between
the
reinterpretations of the Jews' definition by the liberals and
would-be nationalists and Herzl's synthesis.
Hebrew and Aramaic were the national Jewish languages of their
time and thus the texts written in those languages were available
for everyone. In later centuries, Jews learned the ancient
languages (Yiddish was used in women's instruction) to study the
text. In modern times, the languages were abandoned by reformers
but since the texts were not translated they became totally
unavailable, thus lost touch with tradition (though now a great
deal is translated and so more is possible).
the common pattern: loss of belief, cessation of observing
laws, decline of participation, more and more non-Jewish friends.
sometimes geographical isolation, aspirations for social and
professional progress, intermarriage. breaks between parents and
children with less education almost always corresponding to lower
levels of connection.
Ahad Ha-`Am, Selected Essays (NY, 1962)p. 44: "And yet we have
among us "Reformers" who think that we can strip the shell of
practical observance from our religion and retain only the kernel,
the abstract beliefs" but they fail "to see that it is just the
ancient cask with its ancient form that is holy, and sanctifies all
that is in it, though it may be emptied and filled with new wine
from time to time; whereas, if once the cask is broken or remolded,
the wine will lose its taste, though it be never so old."
103: "Yet, call it what you will, the fact remains that this
hatred [of Jews], this behest of past ages, remains in its full
strength, with all its practical consequences, even now, when the
Present has attained strength and a large measure of development,
and in many departments of life the shadows of the Past have
vanished."
18
105-6 "It is not outside the bounds of possibility that in
course of time the gospel of Humanity will grow and spread" until
it encompasses every race and class, making a world of justice and
mercy but always `except the Jews.' If any man arise in that day
and ask, `How can this be? Surely the contradiction is obvious and
glaring,' he will receive two answers. Thinking men will say, with
Secchi, `When we are occupied with Humanity, we forget the Jews,
and when we are occupied with the Jews, we forget Humanity.' But
simple men will give a simple answer: `That is an old objection'"
in other words, it has always been a contradiction and still is but
the behavior happens nonetheless.
113: if two cultures come together equal in strength and level
of culture there will be competitive imitation, but if one is much
smaller and weaker as to feel itself inferior, "the result will be
self-effacing imitation on the part of the weaker," arising from
submission, "imitation will be complete and slavish," not just to
strengthen but to imitate the past of the larger community even
though they had not inherited that past. such imitation would
endanger the very existence of the smaller, divorcing itself from
its own past. 115: the cause of assimilation is not imitation but
self-effacement through imitation, for imitation can be used to
grow and make stronger, which was past Jewish response (one might
say today this is, for example, how the Japanese have worked, thus
118 Jews used Greek knowledge "as an instrument for revealing the
essential spirit of Judaism," using imitation to make something
else their own. 119 thus foreign imports renewed the Jews and
deepened them rather than destroying them. Jewish history since
then had been "a long period of complete separation. [120] and a
short period of complete self-effacement." predicted that the
solution was "the perfection of the national individuality by means
of competitive imitation." reformers walk out on own tradition.
122: Jews of Germany model for Jews of Eastern Europe but
conditions different and adapted enlightenment to their own needs
and so competed with their models; the same would be true for
Middle East Jews and their model of French Jews. 123: the greatest
danger is that the Jewish people would be so divided on national
lines and changes, the only thing that could hold them together "in
spite of their different local characteristics" would be a center
that would have a strong attraction to all of them, and "claim a
certain allegiance from each scattered section of the people. Each
section will develop its own individuality along lines determined
by imitation of its own surroundings; but all will find in this
center at once a purifying fire and a connecting link." (great
description of Israel's role.
The relationships in the Christian Catholic church were
parallel to those of the social order, with the clergy being the
aristocracy of the spirit and the followers being the peasantry. As
with the aristocracy--and Jesus--the priests were qualitatively
different from the followers. But in Judaism, at least post-Temple,
the rabbis were the first among equals and however high one had
risen, he was only further along the ladder toward God than the
19
average Jew, not qualitatively different, mirroring the Jewish
rejection of a distinction among men in their status before God and
certainly in their absence of divinity. The Christian could never
be sufficiently good and was innately inadequate, the Jew saw
himself as mortal in merely being required to do his best. The
Christian saw society and the world as sinful and inferior, the Jew
as the theater of life which was his proper concern. The Christian
had the clergy to live the fully religious life, but the average
Jew was expected to do so, too, rather than delegating that
responsibility.
146-7 "Flesh and Spirit," "Judaism did not turn heavenwards,
and create in Heaven an eternal habitation of souls. It found
`eternal life' on earth, by strengthening the social feeling in the
individual, by making him regard himself not as an isolated being,
with an existence bounded by birth and death, but as part of a
larger whole, as a limb of the social body." of the community. the
changes of the nineteenth/twentieth century however broke that
community, in becoming more Protestant. community had been given
value as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. gives value to
both community and individual. the physical and spiritual were not
inevitably opposed but should cooperate, each completing the other.
152: Prophets didn't hate the state but demanded it fulfill
spiritual as well as political goals. did not favor political
asceticism. 156: until nation could be recreated the gap must be
filled by spiritual community. "Slavery in Freedom" 1891, pp. 172-3
a book by French Jews talking about how free in France (note:
before Dreyfus affair) Theodore Reinach, secretary of the Society
for Jewish Studies had said in 1887 that "in this beautiful France
of ours" antisemitism was "trying to raise its head....This
success--so I would fain believe--is only temporary." He urged,
"Being as we are, the smallest religious sect; being, as we are,
strangers newly arrived in the French household, we are especially
subject to jealously and criticism." abilities and successes only
inflame jealousy. The only remedy, "Our merchants must all be
honest, our rich men all unassuming and charitable, our scholars
all modest, our writers all disinterested patriots." [be a Jew in
the home and a saint in the street] Ha-`Am writes, "Then,
naturally, such angels will please even the French." but things had
only become worse, he would prefer to believe this would not happen
because "they are not willing to give up in despair the struggle of
a hundred years. And yet, if you listen carefully to their
quavering voices, when all their talk is of belief and hope, you
will hear the stifled sigh, and the voice of a secret doubt, which
would make themselves heard, but that they are forced back and
buried under a heap of high-sounding phrases." another collection
of French Jewish writers, notes, "In the year 1840, fifty years
after the promulgation of the principles of 1789, the Jews
possessed rights on paper; but in practice their rights were nonexistent....Do they exist fully even in 1890?" 177-79: one of the
writers tells this story: during the revolution of 1840, a rumor in
an Alsatian city that the revolutionaries intended to attack and
20
loot the homes of rich Jews, Jews asked for help of garrison, army
refused and so did National Guard, Jews returned home in fear and
trembling but next day rumor that revolutionaries might attack all
the rich without distinction, at once the army and National Guard
came into streets to protect, the narrator concludes "the Jewish
question was settled" and says "lofty moral" but Ha-`Am writes,
"This trick of exciting sympathy with the Jews on the ground that
it will benefit other people" is "a terrible idea...sufficient in
itself to show how far even Western Jews are from being free men at
heart." It is like a man surrounded by bandits calling for help,
"Is not every man bound to hasten to my help? Is it not a fearful,
an indelible disgrace, that I am forced to prove first of all that
my danger affects other people, affects the whole human race? As
though my blood were not good enough, unless it be mingled with the
blood of others! As though the human race were something apart in
which I have no share, and not simply a collective name for its
individual members of whom I am one!"
179-80: another sign of slavery, downplaying international
connection of Jews and with ancestral land. "moral slavery--a
spiritual yoke that throttles them, and reduces them to a condition
of undisguised embarrassment." Adolphe Franck, a distinguished
philosopher had written that Jews would be Frenchmen first and then
only their actual birthplace yet it is no breach of duty to
sympathize with oppressed Jews elsewhere, does one believe that if
French patriotism inconsistent "with affection for his flesh and
blood in other countries, he would still feel that affection for
them secretly, in the depths of his being; that even if all the
Jews were blessed with full emancipation" he would still want to
maintain his connection. "But if this be so, what are all these
excuses, what is this constraint which he pleads, if not moral
slavery?" this is one half the price of Western Jews paid for
emancipation, the other is "intellectual slavery." 183-4 the
reinterpretation of Judaism to reduce bond to one of religion but
religion is steadily growing weaker and what are the Jews to do if
only this one bond which means nothing to many of them, give it up
altogether? Why do most feel they cannot? "Is it the instinctive
national feeling which they have inherited, which is independent of
religious beliefs or practices?" they deny. but they cannot uproot,
try as they will to conceal it, "it is a force at the center of
their being." but they cannot confess that having renounced their
Jewish nationality, "they cannot confess that they have sold that
which was not theirs to sell." and how can "they justify their
obstinate clinging to the name of Jew--a name which brings them
neither honor nor profit--for the sake of certain theoretical
beliefs which they no longer hold...?" this troubling question, the
new and strange gospel of the mission of Israel among the nations.
(this reflects their mentality for it makes Jews the world's
servants and is more a reflection of the Christian conception of
the Jews--which was the basis for discrimination against them--it
is a total philosophy based on the other and it has little to
attract people, no passion, no deep feeling, professional altruism,
21
no significant difference from the attractive, larger, wealthier,
free majority. it is the embracing of slavery or at least
servitude. on the surface it is noble, in practice it is ridiculous
and degrading. teachers of the whole world to the end of time which
allegedly slakes its thirst at the fountain of our inspiration.
like a fruit that was all beautiful skin to admire but no fruit
within. no longer doing anything useful for mission, since the
Scriptures and religious progress out of hands, that mission has
already been performed. 187: "we are nothing but a monument in the
path of religious progress, which marches on its consummation
without our assitance. Why, then, this life of trouble?" might as
well make exit. if there is no real difference--or if Judaism is
just a doctrine which makes its people suffer--(189) "Why not acept
a change of name, if by means of this purely external change we can
win freedom from all our sufferings?" (Jews are not missionaries of
religion they should then be missionaries of progress, liberalism,
justice and so on. but what if then being Jews gets in the way?
the irony being that Jews were self-interested in so doing and
attacked for taking the positions they did?)
this is amusing,
"that a whole people can have maintained its existence, and borne a
heavy burden of religious observance and an iron yoke of
persecutions, torments, and curses for thousands of years, all for
the purpose of teaching the world a certain philosophy, which is
already expounded in whole libraries of books, in every conceivable
language, and every conceivable style, from which who will may
learn without any assistance from us: and especially at the present
time, when the number of those who wish to learn grows less every
day, nay when we ourselves are every day forgetting our own
teaching." this is their way of reconciling Judaism with
emancipation (but it can just as easily be transferred to another
mission: Marxism, Communism, social democracy, feminism, etc.).
192: the real mission is "that physical, natural `mission' which
belongs to every organism" to create for itself conditions suitable
to its character in which it can develop its power, aptitudes, and
way of life. 193 the reality is one of degradation, poverty in
Russia and looking at the professors and successes across the
border, behind the glory and grandeur, is moral and intellectual
slavery, "Do I envy these fellow-Jews of mine their emancipation?"
no, "I may not be emancipated; but at least I have not sold my soul
for emancipation. I at least can proclaim from the housetops that
my kith and kin are dear to me wherever they are, without being
constrained to find forced and unsatisfactory excuses." can think
of Judaism outside religion, can mourn for its loss in pubic and
private "without being asked what Zion is to me, or I to Zion." do
not have to find a justification for my people's existence, do not
need to ask why I remain a Jew, can speak my mind without fear, can
even become an atheist without any danger to my Judaism, "I am my
own, and my opinions and feelings are my own. I have no reason for
concealing or denying them, for deceiving others or myself. And
this spiritual freedom--scoff who will!--I would not change or
barter for all the emancipation in the world." (and is this a
22
factor behind the romanticization of the shtetl today?)
"Some Consolation," 198-99 in the past, "Conscious of their
own worth" Jews were not affected by the low opinion and wild tales
told about them by others, feeling no sense of shame or
humiliation, they just wanted to be left alone to live in peace but
now "Since we no longer treat the outside world as a thing apart,
we are influenced, despite ourselves, by the fact that the outside
world treats us as a thing apart." and so when a Russian writer
asks, "Since everybody hates the Jews, can we think that everybody
is wrong, and the Jews are right?" some among the Jews think the
same thing. doubt. 201: "There is nothing more dangerous for a
nation or for an individual than to plead guilty to imaginary
sins." because there is no way of escaping from that guilt since
you cannot remove a beam from your eye that isn't there. More
common 202 is to believe the whole people afflicted with sin except
himself thus his conversion, flight to universalism, leftism, etc.,
is motivated by healthy ideas--or is a mere response to material
reality (not in my terms a Jewish Variation, like Marx's anarchist,
and like Marx himself.
205-6 "Ancestor Worship" in every generation there are those
who say that no belief can hold its ground in the face of logical
deduction or scientific evidence. But the mass of men--even
educated ones--ignore these proofs, so influenced are they by what
has gone before. the past is powerful and the world is not remade
in every generation, people do not quickly accept that their
ancestors were fools, though Jews much faster to do so. The Jews
are only group in West which as a group--not just as individuals-produces such large number of "objective" "detached" persons.
248: "We have already grown accustomed to these scholars who
do not know their people, and hurl their utterances down from the
lofty heights of Olympus."
But the mere idea of choosing a nation is a Jewish Variant,
not so much Sherlock Holmes's dog that did not bark but rather a
dog which had to decided whether it would bark or meow or moo.
265-67: Jewish creative power continues but has lost the most
gifted "for a life devoted to the service of other nations." they
try to conceal their Jewish characteristics but they rise to the
surface "in all that they attempt, and gives their work a special
and distinctive character, which is to found in he work of nonJewish laborers in the same field." and if had stayed within
culture "would be today one of the richest and most original in the
whole world." "But, unfortunately, it can only serve to increase
our despondency, when we see our people exporting without
importing, and scattering the sparks of its spiritual fire in all
directions, to augment the wealth and the fame of its enemies and
its persecutors, while for itself it has no enjoyment of its own
wealth, and its national treasury is none the richer for all the
work of its most gifted sons." but so far in dispersing national
individuality that don't notice or hearts swell with pride and joy
"and we hasten to proclaim from the housetops that `so-and-so is
one of our people,' though `so-and-so' may be doing his utmost to
23
forget and bury the relationship." or the "superior" and "broadminded" brothers "treat us with a lofty contempt and regard our
complaint as treason to `humanity.' `What do we care,' you will
hear them argue, `whether a man works for his own people or for
another? Enough that this work benefits humanity at large." but
greatness is a matter of depth as well as breadth, "In the one case
a man works among his own people, in the environment which gave him
birth and endowed him with his special aptitude...his fundamental
ideas and feelings....In the other case he works among an alien
people, in a world that is not his own, and in which he cannot
become at home unless he artificially change his nature and the
current of his mind, thereby inevitably tearing himself into two
disparate halves, and foredooming all his work to reveal, in its
character and its products, this want of harmony and wholeness. Is
there really no difference?" (but in modernism the two disparate
halves, lack of harmony and wholeness became an advantage) it is up
to them to show what humanity gains by our loss. 272: "All our
greatest artists, thinkers, and writers...leave our humble cottage
as soon as they feel that their exceptional abilities will open the
doors of splendid palaces." and in effect we are sharing in "the
pride and the joy which they feel at having had the good fortune to
escape from our darkness into the foreign light." but even this is
regarded by our enemies as a slave's impudence, "They grow rich by
our poverty, prosperous by our decay; and then they cry out on this
despicable nation, which has not a single corner of its own in the
temple of modern culture!...Several nations have even annexed our
God, and now scornfully ask us, `Where is your God?'"
292: "Of course, nation building in this style is something
abnormal. But then our life altogether is abnormal; and build how
we will, the building must be something quite without precedent. In
this matter, therefore, we must not look for guidance to the
history of other nations: we must dow hat our peculiar position
forces us to do...."
evolution of arts and letters: from impressionism, meaning
comes from within, man shapes the world) to abstractionism: there
is no meaning or only the most inner, esoteric one, i.e., from
search for a new tradition to denial that there is one.
raw notes David S. Landes, "Two Cheers for Emancipation,"
Wasserstein p. 288
Assimilation offered Jews who were no longer
religious "the prospect of salvation, but only at the price of
rejecting one's roots, one's parents, one's family, one's own
self." p. 289 The eighteenth-century Enlightenment "sharply reduced
the price of defection. It devalued religious faith in general,
putting old beliefs in doubt and proposing new faiths of a more
pallid,
less
demanding,
more
"rational"
character.
The
non-doctrines of the varieties of deism - the looseness or absence
of theology, the abhorrence of dogma, the emphasis on an obvious,
"reasonable," "natural" morality - made these new faiths ideal
vessels for those who wanted to leave the "outworn" confines of
Judaism for more spacious opportunities. A Jew who could not abide
the thought of a trinitarian faith or believe in divine incarnation
24
or transubstantiation could live with God the Great Clockmaker or
the all-purpose deity of the Unitarians and Universalists."
A proponent of
Jewish emancipation, Clermont-Tonnerre,
declared in the National Assembly, "To the Jews as individuals-everything; to the Jews as a group--nothing. They must constitute
neither a body politic nor an order; they must be citizens
individually." Napoleon called a Sanhedrin of French Jewish
delegates to declare loyalty to France and say that Judaism was not
a nation but merely a religion which had no special ties to Jews in
other lands. He hoped Jews would disappear through intermarriage.xi
Generally speaking, antisemites were not those who insisted on
this surrender but those who denied its possibility. Thus, the
enemies of the Jews demanded their expulsion or permanent
subordination; the neutrals--and some of the friends--demanded
their dissolution and surrender of any independent character. For
the Jews as individuals, the second was more attractive; for the
Jews as a group, both were fatal.
Avneri, Hess p. 102: "The people, as the Scriptures say, have
to work in the sweat of their brows in order to maintain their
lives of misery....Such a people, we maintain, needs religion: it
is as much a vital necessity for its broken heart as gin is vital
for its empty stomach. There is no irony more cruel than that of
those who demand from utterly desperate people to be clear-headed
and happy." (compare to Marx who knew nothing of the solace of
religion but could have only the utmost cynicism toward it. Marx
uses opium as harmuful drug, Hess as medicine.)
"It is true that religion can turn the miserable consciousness
of enslavement into a bearable one by raising it to a state of
absolute despair, in which there disappears any reaction against
evil and with it pain disappears as well: just as opium does serve
painful maladies."
Because being Jewish is not just a religious affiliation, Hess
maintained, "a Jew belongs by his descent to Judaism, even if he or
his parents had converted." If Judaism had only been a religion, it
would be doomed to disintegrate under the impact of reason, but
because it was also a national culture, it had, paradoxically, more
of a future than Christianity. This is an elegant turning of the
tables on the conventional wisdom that relegated Judaism to the
past while postulating a bright future for Christianity. Hess could
maintain as a socialist that religion would disappear but not the
Jewsxii
Avineri Hess p. 183 "The study of the Torah became, in the
Diaspora, the national cult of the Jews.
The House of
Learning...became the agora, the only focus of autonomous
life...All the laws and regulations, both religious and juridical,
which imbue all the corners and crevices of a Jewish person's life,
are aimed at preserving the integrity of Jewish life in the
Diaspora, just as they had preserved it against the Hellenistic
culture. Those who laugh at these regulations and deride them have
no understanding of their deep patriotic meaning...
What would have become of Judaism and of the Jews if they
25
would not have wrapped themselves up, until the day of national
rebirth, like a cocoon in their talmudic learning in order to
appear again, at the end of a fully attained spiritual
regeneration, as a butterfly next to all other liberated nations"
L. Abel, The Intellectual Follies p. 268 every individual Jew
had the right to determine for himself what attitude he wanted to
take toward the fact of being Jewish.
Charles Hannam, Almost an Englishman p. 141 There was this
Yeshiva bocher, know what that is? Well, it is a sort of Talmudic
scholar, a poor young boy apprenticed to a Rabbi. Well, the rabbi
and his wife got fed up with the boy and wanted to be rid of him,
so thay made a plan. The Rabbi said, "Tomorrow at lunch I'll say
the soup is too salty and you say, "no, it isn't", and then we will
ask the bocher what he thinks. If he agrees with you I'll throw
him38╦ad╦ out, and if he agrees with me you insist that he
goes."QS╦ They carried out their plan at lunch the next day, but
when they asked the bocher to give his verdict all he said was,BG╦
"For the remaining three years of my stay with you, I am determined
not to fall out with either of you."
On one hand, the cultural, business and political and literary
figures express experiences and attitudes held by much larger
groups; on the other hand, their drive to become--and their success
in being--such figures gives their views and experiences a
nonrepresentative element. For one thing, far more contact with
non-Jewish milieu.
Catholic model--all or nothing; Protestant model--varieties to
soften; Jewish life went from Catholic to Protestant model via
reform; nationalism in France and Italy, various secular philosophy
overrepresented via Jewish variation.
The number of Jews in the world declined from the time of the
Roman Empire in 200 to 1200 by about 66 to 85 percent. By the midseventeenth century, they had declined from 7-10 percent to less
than 1 percent of Europe's people. Not just massacre and mass
conversion, writes Cecil Roth, but a "constant pressure of
environment, of social advantage, of conviction, of petty
annoyances, of Ghetto pressure, of conversionist sermons and the
rest of an elaborate system organized mainly with a view to
breaking down the resistance of the Jew." (No wonder Marcuse
thought of repressive tolerance!)xiii
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism p. 66 to a
certain extent every Jew in every generation had somehow at some
time to decide whether he would remain a pariah and stay out of
society altogether, or become a parvenu, or conform to society on
the demoralizing condition that he not so much hide his origin as
"betray with the secret of his origin the secret of his people as
well." (This formulation was made by Karl Kraus around 1912)
Jews felt simultaneously the pariah's regret at not having become
a parvenu and the parvenu's bad conscience at having betrayed his
people and exchanged equal rights for personal privileges.
(to be a Jew only or primarily from a reaction to anti-Semitism
was to be an involuntary Jew. title:
one does not leave
26
civilization usually but learns to co-exist with one's discontents,
with it)
It is not just the Jewish tradition but that culture and way
of thinking combined with the unique experience of Jewish
assimilation (while much in common, also different with "ethnic"
and racial groups. To say that the experience of struggling with
assimilation has been so central is not to say that it is the only
influence. for example, Marx's ideas originated there but enough
followed to make for a century of revolution involving millions and
so on.
"All those tendencies for accommodation and undifferentiated
integration," wrote Moses Hess in the mid-nineteenth century, "have
always remained without impact on those Jews who make up the great
Jewish masses."xiv
NOTES
i. Ahad Ha-`Am, "Sacred and Profane" (1892), Selected Essays, (NY,
1962), p. 41.
ii. Ahad Ha-`Am, "Two Domains" (1892), Selected Essays, p. 93.
iii. Ahad Ha-`Am, "Two Domains" (1892), Selected Essays, pp. 94-5.
iv. Charles Angoff and Meyer Levin, The Rise of American Jewish
Literature, p. 11.
v. "The Jews were called to prove that the charges raised against
them were untrue (or no more true) but the same people who brought
forth the charges would pronounce on the cogency of the proofs."
Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and ambivalence (Ithaca, NY, 1991), p.
113.
vi. Arthur Schnitzler, The Road to the Open (Evanston, Il., 1991)
1908, p. 252.
vii. Isaiah Berlin, "Jewish Slavery
Chronicles, September 21, 1951.
and
Emancipation,"
Jewish
viii. Hannah Arendt, "Creating a Cultural Atmosphere" in The Jew as
Pariah.
ix. Theodor Herzl, "The Jews as a Pioneer People,"
Writings, Essays and Addresses Vol. II, (NY, 1975).
x. Forward, Books November 1991.
xi. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, pp. 5-7.
27
Zionist
xii. Avineri, Hess p. 181.
xiii. Lewis S. Feuer, "The Sociobiological Theory
Intellectual Achievement: A Sociological Critique,"
Waxman Ethnicity, Identity and History p. 102.
xiv. Avineri Hess, p. 195.
28
of Jewish
Maier and
CHAPTER TWO
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE, 1789-1897
"The wise child asks: `What is the meaning of the rules, laws and
customs which the Eternal our God has commanded us?'
--The Haggadah
subdivide: period up through French emancipation and rollback;
striving for assimilation--ending with Zionism/1880s/Dreyfus
1.--Biblical reading on conversion from and intermarriage
mess of pottage.
Esau: "Lift up thine eyes and thou wilt see that all men eat
whatever comes to hand--fish, creeping and crawling creatures,
swine's flesh, and all sorts of things like these...."
Jacob: "If we act like other men, what shall we do on the day
of the Lord?....If thou art of opinion that there is no future
world, and that the dead do not rise to new life, then why dost
thou want thy birthright? Sell it to me, now, while it is yet
possible to do so."i
327: "Rebekah, weary of her life on account of the woman
chosen by her older son [Esau], exhorted Jacob not to marry one of
the daughters of Canaan, but a maiden of the family of Abraham. He
assured his mother that the words of Abraham, bidding him to marry
no woman of the Canaanites, were graven upon his memory."ii
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews Vol. 2, (Philadelphia, Pa.,
1988):
p. 29: "It is a law of nature that however much one may grieve
over the death of a dear one, at the end of a year consolation
finds its way into the heart of the mourner. But the disappearance
of a living man can never be wiped out of one's memory." [loss
through assimilation and conversion].
p. 44: When Joseph began to flourish in his "new and happy
state" "He thanked God," praying, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, that
Thou hast caused me to forget my father's house." "But God spake to
him saying, `They father is mourning in sackcloth and ashes, while
thou dost eat, drink, and dress thy hair." so gave him troubles.
Midrash Bareshit Raba
Pharaoh raises Joseph because he interprets his dream over all
Europe, princes of Egypt criticized Joseph pointing out that he
"cannot even speak the language of our land." [72] the king gave
him
his
signet
ring
and
beautiful
garments.
successful
assimilation. The famine forced the Jews to emigrate. his brethren
fell down before him, didn't know him but he knew them, made
himself strange to them, called them spies,
The Bibleiii is empty of discussions about afterlife yet full
of injunctions on maintaining national-religious identity.
Biblical self-criticism and its use in antisemitism.
built-in survival mechanisms: though shalt teach them
diligently...
1
cultural distinctions in diet...
shabbat, need to live within walking distance of synagogue,
for food preparation... ie, difficulty in living outside community.
these same distinctions, however, made for pressure to drop these
customs if one could not be within community or they were not
available.
interpret of Balak portion "The great God-fearing generation
that made the Exodus from Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and was
present at the Revelation at Mount Sinai was nevertheless unable to
withstand the temptation of Moab's daughters."iv
Many tribes formed, traced themselves to a common ancestor,
and developed stories to explain their existence; people migrated,
driven by drought but striving to find a rationale for their
movements. This tribe had no tanach, talmud, or ten commandments,
and in the story of Joseph--unlike earlier portions--there is not
even a direct presence of God. We are dealing with a small tribal
band, one among many and yet the only one to have survived or
maintained self-consciousness from the bronze age's dawn to today,
a seeming mosquito among powerful civilizations, faced with famine
and at others' mercy.
Yet at this early stage of cultural and moral development, the
people and behavior described are often immoral in our terms and
even in there own. How do we reconcile this fact?
One important point is that Judaism deals with real people.
Unlike Christianity or Buddhism it does not demand people be
saints. The starting point must be actual human behavior which is
not innately sinful or meaningless. And unlike Christianity and
Islam there is a strong sense of self-criticism--unique in all the
autobiographies of people--so much at the foundation of our
character, though it has often been used as the very basis of antiJewish, antisemitic criticism: they sinned and God forsook them.
JOSEPH ben JACOB (bio?)
In the story of Joseph, an evil act--his brothers' selling him
into slavery--ends by turning to good. Joseph is both able and
pious. "God will see to Pharaoh's welfare," he tells Egypt's king.
God does not speak directly to Joseph, but he knows that the
scrawny cows eating the fat ones yet gaining no weight signifies a
famine and not a diet fad.
When Joseph suggests that Pharaoh find a wise man "and set him
over the land of Egypt." there is not the slightest hint that he
has a hidden agenda nor that God intends this outcome. And in
addition, perhaps more important, although the famine can be
considered an act of God, the forewarning allows people to escape
starvation by rational action. It is this independence of human
ability--and responsibility--to shape events becomes a foundation
stone of Judaism.
"Since God has made all this known to you," says Pharaoh,
there is none so discerning and wise as you." And this points to
another basic tenet--the importance of knowledge, which can raise a
penniless refugee to wealth and success, a phenomenon we have often
seen. put in charge. Tell the story of merchants.
2
The mixed marriage to Zaphenath-paneah. and the fascinating
names of the two sons Manasseh "God has made me forget completely
my hardship and my parental home." Ephraim "God has made me fertile
in the land of my affliction." Is there a relationship between
"hardship" and "home", they are linked just as for us hardship and
Judaism are linked. Had Joseph forgotten like the cupbearer his
origins in his good fortune (a tale of assimilation, it was in his
interest to do so, identifying with the Egyptians--following their
custom of refusing to dine with the Hebrews). His journey seems the
opposite of Moses--from identification to assimilation. But the
naming of Manasseh--the self-accusation of forgetting--shows that
he could not forget. And as for Ephraim, was Egypt only the land of
affliction because of what happened in the past or was Joseph's
exile--from family, customs, even God--a continuing form of
affliction. Again, the name was an important message to himself.
Brothers come and he makes them suffer but also recognizes
their repentance when they say, "Alas we are being punished on
account of our brother, because we looked on at his anguish, yet
paid no heed as he pleaded with us." Joseph wept not only to see
his brothers but to know they regretted their action. Another
foundation stone.
Jacob did not want to sent Joseph, mistrust of intentions.
Earlier, Abraham disguised Sarah as sister
Again on verge of crying "overcome with feeling toward his
brother" and on verge of tears. It is never implied that Joseph
seeks revenge against his brothers though, being human, he does
test them and makes them--and his father--suffer. And indeed he
replays what might be called the stealing of the last born--his own
experience. But this time the story is different. His brothers
given a second chance act properly, even Judah redeems himself
putting his own life on the line. The way he should have behaved
the first time.
Ideas portrayed in this portion--intelligence, right behavior,
and repentance, constructive (not self-flagellating) self-criticism
inward loyalty even when outwardly assimilated, hope that anyone
may be ingathered no matter how long separated from one's people-were all essential building blocks of Judaism. Thus, while Joseph
does not advance the Jewish people theologically, he does in moral
and intellectual terms. With Abraham, the Jews become a tribe with
a single God; with Jacob--through Joseph's help--they become a
tribal confederation with a broad code of behavior; with Moses,
they become a nation with a law. around Jewish/Arab relationships;
if they felt insecure on a level to insensitive to admit than
Israel had to be threatened direly and living in fear of imminent
disappearance; if their survival seemed to depend on pleasing those
around them, then Israel's existence rested on public relations.
The Jews great achievement was to start the first monotheistic
religion but this has always been insufficient to explain their
survival or their manner of living to a confused Christian and
Moslem world. The puzzle can only be solved if, in addition, it is
understood that the Jews created the world's first nation as well,
3
a group of people bound together not only by a common ruler--the
Pharaoh, the Emperor, the King--but in a personal relationship each
to the other. That is at the root of survival and feeling--and the
resistance to assimilation. But when those national bonds are
dissolved then is the day of the wicked son.
Jews have suffered at least five major traumas to their
belief: the fall of the Temple, almost 2600 years ago, then the
Roman conquest of 2000 years ago, the massacres of the Crusades and
of the 17th century, and only most recently the Holocaust.
The 44 psalm: "Thou hast cast off and brought us to confusion
and goest not forth with our hosts....and has scattered us among
the nations and made us a taunt to our neighbors and a byword among
the nations and a shaking of the head among the peoples. All this
is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we
been false to thy covenant. Though thou hast crushed us and covered
us with the shadow of death. If we had forgotten God he would have
searched us out and so since we remembered him he must redeem us."
The gap between promise and reality. we observe even if you
don't, to shame you into memory. we are too stubborn to give up.
The less you give us, the more we will demand of you.
1a Jewish-Greek
Salo Baron, et. al, Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People, (NY,
1956). Yehezkel Kaufmann, "The Biblical Age," "The Patriarchs marry
Aramean women; Judah and Simon take Canaanite wives; Tamar, the
ancestress of the most important Judaist clans, Perez and Zerah, is
a Canaanite; and the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh is Asenath, the
Egyptian wife of Joseph." Not refusing to mix because see others
inferior--as in other traditions--Ruth as ancestor of David and the
Messiah--but because carried alien doctrines and had influence.
53: King Solomon's decline is based on his taking foreign wives who
prevailed on him to worshp other Gods. Ahab's Sidonian wife (875854) leads him to Baal worship, Jezebel. struggle and persecution,
and the fall of his house.
63: moral law is for all, the righteous of all nations enjoy the
world to come but Israel is also responsible for its religious
state and observance of the Torah, idolatry is the worst sin,
referred to in the first commandment. "Israel's fateful sin was to
worship other gods, to follow the customs of the nations."
[Leviticus 26:30; Deuteronomy 4:25-28 and 6:12-15.
115: Jews in Greek cities like Alexandria had a special status of
citizenship which allowed their separate communal organization and
exempted them from obligations which conflicted with the Jewish
religion. Roman and Greek governments which treated Jews were
appreciated, though local citizens often antagonistic in Alexandria
and Rome charging that Jews had too much influence. conversions or
partial adherence to Judaism by others (many of these part-Jews
becoming the most fertile recruiting ground for Christianity).
123-127: despite outward Hellenization, though, in language and
dress, contemporary writings make it clear that the vast majority
of Jews remained observant and continued to regard Jerusalem as
their holy city and the land of Israel as their country, refusing
4
to become christians or pagans. the flow was rather the other way.
Key elements: maintenance of both community organization and
knowledge. observed Sabbath, dietary laws, synagogue attendance,
translation of Bible into Greek in Alexandria third and second
century bce, even hellenizing Jewish names, using Greek poetic
forms. also influenced by Greek law and philosophy, buried dead in
coffins. also used Greek forms to communicate with neighbors:
Ezekiel Tragicus wrote plays, others poems and books in Greek style
but did so using Jewish material and from that standpoint. There
were conversions but relatively small in numbers and it was a twoway street, including many of the early Christian leaders and
missionaries.
132 Philo of Alexandria born about 20bce to 50ce, his nephew
Tiberius Julius Alexander, an apostate was procurator of Judea,
governor of Egypt, chief of staff of Titus in his war against the
Jews, executed many in both places, key in the success of Titus in
capturing Jerusalem. Philo and Maimonides as parallels, well versed
in Greek literature and philosophy and culture, even analyzes
sports, and positive about much of it--but austere in personal
life--though more suspicious of locals (Austro-Hungary complex and
many other places including Germany--devotion to ideals and since
persecuted often come to feel they are more faithful to them than
their neighbors.
137: Philo wrote that Greeks settled everywhere "and while
they believed the sacred city [of Jerusalem], where the holy temple
of the Most High God is established, to be their mother-city, yet
they consider the various cities which they have inhabited from the
time of their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers and
ancestors still farther back, where they were born and reared, to
be their fatherlands."
147: they spoke Hebrew and Aramaic in the land of Israel, Greek in
Egypt, Latin in Rome, Babylonian Aramaic in Mesopotamia and there
were some differences in religious observances although also
communication and mutual adaptation.
149 neighbors regarded them as alien group with another fatherland
but this was standard in that period in which ethnic and religious
difference was expected from those of different origin.
150 find Biblical source: "Thou shalt not make marriages with them;
thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter
shalt thou take unto thy son....For thou art a holy people unto the
Lord thy God." as a priest people, a holy nation, separation was
necessary.
but
inside
P,
political
issue--autonomy
might
mean
independence, the empire pushed into conflict with Jewish religion
to assert its hegemony. The Herodian dynasty as assimilated,
traitors and important model for later skeptical view of
assimilation as dangerous.
163: in retrospect, Romans more tolerant than what was to follow.
164: after fall of Jerusalem, rabbis who had divorced themselves
from the rebellion were even more adamant about keeping out Romans.
the greatest communal offender became the informer who aided the
5
authority, need for solidarity to maintain survival.
Abraham Halkin, "The Judeo-Islamic Age," 236-7 cultural
influence in Spain: compare to Greece as fusion [is modern period a
fusion or is that the question, fusion or extinction for in these
earlier times religion, religious and language based knowledge, and
communal autonomy were the keys--not just persecution and
exclusion. the failure to recognize this fact is a major symbol of
the degeneration of that system, both sides of Grouchoism: the
refusal to join the club as well as exclusion, just as the refusal
to join the club when welcomed.]
237 para 1 good statement of classical position, "The consciousness
of Galut did not prevent the Jew from going about the ordinary
business of living, even seeking happiness, much in the manner of
his neighbors. Yet the Jew never forgot it." centerpiece of culture
and religion, even when dormant these were central factors.
Lewis S. Feuer, Maier and Waxman, "The Sociobiological Theory of
Jewish
Intellectual
Achievement:
A
Sociological
Critique,"
Ethnicity, Identity and History, p. 103 "There was a perpetual
procession from the Synagogue to the Church. Between 1634 and 1700
no less than 1,195 Jews were baptized in Rome alone."
2.--early Christianity
3.--conversion pressures, antis
of converts, as cause of
persecution, hence attitude toward informers (shemona-esre prayer)
YK prayer for martyrs, whereas later people would convert for
convenience. Pope Innocent II 1130-43 of J descent.
the fable of the J pope: check J folktale book
4.--Spain, and the Marranos as model
613: edict in Spain forces Jews be baptized or leave but in
711 those still practicing secretly could come out when Moslems
conquered. 1066 Moslem slaughter of Jews in Grenada. 1391 Christian
massacres. 1481 Inquisition begins investigation previous converts,
burnings at stake. 1492 expulsion. Jews had create Hebrew culture,
poetry, philosophy, mysticism. Abraham Ibn Ezra, Bbl commentator,
physician, phil, astronomer. rose to top without assim, gvt
ministers signed their names on official documents in Hebrew.
Hasdai Ibn Shaprut court physician and foreign minister in
caliphate of Cordoba, Shmuel Hanagid, 11th century Granada chief
minister. but some see these as atypical. Hanagid's son Joseph
murdered in 1066 along with 6000 others. Perhaps 200,000 baptized.
communities earlier had chosen death to baptism (examples needed,
also Maimonides to Jews of Yemen. also converts after pogroms of
1391. and after 1492 more returned and converted. in twelfth
century Almohad conquerors had also forced thousands to convert,
Maimonides said ok to convert to Islam if then tried to escape and
revert. on the eve of expulsion, at least 6 of 18 Spanish bishops
of converso origins. many converts were sincere. but many married
among selves, others later fled to Amsterdam or new world. Jews
expelled from England in 1290, France 1394, Prague 1400, Vienna
1421, Tyrol 1475 and many other places. St Teresa of Avila.
Beinart: "The Jews helped finance the war against Granada [the last
Moslem stronghold] and when they were no longer needed they were
6
thrown out."v 20th c parallel: conversos released from disabilities
and rose high but as did resentment rose among Old Christians of
still being Jews, jealousy and competition (like reaction to 18/19c
J "conversion" to W culture. Also discuss those who left. Rabbi
Solomon ha-Levi of Burgos became Pablo de Santa Maria, the bishop
of Burgos. claimed New Christians dressed up for Sabbath, not
working, not eating pork, and so on. continued relations with Jews.
paranoia but a specific kind--that society was being undermined
from within perhaps in conjunction with foreign enemies (Jewish
influence was the invisible enemy). The political, psychological,
and sociological pattern was distinct for the time but the
underlying human patterns would recur. The peculiarity of hatred of
Jews: other hated groups were seen as inferior, lazy, and
powerless--except when in open military confrontation--while Js
were seen as strong, energetic, and perhaps dangerously superior in
intelligence and cunning. interesting point: demand for complete
abandonment and renunciation of what might today be called ethnic
heritage no matter what religious standing.
young people told not Christians, believed in Jewish law, only
saved, carry out Jewish practices when possible including seder. no
rabbis. whole converso communities across the border in southern
France. moved back and forth between Spain and Portugal but few
left to areas where they could be free (addicted to strange
existence? love of Spain?) some left after being caught up in
Inquisition and knowing only chance of survival. mid-sixteenth
century to Netherlands (still part of Spain but pressure less).
when Spanish forced out came out. Amsterdam community self-taught.
Menasseh ben Israel, leading J philosopher, came as teenager from
Portugal. first Hebrew printer. general level of knowledge low
compared to other places, so school system established on basics
with looser hold. since didn't know much Hebrew, sermons in Spanish
and Portuguese and Jewish education in Spanish (forerunner). other
rationalists before, Uriel Da Costa (but great J phils of Middle
Ages tried to explain rationally practices). excomm, recanted,
again, and committed suicide. Juan de Prado, personal physician to
Spanish bishop going to Rome as cardinal, went to Italy in 40s then
to Hamburg where stayed with a Jewish banker, then to Amsterdam
where became impoverished. skeptical of religion. French Marrano
Isaac La Peyrere 1655 Men Before Adam challenged the accuracy of
biblical text. Prado better known than Spinoza at time, after
failing to get verdict reversed, he went to Belgium and became a
New Christian again. Spinoza not mistreated. He argued that the
Bible was a historical document written by the ancient Hebrews,
miracles are impossible. yes heretical in terms of religious
Judaism, it is mainstream among contemporary secular Judaism, in
fact it is a necessary idea for nationalism. meanwhile, community
involved in helping large numbers of Jews who had fled Spain to
escape inquisition and poor from Lithuania fleeing Russians.
Spinoza is the only one of 300 excommunicated from the Amsterdam
Synagogue in the seventeenth century who made no effort to reverse
it. simply passed into nondenominational Christian world--not an
7
open atheist while remaining intellectually Jewish. his writings
were far more discussed by Christians than by Jews. not clear what
Spinoza thought about himself. no one Marrano point of view. Kaplan
points out that since couldn't observe the letter of the law had to
feel
more
personal,
inner,
ethical
considerations.
((the
interesting point was that they were not just joining the other
religion but the oppressor; and the oppressor saw them as New
Christians so--as the model would be later repeated--they were not
totally accepted, still set aside.
Basic point: from being a community which totally surrounded
the individual, once immersed in Christian milieu, could do
comparative. It is easier to believe in something which everyone
one knows believes in than one which the majority around one
rejects. The difference between inward and outward belief
intensifies this contradiction. Equal knowledge of two traditions
even further undermines a third time. Thus, critical of both.
Marranos first to be so closely surrounded (since other Jews stayed
in communities, openly adhering, less accessible.)
4a. Spinoza excommunicated in 1656 first secular Jew, sort of.
but even rejecting conversion they were still subject to an
unusually high level for that time of assimilation. Marranos who
settle in Holland, J education. European world of knowledge, of
Latin, and discourse. [mention somewhere that some Israeli children
call the alphabet of the West "Christian letters". doctrine of
levels of truth (Moslem doctrine of taqliyya). humans are as much a
part of nature as any other. one has to examine the origins of any
belief. philosophical minority and the mass who will follow
traditional, transmitted ideas. (also medieval Jewish and Moslem
doctrines said this last point). felt there was a positive value in
isolation to work out philosophy. Also advocate of toleration.
(me:
the
true
dialectic
is
that
between
material
conditions/external world and the psychology of human beings, the
laws of thought and behavior--except they are far too complex and
individual to be laws. Second dialectic, between identity and
reason, the base and superstructure of the individual.)
(we have learned that wisdom merely being traditional is not
necessarily right--it is disadvantaged coming from a time of less
knowledge about science and other matters) but we cannot forget
that people of the past were not fools and the experimentation and
conclusions of century about some matters--particularly those less
changeable--has a proven value. Spinoza used the image of a ladder
which one uses to reach rationality and is not then kicked away,
one might add it is also the ladder which one used to reach
personal identity and character.)
Maimonides 1135-1204
assim 1) by producing books which attempted to reconcile
Judaism with Greek philosophy and logical thought (rather than
abandoning for it. even apparently meaningless laws could be
explained as contributions to moderation, health, etc. dietary laws
as example, as physician
2) in 1170 letter to Jews of Yemen Letter of Consolation (my
8
understanding is that could profess conversion to save life but
maintain secretly and go somewhere where could practice religion
(in other words, based on his own actions)
3) by leaving Spain rather than converting
4) by codifying law and advising on life style so as to
preserve in exile. how to adopt without abandoning. only attempt at
creed.
*get copy of letter
b Cordoba, 1148 Almohades came in, left
Dona Gracia and Don Joseph Nasi sixteenth-century Portuguese
Marranos who moved o Antwerp and helped other Jews to flee Iberia.
She refused to marry a Christian aristocrat and, still concealing
her Jewishness, went to Venice. There she was denounced to the
authorities, perhaps by her sister, and arrested. Her daughter and
niece were taken to a nunnery. Finally, in 1552, she succeeded in
leaving for Istanbul where she could openly practice Judaism and
engage in large charities.
assim is the pound of flesh of societies which maims more
often than it killed. Merchant of Venice and Ivanhoe as
assim/conversion plays. The Canterbury Tales blood libel.
Manasseh ben Israel 1604-1657 petition to Cromwell in 1655 for
readmission to England. after 1290 expulsion. 1190 York massacre.
former Marrano family in Amsterdam. became one of rabbis there,
established yeshiva. 1648 massacres in east.
Sabbatai Zvi 1626-76 born in Smyrna, proclaimed self messiah
at age 20. [is there an angle here? arr 1666. sultan's physician a
converted Jew convinced him to convert? some followed him.
Rothschild (Nathan Mayer) 1777-1836 son of Mayer Amschel,
clerk with bankers in Hanover. built up various business with
banking to aristocrats. sons given religious training, spread out,
Nathan to England, Napoleonic wars. Did he epater the aristocracy?
His eldest son Lionel lobbied on Parliament and finally became
member of House of Lords.
The idea that Jews were very powerful, especially in financial
terms, was largely a holdover from a relatively brief period in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century before Christians
entered big business more, the modern corporation and bank emerged,
and states developed the ability to tax. Even when Jews had wealth,
this did not translate into much real influence. The memory of that
brief era continued to be powerful in a way which would have been
amusing if it had not been so bloodily tragic. Rothschilds behind
everything.
when Rothschilds sons were scattered and served all
the great powers (indiscriminately, incidentally and for no Jewish
purpose) Frankfurt, Paris, London, Naples, and Vienna.
During Medieval times, a few Jews voluntarily converted,
seeking to better their status, unable to stand the pressure, or
quarreling with the community. Opportunism or antagonism sometimes
made them become prosecutors and slanderers of other Jews. Having
taken a new faith, they wanted to force other Jews to follow as if
to prove the correctness of their own behavior.vi
9
5.--The crisis of 1500 and 1600s
Bach 32: September 1509 Johann Pfefferkorn, a convert of J
background entered the Frankfurt synagogue, largest, and threatened
to ransack the houses of the ghetto with an imperial warrant to
confiscate all Jewish books except the Bible saying against
Christianity. Not by far the only such incident, a Christian
scholar of Hebrew denied it saying Jews were also children of God.
irony, beginning of Enlightenment but also Luther's hysterical
antisemitism. Js charged also with having inspired Protestant
movement, when Jews didn't join his movement, Luther also attacked.
Shulhan Arukh 1564 of Joseph Caro. 1648 disasters. Shabtai
Tsvi 1665-66 all turned community inward, second half of eighteenth
century. suspicious of change. formation of nation-states.
bewilderment, disillusionment, suspicion.
6.--the eighteenth century, Jews in the Enlightenment Mendelssohn
Before Enlightenment, all non-Jewish teaching (with a few
exceptions) deemed uninteresting but then most of it was very much
touched with Christianity. discovery there were things worth
learning. [what is interesting about Arendt is that her interest in
Jewish subjects was so totally segregated from her philosophical
and other work. Thus, in the Origins of Totalitarianism it is a
wholly different section.
The society disrupted by the Enlightenment, emancipation,
assimilation, and division into political and cultural tendencies
was not--as many mistakenly believe--the contemporary ultraorthodox but a broad society encompassing everyone and a medium,
laws obeyed, for example, but with a great deal of variation in
strictness and most men studied but for a relatively limited
period. So a divergence rather than one group continuing and others
breaking away for the "Orthodox" were changed, too, becoming more
pious and isolated and strict or incorporating elements of Western
thought and civilization.
Hannah Arendt, "Privileged Jews," in Emancipation and CounterEmancipation 65: the court Jews "could have ever so many business
relations with their prince; all that business did not bring them a
step nearer to the strange environment around them." Samson
Wertheimer lent Austrian state money, confidant at court, access,
yet no social relations and did not expect to be treated as equal.
but being out of touch with own people became tightly knit group
(like Birmingham describes, a caste). 1780s Jewish salons.
intermarriage 72: an "endeavor to replace loans by dowries" close
relations in Prussia between Jews and nobility and longer in
Austria. (in fact less dangerous to accept Jewish money because the
non-Jews were the ones who had political ambitions while Jews were
blocked. period of individual emancipation. 74: "Just as Jewish
businessmen were compelled to remain Jews in order to acquire more
wealth, so Jewish intellectuals had to abandon Judaism so as not to
starve." Borne wrote, though, "Some reproach me with being a Jew,
some praise me because of it, some pardon me for it, but all think
of it." they were all rebels. Kraus last representative of
Heine/Borne tradition converted to Catholicism. after Prussian
10
defeat of 1807 growth of antisemitism. p. 81: "The problem which
confronted every Jewish individual in every generation was the
decision whether to remain a pariah or become a parvenu." The
pariahs regreed not taking the opportunity; the parvenus felt
guilty knowing "he had betrayed his people, denied his origin, and
exchanged universal justice for personal privilege." Salomon
Maimon, Kant's favorite student, was born in poverty in a shtetl
and died penniless in a Prussian count's castle. If he had not been
a Jew and helped by Jews he never would have succeeded
intellectually but if he had ceased being a Jew he would have died
a wealthy professor.
Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn 41: "The rabble among the
Christians has always regards us as the scum of nature, as the sore
of humanity," he wrote in 1754. "Yet of learned people I expected a
fairer judgment." not only did the Christians oppress Jews but they
also denied them any virtue. the idea that the Jews, too, were
human beings was considered a startling discovery.
Mendelssohn section
Jerusalem (1783). He denied Judaism conflict with rationalism
and disputed the right of rabbis to place dissident Jews under a
ban, lauded classic Judaism, while pleading for tolerance towards
all faiths. German translation of the Bible in Hebrew characters to
promote German over Yiddish, and the study of the Bible rather than
the Talmud. history over law) Moses Mendelssohn 1729-1786 delicate
health, hunchback with noble and kindly face. changed Chr idea of
what Jews were like, small town of Dessau. Talmudic education. read
Bible and Maimonides and concluded that one should use reason to
move closer to God rather than assume it would undermine faith.
followed his teacher to Berlin. had to learn German, only medicine
was a permitted field of secular study. read Locke and other
philosophers. Friend of Lessing who had written play, "The Jews,"
urging tolerance. The Christian Gotthold Lessing was Mendelssohn's
sponsor and the first ally, setting a model of the liberal
Enlightenment figure who would later be sought in so many others
down to Franklin Roosevelt, beginning of liberal tendency and also
of J "pr" to persuade Chr to respect. MM wrote Philosophical
Conversations, and then other works. German was a foreign language
for him. Studied Greek. Presented as a century later, a non-white
intellectual might be, as a marvel. interested not only in ethics
but in cultural principles of art. kindness and brilliance. 63: MM
said appreciated Jesus quality as person but must be private, a
Protestant minister wrote asking M to publicly refute a book's
proof of the truth of Christianity or to convert. 1769. classical
problem of Medieval situation. reply was that stayed in own
religion only because believed in its principles. J was valid only
for Js and did not have to refute Christianity to remain a J. reply
won sympathy, and feeling would contradict Enlightenment, so gained
an apology. but so nervous undermined his health and led to a 7year period of withdrawal. wrote in Hebrew, respected in Jewish
sphere now shifted more to Jewish issues. Translation of Jewish
Bible into German, originally for tutoring of own children, printed
11
in Hebrew letters and used for teaching German. helped protect
Jewish communities. advocated equality and emancipation, helped
found Jewish Free School in Berlin. 1783: chief work, Jerusalem or
On Religious Power and Judaism. religious teachings are matters of
conscience which the state should not regulate. J religion of laws
more important to beliefs, no beliefs contrary to reason. [a step
toward saying it was a culture, not an ideology] laws did not
prevent Js from being good citizens. Thus, difficult task of
balancing. Spinoza had said Bible work of Jewish legislation, of
which only moral precepts were of universal validity. (the idea
that J was only for Js did not really contradict previous thinking
but emphasizing it made possible the living as a minority view
without assuming the majority must be right. but identification of
J and reason could mean merged into wider humanity. More Jews
participated in cultural life, including Rahel Varnhagen. Joseph II
in 1782 proposed a gradual removal of discrimination. influenced
some leaders of the French Revolution. 1791 emancipation of French
Jews, spread by that army's advances. Belief that it was a
Messianic era. 75: French formula, "The Jew as an individual is to
be given every right, but Jews as a [community] are to be denied
any right." hence freedom in exchange for assimilation. To pay the
price, not pay the price. only gradually emerged the view that
there should not be any price. universal ideology/Jewish life could
not long endure over generations as a balance. 1792 Saul Ascher
suggestion of religious reform influenced by Kant. J as a
philosophy of life rather than as a way of living. MM son Abraham
wrote: (77) "One can remain loyal to a suppressed and persecuted
religion, one can impose it on one's children as an expectancy of
lifelong martyrdom, so long as one believes it to be the only
saving faith. Yet once one ceases to believe this, it is
barbarous." his children defected. Setbacks in emancipation with
Napoleon's defeat, decrees limited though not all improvements
rolled back. Js filled lecture rooms, theaters, concert halls.
dedication to education continued but subject matter changed.
universities. Yet while Js kept bargain--free citizens if discarded
customs--still much prejudice, assim would be to bring it new
forms. Now J was a misfortune not only because it was persecuted
but because it was being persecuted in a worthless cause.
Wasserstein "TWO CHEERS FOR EMANCIpATION DAVID S. LANDES p.
288 The French revolution would create a new society open to all.
p. 292-3Napoleon, "It is necessary to consider the Jews a nation
and not a sect, for they are a nation within a nation. I should
like to prevent them, at least for a certain length of time, from
taking citizenship; it is too humiliating for the French nation to
find itself at the mercy of the vilest of all nations." many
smaller Jewish communities disappeared into the general population.
Rahel Varnhagen--no accident subject of Arendt, said being
born Jewish was like a prolonged bleeding to death (p 81). b1771
Levy, converts 1814 to marry Varnhagen after earlier engagements to
Count Karl von Finckenstein and a Spanish diplomat. d 1833 buried
Trinity Church in Berlin. Varnhagen. "Reason can liberate from the
12
prejudices of the past and it can guide the future. [p. 10]
Unfortunately, however, it appears that it can free isolated
individuals only, can direct the future only of Crusoes." "How can
you peel off the disgrace of unhappiness, the infamy of birth? How
can you--a second creator of the world--transform reality back into
its potentialities and so escape the `murderous axe'?" a philosophy
of seeking man's hegemony. p. 11: Varnhagen"Facts mean nothing to
me, for whether true or not, facts can be denied." "Lying is lovely
if we choose it, and is an important component of our freedom." p
12 she went driving on the Sabbath but would deny it. only
"rational truths" the product of pure thought can lay claim to
validity.{Varnhagen and Bernhard; the other Rahel?] Rachel
Varnhagen, "Jewess and Shlemihl" 12: went driving with a friend on
the Sabbath "Nobody saw me; I would have and would and shall deny
it to anyone's face." Arendt responds, "If she denies it, nothing
remains of the fact except one opinion against other opinions.
Facts can be disintegrated into opinions as soon as one refuses to
consent to them and withdraws from their context....Perhaps reality
consists only in the agreement of everybody, is perhaps only a
social phenomenon, would perhaps collapse as soon as someone had
the courage forthrightly and consistently to deny its existence." a
very key idea, Marx, Derrida, malleability of a reality that the
other Europeans accepted. Not to argue that Jews unique in this or
most other respects but there is a community of discourse that
makes them separate. rational truth is the product of thought
Lessing to Mendelssohn Enlightenment. and since reality so
unpleasant it was one easy and desirable to deny; the existing
order
both
internally--religion
and
custom--and
externally,
discrimination and the reigning social and intellectual order. 13:
but one fact was, for Rahel for example was that she had been born
a Jew, another fact to deny but which also made her refuse "to
consent to herself; she, born to so many disadvantages, had to
deny, change, reshape by lies this self of hers, since she could
not very well deny her existence out of hand." self-transformation,
danger of always being an empty possibility, "Once one has negated
oneself, however, there are no longer any particular choices. There
is only one aim: always, at any given moment, to be different from
what one is; never to assert oneself, but with infinite pliancy to
become anything else, so long as it is not oneself." Zelig,
Koestler. she wanted to escape from Judaism. fell in love with a
count. 26: "Once she became a countess, her disadvantages could be
forgotten overnight; nothing would remain of Jewishness but a
natural solidarity with all those who likewise wanted to escape
from Judaism." situation growing worse, Enlightenment's force
weakening. 27: Mendelssohn little interested in emancipation until
conceived of it as a symbol of worthiness. already issue was beyond
religion, and even a converted Jew became...a converted Jew. It was
becoming the history not of religion but of nations and [to use the
contemporary word so often applied, and not always pejoratively]
race. 1812 first Emancipation degree. Henriette Herz, married
Berlin scientists, studied. Christianity another element of culture
13
p. 31 baptized after death of husband and mother. Dorothea
Schlegel, youngest daughter of Mendelssohn, good education and
arranged marriage, ran off to Schlegel and her sons of her first
marriage became devout Christian painters (p. 32). more a satellite
of husband but in those days more of the latter than the former.
Others married aristocrats. their ambiguous position might make
them vain and animosity but also clever and alert. 74: "For her
indefiniteness, her natural lack of ties, appeared to her...as
freedom, incorruptibility, absence of prejudice." [how often this
applied in intellectual life.] 85: "Just as every antisemite knew
his personal exceptional Jews in Berlin, so every Berlin Jew knew
at least two eastern Jews in comparison with whom he felt himself
to be an exception." V spoke of the necessity "of having always to
show who one is; that is why it is so repulsive to be a Jewess!"
the situation "killed any desire in her to conserve a world in
which such repulsive behavior was necessary....so that when she
became involved in society she had to be revolutionary...."
86: her great love Gentz "betrayed her a thousand times over."
writing a friend, "Never has a Jewess--without a single exception-known true love." while writing her on virtually the same day that
no one knew as well how to love as she.
Hannah Arendt, Rachel Varnhagen p. 201: "Varnhagen has now married
the little Levy woman. So now at last she can become an Excellency
and Ambassador's wife. There is nothing the Jews cannot achieve."
Here, as elsewhere, Wilhelm von Humboldt was true because the Jews
stood outside of society, there was no prescribed ladder for them
to climb from birth, and because no one will of his own free will
stay on the lowest rung.
Varnhagen bragged that she was "one of Frederick the Great's
Jews." Between 1780 and 1806, when Berlin Jews so successfully
mixed with aristocratic society, of a group of 20 elite women
participating in salons, at least 17 converted and 10 married
gentiles.vii
Altmann on Mendelssohn: M in Berlin on sufferance to study
Talmud. thus his city experience tied up with J. also first gen:
man of tradition with Eur culture as opp to second or third. 20:
Frederick William I's economic advisor: In matters of commerce it
makes no difference whether the trader is a Jew or a Christian."
21: Jewish heritage blended with philosophy of age. Chr works of
Enlightenment: truths founded on reason are truths and--assuming
they confirm divine/scripture all the more welcome. Maimonides had
lived five? centuries earlier, after all. But what happens when
start to diverge? here is the problem avoided in the eighteenth
century but crashing home in the nineteenth and handled in the
twentieth by secularism or new all-encompassing ideologies. Indeed,
the earlier refuge in philosophy can then come to save faith--look
at Buber, and Cohen, and Rosensweig (sp) who used the tools to
shore up the earlier belief--as Maimonides had done. But also, the
substitution for a highly sophisticated philosophy for simple
faith, of years of thought and reading for observance to rules is
clearly going to appear only to a small minority of the masses who
14
pursue this path and only a minority of the thinkers, too. Most
will not find their way back to their origins. They will find some
other faith or sink into material life and accumulation. MM
fascinated by Spinoza. a personal identification with S pp. 34-35.
MM spoke of "two nations" and the point was not to ignore
distinction but to face up to it. p. 194. not to try to convert or
reject him. 196: MMquotes mishnah "The nobler a thing is in its
state of perfection, the more awful it is in its decomposition."
integrate into talk, for there is much wisdom. the whole enterprise
was to acknowledge differences not to hide them--diff between
Enlightenment and assimilation. MM could joke with Chr friends
about it--again possible only after many decades of trauma.
Altmann: Mendelssohn saw reason as divine. could not accept
faith alone (as in Christianity) p. 200. [thus J not only as a
religion which accepts reason but demands it.] The Lavater affair:
assumption MM had to convert since Chr, said he respected Jesus as
long as he did not claim to be divine. 205-6. argument that
negative parts of Chr not preached by Jesus. 1769. dedication an
open letter in his translation of a book. Yet that faith which he
defended with such impressive skill and passion was soon to be
thrown away by his children. first reaction to be outspoken,
outrage. 212: "To be sure, the fact that this despised, scattered
little band [of Jews] still exists--Blessed be the ashes of that
humane theologian who was the first to declare that God was
preserving us as a visible proof of the truth of the Nazarene
religion. But for this lovely brain wave, we would have been
exterminated long ago." decided to avoid theological controversy
but reaffirm his position. 221: he was "a member of an oppressed
people that had to implore the ruling nation for patronage and
protection, which it did not receive everywhere, and which was
nowhere without restrictions." maskilim movement of 1770s.
The typical Jew was not a Mendelssohn and the typical
Christian/national of the place was not a Lessing
Once the eggshell of observance was cracked--the yoke of the
613 commandments--a new wall had to be built lest the yolk of
identity also run out. The masses of the pale--of Russian Poland,
and Austro-Hungarian and German Galicia and of Romania and Hungary-were still observant. Samson Raphael Hirsch 1808-1888, founder of
modern orthodoxy, divine origin of laws and remained vindication of
Jewish identity.
Bach: Reform, what to retain, what to give up. thus, a form of
adjustment. shorter feature, drop national and Messianic allusions,
organ, sermon in German, "dignified" manner. first "Temple" 1817
(significance in religious terms). MM religious ideas of J common
to humanity as religion of reason. 1819: Society for the Culture
and Science of Jews. to study, give intellectual content, apply new
methods of scholarly research. secular, historical research.
Influence of Hegel. Prussia withdrew right of Jews to admission to
academic careers, Eduard Gans, president of the Society, converted
though they had sworn to preserve Jewish faith, Society collapsed
but this type of work went on. Others attempted to reconcile
15
traditional Judaism with reason. neo-orthodoxy by Isaac Bernays and
his student Hirsch. B gave regular sermon, more emphasis on Bible,
Hebrew and some secular subjects including German, history, and
geography. Reform among wealthier and educated.
Bach: Liberal party, Leopold Zunz of Society wrote Names of
the Jews (1836) analyzing and showing they had always been
influenced by Greek, Roman, Persian, Arabic, and other languages
while some Christian names had Jewish origins. The Jew periodical
1832. Gabriel Riesser, "We are not immigrants, we are born in
Germany and, therefore, have no other claim to a home: we are
either Germans or homeless." p. 93 first demand for equality by
right. (from Messiah to emancipation) (future would be redeeming).
F.J. Stahl (1802-61) established legitimist Christian Conservative
Party providing reaction with an ideology. professor of public law
at University of Berlin, Christian-Germanic state to be true
progress
because
could
maintain
harmony
among
interests.
Protestantism only alternative to religious indifference
p. 78 Mendelssohn's own children with the exception of his
eldest son. David Friedlander, a pupil of Mendelssohn and founder
of the Jewish Free School at Berlin, 1799 wrote an Open Letter to a
Protestant minister offering the mass conversion of the city's
leading Jews if that act could be accepted as a political formality
without implying any belief in Christian dogmas. But he also
continued as the Prussian Jews main leader, trying to improve their
social and political conditions. wealthy family arrive 1771. silk
factory and city councilor. knew Kant. close disciple. founded
Jewish Free School Hebrew, German, French and secular subjects.
when a Christian proposed to him the idea of reestablishing a
Jewish state (as a way to bring Messiah) said centuries of pressure
had atrophied the urge for freedom, praying and enduring not
acting. spirit of unity did not exist. the immediate task was
emancipation. had to defend communities against mistreatment.viii
p. 79 Napoleon's conquest of Prussia allowed him to issue a
decre in 1812 granting Jews equal rights, abolishing residence
restrictoins, allowing their admission to academic and municipal
posts, and making them eligible for the military draft. Yet
patriotic Jews joined the Prussian forces in the War of Liberation
against Napoleon. retarding emancipation for fifty years
p. 94 The expectation of Messianic liberation and redemption
was still secularized and linked up with the concrete political aim
of emancipation, still--and even more so--indissolubly connected
with the spiritual salvation of mankind by prophetic justice.
"but Jewish nationality has perished in a fine and enviable
way: it has become universality" - and now Jews should be "the
teachers of cosmopolitanism" rather than pleading their own cause.
p. 95 Abraham Geiger was deeply convinced that "universal
humanity has its roots in Israel."
p. 96 This mission demanded the permanent preservation of the
Jewish community. the segregating effect of the ceremonial law had
now come to obscure its very purpose.
p. 97 His understanding of Judaism reduced its range yet
16
emphasized the moral and social aspects. Geiger's fellow student,
Samson Raphael Hirsch, Hirsch held that ideal humanity was
represented by strictly traditional Jewish life. The Jew educated
in the true spirit of the Torah as the divine word, the
"Israel-man," he said, is "at the same time the most universal
cosmopolitan"--the spirit of the Torah being the goal of education
for mankind. Thus he refused to distinguish between religion as
faith and as an established observance.
p. 98 Hirsch praised Mendelssohn for demonstrating that "one
can be scrupulous in religious observance but be nonetheless a
highly esteemed man and shine out as a German Plato." The national
aspects of Judaism, as "mere means of its spiritual vocation," were
held to be no obstacle to the sincere allegiance of Jews to other
nations, to a combination of "Torah with Derech Eretz,"
p. 99 He was refused a seat on the rabbinical board on the
grounds that, "having attended a university, he was unfit to be a
rabbi.
p. 100 Zacharias Frankel, rabbi at Dresden, Sermons in the
vernacular were sanctioned by tradition. The controversy thus was
not one of plain affirmation or denial but over a question of
degree, namely, whether the retention of Hebrew in the service was
merely a concession to the past, to be recommended for a
transitional period, or a necessity of Jewish religious life for
all time. Geiger emphasized that, by remaining tied to the Hebrew
language, Jewish religion would depend on a national element.
Frankel replied that if nationality were indeed part of religion it
should be honestly admitted. As a result of the conference a Reform
Congregation was established in Berlin, with Holdheim as its
minister. The service, for lack of attendance on Sabbaths, was
transferred to Sunday; separation of men and women was abolished as
well as praying with a covered head; a new liturgy, almost entirely
in German, was adopted,
p. 105 Zunz tried to translate this conviction into academic
practice by applying to the University of Berlin for the
establishment of a professorship in the Science of Judaism.
p. 108 The fame won in Paris by Giacomo Mayerbeer as an
operatic composer prevailed upon the Prussian king to make him
director of the Berlin opera house despite the fact that he was not
converted.
106-7. Jews open up German industries: clothing, coal, timber
to furniture, and so on. furs. banking. Paul Reuter news agency.
journalism and medical profession. Felix Mendelssohn rediscovered
Bach. Paris: Giacomo Mayerbeer success as operatic composer, made
director of Berlin opera house. urban migration grew rapidly.
though some because of reaction went to England or America. 1859 Js
could enter legal profession. Heinrich Graetz, History of the
Jewish People 1853-76) modern and critical yet retaining unity and
continuity. from Hegel history as manifestation of idea; Ranke to
regard a people as a national individuality. had not realized was
history. national pride. pressure of work made do on Sabbath, the
rabbi was becoming the religious professional taking the lay
17
people's place. the belief in advancing civilization and growing
social justice--typical of time and especially concentrated. 1860s
emancipation and 1870s new institutions and professionalization of
religion, orthodoxy with secular study. The grandson of a young man
expelled from Berlin for carrying a German book to Mendelssohn was
Gerson Bleichroder, powerful Berlin banker. 1871 and reviving antis
in what is now Germany.
hero of Gotthold Lessing's play "Nathan the Wise", grandfather
of Felix, writer and philosopher, translated tanach into German,
taught himself German. grandfather of Felix but his children had
converted to Catholicism or Protestants. Abraham and Rebecca were
Felix's parents, converted the children. adopted Bartholdy name.
interested in church music and Christian themes. Liked Wagner's
music but Wagner attacked him after death, patriotic and loyal to
the church never considered Jewish or mentioned it but would be the
focus of attack on the Jewish spirit. banned by Nazis because antis
now racial not religious--a parallel to the Inquisition?
Mendelssohn founder of German haskalah movement. use of German
and rise of "state religion" end of eighteenth century high
incidence of baptism in Berlin.
8.--Napoleon 1807. changes in Europe, rise of nationalism,
liberalism, Christian anti-clericalism, increased contact among
Jewish
communities.
cross-border
cooperation
among
Jewish
communities in Damascus affair of 1840. a Catholic priest and his
servant disappeared, Jews accused of murdering for Passover matzo,
Christians promoted the charge. encouraged by French and Egyptian
rulers. Montefiore sent along with Adolphe Cremieuxto Egypt and
sucess in getting Egyptians to denounce. also roused British, US,
and even Czarist governments, public meeting.
7.--Vienna Rachel Varnhagen. Fanny von Arnstein 1757-1818 Viennese,
daughter of banker, salon, during Congress of Vienna.
Germany's Stepchildren: Dorothea, oldest daughter of Moses
Mendelssohn and wife of Jewish industrialist refused an offer to
tutor Princess Charlotte, later Empress of Russia in 1815. In 1817
converted after mother's death, met Friedrich Schlegel and eloped,
said she was at heart Protestant, thinking Catholicism too close to
Judaism which she had come to despise. pp. 10-11. 1804 baptized but
four years later she and her husband converted to Catholicism.
husband ex-revolutionary and ex-atheist worked for Metternich. she
religious and charitable tasks, missionary and fanatic. convinced
two sons to convert despite their father's pleading, became pious
painters. d 1839, Varnhagen helped make Goethe's reputation.
virtual cult figure, praised by the great intellectuals and
aristocrats of the day. Count Finkenstein broke off engagement
because family objected. felt ignoble birth. 13: "How loathsomely
degrading, offensive, insane, and low are my surroundings, which I
cannot avoid. One single defilement, a mere contact, sullies me and
disturbs my nobility. And this struggle goes on for ever! All the
beauty that I meet with in life passes me by as a stranger and I am
compelled to live unknown among the unworthy!" [interesting that
she did not attribute problems to status as a woman] 14: she could
18
never adjust, "I imagine that just as I was being thrust into this
world a supernatural being plunged a dagger into my heart, with
these words: `Now, have feeling, see the world as only a few see
it, be great and noble; nor can I deprive you of restless,
incessant thought. But with one reservation: be a Jewess!' And now
my whole life is one long bleeding. By keeping calm I can prolong
it; every movement to staunch the bleeding is to die anew, and
immobility is only possible to me in death itself."
note on all this: the atheist position is untenable at the
time since even the deists and radicals tend to convert.
Mendelssohn's grandchildren became not only Christians but devout
ones, pouring into that the emotion and feeling that they would not
give Judaism. thus, it was not that the religious feeling was
drained altogether but merely that it was transferred to a new
loyalty. 14: "You have no reason for wishing to remain in the glare
of the religion of your birth. You must assimilate yourself
externally as well to the great class with whose customs, opinions,
culture, and convictions we are one." interesting that though
Varnhagen spoke of class--the aristocracy--there would be others
who would identify the class as the bourgeoisie or the proletariat,
with the same degree of self-abnegation. but kept some Jewish
aspects of thought even in her Christianity. when anti-Jewish
pogroms in 1819 she was concerned, encouraged acquaintances to be
less anti-Jewish and wrote just before her death that she was a
refugee from Egypt and Palestine, thinking "with supreme delight"
of her origin and connection back through time "That which for so
long a period of my life seemed my greatest disgrace, my bitterest
pain and misfortune, namely to have been born a Jewess, I would not
now dispense with at any price." (because it was a part of herself
and to remove would lose her own personality.)
pp. 17-19 not altogether inevitable in 1811 Achim von Arnim,
Romantic poet, hated Jews though his wife frequented the salons.
during a music festival at Sara Levy's he came for his wife
uninvited, made anti-Jewish jokes and insulted, left, nephew Moritz
Itzig wrote letter challenging his conduct. Arnim scorned,
challenged to duel. aristocrat rejected, getting signed statements
from fellow Prussian officer that a Jew had no honor and thus could
not be engaged in a duel, wrote another insulting letter and one
afternoon Itzig appeared before him in Berlin and beat him with a
cane, officer cried for help and saved tough he was the larger man.
Itzig said he had no other recourse. Arnim turned over to court,
officer
corps
criticized
Arnim,
court
said
extenuating
circumstances and provocation. Rahel even talked some of the
officers to send Itzig letters retracting their earlier ones. Itzig
volunteered to fight against Napoleon and died in battle. Arnim
stayed hoe on his Prussian estate and did not fight.
22-23 the paradox was articulated to the father of Felix
Mendelssohn and son of Moses, who had converted his children but
not himself by his brother-in-law who had done both, "You say, you
owe it to the memory of your father--do you really think you did
something wicked when you gave your children the religion which you
19
regard as better for them? It is rather a form of homage which you
and all of us are rendering to the efforts of your father in behalf
of true enlightenment. He would perhaps have acted as you did for
your children and I for my person. One can remain true to an
oppressed, persecuted religion, and can even force it on one's
children with the prospect of a lifelong martyrdom--as long as one
regards it as the sole means of salvation. But to do so, when one
no longer believes this, is barbarism."
24-25: to complete the irony of the situation, Arnim's wife
Bettina, whose brother was also a leading antisemite, the greatest
non-Jewish women writer was friendly to Jews, saying they were not
merely a religious community, they were a nation, rooted in their
psychic structure, the problem was the oppression by Christianity,
let them be given rights and they would help society without
changing themselves. It was the Christians, not the Jews who were
acting wrongly.
Ludwig Borne. b 1786-1837 Frankfort baptized 1818. pp. 28-29
Loeb Baruch/Louis Baruch/Ludwig Borne. died and buried in France.
born into ghetto which was locked in at night. could not use
footpath, street urchins yelled to Rothschild "Make your obeisance,
JewJew!" restrictions on marriage. yet irony that the society which
had so oppressed them is the one they wanted to enter. Napoleon
only temporary reversal and had to pay. Note that German patriotism
was to fight against Napoleon--like Itzig did--i.e., against one's
own liberation. 30: "Good God! For thirty years a sea of human
blood has flowed in behalf of truth and justice, and is it still
necessary to bring proof of one's righteous possession of the
sacred inheritance of humanity, as though possession of a disputed
cabbage field were up for discussion?" at first tried appeal to
reason, idea that Germans not free in keeping Jews unfree, a theme
much heard later in different circumstances. 31: "The people will
discover that they were designated as disputed of the Jews, because
disputed as well as the jailed may not leave prison...but neither
group is really free." (see Bob Dylan on George Jackson: get exact:
Sometimes I think this world is just one big prison yard/some of us
are prisoners and some of us are guards." ) called for united front
against the rulers (but why should the average people form one?
religion should be source of love but became one of hate. wanted to
be thought of as individual apart from Jewishness. p. 34: a century
earlier, Borne wrote, the Frankfort Jew "had no fatherland and when
his "birthplace was more foreign to him than any foreign land."
35: words in retrospect chilling: "Hate the Jews or love them,
oppress them or elevate them, be good to them or persecute them;
all this is left to your caprice. But I tell you one thing: see how
far you get with the freedom of Germany so long as this freedom is
not to be for all." but progress will occur, the people will learn
better--a nineteenth-century liberal notion taken over in the
twentieth century by socialism and Communism. Like Varnhagen before
death 1832 Borne wrote p. 41: that he too had "come to prize my
undeserved fortune in being at the same time a German and a Jew, so
that I can strive for all the virtues of the Germans without
20
sharing any of their faults." (a very interesting statement in late
of later attitudes including in U.S. because born a slave, loves
freedom, understands it and yearns for a fatherland more fervently
than" others. very revealing of "Jewish spin" on attitudes. Like
other converts--Disraeli, Heine, and even Rahel--gave out with
bitter pride (41-2) "You are thirty million Germans and amount to
about thirty as far as your influence in the world is concerned;
give us thirty million Jews and the world would not count beside
them. You have deprived the Jews of air; but this saved them from
putrefaction. You have strewn their heart with the salt of hate;
but this has preserved it fresh. You have locked them up all winter
long in a deep cellar and stuffed up the cellar hole with dung; but
you yourself, exposed to the frost, are half frozen. When spring
comes, we shall see who blossoms earlier, the Jew or the
Christian." [when the gates are opened, the Jews compete very well,
adopt better, and flower in both intellectual and business terms.)
an antisemite attacked the Jews as the people of Borne. but
remained assimilationist and internationalist.
history is often told in the name of the exception, the hero,
the martyr. it is how oppressed people tell their own stories--to
raise morale and make propaganda--and it is how a sympathetic,
contrite majority later records. But most people simply want first
the basics of survival and security, and then the comforts of
luxury and success. When given a choice, they would take the easier
path. One must be careful not to draw too heavily on our own age,
where being a philosophical, cultural, or political rebel is
idealized and the oppressed are seen as noble--attitudes which Jews
had a disproportionately large role in shaping. For in the
nineteenth-century and in a good part of the twentieth in a good
many places, those who were downtrodden were regarded as worse, as
having merited their low rank by displeasing God or--later--having
inferior character and customs. It is quite conceivable that the
majority of Jews outside of those sheltered by a continuing
thoroughgoing Orthodoxy, even into contemporary times, accepted
this view.
The German writer Berthold Auerbach who was loyal to the
community and a strong advocate of equality and would become one of
the country's most famous novelists, pointed out that the
conservatives accepted Jews original religious orientation and
peoplehood (hence saw them as enemies) and wanted them to convert;
the liberals were friendly but patronizing but turned quickly
against them if they differed; Young German radicals critiqued all
faiths wanting to substitute a new testament. went to synagogue
periodically to retain his connection. Gabriel Riesser, the lawyer
who was vice-president of the Frankfurt parliament during the 1848
rising and later Chief Justice of the Court at Hamburg--refusing to
convert--regarded themselves as Germans who were also Jews, denied
nationality, closer to Germans than to Jews of other lands. need to
modernize. wanted to universalize Jewish problems: national
life/international connections were dangerous not to assimilation
but to acceptance on an equal basis. when Moses Hess told of plan
21
to write book on nationality very upset, p. 93 "Who has set you up
as lord and judge over us?" 1875: 96: "We are not Jews who happen
to speak German or be raised in this land, but that we feel
ourselves wholly as Germans." 1880: "In vain have I lived and
worked!" viewing continuing antisemitism. half-century emphasis on
patriotism.
When German wrote patriotic song about the Rhineland against
French claims and Hess sent him a music score, he returned it, "You
are a Jew!" p. 103. Hess shocked by Damascus affair of 1840
(compare later stages: Dreyfus affair, Holocaust)
Emancipation and Counter-Emancipation "The 1848 Revolution" p.
158: in America, the question of Jewish emancipation never arose
since Jews were covered under the general constitution. 1848 Jews
active from start. 159: vice president of Jewish organization in
Paris ran for the National Assembly. Adolphe Cremieux as minister
of justice and minister of finance Jewish. Vienna Adolf Fischhof
and Joseph Goldmark two young Jewish doctors were in leadership.
Fischhof head of Committee on Security, very powerful, and this
brought anti-Jewish feeling. The secretary of the Vienna Jewish
community 160 became one of the country's most popular poets. two
Jewish deputies were leading rabbis, Jewish youngsters were on
barricades and at least one was killed with joint religious
funerals including rabbi [shades of Moscow] In Prussia too played
leading role and suffered many of the casualties, another burial as
public demonstration.
161: leading exponent of the "Christian" state and leader of
the Prussian conservative party, Friedrich Stahl, was from a Munich
Orthodox family, converted at age 17 during anti-Jewish movement of
1819. Gabriel Riesser, for many years leader in struggle for Jewish
emancipation was second vice-president of the Assembly. the
delegation that offered Prussia's king the rule of a united Germany
was headed by a converted Jew who later became first president of
the German high court. Marx and Lassalle also supporters. 163
Italy, the leader of the Venetian uprising was a converted Jew, his
cabinet included two Jews and many more fought there.
164-5 they denied they had specific Jewish interests or that
their backgrounds affected their opinions. As one put it, "Being
simultaneously a Jew and a German, the Jew in me can never be free
without the German, nor the German without the Jew." A leading
rabbi who was in Austrian parliament, "What shall be done for us
now? Nothing! Everything for the people and the Fatherland....No
word about Jewish emancipation unless others speak up for us....No
petitions, no requests, implorations or complaints in behalf of our
rights....First the right to live as men, to breath, think, speak,
first the right of a citizen...afterwards comes the Jew. They
should not reproach us that we always think first about ourselves!"
anti-Jewish pamphlets and placards appeared and when done leaders
blamed it on other Jews for being too forward, yet the Jews could
not depend on the liberals. had to press behind the scenes to get
them to do anything. No matter how much tried to stress either
conservatism or self-sacrifice, the right attacked and the left
22
ignored. Disraeli argued that conservatism and Jews went together.
so associated did Jewish emancipation and revolution become that
Austrian government gave in March 1849 then withdrew in December
1851 once felt secure. Still, disabilities came down and Jews
rushed into medicine, law and journalism. leading to criticisms of
domination.
180 Jews found themselves as being exponents of Magyar culture
among the Slovaks, Serbo-Croats and Romanians; Germans among the
Czechs and so on. 181: "With whomever they side," complained a
Vienna journalist, "they find a powerful party opposing them."
182: Berthold Auerbach wrote better about German peasants than
anyone, to Cremieux in 1869, it was the Jews' "mission to help
establish the life of state and nationality on a superior plane,
not on the basis of blood descent but on that of the spirit." And
concluded with a fascinating phrase, "the Jews are like the Bible
which, translated into all national languages, nevertheless remains
the same immutable content."
183: 1848 Fischhof famous call for revolution, "Ill-advised
statesmanship has hitherto kept apart Austria's nationalities. They
now must find their brotherly way to one another and increase their
strength by unity."
Avineri p. 43: the ancient, holy state of the Jews, though
destroyed so long ago, "continues to live until this very day in
the feelings of its scattered members. In the Jews, in this
despised people, which has remained loyal to its old customs and
which reawakens now, after a long sleep, to a higher consciousness"
p. 183: his articles and essays were usually published under
the name of M. Hess, Moritz Hess and (after moving to Paris) also
Maurice Hess. But in Rome and Jerusalem, he wrote, "From now on, I
shall adopt my biblical name Moses--I only regret that I am not
called Itzig," the derisive name German antisemites called Jews.
Avineri Hess p. 189: Hess noted the implications of the
emergence of a modern Jewish secular literature, written mostly in
Hebrew - the Haskala, the Hebrew Enlightenment; p. 190: the
Paris-based, first worldwide Jewish organization, the Alliance
Israelite Universelle; the fact that German and French poets of
Jewish origin, whether baptized or not, had found the courage to
discuss Jewish themes in their poetry.
p. 193: From the beginning of the 1840s, gradual liberation
greatly improved the lot of German Jews, the speed of their
integration into German society. Hess was one of the few Jews who
challenged this optimism as an illusion.
Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen
p. 122-23: The salons in Berlin were
taken over from the Jews by the nobles who then excluded, having
been the first to deal with on some degree of social equality and
the first to turn against them. "It took the Prussian Jews a long
while to realize the significance of the quiet disaster that had
descended upon them. They, like their historians, were living at
that time in a delirium of hope for political reforms, which
finally came, bringing emancipation and civil liberation."
Jews, the antisemite Brentano declared, despised "old
23
festivals and sagas of the people," and everything traditional.
In 1840, a medieval belief that Jews kill Christians to use
their blood for ritualistic purposes was revived in Damascus. Eight
years later, a Russian ukase forced Jews to move to the interior.
In 1858 a Jewish child named Edgardo Mortara was secretly baptized
by his Catholic nurse in Bologna and spirited to Rome by papal
police. Despite Jewish protests, he was raised as a Catholic,
became a priest, and a fanatical advocate of Jewish conversion. (a
Jewish Dred Scott case, the contemporary Supreme Court decision
that the black man had no rights which the white man must respect.
duck Heine
Adano, THE JARGON OF AUTHENTICITY "Notes to Literature I:
Heine the Wound," p. 80: The Nazis almost honored Heine by putting
the words put the now famous words "Author Unknown" on his poem
"Die Loreley," turning a poem by a Jew into a piece of Germany's
folk tradition. Yet never was it clearer that the price of
acceptance was loss of identity.
p. 84 The Return Home p. 85: Heine's stereotypical theme,
unrequited love, is an image for homelessness, and the poetry
devoted to it is an attempt to draw estrangement itself into the
sphere of intimate experience. there is no longer any homeland
other than a world in which no one would be cast out any more, the
world of a genuinely emancipated humanity.
Heine book pp. 760-764: mostly secular German education at a
Christian school, sometimes other boys ridiculed him, felt
Jewishness only a small part of his complex identity. He tried to
escape at first by failing at any kind of mercantile or banking
career in which so many Jews, including his family, had succeeded.
His early poems were self-consciously German. He used a pseudonym
in publishing some of them in an anti-Jewish newspaper; steeping
himself in German lore; by seeking predominantly non-Jewish company
at the universities and accepting the duelling ethos of student
fraternities. baptized into the Protestant religion. For a long
time he rejected the Jewish religion as a fossilized relic that had
little meaning for modern man. he proclaimed his mission of
fighting for the political and social emancipation of Germany and
all mankind; he saw himself as Germany's cultural ambassador in
France, mediating between the two countries (a substitute for
mediating between Germany and Judaism), but a German linguistic
patriot. He angrily rejected the appellation `Jew' when it was
attached to him by friend or foe; devaluing Judaism as a
`sickness'; indulging in anti-Jewish abuse in his private
correspondence, and making free use of stereotypes beloved by
anti-Semites: physical clumsiness and gracelessness, the `Jewish'
nose, the unsanitary appearance of Jews from Eastern Europe, Jewish
pawnbroking and peddling, the mercantile `genius', the parvenu
behavior of Jewish nouveaux riches, and Yiddish accents.
Also defended against attackers, Baptism only confirmed that
Christianity was not for him; his love-affair with Germany
frequently turned sour; the Saint-Simonians disappointed him, his
romanticism
rejected
its
application
for
exclusive
German
24
nationalism. Worked with Jewish society trying to mediate between
German intellectual views and Jewish tradition, history, folklore,
and literature. In Poland respect for the "wholeness" of orthodox
Judaism, though he himself opted for assimilation. ranging from the
remembrance of sabbath and Passover ritual (family life bound up
with Jewish religious practice) to Jewish cooking, the Jewish
bible--ironically read in Luther's translation, of youthful Hebrew
study. Yiddish and Hebrew words, sometimes in Hebrew script, in
Heine's correspondence when Jews were threatened in Hamburg or
Damascus felt solidarity with his people, though he protested that
he would have felt equal solidarity with any other group similarly
threatened and oppressed. Heine is constantly drawn to Jewish
personalities of the past, Jewish friends; historical conditioning
of faults respect for Jewish traditions of support for the learned,
loyalty to the sacred books, charities, and democratic traditions
which gave the beggar inalienable rights vis-a-vis his plutocratic
co-religionists. the Bible as portable fatherland. His respect for
Jesus was not the Christian's respect for the Son of God - that he
often affronted with deliberate blasphemies; it was the respect,
rather, for a reformer sprung from the Jewish artisan class who
wanted to democratize the priest-ridden society of ancient Israel
and to spread Jewish ethical teaching beyond the narrow frontiers
of the ancient Hebrew nation.
the antisemites were those who had stressed the Jews as a
nation, In his early years we found him speaking of Jews
collectively as 'the Jews', or 'adherents of the Old Testament', or
'Israel', or 'the children of Israel', or 'the people who
understand arithmetic so well'. Of Polish Jews he spoke in class
terms, seeing them as Poland's 'third estate'; German Jews he
characterized as 'stepchildren' when he made his narrator speak of
Germany as their 'stepfatherland'
p. 765: Baptism brought home to Heine with renewed force that
whatever Judaism was, it was not simply a religion, but speaks of
"the mark of the Jew" which cannot be washed off in the baptismal
font. His tone is usually ironic when he speaks of the Jews as
`God's people' or `God's chosen people'--he had little sympathy
with such ethnic conceit; but he is wholly serious when he speaks
of them as 'the people of the spirit' and 'the people of the book'.
pp. 765-6: universal validity of Jewish ethics and the
universal message of Jewish Messianism. Jesus, whom the poet always
regarded as a member of the Jewish people, his own "cousin."
p. 767: glorifies ancient Israel and Jewish morality, poetry,
great men and martyrs. Despite the extremes of money worship or
abjectness to which individual Jews may be prone, Heine says they
have "a great civilization of the heart" and "an unbroken tradition
of 2,000 years" to which he has a loyalty consistent with his
loyalty to Germany and as a "good soldier in the war of liberation
fought by all mankind."
p. 769: He stressed aspects of the Jewish tradition coinciding
most with democratic and ethical ideals in the current German
culture. He suggested that Europe had become Jewish because it had
25
accepted these principles. In each country, Jews argued that it was
theirs which most embodied such virtues.
p. 771: Jewish wit, attributes include sharp self-criticism;
making fun of Jewish stereotypes that originate in the Gentile
world; a democratic mode of thought that places rich and poor,
aristocrat and simple man of the people on the same footing,
without losing sight of regional differences and class rivalries
within the Jewish communities; revolt against over-harsh and
overplentiful precepts and prohibitions; a pervasive skepticism
induced by a long history of exile and persecution which leads to
witty demonstrations of the fragility of law and order in the human
world; respect for learning coupled with delight in playing the
card of common sense against it: and a fascination with intricate
modes of thought, with a hypertrophied logic that leads to real or
apparent absurdity.
was it more virtuous for a Heine, Berenson, Disraeli or even a
Marx to enjoy the benefit of Christianity without believing it.
Jewish leadership in European culture, everywhere one turned
there were books, operas, plays, music, and newspapers being
written by Jews.
Joan Comay, Who's Who in Jewish History, p. 125: Disraeli
viewed as a social climber and political opportunist. His
grandfather came to London as a youth from Italy. His son Isaac
received an honorary doctorate at Oxford for a book on the life and
reign of Charles I. p. 127: Alroy (1833) written after an extensive
tour of the Near East including Palestine, is set in the 12
century; its messianic Jewish hero, David Alroy, fails to create a
Jewish empire. elected as Conservative in 1837. He defended the
monarchy,
the
aristocracy
and
the
church
as
traditional
institutions that ensured stability; and his writings and speeches
were tinged with nostalgia for a mythical golden age harking back
to a simpler period.
At the same time, he reflected a genuine
concern for the underprivileged - the tenant farmers and the
factory workers.
He sought to transform the Tory party into a
vehicle for gradual social reform, and a movement that could
embrace all strata of society.
In his novel Sybil he warned about the division of rich and
poor and urged reconciliation. His hero in Tancred, tried to
re-establish the harmony of English society. Disraeli was a
protectionist and in 1852 became chancellor of the exchequer and
leader of the House, then had to announce his party's abandonment
of protectionism. In 1867, Disraeli piloted an electoral reform
bill through the Commons that doubled the number of voters.
Becoming prime minister the next year, he was defeated in an
election held in that same year because of the new suffrage law.
In 1875, he was able to acquire for Britain control over the
French-built Suez Canal, the vital access route to the east. He
heard that the khedive of Egypt was compelled by debts to dispose
of his shares in the canal.
Disraeli promptly borrowed four
million pounds sterling from the Rothschild bank in London, bought
the shares on behalf of the government and then sought
26
parliamentary approval of his audacious coup.
Alfred Dreyfus p. 129 Earnest, hardworking and unfriendly, a
wholly unremarkable man. 1894 court martial held in secret, rigged,
sentenced to life imprisonment - the death penalty having been
abolished a few years earlier. At a ceremonial public parade, he
was stripped of his rank and degraded. He was then shipped off to
Devil's Island. (note: Kafka story). Two years later, however, a
French spy found a German document showing that the guilty man was
another staff officer, Major Esterhazy, a dissipated, debt-ridden
man-about-town of aristocratic descent married to the daughter of a
marquis. (note: betrayed by elite, like Germany, Petain, and Philby
not Jews). p. 130: Socialist leader Jean-Leon Jaures, Clemenceau,
and the writers Anatole France and Emile Zola. (Dreyfus saved by
non-Jews coming to defense)
pp. 131-2: international Jewish finance to destroy France. It
was in league with the Germans, the communists, the atheists and
every other enemy of the established order. (in Germany, Jews
viewed as allies of France). French Jews intimidated and stayed
away from case. It was a shock to the crowded courtroom when
Dreyfus appeared. Nearly five years of Devil's Island, of chains,
solitude, privation and tropical fever, had taken its toll. Forty
years old, he seemed aged and shrunken, with prematurely white hair
and hardly conscious of what was taking place.
The judges were told that they must choose between Dreyfus and
the French army--ex-Minister of War General Mercier commented,
"Either Dreyfus is guilty or I am"--the military court backed down
and
reaffirmed
Dreyfus's
guilt
but
citing
"extenuating
circumstances" it reduced his life sentence to ten years, including
time already served. Soon after, he was pardoned by the president
and released. A broken man, he declined to accept his supporter's
urging that he appeal to clear himself, a step that came only in
1906 when a court set aside the original conviction, reinstated
Dreyfus in the army, promoted him to major, and awarded the Order
of the Legion of Honor.
Herzl covered the trial for his Viennese newspaper, witnessed
the ceremony in which Dreyfus was degraded, and heard the crowds
screaming "Death to the Jews." He wrote: "Where?
In France. In
Republican, modern, civilized France, a hundred years after the
Declaration of the Rights of Man."
Dreyfus, a Graduate of Ecole Polytechnique, captain in
artillery, general staff, stiff and reserved--overreaction? the Jew
wanting to disappear into the crowd, and a crowd of patriots at
that. wanted to be absorbed, religion forgotten, believer in the
French
national
myth.
great-grandfather
a
kosher
butcher,
granddaughter, member of Resistance died in Auschwitz.
Josephus: p. 230: In his later years he published a life of
himself and Against Apion, a defence of the Jewish people.
(tradition of defending converts) Having exonerated the victorious
power of Rome, Josephus now applied himself to presenting the
history of the Jewish people in a comprehensive and positive way.
He may have been impelled to do this by the anti-Jewish bias and
27
the ignorance about the Jewish past and faith which he
encountered in the Roman capital.
Braude in Apostasy p. 109, Heine: "I make no secret of my
Judaism, to which I have not returned, because I never left it."
optimistic expectations of human deliverance. Napoleon. 1840
damascus sent back o roots. France instigated attack [pattern of
conflict when one's country attacks, compare to Aron or German
Jews. Heine denounced policy, went back to Bible but also denounced
J as affliction worse than poverty or sickness, internalizing some
of the antisemites charges. also ignorance. a predecessor of Roth
or Richler.
Heine on Gans Stepchildren p. 71: in a poem, "And so you
crawled to the cross that you despise, to the cross that only a few
weeks ago you thought of treading under foot....Yesterday a hero
and today already a rascal."
Heine's Jewish Comedy p. 3: "What a tragic story is the
history of the Jews in modern times! And if one tried to write
about this tragic element, one would be laughed at for one's pains.
That is the most tragic thing of all." lacked knowledge of Hebrew,
mother hostile to orthodoxy, wrote a great deal about Jews and
individual figures--though also of many others. Heine joined the
Society for the Culture and science of the Jews in 1822. he
lectured on German history and institutions. to spread modern
science and scholarship among the Jews, to study in a scholarly way
the Jewish history and contribution in various fields; to inform
both Jews and Gentiles more accurately. Gans too accepted baptism.
12 "If the state is so stupid as to forbid me to serve it in a
capacity which suits my particular talents unless I profess
something I do not believe--and something which the responsible
minister knows I do not believe: all right then, it shall have its
wish." 57-58: Heine, "I love Germany and the Germans; but I love no
less the inhabitants of the rest of this earth, whose number is
forty times greater--and it is surely love which gives a man his
true value. I am therefore--God be thanked!--worth forty times more
than those who cannot pull themselves out of the swamp of national
egotism and who love none but Germany and the Germans." 58: "What
does it matter who is beneath the mask?" at a masked ball, the
quest is for enjoyment "where a costume covers all pretensions and
brings about the most beautiful equality and the most beautiful
freedom--the freedom conferred by masks." [but one must be decide
whether to don the mask or to fling it off and loudly proclaim, "I
am what I am." whereas the others do not face such a choice but
take it for granted that they will act themselves [and Freud comes
into it too]
when writes of the Christianization of Moslems in
Spain, clearly writes about Jews in Germany. Heine is sort of a
literary Disraeli, a romantic writing from the heart which took
precedence over the facts, perhaps indication that their identity
lay beyond the facts, that they were always conscious of an
alternative world--Philip Roth would call a "counterlife" existed
and thus others could exist. converts yet not apostates of a
transitional time. Chaim Heine, b 1797. disciple of Hegel, 1825
28
baptized never really accepted, hostility so went to Paris where
more congenial. 1856 buried without religious rites there.
denounced ritual murder libel.
Thom Brown, DISRAELI THE NOVELIST p. 118 "In England, when I
prayed in vain for enlightenment, I at last induced myself to
believe that the Supreme Being would not deign to reveal his will
unless in the land which his presence had rendered holy; but since
I have been a dweller within its borders, and poured forth my
passionate prayers at all its holy places, and received no sign,
the desolating thought has sometimes come over my spirit, that
there is a qualification of blood as well as of locality necessary
for this communion, and that the favored votary must not only kneel
in the Holy Land but be of the holy race." (Tancred)
"Through Jesus, God spoke to the Gentiles, and not to the
tribes of Israel only....Christianity is Judaism for the multitude,
but still it is Judaism." (Tancred) (and does the non-Gentile then
want to be one?) 'Pray are you of those Franks who worship a
Jewess; or of those others who revile her, break her images, and
blaspheme her pictures?' Jews were the holy race who, through the
crucifixion of one of their own kind, had saved the world.
Heinrich Heine, The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine (NY,
1948), edited by Frederic Ewen, 1797-1856. uncle wealthy Hamburg
Jew, governor of a bank but ineligible to be a citizen. unsuited
for business. naturally inclined toward liberal side. taken up by
Varnhagen, Judenschmerz. 1822 joined Society for Jewish Culture and
Science. saw it was isolated from people, very small. prophets of
the progress of reason. 13: on Jews in Berlin, "We no longer have
the strength to wear beards, to fast, to hate, and to suffer
hatred." [later history of attitude to Ostjuden, note Freud
mentioning of Galician descent which in some ways was braver than
acknowledgement of Jewishness. converted June 1825 to Protestant
the month before he received his doctorate, heavy heart, despite
converts, including himself. 18: "I am now hated by both Christians
and Jews," he wrote, "I have become a true Christian--I now sponge
on rich Jews." "I often get up at night and stand before a mirror
and call myself all sorts of names." great admirer of France and
Napoleon [Stalin, Roosevelt] as the hero of progress and equality.
23: "Every age has its own task. And what is the great task of our
day? It is emancipation. Not simply the emancipation of the Irish,
the Greeks, the Frankfurt Jews, the West Indian blacks, and all
such oppressed peoples, but the emancipation of the whole world."
history is a history of emancipation. When conservatives attacked
him, they often did so as a Jew. Fellow exile, Ludwig Borne--less
remembered as Heine and Marx but as famous or more so in his day,
another convert. died in 1837 Frankfurt, Emancipation and reaction,
lost government post, reduced pension, became Protestant, drama
critic.
(p. 31) 1833 Federal Diet decree "against the wicked,
anti-Christian, blasphemous literature that wantonly treads all
morality, modesty and decency under foot."
156: sad poem, "Annual Mourning" "There will be no whispered
masses,/There will be no songs nor crying,/None will rise to say a
29
Kaddish/On the day that I lay dying." 157: Babylonian Sorrows is a
title of another poem about his death though it is about Paris, and
mention of the Hindu God. Many or more Christian references--and
they are given a far more central tone in his letters to Christian
friends, giving his approach an air of opportunism or, more
correctly, illustrating a genuine split rather than a Jewish
preference. Christians suspected Jewish converts of still being
Jewish and so missed the real problem: their faith was insecure,
having made a choice--especially one about which they could be
cynical--they could envision making another choice. 165: Testament
"Who needs my religion most?/My faith in Father, Son, and
Ghost?/Let the Rabbi of Posen, the king of China/Cast lots for the
piety of Heine!" poem Princess Sabbath, 263-67 ambiguity, one
enchanted princes who may now and then recover their beauty, but
the "magic-time runs out" and turns into something monstrous.
Israel, the prince, "Words of witchcraft have transformed
him,/Turning him into a dog." jeered but on Friday evening "the
dog/Once again becomes a person." clean, proud. [if sentimental, it
because Judaism is for him only a past not a future.] but the day
is short, "the curse's evil power" comes back. medieval
disputation,
which
ends
rather
unsentimentally
when
the
aristocratic judge says (p. 280): "Which is right I hardly know-/But, to tell the truth, I think/That the rabbi and the friar,-/That they both--forgive me--stink." The strange Donna Clara (pp.
282-4) in which a knight proclaims his love for the Lady, as she
curses the Jews and he tells her not to waste her words on them and
ends (284) when she asks her beloved's name he replied: "I, Senora,
your Beloved,/Am the son of the renowned,/Famed and scripturelearned Rabbi,/Israel of Saragossa!"
"The New Israelite Hospital in Hamburg," (285) dedicated to
those poor people: "Who groan beneath the heavy, threefold evil/Of
pain, and poverty, and Judaism." "The most malignant of the three
the last is:/That family disease a thousand years old,/The plague
they brought with them from the Nile Valley....Will Time, the
eternal goddess, in compassion/Root out this dark calamity
transmitted/From sire to son?--Will one day a descendant/Recover,
and grow well and wise and happy?" Jehuda Halevy poem. knowledge
certainly more than 20th century secular. mixed education.
attending Franciscan school with the Sabbath at home, asked
father (321-22) about grandfather, "Your grandfather was a little
Jew with a long beard." announced to class on following day, set up
total disorder, interrogated by teacher and beaten by the priest,
"These were the first blows I received on this earth."
In an 1823 letter. "I am likewise indifferent in religious
matters, and my attachment to Judaism stems from my deep antipathy
to Christianity. Yes, I am a condemner of all positive religions,
and yet I will at some future time probably accept the crassest
Rabbinical doctrines, merely because I consider them a time-tested
antidote." (347-8)
banker and one founder of the Society, Moses Moser, 1823, p.
349: "I am a Jewish poet. Why should I feel embarrassed? We're
30
among friends and I love to speak in national figures of speech."
"self-mockery" because talking about money. and in another letter
349: Luneburg "The Jews here are, as everywhere else, insufferable
usurers
and scoundrels. The Christian middle classes are
distasteful, and animated by a singular hatred. The upper classes
are even worse." Judenschmerz, the Jewish sorrow. 1824: studying
Jewish Bible and history, writing "The Rabbi of Bacherach" about
Jewish life and persecution in the Middle Ages. pp. 508-39
letter to Moser December 14, 1825: heard that Gans is
"preaching Christianity, and seeking to convert the Children of
Israel. If he's doing this from conviction, he's a fool. If from
hypocrisy, he's a scoundrel. I will not stop loving Gans; but I
assure you that I would much rather have heard that he had been
stealing silver spoons." hears Moser thinking the same way, "I
should be very sorry if my baptism were to meet with your approval.
I assure you, if the law permitted the theft of silver spoons, I
would not have been converted." went to Temple to hear sermon
blasting baptized Jews especially those who "hopeful of obtaining a
position." the sermon was good, he goes to Sabbath dinner eating
kugel. "Contritely I much that sacred national dish which" has done
so much to preserve Judaism. Wrote Moser in January 1826, "I am now
hated by both Christians and Jews. I regret that I've been
baptized. I don't see that it's helped me very much. On the
contrary, it's brought me nothing but misfortune."
Ferdinand Lassalle, February 1846 p. 448: "With regard to
Mendelssohn--I cannot understand how you can consider the trifling
matter of any importance....I am angry with him for turning
Christian. I cannot forgive this man of independent means [does
this suggest that Heine had to convert for career? he had
independent means?] for putting his great, his prodigious talents
at the service of zealots. The more I am impressed by his talents,
the more I am outraged by their vile misuse. Had I the fortune to
be a grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, I would not use my talents to
set to music the Lamb's urine."
454: Maximilian Heine, December 1848: "In my sleepless nights
of martyrdom I compose many beautfiul prayers....(all of them are
addressed to a very specific God, the God of our Fathers).
need to prove challenged Germanness. 485: "I could never bring
myself to renounce my domestic cross. I detest disloyalty of every
kind, and I could never renounce a German cat or a German dog,
however insupportable their fleas and fidelity might be to me."
"Mr. Hyacinth on the Subject of Religion" 593-4 The Jewish religion
"I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It brings nothing but shame
and abuse. I tell you it isn't a religion at all! It's a calamity!
I avoid everything that reminds me of it, and since Hirsch is a
Jewish name and means Hyacinth in German, I've let old Hirsch run,
and now I sign my name `Hyacinth....A name counts for much.
Hyacinth sounds altogether different from plain Hirsch. No one can
treat me like a common blackguard any longer." by writing this, of
course, Heine is satirizing himself. How can such a liberal,
courageous man as Heine have sold out so blatently, despite his
31
guilt feelings? Because there are fears each individual will face,
hints when the marquis in the story disagrees: "My dear Herr
Hyacinth, who would ever want to treat you that way? You seem to
have done so much to improve yourself. It is easy to see that you
are a man of culture, even before you open your mouth." (ie, the
Mendelssohn solution, education but Jewish). perhaps become Reform,
stupidity makes one happy. "Take an old Jew with his long beard and
ragged coat, who can't speak an orthographic word and is a little
mangy, and I'm sure he feels happier than I do with all my
accomplishments." but Friday evening he has his candlestick,
tablecloth, puts off all burdens and sorrows and eats good food,
sings a magnificent psalm and his heart rejoices at the exodus. he
is contented with his religion and candles and if Rothschild would
come he would be willing to change places with him. (attitude
toward still believers, like Kafka and Buber, and others as pure
and happy but would not imitate.
604 But would also write "Christ" "What a beautiful figure is this
Man-God! How narrow in comparison appears the hero of the Old
Testament!" "Moses loved his people...Christ loved humanity." and
so on. 658 Jesus "demolished the ceremonial law, which had no
further meaning or use. He even passed final sentence of death on
Jewish nationalism. He called all nations of the world to share in
the Kingdom of God, which had once belonged only to the chosen
people and extended to all mankind the rights of Jewish
citizenship. That was the great problem of emancipation, which,
however, was solved much more magnanimously then than is being done
at the present, in Saxony or Hanover....Naturally, the Savior who
had freed his brethren from the ceremonial law and nationalism, and
had established cosmopolitanism, fell a prey to his own
humanitarianism, and the magistrates of Jerusalem had him crucified
and the populace mocked him." (yet Heine also proclaimed himself a
non-believer). Everyone is so eager to make Heine a hero they
ignore his hypocrisy.
660: attributes conversion to reading the Bible.
The old Jewish God "will have nothing more to do with their
tribe and is having himself baptized into a God-free pure spirit."
Heine believes this "parvenu of heaven, who is now conceived as so
moral, cosmopolitan, and universal, harbors a secret resentment
against the poor Jews because they knew him as of old, and every
day in their synagogues insist on reminding him of his erstwhile
obscure national connections. Perhaps the old gentleman wishes to
forget that he is of Palestinian extraction, and that he was once
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--and that his name was then
Jehovah." pp. 596-7 ie., God--like Heine--is an ashamed convert
(compare to Hirsch).
662: "my Hellenic temperament which was repelled by Jewish
asceticism" which has declined, "I seen now that the Greeks were
only beautiful youths, but that the Jews were always men, mighty,
unyielding men, not only in the past, but to this very day, in
spite of eighteen centuries of persecution and misery." but "all
pride of ancestry" was "a silly paradox in a champion of the
32
Revolution and its democratic principles" but proud of his
ancestors. At times, sees the victory of Judaism through
Christianity, spreading p. 665: "the genuine, the ageless, the
true--the morality of ancient Judaism" Jewish love of freedom.
failure to emancipate Jews holds back democracy. since atheism is
the threat--he comments somewhat tongue in cheek--the state should
encourage Judaism. 669-70: At the same time that you find among
these people all possible caricatures of vulgarity, you also find
among them the purest ideals of humanity. As they once led the
world into new paths of progress, the world may still expect them
to open up others." "It is very possible that the mission of this
race is not yet fulfilled, and particularly may this be the case
regarding Germany. She too awaits a redeemer, an earthly Messiah-with a heavenly one the Jews have already blessed us--a King of the
Earth, a Savior with a scepter and sword, and this German redeemer
is perhaps the same as he for whom Israel waits." was it
revolution? Marx? Or Hitler as the anti-Messiah?
684 Mendelssohn as Jewish Luther, "Jewish-Catholicism" 690,
Polish Jews appear frightful, horrifying, nausea, filthy, repulsive
jargon, then pity at poverty, at first higher civilization 701 "But
they did not keep step with European culture; their intellectual
outlook became narrow and degenerated into revolting superstition,
which by reason of their subtle scholasticism took on a thousand
perverted forms." yet still esteem more highly than German Jews
because have inner unity and freedom. defends Jews on Damascus
blood libel. 699: Judaism is aristocracy, with Jews as favorites,
"He is a monarch, and the Jews his noblemen," and Israel the
Vatican. Christianity is democracy, God loved all equality,
universal. 700: "a baptismal certificate is a ticket of admission
to European culture." "The Jews must finally realize that they will
achieve full emancipation only when the emancipation of the
Christians is completely won and secured. Their cause is identical
with that of the German people, and they should not need to demand
as Jews, what has long been due them as Germans." [the Jews knew
it, the Germans didn't]. mission of Jews will be fulfilled "when
the worldly Savior comes--industry, labor, joy."
pp. 703-5 praise for Martin Luther
9.--Marx Moses Hess/Theodor Lassalle [mention]
Shlomo Avineri, Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism & Zionism p.
5: A Rhenish Jew lawyer, son of the chief rabbi of Trier, married
and with a growing family, converted to be able to continue in his
profession. Believing in the Enlightenment and a disciple of
Voltaire, he called himself a deist, and did not care for any
religion. He did, however, resent the situation in which he found
himself, forced to choose between his livelihood and his nominal
religious affiliation; he petitioned the authorities to be able to
continue as a lawyer without having to belong to a Christian
denomination. But after numerous appeals, his petition was denied,
and he converted to Protestantism.
He changed his name from
Heschel Halevi Marx to Heinrich Marx. A year after his conversion,
a son was born to him, to be called Karl. (Marx's circumstance was
33
based on the most bourgeois and cowardly of factors)
pp. 5-6: It was among the younger generation of these Rhenish
Jews, traumatized twice in a period of less than 20 years, that one
finds in the first half of the nineteenth century an unusually high
number of radical thinkers - critical of their restrictive German
conditions as well as of bourgeois society in general: Heinrich
Heine (1799), Karl Marx (1818); Ludwig Borne, (born Leo Baruch in
1786), and Moses Hess (1812),
p. 9: The only formal schooling Hess received was a traditional
Jewish religious education
p.
215:
the
reformers
were
making
"Judaism
another
Christianity,
rationally
tailored....They
imagined
that
a
fabricated prayerbook or psalter, in which a philosophical theism
is set to rhyme and music, is more edifying than the moving Hebrew
prayers, which express the pain and agony over the loss of the
national home--prayers which have created and preserved over
thousands of years the unity of our tradition and are even today
the link that binds all Jews together all over the world."
THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM HANNAH ARENDT
p. 67
The majority of assimilated Jews thus lived in a
twilight of favor and misfortune and knew with certainty only that
both success and failure wre inextricably connected with the fact
that they were Jews. For them the Jewish question had lost, once
and for all, all political significance;
but it haunted their
private lives and influenced their personal decisions all the more
tyrannically. (Disraeli and Proust - not the Bohemians - the true
authors of the Jew as noble oppressed, something much postured in
the late 20th century but which would not have occurred to those
genuinely oppressed and treated as inferior) (The bourgeoisie, who
thrived on peace and stability, favored silence. It was the Jewish
intellectuals who thrived on words, who had to justify and make
systems of their betrayal.)
p. 68
Benjamin Disraeli
how foolish it would be to feel
declasse and how much more exciting it would be for himself and for
others, how much more useful for his career, to accentuate the fact
that he was a Jew "by dressing differently, combing his hair oddly,
and by queer manners of expression and verbiage."
p. 117 The case of the unfortunate Captain Dreyfus had shown
the world that in every Jewish nobleman and multimillionaire there
still remained something of the old-time pariah, who has no
country, for whom human rights do not exist, and whom society would
gladly exclude from its privileges. No one, however, found it more
difficult to grasp this fact than the emancipated Jews themselves.
"It isn't enough for them," wrote Bernard Lazare, "to reject any
solidarity with their foreign-born brethren; they have also to go
charging them with all the evils which their own cowardice
engenders. They are not content with being more jingoist than the
native Frenchmen; like all emancipated Jews everwhere, they have
also of their own volition broken all ties of solidarity. Indeed,
they go so far that for the three dozen or so men in France who are
ready to defend one of their martyred brethren you can find some
34
thousands ready to stand guard over Devil's Island, alongside the
most rabid patriots of the country."
Salo Baron, "The Impact of the Revolution of 1848 on Jewish
Emancipation," in Emancipation and Counter-Emancipation Disraeli
view that the Jews (p. 146) "were a living and a most striking
evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern
times--the natural equality of man." ie.,, they should have equal
rights because they were better but Jews rejected this idea
demanding equal rights on the basis of equality--sensing the danger
in Disraeli's appeal. emancipation and decline of community:
taxpayers now refused to pay their communal dues, financial
difficulties of institutions. but generally favored emancipation.
damaging to Rothschilds who had lent to existing governments.
decline of private banking. Borne, p. 156: "Yes, because I was born
a slave, I love freedom more than you. Yes, because I have
experienced slavery, I understand freedom better than you. Yes,
because I was born without a fatherland, I yearn for a fatherland
more passionately than you." (before emancipation, universities in
reactionary camp and later in German and Balkans, stronghold for
fascism. 1860 Alliance Israelite Universelle, 1859 Board of
Delegates of American Israelites, 1871, Anglo-Jewish Association
and more. Left generally anti-Jewish thinking of Rothschilds and
Industrial Revolution. anti-Jewish riots by opponents of revolution
and emancipation and also by advocates of revolution. What was the
price? sometimes to give up customs and identity. When Jews in
Polish areas evinced German patriotism it antagonized the Poles.
Others supported Polish nationalism and fought for it. Most
Hungarian Jews supported liberal revolution there. delays on
emancipation. those suppressing revolution often attacked Jews.
Against the Current: Hess's home under Napoleonic French rule,
then Prussian rule in 1815 and old restrictions on Jews, some
accepted baptism then including Karl Marx father. Other converts
included Ludwig Stahl who later founded the Christian Social
party!! others became reinforced in beliefs, including Hess's
father, head of Jewish community in Cologne and MH brought up by
religious grandfather with traditional learning. his grandfather
could not hold back tears (214) when speaking of Temple's
destruction and Jew's dispersion. (Marx's father follower of
Voltaire--his attitude toward Js). father reluctantly went to
university of Bonn. revolution of 1830 in France. German political
exiles. 219: Hess married poor seamstress to redress injustice of
society, expressing need for love and harmony among humanity. wife
Christian, saintliness. Marx despised him since totally alien to
notion of expressing one's views in one's personal life (is this a
comment on his lack of personal moral standing, all theory to him.
concern for ethics rather than science. justice at center
1848: Fischhof advocated ethnic group rights for nationality
and language but not for Jews; Goldmark 354 Baron/Baron: "If it be
true that we are awaiting the coming of a messiah, he must be
coming in 1849. If we are no longer oppressed, we need no messiah."
would subsume in nationalities among whom they lived. A few like
35
Moses Ehrenreich, a Galician-born rabbi, warned, "in our quest for
proving ourselves as citizens of the country which we call our
Fatherland...we must not forget the interests of our nationality."
urging (A-H) Jews to cultivate Hebrew; Simon Szanto of same circle
suggested adopting Jewish colors of blue and white but tiny
minorities. origin of local autonomy by Dubnow and Chaim Zhitlowsky
(1892) which led to Bund. 356: Juli Martov (Zederbaum) "a working
class which is content with the lot of an inferior nationality will
not rise up against the lot of an inferior class....The growth of
national and class consciousness must go hand in hand." but again
this view did not triumph in Russia where the Communists became the
heirs to the empire. Yet it is often forgotten that minority rights
were enshrined--though never practiced--in the post-1918 order in
eastern Europe (?). By opposing other reforms--trying to control
reading, opposing secular education--many rabbis became enemies of
change and thus led to overall rejection of community; but others
were friendly to reform and sometimes thus encouraged assimilation.
There were clearly no easy answers. Jewish rebels rebelled against
their clergy as their Christian counterparts did, but the former
also had the problem of a whole way of life--years of talmud study
in the east--as the majority people did not.
In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, there were
still those who advocated an alliance with the ruling forces out of
fear that the revolution which liberated Jews religiously would
then punish them as capitalists, some of those who began as
revolutionary democrats ended as reactionaries, it all depended on
who one most feared, which partly depended on the country of
residence. Self-abasement of converts. many converts never again
mentioned their Jewish connection while everyone else did.
A Moravian rabbi Mordecai Banet, condemned Reform as intended
only "to curry favor with Christians." Baron/Baron 366. some
extreme Reform rejected even circumcision Felix Adler philosophy
professor at Columbia and soon founder of Ethical Culture, a former
rabbinical student and son of the leading Reform rabbi. Reform's
anti-nationalism, it should be remembered, was not originally a
reaction against Zionism but against Orthodoxy. eliminated messiah
and restoration to Zion. Conservative Judaism, a more balanced
blend of old and new, was the most enthusiastic on Zionism.
Haskalah, science of Judaism, modern learning, an intermediate
movement, offshoot of Enlightenment. scholars Samuel David Luzzato
in Italy. Baron/Baron 382: just after 1848, "In short, Judaism must
be liberated from external oppression, as well as free itself from
everything that has intruded itself into it through external
influence.
Be
that
through
the
imitation
of
Chaldean
civilization...of the American, or any other kind of civilization,
in fact of all of them which, not having (as does Judaism) as a
basis the two principles of mercy and heavenly reward, have not,
and will not, be able to preserve themselves, as Judaism has
preserved and will preserve itself." Graetz. Zunz called for Jewish
studies, rejected at German universities.
Ferdinand Lassalle 1825-64 workers cooperatives, a founder of
36
German SDP, dandy killed in dual. estranged and wrote he hated Js.
Engels attacked in antis terms.
Monika Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany p. 2-3: in the
eighteenth century Jews were a tolerated, alien people outside the
social order, directly subservient to the innumerable sovereigns
and the Jews Laws decreed by them. Solely for reasons of economic
and fiscal interest, the princes tolerated them because of the
protection money and special taxes they were forced to pay to the
princes, who were constantly in fiscal straits, the Jews were a
reliable source of income and enlivened the economy through their
financial and trade connections. Thus, every sovereign sought to
absorb only wealthy Jews into his state, while Jews without means-as many as 75 percent--were periodically expelled.
p. 17: Before emancipation the Jewish community embraced the
social and political life of its members, as well as their
religious and cultural life. (from everything to a small portion)
p. 18: In the first half of the century almost 6,000 Jews in
Prussia were baptized, less than 1 percent of the Jewish
population. (but which one percent? the wealthiest and best
Western-educated
p. 21 The turn to Zionism almost had the nature of a
conversion, meant that one would come into conflict with one's
family and the entire Jewish environment.
p. 25: The rapid spread of antisemitism was intensified by
economic crises between 1873 and 1894, by an antimodern mentality
of some of the bourgeoisie, and by a weaker political liberalism.
experiences with antisemites took place in the three
institutions of socialization: the school, the university, and the
army.
They almost never permitted Jews to attain positions of
leadership, created a climate of discrimination that encouraged
antisemitic behavior by pupils, students, and soldiers toward Jews
in their ranks. Almost all Jewish young people were exposed to
negative experiences that could influence their psychic, social and
political behavior as adults.
Walther Rathenau wrote:
"In the
youth of every German Jew there is a painful moment that he
remembers all his life: when for the first time he becomes fully
aware that he came into the world as a second-class citizen, and
that no amount of ability and no personal merit can free him from
this situation."
p. 26 Philipp Lowenfeld tells of students who changed their
names and avoided their relatives in order to be admitted to a
Christian student association. The Congress of German Fraternities
voted in 1896 to accept no Jews; The Union of German Students,
founded in 1880, was aggressively antisemitic.
Half of the
students in Berlin signed this petition, which demanded that
Parliament repeal the emancipation of the Jews.
As a result of
their social isolation, in 1886 the Jewish students in Breslau
founded the Viadrina, the first Jewish fraternity, At first many
Jews rejected such an exclusively Jewish and, in addition, activist
organization, since it appeared to evidence that the social
integration of Jewish citizens had failed.
In 1896 the Jewish
37
fraternities combined and retained the practice of dueling, whereby
they sought to combat anti-semitic insults.
As of 1895 Zionist
fraternities were also formed and joined together.
The majority of German Jews took longer than the students
before they were ready for an organized response to antisemitism.
Would not the founding of a body for the defense of Jewish rights
declare that the Jews were more than just a religious group?
Meryle Secrest, Being Bernard Berenson, p. 18 The Pale of
Settlement covered 386,000 square miles through western Russia from
the Baltic to the Black Sea and, at various periods was part of
Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Rumania, depending on the
temporary rulers. By the turn of the century, above five million of
them inhabited the Pale, still only 12 percent of the total
population.
"this prison house of the Jews," as Chaim Weizmann called it,
the pattern of life had remained unchanged for so many generations
that an emigre to the United States, leaving even later than
Berenson, might well declare, "I began life in the Middle Ages."
p. 32 Mary Antin described the continual tension between the
Pale's Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants.
When a Gentile child
threw mud at her, her mother explained, as she wiped her dress,
that there was nothing to be done, because Gentiles did as they
liked with Jews.
The little girl quickly assumed the same numb
fatalism, accepting such abuse "as one accepts the weather."
10. England: Montefiore and Disraeli
Montefiore from an Italian Jewish family settled in England,
married into Rothschild family, and success on the Stock Exchange,
he made enough money to retire in 1824 and devote the remaining
sixty years of his life to public service. His most famous
intervention was in connection with the Damascus Affair of 1840. A
Capuchin monk and his Moslem servant disappeared in shady
circumstances. At the insistence of other Capuchin monks, a number
of Jewish residents were seized, imprisoned and tortured (two of
them to death) on a charge of having murdered the missing men in
order to use their blood for ritual purposes at Passover. The
affair became an international sensation, and was caught up in the
power struggle between the ruler of Egypt and Syria, Mehemet Ali
(backed by France) and the Turkish sultan (backed by England and
Austria). A Jewish delegation headed by Sir Moses Montefiore, and
including the French Jewish leader Adolphe Cremieux, descended on
Mehemet Ali in Cairo and put enough pressure on him to secure the
release of the surviving Jews, though not their formal acquittal on
the charge.
The delegation then called on the sultan in
Constantinople and demanded a decree banning any further blood
libel charges in his realm. Montefiore also paid two visits to St.
Petersburg on behalf of Russian Jews, calling on the Czars Nicholas
I and Alexander III. the second Jew to be sheriff of London and
one of the first to be knighted. He was president of the Board of
Deputies of British Jewry for forty years.
He was strictly
Orthodox and a fierce opponent of Reform Judaism. He built his own
38
synagogue at his Ramsgate estate, and travelled with his own ritual
slaughterer.
In 1973 he and his wife were reburied in Israel.
Many of his descendants drifted away from the Jewish community,
although some remained prominent in Anglo-Jewish life. In the late
20 century, one member of the family was Hugh Montefiore, an
Anglican bishop.
Frankel & Zipperstein, Assimilation and Community p. 33 As an
isolated group of would-be reformers, the maskilim frequently found
themselves forced to seek an alliance of one type or another with
the autocratic regimes in Vienna or St. Petersburg.
p. 36 Reform Judaism from the Enlightenment movement it took
its extreme rationalism and naive universalism.
pp. 36-7 to prove the absolute loyalty of the Jews to state
and country they were ready to remove from the prayer-books any
reference to the age-old hope for a return to the ancient homeland
in Palestine and to interpret the dispersion of the Jews across the
world not as Exile but as of positive value, as the way for the
Jews to carry the message of monotheistic ethics to all of mankind
as a divinely ordained mission. Thus, the Reform movement made it
possible to claim that the Jews constituted a strictly religious
community divested of all national attributes, that they were
Germans (or Poles or Frenchmen, as the case might be) of the
'Mosaic persuasion'.
In this way, reformed Judaism became the symbol, as it were,
of a readiness to trade in age-old beliefs in exchange for civil
equality and social acceptance.
p. 37 Dubnov argued that they reconciled themselves to
national assimilation which, in the final resort, is bound to lead
to the total dissolution of the Jews among the other nations - to
the disappearance of that vital organism which sustains Judaism."
Geiger in a letter during the 1840 Damascus blood libel, "It
is quite honorable that eminent people are manifesting solidarity
with their persecuted brethren, but...in my eyes it is more
important that Jews in Prussia should be allowed to become
pharmacists or lawyers than that Jews in Asia or Africa be
rescued'.
(Jews might convert in large numbers but Judaism as such-reform--would not convert)
Frankel & Zipperstein, Assimilation and Community Israel
Finestein, "Jewish Emancipationists in Victorian England," pp.
41-2: The history of Jews in England lacked the upheaval and
confrontation with oppression that forced continental Jewry toward
change, anger, or surrender, nor was there a sense of an end to
history "of utopia achieved" as in the United States.
p. 45: In the 1860s Francis Goldsmid in the House of Commons
protested the treatment of Jews abroad, especially Romania. Sir
Samuel Montagu (later made Lord Swaythling), the banker who in 1887
founded the Federation of Synagogues out of the intensely Orthodox
East End, was from the 1870s the most resolute layman in
metropolitan Jewry in defence of firm Orthodoxy.
German Jews, frightened by discrimination and altered by the
39
rationalist milieu, in England avoid Jewish involvement and they or
their descendants soon convered or intermarried. They did not
circumcise or educate their sons, buried their dead in a Christian
cemetery and married their children to gentiles in church
ceremonies.ix
Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881
Endelman Radical Assimilation p. 45. Disraeli found Jewishness
liability in parliamentary campaigns of the 1830s--he only won a
seat on his fifth try--on one occasion greeted with cries of
"Shylock" and "Old Clothes" so projected Jewishness when couldn't
hide but in general converts accepted in England far more
thoroughly than in German-speaking countries. also in England,
ideology played no important role.
Israel Zangwill, The King of Schnorrers (London, 1972) p. 107
attributes the demands and tight control of the Sephardic communal
leadership due to its seeing itself "a camp in enemies' country, in
need of military regime; and it cooperated with the attractions of
an unhampered `Christian' career in driving many a brilliant family
beyond the gates of the Ghetto, and into the pages of Debrett." ie,
the British aristocracy, including Isaac Disraeli whose quarrels
with them led him out of Judaism.
Disraeli less guilt since done by father. view changed over
time, superiority of the Semites. Christianity is Judaism for the
multitude. D'Israeli from Spain, taught Hebrew, not Orthodox, B
baptized at age 13. often attacked for being of recent origin but
England was not Spain of the Inquisition. looked Jewish. "Where is
your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?"
supporting Rothschild's admission. romantic, satirical, travelled
in east. a week in Jerusalem. novel Alroy on medieval Jewish hero.
rootless poet hero a la Byron. jumped from Radicals to Tories. but
founded reform Conservatism. outsider status, unconventionality,
Tancred 1847 noble Englishman, sees J traditions in Christianity.
Blake: Disraeli tour of 1830-31 formative experience, age 25
when left. family came from Italy. disputatious father. Jaffa to
Jerusalem described trip in romantic terms though it was
notoriously unpleasant and hard. "I was thunderstruck. I saw before
me apparently a gorgeous city." wild, dark, stony, and severe
around it but the undulations, the ravines, the domes. p. 65.
though it was a poverty stricken Ottoman town, Jews especially
downtrodden. no contact with Jews. age of 12 conversion. Js not
eligible for parliament until 1858, 21 years after he entered.
father had quarrel with synagogue board. 78: first Anglican bishop
in Jerusalem a former rabbi from Posen who had become a missionary
of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews.
Wolf to Michael Solomon Alexander. hitherto had little interest in
"the race". no less than four novels came out of this trip. Alroy a
twelfth century Jewish prince's rebellion against the Islamic
power.
Iskander
an
Albanian
prince's
similar
challenge
(Skanderbeg). a Moslem brought up circumcised who revolted against
the Sultan. the first Jewish historical novel. David Alroy. in the
novel, though not in history, he wins and becomes caliph. marries
40
the daughter of the defeated Caliph who undermines him, is
defeated, refuses to bow before Muhammad--convert--and executed.
Disraeli would say the book represented his "ideal ambition" p.
113. Alroy wanted to regain Jerusalem. "that sacred and romantic
people from whom I derive my blood and name." Tancred: 1847, the
hero, a British aristocrat. goes on pilgrimage, makes fun of
Anglican church which tries to discourage him. 119-24: "We shall
soon see a bishop at Manchester." "But I want to see an angel at
Manchester." an angel in the Sinai advises him to announce the
"doctrine of theocratic equality" Disraeli said it was his favorite
novel. earlier converted MPs: Sampson Gideon (son of a great
financier) elected 1770; David Ricardo, 1819; Ralph Bernal; Sir
Manasseh Lopes.p. 125. 126: wrote in another novel "Was then this
mixed population of Saxons and Normans among whom he had first seen
the light, of purer blood than he? Oh no, he was descended in a
direct line from one of the oldest races in the world...who had
developed a high civilization at a time when the inhabitants of
England were going half-naked and eating acorns in their woods."
131: a friend visiting Disraeli in 1851 wrote that he said the
Jews might well be restored to their own country, that such ideas
were widespread among the Jews, and the man who carried them out
would be "the true Savior of his people."
Lipman on Montefiore b 1784, 1827 to Holy Land. 1835-74
president of Board of Deputies of British Jews. Mortara affair
1859. d 1885. campaigned for Jewish rights in England. wrote in
diary in 1836 (p. 52) "most firmly resolved not to give up the
smallest part of our religious forms and privileges to obtain civil
rights." supported Reform joining board. Goldsmid, Rothschild
[point out large numbers who submitted to death rather than
conversion or betrayal of others]
The problem of the Jews is tied up to their status as
foreigners or recent foreigners, the pattern of immigration (and of
new/old communities confronting each other) happened in US, France,
England (and Austria-Hungary, too). Italy where least antisemitism
is where Jews longest resident. German Jews who emigrated to
England more likely to assimilate than those who saw themselves as
already English.
Aris: 1882 mass migration began to US and England, success
as threat, Lord Melchett, half chairman of British steel but p. 17
only 23 of 500 companies in The Times index could be described as
Jewish-controlled. Financiers like Marcus Samuel.
March 1, 1881 Alexander II assassinated by bomb by radicals.
Jews among those involved, wave of riots of attacks on Jews. April
15 pogroms began and continued a year, 225 communities, 20,000 Jews
made homeless, many killed, no criticism from Russian liberals or
radicals. opened question of assimilation. also pogroms in Warsaw.
The May Laws no Jews could have own land or house outside Pale so
demanded proof and then expelled. Pobyedonostzev, "A third of the
Jews will emigrate, a third will be converted and a third will
die." far more followed the first and--during the Holocaust and
Stalin's purges--the third, far fewer the second. About 4.7 million
41
Jews then living in the westernmost provinces. military service but
no one higher than private, professions closed, big cities barred
except for some rich merchants, students and a few professionals
with needed skills.
Dawidowicz Isaac Elhanan Spector, a modernizing rabbi wrote in
his post-1881 memoirs. "The spirit of freedom which swept across
the land in the wake of the Crimean war was delusive. Many people,
sensible ones at that, thought the days of darkness were over. The
sun of knowledge would purge men of evil, no man would harm another
because of his beliefs or views, hatred for different religions and
nationalities would disappear without trace." said was transitory.
There were earlier nineteenth century attempts by Jews and
even Christians to call for the return of the Jews to their land,
but these were largely religiously guided. But such figures as (all
cites to avnery making of modern zionism) pp. 14-22 Nachman
Krochmal 1785-1840 first generation of emancipated, religious
education plus Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Lessing, Kant through Hegel.
Hegel applied to Jews (note: those with traditional education plus
modern education often brought Jews into their philanthropies and
philosophies, it was those who lacked all such background--who did
not know even how to ask questions--who were the main
assimilationists those who lacked any duality and thus--((since
they were called Jews and yet felt or saw (intellectually) nothing
inside, assumed it did not exist for others or was meaningless)).
In short, they were already well on the road to assimilation.The
pattern was the rebel who brought up children without any such
background). Jews are a nation like others. if Jesus emancipated
monotheism from tribal background, but was carrying religion the
sole purpose of J existence? And why had the Jews survived?
Heinrich Graetz (1817-91) also from German/Polish cultural border
area, said J history should be judged by general historical laws.
thus as national history with continuity and their own story (again
Hegel a factor) widely translated and changed view. pp. 23-35.
influenced by contemporary history. [bringing back knowledge and
incorporating as opposed to fleeing, enhancing one's essence rather
than abandoning it or narrow-minded celebration of it.] J as a
community religion, not personal salvation which is why it puts so
little emphasis on immortality of individual soul. a public
religion. what the christians had said was a shortcoming--the
community's limited and inward-looking nature--was now seen as an
advantage. the Reformers wanted to make Judaism more like
Christianity. law, nation, and land together. Reform not only
ignored the original religion but also its shaping by history and
the views of the majority. 29: J puts special emphasis on future,
from time of Abraham and also to land--which is in future during
tanach period and formulation of laws, the exile made it again in
the future. David as king and poet. Refutes Christian view that
Judaism frozen after Jesus but points out the creativity of Exile,
the Talmud and rabbinic Judaism and medieval thinkers. Hess brought
the radical dimension. Acted as universalist and also as Jew.
Again, by applying an analysis to the Jews reached by a study of
42
outside materials as well. [the current generation in America,
England, France, and Russia are increasingly a generation that
lacks the duality of either vision--immigration--or religion or
separate society. save for the "undivided" Orthodox minority). In
his earlier work, Hess saw Jews only as individuals who should
merge--the standard socialist view. Spinoza as model. 40: "Here, in
the heart of Europe, that New Jerusalem will be built." yet the
bottom line of his view of non-nationhood is his pessimism over
success. Hess even wrote anti-Jewish material at about the same
time and similar to Marx. Rome and Jerusalem was subtitled The Last
National Problem the Rome was that of the modern Italian
nationalist movement. Again the analogy to nationalism: "With the
liberation of the Eternal City on the Tiber begins the liberation
of the Eternal City on Mount Moriah; with the resurrection of Italy
begins the resurrection of Judea. The orphaned children of
Jerusalem will too be permitted in the great renaissance of the
nations." (comparison of Hess and Marx biography and ideology. Marx
was unrooted and he thought nationalism would mean nothing to
everyone else because it meant nothing to him. It took Hess 20
years to work himself back to his position. 42-3: precisely because
Hess had so much involvement in the wider world, he was the
transformative revival of antisemitism. (Mazzini was also a
nationalist and universalist, the only way of belonging to humanity
is through belonging to an individual nation--the exact opposite of
the Marxist/humanist approach.There were also Orthodox Zionists and
Enlightenment types like Peretz Smolenskin disillusioned by post1881 pogroms just as others affected by Dreyfus case in the 1890s,
Kishinev pogroms in the 1900s, and Nazi/fascist persecution in the
1930s (hence, golden age of assimilation between 1905/10 and 1933.
or later by positive at the independence of Israel 1948 or its
threat of survival and victory in 1967. Sm from Odessa the most
liberal, Western-oriented city and center of Hebrew and Jewish
Enlightenment. What can be said of 1881 [p, 58] can be said of the
later events, for that generation they "were a cruel shock. Almost
overnight,
religious
bigotry
and
intolerance,
bureaucratic
harassment and official connivance in the pogroms seemed to
obliterate twenty years of slow progress." for Jews emerging from
secular Russian-language schools it showed "how fragile and shallow
all this development was. Beneath the thin veneer of relative
tolerance an abyss of deep hatred continued to exist." threw into
question the maskil view that the strangeness of Orthodox was what
created hatred. [[so assim needed long period of formative
development--before choosing doctrine--when not such hostility. In
France, consciousness formed after 1890s; in Germany, before 1930s.
Only in 1882 was Smolenskin formulating a new definition of Jew,
which gave more to Spinoza than just departure (S by the way did
not wish to leave, he was kicked out by a community not yet willing
to sanction modernism with being Jewish; he was not an
assimilationist but an involuntary departer) p. 59: "No matter what
his sins against religion, every Jew belongs to his people so long
as he does not betray it--this is the principle which we must
43
succeed in establishing." saw as spiritual nation, can be good
citizens. p. 61: the haskala in Russia "were foolish enough to
believe that the way of Enlightenment would bring them success and
honor. if only they would reach a high level of Enlightenment, the
Gentiles would accept them with respect and brotherly love, and
troublemakers would no loner attack them." [ger and EE Jews later
repeat pattern] Moshe Leib Lilienblum like Smolenskin also Odessa,
became a key figure in Hovevei Zion. Leo Pinsker, also in Odessa.
hence trio. doctor and volunteer with army during Crimean War,
decorated by Czar. Ben Yehuda and Herzl.
Sachar, Diaspora pp. 141-2: Orthodox or Bundist or more
leftist yet, immigrant Jews poured into the East End between 1880
and 1914. Native Jews prospered including cabinet members like
Herbert Samuel and Edwin Montagu. They had been more fully accepted
in Britain than in any other European nation, except possibly
Italy. they produced nearly a quarter of Britain's (nonlanded)
millionaires among bankers, stockbrokers, and investors such as the
Rothschilds, the Montefiores, the Montagus, the Goldsmids. Board of
Deputies of British Jews
p. 144: Between 1933 and 1941, fully 60,000 German-speaking
refugees were added to Britain's Jewish population of 200,000.
While the new influx was only a third the size of the earlier East
European immigration, it was concentrated in a much shorter period.
p. 155: Martin Gilbert, a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a
distinguished biographer of Churchill and the author of a number of
semipopular works on the Holocaust, have emphasized that their
Jewishness has created no obstacle whatever to their academic
careers or to those of their Jewish colleagues.
Aris 28: one British official described them as "like a drop
of prussic acid in a glass of water."
[[by disappearing was the best way to prove their critics
wrong and many took it as an injunction to disappear.]]
33-35 those who had integrated two generations earlier did not
give the warmest welcome but like established Jews in America and
France were ambiguous: wanted to help but also frightened of
because they were so unassimilated, as in US tried to move outside
of London and other overcrowded cities.
thirst for education which had been denied the right or
feeling that they belonged in Russia, that they were part of the
country, and so thirsty for it, one headmaster in London said (p.
39) "The boys seem to be very proud to believe that they will
become English....They mean to try and be English in everything."
42: Sir Robert Waley-Cohen managing director of Shell would
say that they were "entirely British in thought, aspirations,
interest and zeal." (also a reaction to the earlier expulsions from
England and elsewhere. head of the United Synagogue and
establishment. marriage and
business ties except for the
Rothschilds who married cousins.
[[much of the Jewish question has been the immigrant or recent
immigrant question and much of assimilation had been territorial
rather than anti-traditional or secular, for they did not take
44
staying for granted. Was the problem their different religion or
their foreignness. They were the sole large-scale immigration at
least in the big cities of London and Paris, and Berlin? and
Vienna? though this was not true of course in America.]]
45-6: Abraham Goldsmid, banker, moved in highest circles,
close friend of Nelson who stayed at his home the night before he
went to Trafalgar, had private synagogue and part of estate to grow
wheat for Passover. Keysers had rule that family bank would not do
business on Shabbat (so managed, more convenience and loosing of
educational bonds than necessity, the sharp break of america?)
Their snobbishness and fear was matched by their willingness to
help. fiercest resistance to Zionism. Weizmann (47) "They seem to
live in an entirely different world." from Jews of the ghetto (but
also different from non-Jews, a transitional? state as a parallel
elite with ties both to own people and to main elite.
47: religion Anglicized. rabbis in English clothes [Reform was
not modernization but Christian imitation]. followed pattern of
trying to become landed gentry. estates. Samson Gideon left to Duke
of Devonshire most of his large estates. The Rothschilds manner
house, the Sassoons arrived from Hong Kong in 1858 bought estate.
49: David Sassoon, "There is only one race better than the Jews,
and that is the Derby."
50: 1833 Francis Goldsmid became first at bar; 1855 Sir David
Salomons first Lord Mayor of London; 1858 Lionel Rothschild in
House of Commons, 1885 Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild peerage and House
of Lords. dynasties tended to decline as wealth sapped their
business energies. like their peers became interested in the racetrack and other pleasures.
The basis of success: willing to take risks, tight family
bonds (when corporate ties unreliable), international connections,
openness toward innovation, they were adaptable and energetic, they
were of lower status but they did not take this for granted: their
feeling of Jewish specialness, the fact that they had been
impoverished (often temporarily in retrospect) by being despoiled
and having to flee without their possessions, that they had already
been held down in status by the weight of restrictive laws and now
buoyantly rose, importance of education and--even among those with
little formal education--of taking an intellectual approach to
endeavor--including business--always trying to improve and to
rationalize. also, liberal and left aspect, with the collapse of
feudal relationships, the Jews were practically the only ones among
the wealthy with a continuing integral tie to large numbers of
people who were poor or, at least, far poorer. compare to George
Bush types. "people we know" "people like us" could never forget
two things: the existence of large numbers outside that group and
the instability of their own status.
Theory to try: as aristocrats, though, the old elite families
would not convert or desert for that was against their Britishinfluenced system of mores as much as their Jewish one. it was an
element of their pride though they were more quiet, less active,
than the newer Polish and German elite.
45
language, clothes, and customs were different. but what was
Jewish after all and what East European, like the Hasidic caftans
modelled on the dress of eighteenth-century Polish noblemen now
seen as being the essence of being observant.
In fact, despite the intimidation of British society--perhaps
because it did not receive them as fully as American society did-the Warburgs and the Wolfsons and the Sieffs of Marks and Spenser's
remained more
proudly Jewish. Those coming from Orthodox
backgrounds still had the knowledge, like sir Isaac Wolfson who
combined his spartan lifestyle with philanthropy. took oath with
head covered, dined with the queen in 1962 on kosher food. strong
supporter of Israel.
Italy the most important role in creating a nation. Sidney Sonnino
and Ernesto Nathan.
Milton Goldin, Why They Give p. 48: In Easter 1881, newspapers
accused Jews of being pro-Western proponents of rational thought
and congenitally opposed to Russia's essence and institutions. With
official approval, hooligans robbed, murdered, and raped Jews in
160 towns and cities. Protest meetings were held in western Europe
and the United States but no Russian radicals or intellectuals
raised their voices, on the contrary some approved either
criticizing Jews or praising the upsurge as revolutionary. Czar
Alexander III proclaimed the "May Laws." A half million Jews were
forced to return to the pale, Jewish enrollment in secondary
schools
and universities was
cut. The assimilated Jewish
establishment opposed flight, a meeting of 40 magnates at the time
rejected organized emigration as "subversive of the dignity of the
Russian body politic and of the historic rights of the Jews to
their present fatherland..." Orthodox leaders opposed emigration on
grounds that the faithful would neglect ritual and custom away from
the great centers of Jewish learning.
p. 49: 2 million Jews moved across Europe and the Atlantic.
The Board of Delegates wrote the Alliance Israelite that immigrants
would be assisted only if "groups of not more than one hundred
able-bodied persons each were shipped, and provided they did not
remain in New York City but moved to the West or South."
11. Turning points:
--Dreyfus
--Herzl
--maskilim often allied with regime, looking for support
outside of community to Austrian or Russian rulers. state school
system. Yiddish writers not sentimental, as is thought today, but
harsh critics of poverty, ignorance, narrowness, a central part of
struggle. interesting parallel between and leftist revolutionaries:
opposite before left gains power, same after it does so.
"What does it matter to us," wrote a French lawyer on the eve
of the revolution, "what our fathers have done or how and why they
have done it?" dawn of a new age in which tradition had lost its
sanction and, indeed, became an argument against any proposition.x
if can convert and solve problem, have real way out (Marrano
factor) but if problem is not conversion but racial, then self-hate
46
is possible because there is no escape from racial origins, thus
self-hate is a late nineteenth-early twentieth century phenomena.
And one can understand the disgust with an origin which condemns
one to death and being an outcast which one does not desire or
agree with but cannot shed. cannot exist where conversion or
pluralism are alternatives. Of course, self-hate can then lead to
conversion or hiding but then ceases. Do Jews still need to convert
to climb? mixed marriage is more likely outcome, then children are
"freed" and one has the choice of becoming the last Jew.
Salo Baron in Baron, "The Modern Age," 329, 1848 activists,
some of them strong advocates of Jewish rights: Ludwig Borne, Karl
Marx, and Moses Hess as German advocates (and Heine! three of the
four converts). In Vienna, two young Jewish doctors, Adolf Fischhof
and Joseph Goldmark were among the leaders, the former as head of
the Committee on Security, and Gabriel Riesser was a vice-president
of the parliament; in Italy, the head of the Venetian republic was
the convert Daniel Manin and his cabinet included two Jews; in
France two cabinet members including Minister of Justice Adolphe
Cremieux. on conservative side were more usually converts,
Disraeli, Friedrich Julius Stahl leader of the conservative Junker
party. Italy later had Jewish Prime Minister Luigi Luzzatti and two
cabinet ministers, mayor of Rome, 11 generals and many others in a
community of less than 40,000. strong international reaction by
communal leadership over 1840 Damascus blood libel, 1858 forcible
conversion against parents' will of Edgar Mortara in 1858. 1860
Alliance Israelite Universelle, Anglo-Jewish Association 1871.
disillusion with emancipation, as conversions rose and
antagonism to Jews sometimes seemed to increase. In Russia, there
was no real emancipation. Military service, for example, did not
represent a right but an anti-Jewish conversion effort. Jews,
whatever their specific views, concluded the only two solutions
were leaving or overthrowing the government by democracy or
revolution.
duck 10.
Allfrey book: Jewish banking families Bischoffsheims and
Goldschmidts, many Jewish heiresses especially Rothschilds, married
aristocrats and converted. King of Bulgaria to Herzl and Alfred
Rothschild said half-Jewish, "Dear Baron, what do think my subjects
are saying as they see us pass?...Look at those two old Jews, each
of them rubbing his hands because he thinks he has got the better
of the other!" King Ferdinand came to Hirsch's funeral. Mendoza
fighter; Rothschilds generous to non-J charities. Alfred first J
director of the Bank of England. Prince of Wales had many J
friends. Baron Maurice de Hirsch 1831-96: German banker, Paris, rr
construction, Jewish Colonization Organization to New World
rejected by Viennese society, ave to charities. racehorses.
Argentina. interesting story: Lt Col Michael Goldsmid, a Hirsch
manager in Argentina, assimilated J family with long military
tradition, converted back to J at age 24 and later chief of staff
of British division in Boer War. founder of the J Lads' Brigade to
47
train ncos and officers territorial, descendent Sir Henry D'Avigdor
Goldsmid bullion dealer and supporter of Israel. Hirsch forgave
Crown Prince Rudolph's debt after suicide at Mayerling. Cassel
younger,
also
worked
with
Bischoffsheims.
Hirsch
mocking,
irreverent, gallant; Cassel, dour and stolid. Christian wife died
and their infant daughter became mother of Edwina wife of Earl
Mountbatten (source of her adventurousness?) had promised wife and
on her deathbed was baptized, loved honors, honest and reliable.
when waiting to be sworn in as Privy Councillor clerk had
thoughtfully provided kippa and J bible, Lord Rothschild tipped him
off and the man asked C for contribution to Westminster Cathedral.
friend of Jacob Schiff who was very observant. Hirsch made Cassel
director of Jewish Colonization Association. Sir Sydney Lee (b
Solomon Lazarus Levi son of Hungarian J imm) commissioned by George
V to write Edw bio and left out the Jews--or their Jewishness.
Endelmann Eng Assim: even assim preferred fellows, "radical
assimilation" indifferent well before departure, unnecessary or
atavistic burden p.4. secular and opportunistic reasons to become
nominal Christians. more commonly "Jews in each succeeding
generation became progressively distant from the tradition and
allegiances of their ancestors" so total departure an easier step.
but it may be that defection is a point which can be past when the
family feels comfortable enough to maintain its identity without
fearing its security or loyalty to be in question. clear class
advantage, country estates. In England, it was not so much
intolerance as ambition which fueled conversion. It was the
wealthiest who went over but also many did not, becoming an
alternative elite. 117: Freud thought of moving to England where
would not be persecuted, saying to wife, "Must we stay here,
Martha? If we possibly can, let us seek a home where human worth is
more respected." Power of conformity in British society, decline
sharply in numbers of the British Jewish community, its lack of
intellectual distinction or political energy. perhaps because,
ironically, it was assimilating to a culture less accommodating to
such activity--less in the lie of what are seen as Jewish
characteristics--than America, Russia or France. pressure against
pluralism in England more what? grinding down than violent.
"When shall I consider my life's work as crowned with success?
When poor Jewish youths have turned into proud young Jews." These
lines by Theodor Herzl provide a key to his character and work. He
was neither poor nor oppressed, but knew he could only free himself
by joining with fellow Jews who were suffering. And he came to
understand that Jewish identity and security could only be ensured
if protected by a sovereign Jewish state.
To abandon his Jewish identity in exchange for success was too
humiliating for Herzl's spirit to bear. To abandon other Jews, poor
in rights or worldly goods, was equally unacceptable. For Herzl,
Zionism was an alliance of material necessity with spiritual
necessity, of survival combined with fulfillment. The Jews could
transform themselves by their own efforts in order to achieve their
own goals.
If they were willing to do so, they would achieve
48
heights that otherwise seemed impossible.
These elements of
Herzl's message still have much to say for Jews today, wherever
they might live and whatever their condition.
Herzl's own life presented him at one time or another with all
the options open to Jews in his time and today: religiosity,
assimilation, revolutionary activity, and Zionism. In fact, it is
astonishing how closely his personal experience parallels that of
modern Western Jews. Herzl was a most successful man who achieved
social prominence, a fine career, material well-being, and fame.
Yet these were insufficient to satisfy his own spiritual thirst and
need for identity.
Herzl was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, in 1860. His
family midway on the path from total immersion in Jewish culture
and religion--which still characterized East European and Middle
East Jewry--to the preference for assimilation prevailing among
West European Jews. Two of Herzl's uncles had followed that line to
its conclusion by converting to Christianity. If one neither
believed in the Jewish religion nor felt any loyalty to the Jewish
people while wanting to escape persecution and be treated on a
truly equal basis by fellow citizens, this was a logical step.
Herzl's father, however, refused to act in this manner out of
pride and self-respect. "If you are unfaithful to yourself,"
Theodor Herzl wrote in one of his plays, "you cannot wonder if
others are unfaithful to you."
Like many contemporary Western
Jews, Herzl had a model of traditional Jewish life in the visits
of his grandfather Simon, an Orthodox Jew.
In addition, Simon
Herzl was a disciple of Rabbi Yehuda ben Shlomo Hay Alkalay, an
early advocate of a return to Zion, and might have influenced the
later development of Theodor's political thinking.
The Herzl household's attitude toward Judaism was akin to that
of most Reform or Conservative families today. It observed basic
rituals and festivals--particularly Hanukkah and Passover--but the
children had little religious instruction and were not taught
Hebrew.
Theodor was given a bar mitzvah at age 13 but it was
called, in an effort to imitate Christian practice, a confirmation.
Generally, he did not like his religious school studies, finding
them cold and formal. In short, Herzl's youthful experience with
Judaism was limited and not altogether favorable. This, too, is
typical of many or most young Western Jews.
The adult phase of Herzl's life began in 1878 when, after the
tragic death of his sister, the family moved from the provincial
city of Budapest to Vienna, the glittering imperial capital of
Austria-Hungary.
This step required a change in language and
customs that might have given Herzl the sense that geographic
displacements were not so difficult to make, the insecure life of
Jews, and a detachment from local conditions and societies which
marked the condition of Jewish alienation.
During his college years, 1878-1884, Herzl was a typical
alienated, middle-class Jewish student who genuinely wanted to be
assimilated into the surrounding society. He was interested in
drinking, gambling, fashionable dueling, and the theater. Of this
49
period, he would later write in his diary, "At first the Jewish
Question grieved me bitterly. There might have been a time when I
would have liked to get away from it--into the Christian fold,
anywhere." But he never seriously pursued such thoughts.
As for politics, Herzl joined the pro-German nationalist
circles who sought to merge Germany and Austria. From this latter
experience, he saw the strength of nationalism and the powerful
influence that its symbols held over men's minds. In creating a
united German state only a few years earlier, political ideas in
people's heads had preceded and made possible developments that
"sensible" people would have called fantastic.
On the contrary, his involvement in the Alba fraternity, far
from melding Herzl with his fellow students, only taught him how he
was different from them. When one of his friends made a speech in
favor of the anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner in 1883 and his
fraternity echoed anti-Jewish sentiments, Herzl resigned. The
implicit lesson was that being a Jew and being accepted into the
dominant society were in contradiction. He had already read some of
the new anti-Semitic literature appearing throughout Europe
attacking Jews as an alien race. Instead of being based on
theological grounds, hatred of the Jews now preened itself as
resting
on a "scientific" basis.
The leader of the Viennese
anti-Semitic movement, Karl Lueger, would soon be elected as mayor.
The Jews of Western Europe had hoped that by copying the
customs of their countries' Christian majorities--downplaying or
altogether abandoning their own Jewish customs and culture--they
would be accepted as equals. As the editor for whom Herzl worked on
the Neue Freie Presse expressed this philosophy,
"I am not
pro-Jewish; I am not anti-Jewish; I am a-Jewish." They modeled
themselves as patriots and gentlemen.
But the new anti-Semitism portrayed these assimilated Jews as
even more dangerous than their caftan-wearing, Orthodox predecessors. The former were accused of hiding their "true nature."
Their very success in participating in all aspects of the nation's
life was portrayed as "infiltration" into positions of respect and
influence. This trend, discouraging for all assimilationist Jews,
was personally devastating to Herzl.
While struggling over his identity, however, Herzl built a
brilliant career. Originally, he wanted to become an engineer but
he was not suited for it, despite his fascination with science and
technology. In 1884, Herzl received his doctorate and was admitted
to the bar.
After a year, he concluded that professional
advancement would be restricted for a Jew. Consequently, Herzl
turned to his real love, writing, to become a successful playwright
and journalist, rising to be literary editor of the Neue Freie
Presse. The great novelist Stefan Zweig said that Herzl's
acceptance of a man's article was enough to make his reputation.
Herzl moved in the best Viennese circles at a time when the
city was the frivolous but fertile center of modernist culture.
Vienna was known for its lively conversation, romantic music, and
inventive artists. But there Herzl's fellow Viennese Jew, Sigmund
50
Freud, was also being traumatized by the indignities of
anti-Semitism and formulating his view of the power of the
irrational forces underlying--and so slowly eroding--the vibrant
and relatively open society of the Habsburg Empire.
In 1891, Herzl was given a prized assignment as correspondent
in Paris, the cultural capital of the world. He might have been
even more successful if he had abandoned interest in the Jewish
question, but conscience and consciousness would not let him rest.
In some of his articles and plays, Herzl continued to wrestle with
anti-Semitism and the meaning of Jewish identity.
During these years, Herzl observed two phenomena that he would
eventually synthesize into his own political philosophy.
On the
one
hand,
contrary
to
the
assimilationists'
predictions,
anti-Semitism was intensifying rather than withering away. The
Lithuanian writer Moses Lilienblum proclaimed, "I am convinced that
our misfortune is not the lack of general education but that we are
aliens. We will still remain aliens when we will be stuffed with
education as a pomegranate is with seeds." West European societies
seemed unable to accept Jews as equal citizens while the East
European states were unwilling to do so.xi
On the other hand, the Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Yugoslavs,
and others were seeking to construct new states to further their
freedom and express their cultural identities. The Germans and
Italians had both succeeded in doing so in 1871. By losing their
own national solidarity and sovereignty, Herzl would later write,
the Jews had "lost that equilibrium that our great ancestors
possessed in their inner being." To rebuild this historic pride and
identity in the form of a Jewish state that could stand on an equal
footing with the world's other peoples was only "to do what honesty
and common sense dictated."
Herzl had lived through the classical experience of the
oppressed people. He had set out on the route to success and
acceptance prescribed for him by society. Yet despite his personal
successes, Herzl still felt excluded, insecure, and alienated. He
was constantly being pressed to choose between his people and his
own narrow self-interest. Personally he was unwilling to abandon
and socially he was not permitted to escape from this communal
identification. Assimilation, Herzl later noted, was impracticable
because of anti-Semitism, craven because it forced the abandonment
of one's dignity and fellows, and self-destructive because it
denied one's self.
In self-defense, then, Herzl borrowed the ruling ideas of the
dominant society. If Christian peoples were seeking a renaissance
through devotion to their traditions and by organizing to establish
a nation, the much older Jewish nation might do the same. When all
the other peoples of the Austrian empire were following this path,
there might be a Jewish national liberation movement as well. In
one of his plays, as in Die Judenstaat, Herzl shows a Jew learning
from a Christian "how to bow without cringing, how to stand upright
without defiance."
Such ideas were already in the air as they were being
51
formulated in Herzl's mind, and in countries outside the Austrian
empire as well. Aside from Rabbi Alkalay's teachings, the
philosopher Moses Hess had written a Zionist book, Rome and
Jerusalem in 1862.
In the Russian empire, where Jews faced many
restrictions and periodic pogroms, Lovers of Zion groups had been
founded to promote the reestablishment of a Jewish state. In 1878,
pioneers inspired by these ideas had founded the town of Petach
Tikvah in Turkish-ruled Palestine. In 1881 a Russian writer, Leo
Pinsker, wrote Auto-Emancipation.
Herzl was totally unfamiliar with these developments. If there
was one decisive, final event triggering the idea of Zionism in his
own mind, it was a conversation with the Jewish sculptor Samuel
Beer in late 1894. As Herzl sat for his bust, he told Beer that
the would-be assimilated Jews were still not accepted no matter
what they achieved. Suddenly, he realized that perhaps they should
not subordinate everything to seek such approval. He began writing
about this problem from a new point of view. A few days later, in
December 1894, the Dreyfus case exploded on the French political
scene, sadly confirming his views.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jewish officer in the French
army, was falsely accused of selling
its military secrets to
Germany. In a wave of hysteria, Dreyfus was convicted in a
court-martial and sentenced to Devils Island. Anti-Jewish riots and
demonstrations broke out throughout the country. As a journalist,
Dreyfus witnessed the ceremonial dishonoring of Dreyfus while
onlookers shouted anti-Semitic slogans.
The Dreyfus case did not surprise Herzl, but the revelation of
the depth of anti-Semitism even in highly civilized France was the
final straw. Herzl was already working on his book about the Jewish
problem. In June 1895 he met with the millionaire Baron Hirsch,
known
for
his
philanthropic
activities
financing
Jewish
agricultural colonies in Argentina. While Herzl appreciated
Hirsch's good intentions, he felt that charity would achieve
nothing: only the mobilization of Jewish efforts could give a
rebirth to the Jewish people.
The publication of Herzl's book, Der Judenstaat, in February
1896, gained him overnight fame and the leadership of a movement
born of the material conditions of Jewry but given life by Herzl's
pen. Some of his friends thought he had lost his mind. How could
the fate of the Jews, after all, be more important than his career
or the pursuit of amusement? Herzl turned down the editorship of
Die Neue Presse to lead the Zionist movement to which he would
devote his life and fortune. Yet Herzl was far wiser than his
short-sighted compatriots. Not only did he understand the future
course of anti-Semitism and the real chance for establishing a
Jewish state, but Herzl also understood his own needs. His entire
life experience had prepared him for the mission he had undertaken.
Herzl's charismatic personality and handsome appearance greatly
contributed to his leadership qualities. He was witty, and elegant,
a Jew who even anti-Semites would have to admit was a gentleman and
one to whom the gates of palaces would open. His height, full black
52
beard, and dark, melancholy eyes made him seem like a figure out of
the Bible and many saw Herzl as a new Moses, a veritable King of
Zion. He was a stirring speaker but, unlike most nationalist
leaders, never played
the demagogue or preached hatred against
anyone, even the persecutors of his people. A cousin wrote, "I have
never encountered a person of greater magic, nor anyone whose magic
was embellished with so much grace."
Part of the grace came from his own inner transformation.
Herzl later expressed his feelings about this process in an
obviously autobiographical story, "The Menorah," for the Hanukkah
issue of the Zionist newspaper,Die Welt. "There was once a man who
felt deep in his soul that he needed to be a Jew. His circumstances
were not unsatisfactory; he enjoyed an ample income and a
profession that permitted him to do whatever his heart desired. For
he was an artist. His Jewish origin and the faith of his fathers
had long ceased to trouble him. Then suddenly the old hatred
[anti-Semitism] came to the surface again in a new mob cry. With
many others he believed that this flood would shortly subside. But
there was no change for the better; in fact, things went from bad
to worse; and every blow even though not aimed directly at him,
struck him with fresh pain, till little by little his soul became
one bleeding wound.
"These sorrows buried deep in his heart and, silenced there,
evoked thoughts of their origin and of his Judaism. And now he did
something he could perhaps not have done in the old days because he
was then so alien to it--he began to love this Judaism with an
intense fervor. Although in his own eyes he could not, at first
clearly justify this new yearning; it became so powerful at length
that it crystallized from vague emotions into a definite idea which
he had to express. It was the conviction that there was only one
solution for the Jewish problem--the return to Judaism."
Herzl's experience would be recapitulated by most of Western
and Middle Eastern Jewry in the following generations. And like
him, what they began as a response to oppressive anti-Semitism or a
sense of duty to fellow Jews became intensely fulfilling in itself.
"When he had decided to return to his people and to avow it
openly," wrote Herzl, "he had only thought of doing something
honorable and useful. He had never dreamed that he would find in it
a gratification of his yearning for the beautiful."
In his achievement of wisdom and self-knowledge and in his
powers of political leadership, Herzl achieved wonders for a man
who would tragically die at the age of only 44. He was a thoroughly
modern and very rational man, possessing the skills of the engineer
he had once sought to be. Herzl was a man able to dream but not a
dreamer--for he had the drive, determination, and discipline to
move his dreams toward reality.
The frequently made analogy of Herzl to Moses was more
compelling than many of his contemporaries realized. For Moses had
been raised by Pharaoh's daughter, cut off from his own people and
customs, even ignorant of their language and religion. Yet he had
returned from the edge of assimilation to lead them to the Promised
53
Land.
And Herzl, the prototype of the modern Diaspora Jew, had
played a similar role. A century later, his search and discovery of
identity has something essential to teach those in a similar
situation.
Equally,
a
reconsideration
of
the
social
and
psychological forces that drove him is an important reminder to the
Jews living in the Jewish state that Herzl had imagined.
In Herzl's new conception of Zionism there was also implicit a
distinctive view of Jewish history and the nature of the Jews
themselves. This analysis became the dominant form of Jewish
self-image even among sectors which did not explicitly regard
themselves as Zionist.
According to this revolutionary viewpoint, the ancient period
of the Jewish judges, prophets, and kings was the period in which a
Jewish people and nation were formed. The Bible is not only a
religious document but also the story of the rise to Jewish
sovereignty. In addition to their theological significance, the
history of the Passover, Joshua and the conquest of the land, the
Maccabees' courageous revolt, the Babylonian exile and return, is a
nationalist epic full of heroes to emulate. One of the Jews' main
problems, Herzl argued, was that they had to revive the ancestral
virtues of pride and self-reliance. The reconsideration of this
period also stressed the idea that Jews had been--and continued to
be--a people and that their common religion was only one of the
characteristics of their culture and civilization.
The destruction of Judea by the Romans was perceived as a
political defeat by secular enemies that could be reversed. The
Jews would not have to await the Messiah to return home, as most
Orthodox Jews had believed, but could do so by their own efforts.
How could Jews yearn for Israel spiritually and not want to go
there physically, asked Herzl. Many religious Jews came to agree,
believing that an end to the exile either counteracted no divine
injunction or even accelerated the coming of the Messiah.
Reform Jews had argued that the dispersion was an opportunity
for Jews to spread ethical monotheism and to be a light unto the
nations. Herzl was especially contemptuous of this notion. Those
who believed this doctrine were rarely if ever among those who
suffered from the persecution and poverty that was the result of
this supposed role. "It is a myth," wrote Herzl, "that the Jews
have to live dispersed among the nations in order to instruct them.
If the nations had not hated and despised us anyway they certainly
would have had to laugh at us for such arrogance."
Thus, the scattering of the Jews over the world was neither a
divine mission to be embraced nor a random misfortune to be
passively accepted but a tragic exile (galut) to be reversed. The
Jewish religion had enshrined this mourning for a lost homeland. It
had renewed the Covenant with God in which he had promised the land
to the Jews in exchange for their observance of His commandments,
taught the ceremonies of the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem,
observed the seasons of the land, and prayed for the restoration of
the holy city. The Passover service ended with the pledge, "Next
year in Jerusalem!" And, during his speech to the Sixth Zionist
54
Congress, Herzl stood erect, raised his right hand and cried out
with holy fervor in Hebrew one of the most repeated of Jewish
prayers: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!"
The Jews, then, were a nation. Herzl gave his definition of
that entity as "a historical group of people who recognizably
belong together and are held together or driven together by a
common foe." And the answer to the great historical riddle of the
Jews could be simply expressed in a single sentence: "We are a
people--one people."
But as the first nation in history--as
opposed to merely a group of subjects ruled by the same ruler--the
Jews had defined themselves and been defined by the world long
before there existed the concepts necessary to understand that
phenomenon.
Herzl always stressed the continuity of Jewish history and the
unity of the Jewish people. For this strong, though implicit,
national identity was the reason why Jews had not disappeared
during their centuries of defeat and dispersion. And if, as Herzl
argued, the Jews were one people and one nation, they should work
together despite divergent political, cultural, and even religious
beliefs. In Herzl's interpretation of Jewish history, religion had
been the glue that maintained the people's solidarity for two
millennia but was not the sole root or reason for the Jews'
existence.
Both religious and secular Jews should respect each other's
views and liberty, he explained, and always sought to foster and
maintain cooperation between the two groups. Although himself
neither a believer nor observant, Herzl tried to avoid offending
the sensibilities of Orthodox Jews. During the first World Zionist
Congress in Basle, Switzerland, he even attended services to
underline the importance of unity. Moreover, Herzl
felt that
celebration of the Jewish holidays were a vital part of the
national identity. "Zionism," he told the first meeting, "is the
return to Judaism even before the return to the Jewish land."
Another
central
element
to
Herzl's
views
was
his
interpretation of anti-Semitism. To his thinking--and based on his
own direct experience and observations--hatred of the Jews derived
from deep, virtually ineradicable factors in the culture and
history of the countries where they lived. "Proverb and fairy tale
are both Anti-Semitic," Herzl wrote. "The nations in whose midst
Jews live are all, either covertly or openly, anti-Semitic." This
attitude would be eradicated neither by signs of Jewish virtue and
willingness to assimilate nor by education or revolutionary change.
"We have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves in
the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve only the
faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so. In vain are we
loyal patriots, our loyalty in some places running to extremes; in
vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our
fellow-citizens; in vain do we strive to increase the fame of our
native land in science, and art" commerce, treated like strangers
though lived there for centuries. do not surrender rights, but in
world might precedes right and useless to try to prove oneself.
55
"Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us." "Jew-baiting
has merely stripped off our weaklings." The strong remain loyal.
The "rational" basis to anti-Semitism was that the Jews were,
in fact, different. The more Jews who lived in any country, the
more intensive would be the anti-Semitism of the majority due to
fear, mistrust, competition, and jealousy. Even in political terms,
Jews were attacked by the most diverse, warring camps: the
capitalists saw them as revolutionaries; the socialists portrayed
them as plutocrats.
The best way to deal with this problem was by acknowledging
this difference and explaining it in acceptable terms--as
equivalent to all the other contrasts among various peoples-rather than through wild notions of Jewish religious heresy,
conspiracy, or racial inferiority. "From time immemorial," Herzl
commented, "the world has been misinformed about us."xii
Establishing a national state for those who wished to live
there would give the Jews equal standing with other peoples on an
internationally accepted basis. Both the state and the movement
would rebuild the character and fortunes of the Jewish people,
gaining new respect for them as independent, hard-working, and
productive. Without a state of their own, the Jews were helpless.
"For the time being," Herzl mused, it seems to me we always find
that the Jews have been in a less favorable position than other
nations, because when the nations lined up against them, they
themselves were not a nation."
Herzl's fears about the resurgence of anti-Semitism proved
prophetic as fascist dictatorships arose in Germany an the Balkans
that increased the persecution of the Jews to proportions
unprecedented in history.
The Holocaust was a logical result of
these developments, though even the most pessimistic Zionists never
expected something of such size or scope. As for the hopes of the
revolutionary left, which argued the Jewish question would be
naturally resolved under Marxism, the Soviet Communist regime also
sought to destroy any vestige of Jewish religious observance or
cultural existence.
One of the best expositions of his theory was a letter to
American Jews in February 1898xiii: "On iron rails men and goods
speed across continents, great steamships hasten over the oceans of
the world, in a single hour we receive news reports of events in
places which, in our fathers' time, would have been inconceivably
great distances. But one thing only is still as it was when the
Turks conquered Byzantium, when Columbus set sail...when men
rumbled over the highway in stagecoaches--and that single thing is
the plight of [our] ...people....Yes, after a short breathing space
for us modern "emancipated" Jews, bad times have come again. Under
a new slogan, the old hatred has raised its ugly head once more,
not only
in the backward countries...but also in those that are
called civilized. A dream, an illusion it was for us to believe
that anti-Semitism would disappear. It grew; it is growing....Is
there no end of wretchedness and no escape from misery?
"Then--an idea sprang up in the minds of Jews....You know that
56
to cure the age-old misery the most modern means are called for, a
solution up to date....and we are still supposed to be as incapable
of helping ourselves as were our fathers in the ghetto? No! We can
help ourselves and we will help ourselves. We are experienced in
science, skilled in communications, able to work, enterprising,
toughened. What we need is nothing but some sure soil on which we
can do our work unmolested. And you know, too, what that soil is
called, you know what name is given to that movement. Zionism!
Eighteen hundred years of misery and hope are contained in that
word.
"There are depraved Jews who scoff at it; narrow-minded ones
who fight it. But our movement, at first kept secret, then laughed
at, then fought against, has within itself the whole strength of a
people that simply cannot be destroyed."
Actually, Herzl saw anti-Semitism itself as the force creating
a renewed Jewish consciousness, telling the Second World Zionist
Congress that the Jewish people would have been "dead and
forgotten" through peaceful assimilation, if not for the new waves
of oppression coming forth.
Yet no Jews should think himself immune to the threat of
anti-Semitism. Neither wealth nor patriotism, socialist fervor nor
scholarly achievement, fine manners nor high-born connections could
be depended to ward off the plague. "But even if your present
situation is satisfactory and you can eat your supper in untroubled
leisure," proclaimed Herzl, "this does not mean that this situation
will always be favorable or that things will be just as good for
people who are not in Vienna, who are in exposed positions as Jews.
What would be your opinion of a householder who does not think of
his needs and their satisfaction until they make themselves
urgently felt?" Preparing for the storm about to strike the Jewish
people in full fury was as necessary as buying a winter coat before
the snows came. One "must make provisions in time."
If anti-Semitism was going to exist, and it inevitably would
do so, Herzl argued, the Jews should try to turn it to their
advantage. Concern over the threat should turn them toward trying
to save themselves. If anti-Semites would support the emigration of
Jews who wished to leave or the establishment of a Jewish homeland,
then let them do so to atone for their sins.
But Herzl always stressed that any Jewish emigration must be
strictly voluntary.
Besides, he added, it would speed the
assimilation of those who remained behind and sought to integrate
themselves into the society. To Herzl, assimilation did not mean
merely the acceptance of local customs, laws, and loyalties, "not
only
external
conformity
in
dress,
habits,
customs,
and
language"--this was taken for granted--but a determined effort to
disappear as Jews through conversion or intermarriage, reaching an
"identity of feeling and manner" with the majority group.
If Jews no longer believed in their religion and rejected the
idea of peoplehood, Herzl reasoned, there would not be much of a
barrier to such a surrender and absorption. But for those who had
pride in the past and future contributions of Jewry, to its
57
identity, and to its right to exist equivalent to that of any other
people, then resistance to assimilation was an heroic act. He went
so far as to call Zionism the Jews' "last chance before
disappearing from earth and society."
Zionism was "self-help for the Jews," the best available
option morally and materially. "Under present conditions the Jews
have three roads before them: One is apathetic submission to insult
and poverty; another is revolt, outspoken hostility to an unjust
social system."
The third was to organize themselves and their
resources, proudly proclaim their heritage, and build a future of
their own making.xiv
While Herzl's analysis on the centrality of anti-Semitism in
reviving Jewish identity and the power of assimilation in erasing
it was somewhat overstated, it was due to his experience as a West
European Jew.
The society he lived in gave Herzl and his
compatriots the sense that being a Jew was a burden with few
benefits.
Yet the Jews of the Middle East and of Eastern Europe not only
faced more immediate oppression but also enjoyed a far more
positive sense of Jewish communal, cultural, and spiritual life.
Herzl came to understand and learn from these groups. "If you were
to come to Russia," says one of Herzl's characters, "you would
discover that the Jewish nation still exists. We still have a
living tradition, a love of our past and faith in our future."
There, the best and most highly educated remained loyal to their
people and created a renaissance in Hebrew, literature, and other
areas. Similarly in our time, the creation and survival of Israel
and the struggle of Soviet or Ethiopian Jewry reinvigorated the
Western diaspora.
But if the times were threatening, the times were also right
to change conditions under which Jews had lived for 2000 years and
which many Jews and non-Jews expected to continue until the end of
days. What is even more remarkable is the extent to which Jew took
up Herzl's ideas and interpretations because they, too, shared
them.
Herzl set forth the current situation of Jewry in his speech
to the First World Zionist Congressxv: "The homogeneity of our
destiny has suffered a long interruption, although the scattered
fragments of the Jewish people have everywhere undergone similar
ills. It is only in our days that the marvels of communication have
served to bring about mutual understanding and union between
isolated groups. And in these times, so progressive in most
respects, we know ourselves to be surrounded by the old, old
hatred. Anti-Semitism."
While failing to eradicate anti-Semitism, however, the new era
had
not
only
provided
Jews
with
the
technology
and
skills--education, communication, transportation--to restore their
peoplehood but also with the ideas for doing so, including those of
nationalism. Rejecting the idea that Jewishness was something to be
jettisoned by the modern, civilized individual, a new generation
now embraced it with pride. They then allied themselves with
58
Eastern European and religious Jews to whom such thoughts had never
occurred.
Herzl noted in one article: "Only most recent developments in
the second half of this [19th] century have made it appear not
customary, not proper, and not desirable to emphasize one's
Jewishness....Since we are trying to improve the situation of our
fellow Jews through our own efforts, we regard it as our first
logical task to make a public avowal that we belong to the people
for whose benefit we are working."Of the Westerners, he added
elsewhere,
"We returned home, as it were. For Zionism is a
homecoming to the Jewish fold even before it becomes a homecoming
to the Jewish land."
For Herzl, then, the Jews were not a historical fossil, a
religion (admirable or obsolete depending on one's viewpoint). They
were not some threat or benefit for all humanity. They were simply
themselves: a people with a common history, religion, culture,
linguistic heritage, and other characteristics. And if they so
willed it, they would be the possessors of a great future as well
as a glorious past.
Zionism for Herzl represented continuity, rather than a break,
with the course of Jewish history. His theory synthesized religion
and reform, technological progress and social improvement, the
battle against anti-Semitism and the struggle to build a positive,
new style of life. There is nothing freakish or mysterious, much
less racist, about Zionism. It is simply the national liberation
movement of the Jewish people, a nationalism in accord with their
history, experience, right to survive, and to develop their
identity and culture. The Jews are seen as one people whose
religion is only a portion of their national consciousness as is
true of other peoples with a predominant religion. The Poles and
Irish tend to be Catholic, the Arabs and Persians tend to be
Moslem, and the Jewish people tend to be of the Jewish religion
though many of them no longer practice it.
If peoplehood lies at the root of the Jewish identity, antiSemitism grew from the long sojourn of that people amidst other
nations which became hostile and suspicious of their differentness.
Unable to explain the phenomenon of the Jews and their survival,
the dominant groups resorted to sinister explanations seeing the
Jews as evil unbelievers, enemies of their own religion and state,
economic parasites or enemies of the established order, even as
racial inferiors or demons in human form.
Zionism posited that the solution to both the inner yearnings
and the sufferings of the Jews and to the gentiles' oppression
would be the redefinition of the Jews as a nation and the building
of a Jewish state. By being put on an equal footing with all the
world's other peoples, the Jews would cease to be an anomaly. They
would regain their pride, normalize their sociological situation,
be able to defend themselves, and find a basis for unity and
cooperation. Both Jews who lived in that state and those who
continued to reside outside of it would benefit.
The idea of a "restoration of the Jewish state," Herzl noted,
59
"is a very old one" that was innate in two thousand years of Jewish
history and prayers. But success in the endeavor "depends on the
Jews themselves." While Herzl did say, in what might have been his
most famous remark, "If you will it, it is no dream," he fully
understood that the only thing connecting dream to reality was a
great deal of practical work. "The Jews who want their state will
have it and deserve it," Herzl commented. Yet to deserve it and
have it they must work together in a broad front and must labor
long and hard.
Thus far, Herzl's general line of argument was typical of that
seen in every other embryo nationalist endeavor in the nineteenth
and twentieth century. A nation that had once existed on its own
land and governing itself had been displaced. Yet material defeat
and suffering had not destroyed the yearning for renewal and the
sense of identity in its people's hearts. The time was now at hand
for the long-awaited struggle to begin for cultural renaissance and
practical reconstruction.
But the Jewish national liberation movement, if it were to
succeed, had to overcome three particular problems that were more
intense and controversial than the parallel issues faced by its
counterparts:
First, the idea that Jews were a nation had to gain
psychological hegemony among Jews. Those opposed to Zionism for
religious, assimilationist, or other reasons had to be persuaded or
their resistance overcome. The wealthy feared they would lose their
positions in the countries where they lived; leftists hewed to the
belief that socialist revolution would resolve every difficulty;
the pious felt confident in awaiting the Messiah to put things
right. Many Jews feared that any action or outspokenness would
encourage repression and anti-Semitism; professionals or artists
worried lest an open identification with the Jewish people might
narrow their horizons or damage their careers.
Herzl tried to respond to these concerns in his theory of
Jewish history and alternative analysis of anti-Semitism (see
Article Two, above) as well as in his attempts to inspire Jewish
pride, solidarity, and courage. He also had to demonstrate--to
those who might be sympathetic but viewed a Jewish state as an
impossibility--that he was advocating a realizable goal rather than
a fantasy. The Zionist movement also needed to convince many
central or west European Jews to take pride in an identity many of
them had, at worst, hitherto taken pains to conceal or even disown
and one which, at best, they saw in purely religious terms. If
Herzl understood these attitudes so well it was because he had once
held them himself.
Although the debate on these matters was more intense among
the Jews, other nationalist leaders had similar problems to an
extent not realized today, when the existence of countries like
Hungary or Poland, Germany or Italy, Turkey or the Arab states is
taken for granted. In Herzl's own land, loyalty to the Habsburg
dynasty was a viable alternative to believing in a Czech or
Yugoslav homeland; in the Middle East, loyalty to Islam and the
60
Ottomans was long a dominant force among Arabs and Turks.
Herzl also had to combat a universalist ethic, particularly
common to the Jews given their historic situation, which saw
nationalism as a regressive step. "One could say that nationalism
is worthless, that we ought to endeavor to strive toward a higher
stage, one in which national differences have disappeared," Herzl
wrote. "I do not dispute this point of view. I simply believe that
if all our contemporaries actively espouse nationalism to our
detriment, it would be foolish of us to reject this idea which
could afford us protection."
In line with his view that the Jews were only asking for
equality, Herzl added, "Every genuine nationality which does not
hide behind [another identity] has a fundamental right to respect
and toleration on the part of other nations, provided it does not
menace their existence."
Second, it was necessary for the Zionist movement to seek the
backing of powerful non-Jews and existing states who would support
the endeavor. It literally never occurred to Herzl that the Zionist
movement would be subject to any regime's control or direction.
Rather, he believed that there would be parallel geopolitical and
sociological interests between these rulers and the Zionists. A
Jewish state would be a force for stability and progress in the
region quite compatible with the needs of the Ottoman Empire, which
then ruled Palestine, or those of Britain, Germany, and other
powers. If, as part of their process of competition, they were to
compete in seeking to appear as patron of the Zionist movement,
Herzl had no objection. Nor did he have any preference among the
powers. He would negotiate with the crowned heads in search of a
charter to place the Zionist endeavor on a sound footing. The more
Jewish support he could organize and the more state backing he
could win would be mutually reinforcing steps toward his goal.
The migration of Jews who were poor, persecuted, or proud in
their
national
identity
would
ease
friction
in
Europe.
Anti-Semitism would be harnessed into helping its would-be victims.
If you do not want us, Herzl seemed to say, help us build a
productive home of our own. And if you do wish to help the Jews,
do so in a manner allowing them to help themselves. Those Jews who
wished to do so would be perfectly free to assimilate; those Jews
who wanted to do so would be perfectly free to migrate. In essence,
then, the Zionist movement was presented as a good faith effort to
help European governments resolve their own interrelated problems
of a non-assimilated or recently arrived Jewish population and a
destabilizing anti-Semitic reaction without any harm to the Jews
themselves. It also provided non-Jews with a rational and
non-threatening--rather than theological or racial--explanation for
understanding the nature of the Jewish people.
Herzl realized that the Jews' reputation for enjoying
financial power and political leverage was a major cause of antiSemitism. But while he knew that it was largely an illusion, he
tried to turn it into an asset. Again, he would take this myth,
which so often served as a pretext for anti-Semitism, and turn it
61
into an asset serving the Jews' own interest. He would meet with
the Ottoman Sultan, the German Kaiser, Russian cabinet members, and
other notables offering Jewish financial and political support in
exchange for their help. In these relationships, Herzl brilliantly
used all his personal charm, charisma, and base of support.
Herzl's goal was a charter that would provide a legal basis
for Jewish immigration to Palestine and secure a national state
there. Only thus, he realized, would enough people feel it safe to
migrate or would even be allowed into the country by its Turkish
overlords. He thought small-scale, individual movements would be
too slow and fragile, a sort of undignified "infiltration,"
although Herzl was, of course, pleased to see any strengthening of
the Jewish presence in the land.
While not fully successful in Herzl's own attenuated lifetime,
these diplomatic contacts laid the necessary basis for the Balfour
Declaration--the British charter for a Jewish homeland that would
be accepted by the League of Nations--a dozen years after his
death.
Third, the nation had to be spiritually and materially
reconstructed.
In his writings, Herzl provided a vision of what
the state would be like [See Article Four, below]. His experience
in the movement furthered his thoughts on this matter. For example,
he came to understand the importance of the Hebrew language and the
centrality of religious/secular partnership in the national
reconstruction.
On the latter point, he commented, "Zionism has already
brought about something remarkable, heretofore regarded as
impossible: a close union between the ultra-modern and the ultraconservative elements of Jewry. The fact that this has come to pass
without undignified concessions on the part of either side, without
intellectual sacrifices, is further proof, if such proof be
necessary, of the national entity of the Jews. A union of this kind
is possible only on a national basis."
But Herzl's tremendous interest in technology also made him
realize from the very beginning that the building of a Jewish state
required all sorts of planning and practical work. There was money
to be raised, land to be bought, banks to be founded, means of
transportation to be acquired, agricultural settlements to be
organized, hundreds of thousands of Jews to be mobilized, and a
wide range of other labor to be performed.
The cadre for the
movement would be the reservoir of Russian and East European Jews
but he also had some incipient idea that Oriental Jews would also
be important since they, too, were "Lovers of Zion." There had been
some earlier practical steps toward resettlement: Baron Hirsch
financed agricultural colonies in Argentina and the Rothschilds had
done the same in Palestine.
Herzl had met with both philanthropists and had expressed
appreciation for their efforts.
But this approach was not
satisfactory. On the one hand, these activities were essentially
acts of charity and, Herzl noted, "A people can be helped only by
its own efforts, and if it cannot help itself it is beyond succor."
62
On the other hand, they had no political future but were doomed to
remain small-scale experiments lacking the flexibility, security,
and identity offered by a state. It offended Herzl's sense of pride
and independence that the settlers became a sort of serf within
this paternalistic framework rather than a sturdy, autonomous
yeomanry. These colonies, then,
were a limited form
of
transplantation, rather than transmutation, for the Jews.
As for practical measures, Herzl favored the movement of as
many people as quickly as possible. But he realized that "publicly
legalized guarantees" were needed in order to increase the scope
of migration and work. Herzl stressed the legalist aspect because
he did not want the political entity to be reduced to a series of
unconnected villages--eventually at the mercy of a sovereign
government--or a mere cultural center.
He was also fully aware
that the Ottoman regime would use old immigration restrictions to
restrict any influx of Jews.
Herzl never idealized his own people. He accepted the idea
that some of the criticism made of Jews had a firm material basis
but attributed shortcomings to the effects of anti-Semitism,
poverty, and psychological statelessness. Conditions had put them
out of proper balance. There were too many Jews in trade, petty
commerce, and banking of various sorts and not enough in more
economically "productive" occupations and manual labor. Long
dependence had damaged their ability to work in a cooperative
manner.
Herzl was also concerned about the proportionately large
numbers of Jewish revolutionaries in Europe. He saw the
disproportionately large Jewish involvement in leftist movements as
the result of discrimination and discontent with the existing
system.
If they succeeded, however, the situation of the Jews
would not improve while, if they failed, all Jews would suffer
through intensified anti-Semitism. Herzl was prophetic in this
regard in understanding how radical socialism could intensify
rather than resolve anti-Semitism.
As a later, probably
apocryphal, story put it, "The Leon Trotsky's might make a
revolution but the Lev Bronstein's [Trotsky's original name] would
pay the price." The Jews suffered under Stalin's revolution and in
the fascist reaction to alleged "Jewish Bolshevism."
Thus, not only did the Jews have to build the state but the
possession of a state had to rebuild the character of the Jews
themselves. Once they possessed a country of their own--as their
ancestors had in the Biblical era--military valor, self-sacrifice,
and other desirable attributes would reappear.
Again, Herzl was
correct as Israel's later history would demonstrate.
During his visit to Palestine, Herzl was especially impressed
by the mounted Jewish guards (shomerim) who protected the
settlement. The existence of the first Jewish self-defense militia
in two millennia seemed a good omen toward rebuilding a proud,
fearless citizenry. Herzl was no militarist. But he knew that the
Jews had ample need to protect themselves and yet had never been
able to do so before. They were at the mercy of the rulers and the
63
mob, a situation that provoked the contempt of their adversaries,
feelings of fear and helplessness among themselves, and increased
the likelihood of victimization.
Herzl never argued that the state of the Jews would be the
most magnificent of all the world's nations or a country whose
existence would be justified by its moral superiority. He did hope
that it would improve the character of the Jews and the world's
image of them. But he rejected any idea that the Jews were better
than anyone else, they simply required equality to enjoy their
rights and to reach the full flowering of their potential. The
state would protect the Christian holy places and furnish an
example of economic development and human rehabilitation that would
be appreciated throughout the world.
In
a
remarkably
short
time,
Herzl
achieved
amazing
accomplishments. He articulated a largely new ideology of Zionism,
won the adherence of a large part of the world's Jews for his
ideas, united widely varying sectors of the community, made the
movement respectable among non-Jews, put its demands on the agendas
of world leaders, helped accelerate a Jewish cultural renaissance,
and put into place institutions capable of sustaining the momentum
after his own disappearance from the scene. Starting from scratch,
with virtually no money, and in less than eight years, Herzl had
led a non-violent revolution that transformed centuries-old Jewish
attitudes and revitalized the entire nation--indeed made it see
itself as a nation.
This triumph was a tribute to the abilities and energies of
Herzl. But it was equally a testimony to how natural and necessary
the ideas of Zionism seemed to the Jews themselves as an analysis
of their situation and as a prescription for its spiritual and
material resolution.
Herzl wrote a utopian novel, Die Judenstadt, about his
proposed Jewish state and imbued it with features he felt would
make an ideal society. But Herzl, no utopian dreamer, admitted his
vision was "far less attractive" than those made up by abstract
thinkers because he intended to realize it in practice.
The new country would be based on a "legally assured Homeland
for those Jews who cannot or do not want to be assimilated in their
present places of abode," he wrote the first American Zionist
conference. "Nothing can be achieved if hands are laid idly in the
lap. everything can be achieved if there is a firm will, and one
goes to work." Die Judenstadt, then, offers us the dream of a very
practical man.
Again, far from being a simplistic optimist who lightly sweeps
aside all obstacles with words, Herzl goes out of his way to stress
the difficulties and labor ahead. Immigrants, he writes, should be
received "without foolish exaltation" since the situation would be
far from the perfect promised land of milk and honey. Yet on a
psychological level, these people must know "they have not merely
entered another territory but "should already see that they are at
home." Nor did Herzl have any illusions about the state of the
land itself.
He did not seek to establish a Jewish state in
64
Palestine because he thought it to be rich or full of resources.
Particularly after his visit there, Herzl knew it to be a back,
ward, relatively unpopulated place. He described it as desolate,
the coastal plain possessing only "meager fields," and found the
main seaport, Jaffa, to be "most unpleasant."
But he believed
sustained Jewish labor would increase the value of the land, at
each stage making it more attractive to further immigration. The
idea of a massive immigration movement was not at all fanciful.
Many East European Jews were fleeing from oppression or in search
of opportunity. Many of them were moving into the urban centers of
Austria, Great Britain and other states while, most significantly,
a large sector of Europe's Jewish and non-Jewish population was in
the process of migrating to America.
On this model, Herzl foresaw an orderly transfer to Palestine
with the company organizing steamships and other means of trans,
port. The emigrants would travel in cohesive groups and with as
much comfort as possible.
The new state would have an economy that blended socialism and
capitalism, Herzl declared, "We shall only work collectively when
the immense difficulties of the task demand common action," but
would
respect
private
property,
the
"economic
basis
of
independence." Protection of business would also allow the
laborers, a position where most new immigrants began, to work their
way
up. Once again, the practice in mandatory Palestine and in
independent Israel would closely follow Herzl's prescription.
Herzl also predicted the kind of agricultural settlements that
would
arise
with
the
kibbutz
and
moshav--collective
and
cooperative--farming villages. Having been too long dependent on
small-scale commerce and a constant expectation of mobility (to
escape oppression), the Jews must be attached to the land in order
to form a stable nation. "Each settlement shall administer its own
affairs as an agricultural productive association," wrote Herzl.
The main instrument for achieving these ends was the Jewish
company, which Herzl describes at length in Die Judenstadt. He is
at great pains to insist that it will be run as a business
enterprise by practical men of affairs. As such, it will be above
any possibility of
corruption or political manipulation. The
company would thus wield great power, but he did not envisage it
playing any excessive role in the state to be created. It would
remain the instrument for creating a new society, not the master
dominating the country.
Like many progressive reformers of his day, Herzl rebelled
against the cult of aristocracy and glorified worldly labor of
farmers, engineers, and factory hands, that was capable of building
a better world. "We will seek," he noted, "to bestow the moral
salvation of work on men of every age and of every class." Although
he loved elegant Vienna, Herzl also felt that the middle and upper
class obsession with luxury, the premium put on languorous
idleness, and the dependence on servants was somewhat demeaning.
He wanted a scale of values in which productivity and public
service would be prized above all. It would be a modern industrial
65
rather than an aristocratic society. It was no disgrace to be a
"peasant" farmer or manual worker; each individual would be judged
on his contribution to the community.
As a humanitarian and nationalist, he wanted to include all
the latest reforms and measures in the new state. Workers must be
well-treated and he particularly advocated a seven-hour work day.
In fact, Herzl was so taken with this measure that he proposed to
symbolize it on the national flag with seven gold stars. The idea
was often ridiculed by critics.
After all they said, Herzl was
more concerned about the length of the workday than about giving a
Jewish content to the state.
It is true that Herzl's state is primarily the product of a
late nineteenth-century liberal, democratic, and technocraticoriented thinker. For Herzl and most West European Jews, the
specific nature of Judaism seemed mostly reduced to that of a
particular religion. And the fact that it would be a state of the
Jews was remarkable enough that they did not feel the need to imbue
it with unusual features.
Herzl also appreciated the fact that the diversity of
immigrants' backgrounds would make the new society a blend. But he
saw no problem in this situation: "Every man will find his customs
again in the local groups, but they will be better, more beautiful,
and more agreeable than before." The Jews from various countries
would fondly remember their old homes while building new ones. The
Jewish state was to be an exemplar of high European culture in the
endeavor to prove to the Christians that Jews would make their own
contribution to civilization. Today, with Jews having provided so
many great Western scholars, scientists, writers, and leaders,
writers, and musicians, this idea is taken for granted, but in
Herzl's time most European gentiles doubted that Jews would ever be
so integrated and were not willing to give them a chance.
Herzl stressed, however, that the Jews were not rejecting
Europe, but were reacting to its rejection of them. "No longer will
it be necessary to exclude Jewish children from institutions of
learning as is done in some places at the present time." Instead,
fine schools and educational facilities would allow the people to
develop their capacities to the highest degree possible.
"We have not the least intention of yielding a jot of culture
we have acquired," Herzl noted. "On the contrary, we are aiming
toward a broader culture, such as an increase of knowledge brings
with it." And, of course, there would be a special place for
Herzl's beloved theater. Rather than be a new ghetto, the state
would provide a platform for a healthier form of Jewish
participation in a global society based on a well-established
identity rather than on mere imitation. And the society would
produce cultured but intensely practical gentlemen, equally at home
behind a plow or behind a book.
Herzl himself was a prototype of this personality, though
lacking any inclination toward blue-collar work, as a playwright
who had once wanted to be an engineer. Herzl's vision was, in some
ways, quite compatible with the traditional Jewish combination of
66
practicality and learning; Israeli culture, to a large extent,
accepted the essential idea of Herzl. An admirable person was
someone who could be farmer and warrior, student and worker,
businessman and social benefactor.
In Die Judenstadt Herzl has his central character make the
statement, obviously an autobiographical one from the author, that
he was "a stranger to his own people." Over time, through his
contacts with East European Jews and his experience in the movement
he founded, Herzl deepened his own Jewish consciousness. The
examples of religion and language are indicative of these points.
Religion in the state would be accorded a place of honor but
the rabbis would keep to their synagogues--it is revealing that
Herzl uses the Reform Jewish word of temples--and not interfere
with the administration of the state. "I am a free, thinker," he
declared, "and our principle [in the Jewish state] will be: Let
everyone seek salvation in his own way." He thus presents the
notion of separation of faith and state typical of his milieu.
Everyone would be free to be a believer or a non-believer without
interference. Yet Herzl came to recognize that the rich course of
Jewish history and large national elements within the religion were
essential parts of the new nation's ethos and the state would also
incorporate the cultures of the places from which the immigrants
came.
Herzl suggested that the Jewish state be neutral, an important
consideration given the fact that Europe was already embroiled in
the quarrels over precedence and colonies that would later lead to
World War One. He was, thus, an early advocate of nonalignment. "I
think the Jews will always have sufficient enemies, much as every
other nation has," so they did not need to involve themselves in
any other disputes.
While Herzl did not expect the intensity of the Arab-Israeli
conflict, he was also not naive so naive as to doubt that there
would be an occasion where the new state would have to defend
itself. The idea was, however, that in their own homeland the Jews
could at least defend themselves, something that had proved
possible during previous centuries of persecution.
Again, contrary to later myth, Herzl and his compatriots did
not ignore the Arab question. Of course they knew that there were
already inhabitants, not all of them Jews, in the land of
Palestine. But first-hand observation also showed them that these
people were few in number and had manifested no particular national
identity
of
their
own.
They
were
Ottoman
subjects,
indistinguishable and not setting themselves apart, from the other
people of that sprawling empire ruled from Istanbul. The Arab
nationalist movement was far less developed or publicly apparent
than even the Zionist one and had made no appearance in Palestine,
nor would not do so for another two decades. There was not even a
glimmer of any Palestinian Arab political consciousness.
Thus, Herzl and his colleagues were acting in good faith when
they suggested that the presence of a non-Jewish population would
be resolved by peaceful cooperation. The Arab-speaking people would
67
be beneficiaries of the development that the Jews brought to the
country. Their own society and customs would be left undisturbed,
for the Jews had no interest in altering them. And if the Zionists
expected that Christians and Moslems would live peacefully and
loyally as citizens within a Jewish state had not this, after all,
been the behavior expected and delivered by the Jews in a score of
Christian- and Moslem-ruled states over the previous two millennia?
At a time and place when the worst nightmares of the twentieth
century were still theorists' dreams--the "utopias" of what would
be communism, fascism, and chauvinistic nationalism--Herzl was
seeking a benign, democratic society. He rejected the frantic
certainties and the rigid lines of the radical utopias, preferring
a practical vision of moderation. But, then, his famous
statement--"If you will it, it is no dream"--had a double meaning.
Not only did it entail a great practical effort of the will, it
also necessitated a humane dream capable and worthy of being
realized.
If Herzl had only been the theorist and popularizer of
Zionism, it would have been impressive enough, but he was also the
organizer and leader of a large international movement. His energy
and talent revealed themselves at every turn. He edited the
Zionists' newspaper, laid out the organization's strategy, and
served as its chief statesman and diplomat.
His first task was to create an organizational structure
capable of spreading Zionism's ideas and of activating and uniting
the Jews. Next, he had to raise funds and to create institutions
able to further the work of settlement in Palestine. Third, he won
political contacts in a half-dozen countries in search of a charter
for the proposed Jewish state.
Finally, he had to reconcile
different currents in the movement and keep it headed toward the
distant but visible goal.
Thus, Herzl threw himself into a whirlwind of activity-correspondence,
travel,
writing,
meetings,
conferences,
negotiations,
debates,
and
administrative
work--between the
publication of Die Judenstadt in February 1896 and his death in
1904. It is not surprising that the resulting strain contributed to
Herzl's physical decline and his passing at the age of 44.
Immediately after his book came out, Herzl began his political
campaign. He turned down the prestigious post as editor of the
newspaper Die Presse to have time for this activism. After
obtaining an entry into the palace of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid
II, went off to Istanbul on the Orient Express. The Ottoman
officials were openly corrupt, demanding payments from Herzl for
each step closer to their sovereign, but the Jewish leader felt
that progress had been reasonable for his first effort.
On his way home in June 1896, however, he had a much more
inspiring and encouraging experience. When he arrived in the Sofia,
Bulgaria train station, Herzl was met by a massive spontaneous
celebration on the part of the Jewish populace there. The cheering
people acclaimed him as "deliverer of Israel," and he was
practically carried to the city's main synagogue. Asked to speak,
68
Herzl hesitated to turn his back to the Torah kept at the room's
front. Voices among the crowd shouted to him that it was all right
for Herzl to do so because he was equally holy. That day's
experiences showed Herzl both his own leadership ability and the
Jewish masses' unbounded enthusiasm, only needing to be released,
for the Zionist idea.
By August 1897 he had organized the First World Zionist
Congress in Basle, Switzerland. The gathering seemed a modern
miracle. For two thousand years the Jews had dreamed of their
country's restoration and now, only 18 months after beginning,
decisive action was being taken in that direction.
Herzl's appearance on the platform set off fifteen minutes of
enthusiastic applause, shouting, and weeping among the assembled
delegates who represented Jewish communities in over a dozen
different countries. Finally, the tumult subsided allowing Herzl to
speak. "We want to lay the cornerstone of the edifice which is one
day to house the Jewish nation," he said. "Have we already obtained
a charter, giving us the right of settlement in Palestine?" "No,"
he answered. But will we continue to hope and struggle for it? Yes,
he responded. "The likelihood of realizing our demands and
proposals grows with our numbers and with the increase of our
strength."xvi
Practical efforts, not mere words, would determine the
outcome. "Nothing can be accomplished by lamentations. If we show
that we are capable of action we shall not lack the cooperation of
honest men."
"It is not sufficient that we feel and recognize ourselves to
a nation," explained Herzl. "Once the national consciousness is
awakened the national will must also be aroused." This was
difficult to do because those who had suffered so much lost the
habit of using their willpower and "did not dare to give tongue to
aspirations which every other nation not only does not hide but
vaunts as its greatest glory." Since the official Jewish religious
or communal leaders where so timid, it was often necessary to
circumvent them by creating an alternative leadership.
Yet,
wherever possible, the establishment had to be reconciled or won
over to the movement.
While Herzl knew the importance of planting ideas and stir,
ring up enthusiasm, he gave equal attention to practical work.
Herzl became head of the Actions committee and the meeting set up a
bank, funded by subscription and run by respected and competent
businessmen,
for financing settlements. It also established the
"shekel" as a low payment that individual Jews could make to become
members and support the movement's endeavors.
The Basel meeting successfully launched the new movement. "At
Basel I founded the Jewish state," Herzl later wrote in his diary.
"If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal
laughter. Perhaps in five years, and certainly in fifty, everyone
will know it." Exactly fifty years six months later, Israel
declared its independence.
Herzl gathered around him a group of supportive leaders,
69
including David Wolffsohn and the internationally known writer Max
Nordau.
A few months after the conference, Herzl met with the
German Kaiser Wilhelm II and then made his first visit to
Palestine where he again encountered the German king. Herzl was
emotionally thrilled to be in the land of his dreams but
unhesitatingly understood that fulfillment lay well in the future.
The decayed state of the land was obvious to any eye. Herzl would
later portray it in Altneuland. On a more encouraging note, he saw
the Mikveh Israel agricultural school, the Rothschild colony at
Rishon Le Zion, the village of Nes Ziona, and the Jewish watchmen.
Herzl backed a resolution at the Second Congress in August
1898 which stated, "Zionism does not only strive for the economic
and political, but also for the spiritual regeneration of the
Jewish people, and finds itself therein on the ground of modern
culture, to the achievement of which it strongly adheres. Zionism
will do nothing that contradicts the Jewish religious laws."
Ceaselessly and tirelessly, Herzl travelled the continent,
organizing supporters, lobbying with governments, and debating his
opponents with words and articles.
"We shall ask our Jewish
opponents what they have done to relieve the frightful distress of
our brothers. Where are the results of their work? What have they
achieved?" After pogroms broke out against Romanian Jews, thousands
of whom became refugees, he argued that a change in conditions, not
temporary charity was necessary to relieve their plight.
"We have not tried to prove through invective that we are the
better people. We have not alluded in vague sermons to the imminent
fraternization of all mankind," Herzl told one meeting. "We no
longer want to wear the mask of any other nationality. And finally
we are not working for the overthrow of all things. These matters
do not concern us."
Herzl met with Ottoman sultan. The founding of the Jewish
National Fund to buy and develop land, beginning the build-up of
the community of Jews there. At the Fifth Congress in 1901, the
Democratic Fraction of young Russian Jews introduced cultural
issues in a more aggressive way, to put more of a Jewish but
secular orientation. Herzl was deeply concerned lest his long
effort to win cooperation from Orthodox Jews--themselves split into
pro- and anti-Zionist factions--be destroyed. Herzl met with
symathetic rabbis to suggest that they found their own Zionist
party. This Mizrachi movement began in 1902--Herzl financed its
first convention from his own pocketand successfully strengthened
Orthodox participation in Zionism and combatted opposition in that
community.
In the meantime, he continued his visits to the palaces and
powerful of Europe.
He met with Russian Minister of Interior
Vyecheslav Plehve and Minister of Finance Count Witte, the former
an outspoken anti-Semite. But Herzl knew that the Jews had to try
to make use of their enemies as well as their friends. He spoke to
Italian King Victor Emanuel and had an audience with Pope Pius X.
The Pope did not look with favor on any Jewish return to the Holy
Land, preferring to leave Christian sites in the hands of the
70
Turks. Herzl cultivate connections with Germany royalty
and the
Ottoman bureaucracy, leaping on any opportunity to explain the
cause. He used his own money to start a Zionist newspaper for that
same purpose.
In 1902 the focus of Herzl's activities shifted toward Great
Britain.
The oppression of Russian Jews had made for a largescale emigration and many of the refugees sought entry into England
where they settled in London's East End.
As Herzl's theory
predicted, anti-Semitism was on the rise in Britain and a Royal
Commission on Immigration was organized to consider whether the
doors would be closed to more arrivals. Herzl testified before the
Commission and extended his contacts in that country, then the
world's most powerful state.
In the long run, these contacts laid the basis for future
British-Zionist cooperation but more immediately Herzl spoke with
national leaders there who tentatively offered a proposal.
The
British might give the Jews the district of El-Arish in the
northern Sinai or the western uplands of Uganda for settlement.
Herzl decided to accept the Uganda offer, although he knew
that this step would provoke a storm within the movement. Herzl
well understood why there was such bitter opposition because he
himself would not want to accept any substitute for Palestine. Why,
then, did he make such a controversial which turned him, literally
overnight, from the movement's beloved founder to the object of
hatred on the part of many Zionists?
First, he did not want to insult the British government which
had, he believed, made the offer in good faith. This was, after
all, the initial diplomatic success for the Zionist movement and
the first real chance it had to gain a homeland. To reject it out
of hand would seem ungrateful and stubborn, wounding the British
and making more difficult any further progress.
Second, the gaining of such a foothold--or even the prospect
of obtaining some land--would greatly enhance the movement's
credibility with other states, whose rulers would not want to be
left behind by Britain. By the same token, Jews throughout the
world would take heart in believing success might really be
possible and give more support to the movement. The strongest
argument against Zionism was always that it was an impossible,
impractical dream. Herzl knew that the movement must break through
this psychological roadblock.
Ultimately, those derided as
dreamers would prove to be the practical ones while their critics,
claiming to be standing on solid ground, would be shown to have
built their castles on quicksand.
Third, Herzl was genuinely moved by the plight of oppressed
Russian and Romanian Jews who needed sanctuary in any such
territory and could begin practicing the skills and personal
transformation that would prepare the ground for the future
rebuilding of the state. The bloody Kishinev pogrom made it
necessary to seek some way in which their suffering could be
alleviated. Herzl explained that the Uganda land might furnish a
temporary sanctuary for refugees who could be moved on to Palestine
71
at some future point.
So great was the outcry that, in November 1903, Herzl planned
to resign his leadership. But he realized that without his hand on
the helm the movement might irretrievably split. The greatest
opponents of the Uganda plan were the Russian Jewish leaders, whose
people faced the greatest oppression and would most benefit from
the scheme. While frustrated and angry, Herzl was also proud in a
sense of this reaction, knowing it symbolized their loyalty to the
cause of a Jewish state in Palestine.
In a letter made public only a quarter-century later, Herzl
wrote, "When I started out, I was only a 'Jewish statist;' I have
now become a Hovev Zion [a Lover of Zion]. For me there is no other
solution but Palestine for the great national question which is
called the Jewish question." But in the face of immediate
suffering, "Let us at least do something to ease the distress,
continue to arouse the people, and strengthen those who have been
aroused." On his death, then, Herzl left a solidly established
movement. Zionism, which a few years previously had been little
more than a book outline in his mind and a few scattered groups in
Russia, was now a powerful, well-organized, widely recognized force
in the world.
Theodor Herzl, Congress Addresses of Theodor Herzl, (NY, 1917)
pp. 24-25. some Jews had criticized endlessly and helped not at
all. "But I am convinced that those Jews who stand aside today with
a malicious smile and with their hands in their trousers' pockets,
will also want to dwell in our beautiful house." "We shall ask our
Jewish opponents what they have done in all these years to relieve
the frightful distress of our brothers. Where are the results of
their work? What have they achieved?"
28: "We have not alluded in vague sermons to the imminent
fraternization of all mankind. We no longer want to wear the mask
of any other nationality. And finally we are not working for the
overthrow of all things. These matters do not concern us."
6: "Zionism has already brought about something remarkable,
heretofore regarded as impossible: a close union between the ultramodern and the ultra-conservative elements of Jewry." without
concessions on either side. "We have not the least intention of
yielding a jot of the culture we have acquired. On the contrary, we
are aiming toward a broader culture, such as an increase of
knowledge brings with it."
For almost 19 centuries, it was hard to find a single case of
a Jew really attacking or injuring a Christian or Moslem. This is a
remarkable fact, all the more so for being so rarely remembered.
But it did not win the Jews any sympathy, indeed false charges of
ritual murder were made up since this lack of aggressiveness in the
face of oppression was considered to be so incredible.
Alter, Modern Hebrew Literature: Mendele Mocher Sforim (S.Y.
Abramowitz, 1836-1917) father of Yiddish and Hebrew novel, about
pale, the use of Biblical references in fiction, portraying real
conditions, poverty not ideal, struggle between currents. Y.L.
Peretz (1852-1915) also in Hebrew and Yiddish but latter necessary
72
to reach masses, lawyer, socialist, secular less grotesque than
MMS. czarist government brings in official rabbis with modern
education, treated with suspicion in many communities. there are
the
narrow
pious--often
hypocritical--traditionalists,
the
merchants who are pretentious and whose grasp on European culture
is unsure; the young secular intellectuals who are isolated and
themselves naive. they believed like Dostoevsky that for those to
whom God did not exist--at least in their form--anything might
happen. seen as traitors to both religion and community. Ahad ha-Am
("One of the People" Asher Ginzburg, 1856-1927) believed galut
falling apart and thus a central point for Yishuv would be to save
it by becoming its cultural center. popularized European ideas in
Jewish circles in Hebrew, a great deal of borrowing going on. Ahad
Ha-Am, the real task, "the emancipation of ourselves from inner
slavery and spiritual degradation" for which need prophets not
diplomats.xvii
1922 settled
in Tel Aviv. religiously-rooted
secularist change and continuity, importance of pride and selfrespect and disgust with deserters. "Imitation and Assimilation"
1893. need for an anchor against assimilation (and this is what
Israel did become) isolation is not a solution. 95: "The very
separation sometimes has the opposite effect to that which is
intended." making foreign culture seem more attractive and its
acceptance an all-or-nothing proposition. "self-effacement" leads
to assimilation, must be strong internally. need a spiritual
revival. 97: "The Jews have not merely a tendency to imitation, but
a genius for it." need to use force "to reveal their own spirit"
and the imitation is a source of strength. example, Jewish use of
Greek knowledge (translation). Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) German
Jewish historical scholar and advocate of religious reform.
At
first, imitation is slavish and then build up in the context of
their own spiritual force.
source of imitation has to be
alternative center 101: "to turn eastward to the land which was our
center and our pattern in ancient days."
Ahad Ha'am another Odessa man. pointed out that Z solution
would take a long time and would not take in everyone. Problem of J
in West, separation from J culture
For almost 19 centuries, it was difficult to find a single
case of a Jew really attacking or injuring a Christian or Moslem.
This is a remarkable fact, all the more so for being so rarely
remembered. But it did not win the Jews any sympathy, indeed false
charges of ritual murder were made up since this lack of
aggressiveness in the face of oppression was considered to be so
incredible.
duck end A specifically Jewish version of modern culture in
the use of Yiddish as language of preservation and modernization
simultaneously, it brought Jews the world outside of sacred Hebrew
and the attitudes. the great nineteenth century writers of the
shtetl and the early twentieth century writers of the city.
Translation (Karmon's phrase, even better than the original) while
also putting a distinctly Jewish voice on it.
Js ritual and ethics--as Christians claimed they did, dropped
73
former for latter but found the rules easier to change than the
morality to live. Secular Jews, too, dropped faith and what was
left were tenets of humanism--justice, kindness, good treatment of
fellow humans--making them liberals.
Conversion gave right to criticize Christianity
phenomenon of government rabbis
Jacob Katz, Emancipation and Assimilation p. 2-3: The Jewish
population grew from 2.5 million (about 1.5 million in Christianruled Europe) in 1800 to about 10.5 million in 1900 (over 8 million
in Europe, five million of them in Russia) and over a million in
the Western Hemisphere.
p. 4: The new order, based on the direct relationship of
citizen and state could not accept autonomous Jewish communities
with special rights any more than restrictions.
granting equal citizenship to the Jewish subjects of France
(1791). The most important date pegs in the ups and downs of this
development are:
the Prussian Edict of Emancipation (1812); the
revocation of rights obtained in German lands in the wake of the
Vienna Congress (1815);
and the removal of the Christian faith
clause from the oath for public officials in England by an act of
Parliament (1858). With the achievement of citizenship in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867), in the newly founded German Empire
(1870), and in Switzerland (1877), the historical process of Jewish
emancipation came to a successful conclusion in Western Europe.
Citizenship rights had implicitly been guaranteed to Jews in the
United States of America by the American Constitution (1790). p. 5:
The purely religious schools were replaced either by Jewish
schools, much or most of whose curriculum was the same as their
counterparts or public schools which were at best secular and often
had considerable Christian influence or an antisemitic atmosphere.
p. 7: Even most of those denying any special bond among Jews of
different countries actively helped their compatriots elsewhere,
thus contradicting their own thesis.
p. 8: The anti-Semitic wave of 1880 in Germany, the Dreyfus
Affair of 1894-99 in France, and similar phenomena in AustriaHungary and Russia.
p. 11: Jerusalem (1783) upheld the Divine revelation on Mount
Sinai as the source of the Jewish religion. But while God was
responsible for the ceremonial laws--which could not therefore be
abandoned--man was responsible for using Reason to deepen and
practice the ethical doctrines of Judaism.
p. 12: To Mendelssohn the unifying bond of the Jewish people
was guaranteed by their observance of the ceremonial law, and he
could therefore dispense with a doctrinal system.
The next
generation found itself in a situation in which the observance of
the ceremonial tradition could no longer play this function.
p. 17: the Musar movement, founded in Lithuania by Rabbi
Israel Lipkin of Salant (1810-1883), Orthodox emphasis on ethical
issues, seeing the traditionalists laxity here as cause of the
secularists' defection.
Philipp Lowenfeld Richarz ed MARTIN LOVINSON (AUTHOR) p. 117:
74
When the laws restricting Jews were dropped in 1869 "One did not
expect that society and the practice of the authorities would
maintain these barriers for a long time to come, and would erect
new ones. Now there were Jewish judges and civil servants, whereas
formerly even an appointment as a lawyer had scarcely been
attainable for a Jewish civil servant even after years of unpaid
civil service. Thus, in our circles, too, the joy and hope were
almost beyond description.
p. 124-25: Hermann Hamburger. His father joined the paternal
wholesale business at age thirteen, accompanying his father to sell
dry goods, then went into business for himself. In 1857, he started
a new company and expanded into linen and then into paper. "Today,
when we observe the stores of the big cities with their vast
departments and goods, the shining displays in their show windows,
the splendidly outfitted offices with their luxurious appointments,
we forget entirely from what small beginnings some of them
emerged."
Philipp Lowenfeld Richarz ed Clara Geissmar p. 155: Born in
1844 she married the Jewish lawyer Josef Geissmar and the married
couple lived in Konstanz - as the sole Jewish family.
With new
social obligations and in a cultural environment molded by
Protestantism, Clara was seized by deep religious uncertainty and
she took refuge in a kind of religion of literature and the arts.
p. 156: Her mother hated drinking rewarmed coffee on Shabbat
so every Saturday she went to a Christian schoolfriend who lived
near-by. But once these pleasant Saturday afternoons were
interrupted. My mother was an avid newspaper reader, and at that
time there were ugly persecutions of Jews under the slogan "Hep,
hep!" In my hometown one did not feel them; the various religions
coexisted peacefully. But my mother took the ill tidings much to
heart, and her lively imagination may have further inflated those
matters that the newspaper writers usually desribe vividly enough.
As it was, her gentle spirit was easily oppressed. One evening,
while my parents were sitting at their dinner, a stone came flying
through the windowpane, without injuring anyone, however.
My
mother became extremely agitated. That someone dared to do such a
thing to her husband's home--she always thought far too little of
herself--filled her with indignation and bitterness. She refused to
have the shattered pane replaced. She wanted everyone to see what
had been done to our house, and they would all have to be ashamed.
And with that, she grew very melancholy. When the Schmidts'
servant girl brought the usual message, my mother sought an excuse
and sat at home with her gloomy ponderings. Again a week passed and
mother was still bitter and oppressed and did not respond to the
four-o'clock summons. Then Herr Bailiff Schmidt himself came to
check on things. He told my mother that until then he had
considered her to be a reasonable woman; but he had been mistaken:
she was not one. To risk a friendship of many years because of
what some gutter-snipe or some other crude person had done was a
most foolish way to act. If she did not go with him right away, he
would never return and he would forbid his wife all association
75
with her. This uncompromising manner had its effect, and after a
while my mother's head and heart were back in their right place.
She again went regularly to Saturday coffee.
p. 158: On Christmas Eve...I was quite envious and sometimes
could not hold back my tears when I saw the poorest of the
neighboring homes beaming in the glow of the candles. But during
the Feast of Booths I had something the Christian children did not
have. Whoever I liked was allowed to sit in our booth.
p. 160: The new environment into which Josef introduced me
removed me once and for all from this world. So much that was good
and beautiful descended upon me in my new world that it almost
exceeded my power to absorb it spiritually. There were hours in
which I felt empty and unfulfilled. There was a corner of my soul
that neither my husband's love nor the most beautiful passages of
Shakespeare and Goethe were able to fill. I missed belonging to a
religion. Once I went to church to observe the Protestant service.
When the service was introduced "in the name of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost," words that one had to interpret in order
to arrive at some meaning, the Hebrew words occurred to me that
introduce Jewish prayers: "Hear, oh Israel, the Eternal, your God,
is one, a single, eternal Being." When at the end the congregation
was dismissed with the words "May the Lord bless you and keep you,"
I thought of my father, who, when I went to meet him at the door on
his return from prayers on Friday evening, laid his hands on my
head and in the original Hebrew said the words that the Protestant
clergyman bestowed upon his congregants on their way home. I did
not go to a Protestant church again.
i. Midrash Ha-Gadol, cited in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the
Jews Vol. 1, (Philadelphia, Pa., 1968), p. 320.
ii. Ibid.
iii. The word "Bible" in this work refers to the Jewish Bible,
while "Torah" signifies its first five books.
iv. Chaim Grade, The Yeshiva, (NY, 1977) Vol. 2 p. 346.
v. Jerusalem Report January 23, 1992, p. 11.
vi. Todd Endelman, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World (NY, 1987),
p. 6.
vii. Todd Endelman, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World (NY, 1987)
Deborah Hertz, "Seductive Conversion in Berlin, 1770-1809," pp. 49,
70.
viii. Todd Endelman, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World (NY, 1987)
pp. 71-2; Altmann, p. 425.
76
ix. German Jews in Victorian England Todd M. Endelman p. 62-3
x. Simon Schama, Citizens (NY, 1989), pp. 299-300.
xi. Lucy Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought
in Eastern Europe (NY, 1967), p. 129.
xii. Addresses book, p. 5.
xiii. Theodor Herzl, A Portrait for This Age (NY, 1955), pp. 31314.
xiv. Congress addresses p. 21-22.
xv. Congress Addresses book, p. 5.
xvi. Congress Addresses, p 5.
xvii. Quoted in Joan Comay, Who's who in Jewish History (NY, 1974),
p. 48
77
CHAPTER THREE
THE BURST COCOON, Europe 1897-1940
"If the question were put to him: `Since you have abandoned
all these characteristics of your countryman, (language, religion,
nationalism) what is there left of you that is Jewish?' He would
reply, "`A very great deal, and probably its very essence.'"
--Sigmund Freud, introduction to the Hebrew translation of
Totem and Taboo.
Like smoke signalling a conflagration at an exquisite
edifice's opening ceremony, the moment of glory for Jewish
assimilation in Europe announced the enterprise's imminent failure.
During the twentieth century's first four decades, Jews played a
remarkable role in transforming Germany, Austria, Britain, France,
and Russia in creating modern society. But Jews--as their very
success showed--did not act precisely like their non-Jewish
counterparts. They were markeed by both a "Jewish" portion-surviving from their previous culture and religion--and a "Jewish
assimilationist" character--arising from a personal experience of
breaking with tradition, then facing simultaneous rejection and
integration by their host societies.
These two factors produced a set of Jewish Variations-specific emphases and directions--in what such individuals created.
But
the Jewish
assimilationists heatedly denied any such
distinctions. After all, the antisemites were claiming that the
Jews were not carbon-copy Germans or Russians but rather
representatives of a different approach. The assimilationists
responded by insisting that they were only individuals, rejecting
all the more heatedly and completely membership in any Jewish
group. At one end of the spectrum, they sought a new group to join-the proletariat, Christianity, nationalism, humanism, intellectual
movements; at the other end, they insisted on a total iconoclastic
individualism.
Jews might escape Judaism but could not escape the effects of
the assimilation process itself. The bitter struggle among divided
loyalties to self, family, community, state, and society, "deformed
character," wrote the Polish Jewish scientist Leopold Infeld.
Infeld, born in 1898, was rejected by Polish society but returned
to that country he loved in the late 1940s after a long sojourn in
America. He most definitely did not love the Jewish identity into
which he was born. "The ghetto is full of misery, dirt,
sadness....I tried hard, and often cynically, to burn out of me the
traces left by my upbringing. Every successful step outside was
bound to increase my contempt for the small, sad world from which I
came and my desire to erase its visible signs."
Like an escaping prisoner, he tried to shed "his prisoner's
garb and rid himself of the chains still hanging about his ankles."
But in the end, he still felt "a curious mixture of hate and love.
I could say to myself, `What do I care about Jews? I am above
racial, religious problems and prejudices.' But all my continued
1
attempts to tear off the bonds only prove that these bonds exist,
and they will exist to the last day of my life."i
Many Jews of Infeld's generation and that of his parents were
similarly conflicted: attracted to a powerful, modern and secular
European civilization; repelled by a Jewish identity that had come
to be little more than an inferiority complex and a culture whose
age and religious content made it seem all the more backward. Being
Jewish brought penalties and humiliations while being unable to
offer material rewards. The strictly Orthodox approach jarred the
assimilating Jews' sensibilities; the watered-down reformed version
offered little spiritual comfort.
Within the Jewish community itself, assimilation created
bizarre syntheses which often became second-rate imitations of the
surrounding Christian societies. A German synagogue, for example,
featured as cantor Magnus Davidsohn, a former opera singer of
imposing appearance, stiff, blond, like the heroic tenor of a
Wagner opera, a cross between Joshua ben Nun and Parsifal. He
entered, as if on stage, after an organ prelude through a radiant
gold door. "With the hymnal, alias siddur, in his arm, a
star-shaped priest's cap on his head, the folded prayer mantle
draped across his shoulder like a shawl, he strode in his robe to
the dais, head held high: every inch the star." Raising the kiddush
cup aloft was a kind of Grail scene. [compare to Mandelstam]ii
The old style of worship was unimpressive to onlookers but it
was not designed for observers but to make everyone a participant.
It presupposed that all members of the community (even women, whose
role was very restricted) had a relatively high level of
knowledge. The new style appeared more dignified but, since it was
a performance, also implicitly alienated those present who were
transformed from actors to audience. The rabbi became, Christianstyle, an intercessor with God. Judging the show like any other
stage presentation, the audience could well decide that they might
prefer another theater.
Yet so powerful was the appeal of mainstream European culture
that parents trying to force children into tradition often fared no
better than if they were themselves negligent or lenient. His
father's attempt to make him be a great Talmud scholar, wrote a
German Jew, "achieved the opposite of what he intended." After
being ordered to stop attending the theater and opera, he ran away
from his yeshiva's "stifling atmosphere....For the next thirty
years--recalling the torments of my youth--I could not bring myself
even to take a peek into a Hebrew book." This rebellion "marked the
beginning of my inner independence from my father, who until then
had determined how my life would be shaped, without regard for my
wishes and inclinations."iii
As so often happened in history, social and intellectual
revolt was largely a byproduct of a familial rebellion. For such
youths, piety became synonymous with intolerance since it rejected
not only assimilation but also such Jewish alternatives as Zionism
or modernized religious practice. The rabbi became leader of the
reactionary forces, using coercion and rote memorization to enforce
2
conformity. Escaping that dictatorship was often equated with
turning away from Judaism altogether.
What is really surprising is not how many converted or drifted
away but how many did not do so. Some could not forget, despite
their efforts, that they were Jewish; more of them were not
permitted to forget. When Albert Einstein moved from Switzerland to
Germany in 1914, he later wrote, "I discovered for the first time
that I was a Jew. I owed this discovery more to the gentiles than
Jews."iv.
"I'm not baptized," said an assimilationist character in a
Schnitzler novel. "But on the other hand I am certainly not a Jew
either. I've ceased to belong to the congregation for a long time,
for the simple reason that I never felt myself to be a Jew."
"If someone were to bash in your top hat in the Ringstrasse
because...you have a somewhat Jewish nose," replied another, "You'd
realize pretty quick that you were insulted because you were a
Yiddisher fellow. You take my word for it.'"v
It was becoming evident that Christian societies which once
demanded that Jews merge and disappear increasingly rejected them
as full members. Despite personal success and conversion to
Christianity, the composer Gustav Mahler felt as "a Jew everywhere
in the world. Everywhere I am regarded as an interloper, nowhere am
I what people call `desirable.'"vi
Partly in reaction to such experiences, some Jews became
increasingly skeptical of assimilation or alarmed at its
destructive--perhaps fatal--effect on the Jews' survival as a
group. The Viennese Jewish parliamentary deputy Joseph Karels
complained to his colleagues, "When you consider the way in which
the poor Jews strive to gain your favor in the ranks of the
Germans, how they try to accumulate the treasures of German
culture, how they work in the sciences, some perhaps dying young as
a result--and all the thanks they get is that they are not even
accepted as human beings."vii
The year before Infeld's birth, 1897, was a turning point in
these processes. In that year, Karels voiced his dissatisfaction,
the first Zionist congress was held, the Jewish Socialist Bund was
founded, and Sigmund Freud joined the Vienna chapter of the Jewish
fraternal organization B'nai Brith. In that year, too, the
antisemite Karl Lueger took office as Vienna's mayor and Mahler
converted to Christianity.
Two knotty issues were taking center-stage in Europe: first,
would the Jews' neighbors let them to assimilate; second, what
price were the Jews be willing to pay for equal rights. Simon
Dubnow, the pioneer Russian Jewish historian, pointed out the
difference between freedom for the Jews--"the struggle for
emancipation without assimilation, for both civic and national
rights"--and the freedom to escape being Jewish. He also echoed the
new cynicism about the intentions of Christians--reactionaries or
revolutionaries, warning fellow Jews, "Do not put your trust in
Amalek, neither the Amalek of the government nor the Amalek of the
people, for the old Russia may yet revert in the new!"viii
3
But the urban, middle class European Jews of the early
twentieth century overwhelmingly did put their trust in "the new."
They rebelled against their own tradition and embraced modernity in
the form of European culture. In the long run, the ferocity needed
to break free could be reduced once the tradition was conquered,
reformed, and made to accept change. But by then, many in the
generations born between 1850 and 1910 were irretrievably
alienated. But equally it had the background in childhood and youth
in it. For not only a universe of customs but also a universe of
knowledge and of attitudes had been left behind. Perhaps the new
intellectuals,
professionals,
businessmen
were
largely
or
completely secular but they had studied the sacred texts and knew
the languages. They still had the knowledge and the attitudes
(perhaps not the best word, orientation?) the next generation did
not, lacking the choice of rebellion it had little or nothing, a
vacuum or else symbols stripped of their meaning which could thus
not be respected. The generation of wise but indifferent or wicked
sons had become the generation of those who did not even know how
to ask questions or who in these terms were simple sons.
even if not all Jews were modernists, the choice to imitate or
innovate was more often in their own hands, they were freer to
chose. The reductionism of Marx and Freud--myth-makers posing as
scientists--was due to the fact that nationalism and religion was
less to them, further down in their relative looseness of bonds,
the dominant culture is more questionable to them--which also would
have applied if they had stayed in Jewish culture.
Tradition had stultified, based on tighter legalism in large
part as a defense mechanism against the weakening of traditional
society. Judaism would meet the age of defection with continued
change: some by building higher walls against the outside world;
others by seeking to adapt to the new times. The generation of
defection from tradition did not view Judaism as a pillar of
Western civilization and philosophy because neither the rabbis nor
the Christian professors considered it as such. Eventually the
self-reevaluation of Judaism--ethics, mysticism, history, and
philosophy--would
play
a
role
in
the
formation
of
an
ethnic/national identity outside it as well.
Having rebelled against their own tradition, why should they
revere the one they were entering? While many assimilating Jews
were insecure enough about acceptance to fear controversy, their
weaker roots made them more attuned to it. Thus, there was a
modernizing Jewish minority alongside an assimilationist Jewish
majority which saw its vested interest in copying literally what
already existed. Inevitably, the former attracted more attention
both as innovators and by fitting a stereotype quickly developed by
antisemites, defenders of tradition, and even admirers of the
Jewish commitment for change.
Vienna, capital of Austria-Hungary, was also the city where a
distinct Jewish assimilationist civilization reached its peak. The
conversation rate there was the highest in Europe. Few converted
from conviction but tens of thousands were indifferent enough to
4
their own heritage, tired of discrimination, eager for promotion in
restricted professions (the high civil service, army, universities,
and diplomatic service) or seeking to intermarry became Christians
or raised their children as such.ix
Yet Jewish life also remained energetic. Some converts turned
their anger and ambiguity into art, like the composer Gustav
Mahler, the satirist Karl Kraus, the playwright Arthur Schnitzler,
or the socialist Victor Adler. Mahler called himself "thrice
homeless: as a Bohemian among Austrians; as an Austrian among
Germans; and as a Jew everywhere." Even more Jews continued to
straddle two societies, keeping their own neighborhoods and
organizations. Stefan Zweig wrote that nine-tenths of his friends
were other bourgeois Jews; the same was true for Sigmund Freud.
Jewish students found it easier to adopt gentile culture than to
make gentile friends.x
Of course, individual Jews sought upward mobility for all the
reasons non-Jews wanted it, but they also had the ambition and
fresh vision and additional zeal of recent immigrants from
tradition and backward regions. Barred from some jobs and groups,
they flooded into others. In their ideas and career paths,
assimilating Jews emerged as a society of their own, between
Christian Austrians and traditional Jews. Ironically, one of their
most common tenets was German nationalism.
The Jewish population of Vienna grew by 700 percent between
1857 and 1867, the year Austrian Jews were granted full citizenship
rights. By 1880 they were ten percent of its residents, augmented
by a continuous immigration of more religious, traditional Jews
from Austria's Polish provinces. It was a time when, as Freud later
wrote, prospects for progress seemed unlimited and "every diligent
Jewish boy carried a minister's portfolio in his satchel." Viennese
Jews responded with love for Austria's monarch and votes for
liberal parties that protected them. But these gains also produced
rising antisemitism in the 1880s, culminating with the election of
the antisemite Lueger as mayor in 1895. Emperor Franz Joseph vetoed
his inauguration for two years before finally letting Lueger begin
his 13-year reign over the city.xi
Ultimately, politics offered no way out. Any party in which
the Jews became active was either thereby discredited as a Jewish
faction or pushed the Jews out of the leadership. Rather than
defeat their arguments, enemies need merely--as Schnitzler
recounted--shout on the floor of Austria's parliament, "Be quiet,
Jew! Hold your jaw! Jew! Jew! Shut up!'" And while, for example,
many Socialist leaders (Rudolf Hilferding, Otto Bauer, Max and
Friedrich Adler) were Jews by origin, they were also the ones who
tried to distance themselves the most from that community.xii
While many Jews still had faith in alliances with fellow
Austrians through such parties, experience also increased cynicism.
"Who created the Liberal movement in Austria?...the Jews,"
proclaimed a disillusioned Schnitzler character. "By whom have the
Jews been betrayed and deserted? By the Liberals. Who created the
[German nationalist] movement in Austria? the Jews. By whom were
5
the Jews left in the lurch [and] spat upon like dogs!...By the
[German nationalists], and precisely the same thing will happen in
the case of Socialism and Communism. As soon as you've drawn the
chestnuts out of the fire they'll start driving you away from the
table. It always has been so and always will be so."xiii
Jews still dominated, however, the Austrian capital's cultural
and intellectual life. On Schnitzler's 1891 list of 23 literary
leaders there, at least 16 were of Jewish descent. From the late
1880s to 1904, 24 to 33 percent of Vienna University students were
Jewish, a figure held down by quotas and the fact that high civil
service or teaching posts were barred to unconverted Jews. Jews
were as many as 75 percent of lawyers and well over half the
doctors and journalists. People of Jewish descent owned or edited
all the main liberal newspapers. The intellectual salons (brought
by Jews from Berlin) and coffee houses were mainly Jewish. In
short, at least half and perhaps two-thirds of Vienna's educated
class were Jews or recently converted Jews.xiv
The Jews entered European society already convinced of the
value of education, systematic thought, and rational debate.
Breaking with tradition made them fearless rejectors of existing
dogmas and devotees of logic. Rather than using these tools to
modernize their own culture, though, Austrian and German Jews
largely saw them only in terms of the broader society. But being
less attunded or committed to that society, they had less reverence
for its traditional forms which, moreover, often conflicted with
both their assimilationist ambitions and generalized skepticism.
Jewish assimilationist artists were less likely to pain madonnas or
Jewish musicians to imitate Bach and Mozart liturgical music.
Mahler German nationalist. most progressive culture in lands
to east--Poland, Hungary, compared to Russia. Beethoven, Kant,
Schiller, Goethe, and Lessing--the last three liberals and friends
of the Jews? Also more friendly to England and France than their
counterparts. Scholem "For many Jews the encounter with Friedrich
Schiller was more real than their encounter with actual Germans."xv
[thus, Js became guardians of German culture's best values but once
identified with Jews these became sometimes suspect to the non-Jews
who turned to more reactionary ones.] liked those who championed
values similar to their pre-assimilationist ones plus those
allowing them to assimilate.
But Jewish loyalty to Austria and German culture--the very
attitudes designed to further assimilation--alienated the emerging
anti-imperial nationalist forces among Czechs, Hungarians, and
others. A few Jews, however, alienated the central government by
becoming avid advocates of these groups, too.
Given the psychic conflict between success in assimilation and
fear in being stigmatized, between one's original self and the
attempt to transform oneself, it is not surprising that Viennese
Jews invented psychoanalysis. They did not have a persecution
mania, wrote Schnitzler, since persecution was real. Their real
mania was for being hidden, left alone, and safe.
The
Viennese
6
novelist Joseph Roth satirized these attitudes of concealment--in a
book appropriately entitled Flight without End--with such anomalies
as a Jewish club that put a quota on accepting Jewish members and a
character who, hiding her Jewishness, became depressed when anyone
told a joke lest they make fun of Jews and she had to decide
whether to laugh or not.xvi
Such contradictions became the earmark of the assimilationist
dilemma. The paradox was that they had become wealthy and
successful without being truly secure or accepted. They became
Vienna's cultural glory without being Vienna's pride. They
abandoned old customs but could not conceal their background. The
situation's perfect symbol was a contemporary novel's Jewish hero
who thought to prove his Viennese identity by singing a folksong in
perfect local dialect, only to be congratulated by critics who
declared that they never knew Jews could sing Viennese songs so
well. Do what he could, he could not be merely and purely a
Viennese.xvii
The pervasive Jewish presence in cultural and intellectual
life made assimilated Jews virtually a separate caste, hated by
jealous, less successful Christian competitors.xviii In the words of
the antisemitic leader in a Viennese novel, "We must give up either
our Christian ways, our own life and customs, or the Jews. The
trouble is simply that we Austrian Aryans are no match for the
Jews, that we are ruled, oppressed, and violated by a small
minority because this minority possesses qualities which we
lack."xix In the comic book, the Christians, quickly realizing that
Vienna without Jews is too impoverished economically and
culturally, invite the expelled Jews to return.
The other paradox was that the assimilationist process
supposed to be a road to integration pushed them toward distinct
professions and ideas, engendering even more antagonism from those
opposing their perceived social impact. Assimilationist Jews, no
longer distinguished by their clothes, kosher food, or Sabbath
observance, were now set apart by their disproportionate tendencies
toward humanism, secularism, liberalism, socialism, and modernism.
Since successful assimilation was fueling antisemitism, Jews
increasingly abandoned their earlier optimism in a social contract
based on Jewish willingness to exchange religion and customs for
secular education and adherence to the dominant culture. "Neither
assimilation, Zionism, socialism, conversion, nor self-hatred would
bring closer the days when Jews could breathe easily without
persecution," historian Robert Wistrich wrote.xx But, between the
first portents of disaster in the 1880s and the onset of their
annihilation in 1938, Vienna's Jews grew a great cultural bounty
out of their constant experimentation and debate among these
alternatives.
Schnitzler most clearly presented this dialectic he defined as
the Jews' "eagerness to assimilate to an environment that despised
them" in his 1908 novel, The Road to the Open.xxi Every attitude
toward assimilation, by Jews themselves or by their Christian
neighbors, was contradictory. Thus, a highly assimilated Jewish
7
character complains of Christian compatriots "who gorge themselves
sick at Jewish houses and then [criticize] the Jews as soon as they
get on the doorsteps." They should at least wait," he adds with
typical Viennese irony, "till they got to the cafe."xxii
If they asserted their own identity, Jews were seeming to
prove the antisemites' charge that they were not truly assimilated;
to ignore their background incurred a heavy psychological price. As
Schnitzler wrote, Jews were either "ashamed of being Jews, or the
type who were proud of it and were frightened of people thinking
they were ashamed of it."xxiii
Furthermore, everyone knew that no matter how much he detached
himself from the community he might be held accountable for the
actions of any other Jew just as it was held responsible for his
behavior. It is not surprising that many assimilationist Jewish
intellectuals reacted by developing an assertive individualism
proclaiming itself to be humanist and cosmopolitan, above all
groups. Schnitzler's assimilationist character insisted that he
"felt himself akin with no one, no, not with any one in the whole
world: with the weeping Jews in [the Zionist Congress] as little as
with the bawling Pan-Germans in the Austrian Parliament; with
Jewish usurers as little as with noble robber-knights; with a
Zionist bar-keeper as little as with an [antisemitic] grocer." But
the underlying reasons for this attitude was not some detached
perception of higher truth but rather an eagerness to be left
alone, to slip the bonds of a community which seemed only to exact
a price in discrimination.xxiv
107: a Zionist said, "One really can't bear a grudge against
these people if they regard themselves as the natives and you and
me as the foreigners. After all it is only the expression of their
healthy instinct for an anthropological fact which is confirmed by
history. Neither Jewish nor Christian sentimentalism can do
anything against that and all the consequences which follow from
it."
Heinrich responds that his instinct is as good as that of the
antisemites, "And that instinct tells me infallibly that my home is
here, just here, and not in some land which I don't know, the
description of which doesn't appeal to me the least bit and which
certain people now want to persuade me is my fatherland on the
strength of the argument that was the place from which my ancestors
some thousand years ago were scattered into the world."
108: the Zionist answers, that it is an "irrelevant
circumstance, that you are an author who happens to write in the
German language because he was born in a German country, and
happens to write about Austrian people and Austrian conditions
because he lives in Austria. But the primary question is not about
you, or about me either, or even about the few Jewish officials who
do not get promoted, the few Jewish [soldiers] who do not get made
officers, the Jewish lecturers who either get their professorship
too late or not at all," the real problem was that of the Jewish
masses, a class "you know either imperfectly or not at all."
8
110: establishing a Jewish state was a nonsensical defiance of
historical progress. even the Zionist's saw his forefather's faith
as "a collection of customs which you have now ceased to observe
and some of which seem as ridiculous and in as bad taste to you, as
they do to me."
112: Heinrich tells Leo, "You will never migrate to Palestine
all your life long, even if Jewish states were founded and you were
offered a position as prime minister... [and] in spite of my
complete indifference to every single form of religion I would
positively never allow myself to be baptized, even if it were
possible--though that is less the case today than ever it was--of
escaping once and for all antisemitic bigotry and villainy by a
dodge like that."
113: "But," said Leo, "supposing the medieval stake were to be
lighted again."
"Those times will certainly not come again," objected George,
their Christian friend. The two Jews laughed that George was
assuring them in the name of all Christendom. But the stakes were
lit again, and in these characters' "life-time."
goose People of the cities, entering culture as if creating
it, unimpressed with the classical pieties--as opposed to the
academics who embraced them--remaking themselves and making the
arts and humanities. But their starting point was their experience
and situations no matter how much they universalized or abstracted
it.
Moreover, each Jewish writer or artist knew that he was being
watched to see if he was capable of transcending the narrow limits
of the ghetto. 44-45: , to comprehend, as Schnitzler has a writer
say, "heathens, Jews and Protestants, yes, even Catholics,
aristocrats and Germans, although I have heard that it is supposed
to be infinitely difficult, not to say impossible, for people like
myself." They were thus intimidated from speaking self-consciously
as a Jew or about Jews.
goose
Camille Pissarro, painter
The European Jews were also often recent immigrants from
Galicia or Eastern Europe into England or Germany, from AlsaceLorraine into France, from rural to urban areas of Austria-Hungary,
from the Pale of Settlement into Russian cities. this added to
their distance, need to assimilate, alienness to the existing
society/culture, and distinctiveness among themselves.
Vienna's classic music came from the Straus family (converted
to Catholicism in 1759); its modern music came from Schoenberg's
12-tone scale, Mahler, Alban Berg, Bela Bartok?, Bruno Walter, Otto
Klemperer, Ernest Bloch. section: served in Austrian army in World
War One. Arnold Schoenberg. opera Moses un Aron composed 1930-32.
converted to Lutheranism in 1898 for professional reasons,
reentered Jewish community in 1933 in a Paris ceremony witnessed by
Marc Chagall. A decade earlier, Schoenberg, already reacting to
slights, penned an unpublished drama, The Biblical Path. He wrote
an old associate, the painter Kandinsky, in May 1923, "What is
9
antisemitism to lead to if not to violence? Is it so difficult to
imagine that? You are perhaps satisfied with depriving Jews of
their civil rights. Then certainly Einstein, Mahler and I, and many
others, will have been got rid of. But one thing is certain: they
will not be able to exterminate those much tougher elements thanks
to whose endurance Jewry has maintained itself unaided against the
whole of mankind for 20 centuries. For these are evidently so
constituted that they can accomplish the task that their God has
imposed on them: To survive in exile, uncorrupted and unbroken,
until the hour of salvation comes."xxv
"He broke all the set rules, all accepted canons of taste and
style. He was a 'shocker' in the literal sense and hardly a major
work of his appeared without a predictable eruption of furious
criticism from the self-appointed arbiters of good taste and
guardians of moral values." He was a target of anger and abuse as
"his originality and willingness to experiment that won him the
reputation of being an enfant terrible. pp. 256-7: a bronze statue
of Christ, at the Leicester Galleries. "Immediately," wrote
Epstein, "a most hellish row broke out. The statue was reviled,
attacked by the Press, the Clergy, and tamer artists."xxvi
duck 5 Kafka section
Alter Defenses of the Imagination p. 60 Benjamin says that
Kafka writes out of a sense of desperation that the legitimating
source of morality may have disappeared Gershom Scholem, The
Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem 1932-1940 p.
xv a messianic spirit, spiritual radicalism, Jewishness without
religious orthodoxy, messianic and romantic as opposed to the
highly rational, liberal dominant German Jewish outlook.
In 1912 Ernst Bloch remarked that for his generation "the
social manifestations of submissiveness and self-deprecation have
disappeared." Instead, was "an anticipation" of a messianic change
that would manifest itself in many of the schools produced by that
generation of Jews. to gain secret knowledge and regain lost truth.
p. xxii: In Paris, Benjamin told Scholem--who hoped to
convince him to migrate to Palestine--that he would soon start
studying Hebrew. Scholem arranged a meeting with Judah Magnes,
chancellor of the Hebrew University, and Benjamin spoke of his
plans to emigrate but although Scholem secured for him a stipend to
study Hebrew in 1929, Benjamin confessed to Magnes that he was
"encountering a pathological vacillation."
p. xxvi: Benjamin wrote, "Life among the emigres is
unbearable, life alone is no more bearable, and a life among the
French cannot be brought about" (42). Georg Forster, whose letter
from Paris exile almost 150 years earlier Benjamin quoted, "I have
no homeland, no fatherland, no friends anymore, everything which
once clung to me has abandoned me to assume new bonds and when I
think about the past and what of it I am still bound to, it is
merely a matter of my own choice and my imagination."
p. xxviii: Hannah Arendt, who knew him in Paris, denied that
Benjamin was indecisive but rather attributed to him "the bitter
10
insight that all solutions were not only objectively false and
inappropriate to reality, but would lead him personally to a false
salvation, no matter whether that salvation was labeled Moscow or
Jerusalem."
p. xxvx: Benjamin thought Kafka's theme was the exile from a
tradition which had been the source of knowledge and truth with
nothing to replace it. The remaining "bits and pieces" offered more
in their dissipation than does the most coherent philosophical
system in its completeness. But like a living organism which has
died, this body of feeling and knowledge could not be resurrected.
p. 264: Scholem to Benjamin 1940, Horkheimer's essay "The Jews and
Europe." The author has neither any conception of the Jewish
problem nor any interest in it. It's obvious that at root no such
problem exists for him." p. 265: Even in the face of the Jews'
expulsion from Europe, and perhaps annihilation, "The Jews interest
him not as Jews, but only from the standpoint of the fate of the
economic category they represent for him." The left's inability to
deal with the Jews and its own Jewishness was a key element in its
dehumanization of people in general. "Well, with such wisdom
dialectics is prostituted, and all I can say is that anyone who has
such an idea of the meaning of pogroms has nothing to say of worth
on the subject."
Robert Alter, After the Tradition p. 28 Knowing he was the
token Jew at his office, Kafka had daily reinforced his identity, a
"negative awareness of Jewishness as a condition of being unwanted,
mistrusted, transparently dependent on the favor of others." He saw
his generation of Jews as standing uncertainly at the irrevocable
end of a long era of Jewish history, which impelled him to ask what
could be preserved or created in its place.
p. 29 "We walk through the broad streets of the newly built
town. But our steps and our glances are uncertain. Inside we
tremble just as before in the ancient streets of our misery. Our
heart knows nothing of the slum clearance which has been achieved.
The unhealthy old Jewish town within us is far more real than the
new hygienic town around us. With our eyes open we walk through a
dream: ourselves only a ghost of a vanished age." it might be
observed that what he has in effect described here is the
imaginative landscape of all three of his novels--the hidden alleys
and sinister attics of The Trial, the medieval squalor and
confusion of the courtyards, the dubious inns and devious byways in
The Castle, and even the new-world landscape of Amerika, which
begins with skyscrapers but breaks off in a dark and filthy garret
where the protagonist is held prisoner.
p. 30 Kafka's fable of a wanderer through awesome eternity,
whatever Gracchus's universal character, "the words and images his
inventor chooses for him resonate with the experience of rejection
and exclusion of many generations: `Nobody will read what I say
here, no one will come to help me; even if all the people were
commanded to help me, every door and window would remain shut,
everybody would take to bed and draw the bedclothes over his head,
the whole earth would become an inn for a night.'" This is what
11
often happens with Jewish writers: extremely non-Jewish characters
reflect Jewish experience and worldview.
(the key to creativity is not only where the author is going
but also where he is coming from)
p. 32 The very contrast between human and Jew was one that
modernizing
Jews
themselves
implicitly
accepted
in
their
desperation for a way out. The poet Y.L. Gordon's famous line, "Be
a man outside and a Jew at home," summed up this whole
self-negating mentality as articulated in the Hebrew Enlightenment,
Kafka copied this statement into his diary.
Robert Alter, Necessary Angels p. 30 It must be remembered how
little Jewish literature existed in English, Russian, German and
French in those days) His grandfather's original name was Scholem.
In his later years, having become a Wagner enthusiast, he assumed
the first name of Siegfried.
pp. 31-2 the rebellion against bourgeois origins and for
radical solutions was closely associated with a rebellion against
the parents' assimilationism. (significance of word "universal" as
means or end in itself). Kafka found emptiness in his father's
perfunctory preservation of a highly vestigial Judaism--like
millions of children in the decades to come--and the consequent
spiritual vacuum. He fantasizes that if his father had remained
remained anchored in traditional practice, they might have met on
the common ground of Judaism.
p. 33 "Most young Jews who began to write German wanted to
leave Jewishness behind them, and their fathers approved of this,
but vaguely (this vagueness was what was so outrageous to them).
But with their posterior legs they were still glued to their
fathers' Jewishness and with their waving anterior legs they found
no new ground. The ensuing despair became their inspiration...The
product of their despair could not be German literature, though
outwardly it seemed to be so." (insect!)
Scholem [Ahad ha-Am model] used the tools of German
scholarship to explore the world of Jewish mysticism,
p. 42 Near the end, Kafka said he would be content to live in
any clement southern region, devoting himself to Hebrew.(compare to
Woody's line in film) (readers don't understand: Kafka wanted to
escape, not celebrate, alienation.)
Reaching back to a world in
every respect antithetical to the realm of Hermann Kafka's shop and
bourgeois apartment and his thin veneer of Prague German. he was
desperately concerned with the idea of revelation and the human
effort to relate to a realm of the transcendent
[Scholem succeeded, Kafka tried, Benjamin forgot the question]
To study Jewish texts could provide neither intellectual solutions
nor spiritual redemption for the dying Kafka, but it did put him in
touch with something he could feel was authentic. In the absence of
hope, he settled for truth, a truth of historical identity in which
his people had imagined, legally defined, questioned and quarreled
about its role in the world and its relationship with God.
p. 43 Much later, in a letter following the painful one in
which Benjamin had renounced his plans for coming to Palestine, he
12
attested to the fact that all his interest in Judaism had been
through the medium of his friend Gerhard.
Benjamin first undertakes the study of Hebrew in 1920 but
abandons it after a few months. Five years later, he writes
Scholem, who moved to Jerusalem in 1922, announces his turn toward
Marxism and talks of travelling to Moscow or joining the Communist
Party (he never did). Moscow and Jerusalem are opposites and yet
are both radical routes away from the German bourgeois origins he
sought to escape, a point Benjamin partly understood. (Jerusalem
was the more radical, requiring a deeper personal
p. 49 the tension between the desire to expose and the need to
conceal that most writers feel, and perhaps German-Jewish writers
more than most
p. 57 the basis of virtually every Kafka plot: "there was some
dreadful misunderstanding between them which neither could
resolve."
p. 72 The Hebrew orientation was based on deriving truth from
the text rather than the external world. "Turn it over, and turn it
over again, for everything is in it," according to Ben Bag-Bag's
famous formulation in the Mishnah Avot. (conditioned expectation of
science, nature, Marxism, etc.)
p. 73 Kafka, marooned in ordinary existence and mentally
straining after an impossibly removed realm of transcendence,
conjures up his own version of Abraham. His version "was prepared
to satisfy the demand for a sacrifice immediately, with the
promptness of a waiter, but was unable to bring it off because he
could not get away, being indispensable."
("Highway 61 Revisited") But another view of Abraham was as a
man who wanted to follow God's will "but could not believe that he
was the one meant, he, an ugly old man, and the dirty youngster
that was his child." He has faith and is willing to be obedient but
is afraid of being a Don Quixote, "afraid that the world would
laugh itself to death at the sight of him."
p. 116 '"An angel, then!" I thought;
"it has been flying
towards me all the day and in my disbelief I did not know it. Now
it will speak to me." I lowered my eyes. When I raised them again
the angel was still there, it is true, hanging rather far under the
ceiling (which had closed again), but it was no living angel, only
a painted wooden figurehead off the prow of some ship, one of the
kind that hangs from the ceiling in sailors' taverns, nothing more.
The hilt of the sword was made in such a way as to hold candles
and catch the dripping tallow.
I had pulled the electric light
down, I didn't want to remain in the dark, there was still one
candle left, so I got up on a chair, stuck the candle into the hilt
of the sword, lit it, and then sat late into the night under the
angel's faint flame.'
(from magic to function, from religion to
nation?)
Kafka: indeterminate, tentative, could not be decisive even
about reality. Gregor Samsa tries to ignore his metamorphosis into
a gigantic insect as if it didn't happen though it conquers him and
totally takes over his family's perception of him. Theme: entry of
13
a small piece of supernatural into life or the yearning for it;
search for something which may or many not exist. looking for God
though stripped of tradition (which is quite different from not
looking for at all). A favorite theme: the frontier town so remote
from the capital it has been forgotten. Perhaps the government has
ceased to exist altogether? God but also J situation. another the
ability to flow in and out of society and norms: the travelling
salesman who becomes an insect and the ape who becomes a person.
the uncompleted task (Pirkay Avot) which perhaps has lost its
meaning altogether. the vagueness of time and place for these are
secondary for the one outside, for whom they are not acceptable as
the sole conceivable reality.
Franz Kafka, a neurotic personality as well as a great writer,
lived with his parents while working in the Workers' Accident
Insurance Institute of Prague. 1883-1924. Whatever one considers
his subjective, individual, psychological motivation, objectively
he did reproduce many of the problems and situation of Prague Jews.
to assimilate or to stay in community; to support the Czechs or the
Austrian empire; the Czech or German languages; to emigrate to
America or Palestine; support the status quo or revolution. Franz's
father spoke both languages and was secular, though member of a
group to fight antisemitism. Franz went through Yiddish period. man
without country or language or community. The Trial 1915 was like
blood libel or inescapable sin. The Castle 1922 is a different
aspect, the inability to get in. The Great Wall of China about
emperor's orders which must be obeyed no matter how illogical can
be seen as God. Kafka, in his context was very Jewish because of
context for example writing in German in Prague was not a German
act but a Jewish act. Jewish Variation
Kafka's three sisters died in concentration camps. K said xix
men "will try to grind the synagogue to dust by destroying the Jews
themselves" passing Prague synagogue. Hermann Kafka proud of
assimilation and son accused "it all dribbled away while you were
passing it on." read Graetz "Because my desire for it had far
outrun the reading, it was at first stranger than I had thought,
and I had to stop here and there in order by resting to allow my
Jewishness to collect itself." xix quoted 1911 diary. studied
Hebrew. (was Dreyfus case the main thing that would have made him
think about a penal colony?) Kafka did not seem to be made happy by
his rootlessness though many outsiders would seem to see it as a
beneficial state.
"Description of a Struggle," "Why, by the way, was I so intent
on staying with him?...I'll stay with him and slowly he'll draw the
dagger...and then plunge it into me." pp. 15-16 And "Why it is that
around me things sink away like fallen snow, whereas for other
people even a little liqueur glass stands on the table steady as a
statue." p. 34. 37: "Just look at yourself! The entire length of
you is cut out of tissue paper, yellow tissue paper, like a
silhouette, and when you walk one ought to hear you rustle....You
can't help bending to whatever draft happens to be in the room."
40: "What makes you all behave as though you were real? Are you
14
trying to make me believe I'm unreal, standing here absurdly on the
green pavement? You, sky, surely it's a long time since you've been
real, and as for you Ringplatz, you never have been real." 41:
"It's negligent of me to go on calling you so-called moon, moon.
Why do your spirits fall when I call you `forgotten paper lantern
of a strange color'?"
Kafka, "To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an
understanding with people is hard." p. 223 "The Country Doctor."
Kafka The priest read, "Ancient history told long ago, old
sorrows long since healed. And though...the gruesomeness of the
living present was irrefutably conveyed...we laughed and shook our
heads and refused to listen any longer.So eager are our people to
obliterate the present. If from such appearances anyone should draw
the conclusion that in reality we have no Emperor, he would not be
far from the truth. Over and over again it must be repeated. There
is perhaps no people more faithful to the Emperor than ours...but
the Emperor derives no advantage from our fidelity." p. 146 "The
Great Wall of China."
"A Report to an Academy," from ape to civilized man and
entertainer. "No one promised me that if I became like them the
bars of my cage would be taken away. Such promises for apparently
impossible contingencies are not given. But if one achieves the
impossible, the promises appear later retrospectively precisely
where one had looked in vain for them before." the men were no
great attraction but "It was so easy to imitate these people." 255
p. 257: "I repeat there was no attraction for me in imitating human
beings. I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no
other reason."
"A Hunger Artist" "Why stop fasting at that particular moment,
after forty days of it? He had held out for a long time, an
illimitably long time; why stop now....Why should he be cheated of
the fame he would get for fasting longer," for not only being the
record hunger artist of all time but also beating his own record.
p. 271./ 272: if someone pointed out that his melancholy was
probably caused by fasting, he reacted with an outburst of fury and
began shaking the bars of his cage. 273 public deserted. 277:
secret "because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found
it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like
you or anyone else."
Kafka has a canine hero describe dog society: "We are drawn to
each other and nothing can prevent us from satisfying the communal
impulse; all our laws and institutions, the few that I still know
and the many that I have forgotten, go back to this longing for the
greatest bliss we are capable of, the warm comfort of being
together." Although living in such wide dispersion and being so
different, their "one desire is to stick together" even though many
individuals hold "firmly to laws that are not those of the dog
world, but are actually directed against it." It is tempting to
ignore these questions--and he understands the standpoint of those
who choose to ignore them--but he cannot help being obsessed by
them.xxvii
15
And the mice (later picked up in Maus) "Josephine The Singer
or the Mouse Folk" 367: "Our life is very uneasy, every day brings
surprises, apprehensions, hopes, and terrors, so that it would be
impossible for a single individual to bear it all did he not always
have by day and night the support of his fellows; but even so it
often becomes very difficult; frequently as many as a thousand
shoulders are trembling under a burden that was really meant for
only one pair." Josephine, religion? provides the relief but also
endangers 366: "When we are in a bad way politically or
economically, her singing is supposed to save us, nothing less than
that, and if it does not drive away the evil, at least gives us the
strength to bear it." 370-1: claims to give us new strength, why
else would they gather when danger is closest and even thus
hindering proper precautions to avert it.
399: "A Dream" saw own grave in dream. 437: "The Problem of
Our Laws" ancient, not generally known, kept by nobles "It is an
extremely painful thing to be ruled by laws that one does not
know." their interpretation has been the work of centuries and has
itself become law though there is still a restricted freedom of
interpretation. but when try to adjust selves for present or future
"everything becomes uncertain, and our work seems only an
intellectual game." some say do not exist, arbitrary, if someone
would repudiate all belief in laws and nobility would have people
behind it but none dare repudiate.
Gershon Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, Prussia, like
Russia, permitted (ex-Polish) Jews to live in the big cities only
if useful. typical liberal middle class, highly assimilated. 9-10:
father forbade use of Jewish expressions but mother used. an uncle
who was a Zionist also used at family get-togethers partly to twit
father. observed Friday evening as family night and seder. kiddush
chanted but only half understood, Sabbath candles used to light a
cigarette or cigar afterward, deliberate mockery. Passover had
bread and matzos. father went to work on YK and no fasting. while
grandmother and uncle's wives observed and went to synagogue. once
or twice a year father made speech at dinner table in praise of
Jewish mission to proclaim pure monotheism and a rational morality.
baptism he said was servile and unprincipled. newsletter of Berlin
Jewish Community Council around 1910 started printing names of
those converting, some tried to take legal action to prevent
exposure. given variety of family members, one could choose
philosophy among their influences (though this probably decline in
mobile, nuclear family America).
26: "Most Jews lacked discrimination in all matters affecting
themselves, yet in all other matters they mustered that faculty for
reasoning, criticism, and vision which others have justifiably
admired or criticized in them. This capacity for self-deception is
one of the most important and dismal aspects of the German-Jewish
relationship." punctured by humor.
Scholem p. 78: bizarre juxtaposition, thus a group of wellmeaning young German Jews who wanted to do social work among
Eastern Jews in Berlin debated over whether it would be all right
16
to hang a reproduction of a famous painting of the virgin Mary at a
community center for poor but Orthodox Jewish families. an idea
quickly shot down, one should add.
84: when brother charged treason for participating in a
leftist demonstration during World War One, Scholem's father blew
up and said that Socialism and Zionism were anti-German activities
which he would no longer permit. On February 15, 1917, he sent
Gershom a registered letter, addressed to his own house, giving him
two weeks to move out. (They later reconciled.) Arthur Scholem made
a great show of his staunch German identity but Gershom noted that
virtually all his father's social acquaintances was a Jew.xxviii
131: called the Frankfurt School one of the "most remarkable
`Jewish sects' that German Jewry produced."
135-36:
even
in
the
early
1920s
the
city
was
"unbearable....There was no disregarding the huge, blood-red
posters with their no less bloodthirsty text" announcing Hitler's
speeches. "But it was frightening to encounter the blindness of the
Jews who refused to see and acknowledge all that" and Munich Jews
"became extremely angry and jumpy when someone broached that
subject." the point was not necessarily to know that Hitler would
take power a decade later but that there was still mass support for
such a movement showed how scant the result of a century of effort
at gaining acceptance. And, Scholem commented, p. 151. "In those
days we did not know, of course, that Hitler was going to come, but
we did know that, in view of the task of a radical renewal of
Judaism and Jewish society, Germany was a vacuum in which we would
choke. This is what drove people like myself and my friends to
Zionism."
144-6: brother became Communist deputy, expelled from party,
remained independent Communist, imprisoned by Nazis when they came
to power and murdered in Buchenwald in 1940, went to a speech by
his brother to workers and told him "Don't fool yourself..behind
your back nothing will change." has heard one of the workers say,
"The Jew makes a nice speech."
Germany's
Stepchildren
Walter
Rathenau,
economist
and
industrialist. "I will confess at the outset that I am a Jew," he
wrote p. 139 called on them to discard all ethnic characteristics
and because it was their burden to appeal to fellow Germans. to
merge
totally,
did
not
defend
but
convinced
that
were
alien/foreign; German society was preferable, there were no
important differences between Christianity and the views of
educated Jews but conversion was insufficient because those who
didn't convert would still endanger those who did. Aryan society
was superior and Jews would benefit from joining it (of course, he
wanted the opportunity to be open to join it, contrary to the
antisemites), the Germans were the most superior civilization.
accused by other Jews of furthering antisemitism, his intentions
were good but the effect was disastrous and his work would later be
distributed by the Nazis. he had withdrawn and not republished.
144: "I have and I know no other blood than German, no other stem,
no other people. If I am driven from my German soil, I shall remain
17
German and nothing will be altered....I share nothing with the Jews
what every German shares with them." and so on. 144-5:
"Antisemitism and local nationalism are for me on an equal plane;
if I examine myself closely I find that I am hurt more if a
Bavarian declaims against the Prussians than if he does so against
the Jews." in 1920 refused to fight against antisemitism since that
was bound to collapse. it was a logical theory: race was
irrelevant, everyone was most like one's neighbors of similar
social class. thus, the price of demanding others give up their
provincialism was to show that one had given up one's own, there
was no need to convert since it would be counterproductive to join
another group rather than to try to dissolve all groups. (compare
to story told in Marx's German Ideology.) in somewhat less intense
form, much of the belief system of Jewish intellectuals in large
numbers. (see Asimov). became Foreign Minister reluctantly and
assassinated in 1922, wrote a few days before death. p. 150: it was
his destiny to be ever ready to lift from others the burden which
oppressed them, while he himself remained without desire." note
important: this previous statement is the suffering servant, again
a typical statement of Jewish ideology among intellectuals.
Moreover, other Jews would pay heavily for his behavior since as a
traitorous politician he would become a central part of Nazi
arguments to prove that Jews were unpatriotic and responsible for
Germany's problems. In short, he twice (writing, politics) by
acting as if discrimination did not exist brought it on
disastrously. It was not in the end those who remained faithful to
community or faith who endangered those who totally assimilated or
converted but the exact opposite.
155-56: when Nietzsche, who was far more pro-Jewish than
realized, asked what Europe owed them he wrote above all, "the
grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite
demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and
sublimity of moral questionableness--and consequently just the most
attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those iridescences
and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our
European culture, its evening sky, now glows--perhaps glows out."
Theodor Lessing like Rathenau became a German super-patriot,
Jews as Asiatics in between, compared Jews 166-67 to a beautiful
body, tortured and poisoned, then exhibited tho show its wounds as
proving how unworthy and ugly it was. (but the point was that the
wounds still existed). vitality burst out but exhausted during
emancipation. but the Balfour declaration made him belief Jews
could renew themselves though depressed about rise of Nazism. 16869: [no way out] "We were told: you are parasites on the land of
others--and so we tore ourselves loose. We were told: you are the
middlemen among the peoples--and so we raised our children to be
farmers and peasants. We were told: you are decaying and becoming
cowardly weaklings--and so we went into battles and produced the
best soldiers. We were told: everywhere you are only tolerated--and
we answered our greatest longing is to be an object of tolerance no
more. But we insisted on maintaining ourselves as a distinct
18
people, we were told: have you not yet learned that your preserving
your distinctiveness is treason against all international pan-human
values?" and when placed self "under the protection of the European
conscience"
more oppression "From nowhere can help be expected.
Hereafter each Jew must plan his own salvation." learning to love
his fate, "Let him learn to love this people and to help in its
resurgence. He is not only the son of some peddling tradesman and
some insignificant woman, but also the offspring of Judas Maccabee
and Queen Esther. He is a link in a chain that reaches back to Saul
and David and Moses. By regenerating himself and by assuming his
share of the suffering and struggle that fall to the lot of Jews,
let him pave the way for a brighter heaven for his children and the
children of his people." but he like Rathenau was killed, by German
agents in 1933.
Jacob Wassermann. historic world mission is more important
than establishing state which would remove that. 177: shocking,
"Let the Jews be killed or exiled, let them be made the bugaboo of
children and an object of scorn: al this would be less fatal for
the culture of mankind than if the Jews themselves were to give up
the role which they have hitherto played in the world arena, in
accordance with their mission and destiny." (again reflects ideas
of many, but usually others suffered) decided that Jews would soon
disappear, said every European village meant more to him than the
soil of the so-called Holy Land, even in exile he would remain a
German. the state would never survive and who needed another state?
German Jews had little in common with those of other countries.
anti-eastern Jews and spoke disparagingly of them, even in terms
which sound antisemitic. even if Jewish blood had once been
inferior, it had been improved by being in the West and in Germany.
180-81: He, too, voiced disgust at the inability of reason to
triumph: "Vain to adjure the nation of poets and thinkers in the
name of its poets and thinkers. Every prejudice one things disposed
of breeds a thousand others, as carrion breeds maggots. Vain to
present the right cheek after the left has been struck. It does not
move them to the slightest thoughtfulness; it neither touches nor
disarms them....Vain to act in exemplary fashion....Vain to seek
obscurity. They say: The coward!....Vain to go among them and offer
them one's hand. They say: Why does he take such liberties, with
his Jewish obtrusiveness? Vain to keep faith with them, as a
comrade-in-arms or a fellow citizen. They say: He is Proteus, he
can assume any shape or form. Vain to help them strip off the
chains of slavery. They say: No doubt he found it profitable. Vain
to counteract the poison. They brew fresh venom. Vain to live for
them and die for them. They say: He is a Jew." (Itzig) What can be
done? nothing. best selling novelist, died 1933, blessed not to see
what came next, beyond even his wildest nightmares.
184-94 Otto Weininger, convert 1902 and suicide in 1903. Jews
as women and as lowest nation, England. Aryanism superior because
he wanted acceptance and was willing to die for it. Judaism was
Platonic idea which one could desert for others. Arthur Trebitsch
his disciple. Viennese. both Judaism and Christianity were ruins,
19
threat from Jewish race, he had evolved into pure Aryan, eastern
Jews were threat, must be expelled, Jews must be forcibly Aryanized
through forced labor, Jews responsible for loss of World War One,
England-Jewish alliance. would bring decline of West, the best
weapons were those who had recovered from Jewishness (Middle Ages)
because understood danger better. Believed Protocols. died 1927
lectured on Jewish menace, views very much paralleled Nazis.
Extreme cases, but driven mad by the lack of the exist described by
Lessing and Wassermann. Ernst Toller, poet committed suicide in May
1939, first life, 20 to 30, German patriot returned from France to
fight in World War I on last train before border closed, fought at
front and became anti-war, leader of 1919 leftist uprising in
Bavaria, five years in prison. second, 30 to 40, dramatist and
famous
anti-bourgeois
playwright.
internationalist,
world
brotherhood, rejected boundaries, pacifist, then concluded had
undermined Weimar Republic, went to Spain in support of republic
there. could not face the senselessness of another war.
autobiography, I Was a German. grandparents Orthodox, father German
culture in Polish area, still tied to Jewish community; Ernst
wanted to escape, saw as superior German in Slavic region. young
patriot (198-99) but his fellow Germans spoke of Jews committing
ritual murder, patriot, then socialist, then cosmopolitan humanist.
200: when boy experienced pain when the others called him Jew,
"overwhelming joy when I was not recognized as a Jew" in war
passionately wanted to prove self German and at front had name
erased from Jewish roles, Goethe, German language. but also a Jew.
a people in whom the boldest "never bowed and preferred to die
rather than to be unfaithful. I wanted to repudiate my mother. I am
ashamed of myself. That a child was compelled to resort to such
lies,w hat a horrible indictment against all who drove him to it."
but wasn't Germany also the land of his birth, formed by its
spirit, wasn't he a German writer. 201: "The words: I am proud to
be a German, or: I am proud to be a Jew, sound as foolish to me as
if a person were to say: I am proud to have brown eyes. Must I
succumb to the madness of my persecutors and accept Jewish instead
of German arrogance?" he would say "a Jewish mother brought me into
this world, Germany has nourished me, Europe has educated me, my
home is this earth, and the world my fatherland."
Franz Werfel the discovery of Christianity afresh. "The
Eternal Road" set to synagogue-type music by Kurt Weill staged in
1936 a Jewish community trapped during a night of pogrom awaiting
the decision whether they will die or be exiled, read Bible
allowing reenactment. but characters and scenes shown largely
unsympathetic, degraded. God haggling with Abraham over saving
Sodom, the near sacrifice of Isaac, lying, theft. 206: novel
showing Catholicism provided the unity of mankind "The unity was
real, even though incomplete. It was more universal than anything
else on earth, for it cut across all races and classes." faith over
logic [irony for criticizing Judaism on these grounds]. Negative
Jewish characters. 207: "An infernally cunning fellow, this Jew. He
managed to get onto the right side in good time."
20
Stefan Zweig: the very symbol of internationalist humanism.
212: suicide note "After I saw the country of my own language fall,
and my spiritual land--Europe--destroying itself, and I have
reached the age of sixty, it would require immense strength to
reconstruct my life, and my energy is exhausted by long years of
peregrination as one without a country. [the wandering Jew]
Therefore, I believe it is time to end a life that was dedicated
only to spiritual work, considering human liberty and my own as the
greatest wealth in the world." Herzl published his first article,
assimilationist, pan-Europe. his Jewish background made him
underestimate
nationalist
conflict,
"irrational"
elements--a
different rationality from his own, and the likelihood of progress.
Like others before (Heine) and after (Ehrenberg) him, Zweig would
be the bridge among nations, explaining Russian culture to the
West, the French to the Germans. increasingly avoided Jewish
themes, characters and problems because--irony of irony--these
detracted from his cosmopolitanism. In other words, cosmopolitanism
became the understanding of all and the ignoring of the Jews
because once bringing this up revealed his own particular stance
(see al-Afghani). 1937: The Buried Candelabrum a short novel
affirming his Jewishness, the Jews are blamed for adversity though
they suffer as much as their neighbors, prayer was their sole
escape. But now people did not know why they were being martyrs and
would not act as such for no reason.
The image of Ahasverus, the Wandering Jew.
On Vienna: 213-14: Their longing for gaiety, frivolity, and
irresponsibility alternated with their desire to serve, to suffer,
and to shoulder responsibilities." this mixed mood by alternative
pulls between the contemplation of beauty and the knowledge of its
limits. chasing after pleasures and sensing that this was somehow
antithetical to life's purpose or essence, melancholy joy--a very
Jewish characteristic, wedding ceremony the glass is broken to
symbolize the mourning of the temple's destruction. puzzlement, of
having been recently deprived of the hitherto accepted answers and
no new ones being formulated have all-encompassing skepticism.
rationalists and aesthetes. Gustav Landauer, who favored an ethnic
view which blended Zionism, assimilation, and humanitarianism said
(234-5) just before World War One, "Since mankind is...a garden, we
shall have to put up with the fact that not all trees have the same
bark. If a human being feels a quality in himself which unites him
with others who also feel it then it will always be hard for an
outsider to talk him out of it." "I do not find in our day so many
communal relationships which reach back for thousands of years that
I should gladly dispense with one of them, especially when I have
no reason for doing so." beaten then shot by German officers in a
Bavarian prison in 1918. His last words (238) "I've not betrayed
you. You don't know yourselves how terribly you've been betrayed."
231 "I accept my fate as it is. My Germanism and my Jewishness
do each other no harm but much good. As two brothers, a first-born
and a Benjamin, are loved by a mother--not in the same way but with
equal intensity--and as these two brothers live in harmony with
21
each other both whenever their paths proceed in common and also
whenever each goes his own way alone, even so do I experience this
strange and intimate unity in duality as something precious and I
fail to recognize in this relationship that one is primary and
another secondary." neither reconcile nor abandon this duality but
hopes it leads to an even higher level.
239: Richard Beer-Hofmann to Herzl after reading The Jewish
State, "At last, once again a human being who does not bear his
Judaism resignedly as a burden or as a misfortune, but who, on the
contrary, is proud to be among the legitimate heirs of an ancient
culture."
duck 6 Freud
The man who wrote that [the quote which opens the chapter]
could not be guilty of self-hatred, secular Jew, what is left in
the first place is pride and loyalty. Freud, "Nor is it perhaps
entirely a matter of chance that the first advocate of
psychoanalysis was a Jew. To profess belief in this new theory
called for a certain degree of readiness to accept a position of a
solitary opposition--a position with which no one is more familiar
than a Jew."xxix
Freud is a model of courage in this regard. influences on
Freud: concept of choice of character as mitigated by roots and
circumstances; conflict between fathers and sons over assimilation
degree of progression; in which the past of one's development
[childhood] affects one's self even without awareness [the
subconscious] and in which that profoundly developmental past is
buried [repression].
What did Freud's famous statement that he was "a godless Jew"
mean? It is usually interpreted as indicating his distance from
Judaism but it can be more obviously read as saying that even
though he was an atheist, he was still a Jew, the wording is chosen
to play on an anti-semitic phrase but he is simply saying that he
is a secular Jew.
The notion of Freud and psychoanalysis as a science should
provoke nothing more than laughter, it is a literary-philosophical
movement, an application of imagination to society closer to that
of a novelist than to that of a chemist or physicist or even a
historian or statistician. it is the very subjectivity of Freud and
his followers which make many of them so fearful that their
particular stand in time and space be uncovered and displayed.
making of myths which are supposed to be rough approximation of
life cycle experiences--yet supposedly universal and timeless, the
liberal assimilationist view that what was specific stood for all
humanity when it was on a much smaller scale. at one time, irony of
ironies, reasserting the Jewish claim to leadership and chosenness
within the context of dissolving it in the mass of humanity. Thus,
whatever came out of the mind of Freud or Marx or the Frankfurt
school or so many others took an arrogant position of being Truth,
accumulated its own prooftexts, and pled its special case with the
voice of humanity.
Psychoanalysis is the painful uncovering of a past which one
22
would prefer to keep hidden--what better analogy for the crisis of
assimilation--and yet only by digging out this past and facing it
can one free oneself of the past or of one's problems by
integrating it.? [like Marxism, would not turn its analytical tools
on itself--M, all history of class domination but the nomenklatura
class which controls the state and means of production? and for
psycho not take into account the psycho stance on which it stands.
As Marx wrote--but ignored--even the educator must be educated.
ideas come from somewhere] Fascination with agent history, problem
with Rome, identification with the "Semite" anti-Roman Hannibal.
owned an old menorah, a postcard he said with the arch of Titus
with Freud writing "The Jews survives it!" the Talmud in German and
Aramaic. two kiddush cups--as well as lots of other ancient things.
Freud's well-known obsession with Moses, the closest thing to the
creator of his previous faith.xxx
Freud was an atheist but he was also a secular Jew,
emotionally attached to his people and relatively free of complexes
for his era. His irreligiosity was irrelevant to his identity, as
was the fact that he was a scientist and rationalist. mother spoke
Yiddish father gave family Bible rebound on 35 birthday rebound and
with an elaborate dedication in Hebrew (BUT why did father write in
that language since Freud claimed he didn't know it). because took
in stride, his attitude has been taken for granted. last book Moses
and Monotheism (1939). Freud understated his background, friends
mostly Jews, married a woman from an observant family. Sabina
Spielrein after break with Jung in 1912, "We are and remain Jews.
The others will only exploit us, and will never understand and
appreciate us.xxxi
a rationalist history: Moses was an Egyptian,
became monotheist threw Ikhnaton, murdered by Israeli slaves. based
on killing and monotheism revived only later. done in line with
Totem and Taboo expresses own relationship to father. yet Freud's
equation of the break with parents (a normal process) escalating as
murder may indicate his own feeling of breaking line and tradition.
after all, many writers have stressed continuity in life and the
progression from generation to generation. sharp break is an
indication of Freud's own experience. would, say, an Austrian
peasant who takes over family's plot and way of life would not see
it as murdering the father. The last Jew murders a whole long
string of ancestors going back three or four thousand years.
Freud called scientific creativity, the "succession of
daringly playful fantasy and relentlessly realistic criticism"xxxii
a common combination in Jewish intellectual life, freed from
existing premises and thus more easily able to abandon or critique
them, having an alternative history and tradition to stand on.
View of Freud coming from highly assimilated family, Reform
Jewish. Yet even the minimal case analysis do not bury what their
was, its significance for the time, and Freud's own discussion of
these points. rather typical, Freud's mother religious, gave mother
Orthodox funeral though he did not attend, may have maintained
kosher home. Yiddish. father had religious studies, yeshiva,
German-Hebrew Bible. not turning away but co-existence. The refusal
23
to see Freud's Jewishness was an inability to see any kind of
"faithful assimilationist" as opposed to Abandoner, yet there were
many like Freud and it is now the mainstream position of Jewish
communities in the United States, England, France, and many other
places. Like many Jews of his generation, Freud worked himself
backward from earlier rebellion, claiming to know nothing, to have
forgotten all his Hebrew, when he says of an inscribed book that
the dedication is "evidently" written in Hebrew, protests too much.
the Bible seems to carry Freud's notations. It was a generation in
which the most outspoken atheists were those who would revive the
Hebrew language, nation, mutual assistance, self-defense, and a
whole new body of literature. In 1931 wrote Dr. David Feuchtwang,
"I am a fanatical Jew. I am very much astonished to discover myself
as such in spite of all efforts to be unprejudiced and impartial."
last part is especially interesting as reflects his scientific
view. Publicly, limited contacts because of career, desire to
promote psychoanalysis, and his whole intellectual framework as a
scientist: he wanted to prove not only that his system did not
derive from a derided group but from no group at all, that it was
objective and scientific fact about the very foundation and essence
of humanity, unaffected by his historical era, place of residence,
and background. In a sense, Moses and Monotheism is an attempt--and
not
one
of
the
better
ones
by
far--to
give
a
historic/sociological/psychological basis to the strength of Jewish
feeling. While Freud's specific arguments are ridiculed, the basic
approach is very much accepted today. book saw both J as preferable
and gave a theory of antisemitism. The way his own father
romanticized family background was to claim the family came from
German Jewish or Sephardic origins rather than the lower status
eastern European Jews. some observance in Freud's family. Freud's
hopes for assimilation were disappointed, but--far short of
fascism--so were those of many others.
Diller p. 13: "The history of psychoanalysis is inextricably
bound up with the ethnic identity of its founder, Sigmund Freud."
worst nightmare for those who disagree, note ethnic identity. Freud
understandably worried about this point but he never did anything
dishonorable. and the literature has tried to hide this point,
since it is supposed to be objective science. but this is problem
since the productions of Jews in literature and social sciences-not in exact sciences--flavored by their background, which could
enhance their insights but feared would discredit them. Of course,
to say that Freud was detached from his origins should be as alien
to psychoanalysis--since it saw people rooted in them--as say
Marxism would deny the importance of ethnic/national/religious
roots in their materialistic philosophy-but did so, of course and
to its own intellectual loss. Many of analysts, like Marxists, had
themselves abandoned Jewish religious and ethnic backgrounds and
hated them as well as seeing them next to their images as champions
of truth. thus they were respectively ignoring the complex and
bourgeois nature of themselves. Their handling of the issue gave
the lie to their own philosophy (see Afghani). p. 16: wrote "My
24
merit in the Jewish cause is confined to a single point: that I
have never denied my Jewishness." [the evidence on Freud is so
ridiculously abundant that denial of it indicates a neurosis,
though also a problem of differentiating religion from ethnicity.
Claimed did not know Yiddish or Hebrew when had some knowledge,
dreamed about Herzl play but did not write up author's name when
recounting the dream. p. 21. (the problem has often been the
cutting out or ignoring of Freud's Jewish references. The study of
freud has in itself been a fascinating example of assimilation.
Freud's courting of Carl Jung, who chose as heir (like Jewish
socialists and communists) break painful and Jung's philo-Nazi
tendencies. tremendous emotional turmoil in and leaving Ghetto.
[importance of whether emancipation granted by monarch or republic-differing loyalties between France and Austria-Hungary for
example. how to respond to growing antisemitism? redouble efforts
to assimilate for most, others react with injured pride, emigrate,
or seek more complete fulfillment of Enlightenment--the left;
convert. Jewish students and dueling. 43: a "psychic legacy" Jacob
Freud b 1815 probably Hasidic family but by time Freud born wore
Western clothes, spoke German, married in a Reform Jewish ceremony,
a large, close Jewish family. four of Freud's six siblings died in
concentration camps. it was a very Jewish family. Sigmund built up,
encouraged, made a little Jewish prince. Bible stories--and not
Christian ones. nor did he marry a Christian--a notion which never
seemed to enter his mind. 81: England, relatives not discriminating
against there; Disraeli prime minister. named his second son after
Oliver Cromwell. wife came from an Orthodox family and was a
Sabbath observer though he pushed her out of it. brought up
children with no instruction at all. Christmas and Easter. 87: in
1938 still pushing him to let her write candles on Friday night.
87: wrote wife during their engagement, "This is what I believe:
even if the form wherein the old Jews were happy no longer offers
us any shelter, something of the core, of the essence of this
meaningful and life-affirming Judaism will not be absent from our
home." religious wedding, though he was reluctant. collecting
idols--ie statues from Greek, Roman time (yes, but by then famous
Jewish sculptor. Freud prided himself as a scientist yet he did
things remarkably at odds with the scientists' approach-extrapolating broadly from a tiny amount or even one case, acting
on the basis of intuition, expanding from his own experience to
humanity. Moses and Monotheism a travesty from point of view of
scholarship in history. Yet irrepressibly romantic, and in effect
marking a study of Jewish history trying to apply modern methods,
albeit his own, what Heine had said he would do if he had more of
life left to him, what the Society for studying Judaism had done.
Freud's friends were almost all Jews and i writing to them he used
Yiddish phrases, allusions to Jews, Jewish jokes, biblical
references, and current events of Jewish interest 159. joined B'nai
Brith in 1897, had many friends in group. 172: Second International
Psychoanalytic Congress in 1910, decided to choose Jung, told
colleagues, "Most of you are Jews and therefore incompetent to win
25
friends for the new teaching. Jews must be content with the modest
role of preparing the ground....I am getting on in years and am
weary of being perpetually attacked. We are in danger. They won't
leave me a coat on my back."
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time, (NY, 1988)p. 6 when
wrote, "My parents were Jews" and added, "I, too, have remained a
Jew." it was obvious that this was a choice that, in his time and
place, could not be taken for granted." nonreligious, little
knowledge, father spoke Hebrew and gave Freud a deep interest in
biblical history from a Jewish point of view, read Bible from early
age.
11-12: father wanted to tell life had improved and told story,
"When I was a young fellow, one Saturday I went for a walk in the
streets in your birthplace, beautifully decked out, with a new fur
cap on my head. Along comes a Christian, knocks off my cap into the
muck with one blow, and shouts, `Jew, off the sidewalk!" Freud
asked, "And what did you do?" "I stepped into the road and picked
up my cap." This response "did not seem heroic to me." father was a
"big strong man." revenge fantasies, the Romans versus Carthage
Gay: "From his childhood days on, an assertive display of
intellectual independence, controlled rage, physical bravery, and
self-respect as a Jew coalesced into a highly personal,
indestructible amalgam in Freud's character."
25: "greed for knowledge." Freud's determination to have a
scientific personality which he saw as being anti-flamboyant and
non-speculative though these characteristics gained the ascendancy
on him. at university antisemitism but responded with defiance--a
model of the new type, p. 27 thought Gentiles felt he would feel
inferior. "I never understood why I should be ashamed of my descent
or, as one was beginning to say, my race." he rejected what was
generally accepted and had a "secret disposition toward minority
opinions grown." when antisemites cursed him on a train, he invited
them to step outside and yelled back, charged another such group
with his walking stick. very anti-religious, an illusion,
pernicious. but the fact that many, for example, French
intellectuals were anti-clerical did not make them less French
patriots, on the contrary. for their was a perception that national
identity was opposed to a religion which was conservative and--in
Catholicism's case--internationalist. against religious observance
in his own home though wife wanted. but while Freud was very
bourgeois, stiff and disciplined he was also highly emotional.
gloried in intellectual isolation. B'nai Brith, feeling ostracized
sought out own circle. love of antiquities, which p. 172, put him
"in high spirits and speak of distant times and lands.", felt
"strange secret yearnings" rise in him "perhaps from my ancestral
heritage--for the East and the Mediterranean and for a life of
quite another kind" not only Disraeli but Roth's Counterlife.
[compare Freud's handling of Jewish leadership issue with that of
Socialists. Jung was not Viennese or Jewish. 204: "Be tolerant,"
Freud wrote a leading disciple, "and don't forget that it is really
easier for you" as a Jew to accept psychoanalysis than it is for
26
Jung, who, "as a Christian and the son of a pastor," can "find his
way to me only against great inner resistances." Hence, "his
adherence is all the more valuable. I almost said that only his
appearance has saved psychoanalysis from the danger of becoming a
Jewish national concern." Freud thought world saw as "Jewish
science." "We are and remain Jews," he wrote another, "the others
will always simply exploit us and never understand or appreciate
us." To a third [p. 205] "Be assured, if my name were Oberhuber, my
innovations would have found, despite it all, far less resistance."
precisely because the Jews so well understood each other in the
movement, he cautioned, "not to neglect the Aryans, who are
fundamentally alien to me." to Karl Abraham, "May I say that it is
kindred Jewish traits that attract me in you?" "We must, as Jews,
if we want to join in anywhere, develop a bit of masochism."
(compare Grouchoism). 218: 1910 psychoanalytic congress in Nurnberg
of all places, a private meeting at which he moved to retire in
favor of Jung "Most of you are Jews, and therefore you are
incompetent to win friends for the new teaching. Jews must be
content with the modest role of preparing the ground. It is
absolutely essential that I should form ties in the world of
general science. I am getting on in years, and am weary of being
perpetually attacked. We are all in danger." "They won't even leave
me a coat to my back. The Swiss will save us--will save me, and all
of you as well." but interesting had two years earlier spoken of
(205) "the hidden antisemitism of the Swiss." By 1912 Jung
difficult, p. 231, conceded failure of effort at amalgamating "Jews
and goyim in the service of psychoanalysis." "They separate
themselves like oil and water." Freud thought science and religion
in opposition. pp. 241-2 when Jung disagreed wrote in 1915 "lies,
brutality, and antisemitic condescension toward me."
By transcending religion with science, Freud had transcended
the gap between Jewish and Western civilization without abandoning
his Jewishness, which was now non-religious but communal. Yet he
doubted "Aryans" could so thoroughly abandon their religion since
it was reinforced by the surrounding culture. And atheism and
complexes seemed a Jewish monopoly. Prometheus, the traitor to his
group for the good of all humanity or the careerist seeking
opportunity.
Saw
p.
327n
humanity
proceeding
from
animistic/mythological to religious to scientific. 406: Freud
always critical of religion obviously a reference to Christianity:
"a religion, even when it calls itself the religion of love, must
be hard and loveless against those who do not belong to it." 448:
1926, "My language is German. My culture, my attainments are
German. I considered myself German intellectually, until I noticed
the growth of antisemitic prejudice in Germany and German Austria.
Since that time, I prefer to call myself a Jew." [but how many
years earlier was this, compare to Schoenberg.
455 In 1925, Lord Balfour speaking at opening ceremonies of
Hebrew University in Jerusalem linked Freud, Bergson, and Einstein
as the three men--all Jews with the most beneficial effect on
world. Freud had hailed Balfour declaration. 531: men invent gods,
27
or accept those in culture, defend against nature, religion as
childish illusion. human wish fulfillment, religion had been
failure, perhaps science would be success. yet Freud's antireligion co-existed with his pro-Jewish position and showed that
religion and Jewish identity were becoming very much disconnected.
[part linguistic since "Jew" both religion and nationality and
hence can be used interchangeably compared to say "Hebrew." A
Christian might be less quick to conclude that religion had failed,
that it did not express some inner knowledge.
549: also Jewish approach, Christianity had said love they
neighbor (so did J) Freud concludes that to love everyone is to
love no one, could not forget the roots of hostility, many had
"aggressive inclinations" as much as good ones, atrocities of
Crusaders and others--of which Jews had been victims. [communism as
wishful thinking that this could end, human nature be transformed?]
"the narcissism of small differences, people seem to enjoy
persecuting or at least ridiculing immediate neighbors and Jews had
been favored target, he said, of this, giving Christians a chance
to vent aggressions. "Unfortunately, all the massacres of Jews in
the Middle Ages were not enough to make that age more peaceful and
more secure for their Christian comrades."
550: whole cultures can become guilt-ridden, Israelites gave
prophets to criticize themselves and strict commandments to control
themselves.
p. 566 n: a disillusioned follower commented that Freud "was a
great man even if he did invent psychoanalysis."
597: Adler converted to Protestantism and Adler turned briefly
to Catholicism (but if religion illusion, why convert? 598: after
seeing Herzl's play "The New Ghetto" dreamed about "the Jewish
question, the worry about the future of one's children, whom one
could not give a homeland." sympathetic to Zionism "our" University
in Jerusalem, "our" settlements" but pessimistic that Christians or
Moslems would allow. 603: said as Jew "I found myself free from
many prejudices which limited others in the employment of their
intellects, and as a Jew I was prepared to go into opposition."
Moses obsession, Michelangelo's statue but also disparate view of
Moses as not Jewish. 622: when escape from Austria seemed hopeless,
Anna Freud asked, "Wouldn't it be better if we all killed
ourselves?" "Why? Because they would like us to?" 629: and after
getting to London, "The triumphant feeling of liberation is mingled
too strongly with mourning, for one still very much loved the
prison from which one has been released."
Freud's Jewish Identity p. 75: told story that on a train when
he was 26 someone called him a "dirty Jew" and he stood his ground
though outnumber. "I was not in the least frightened of that
mob...I was quite prepared to kill him." son recalled a similar
incident when Freud charged swinging a walking stick. His son
participated in two duels and was stabbed in one encounter when
attending his father's university. proto-nationalist with Hannibal
fantasies. represented the new Jew for while seeing self as German
culture and scientist also proud of being a Jew which was not a
28
common attitude in Vienna of that time. but he could also refer to
Orthodox on a train in 1872, he was a typical Jew "cunning,
mendacious, kept by his adoring relatives in the belief that he is
a great talent, but unprincipled and without character....I learned
that Madame Jewess and family hailed from [a Moravian town]: a
proper compost heap for this sort of weed." ridiculed religion. 79:
at university "I found that I was expected to feel myself inferior
and an alien because I was a Jew. I refused absolutely to do the
first of these things. I have never been able to see why I should
feel ashamed of my descent...I put up, without much regret, with my
non-acceptance into the community, for it seemed to me that in
spite of this exclusion an active fellow-worker could not fail to
find some nook or cranny in the framework of humanity." p. 97 Yet
also actively discouraged his children from being Jews, naming and
making them so as to be assimilated. discomfort with things Jewish.
anger when a Jewish boy at a vacation spa spilled water over
himself and a guest, saying his children would not so act, his son
suggested Freud's uncharacteristic anger was prompted by the fact
that the boy was obviously Jewish and that gentiles were watching.
After all this effort, they earned the statement from a polite
German lady, "Your children, Frau Professor, look so Italian." also
friendly toward Zionism, both sons belonged to Zionist groups and
in his diary praised the Balfour Declaration, admired Chaim
Weizmann, and enthusiastic about Hebrew University. but shared
German Jewish suspicion of nationalism--which had been their enemy
in Germany. Zweig wrote him about the difficulties a cultured man
had in adjusting. fear of religion. Freud's dreams also reflect his
anger toward society and ambivalence about being Jewish. p. 117
picture of the Arch of Titus in Rome and on the back wrote "The Jew
survives it." disliked converts and self-hated Jews. told the
father of one child patient (117-18) "If you do not let your son
grow up a Jew, you will deprive him of those sources of energy
which cannot be replaced by anything else. He will have to struggle
as a Jew, and ought to develop in him energy that he will need for
that struggle." 118: freud on slips of the tongue, anecdote about a
Jewish convert who while visiting a Christian family referred to
his children as juden (Jews) instead of jungen (young ones). Jewish
humor. May 1933: What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages
they would have burnt me; now they are content with burning books."
said of his Jewishness "Because I was a Jew I found myself free of
many prejudices which restrict others in the use of the intellect;
as a Jew I was prepared to be in the opposition and to renounce
agreement with the...majority." he said that Jewish marriages and
family life were closer and warmer, said with pride that his
children had married Jews. 124: when an interviewer said that Jews
are over-intellectualized and that psychoanalysis bore the mark of
that, Freud responded, "So much the better for psychoanalysis
then!" a curator of Hebrew University. the ultimate rationalist was
willing
to
admit
though
that
"miraculous
thing...which-inaccessible to any analysis so far--makes the Jew." To Karl
Abraham spoke of "racial kinship" and a similarity of "intellectual
29
constitution." fascination with Moses. 187: wrote a patient who had
been romantically involved with Jung and written that she would
like to produce an Aryan-Jewish child and who ultimately married a
Jewish man, I am, as you know, cured of the last shred of my
predilection for the Aryan cause, and would like to take it that if
the child turns out to be a boy he will develop into a stalwart
Zionist. He or it must be dark in any case, no more towheads. Let
us banish all these will-o'-the-wisps!...We are and remain Jews.
The others will only exploit us and will never understand or
appreciate us." Full of Jewish imagery, far more than the American
intellectuals who would later make their careers on being "Jewish."
duck Freud debate
Highly emotional debate over Freud, Peter Gay a highly
assimilated German Jew in origin attacked Rice at an American
Psychoanalytic Session as if he was being personally threatened.
Totem and Taboo wrote Freud, "completely estranged from the
religion of his fathers--and who cannot take a share in nationalist
ideas but who has yet never repudiated his people, who feels that
he is in his essential nature a Jew who has no desire to alter that
nature." it was something important that Freud felt that way, of
the second half, and even more important that he was willing to
write it for publication, never afraid to confront the issue
although playing down his religious background. To be religious,
however, was to be backward and superstitious, not a Western modern
man, but would apply same criterion to Christianity. Rice accused
Gay of wanting Freud to be like them people of "Western culture and
enlightenment." Gay said Freud was not "deeply engaged in Jewish
culture" scornful "feverish effort to reenlist" him. accused Rice
of calling Freud a liar.xxxiii What about B'nai Brith. Yet Gay in his
own book says how important the Jewish issue is to Freud and claims
that he only wants to deny that Freud was not a Jew religiously.
Freud's Moses and Monotheism was not only the unfortunate
result of a scientist venturing into the realm of history. Rather,
it was a logical outcome of Freud's myth-making propensity, the
logical result of a man grown accustomed to say that reality was
whatever he claimed, just as he defined the whole psyche on the
basis of a handful of cases. Yet it was also an effort to deal with
tradition, to overturn it in favor of a new approach while still
accepting its basic narrative. Just as earlier Jews--Jesus and his
followers half-immersed in Greek culture; Marx; Herzl; and others
of greater and lesser merit--had set out to be a new Moses
establishing a new tradition. But why was there a need to create a
new tradition and what were the roots to be chosen? Christians felt
less of a need--even though their discoveries, like Darwin--might
indicate that and their alternatives--like Nietzsche--came from
different roots. Mention Freud's correspondence with Arnold Zweig
as well as Einstein, and his admiration for Herzl. It is important
to remember that to the Christians, Jesus was divine and thus not
to be replaced but to the Jews, Moses, though exemplary, was
completely mortal. Fascinated with what was distinctive about Jews-
30
-and why they were hated so much--though almost all the non-Jews
who thought that problem worth dealing with were antisemites.
Also, very important: Freud's interpretation was not only his
attempt to justify theories he had already developed--the alleged
innate desire to kill the father figure; that crime as the origin
of religion in Totem and Taboo but also, an original point, making
Judaism parallel Christianity: just as Jesus was not a Christian,
brought a message, was murdered by those he tried to convince, and
then they only gradually accepted his message (and Freud may have
seen his experience similarly). how much of this was due to his
assimilated-directed interpretation of Judaism?
Peter Gay's essay, "Sigmund Freud: A German and His
Discontents" makes the counter-argument on Freud in his book of
essays. arguing p. 33 that Vienna was not essential to Freud's
discoveries he says, "He admired Schnitzler...was in turn derided
by Kraus, and gave Wittgenstein food for tortured reflections."
Whatever the importance of Vienna, Gay's remark puts Freud into the
assimilationist milieu very effectively. "Freud lived far less in
Austrian Vienna than in his own mind; he lived with the
international positivist tradition," and the discoveries of
classical archeology, international science, and "the infinitely
instructive surprises of systematic introspection." so does every
thinker, and what they come up with is a product of their era,
character, experiences. yet what shapes those? Individually, all
cooks use the same basic set of ingredients and do something quite
different with them. In terms of national cuisines, differences
often hinge on the availability of basic foodstuffs. If Freud is
so much his own ancestor, inventing himself from all these external
materials and the `spontaneous combustion' of his own thought, then
what need of psychoanalysis? and the same goes for Marx, Kafka and
many others. A good phrase Gay uses, "The pleasures of truth" p.
71. 76: Gay "To be the destroyer of human illusions...was to make
oneself into a special target of the antisemite." quoting Freud in
1908, "Be assured, if my name was Oberhuber, my innovations would
have encountered far less resistance, despite everything." Freud
"was the opposite of religious" but his Judaism was a kind of
defiance, Gay says. But why defiance? what did people have in
common whose social posture was one of defiance, i.e., mostly those
who refused to convert in their pursuit of scholarly and cultural
careers. 77: Vienna "a city of ugly rehearsals". but Freud's
courage "was neither sectarian nor local. It was intellectual.
Freud was, first and last, the scientist, bravely following the
evidence wherever it led." p. 85: 1897 Freud's "year of decision"
self-analysis. 90: 1926, "My language is German. My culture, my
attainments are German. I considered myself German intellectually,
until I noticed the growth of antisemitic prejudice in Germany and
German Austria. Since that time, I prefer to call myself a Jew."
not a German and a Jew. but not a new idea for him. In 1880s, assim
Berthold Auerbach said in despair his work and life had been in
vain (p. 94) but many positive signs that antisemitism receding.
name of group German citizens of the Jewish faith. 95: "The
31
Germanness of Jewish high culture in these decades was not an
effort at disguise. It was not craven self-denial, but a
proprietary feeling for a civilization that had produced decent
cosmopolitans like Schiller and Kant, ornaments to modern humanism
like Goethe." assimilation had been overwhelmingly successful and
seemed to be steadily broadening. 97: estimate about 22,000 Jews
converted in nineteenth century, with most journalists and about
half academics converts. 97-98 Eduard Bernstein and many socialists
legally and officially renounced Judaism without taking another
religion as did some of their Christian fellows. Georg Simmel:
father a merchant converted to Catholicism and married a woman who
had been baptized as a Lutheran, Simmel a Lutheran and married a
Catholic/Protestant mixed woman. many German Jews took what might
be called an American-style route of nominal adhesion with
immersion in the national culture. 101: many Jews were also in
mainstream or rearguard as well as modernists. Max Liebermann,
famous painter wrote "I am only a painter, and what does painting
have to do with Judaism?" when attacked by Nazi newspaper as
unsuitable to do a portrait of President Hindenburg. did some
Jewish paintings--including one in 1879 of Jesus as a distinctly
Jewish boy, but also many other themes.
duck anthropologists
Franz Boas 1858-1942 anthrop, born and educated in Germany, NY
Columbia university, field work with Indians, stressed environment
over race, claimed physical differences between immigrants and
American-born children. Emile Durkheim 1858-1917 rabbinic family
from Lorraine, sociologist.
6. The revision of Jewish politics
Zangwell, Nordau, Scholem, the Zionists, the Haskalah, the
Bund, the left, the assimilationists, the ultra-Orthodox (Agudat
founded in 1912), the Reform, the reformers of Orthodoxy. Haskalah
as both Jewish and "assimilationist", striving for the kind of mix
which would be taken for granted a century later.
Avineri Making of Modern Zionism Nordau praises ghetto at
first Zionist congress p. 104-5 because it was a refuge for Jew and
gave him peers among whom he could be valued, "The opinion of the
outside world had no influence, because it was the opinion of
ignorant enemies. One tried to please one's co-religionists, and
their applause was the worthy contentment of one's life." a prealienation society. this was a complete reversal of how people had
thought [today the pendulum has swung too far the other way with
the romanticization of the ghetto]. the only thing that ended
Jewish national identity was emancipation itself. he wrote in 1901.
Nordau
Max Nordau: Philosopher on Human Solidarity Meir Ben-Horin p.
177
Nordau's road to Zionism was paved by his appreciation of
rising nationalism in general in the 1880s. In an 1887 novel his
character returns to Germany from a long sojourn in India saying,
"My yearning for Germany did not leave me all these twenty years
and then I confess to you that in secret I reproach myself for
32
having emigrated. It is convenient to turn one's back on one's
country and to search for more pleasant circumstances abroad.
Later, however, you say to yourself after all that only a
self-seeker deserts his people in its struggle against pressure and
darkness and that one has no right at long distance to play the
happily redeemed and criticize conditions at home while those who
remained behind fight bitterly to improve conditions."
In his 1894 play "Die Kugel," Nordau speaks of an ambition
man's attempt to hide away his uneducated mother and sweetheart. A
friend tells the character, "Shackles, you say?
Had you been
skillful, you would have made an ornament of it....You must feel
all of yourself as possessing worth, including your origin. For
that you have hitherto not been courageous enough. But you must
learn it."
p. 178 Nordau has a fictional characters say, "It is better
for a man to sink roots into the soil even like a tree, to have
friendly relations with neighboring trees, and to see the sun rise
every day in the same place, than to flutter like a bird skipping
from branch to branch and to fly wantonly about in the blue sky?'"
The man revealed himself to be Ahasverus, the Wandering Jew.
p. 179
on October 2, 1896, he told Herzl: "All my
observations lead me to doubts as to whether Jewry still possesses
enough inner virility to preserve its historic individuality even
at the price of life and death struggle. Such a struggle, however,
certainly will be unavoidable."
p. 180 On both the mental and the physical side, Jews show
symptoms of degeneration. Millennia of persecution have left their
stamp on them in the form of a depressive frame of mind. For two
thousand
years
joy,
self-confidence,
hope,
elan
did
not
reinvigorate them. They have lost their self-respect: "It is the
greatest triumph for antisemitism that it has brought the Jews to
view themselves with antisemitic eyes. The Jews consider themselves
as pariahs." As a people, they have lost contact with the soil:
"But a people cannot, in the long run, remain healthy and strong,
if it does not again and again, at least temporarily, return to the
rejuvenating soil.
Without this Antaeus-treatment it inevitably
falls prey to degeneracy."
The outward indication of decline is the growing rate of
escape from Judaism. Hardly one fifth, Nordau estimates, of all
Jews who in the last thirty to forty years have gained fame or only
prominence in any area of science, literature, the arts, politics,
have remained loyal Jews. "One might say: Jewry at present
undergoes a process amounting to an evaporation of the spirit and a
coagulation
of
character."
The
intelligent
(without
other
qualities) leave; only those remain who are too dull to feel
persecution and insult or who are stubborn enough to resist all
enmity. If this selective process continues, the remnant is likely
to be intellectually insignificant. Stubbornness and imperviousness
to outer influence may not have enough adaptability for survival.
How to check this decline? Nordau recommends first of all a
return to agriculture.
As many Jews as possible should become
33
farmers, "Life in nature will rejuvenate their bodies, the secure
possession of the soil resurrect their self-esteem, the sight of
the fruitful labor...will pacify the better and more reasonable of
their enemies."
Second, to hasten the process of regaining
self-respect, Jewish education must make the name "Jew" a title of
honor.
Third, internal Jewish solidarity must be strengthened.
Thus, far, "only persecution keeps /modern Jewry/ together with its
iron ring.
Without the enemies...we would fall apart like an
untied stack of hay."
p. 182 Nordau questions the Reform movement's denial that Jews
were still a people by saying that even if this were true, it can
still be shown that they were a people in the past and that there
is as yet no evidence that they cannot or should not become one
again. Supposing,Nordau argues (1897) against the Chief Rabbi of
Vienna, the Jews of today are genuine Germans, Englishmen,
Russians.
Still they are not more genuine Englishmen than the
English Pilgrim Fathers who emigrated to America on the Mayflower
as a matter of conscience. These Englishmen fashioned a new nation
just as genuine Spaniards founded Argentina and the Mexican and
Chilean nations, and just as the Portuguese founded Brazil. peoples
do not only emerge out of unknown prehistoric events but also from
historical circumstances.
Dissatisfied minorities may create for
themselves more acceptable conditions of existence.
p. 183 "I categorically deny that a people has a mission at
all...Nations like individuals have no other mission than to live,
as long as possible, as intensively as possible." How, Nordau asks,
should the two hundred and sixty thousand Rumanian Jews accomplish
their "mission" in Rumania? If they remain in Rumania, they might
show the Rumanians the example of starvation.
This, however, is
not worth imitating.
If they leave, how can they teach the
Rumanians? By letter?
Then it would be better to write from
Palestine than from twenty scattered countries.
In other words,
"the profound-sounding claptrap of the Jewish mission is a folly
that does not deserve a serious person's scantiest attention." We
have no intention of imposing ourselves as teachers on nations that
do not want any part of us.
p. 184 "Jew-hatred is not the result of antisemitic lies and
insinuations, but on the contrary, the lies and insinuations are
the result of the antisemitic feelings."
p. 185
Why are the Jews always viewed as foreigners? One
reason for this was, paradoxically, that the only early history
generally known throughout the civilized and semi-civilized world
was that of the Jews. The Bible constantly reminded its readers of
the Oriental origin of the Jews and of the fact that they were
vanquished, homeless, cursed. While other migrations and invasions
were forgotten in time--the Franks in Gaul, the Longobardi in
Northern Italy, the Normans in England, the Magyars in Hungary, the
Ottomans in Byzantium soon became "natives"--the Jews always
remained foreigners: "The Bible kept the national memories fresh."
under the medieval legalistic conception of "rights" as
privileges expressly granted by constituted authority and issued on
34
parchment, the Jews who did not have any "rights" stood without the
law,
were--outlaws.
Moreover,
their
strange
status
was
frighteningly incomprehensible to the masses, for even beggars and
jesters formed guilds. Existence outside the legal structure marked
the Jews as a people irrevocably foreign to the community.
A third and related reason was, of course, the difference in
religion. Lacking the concept of humanity lost by the feudal world
after it was developed by the noblest Greeks and the great prophets
of Israel, and not yet aware of the feeling of nationalism and
patriotism, people had no other means of expressing their human
solidarity except through religion. The non-believers did not
belong to humanity thus bound together.
p. 186 According to Nordau, the Jews survived as feared and
hated foreigners because of their dispersion and the protective
walls of their own dream world.
"a strange hallucinatory state of revery" which surrounded the
Jews with a protective insensibility to the terror of reality.
p. 187
"The fathers rejoiced in their faith before
torture-bench and burning-stake.
The sons no longer possessed
their fortitude even before the prospect of a slight restriction
upon fifteen-years-old citizens' rights."
They set an example
which was followed by all Jews in Western Europe. They strove for
political equality, "not in order to live more freely as Jews
within an improved legal situation, but in order to give up their
Jewishness." There is a crucial difference between Jewish efforts
in the eighteenth century to achieve rescission of restrictions on
their freedom of trade and migration and Jewish efforts in the
nineteenth century on behalf of political emancipation: "The Jews
in the eighteenth century demanded the right to be Jews in security
and freedom; the Jews in the nineteenth begged for the privilege of
stripping off their Jewishness without interference and without
ado."
"Assimilation," the one-way process of Jewish self-effacing
adjustment to the countries of their residence, was elevated to the
dignity of a Jewish philosophy and proclaimed as the solution to
the Jewish problem
p. 188 assimilation, from the standpoint of the majority of
Jews, created a new Jewish problem. In the first place, it added
the burden of domestic to the curse of foreign antisemitism, and
while the latter could now be conceived as a Gentile problem, the
former became a new Jewish problem, indeed the Jewish problem,
which threatened to undermine the very foundations of Jewish
adaptability to a changing world. Secondly, it brought with it the
burden of the assimilationist, that is, of the new kind of
antisemitism which he encountered in seeking admission to Europe's
national societies.
Nordau charges that Reform Judaism broke Jewish unity by
suppressing or emptying all the national symbols which existed
historically. He makes a distinction between extracting the
national from religious principles: one destroys the nation, the
other modernizes it to let it survive in the modern world.
35
p. 189 "In Eastern Europe, in North Africa, in Western Asia"
where the majority, perhaps nine-tenths of all Jews, lived, Jewish
distress was no abstraction but a "daily affliction of the flesh;
anxiety for the coming day; vexatious struggle for the maintenance
of life. In the European West, the Jewish struggle for existence
is somewhat easier, although recently the tendency to make it more
difficult is becoming apparent. The question of food and shelter
and of security of life and body tortures them to a lesser degree.
Here the distress is of a moral nature.
It consists of daily
grievances for self-respect and sense of honor."
p. 190 The Western Jew "has lost the home of the ghetto, the
homeland denies itself to him"
p. 191
Nordau writes in 1920, "We must no longer speak of
Zionism. What we are now called upon to realize is not Zionism but
Judaism. Zionism was a party issue, but now it is the destiny of
the whole of Israel which is trembling in the balance. We have a
national task before us, in the fulfilling of which every Jew who
has a sense of responsibility and dignity, must cooperate."
p. 192
The Jewish people, he thunders, "has the choice
between Zionism and death.
The status quo means extinction,
Zionism means life."
Or still more pungently, "Jewry will be
Zionist, or it will not be!"
p. 195 to equate emigration with disloyalty is futile for the
emigrants departure shows that they consider the country of origin
not as their fatherland but as their stepfatherland. To blame the
remaining for the departing is unreasonable, for the fact of their
stay demonstrates their patriotism. In countries of equality, the
Jew sharply distinguishes between his "political citizenship and
his ethnic individuality and, while joyously fulfills all his
obligations towards the fatherland, he does not for a moment forget
that he is the son of a four thousand year-old people with a past
of astoundingly tragic greatness and that he cherishes the certain
hope to witness its historic development advance towards a glorious
future. He feels he has the duty and the right to participate in
the preparation of that future and he does not tolerate being
criticized for loyalty to his people."
Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938 p. 74
Max
Adler, the Socialist, treated his Jewishness as an irrelevancy, as
did the legal theorist, Hans Kelsen, and the psychologist, Alfred
Adler. All three, however, experienced the fact that others still
regarded them as Jewish, especially when it came to academic
promotion.
p. 75
Kathe Leichter, the daughter of a typically Jewish,
liberal bourgeois family, who later became a left-wing sociologist.
could claim until 1938 that no one regarded her as Jewish among her
colleagues. This begs the question of how she knew this was so.
In fact, it was not so. Many of her colleagues, perhaps behind her
back, saw her very much as Jewish. With regard to her knowledge
that no one saw her as Jewish, this can only have been the result
of a consciousness which she had that she herself was not like her
Jewish friends. It all seems to have been the result, on her own
36
evidence, of a semi-conscious assimilation into the lifestyle of
the non-Jewish girls at her school. She is quite open about the
fact that she saw herself as mediating between what she identified
as a definite Jewish group and the others.
In other words, the statement about not being regarded as
Jewish is actually an admission of pride in not being taken for a
Jew. This is a classic case of 'negative consciousness', the wish,
or the belief, that you had escaped your Jewishness. The irony of
this is that it is a uniquely Jewish experience, for it makes no
sense to talk about the pride of a person not of Jewish descent in
not being regarded as Jewish, while in the case of someone such as
Kathe Leichter, the fact that she was proud to appear Aryan is just
one more sign of Jewish consciousness of a rather odd kind.
p. 76
In the case of Hofmannsthal there is little firm
evidence for a consciousness of his heritage except, perhaps, the
often quoted lines: "Weariness of long forgotten races, I cannot
brush off my eyelids." The question of what Hofmannsthal's actual
attitudes to the Jewish part of his heritage were is a vexed one.
Broch, for instance, saw him very much as the product of an
assimilation, repeating in his poetry the attempt to realize the
assimilationist dream of his great-grandfather, Isaak Low-Hofmann.
p. 77 With Wittgenstein the story is similar. For many years
it was quite unclear how Jewish the Wittgenstein family actually
was.
It now appears that Ludwig Wittgenstein was three-quarters
Jewish by descent. It includes the following confession: `Amongst
Jews "genius" is found only in the holy man. Even the greatest of
Jewish thinkers is no more than talented. (Myself for instance.)
p. 84 religious instruction was generally considered a sham at
best and made pupils more negative toward Judaism at worst.
p. 85
Kathe Leichter, under the influence of her Orthodox
grandfather and a good religious instructor, became for a while a
fairly strict Jew fasting on the Day of Atonement, to the horror of
her liberal parents.
Richard Beer-Hofmann was brought up in an Orthodox home. His
Schlaflied fur Mirjam, which Rilke lauded as one of the most
perfect poems in German literature, was actually an affirmation of
the Jewish heritage.
p. 86
Leichter's fleeting religiosity was echoed by other
survivals of the Jewish past in an otherwise totally assimilated
family.
Her father, whom she described as a 'universalist',
counted one of his abilities the reading of Hebrew. When he taught
his daughter about the great freedom fighters of old he would
mention the heroic struggle of the Maccabees, something it is very
difficult to imagine a Catholic father doing.
With an Orthodox
grandfather in the background some contact with the Jewish
traditions was inevitably maintained.
p. 95
Lazar Auspitz was totally committed to Enlightenment
thought and rejected the ritual of Judaism. It is worth noting the
way in which he expressed this rejection: `On the rare occasions
when he appeared in the synagogue, instead of a prayer book he
always had a book of science in front of him.' It seems from this
37
that God could be worshipped through a book of science just as well
as a prayer book.
p. 97 salon was introduced to Vienna in the late eighteenth
century from Berlin by Fanny von Arnstein, the daughter of the
Jewish banker, Itzig.
Until her arrival the salons of the high
aristocracy had not been places for the cultural elite to meet, so
much as occasions at which the nobly born could affirm their
membership of the elite of the blood. They were social, not
cultural occasions.
p. 100 Gustav Mahler's father, Bernhard, would read the works
of French philosophers on his wagon while peddling his goods;
Victor Adler's father, Salomon, was Orthodox but nonetheless a
devotee of the French Enlightenment. He had studied French at the
university and became a revolutionary. When the revolution failed,
he had to gain freedom another way, by making money. All, however,
in the cause of gaining for his children what he had been deprived
of, an intellectual career.
p. 104 Sigmund Freud once described the title of professor as
his ticket to salvation in Austrian society.
p. 109
There were also good sociological reasons why Jews
should have a more individualistic attitude to life.
p. 110 almost all in commerce certain equality in status, if
not in wealth. The difference was in terms of wealth, not legally
recognized castes, and the fact that the poor could appeal to
tradition, and their rabbi, for support
p. 113
Jewish Stoicism
strict ethic of simplicity and
rectitude
p. 114 Jews were concluding that 'God is conscience', an idea
which received much encouragement from the Jewish concept of man as
made in God's image. Faith in God as conscience could further be
secularized into a simple faith in 'the Good in Man, in every
person, also in oneself'
p. 118
The break with organized religion could thus be a
natural consequence of Judaism itself. It is true that there were
many aspects of the tradition which could act in the opposite
direction - the pull of the community and of tradition itself was
very strong, and for many continued to be the dominant factor. Yet
it took only a small, if critical, shift in the balance of the
religion for the outer shell of the ritual laws and customs to be
regarded as secondary, and hence trivial, in contrast to the
personal relation with God, which was open to the Jew as one of the
chosen.
The extremely pious Rabbi Boruch could, for instance,
prefer to worship God in his study than go through the unpleasant
task of praying with his fellows, the imperfect and despised.
Ehrlich could decide that the worship of God in the synagogue did
not provide the edification of praying to God alone in the forest.
Judaism could therefore be reduced to a faith of the individual in
God, with nothing else being necessary.
p. 120 The search for truth as an ethical goal, originating
in Jewish culture in the form of the religious scholar, came to be
transferred straightforwardly enough into the realm of science, as
38
in the case of Freud.
p. 122 "To the Jew liberalism was more than just a political
doctrine, a comfortable principle and a popular opinion of the day
- it was his spiritual asylum, his port of shelter after a thousand
years of homelessness, the final fulfillment of the vain wishes of
his ancestors, his patent of liberty after a slavery of
indescribable severity and shame. It was his divine protectress,
the queen of his heart, whom he served with the whole ardor of his
soul, for whom he fought on the barricades and in the people's
assemblies, in the parliament, in literature and the press. For
her he gladly bore the wrath of the powerful."
p. 123
George Mosse described how the most popular German
liberal authors of the mid-nineteenth century carried with them the
worst kinds of prejudice against `the Jew'. Being liberals, these
authors also included `good' Jews in their books, but what they
meant by the 'good' Jew was the Jew who had become as German as
possible, civilized because not Jewish any more.
p. 132 Victor Adler's letter to his son Friedrich about the
latter's Russian Jewish fiancee:
'She has...absolutely no
resistance to Jewishness, which--namely the resistance--has become
a fundamental part of our whole being.' Behind the leader of the
Austrian socialists, therefore, can be seen the continuation of the
struggle against tradition which Mendelssohn had begun. Only, in
the case of Adler, it had become a struggle to free himself
entirely from 'das Judische', however defined.
p. 133 The hero of Herzl's play, Das neue Ghetto, dies with
an impassioned plea for the Jews to leave the new ghetto which
antisemitic prejudice has created. Herzl's point was that the cry
was in vain, that it was impossible for the Jew in present society
to do this;
no matter how complete the assimilation, the Jew
remained in a social ghetto.
the Neue Freie Presse, in January 1898. Ludwig Speidel, the
Burgtheater critic of the paper, gave the play a glowing report,
but instead
a message of hope was conveyed, rather than the
pessimistic conclusion which Herzl had written the play to
illustrate.
p. 134 It seems prophetic of Jeiteles that even in 1873 he
refused to list the cultural achievements of Jews in Vienna,
arguing that this was not to do with these people being Jewish.
Behind this excuse lay a major irony, for the omission of such a
list was an implicit admission that Jews were somehow different.
The major vehicle of assimilation had been education, with the
result that the assimilated Jews were more educated than most of
the members of the society which they had entered.
The very
strategy of assimilation through Bildung was jeopardizing the
acceptance of Jews in general, by making them something special
again:
no longer Jewish, but not really Gentile either. p. 134
Karl Kraus `The irrefutable faith in the assimilability of the
Jewish character is the best orthodoxy. One should simply let it
become...the faith of the fathers.' Even if some sort of internal
difference remained, Kraus was quite clear that Jews could become
39
acceptable if they would sacrifice the externalities which
separated them from others.
Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938 p. 156 Victor
Adler
His father, Salomon, had named him after Victor Hugo. He
named his first son Friedrich (after Schiller) Wolfgang (after
Goethe) p. 157
Guido Adler was one of the first Viennese
Wagnerians and a founder of the Akademischer Wagnerverein.
The
first composer in Vienna to emulate Wagner was a Jew, Karl
Goldmark, and the composer's music was very warmly received among
assimilated Jewish youth.
p. 158 When youths such as Adler became interested in it, the
volkisch movement was not yet virulently antisemitic. By joining
the counter-culture of the radical German Nationalists, Jews were
also assimilating into a culture: their very rejection of their
Jewish fathers would prove their credentials, that they had ceased
to be Jews and had become part of the great German Volk.
Assimilating into the Volk was just as good, in their eyes, as
entering a universal human society. After all, the Volk continued
to be regarded even by the liberals as something that could do no
wrong, an ideal entity. (like socialism)
For most Jews it was impossible to believe that the Germans
had rejected them in this way, that the Germany of real life was
not that of Schiller. As Friedrich Heer put it: 'German Jews in
1933 still saw the Germany of Goethe, Schiller and Mendelssohn'.
Some Jews saw what was happening much earlier. Schnitzler, like
Freud, saw that the word 'German' had come to mean something very
different from the image it had acquired in the first days of the
assimilation.
p. 178 to acquire a title of nobility, undergo the usually
prerequisite conversion to Catholicism, and adopt the appropriate
lifestyle.
Many of the wealthiest Jewish families followed this
pattern.
Often this led to the next generation being totally
indistinguishable from their counterparts, apart, as Kraus quipped,
from the great emphasis they put on that very fact.
p. 179
Jews tried, almost literally, to merge into the
landscape. When Freud and his daughter Anna went on a walk in the
woods while on holiday they would be dressed in the appropriate
peasant costume of Lederhosen and feathered hat for him, dirndl for
her.
Similar things happened in Vienna.
Kathe Leichter made a
conscious effort, when she was a child, to dress like her
non-Jewish schoolmates.
This was just an anticipation of what
adult Jews were doing, learning all the complicated social rules,
speaking the proper Schonbrunnerdeutsch, going to all the balls
during Carnival, playing the dissolute young aesthete, sitting in
the coffeehouse talking
about nothing very much, only very
cleverly, going to the operetta or opera to be seen. Jews did, to
a remarkable extent, blend into the style and adopt the attitudes
of the other Viennese. Vienna was more easy-going, softer, and so
were its Jews.
p. 201 the Liberals' defeat meant that it was the Jews from
the late 1880s onwards who were in the political wilderness, and
40
this meant a social isolation as well which was in some eyes worse
than before the emancipation. Social intercourse between Jews and
Christians came to a sudden stop.
This expressed itself in the
exclusion of Jews from Burschenschaften, or from cycling
associations, and in the fact that children did not mix at school,
nor even take the same hiking trails. The cumulative effect was to
separate the Jews from the rest of society. The result of these
changed circumstances was to make the Jewish problem unavoidable
for Jews.
p. 202
Many Jews fell back on their Jewish identity and
religion. New temples and synagogues were built reflecting what has
been described as a 'strengthening of their solidarity'. Jewish
pride was rediscovered, but as a reaction to the collapse of the
assimilation.
p. 203
more radical assimilationists, such as Theodor
Gomperz, refused to make any concessions at all to a Jewish
identity, seeing it as a threat to the unity of mankind. Gomperz
saw Jewish Nationalism and Zionism as a surrender to the
antisemites, an acceptance of their anti-liberal beliefs in the
incompatibility of races.
Antisemitism should be overcome, not
accepted, the assimilation continued. The argument was essentially
the same in Karl Kraus' Eine Kroned fur Zion (1898), where Herzl
was described as 'the ultimate executor of the will of the
Christian Socials'. Assimilation was the only real answer to the
plight of the Jews, and socialism, due to its universalism, would
save the day. The Jews would not go to Palestine, because 'another
red sea, social democracy, will bar their way there.'
The biggest argument against Zionism before the First World
War was that in physical terms the situation was actually not that
bad. If society was hostile, at least Jews could insist on their
rights as Menschenrechte in a state which still upheld the
constitution and was headed by a monarch who despised the new
antisemitism.
Of course, only hindsight makes the outcome seem inevitable.
Discrimination, economic boycotts, and restrictions did not block
Jews from gaining more ground. The antisemites did not physically
harm the Jews in western Europe. There was, however, a great deal
of psychological damage, especially among those making the greatest
material progress. p. 204 There was the suspicion that even one's
business colleagues and friends were secretly quite happy to see
the antisemites in power.
p. 205 Max Burckhard, a good friend of Schnitzler and model
for one of his heroes, told Alma
Mahler-Werfel not to marry
Mahler, saying, A fine girl like you--and racially so pure.' Rilke
showed much the same attitude when he advised Sidhonie von Nadherny
against marriage with Karl Kraus, talking of a `last ineradicable
difference' between them. Both men were converts.
p. 211 As Alma commented: `He had no wish to be reminded of
origins, family, race, those emblems of the weight of the earth.'
He wanted to banish his heritage. Karl Kraus held similar views.
In a 1913 essay of 1913, he tried to demonstrate that he possessed
41
none of the supposedly Jewish qualities. The world of spirit in
which he lived, he continued, had no room for race or racial
characteristics. He did not even know what Jewish characteristics
were. Nevertheless, he demonstrated to his own satisfaction that
he had none and, playing on Lanz von Liebefel's statement that
Kraus was an 'exceptional Jew', concluded: `It must therefore be a
Jewish quality to have none at all. That can happen: it is thus
that religions have been founded.' This was an example of what
Hannah Arendt called the 'renunciation of characteristics', a
radical individuation which would leave the individual without
characteristics, free of his past. (the professional attitude)
p. 220: It was not just that Austrian culture revealed the
darker side of the human personality as that there were people
looking for that characteristic. Bermann 'Moreover it is of course
necessary to look into yourself as clearly as possible, to shed
light on the deepest recesses; to possess the courage to follow
your own nature; not to let yourself be misled.
p. 221-22 Otto Weininger's father also despised other Jews and
admired Wagner. Hence Weininger, like so many others, was not a
rebel but a true heir of what he had been taught. 225: What
Weininger decried as `Jewish' was really--ironically--the product
of the assimilation process. Weininger's overcoming of the Jew was
a response, in a way, to the predicament caused by the assimilation
in the first place. p. 226 When he tried to explain why he had left
Judaism, `the last thing that ties me to the literary swindlers',
for Catholicism he could only say that it was not to follow the
Church's dogma. Kraus plainly had his own idea of what the true
values were and, when the Church transgressed these by its
collusion with Reinhardt, Kraus gave up Catholicism.
Max Nordau (Simon Maximilian Suedfeld. The son of a Sephardi
rabbi Nordau had successful medical practice in Paris from 1880
onwards. (Max Nordau was a pseudonym he adopted as his legal name).
At the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, Nordau was elected
vice-president. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Nordau
was deported from France to Spain as an alien, and remained there
during the hostilities. (Avnery): Nordau (1849-1923) one of most
fashionable German writers. born Budapest. lived in Paris, saw
Dreyfus, came from religious enlightened home but cut self off (p.
101) "When I reached the age of fifteen I left the Jewish way of
life and the study of the Torah....Judaism remained as a mere
memory, and since then I have always felt as a German, and as a
German only." His critique of European civilization, friend of
Herzl. Emancipation a failure, both external--antisemitism--and
internal.
(is name change ironic switch from "south" to "north"
symbol?)
England as exception because Emancipation grew out of
real thought and process rather than simply a logical--but
grudging--extension. p. 111: Zionist ideology "reread Jewish
history in the light of modern world history."
Nordau: journalist, dramatist, novelist, social critic.
relentless assault on the accepted wisdom of the time. and hence
became hated by official society. 20: George Bernard Shaw--who had
42
somewhat parallel characteristics Nordau's brings out the essence
in his somewhat antisemitic critique "one of those remarkable
cosmopolitan Jews who go forth against modern civilization as David
went against the Philistines...smiting it hip and thigh without any
sense of common humanity with it [who] trumped up an indictment of
its men of genius as depraved lunatics." (Kraus, Benda, Frankfurt
school, and many other Jews historically took that role as did Marx
and more softly Disraeli and Freud and others down to the present.
34-5 "Each advance in knowledge, each step ahead, was
accompanied by bloodshed of the noble and the high-minded." who
acted not for their own advantage but for truth. This of course has
an objective basis in history and is not exclusively J but it also
derives from the Jewish view of learning as the highest form of
worship. Persecution, the advance of knowledge also is to push back
prejudice and allow freedom and equality. An advocate of science.
Core of his philosophy is the concept of "solidarity" again J
aspects. Other important elements are intelligence and the
development of morals. Critical of heredity as explanation since
anti-racialist. in other words, rejects a psychology of nations
approach. Humans can b educated and improved. Religion has failed,
only hope is intelligence.
Intelligence, universalism, plus ethics also Einstein. book on
Nordau 82: why act morally, not because of fear of Hell but, "Since
you are a part of mankind, its prosperity is your prosperity and
its suffering is your suffering....A blossoming humanity is your
paradise, a degenerating one your hell." note Js don't emphasize
Hell but strong sociology underlying Talmud, functioning of society
implicitly though presented as will of God explicitly (but laws are
also interpreted for human functioning. The explanation as to "why"
changes lots more than the structure.
102: religion is but "a mighty desire to step out of
individual isolation and to vividly feel the solidarity of our
fellow-men."
E.B. Adams, Israel Zangwill, p. 36 Zangwill comments on the
failure of Christianity, with a world war as well as pogroms in
Poland and Russia as proof of it. He feels that the Jews are the
only people left with an ideal of "the unity of the universe...the
brotherhood of humanity under the common fatherhood, and...a
warless world"
p. 37 To Zangwill, the fact that Jews needed a nation was
itself a comment on the failure of the Christian world. Zangwill
would have preferred that Europe learn to respect and protect
minorities; but after World War I, he was convinced that the world
had not and would not oppose oppression.
p. 54 In Children of the Ghetto, the father's spiritual but rigid
orthodoxy is counterpoised to the children becoming British and
abandoning a Judaism that "flourished before England was invented"
(86). Though Hannah decides to escape on the Seder to flee a
"cruel" religion with its "endless coil of laws" and make her own
"exodus from slavery," she finally cannot leave.
p. 55 Benjamin has been taken away from the Ansell family to an
43
English boarding school;
returning for a visit to his family's
Whitechapel garret, dressed and talking, Esther thinks, "like the
pictures of little Lord Launceston in the Fourth Standard Reader"
(168). Benjamin can no longer speak or understand "that beastly
Yiddish," and he rejects Hebrew as "no good to anyone";
he
confesses to Esther that he is ashamed of his father's shabby
appearance and "those two beastly little curls at the side of his
head" (171). Benjamin, who aspires to be a writer, anticipates his
time of fame and fortune, when he can lift the family out of its
poverty. But Benjamin becomes suddenly ill and dies.
A nurse, observing that Moses cannot understand Benjy's
English, nor Benjy Moses' Yiddish, says, "Isn't it a sad case?
They can't understand each other." But in Benjy's last delirious
moments, he speaks Yiddish, "grown a child again." At the end, the
father and son repeat together in Hebrew the Shemah, "the last
declaration of the dying Israelite." "Both," Zangwill adds,
"understood that."
p. 56 Benjamin's story, then, parallels and underlines
Hannah's, for both end with the reconciliation of child to father
and with the affirmation of the values of Judaism.
p. 57 The old men who "would have been ...surprised...to be
informed that they were orthodox"
Grandchildren of the Ghetto
Most of the Jews present at the dinner reject their Jewishness,
though they observe some of the forms of Judaism.
For example,
they despise the idea of intermarriage but look on Yiddish as
"vulgarity," often have Anglicized their names, and refuse to
"spend Christmas" at Brighton because "so many Jews go there."
p. 58 what they want from art depicting Jews is an apologia,
not an analysis.
p. 59 Levi Shemuel (Hannah's brother), who now calls himself
Leonard James and tells Esther, "I see you're like me; I
never think of the Ghetto if I can help it"
Reb Shemuel, worried by his son's absence at the Seder table, goes
to search for him and finds him leaving the theater with an
actress: "For one awful instant, that seemed an eternity, the old
man and the young faced each other across the chasm which divided
their lives"
(434). Levi decides to ignore his father; as he
drives off, he tells the actress that Reb Shemuel is "only an old
Jew who supplies me with cash"
p. 60
Both children and grandchildren drift away from
Judaism, but both return to it in moments of crisis. Reform "was
cold, crude and devoid of magnetism" (439), or toward denial of
Judaism
She is able to see in the ghetto the misery and the
failings, but she recognizes also the "illogical happiness" that
flourishes there.
p. 92
Often the doubter or the convert to Christianity
returns to Judaism because of childhood memories or familial
affection.
p. 110 The Melting Pot
p. 113 Zangwill's play both advocated the assimilation of all
races and creeds while he, possibly unconsciously, slants the story
44
to favor the Jews. The Christians portrayed are mostly bigots,
unless they adopt Jewish ways. But all this optimism is also
somewhat desperate, revealing Zangwill's hope than his conviction.
He wrote in 1913 that if America could not escape the European
disease of prejudice, humanity could only despair. Elsie
Adams,
Israel Zangwill (NY, 1971) b 1864 in London, parents immigrants.
attended Jewish school, teacher, wrote for Jewish newspapers and
magazines, successful writer and humorist in 1890s of both Jewish
and general books, met Herzl and joined movement in 1895. married
Edith Ayrton (non-J, made him more interested in a world religion
of brotherhood and love for all with equal rights) supp Uganda
plan. died 1926. "the Dickens of the ghetto" new/Jewish humor from
bitterness, ridiculing institutions and human foibles. romantic.
after turn of the century increasingly devoted to politics. also
turned to disarmament and pacificism in post-WW1. 24: "Zion is
where the Jew lives as a Jew." play 1909 "The Melting Pot" hoping
America would realize ideal, but became increasingly disillusioned
and WW1 convinced him Christianity had failed and so turned against
ideals of Judaism. again, a jumping-around phenomena as with
Koestler, the difficulty of finding a home, of reconciling wishfulfillment with reality, utopianism with pragmatism. 28: defined
true nationalism as a country's ability to absorb and make patriots
of foreigners. 32: ironically, wrote of evils of nationalism, felt
destroying world during and after WW1. 35: while pulling away from
J religion saw as moral system capable of leading the world.
Christianity was too other-worldly, while Judaism is oriented
toward behavior, family and community. said Judaism the "original
Catholic Democratic Church of Humanity" and Israel's mission to
bring "its own moral vision to the world." justice and unity, other
groups take atrocities as normal. in the slum, at least Judaism
provided a vision and a structure of life. 37: Christian
persecution held together the Jews, Israel could only talk
brotherhood if had a home. 1923: declared political Zionism dead.
would have preferred Europe protect minorities but since would not,
still imperialisms and conflict (predicting what was to come).
Many of his works mainstream British-type humor. Children of
the Ghetto 1892. objectivity plus sympathy, break stereotyping. 53:
"The dirty, shiftless peddler becomes the pious inheritor of a
glorious tradition as he presides over the Seder table." tradition
and religion provides both background and foundation. generational
conflict, rejection of matchmaking, falling away. rebelliousness is
matched with emotional links. the difficulty of leaving. 55: the
son returning from boarding school, dressed like an English
gentleman, unable to speak Yiddish or Hebrew, confesses ashamed at
his father's shabby appearance and funny customs. the father and
son literally unable to communicate because of language though at
end reunited at son's death bed by the Shmah. reconciliation and
affirmation. the sabbath interferes with work, social aspiration. Z
laments how 57: "the vivid tints of the East [blur] into the
uniform gray of English middle-class life." by the grandchildren's
generation, they break completely and even become antisemites. most
45
of them reject their Jewishness, still do not intermarry but see
yiddish as vulgar and refuse to "spend christmas" at brighton
because "so many Jews go there."p. 57.
These West End Jews,
however, are nervous about realistic portrayals as want apologia.
(shades of Roth)
Mark Gertler, British artist. pacifist, b 1891 east London
child of poor immigrants. "By my ambitions I am cut off from my own
family and class and by them I have been raised to be equal to a
class I hate!...I am an outcast." to genteel Hampstead moved in
1915, "I shall belong to no class....I was beginning to feel
stifled by everything here in the East End." painted some of best
pictures in the latter, hung out with Bloomsbury set. tb and much
time in sanatorium. bright color did not always suit English taste.
married non-Jewish painter in 1930, named son Luke in 1932.
committed suicide in June 1939, in bad health.xxxiv
duck 7. The German-Jewish Synthesis
H.I. Bach, The German Jew p. 124 Heinrich von Treitschke, a
leading German historian, criticized Jews for having inadequate
national fervor.
Playing on a phrase of Heine's--who had called
Jewish heritage "a misfortune" because of the persecution it
entailed--Treitschke declared the Jews to be "our misfortune" and
justified Jew-baiting as a "natural reaction of German folk-feeling
against an alien element." p. 125 Jacob Bernays had given a
lifetime's devotion to trying to reconcile Jewish and Greek
heritage, collapsed and died soon after he heard of his former
student's attack.
p. 133-34 1890, H. Steinthal wrote in a Jewish magazine,
professor at the University of Berlin and lecturer at the Institute
for Jewish Science in Berlin. in "The Chosen People, or Jews and
Germans," "We are now no longer a Jewish people. This means...that
in all ways of ethical activity we are determined by the spirit of
the people among which we dwell. The prophet who had suffered most
painfully when Jewish nationhood perished, Jeremiah, called upon
the exiles to promote the welfare of the state where God had led
them; his words (Jer. 29:7) that "the welfare of this state is your
welfare" enjoin us to promote with all our might the growth of all
the moral and spiritual aims of the peoples among which we live,
and to co-operate in their national task. It is our duty to
cooperate in the strengthening, widening and heightening of their
national spirit, and in attending to it we fulfil our
mission....There is no contradiction between being a Jew and being
a German and being a human being--all three are so interwoven that
we can be the one only by being the two others as well. The Jewish
German can be among the best Germans, and the German Jew among the
best Jews, however you call him, he will rank among the best human
beings. This is why we love the German fatherland and are grateful
to it. We can by now be good Jews only by being good Germans, yet
equally we can be good Germans only by being good Jews. We shall be
both, or shall be neither, at the same time. The term "the Chosen
People" is, to us, an historical reminder of religious and ethical
46
significance, a warning from our history to strive after the ideal,
after self-examination and humility. It means to say that we are
Germans of non-German ancestry, yet that, in the double and
interlinked national feeling, we find a double reason for being
humane, for every kind of moral activity."
p. 143 Wealthy social climbers converted to gain titles and
prestige; professionals wanted to promote their careers and gain
jobs otherwise closed to them.
p. 196 Cohen's Liberal humanism that regarded the State as an
instrument of education, a link in the development of mankind to
the Messianic goal of eternal peace among all the nations. Within
this conception, the Jews, as bearers of messianic ethics, of "the
spirit of mankind," were deemed worthy of preservation as a
separate group within the nation, with a "nationality" of their
own, as it were. 1916 "The world of ethics in its historical
development," Cohen maintained, "is our true Promised Land,"
Buber considered this view of the State as a "fiction" of "the
untrue or high-flown 'humanity' of yesterday," as a wrong
idealization, and Cohen's glorification of the Diaspora as "a
misrepresentation and distortion of the basic fact of exile."
p. 202
His great-grandfather had been superintendent of a
Jewish Free School whose pupils included Leopold Zunz, the founder
of the Science of Judaism. The aim of the school was "to transform
ignorant, ill-bred [young men], crude in speech and ideas, into
well-bred, polished young men." One result arising out of these
beginnings was represented by Franz Rosenzweig's cousins and
friends, who became fervent Christians. more characteristic of the
evolution of emancipation were Franz Rosenzweig's parents:
his
father, a successful manufacturer of dyestuffs and town councillor;
and his mother, charming, idealistic, and full of enthusiasm for
art, music, and poetry. Their Jewish convictions were stronger than
met the eye but, superficially, their interest in Judaism was no
more than formal. A "thin thread" of Jewish tradition was handed
on to the boy through a great-uncle who lived with the family,
rather than through his parents.
p. 203 religion, to Rosenzweig, seemed the only way out of the
"curse of historicity," the misleading notion of "progress." Yet to
Rosenzweig it seemed inconceivable that a modern scholar, a man of
scientific training, used to logical analysis and to the
historian's discipline of viewing ideas in the context of their
time, could take religion really seriously. In long discussions
with a friend, Eugen Rosenstock, a Christian of Jewish descent and
a first-rate legal historian, Rosenzweig experienced that neither
his scientific relativism nor his rudimentary Jewish convictions
could be maintained against a living faith. Zionism or baptism
seemed to be the only choice. He decided to become a Christian,
with the one reservation that he would do so as a Jew.
In preparation for this step he attended the synagogue service
on New Year's Day. When his mother heard of his intention and that
he wanted to go there again on the Day of Atonement, she told him:
"I shall ask them to turn you away - in our synagogue there is no
47
room for an apostate."
He went to Berlin and spent the Day of
Atonement in a small orthodox synagogue. That October 1913 day
changed his life, making him change his mind. He later said that he
still agreed with the Church that no one can reach the Father save
through Jesus, but that Jews already had this direct relationship.
He wrote of a Jew on Yom Kippur who "confronts the eyes of his
judge in utter loneliness as if he were dead in the midst of life."
The liturgy recollects the ancient Temple service during which--on
but this one day of the whole year--the high priest pronounced the
ineffable Name of God--"the Word and Fire of Revelation."
The
divine truth was beheld in the sanctuary, in the mystery of
resemblance, as the Countenance "which looks upon me and out of
which I look." And on the last, most solemn profession of the day,
"man himself, in the sight of God, gives the answer which grants
him the fulfillment of his prayer of return....In this moment he is
as close to God...as is ever accorded to man." "By the one shining
moment of grace, of choice, man turns to a `must' that is beyond
all freedom." He turned to the study of Jewish classical literature
and theology [the Jewish apologetic, optimistic, sentimental school
states the few cases as the many and before one knows it Heine,
Disraeli, Marx, and...Woody Allen become the symbols of the Jews
and of the preservation rather than disintegration of Jewish life.
p. 204 [remarkable parallel to contemporary] His religious
conversion, of lightning like suddenness after months of "torture,"
had been the answer to his vital necessity to gain a foothold
beyond the relativism of historicity. In its general significance
this answer meant the rediscovery of "metahistoric Judaism," of
timeless, unchanging reality, of the anticipation of eternity
within life.
This had been the view common to past Jewish
tradition and still shared by Mendelssohn, the view of revelation
as imposing its truth on reason that Steinheim had propounded in
the middle of the nineteenth century. Rosenzweig found this
timeless existence in the "eternal life" of the Jewish People,
whose awareness of being allied to God had ever remained the "fiery
core" of its faith.
Forgoing growth and not subject to decline, this people had
already reached the goal toward which the nations of the world were
still moving.
He saw eternity foreshadowed and mirrored in the
liturgical rhythm of the sacred year with its Sabbaths and
festivals. Corresponding to the "eternal life" of this People is
the "eternal way" of Christianity, both being mutually related and
interdependent for the whole of human history, till the Messianic
Age.
Alexander Altmann, Essays in Jewish Intellectual History p.
258 Franz Rosenzweig notes on Herman Cohen 1913-14 "Balaam's word
of the `people that shall dwell alone' (Num 23: 9) the civilized
world cannot comprehend it." 254 if the issue was the battle for
monotheism, it was Christianity that was fighting paganism [the
idea of a Jewish mission was a sham] 255: now saw synagogue as the
conscience forcing the church to complete its mission so it did not
compromise, "mute admonisher" [yet point is that Jews still existed
48
for the effect they had on Christians rather than for themselves]
250-51 July 7, 1913 talks with Rosenstock, the crisis of his life.
his Jewishness was not strong enough, Rosenstock saw Rosenzweig's
Judaism as "a kind of personal idiosyncrasy, or at best as a pious
romantic relic" of respect for his ancestors. 249: "We are
Christians in every respect," he wrote his parents in 1909, "we
live in a Christian state, attend Christian schools, read Christian
books, in short, our whole civilization is fundamentally
Christian."
Monika Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany p. 1: While Jews in
France received equality overnight, in Germany it was tied to the
fulfillment of conditions, and thus the process of emancipation was
drawn out over generations. "To the authorities the Jews never
appeared sufficiently adapted for full emancipation, and thereby
the emancipatory process itself permanently provided occasion for
new discrimination."
p. 2: there soon arose in Imperial Germany a social
antisemitism of unprecedented scale. where once the Jews had been
attacked as poor and backward, now they were attacked for being
prosperous and seeking education. They were refused social
acceptance, excluded from government jobs, accused of economic
cheating and imposing a foreign culture on the German people Thus,
an isolated German-Jewish middle class developed with its own
character and subculture, in which traditional Jewish elements
combined with elements of German bourgeois culture.
The
"German-Jewish symbiosis" was, then, less a social reality in the
living-together of Jews and non-Jews than it was a cultural
phenomenon within the Jewish group itself. p. 5: Between 1871 and
1933 the proportion of Jewish children fell by half.
"It's like blacks calling themselves whites," said Richard
Wagner appropriately about emancipated Jews. After all, the
traditional view was theoretically that conversion eliminated the
Jew but the new racial view was that they could not change, hence
an assimilated Jew was worse since he was not so visible and all
the more able to subvert the culture from within. The irony, of
course, was that even Wagner could not dispense with such useful
creatures. Giacomo Meyerbeer who gave him both ideas and practical
assistance was praised in 1841 with, "Without Meyerbeer, I would be
nothing." and a rabbi's son Hermann Levy, conductor to King Ludwig
II of Bavaria and who led the premiere of Parsifal in 1882, another
Jewish musician named Rubinstein lived in Wagner's home suffered
his insults and shot himself in despair when Wagner died. his
impresario was a Jew. But he hated the music of Mendelssohn,
Meyerbeer, Offenbach. assimilated Jews liked his operas. Wagner's
hypocrisy and the foolishness of his Jewish admirers were much
ridiculed at the time.xxxv Yet the Jews' affinity to Wagner made
sense at the same time as it exposed the inescapable contradiction
in their position. If Wagner expressed the essence of the German
soul and the Jews wanted to be assimilated to Germany, then they
had to like Wagner. By applauding his music, then, they were trying
to prove he was wrong about them. In Groucho's terms, they would
49
force the club to admit them despite its bigotry.
Jacob Wassermann writer who wanted to be good Jew and good
German. Caspar Hauser 1908 about mysterious foundling. some heroes-and this is typical also found for example in Richler--the secular
Jewish saint, the man of goodness, a sort of guru. emphasis on
goodness, My Way as German and Jew 1921.
150 (Freud, Jews and
Other Germans "Sacrifices are not enough. Wooing is misinterpreted.
Mediation meets coldness, if not scorn. Apostasy is, for the selfrespecting, out of the question on principle. Secret assimilation
bears fruit only for those who are suited to assimilation, which is
to say, the weakest individuals. Persisting in old ways means
torpor. What remains? Self destruction? A Life in twilight,
anxiety, and misery...? It is better not to think about it." cannot
renounce German/Jew link. writes about antisemitism in novels but
wrote rejecting it as a German. 152: Wassermann repeatedly said
that his ancestors had lived in Franconia for over five centuries.
antagonism toward eastern Jews--uniting them with Germans--and to
deflect onto the others the German antagonism to themselves. 153:
"It misread antisemitism as a distorted response to a real cause
rather than a pure projection that has very little, if anything, to
do with Jewish character or Jewish conduct at all." appalled by
these "Jewish traders, profiteers and speculators." asked what did
he have to do with them when his forebears had lived in German for
six hundred years. Stefan George, the humanist who had many Jewish
followers (and some of his non-Jewish devotees were the most
courageous opponents of the Nazis) was careful never to allow them
to be in the majority. some of the younger generation criticized
Wassermann for wanting too badly to be German but the depth of his
desire was also the root of his despair. (164) a generation adrift,
the last preservers of the humane German culture. Berlin a
particularly Jewish-influenced culturally city.
Freud, Jews and Other Germans 110: "The German language no
longer felt like a precious acquisition; it was a cultural
endowment they had in common with other Germans." [parallel to
English] Yiddish was condescended too and hated (because of its
similarity to German) while in America it was too different to
English to have the longer-term threat once it ceased to be
identified with being an immigrant who did not know English. German
Jews saw themselves as the guardians of German culture which caused
more resentment. the debate as to whether it was assimilation or
the lack of it which engendered antisemitism. As Herzl recognized,
the answer was both. 111-13 non-Jewish novelist Theodor Fontane his
old friends and subjects for writing the Prussian aristocracy had
forgotten him on his 75th birthday in 1894, while he received
hundreds of letters from Jews. At first, he noted, the Jews did not
want assimilation, now the Christians did not. He wrote in a
letter: "Down to 1848 or perhaps 1870, we were dominated by the
ideas of the previous century; we had quite sincerely fallen in
love with human rights and reveled in ideas of emancipation, which
we had not yet had time and opportunity to test. This `testing' is
of recent date and has turned out most unfavorable for the Jews.
50
They are irritants everywhere (much more than they used to be
earlier), they mess up everything, obstruct the contemplation of
every problem for its own sake. Even the most optimistic have had
to convince themselves that the baptismal water is not enough.
Despite all its gifts, it is a horrible people, not a `sour dough'
yielding vitality and freshness but a leaven in which uglier forms
of fermentation abound--a people afflicted from its very origins
with a kind of conceited vulgarity, which the aryan world cannot
get along with." one of his friends Georg Friedlaender, whose
family had long ago converted, but called him a "typical Jew" who
drives his "refined and amiable wife" to shed "tears of blood'
because "he cannot get rid of his Jewish mentality." it would have
been better never to have started assimilation. and adds, "I say
all this even though I have had, in my own person, nothing but good
from Jews right down to this day." Jews were the greatest fans and
revivers of Goethe and Kant. the university a stronghold of antiJewish feeling whose many Jewish teachers were unable to gain
promotion. Hermann Cohen had urged moving sabbath to Sunday. return
in 1880 replying to Treitschke's attack on Jews, defending their
right as Germans to profess their faith. pride in both. sociologist
George Simmel rejected for being a Jew which he did not feel,
witty--which was seen as being Jewish--a great lecturer, whether or
not he was baptized, an enemy wrote in trying to block his
professorship, p. 121. "He is surely an Israelite through and
through, in his outward appearance, in his bearing, and in his
mental style." [Jews central in sociology as discipline from
founding to present] 123: he had written "The Stranger," 1908: the
wanderer who comes and stays but is a potential wanderer again, a
marginal man, both at home and ill at ease in his community, which
gives him the rare quality of objectivity. this was not central to
his views. very integrated into German intellectual history.
pervasiveness of alienation. Comte, Kant. left Lutheran church into
which he had been baptized late in life but more as non-believer.
Ambivalence, p. 114: "The louder he protested his emancipation
from Jewishness, the more his Jewishness seemed to be evident and
protruding." (spoken of Heine) "The display of assimilatory passion
was perceived as the most convincing proof of his Jewish identity."
Ludwig Borne, "Some accuse me of being a Jew; some excuse me for
being one; some even praise me for being a Jew. But all think about
it." 115: Wassermann no one "would concede that I too bore a color
and stamp of German life" while foreigners viewed him as a German
writer. but German readers saw this as "a product of deliberation,
of Jewish ingenuity, of Jewish cleverness in adaptation and
disguise, of the dangerous power of deluding and ensnaring." A
Polish Jewish writer put it, by assimilating the individual must
also "consent to his own ugliness." the question was whether one
could escape. Polish culture, too much of a presence, a shaping
role. Wassermann concludes can't win [like rabbi quote about no way
out, and Schnitzler, too. Wassermann, having seceded from the old
and not being accepted by the new. the cafes where they had come to
experience the new life and suddenly realized they were surrounded
51
by other Jews in the same situation. The in-between sham Jewishness
of no passion, or meaning or open ridicule. 120: in Germany and AH,
journalism sometimes seemed like a Jewish invention. a new "ghetto"
as a "third camp" based on an illusion between Jewish and Gentile
communities with a limited number of allies--and those with
somewhat different interests--in the latter. The Jews were earnest
about assimilation, the Germans did not believe them, perhaps
finding it impossible to believe that any people would willingly
give up their culture, history, and identity. In short, the Germans
attributed Grouchoism to the Jews. Ambivalence, p. 123: "The
imagined `real Germany' was the only Germany to which the Jews
could reasonably hope to be admitted....Of that `virtual Germany,'
allegedly hidden inside the unprepossessing exterior of the
practical one and struggling to get out, they were genuine, ardent
and passionate patriots." ironically, those who said the Zionist
enterprise of creating a homeland was impractical were engaged in a
similar effort--but one resisted far more effectively by the
indigenous inhabitants of the European lands than by the Arabs.
this was a reason for p. 124: "an ideology of annihilation of all
particularity in the name of a universal human values: of science,
rationality, truth, which will embrace the whole of humanity." but
the Germans and Russians and others were horrified by this idea-they wanted the Jews to disappear into them, not to disappear
themselves. this doctrine called for the indigenous people to
assimilate to the Jews and to others and it is not surprising that
the vastly expanded notion of what this meant provoked antisemitism
(Jews as Bolsheviks, cosmopolitans, internationalists, businessmen,
disloyal) as opposed to emancipation through nationalism. When
Borne, Heine and others set up Young Germany to encourage progress,
it was dubbed Young Palestine by enemies. 1912 Moritz Goldstein
(125) "We Jews are administering the spiritual property of a nation
which denies our right and our ability to do so." ironically,
antisemitism was being simultaneously provoked by the most Jewish-and foreign--Jews and by the most assimilated ones because the
Germans saw both as allied to take over. (no wonder Marx developed
the notion of false consciousness to create the ideal fatherland).
Jews were telling Germans and Russians how to live, ordering them
about intellectually albeit for their own good and enlightenment,
liberalism and progress. 126: the Jews treated Schiller, Lessing,
Goethe, and Kant, "with reverence previously accorded only to
[Biblical] patriarchs."
Philipp Lowenfeld Richarz ed We were completely shielded at
school and at home from the knowledge that there existed a Zionist
ideology and a genuine Jewish national consciousness. p. 236: I
must have been about twelve years old at the time--when I heard a
discussion between my father and a colleague who said he was
feeling more Jewish every year." His father disagreed, saying, "To
be a Jew is a condition, and not a merit or a taint; one should
neither pride oneself on it nor be ashamed of it." His friend kept
pressing and Lowenfeld's father "began to retreat a bit and to
concede to him that he really felt exactly the same way. But almost
52
no one was ready to admit that in those days. Most people clung to
the doctrine that Judaism was simply a particular religion of
German citizens who had the same rights as all others." pp. 236-7:
the First and Seventh Field Artillery Regiments were, in principle,
antisemitic, which means that they generally did not accept Jewish
one-year volunteers, and in no case did they promote them to
reserve officers. For some rich Jews, this was precisely the reason
they tried to have their sons serve their one year of duty in these
regiments. Even in the military domain some wealthy Jews imagined
that they were more `refined' if their sons were tolerated in an
environment that was free of Jews."
p. 239: Refused to join the Jewish student fraternities in
Munich which "represented an exact, and for Jews an all the more
ridiculous, copy of the drinking, dueling, and conduct-code customs
of the `Christian' fraternities." Since the latter refused to duel
Jews, "The Jews were forced to make a virtue of necessity and
secure and restore their German-Jewish honor by bashing Jewish
heads and chopping up Jewish faces."
p. 240: The Independent Students Association rejected
discrimination and so became known as "Jews Clubs" from the dueling
corps and fraternities, though only a minority were Jews.
Freud, Jews and Other Germans, pp. 202-228. Hermann Levi best
conductor, son of a rabbi, Richard Wagner made him famous and
miserable. inner torment, tortured himself with talk of conversion.
his friends in 1884 celebrated his 25th anniversary as a conductor
with a newspaper with him as a caricatured Jew dressed as a high
priest. 214: in a letter equated "un-German" "detestable" with
"Jewish" praised Wagner's anti-Jewish writings, once kissed
Wagner's hand humbly in the middle of a concert he was conducting,
which Wagner accepted patronizingly, subservient to the point of
masochism. made himself a servant. 195: Theodor Lessing, Jewish
convert to Lutheranism wrote Freud an ugly letter denouncing
psychoanalysis as typically Jewish. Freud: "I turned away from the
man in disgust." "Don't you think that self-hatred like Th. L's is
an exquisite Jewish phenomenon?" Rathenau wrote of Jews with many
antisemitic stereotypes, urging them to become Germans, for whom he
had an almost erotic admiration. Lessing became a Zionist in World
War One though he never got over his personal (short, dark) dislike
but now blamed Jewish character defects on the oppressors. Fled to
Czechoslovakia and assassinated in 1933. he introduced the idea of
self-hatred in one of his books.
It is rarely remembered that even the Nazis were willing to
accept the idea that Jews could become Aryans if enough generations
had gone by after their ancestors' conversion and integration.
The ferocious debate about Freud's Jewish identity is the last
remnant of that age. Once one accepts the undeniable fact that
Freud was an atheist, the strength of his secular Jewish identity
is unmistakable. He is typical of those Jews who did not give up
all to assimilation. It is hard to believe that there can be a
debate at all, since Jewish identity is clearly not a purely
religious matter. More likely is the old reflex that any denial of
53
Jewish assimilation's success is an affirmation of antisemitism,
and fear that such an identification will brand psychoanalysis as
unobjective.
As Scholem pointed out (Ambivalence 129) those parts of
Judaism most pleasing to Gentiles or most consistent with the new
ideology were kept and others jettisoned, thus it was not a
modernization of Israel per se--especially in Reform--but an
assimilation of Judaism itself. this included mystical as well as
nationalistic. universality and the prophets extolled.
Ambivalence 134 a German Jewish newspaper said of the
easterners in 1872, "Those Jews may be registered with the police
as Jews, but their way of living is thoroughly un-Jewish." George
Mosse says (139) this antagonism showed how German the German Jews
had become.
The irony is that assimilation maintained the community of
fate since each Jew knew that he would be judged by--and held
responsible for--the actions of others; the loud and boorish, the
criminal, the wealthy capitalist or the revolutionary. what one
called "the strict rules of the civilization game." p. 131,
Ambivalence. 159: "Once the drama of assimilation is over (or,
rather, where it is over), so is the story of uniquely creative and
original Jewish cultural role."
Simmel greatest sociologist of time but could n ever get a
university appointment despite his publications, Jewish origin
Assimilation pp. 184-5.
Kafka: unstuck in time and place and this is Jewish become
universal--a Jewish Variant--because being unstuck in time and
space is particularly Jewish but by being without such referents it
becomes possible to identify this phenomenon with all other people.
But no other people is so unstuck and thus what seems to make it
universal is what actually makes it Jewish. When Derrida says,
"anyone or no one may be Jewish" this is the opposite of the
universal view but it is simply untrue. We should remember that
the other model of the artist is one who is on a team, representing
the values of his people and country, deeply rooted in local idiom,
an approach often attached to the political right but not
necessarily so (very much dominant in Communist states, for
example).
Anita Norich, The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of
Israel Joshua Singer, quoted in Jerusalem Report, April 16, 1992,
pp. 36-7. 1943, "Never in my life have I been as deeply convinced
of the senselessness of galut and its life and culture as I have
been in recent years. Unfortunately, I don't believe that there is
a cure for us. I have the diagnosis but not the cure." very common
view. pointed out dark side of greedy businessmen and power-hungry
hasids, and Jewish leftists. The Family Carnovsky connection with
Roth as well as carne, flesh.
Ambivalence 194-95: "the phantom of homogeneity." "coercive
homogenization" really made for strangers. Jews bearers of
Hungarian among peasant Slavs, Germa culture among Czechs and in
Austria-Hungary.
54
Bach: 12: "the price for thus being emancipated as
`individuals' was to give up their distinctiveness as a group, to
sever their Jewish roots--a demand almost akin to spiritual
suicide." [compare to leftist view of class rising as a whole and
not individual from class to this situation] German Jews subject to
the strongest stress and most advanced in this process. Ferdinand
Cohen, identified God and nature along Spinoza lines and searched
the smallest parts becoming founder of systematic bacteriology.
Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal created group psychology; Emil
Rathenau, enlightenment as technical development--electricity.
Theologians of this situation: Hermann Cohen (W civ Greek phil and
religious ethics. Leo Baeck, Martin Buber (b in Vienna but educated
in Galicia, from a Haskalah family so sense of community but
studied secular Ahad Ha-Am influenced, J as aspect of national
culture and community. rediscovered Hasidic movement. friend of
Gustav Landauer) a community in service to God through history,
striving after unity, vitality of religious experience and validity
of mystical ones, and Franz Rosenzweig. Buber spent formative years
in east and thus direct contact with vibrant Orthodoxy and Hasidic
movement plus university studies and Zionism, reconciliation of
Haskalah and religion. Buber: individual Jews part of a chain of
communal life through history, the equilibrium cannot continue,
must choose between being German and Jew. battle within oneself
back to roots. striving for oneness in character mirrors the battle
for unity among people and between humans and God.
Ger J community preferred Liberal orientation. In retrospect
the synthesis seems doomed and difficult balance, at the time to
participants it seemed natural. Moritz Goldstein wrote that Jews
representing German culture resented rather than appreciated and
called for some separation but did not happen. 189-91 Bach. Js
fought for Ger. on front lines and as administrators and scientists
but blamed. After war more reaction, Bavaria socialist state. Kurt
Eisner, shot; Landauer beaten to death. Rathenau murdered 1922.
Cahnman, German Jewry p. 26. In the nineteenth century, "Jews
everywhere became fervent patriots, attached more to the state than
to the nation, because they knew that they owed their emancipation
to governmental fiat in the face of popular reluctance." later,
with antisemitic movements, quality of citizens more important but
when state taken over by racist party and became executor of its
policies they were helpless, their role as "patriotic citizens"
damaged them because of the transformation of the protector [but
left, threw itself into arms of nation, or at least people, against
state]
97: the scholars and cultural figures were more often
converts.
Munich:
parts
of
community,
Orthodox,
liberals
(patriotic), arrivals from east (more likely to be Zionist and/or
Orthodox), and Social Democrats.
Bach. Ernst Toller rad. Arnolt Bronnen, Viennese half-Jew who
wrote nationalist and antis plays and became lit advisor to Nat Soc
p. 224. Cahnman 107: It was a conservative baptized Jewish
publisher who developed the "stab in the back" phrase and scenario
which later became Nazi propaganda. He was imprisoned by the Nazis
55
and died in Theresienstadt, behaved heroically.
Rathenau, section father was head of AEG electricity, during
WW1 in charge of war economy, Democratic Party, 1922 MFA, many
works on philosophical and social questions, tortured relationship
with J, despised assim but advocated. need to research. Walter
Rathenau The State and the Jews 1911, social advantages to
conversion made it seem mercenary.
duck case study/bridge Einstein/Schoenberg are another pair)
27: Scholem autobiog: German Jews "wanted to believe in
assimilation with, and integration into, an environment that by and
large viewed the Jews at best with indifference and at worst with
malevolence. 28: Christmas was celebrated, with roast goose or
hare, Christmas tree, and presents, said to be German national
festival, aunt played "Silent Night" 1911 studying Hebrew, "Under
the Christmas tree there was the Herzl picture in a black frame,
and my mother said, `We selected this picture for you because you
are so interested in Zionism.' From then on I left the house at
Christmastime." 29: Two mixed marriages in family. one married a
Catholic who was a soldier in the German army during World War Two
she returned to Judaism when a rabbi came to Munich after the war.
the other was his mother's sister, one of first female doctor,
married colleague, parents opposed, full of Far Eastern art: high
culture and journals, associated with marginal Jews. in 1933, after
20 years of marriage, husband asked that since she was an Aryan and
asked to release him so he could marry a German. died at
Theresienstadt.
personal turning point: reading Graetz, for Bar
Mitzvah received his History of the Jews and a History of Rome see
Hess and Freud. began to attend synagogue. at the reform
synagogues, had magnificent cantors "but their presentation
suggested the atmosphere of an operatic production more than that
of a religious rite." p. 40.
42-3: one brother a right-wing German nationalist, another a
Communist, the third a centrist like parents. oldest brother who
moved to Australia was asked by GS's wife his views, "I am a German
nationalist," "What and you say that after Hitler?" she said. "I'm
not going to let Hitler dictate my views to me!" she was
speechless.
cult of Eastern Jews among Zionists, having read
Buber's Hasidim books.
Scholem autobiog 30-31 his brother who was a Communist deputy
in parliament, married out, father "whose ideology ought to have
made him welcome a mixed marriage" declined to have contact with
the couple. astonished in 1960s when she asked, "`Why didn't Werner
bring me into the Jewish fold?' I replied: `But the two of you were
Communists, and he left the Jewish fold just as you left the
Church!' `No matter,'" she said naively "It would have been the
right thing to do.'" one year before her death converted because
wanted to be buried among Jews. the odd turns one's life takes
which could never be predicted even though, in retrospect, the
seeds are there.
Scholem: 54: Zionism's role in creating a Jewish state was
secondary to its task of helping Jews rediscover their selves and
56
history. 56: Orthodoxy, in Scholem's phrase, was less concerned
with the "spirit of the Torah" than with "the letter of the Shulhan
Arukh, the code of Jewish law."
67-68: Georg Simmel, despite his great reputation as a
philosopher and teacher, was refused a full professorship in
Germany for 30 years because, he noted "I am a Jew," His parents
had left the Jewish fold before 1850, estranged from everything
Jewish and yet "was widely regarded as the very quintessence of a
Talmudist. Buber a disciple and told Simmel that a man like himself
ought to be interested in seeing to it that men of his type did not
disappear, no response, but almost all his ood students Jews, the
only time Buber said that Simmel had ever used "we" was when he
read Buber's book on Hasidism and said slowly and thoughtfully, "We
certainly are a very strange people."
69: Hermann Cohen philosopher told Franz Rosenzweig in 1914
that he was too tolerant of Zionism, "Those fellows want to be
happy!" Very profound since such people preferred to keep Jews
pursing some mission as the servant of humanity, Christianity, or
democracy, they preached the virtues of alienation, suffering, and
a moral vision detached from the real world.
If antisemites and the Holocaust and identification with the
Israel of 1948 and 1967 and immigration memories and religion
cannot be depended on to Jewish identification than what can?
community will continue with ever declining, ever diluting
membership till levels out at a much lower level. Jews willing to
speak out but what to speak about and what to say. The oppressed
minority view--and idea of superiority, a complete reversal of
history and one in which Jews played a predominant role. (Cannot
understand the history of assimilation if don't realize it was
different then, the inferior accepted the idea of their
inferiority, a very different concept today.
Before the Reformation, Jews were the only minority group in
Europe--and after it they were the only non-Christian one--while
the Moslem world was a mosaic.
In practice, the development of a secular Jewish stance was
not an alternative to Orthodoxy but to assimilationism and it drew
supporters from those in the latter group more immediately than the
former. The adaptation of Jews to survival in the modern age.
Scholem and Benjamin met in 1915 when the were, respectively,
17 and 23 years old, brought together by a rebellion against their
German-Jewish bourgeois background. Illuminations 52-3 attempt to
grasp place, his projected ambitious work on Paris, his cityscapes
of Berlin and other places, trying to find a home. Benjamin thought
about Zionism, Hebrew, and the study of Jewish sources and never
followed but also never went away even when close to Communism.
Scholem to Palestine in 1924. Benjamin went into exile in France,
had thought about suicide repeatedly since 1931. Scholem professor
of HUJ. Necessary Angels:8: S wrote B "You are endangered more by
your desire for community, even if it be the apocalyptic community
of revolution, than by the horror of loneliness that speaks from so
many of you writings." SY Agnon's synthesis Orthodox Galician home,
57
interested in European culture. "The Great Synagogue" story by
Agnon. children playing unearth a building, first thought of as a
castle, then as a church which turns out to be the ancient
synagogue (Eur culture, lies at the bottom of, though this was
certainly not Agnon's intention) then after no locksmith can open
the door it swings open and the story ends all was in place, only
the Eternal Light was near going out. The mechanisms are still
there, they can be rediscovered (they don't have to be rebuilt) but
the spirit is near departing because of terrible situation in
Europe? because of abandonment? On Kafka, the difficulty of
transmitting the truth. 22-23: the three men, battling historical
circumstances and sharing a sense that assimilation was a dead end
"perceived a sustaining power of visionary truth and an
authenticity in Jewish tradition while fearing that this truth and
this authenticity might no longer be accessible to them." modernism
as relating to a receding tradition. paradox. For all his apparent
Jewish imagery, Chagall took up painting it was not acceptable
because of images, hence it was a Jewish art in rebellion against
Judaism. Kafka's father from shetl, shop and some success.
Scholem's father had broken with Orthodoxy. Benjamin's family--as
was often true of the Marxist Jews--was the most affluent and
furthest from tradition since links meant nothing to them also
devalued them for others. Scholem's grandfather was Wagner
enthusiast changing name from Scholem to Siegfried (first name) and
his son did not even have a Hebrew name. 30: When Scholem became
interested in Zionism, his parents responded by giving him a
portrait of Herzl as a present under their Christmas tree. Kafka
concerned p. 53 with exile, assimilation, endangered community,
revelation,
commentary,
law,
tradition,
and
commandment.
universalizes but compare to Rabbi Nathan of Breslau. In the Trial
the victim's name is Joseph K, Joseph being the perfect name for
studying assimilation. Kafka's writing German alienated since this
was not--in either sense of the word--his mother tongue. Kafka
words as the path to salvation, study and the mere expression of
ideas an end in itself fits into scholarly tradition. exile from a
Garden of Eden.Defenses/Alter: Benjamin: differences in Arendt's
playing down B's Judaism while Scholem shows how it is central.
Arendt: displacement, could neither be Zionist nor Communist.
Isaiah Berlin, Personal Impressions Lewis Namier 63: compared
the Jews of eastern Europe to an iceberg, part of which remained
submerged and still frozen; part of which had evaporated under the
influence of the rays of the Enlightenment; while the rest had
melted and formed violent nationalist or socialist-nationalist
torrents. Poland father administrator of a large estate and a
convert to Catholicism, given Polish education and expected to
assimilated. 66: felt an unreal world, a no-man's land between two
camps and welcome in neither rejects family's effort to cut off
from past (hence, historian) as self-destructive, shameful and
impractical, father refused to support him, went to England. his
dislike for family extended to Jews in general, decided they needed
to be pulled up to his level. 70: despite all his talk of realism
58
and historical method, "had the temperament of a political
romantic." "morbid hatred of obsequiousness. enjoyed shocking. 72:
spoke of "my co-racials" after hearing someone defend Germany's
claim to colonies, stood up, glared round the room and said loudly,
"We Jews and the other colored peoples think otherwise." 77 yet
hurt that he did not get the Oxford chair. converted to Anglican
when married
second time, Weizmann reacted strongly against
(compare to Herzl and Nordau). 81: "anxiety to please in any
fashion, still less appeasement of critics, was remote from his
temperament. He believed that objective truth could be discovered,
and that he had found a method of doing so in history." two
separate, but typical attitudes.
p. 147-8 "Man can flourish only when he loses himself in
community. Hence the moral danger of the Jew who has lost touch
with his own people and is regarded as a foreigner by the people of
his adoption." "The tragedy of the Jews is...that they lack the
support of a community to keep them together. The result is a want
of solid foundations in the individual which in its extreme form
amounts to moral instability." although the ghetto Jews lacked
much, "these obscure, humble people had one great advantages over
us--each of them belonged in every fibre of his being to a
community in which he was wholly absorbed, in which he felt himself
a fully privileged member, which asked nothing of him that was
contrary to his natural habits of thought." "However much the Jews
adapted themselves in language, manners, to a large extent even in
the forms of religion, to the European peoples among whom they
lived, the feeling of strangeness between them and their hosts
never vanished." 149 readiness to face truth wherever it led
without self-deception. 150 hated nationalism but thought Jews
needed national existence. 152 he wrote he had no roots and was a
stranger everywhere, also a lonely man individually.
Einstein and , former was a pacifist, anti WW1. In 1929
Einstein wrote, "when I came to Germany [from Switzerland] fifteen
years ago, I discovered for the first time that I was a Jew. I owe
this discovery more to gentiles than to Jews." Z movement,
predicted in 1921 would be forced to leave Germany within 10 years.
Schoenberg also suffered from antis and wrote Einstein asking
for a meeting to discuss Z, not answered, Germans would rather give
up preeminence in music, he complained, then give him credit, "in
their hatred of me, the Jews and the Swastika bearers are of one
mind." S feared Js had lost fighting spirit and thus would not be
capable of reestablishing a state. S was critical of Einstein's
criticisms of Germany, "He must surely...have learned that they
have given occasion for far-reaching revenge action against
innocent people." for this reason, refused to join anti-German
boycott because it endangered lies of remaining Jews. By 1933,
wrote friend, "I am decided...to work in the future solely for the
national state of Jewry. Einstein was indifferent to religion and
his wife and children became Catholic was indifferent. Scholem
ironically was in some ways more militant, it was a waste of time
to fight antisemitism since it was inevitable.xxxvi
59
German Jewish leaders tried to refute antisemitic propaganda
rationally--that is, on terms taught them by German culture--on the
premise that antisemitism was an aberration in Germany. But the
Jews were the ones who were isolated, in both their own battle and
their definition of Germany. After World War One, the founders of
the liberal German Democratic Party included such well-known Jews
as Albert Einstein, newspaper publisher Rudolf Mosse, and the
lawyer Hugo Preuss who, as designer of the Weimar constitution,
was a main target of antisemites. Since about 60 percent of Jewish
voters supported it, the Democrats became known as the "Jew Party."
As the party declined, it leaned farther to the right until, in
1930, it joined with the racist Young German Order.xxxvii
Melvyn A. Hill, The Recovery of the Public World, Hannah
Arendt "From the Pariah's Point of View: Reflections on Hannah
Arendt's Life and Work," Elisabeth Young-Bruehl p. 3 Arendt wrote
her doctoral dissertation on St. Augustine's Concept of Love and
shortly afterwards began her biography of Varnhagan.
pp. 4-5 Her grandfather was wealthy and an active leader in
the Jewish community. Her parents left behind Judaism directly but
were ardent supporters of the left-wing of the Social Democrats and
her mother greatly admired the revolutionary Communist Rosa
Luxemburg.
p. 5 Arendt remarked that while all Jewish children
encountered anti-Semitism, "My mother always insisted that we never
humble ourselves....When my teachers made anti-Semitic remarks-usually they were not directed at me, but at my classmates,
particularly at the eastern Jewesses--I was instructed to stand up
immediately, to leave the class and to go home."
p. 6 Her biography of Varnhagen raised the issue of how one
can love one's neighbors if they--and yourself--will not accept who
you are.
p. 9 Wrote in 1948, "Social non-conformism as such has been
and always will be the mark of intellectuals....intellectually,
non-conformism is almost the sine qua non of achievement." (the
fetish of being isolated first isolates one from the Jewish
community and, in the end, mostly from that community and its
interests since other interests can be represented without any
personal involvement.)
p. 10 "Man is a social animal and life is not easy for him
when social ties are cut off. Moral standards are much easier kept
in the texture of a society.
Very few individuals have the
strength to conserve their own integrity if their social, political
and legal status is completely confused. Lacking the courage to
fight for a change of our social and legal status, we have decided
instead, so many of us, to try a change of identity.
And this
curious behavior makes matters much worse."
"It is true that most of us depend entirely on social
standards; we lose confidence in ourselves if society does not
approve us; we are--and always were--ready to pay any price in
order to be accepted by society. But it is equally true that the
very few among us who have tried to get along without all these
60
tricks and jokes of adjustment and assimilation have paid a much
higher price than they could afford:
they jeopardized the few
chances even outlaws have in a topsy-turvy world."
All vaunted Jewish qualities--the "Jewish heart," humanity,
humor, disinterested intelligence--are pariah qualities. All Jewish
shortcomings--tactlessness,
political
stupidity,
inferiority
complexes and money-grubbing--are characteristics of upstarts."
Stan Spyros Draenos p. 218: Arendt wrote, "tradition itself
has become part of the past," p. 222: "Each new generation, indeed,
every new human being, as he inserts himself between an infinite
past and an infinite future, must discover and ploddingly pave [the
gap] anew...without religious trust in a sacred beginning and
without the protection of traditional and therefore self-evident
standards of behavior."
p. 278: The bourgeoisie hid its pursuit of material selfinterest behind an appeal to traditional values, hypocritically
parading public virtues while ignoring them in private and business
life and holding them in contempt. [the hypocrisy of society Jews
see looking outward; the decay of their own beliefs they see
looking inward.] p. 279 "the public order is based on people's
holding as self-evident precisely those best-known truths which
secretly scarcely anyone still believes in."
synthesis in exile Hannah Arendt: her discussion of the active
versus the contemplative life was a good opportunity for a
discussion of the Jewish attitude on these matters in terms of
fulfillment as opposed to the study of law; the issue of whether
man is more a social or a political animal. but these are left out.
Western civilization is seen as a Greek/Christian synthesis for
this is her training in the university. (Strauss/Bloom) her
experience in life was another matter. There is no secular
intellectual use of Jewish thought and experience. a sympathetic
but very Christian reading of Judaism. Jewish situation, Christian
intellectual tradition. Her view has traces, though, for trained by
Heidigger she found the existing tradition in ruins but H's case
his critique of bourgeois society led him to fascism which could
not do in Arendt's case. Banality means lack of thought,
disconnection from history. Her highly individualistic viewpoint
was both a rejection of totalitarianism and established community,
her view of a timeless ideology of racialism and dictatorship is
related to view of antisemitism. She did not say that there was an
Eichmann in all man, but a potential in many. commonality of Soviet
and Nazi. b Hanover 1906. philosopher obsessed with question of
guilt. love for Martin Heidegger, met in 1924 at University of
Marburg. thought highly of him, love affair though he was married,
joined Nazi party and it made him rector of Freiburg university.
forbade his own former professor Husserl to enter university since
he was a Jew. everyone co-responsible for wrong, if don't prevent
am also guilty. visited H even after war when he refused to
renounce his views. she excused his irresponsibility attributing it
to desperation and delusion of genius. had photo of him on desk
when reporting Eichmann trial.xxxviii [transition into next section.
61
Hannah
Arendt's
portrayed
totalitarianism
as
tightly
intermingled with antisemitism.
the battle with tradition: "The deceased force themselves upon
us and upon the institutions that govern us and refuse to disappear
into the darkness into which we try to plunge them. The more we try
to forget, the more their influence dominates us....Because we are
the sons of our fathers and the grandsons of our grandfather, their
misdeeds may persecute us into the third and fourth generations."
[notes: Biblical phrasing of last phrase, compare to Marx, dead
hand of history, tradition as negative (but totalitarianism not due
to tradition as she showed so much as a new phenomenon.). other
signals. Europe's spiritual collapse came because everyone thought
they could ignore the Jews' fate believing "that Jewish history
obeys `exceptional laws.'" Therefore, the Jews who insisted on
remaining Jews caused the problem. In reading Heine and Borne "who,
just because they were Jews, insisted on being considered men and
were thus incorporated into the universal history of mankind, we
forgot all about the tedious speeches of the representatives of the
special group of privileged Jews in Prussia at the same time." Yet
Heine and Borne were, of course, converts whose devotion to mankind
in general caused them to join a particular group of it called
Christians in order to become themselves privileged.xxxix
Rather than say evil is banal--ie, acceptably normal, okay,
found in all of us--she is saying that it is unromantic, unheroic.
There is no devil--Paradise Lost--or drama in it. The demons are
bureaucrats. In doing so, she creates a definition made for Hitler
and perhaps Stalin's evil, yet also she is letting the air out of
their ideological claim of struggle as well as the Nazis' AryanJewish gotterdamerung. They are not heroes, not even heroes of
evil. She is denying the anti-modern cause its romanticism. Evil
itself has become modernized and routinized. This is not the great
battle of manichean conflict, not the Inquisitor, but the midgets.
She is denying the enemies of modern democratic, culturally
pluralist society their cause.
Martin Buber, scholar, philosophy in Europe, student movement,
Zionist, Jewish religion and ethics. Franz Rosenzweig assimilated
family, decided to convert to C but changed mind after attending an
Orthodox YK service, J/C relationship. his students included Buber
and Scholem. (see Scholem above)
9. The great humanists (interwar period)
few could escape some contact with Communism, which presented
itself which--strange as it seems in hindsight--presented itself as
the great humanist theory
strange connections. Daniel Halevy, "master of ceremonies of
intellectual Paris" pp. 19-20. in his salon Andre Malraux and
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, a capital in the "Republic of Letters."
Julien Benda, sharp-tongued and critical of everyone. greatgrandson of German Jewish cantor at Paris synagogue, co-author was
a son of the first French-Hebrew dictionary, the other son became a
famous composer. D's father was a critic, playwright, and author of
62
operettas. had identified with Catholic and Protestant upper
classes. D was a biographer of Nietzsche and worked with Charles
Peguy, defended Dreyfus, but moved to right. humanitarian Socialist
and friend of Maurice Barres. DH became an influential book editor
publishing a wide range of france's best writers, anti-Popular
Front, even anti-Republic, pro-Vichy. 1920s and 1930s. parlor with
paintings by his former friend Degas (an antisemite who he had
broken with over Dreyfus) right by the Seine.xl
Herbert Lottman, The Left Bank (Boston, 1982). Koestler in
Paris in 1920s (p. 40) and again in 1933 came close to suicide at
latter point, worked for Communist-front organization, 41: in those
years, he said, a Frenchman would embrace you then leave you
"shivering in the street, condemned to remain forever a permanent
tourist or permanent exile" [a good description of self]. Institute
for the Study of Fascism.
Drieu's first wife was Jewish (as was Malraux's?) and helped
by Emmanuel Berl but became antisemite. p. 72.
268-9: Margarete Buber-Neumann, daughter in law of Martin
Buber became wife, then widow of German Communist leader Heinz
Neumann, arrested in SU in 1937 and disappeared, she had been in
Siberian deportation camp and turned over to Nazis after SovietGerman pact, spent four years in Ravensbruck concentration camp.
270: the whole mix-up Julien Benda spoke at a rally by French
Communists to denounce Lazlo Rajk, the former Communist leader and
International Brigade who was executed.
duck Koestler born in Budapest. studied engineering and
psychology in Vienna, assimilated background, became interested in
Zionism from fellow students, lived in Palestine 1926-29,
disappointed after original enthusiasm. then became Communist.
close to Jabotinsky, journalist, went to Paris. in SU 1932 year and
a half, more tolerant with that. Spanish Civil War, arrested by
Franco forces and in condemned cell. Moscow Trials disillusioned
and worked on Darkness at Noon in Paris in late 1930s. critiques
idea of the party as the embodiment of history [looking for such an
embodiment and if its not in one place, must be in another, hence
ability to repeatedly be true believer. 1938 left CP writes of this
cited in J Nedava, Arthur Koestler (London, 1948) pp. 37-38: "Since
my school days I have not ceased to marvel each year at the fool I
had been the year before. Each year brought its own revelation and
each time I could only think with shame and rage of the opinions I
had held and vented before the last initiation." [searching for a
place to belong] The Yogi and the Commissar change from within.
Then betrayed by France and held in detention camp under terrible
conditions. Still friendly to Z cause but very cynical. Not only a
man without a country but a man without a place at all. Thieves in
the Night is very self-consciously impartial. main character Joseph
[significant name] half Jewish, half-English,
duck Stefan Zweig "Now I do not belong anywhere, everywhere a
stranger and at best a guest."one of most widely read writers in
interwar period. did not look back, "like my ancestor Lot in the
Bible, I knew that all behind me was dust and cinders, the past
63
solidified into bitter salt." [Mark Gelber of BG is expert].
studies of Erasmus and other biographies. "For a Europe of the
Spirit" role model for other secular Jews in memoirs: "nine-tenths
of what the world celebrated as Viennese culture in the 19th
century was promoted, nourished, and created by Viennese Jewry."
apolitical, believed learning and cultural enlightenment could
unite Europe. compare to Walter Benjamin suicide.xli Because the
humanistic assimilation they had hoped for was shattered, not
expected persecution, unlike the left, religious, and Z who took it
into account in their philosophies. persecution was over,
vanquished, transcended, they could trust their neighbors.
Stefan Zweig, b 1881. "My work has been burned to ashes in the
very country where my books found millions of readers," he wrote
just before committing suicide with his wife in Brazil in February
1942. "Now I do not belong anywhere, everywhere a stranger and at
best a guest." Salzburg. the city "where Nazism was strongest" the
place that "humiliated me." posthumously built up as a tourist
attraction by the town. Prague has Kafka. now forgotten, wildly
popular between the war as a biographer of Mare Antoinette and
Balzac and as a novelist. desire for nationalism to be supplanted
by a greater European consciousness. Freud liked him, secular Jew,
admired Herzl but not interested in Zionism. donated 1933 much of
his papers to Jewish National Library in Jerusalem, dealt with
Jewish themes in some of his stories.xlii
duck 10. The end in persecution
Antisemitism and Nazism, its most sophisticated version,
opposed the Jewish-assimilationist values of democracy and
modernism. (see Modern Dictators. Its argument was a three-fold
one. First, the Jews were competitors who grabbed the good jobs in
academia, law, medicine, and other fields from the "local" people.
This claim appealed to the greed, jealousy, and competitiveness of
those who failed or believed they had failed because they were
treated unfairly.
Second, the Jews were transforming the local culture and
politics to correspond with their own ideas contrary to its
traditions. This argument also had a great deal of effect in the
United States and many other countries. Ironically, of course,
those Jews within the institutions were far more changed than they
were changers most of the time, being reshaped by their experiences
and ambitions, becoming assimilated or even converted into rough
duplicates of those they had replaced.
Third, the demonization aspect. But between personal vendettas
of the first argument and the hallucinations of the third is what
we are interested in--who is altering or assimilating whom.
Grouchoism: in 1933 on Jews forced out of all clubs and
associations, in some cases existing members were allowed to stay,
at least for a time. Cahnman 115-16. The secret of Grouchoism: At
what price would the club have him? The old maxim, if one forgets
one is a Jew a goy would remind one.
Peter Gay book on Freud who answered European Jews' reluctance
64
when confronted with Nazism in a letter to Arnold Zweig in October
1935, "It is sad that we even judge world events from the Jewish
point of view, but how could we do it any other way!"xliii In other
words, many or most European Jews would have preferred to be
universalists but knew they could not be so--and did not delude
themselves into trying to be otherwise. This was the formulation of
a secular ethnic identity. They did not want to be religious or
Zionist yet, out of choice or fatalism, would not abandon the ship
to "save" themselves. But they also did not want to convert, hide
their identity, become nationalists of their country of residence,
or believers in proletarian revolution as their salvation.
Cahnman 135: "Emigration is easy, but to leave Munich is
difficult." A leading law professor named Karl Neumeyer, said he
was happy that his two sons were safe abroad but explained, "I was
born here and grew up in this city; I did all of my work here and
I'll die here!" the day after being ordered to leave their home,
Karl and Anna Neumeyer committed suicide.
136: the youth movements merged, "Now these young people of good
and assimilated middle class background embraced Jewish custom and
thought. The tribulations of everyday life was easier to bear
because of those intoxicating things done together: the lighting of
the Sabbath candles, the singing of Sabbath songs, attending Bible
courses, discussing problems of reconstruction in Palestine, and,
lastly, and more importantly, the combining of Hasidism and
socialism as exemplified in the person of Martin Buber."
Bloch in non-occupied zone, critiqued professors for not
having been more vocal. could not teach. petitioned Vichy
authorities and one of ten professors exempted from discrimination
because of "exceptional services" and given a teaching post,
suggested distinguish French Jews from refugee ones. said law was
unjust, wrote friend of indignation at arrest of "the so-called
foreign Jews." killed by Germans in 1944.
Contrary to Schnitzler's perhaps ironically intended title,
the road was not open but very much closed.
12. Conclusion
Having waged their own successful struggle to escape the
Jewish community, mistook this as a wider social revolution. Easy
to say--as Marx did--that the task was to liberate the Jews from
Judaism, a quite acceptable Enlightenment notion since they also
wanted to liberate the Christians from Christianity but not, of
course, the way it worked out in practice.
Better organization and greater activity would not have saved
them because by the nature of the situation they were at the mercy
of either the authorities or the majority for protection. One or
the other had served--usually the former--in the past. When the two
groups aligned against them, flight was the only alternative. And
there was no open haven. Many refused to leave, many more were
unable to leave, while a large number in the former category were
acting because they refused to abandon relatives unable to go. The
"Catch-22" of the situation--a term itself invented by Joseph
Heller, a self-conscious Jew--was the self-closing alternative: the
65
more they fought, the more they defined themselves as enemies; the
more they organized, the more they became a threat. The trembling
assimilationists' fears were not imaginary ones, yet their solution
brought equal or greater problems. In the middle ages, the caftan,
orthodox Jews were the threat, in modern times, the new marranos
who were seen as trying to take over by subterfuge, as capitalists,
communists, liberals, or cultural figures. Rabbi Bloch was right in
his definition of the Catch-22. Nazism, the Holocaust, and the
Soviet purges. Persecution was not only from the Germans but also
the Austrians, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, Croatians,
Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and others including the French.
Not only from the right in power but also from the left in power.
Even if the triumph of the persecutors was not inevitable
historically but they did happen and it is doubtful that anything
the Jews might have done could have avoided them. Whatever
theoretical arguments can be made, in practice assimilation failed
in Europe or at least the price was the murder, flight, or
emigration of over three-quarters of the Jews (check statistics).
a useful concept, the Jewish beliefs and culture mutated to be
something different or an often parallel but not identical variety
of the wider culture. German Jews might be bourgeois, not rebels,
but they were still more inclined to the liberal aspects of German
history and culture which did not exclude them.
it is Friday, Babel writes, and where is "a Jewish glass of
tea, and a little of that pensioned-off God in a glass of tea?" how
the religious becomes custom. the milestones: discarding the hat,
shaving the beard.xliv Kafka's three sisters murdered at Auschwitz.
Kafka, if not for his premature death, and both Freud and Einstein,
if not for their overseas connections, would likely have died in
concentration camps. They were saved because the Western world saw
their value because they had proven themselves to it. Successful
acculturation had brought them their lives, though there were many
such not so saved.
The common theme, reality was permeable, there was an
alternative--from Kafka and Freud, Einstein, the socialists, Herzl
(if you will it, it is no dream), the modernists, and even the
world of movies created by American Jews.
Freud, Einstein, Bloch reconciled; Roth, Kafka, and Schnitzler
expressed; Mahler and Schoenberg fought but were transformed by
their duality; humanists kept trying to escape "prison" only to
find themselves in another prison they deemed freedom, "Escape from
Freedom" Marx's story. others betrayed.
M. Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany Edwin Landau, p. 306 plumber.
When
the
Nazis
came
to
power,
Landau's
German
identity
disintegrated. p. 307: If we Jewish soldiers had thought that by
our participation in the war we would gain the love of our fellow
citizens, then we were mistaken." p. 311: And for this nation we
young Jews had once stood in the trenches in cold and rain, and
spilled our blood to protect the land from the enemy. Was there no
comrade any more from those days who was sickened by these
66
goings-on? One saw them pass by on the street, among them quite a
few for whom one had done a good turn. They had a smile on their
faces that betrayed their malicious pleasure. This land and this
people that until now I had loved and treasured had suddenly become
my enemy.
So I was not a German anymore, or I was no longer
supposed to be one. That, of course, cannot be settled in a few
hours. But one thing I felt immediately: I was ashamed that I had
once belonged to this people. I was ashamed about the trust that I
had given to so many who now revealed themselves as my enemies.
Suddenly the street, too, seemed alien to me; indeed, the whole
town had become alien to me. Words do not exist to describe the
feelings that I experienced in those hours.
Having arrived at
home, I approached the one guard whom I knew and who also knew me,
and I said to him:
"When you were still in your diapers I was
already fighting out there for this country." The young man replied
that he was only following orders, like Kafka's guard blocking the
path to life. pp. 312-3: I went to the graves of my parents,
grandparents, and great grandparents, and spoke with them. I
returned to them everything German that I received from three
generations, and had absorbed and cultivated. I cried into their
graves: "You were mistaken. I, too, have been misled. I now know
that I am no longer a German. And what will my children be?"
pp. 313-4: One evening an old friend asked him to a meeting in
his apartment where he urged forming a local Zionist group. It
transformed his thinking, "Had I been asleep all that time, half of
my life? Had we not once become a nation and a religious community
at Sinai?" He read the Zionist newspaper urging readers to "Say yes
to Judaism" and "Wear it with pride, the yellow badge." "What if
one could do that, inwardly transform the infamy aimed at us into
national pride, the abusive word Jew into a name of honor? Would
that not show the way out of the inner devastation and despair?
Would one not be able again to hold one's head high as before, in
spite of everything?
"I thought about my school days. Our teacher, standing by the
large map, said: "This is the Holy Land, the land of our fathers."
And now it was once more to become the land of our children!
Perhaps even our land! At the end, "Hatikvah," our national hymn,
was sung. I stood up as I once did when "Hail to Thee who wears
the victor's laurels" was sung on the kaiser's birthday." Walking
home with a friend through the quiet streets in the moonlight, "I
felt inwardly freer. He spoke and tried to persuade me. His words
fell upon me like the early morning dew on the plants and trees.
They freed me from my inherited bonds, and eased the pain of my
soul. And even late in the night there was a throbbing within me:
Palestine..."Altneuland"...Herzl...Think of the children.
p. 314: His friend asked him to give a lecture. He chose the
life of Hugo Zuckermann, a Jewish poet who had died fighting in
World War I for his German fatherland while dreaming of a Jewish
one, highlighting the paradox of that unrequited loyalty. On a
Sunday afternoon he spoke to a crowded room of Jews. "As I began, I
saw all the faces turned toward me, with a spellbound look. Yes,
67
within me there began a singing, a glowing, and I saw tears in many
young eyes. In a vision I saw the land of which the poet had sung.
My older boy also recited a poem...I was as though in a dream,
transported, and the words just flowed from me until I was
finished." The audience enthusiastically congratulated him for
giving a moving Zionist lecture, "For me personally, however, it
was a spiritual elevation. I became calmer and began living anew."
In 1934 he emigrated with his wife and two children and opened a
plumbing business in Ramat Gan.
Paul Muhsam, p. 252-3 lawyer literary creation pacifist
emigrated in 1933 to Haifa
Wherever the Jew went, he always
encountered a certain mistrust at first, and had to fight for his
place.
He was by no means received with open arms.
While a
Christian pupil, just like every Christian citizen, in a certain
way immediately belonged and, until proven otherwise, was
considered decent, the Jew had to first legitimize himself and
prove his decency.
I was riled by the furtive whispering and
giggling when some pupils from other classes saw me on the street;
they were too cowardly for an open affront and therefore preferred
to be able to turn the tables if necessary, so that in case of a
reprimand they could feign innocence and allege that they had
laughed about something entirely different, and thereby would have
made me look even more ridiculous. One always had to consider, at
the loss of one's naturalness, how one ought to behave, whether one
should silently ignore a hurtful remark as too stupid or
insignificant, or make an incident of it.
On Bismarck's eightieth birthday he was chosen to read a poem
at a ceremony. As he was going there, other students ridiculed the
fact that, he a Jew, had been chosen. When a younger student called
him "Itzig," he slapped the boy hard.
The Mond Legacy p. 156-62 In 1933, soon after Hitler came to power,
Henry attended a secret meeting of Jews of both Houses of
Parliament to discuss the plight of German Jews. Deeply distressed
at all he heard, he suddenly realized that he was the only one
there who was not a Jew. Just back from Palestine, where he had
been impressed by Jewish achievements, and wishing to identify
himself with their oppressed German counterparts, he converted to
Judaism soon afterward. Unknown to him beforehand, his sister Eva
was taking the same step, despite some family opposition.
Walter Benjamin, Reflections p. xiv In September 1940, having
obtained a U.S. visa, Benjamin crossed the French-Spanish border
with some fellow exiles. A local Spanish official, who wanted to
blackmail the refugees, told them they would be returned to France-and hence the Gestapo--the next morning. Benjamin, exhausted and
perhaps ill, took an overdose of morphine, refused medical help,
and died in the morning, while his fellow refugees were allowed to
pass through Spanish territory to Lisbon and safety.
p. xxxv Karl Kraus (1874-1936) He was to many the Isaiah of
decaying old Europe or at least the Jewish Swift of Vienna, and in
order to suggest his many and uncanny gifts I would have to say
68
that he combined the interests and energies of H.L. Mencken, Soren
Kierkegaard, and a demonic Woody Allen, all in one. As editor of
the influential periodical Die Fackel (The Torch, 1899-1936).
p. 52
Jewish New Year's Day
But whether because I had
forgotten his address or because I was unfamiliar with the
district, it grew later and later without my drawing nearer to my
goal. To make my way independently to the synagogue was out of the
question, since I had no idea where it was.
This bewilderment,
forgetfulness, and embarrassment were doubtless chiefly due to my
dislike of the impending service, in its familial no less than its
divine aspect.
While I was wandering thus, I was suddenly and
simultaneously overcome, on the one hand, by the thought "Too late,
time was up long ago, you'll never get there" - and, on the other,
by a sense of the insignificance of all this, of the benefits of
letting things take what course they would; and these two streams
of consciousness converged irresistibly in an immense pleasure that
filled me with blasphemous indifference toward the service, but
exalted the street in which I stood.
p. 251 KARL KRAUS His polemics have been from the first the
most intimate intermingling of a technique of unmasking that works
with the most advanced means, and a self-expressive art operating
with the most archaic. In this zone, too, however, ambiguity, the
demon, is manifest: self-expression and unmasking merge in it as
self-unmasking.
Kraus
has
said,
"Anti-Semitism
is
the
mentality...that means seriously a tenth part of the jibes that the
stock-exchange wit hold ready for his own blood";
p. 252 Kraus creeps into those he impersonates, in order to
annihilate them. p. 253
his friend Adolf Loos. "Kraus," he
declares, "stands on the frontier of a new age." Alas, by no means.
For he stands on the threshold of the Last Judgment. p. 254 the
whole of world history presses in on Kraus in the extremities of a
single item of local news, a single phrase, a single advertisement.
Nothing is understood about this man until it has been perceived
that, of necessity and without exception, everything--language and
fact--falls for him within the sphere of justice. To worship the
image of divine justice in language--even in the German language-that is the genuinely Jewish somersault. p. 255 His charge is the
betrayal of justice by law. Decomposition has taken the place of
procreation, stridency that of secrecy.
NOTES
i. Dawidowicz, pp. 361-62.
ii. Conrad Rosenstein, in Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany, p. 167,
speaking of the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue.
iii. Only thirty years later, after fleeing Nazi Germany to live in
69
Israel, the author concludes, "did I succeed in conquering my
revulsion for Hebrew and reawakening the love for Hebrew that I had
felt in my early childhood. Samuel Spiro in Richarz, Jewish Life in
Germany, pp. 202-209.
iv. Isaiah Berlin, Personal Impressions, 147-8.
v. Schnitzler, Road to the Open, p. 68.
vi. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938 ,p. 207. He also
felt rootless "as a Bohemian among Austrians [and] as an Austrian
among Germans."
vii. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938, p. 163.
viii. Dawidowicz, p. 232.
ix. Todd Endelman, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World (NY, 1987),
p. 10-13. Beller, pp. 188-90, estimated that there were 9000
conversions between 1868-1903 and the number climbed steadily,
reaching a peak in the empire's last year, 1918.
x. Marsha L. Rozenblit, "Jewish Assimilation in Habsburg Vienna,"
in Frankel and Zipperstein, pp. 235-37.
xi. Peter Gay, Freud, p. 16-17.
xii. Ibid., pp. 27-8.
xiii. Schnitzler, Road, p. 78.
xiv. Beller p. 13. p.33-35.
xv. Beller, p. 151.
xvi. Arthur Schnitzler, The Road to the Open (Evanston, Il., 1991)
1908, p. 250.
xvii. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938, p. 180.
xviii. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews (Cambridge, 1989) p. 216
xix. City Without Jews, p. 11. The author of this 1923 novel, which
predicted with startling accuracy the Nazi takeover 15 years later,
was himself assassinated by an antisemite.
xx. Robert Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna (NY, 1989), p. 620,
xxi. Arthur Schnitzler, The Road to the Open, (Evanston, Il.,
70
1991), p. xii.
xxii. Ibid., p. 9.
xxiii. Ibid., p. 33.
xxiv. Ibid., p. 109.
xxv. Michael Kowal, "Arnold
Monthly, January 1991.
Schoenberg
as
Prophet,"
Congress
xxvi. John R. Gilbert, Famous Jewish Lives, p. 253.
xxvii. "Investigations of a Dog," pp. 279-80.
xxviii. Necessary Angels, p. 31.
xxix. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and ambivalence (Ithaca, NY, 1991),
p. 169.
xxx. Forward, November 15, 1991 based on the catalog, "The Sigmund
Freud Antiquities: Fragments from a Buried Past."
xxxi. Quoted in Jerusalem Report, October 24, 1991.
xxxii. Cited in William McGrath, "How Jewish Was Freud?" New York
Review of Books, February 5, 1991, p. 27.
xxxiii. Cited in Forward, January 10, 1992.
xxxiv. The Economist, February 8, 1992.
xxxv. Jerusalem Post, January 3, 1991.
xxxvi. Robert Craft, "Jews and Geniuses," New York Review of Books,
February 16, 1989, p. 36.
xxxvii. Monika Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany pp. 27-29.
xxxviii. David Joroff, "Dark and Perverse," Jerusalem Post, March
18, 1989 weekly edition.
xxxix. Hannah Arendt, "Privileged
Counter-Emancipation, pp. 58-60.
Jews,"
in
xl. Herbert Lottman, The Left Bank (Boston, 1982).
xli. Washington Post, February 29, 1992.
71
Emancipation
and
xlii. Jerusalem Report, March 12, 1992.
xliii. Peter Gay, Freud, A Life for Our Time p. 610.
xliv. Baumgarten p. 30.
72
CHAPTER FOUR
AMERICA's FOUNDING IMMIGRANTS
"These are days when it is bad for Jews who stay at home and
bad for those who go elsewhere. In the past, when a man changed his
place he changed his luck; now, wherever a Jew goes, his bad luck
goes with him. Nevertheless, you find some consolation in moving,
because you move yourself from the realm of `certainly' to the
realm of `perhaps.'...For you are certain that the place where you
live is hard; perhaps your salvation will come from somewhere
else."
--S.Y. Agnon, A Guest for the Night (1939)
duck unclassified
Heine: This is no pile of ruins,
Of fossilized wigs and symbols
Or stale and musty Tradition!"i
This was two-sided because there was no anti-Jewish tradition but
it was also a land where there own traditions would melt away.
Emma Lazarus called America--or at least the Statue of Liberty
"Mother of Exiles," a significant name.
Isaac Wise b Bohemia 1819 d Cincinnati 1900 arrived at age 27.
1873 UAHC. 1875 HUC Isaac Mayer Wise described his 1854 move to
Cincinnati, where he would found the center of American Reform, as
to a "new world" where people were "not yet cast into a fixed
mold." but the criterion for dropping elements of law or belief
were whether they fit into American practice "whatever makes us
ridiculous before the world."ii thus making the external the
arbiter of Jewish law and belief. (Did Sabbath observance make
ridiculous--many Christians observed Sunday--or just inconvenient).
contradiction between loudly celebrating freedom and fear of using
it.
Azriel Eisenberg, The Golden Land (NY, 1964): 150-51 a man
writing about his psychoanalysis published in 1950 wrote of this
shame, at fraternity house wanted mothers to serve as chaperon "I
felt depressed and frustrated....I knew that my mother would look
out of place and feel uncomfortable in such a strange
environment...there were so few traces of the Jewish origins of the
boys....It was the type of fraternity that made a strong effort to
attract socially elect Jews who did not look Semitic. not only when
among Gentiles but also "the Jewish world i began to move in was so
interested in aping the mores and customs of the Christians that it
was nearly as alien to my mother. Yet I am sure I blamed Mother
much more than she deserved for her failure to become completely
Americanized." sense of shame coloring view of Judaism.
Mordecai Kaplan. came to "realize that Judaism did not depend
upon the authoritative character of the Bible and the Talmud but
upon the will of the Jews to live as a people." p. 232. "Our inner
problem as Jews was, therefore, not how to maintain the
infallibility of a tradition but how to save our people from
dissolution."
1
primacy
of
power
and
aggressiveness
over
piety
and
scholarship; financial success, material comfort. spent a lot more
time earning a living and so less with children, language, customs,
public school influence. Hebrew school after public school
disliked.
in the Marx Brothers movies, society only exists as something
to be overturned.
Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker, (NY, 1988) product of one of the
first mixed marriages, Rothschild to a well-off NY merchant.
German. she would disdain her family, ridiculed relatives, as an
adlut she was careful to speak quietly and regally. 14-15 attended
a Catholic school but outsider, referring to Immaculate Conception
as "spontaneous combustion." stepmother asking on return, "Did you
love Jesus today?" met husband Eddie Parker, the too-be-familiar
scene immortalized in film and literature of meeting the parents
38-42: his grandfather was a famous Connecticut minister (1917)
Eddie Parker was unconcerned about religion, disdainful of his own
family's piety, "Dorothy was quick to notice that they were
treating her like a New York Jew on the make, an outsider with
stylish suits and advanced ideas about careers for women." Years
later, she confessed to Jewish friends that she liked Eddie partly
because he had a nice, clean name. she hated her original name.
85: the Round Table, Alexander Woollcott once hissed at George
Kaufman, "Shut up, you Christ killer." Kaufman rose to his feet,
threw down his napkin and said this was the last time he was going
to tolerate slurs on his race. He was going to leave, "and I hope
that Mrs. Parker will walk out with me--halfway." [Groucho]
110 she later said that she blamed her family and said as a halfJew she should have known better than to have married a Gentile,
particularly one above her station. Wrote the antisemitic, "Dark
Girl's Rhyme" self-loathing came to the surface, her own people are
portrayed as dark, nearly evil, "devil-gotten sinners" dismissed by
the gentile world as fools, hence her breakup with her husband was
only natural. ignored her husbands' shortcomings, which included
alcoholism and morphine addiction. she attempted suicide during
breakup.
173 Hemingway wrote a poem about her, ridiculing her in antisemitic
terms. unaware of the poem, she continued to esteem him.
228-30 Alan Campbell, a similar background to hers, later married
twice
duck 1 intro
The ethnic factor in America: being Jewish--religiously and
culturally--was part of the immigrant aspect they wanted to leave
behind, certainly publicly, though might preserve in friendships,
style, etc., and of course didn't intend to pass it on being
immigrants/Jews to a generation that was native born. Other ethnic
groups followed no such model, certainly not on religion.
In
America,
being
Jews
was
seen
as
an
immigrant
characteristic, to be dropped as people assimilated. It had a past-
2
-of sentiment--but no future. Eventually became an ethnic
identification.Since religion and many of the customs were from Old
Country, they were quickly dropped and almost no Orthodoxy until
revived from Europe in the 1940s. Theoretically, Jews were defined
by religious difference, in practice they were largely self-seen as
ethnic. But since Jewish features--including religion and language-were seen as old country, they were to be discarded in the new
life. Importance of the fact that the immigrants were the poorer
and less educated, perhaps also less pious.
the argument is quite ironic: because individuals in flight
from their background/heritage or avoid it or have a hole where
that should be, this means that their Jewishness is not important.
In a sense, the nervousness of those advocating this position often
reflects their own assimilationist fright, for if writer A or
academic B or politician C is in some way affected by being a Jew,
so are they. Of course, the effect can be "negative" push as well
as a "positive" pull.
At the same time, was the Jewish role in Vienna or Berlin in
those years very different from the role Jews would come to play in
America's cultural/business center of New York? America was a
culture in the making and though nativists like Henry Adams might
decry the immigration, it was also a place where president Franklin
Roosevelt could address the Daughters of the American Revolution
with the provocative salutation, "Fellow immigrants!"
It was not that America had superseded European societies,
rather it was a different society almost from the start because
there was no tradition nor clearly dominant group nor one majority
with a single minority. There was an amazing change at midtwentieth century as Jews had their cake and ate it too--hegemony
and popular. In part, post-Holocaust timing, in part, because Jews
were one group among many and race was a stronger fault line than
religion. In part, because they became leaders in an immigrant
coalition and offered useful symbols and models for others who
wanted to enter the cultural and intellectual sphere. Jews were
seen more as creating than as taking over.
Originally, small numbers, ignored and disappear quietly into
the Christian majority.iii Benjamin: Yale drop out, lawyer,
plantation, 1852 elected to Senate, 1862 Secretary of War,
Secretary of State, escapes to England and retires there.
Sephardic. born a British subject, religious family but totally
secular education. married to a devout Catholic, he would not
convert. wife moved back to France and rarely saw thereafter. in NO
the former rabbi married a Catholic wife who was only barely
restrained from sending a crucifix to his grave. proud but inactive
on Judaism and treated as exception. Catholic funeral though
perhaps arranged by wife. family already making compromises,
mother's shop open on Sabbath. Hebrew Orphan Society paid school
tuition. Benjamin as American Disraeli.iv
when in 1877 a New York Jewish banker and family excluded from
the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, first provoked surprise and then
3
imitation. 58: says German Jews coined name "kikes" because of
"sky" end of names. yet again ambiguity, for also helped even
though with condescension, knew to be a community of fate no matter
how much decried it. when excluded from hotels, clubs, or apartment
houses, built their own.v
duck 2. The German Jews/elite
German Jewish elite, camouflaged ethnicity on the way to
giving it up, created an assimilated caste. Christmas celebrations,
trees, cards and caroling; Easter with bunnies and colored eggs.
Cousin Irving Lehman, chief judge of NY State Court of Appeals had
mezuzah and gave seders hard to explain, created own German-Jewish
institutions (i.e., not Jewish/not assimilated, the "third" way
typical in Europe: Temple Emanu-El, Mount Sinai Hospital, the
Harmonie Club, and Century Country Club (a name intended to imply
old wealth which was quite untrue). Adirondacks since not welcome
at Saratoga Springs. never push yourself forward, don't be too
visible, eat bacon, ham, shellfish. "Jewish Newport" in New Jersey
and big homes. own summer camps, intermarriage started soon.
"The only profession I know that does not bar Jews," explained
Rabbi Stephen Wise, "is the rabbinical profession." held that Jews
were too nervous to do surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.
separate law firms, hospitals and country clubs a matter of
necessity. professorships of Jews kept to a minimum and quota on
admissions.vi
New York's Temple Emanu-El declared it a "mistake for Jews to
act together for social and political purposes" for this would make
the Jews feel themselves in exile and the Americans to think they
were alien.vii
This philosophy continued to dominate much of the Jewish
elite--though not all of it--through World War Two. One [Jesse
Strauss [identify] refused to speak up against Hitler (ambassador
to France?] complained that Jews trying to organize an anti-Hitler
movement, were "stirring up trouble in things that are none of"
their business. Jewish action hurt Jews by seeming to prove they
"are a race apart, with a group solidarity that prevents them from
becoming a sincere and patriotic part of the country in which they
live." emphasis on being Americans which was a step forward and
actually a sign of the insecurity they felt. but at the same time
given contradictory signal: Jews were better morally, intellectual,
great achievers, glow of pride. rejecting identification while
identifying others positively or negatively.viii
Louis Marshall; Jacob Schiff Kuhn, Loeb head, regarded as most
influential J, from traditional home, phil and helped Js elsewhere,
Born in Frankfurt, Schiff had come to New York in 1865 as a bank
clerk. Schiff did not travel on the Sabbath, said prayers every
morning. attracted to Reform Judaism. generous philanthropy. Oscar
Solomon Straus saw nothing odd in a Jew leading delegates in
singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" at a Bull Moose convention. p.
42: Louis Marshall, the third great shtadlanim skillful lawyer.ix
4
one Straus was at the 1807 Sanhedrin called by Napoleon. His
son (Jacob) Lazarus was involved in 1848 revolution in Germany,
emigrated to America. started over again as peddler in Georgia sent
children to Baptist and Methodist Sunday Schools. Isidor became a
Confederate agent in Europe and secret missions. family moved to NY
and began business. bought Macy's store. Taft called him "a great
Jew and the greatest Christian of us all."x
Oscar Straus, first Jew to serve in the Cabinet and to be an
ambassador, Bavaria emigre, small town in Georgia (attended Baptist
Sunday school) family firm. idea that America fulfillment of
ancient
Israel,
revolutionary
era
and
puritan
comparison;
constitutionalism, democracy, and republicanism in common. Auerbach
12-13. as member of NY delegation to progressive party convention
in 1912 he unselfconsciously led delegates in an impassioned
version of "onward Christian Soldiers"
Mrs. Robert Levy civic worker obit in late 1960s. daughter of
Jesse Isador Straus and Irma Nathan Straus, mother old Sephardic
family. Jesse president of Macy's and U.S. ambassador to France
1933-36 [see Straus quote]. grandfather Isidor Straus went down on
the Titanic. "A memorial service for Mrs. Levy will be held...at
St. James Episcopal Church, Madison Avenue and 71st Street."xi
Louis Kirstein, a department store executive who was most
important Jewish figure in Boston, fought to break down walls of
Harvard. 1933 honorary degree from Harvard though a school drop
out. his son criticized, "It was a cowardly sellout" because quotas
were still in effect, "It absolved [Harvard of its] racism and only
proved to the amused brahmins how desperate for their approval
Father was." This son Lincoln Kirstein went to Harvard, aesthete,
ballet, enjoyed shocking. Another son? George Kirstein wrote,
"luckily I am not motivated by guilt as my father and so many Jews
of his generation were, even those who were, like him, agnostic.
That's why their charitable giving is so much greater than normal.
They wanted to appease an angry God whose vengeance they expected
any minute, probably in the form of a pogrom." Louis for lunch
always ate a lobster omelette. d 1942 never owned real estate and
rented house for 40 years "The diamonds-sewn-in-the-hem-of-yourcoat-for-a-quick-flight-in-the-night
mentality."
bought
The
Nation.xii
Rosenwald at first gave charity on advice of his rabbi to Jews
in Russia, fearing dual loyalty and increased antisemitism, he
opposed separate relief efforts for Jews believing non-Jews would
then attack them, but did give some for special relief. Zionist
views of William, Julius youngest child and younger brother of
Lessing--president of American Council for Judaism--had a different
view. Stanley Marcus also Council member, largely fell apart after
1967.
Felix Adler, son of rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, sent to Germany
for rabbinic training but could not even accept Reform and founded
Ethical Culture in 1876 (the ultimate Jewish Variant. A Jewish
Variant non-Jewish religion!)
5
In America, development of idea of Judeo-Christian heritage,
Auerbach 14: the US as the new promised land. 1906 AJC. America was
the one country where Jews had not merely adjusted also had some
effect in changing the boundaries.
ideas/elite Birmingham Our Crowd. a psychiatrist gave a test
to one of these elite family's pillers and she scored as an
antisemite. Seligman, once leading J family in America, "American
Rothschilds" when James died in 1964--though his grandfather
president of board of trustees of Temple Emanu-El for many years
funeral at Christ Church Methodist 17-18. 1837 Joseph S. August
Belmont (Shonberg) to NY in 1830s, negotiated with Rothschilds from
US. representative.xiii
duck 2. The immigrant experience
Hutchins Hapgood, The Spirit of the Ghetto (Cambridge, Ma.,
1967) 11: in old country, a short coat meant a freethinker, now
everyone wears one. category of "greenhorn" discard the wigs,
downward mobility of the scholarly (educated) and upward of the
aggressive, hard man. the young, 18: "a mixture of almost
unprecedented hope and excitement on the one hand, and of doubt,
confusion, and self-distrust on the other hand." parent/children
conflict--religious observance being one of the hottest issues,
language another, their loyalty is to American fashion not parental
tradition and the break is very sharp, far more so than in Europe.
And yet, other immigrants subject to the same forces did not break
with the past quite so bitterly and decisively, did they? 32: "If
this boy were able entirely to forget his origin, to cast off the
ethical and religious influences which are his birthright, there
would be no serious struggle in his soul, and he would not
represent a peculiar element in our society." shame for parents
wars with affection, trend is against them as a minority. 34: "His
youthful ardor and ambition lead him to prefer the progressive, if
chaotic and uncentered, American life; but his conscience does not
allow him entire peace in a situation which involves a chasm
between him and his parents and their ideals." Not only was "Jewish
knowledge" worthless, but it seemed actually to drag people down,
making them less fit to survive. For Catholic or Protestant
immigrants, their religion as such never became a significant
issue. In addition, these faiths did not require the extent of
distinctive or daily actions. The "Russian" influenced often turned
to the left.
real estate moguls of New York S suggests, since came between
10 and 20 that persecution was seared into them enough to spark
them to succeed but not so much as to undercut their optimism. By
1920, 80 percent of speculative builders were Jewish, especially
active on upper west side.
City Scriptures p. 16-17 1909 Forward letter reader born in
small town in Russia, freethinker, yet feels bad at Yom Kippur
time, depressed, melancholy "a longing gnaws at my breast." went
to synagogue and was criticized by peers, "The members do not want
6
to hear of my personal emotions and they won't understand that
there are people whose natures are such that memories of their
childhood
are
sometimes
stronger
than
their
convictions."
crossing the ocean is like being reborn, loses track of days
(p. 48) and cannot keep the Sabbath, doesn't know if food is
kosher. Singer's story, the old strength is through sacred books,
weakness as father since cannot comprehend sons for something
beside the life they know. 49-50: "The boy spoke up, but Abba
couldn't understand a word of it. He laid into synagogue and state
with such venom, Abba could only imagine that the poor soul was
possessed: the Hebrew teachers beat the children, the women empty
their slop pails right outside the door...."
51: "In its very
coherence," author writes, "Frampol deceives Abba into imagining it
to be the center of the universe."
Berman: 517 at first American Jews feared and tried to
discourage EE immigration, gradually came to welcome.
The critical experience: for many European Jews was an event
of attack--pogrom, Dreyfus affair, or the rise of fascism or
discrimination in the USSR. For American immigrants more likely to
be opportunity. Michael Elkins grew up on Lower East and the West
Side, a poor, tough kid. "I learned camouflage. `If you can't fight
them, join them." Christmas Eve 1925 when he was nine, it was cold,
snow on ground, wrapped newspapers under sweater and cardboard into
shoes, and walked the 53 blocks to Macy's Department store, stood
in long line and finally to Santa Claus, "My turn came. I stepped
up on the platform and leaned close to him in his high chair, and
started to tell Santa Claus what presents I wanted for Christmas.
"Santa opened his mouth, and the man whispered: `This ain't
for you, Jewboy; go to your rabbi!'
"I spat at him; and he knocked me off the platform and I fell
among the other kids and they began kicking me," until the store
police threw out. "I couldn't become a Christian, but I could
become less Jewish." quit the heder, stopped going to synagogue,
didn't participate in Friday candle-lighting, refused to speak
Yiddish at home "and screamed at my parents for doing so, `Be
American!' I yelled. lived in Christian world, distanced self from
Judaism as religion, culture and history, ignored holidays. didn't
celebrate Christmas as religious but neither did most of his
Christian friends, simply a warm joyous occasion. Christmas carols
were folk songs. April 29, 1945 American soldier at Dachau. one of
the living skeletons spoke to him and he said spoke only English
and the man said in Yiddish, "Can you speak mamaloshen? Aren't you
a Jew?" understood and ashamed.xiv
Cowan 54, "Within a century," Judaism for his ancestors had
gone from being an all-embracing civilization, "a religion, a
source of comfort and continuity, for families like my mother's.
Instead, it had become a psychological and social burden."
[Napoleon's? statement, for the Jews as individuals everything, for
Jews collectively nothing]. 59-60: Reform rabbi well-educated and
7
learned on an Orthodox level, angry dislike of Jewish ritual making
into objects of scorn "made many of his younger congregants disdain
Judaism." [if the rabbi had so much contempt for much of what was
Judaism, why shouldn't the followers?] rejected idea of covenant,
circumcision, switched Sabbath to Sunday, Yom Kippur fast. country
club replaces religion. newly arrived in Kenilworth, newly
Christian Scientist first day at school in 1911 his uncle was
called a "dirty Jew." they became subject to a covenant of a
different kind, a housing covenant. 64-5: "the permissive faith
they had learned at Sinai Temple provided very little sustenance,
very little ballast, when they encountered a personal crisis." but
contributed to Jewish charities, founded a Jewish country club. for
them, Judaism was ethnicity not religion but had no need to pass it
on--like the comedians. a transitional thing like the remnants of
Yiddish. Moses Spiegel became Modie and son Modie J. 1925 LeopoldLoeb kidnap a child, Bobby Franks, to prove their intellectual
superiority--what else might have done so? being the descendants of
scholars and pious people they had little outside of material
interests--business, fashion, crude though not stupid, the
flaunting of wealth amid an unease they would ignore. father after
downfall in quiz show scandals became more involved--perhaps
decided could only go so high and that this was not answer--taught
at Brandeis. the man who had tried to bury past now recruited
people for oral histories. 93: "Was Jewishness secretly a source of
terror for her?" his mother, "They will kill all the Jews. Israel
will be abandoned." his mother wrote in 1973, sense of insecurity.
working for black causes as a displacement for energy she felt
uncomfortable in devoting to Jewish ones. with New Left, civil
rights movement, and Catholic left. but subconsciously, these were
safe because they were altruistic and also involved no investment
in personal identity but the luxury of vicarious identification.
The duality of names. paul Cowan is also Saul Cohen, his
grandfather was the reform magnate of Spiegel catalogues and other
grandfather was Orthodox. p. 3 "Jewish WASps" father changed name
when 21 and was so guarded about youth wouldn't let children meet
father's relatives. celebrated Christmas and had a ham dinner for
Easter. Choate prep school mandatory chapel service. married New
England protestant. father was president of CBS, mother ardent
civil rights activist. [a symbol of return and wife... yet most
misleading exceptionalism. mother from 1848 family, obsessed with
Holocaust, believed not real security in America. told him
sometimes to learn a trade since might have to flee. organized to
support civil rights movement in south Mississippi summer. 6:
"There was no doubt in any of our minds that we were risking our
lives to achieve the very American goal of integration because our
kinsmen had been slaughtered in Lithuania, poland, and Germany."
believed father must "always have half hoped" he would develop a
thirst for knowledge. grandfather very bad to father. 7: Yom Kippur
service and afterward appalled as family "fought over status and
money; as they gossiped cruelly" about those not there "That wasn't
8
religion, my father would tell me angrily. That was hypocrisy."
mother told him pC glad that his nose wasn't large like father's.
ate pork but didn't like to. take family to Lower East Side. became
upset at son's marriage though never mentioned it. father read A
Christmas Carol. wanted to blend into elite, mother dubious but
went to church school. 10: "My father wanted me to become friends
with upper-class WASps so that I could function in their world with
the kind of ease he wished he possessed. The strategy backfired
completely."
anti-semitism
had
effect
on
him
of
further
identifying. 11 "Choate's God was the only one I knew, and I
figured that if I appeased Him I'd get good grades on my exams."
dealt with problem by: trying to excel; making marginal friends
(14) including foreign students. 15: part of family that fought
oppression--even against Jews--but without being a Jew. The point
of Cowan's book is that even though no one discussed these things
they were "echoing in our psyches throughout our adult lives."p.
17.
father did encourage him in his search. "The Quiz Kids,"
developed by his father was a show combining show business-American sports competition--and learning. father had kept secret
own religious training. (such discoveries of family secrets are not
rare, with people discovering only well into adulthood such past
connections). names/neighborhoods/foods/customs. 44: choices of
father. "Was he a Smitz, a German Jew, who, in the 1930s, would
never have gained acceptance into the Ravisloe Country Club or the
Standard Club or the University of Chicago's prestigious Zeta Beta
Tau fraternity if he were an Eastern European? Or was he a Cohen,
the descendant of the Lidvinova rav, whose proud Eastern European
origins might have forced him to violate his grandmother Tillie's
advice and choose a different, less prestigious set of people to go
with? Was he Louis Cohen, a Jew who knew how to daven, who fasted
on Yom Kippur, who didn't eat pork, or Louis G. Cowan, a
cosmopolitan intellectual, a Jewish WASp, who shared the disdain
his wife and children felt for those customs? Those weren't
questions he wanted to ask himself as a young man." 47: his
mother's father, the Spiegel magnate told his wife shortly before
daughter and boyfriend arrived, "I don't want that kike in my
house." father invited none of his relatives to wedding. but his
family
became
intellectual/cosmopolitan
rather
than
business/conservative.
Cowan's mother had a different yet parallel upbringing,
compared to his father's break with a fast-disintegrating
tradition, she grew up in a Christian Scientist family in a bigoted
suburb yet at a German Jewish assimilated country club. loneliness.
p. 50: her view, "We were chosen to suffer; chosen to achieve
brilliance; chosen to wage a ceaseless war for social justice."
Merchant princes 46: in Straus family there was everything
from pride to conversion and change of name. why extended Jewish
families hard to hold together. 1906 Oscar Secretary of Commerce
and Labor. p. 48 1911 Roosevelt made speech saying he chose Straus
because he was the right man for the job. Jacob Schiff the
9
toastmaster was dead rose and explained that when Roosevelt called
him and said he wanted a Jew in the cabinet he suggested Straus.
Julius Rosenwald, in Weizmann's words, would give to any
charity anywhere except for Zionist efforts.xv Merchant Princes. He
had an antisemitic executive running Sears who refused to hire Jews
as executives from 1928 to 1954, one suggestion was that this kind
of business drew anti-Jewish reaction because it had such a
devastating effect on local stores 318. 320: he gave money in 1923
for starving Germans, why not said local Jews say something about
antisemitism. he said the fact that Jews were giving was well
known, if protested would make it appear that money was to stop, it
would subside by itself. opposed a Jewish boycott of Ford products
327 one heiress mildly mocking, when father insisted serve
food to Jewish orphans, had unkoshered kitchen by serving meat in
milk cups, when got home father laughed about it. German Jewish
family descendants increasingly loser ties.
The left, unions, and New Deal as integrating agents. Jewish
role in labor movement, Gompers; Sidney Hilman, Bundist, in
underground in Czarist Russia, rose to power and prominence in US,
switched to Mensheviks who were as little interested in Jewish
identity as were the Bolsheviks, clothing industry resembled civil
war between Jewish workers and owners. rose through Garment
Workers. Since the Jews were "overqualified" for proletariat rose
easily to leadership positions or to leave it.
roots of American Jewish Committee. Louis Marshall invitations
1906 launched. much criticism as self-appointed. 358 Steeled by
Adversity, Marshall wrote that a congress of Jews would open to a
flood of "indiscreet, hot-headed, and ill-considered oratory
[which] might find its way into the headlines of the daily
newspapers inflicting untold injury upon the Jewish cause." while
can be criticized for elitism and patronizing attitude also doing
role traditional of the successful and monied taking a leading role
in the community and certainly not separating themselves from it.
Hence, a movement for acculturation rather than assimilation, also
eventual non-Zionist cooperation with Zionists. Judge Mayer
Sulzberger first president. Marshall leading figure. M also
participated in Kehillah movement to organize community in NY. 1908
downtown people calling for mass constituent assembly which met in
1909 social welfare, employment, mediation, rabbinical council,
education. Reform strongest. Solomon Schechter, opposed Reform idea
of Universal Mission, EE p. 387. Some Reform leaders like Stephen
Wise enthusiastic, most rejected, their resolution said 395-6:
Israel's mission has "from the narrow political and national field
has been expanded to the promotion among the whole human race of
the broad and universalist religion first proclaimed by the Jewish
prophets." (isn't all the secular left, humanist, etc., adaptations
of
this
view
and
hence
it
is
something
basic
about
assimilation/acculturation).
opp Z then supported after balfour., the Committee, work with
Zionists. non-Zionist, Zionist cooperation
10
Original sin on the Holocaust? Cahnman 118 when asked by
moderate politicians if American Jews would help raised money for
an
anti-Nazi
uprising
in
Bavaria,
responded
"Charitable
contributions after the catastrophe: Yes! political assistance
before the catastrophe: No!" but were weak.
duck 3. Brandeis/Lippman struggle, Intellectual life
the duality of the elite choice
See Steinhardt story from Istanbul Intrigues and my article.
Brandeis section
Milton Goldin, Why They Give p. 127: Brandeis Kentucky, brilliant
success at Harvard Law School, as a New York corporation lawyer,
enjoyed huge earnings. "Organize, organize, organize," followers
were commanded, "until every Jewish-American must stand up and be
counted, counted with us, or prove himself wittingly or unwittingly
one of the few who are against their own people."
"[Democracy] means that every Jew in this land, preeminently
every Jew in the Zionist Movement, has a right to be heard, what is
more, he has also a duty to be heard," Brandeis told the 1916
Convention of the Federation of American Zionists.
p. 130: Brandeis began his campaign for an American Jewish
Congress, a representative body of organizations whose delegates,
elected by the masses. German Jewish elite sought to block this
effort, wanting to keep their power and fearing that free elections
might select the Yiddish-speakers, radicals, and Zionists.
p. 131: when Brandeis became a Supreme Court justice in 1916,
he continued to be active in the Zionist movement, to the dismay of
the German Jewish leadership and New York Times.
p. 139: Weizmann, in contrast to Brandeis, understood that to
raise money, "There was no need to explain all the reasons why one
should be a devout Jew, a committed Zionist, a loyal American, and
an intelligent investor." For immigrants, "guilt-ridden by their
great fortune while brethren suffered and died in Europe, atonement
could be made in the form of contributions" yielding only spiritual
profits.
Comay 102: Brandeis liberal cultured prague ancestors, 1848
immigrants,
Kentucky,
Harvard
Law
School,
Boston
lawyer,
Lincolnesque, austere, "people's attorney" Wilson advisor. 1916
Supreme Court, first J justice. 23 years on Court, no J upbringing,
when involved in NY garment case 1911 as mediator, impressed by
Jews (like Eur influence of EE on Ger) 102: "to be good Americans
we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews we must become
Zionists." helped in lobbying campaign. 1920 Z conference. felt
Balfour Declaration enough politics and now work just economic
development. small coordinating body of businessmen James de
Rothschild, Alfred Mond. good example of American view seeing no
need for political mobilization.
Felix Frankfurter 1882-1965 immigrant family, Harvard Law
School, 1939 Supreme Court. civil liberties, Z movement.
Brandeis on Z: Americanization is adoption of clothes,
11
manners, language, and ideals. liberty, democracy, social justice.
July 4, 1915. democracy 11:"the misnamed internationalism which
seeks
the
obliteration
of
nationalities
or
peoples
is
unattainable." America's view is "that each race or people, like
each individual, has the right and duty to develop, and that only
through such differentiated development will high civilization be
attained." and actually ends with quotation from Chaucer, "But
Criste's loore, and his Apostles twelve, He taughte, but first he
followed it hymselve." ! June 1915 speech: suffering of Jews "the
greatest tragedy i history (12-13) but world moving toward justice.
the solution of J problem necessarily involves the continues
existence of the Jews as Jews. J is not defined religiously either
by Jews or non-Jews. gains through liberalism and emancipation
large but not complete. why did liberal movement fail to resolve
issue? (17) because not completely triumphed. 18: the assertion of
nationality raised Greece and Belgium and Italy. Approvingly quotes
R.W. Seton-Watson, Jews should "shake off the false shame which has
led men who ought to be proud of their Jewish race to assume so
many alien disguises and to accuse of antisemitism those who refuse
to be deceived by mere appearances. It is high time that the Jews
should realize that few things do more to foster antisemitic
feeling than this very tendency to sail under false colors and
conceal their true identity." Zs "won the respect and admiration of
the world." Z for 24 Js who choose to go to p. refers to Zs as
"Jewish pilgrim Fathers" (28). Just as a man a better American
citizen if loyal to city, family, trade because loyalties are not
inconsistent. indeed, p. 29: "The Jewish spirit, the product of our
religion and experiences, is essentially modern and essentially
American." brotherhood of man, democracy, self-control, sacrifice.
"Indeed, loyalty to America demands rather that each American Jew
become a Zionist." inculcate self-respect, "noblesse oblige"(30)
Lippmann section
Steven Blum, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, p. 10
columnist and political philosopher. After graduating college in
1910, began his writing career. [yet influence, diverse current,
value, idea, interest threatened--cosmopolitans, the Jewish ones-nothing human (except Jews) alien; he would no longer be a culture,
sophisticated cosmopolitan but a little self-interested Jew (the
issue is psychology and self-interest, not fear, since it is
career--not life--at stake. While gentile takes a limited
professional risk at times in being cosmopolitan, the Jew takes a
much bigger one in not being so. even the most narrow nationalist
Jew in Germany or France or England is already being a cosmopolitan
by holding that view and it usually is tempered by an
internationalism--Heine, Soviet Communist patriots, Brandes, Aron,
as "good Europeans"--even when they are very anti-internationalist
when it comes to Jews themselves).
p. 11-12 search for a "cosmopolitan philosophy," a way to get
the United States more active in the world and wanted to show that
12
"his views were unconstrained by the preoccupations and prejudices
of his homeland; that he was receptive to diverse currents of
opinion from abroad; that the values, ideas, and interests of many
societies were interwoven with his methods and conclusion." argued
that growing international interdependence in politics, commerce,
thought and culture was making the world smaller and pulling people
into a wider society beyond their local communities.
p. 13 Lippmann excoriated what he construed as the antiquated
and constraining theoretical apparatus of popular government in the
United States, contending that it was rooted in a ludicrous vision
of small and self-contained communities. The American polity,
Lippmann asserted, was unprepared for the complex interdependence
of modern mass societies; it looked inward with complacency rather
than to the larger world with curiosity.
p. 24 The only child of wealthy German-Jewish parents,
Lippmann was born in New York City in 1889. attended a prestigious
school and travelled abroad frequently with his parents, "He knew
his way around paris and London, Carlsbad and St. Moritz, St.
petersburg and Berlin," observes his biographer, "long before he
ever saw philadelphia or Coney Island."
p. 27 "America does not play with ideas," lamented Lippmann,
"as if it might endanger the optimism which underlies success." [a
Berenson at the time conversion no longer necessary] p. 31
unmasking stale custom, prejudice, moralism, and parochialism
p. 93 modernity possessed an inner logic that was leading it
inexorably toward a greater measure of disinterestedness. suffusion
of the modern world by science
Walter Lippmann, wrote in his youth, "I do not regard the Jews
as innocent victims. They hand on unconsciously and uncritically
from one generation to another many distressing personal and social
habits which were selected by bitter history and intensified by a
pharisaical theology."xvi
Lippmann's critique of democracy was to doubt the public could
rise to the necessary level, different from rightist romantic
critique of yearning for the past or elite per se, on the contrary,
the problem was that the masses were too backward--the Dreyfus or
Scopes trials--too easily stirred up and manipulated (as in
antisemitism, the Czarist use of pogroms and later the Nazis, the
beginning of the Jewish critique of totalitarianism of Arendt and
Aron and others.) Of course, the first "ignorant" masses they
sought to abandon was their "own." Ironically, they claimed that
internationalism would not interfere with patriotic love of their
country but they feared holding such multiple loyalty to their
community of origin.
Rosenberg and Goldstein, Creators and Disturbers Hans
Morgenthau, "The Tragedy of the German Jewish Intellectual," when
18 (p. 75) wrote essay "What Do I Hope To Gain From Life?" "to feel
that the burden of antisemitism be lifted from my soldiers." but
also in America, problem in finding apartment and job. 79: name of
German Jewish group "The Society of German Citizens of Jewish
13
Religion" Z unthinkable (but did no good). 80: widow of Marshall
Field, HM said, "He has a very strong Jewish consciousness."
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of." she said. 82: talking of
Adorno, "I understand a certain attraction in returning to the old
predicament." Yip Harburg, "From the Lower East Side to `Over the
Rainbow," 137-8, "Down on the street you were being Americanized,
but in a special ghetto way." 139 "I found a substitute temple--the
theater." father would say going to shul to hear a preacher and
instead arrived at the Thalia Theater. Yiddish theater. at school
sat next to Ira Gershwin. 146: "I'm a chameleon--I love putting
myself into everyone's shoes--and each composer lends me a pair."
Harold Arlen and George Gershwin combined black and Jewish
melodies. Arlen's father was a cantor. Berlin, Kern, Hart,
Sondheim, Hammerstein. Cole porter main exception (and we know his
quote. 160: Gus Tyler "the gentility of my home...the gangsterism
of the street." two lives. garment industry, many of workers and
employers were Jewish. Brandeis mediated. 168: when union busted in
early 1930s, Dubinsky went to Felix Warburg and Herbert Lehman who
gave no interest loan. 177: Harold Clurman, "As for the Jews,
they're getting rubbed out by Americanism." Yiddish theater. 180:
father read German, Russian, pictures of Shelley, Disraeli. father
found oldest son reading a sports book and gave him another,
preferred one reading. father cut to quick. Clifford Odets, wanted
to be a revolutionary but also to drive a Rolls Royce. p. 186.
Neil Simon. 187-8: in Hollywood, scene in which strike begins and a
fellow says "Let's strike!" "a troublemaker" (but compare to Odets)
asked why give him a Jewish accent. "I wanted him to be somebody
who was not quite American." HC says said, "Look here, you. I'm ten
times more American than you are. What the hell do you know about
America?....You're no more American than I. You're far less. Talk
about American history, let's talk about American politics." Kazin,
p. 194: "A great many traits that once struck me as being wholly
personal I now see as the marks of a distinct culture. Our
intellectual voraciousness was really a feeling for history." that
it had a meaning and progress. Irving Howe, p. 264: "`Feeling
Jewish' is something that occurs to people only when they already
see some alternatives to being Jewish." 270: the parents "entrusted
their kids to the schools: they said, in effect, `You Americanize
them, you educate them, you transform them.' They entrusted us to
goyish schools with preponderantly Jewish teachers." afterward
discovered had entrusted too much and lost them. 277-78 "We had
large ambitions about winning over the American working class and
really that wasn't going to be done by a lot of `Jew boys.' Jews
would have to be content to play the background music." talking of
radicalism in 1930s CCNY. "The whole idea of escaping from
Jewishness is itself a crucial aspect of Jewish experience."
ashamed of bringing friends home since it was so small, and parents
spoke with an accent. [irony, trying to be working class
revolutionary and embarrassed by everything that seemed lower
class. were majority at CCNY, found they were not, the world was
14
not. Grace paley Russian and Socialist tradition. the NY milieu
very hostile to Zionism because of overlapping socialist and
assimilationist influences.
Mortimer Adler wrote that his father's respect for education
about all passed on, German Jewish, unlike Asimov got into
Columbia, no encounter with anti-semitism (compare to Arendt and
Aron) studies Aristotle and Aquinas. irony of Jews as classicists
(searching for a tradition? prefer secular to Christian? roots of
Western civilization.)xvii
Alter suggests that the postwar post-Depression generation was
thoroughly Americanized, some malaise, looking for a uniquely
Jewish cultural experience. Nathaniel West (Weinstein) Irving Howe
(Horowitz) partisan Review with Trilling, Rahv, Kazin, Howe and
Hook, and the WASps (who were small town oriented. 1953 Augie March
success but note the nature of presenting itself as American though
it is Jewish (other immigrants cultures have parallels) As Alter
puts it: starting "I am an America, Chicago born" s to say "I, a
Jew grown up in a Yiddish-speaking milieu, born in Chicago, am an
American like all other kinds of Americans. This is one legitimate
variant of the American experience." p. 5America and Israel...
A New York intellectual life from the 1930s to 1950s in which
everyone was Jewish yet the content? Dorothy Rothchild parker
English departments opposed immigrants, had no right to
comment on English speakers literature. 1939 Lionel Trilling at
Columbia and Harry Levin at Harvard first to receive tenure. how
many of academics had Jewish identity or religion--texts, ideas,
ethnic experience--identity not strong or access to high culture.
Jacques
Derrida,
Harold
Bloom,
Geoffrey
Hartman
secular
displacement of classic Jewish moods of interpretation? Examines
philologist Leo Weiner; two lit profs Ludwig Lewisohn and Trilling;
three philosophers and historians of philosophy: Harry Wolfson,
Morris Raphael Cohen, Horace
Kallen. says rabbinic moral
discrimination plus Haskalah critical reason. suggests forgetting
past, innovations about things having nothing to do with Jewish
culture. [is it J culture or the act of leaving and dealing with
it; the starting point or the assimilation challenge?] are we so
naive as to believe that a culture is passed only through explicit
religious instruction or reading texts? through friends, character
of family and environment, assumptions made and rejected. Wolfson
deciding Harvard career rather than Hebrew novelist; Cohen saved by
gentile teacher on Lower East Side. Wolfson: arrive at age 16 in
America in 1903, Lithuanian yeshiva, talmud studies, Harvard,
studied
philosophers
using
critical
historical
method
and
philology, used his new critical tools on Jewish and other
literatures, one of founders of studying philosophy of religion,
medieval Jewish philosophy but determination to avoid taint of
parochial led him to avoid certain areas of Jewish thought.
Trilling more secular oriented. "descent"/"consent" culture. It is
not a question of "appropriating" figures but trying to understand
how they dealt with their background, problems, identity. much of
15
this reclaiming is to try to say something of Judaism still alive
when it is abandoned in modernism, which pushed aside the sacred
texts but is comforting to believe "the secret seeds of redemption
have been planted."xviii neither indicted or rebelled against with
exception of "Wordsworth and the Rabbis" essay basically ignored
but never denied. Does he show some "Jewishness" in his analysis of
the novel?
Morris Cohen 1880-1947 CCNY philosophy professor, skeptical
about Jewish continuity, denying Jewish problem but with Hitler
organized Jewish studies association. The idea of progress.
The young Trilling, "writing, paradoxically, for the Menorah
Journal,
could
on
occasion
sound
offensively
like
a
mock-Englishman" but some years later "the `mock' component has
quite disappeared: the son of East-European Jewish immigrants has
implicated his thought and feeling so deeply and finely in the
British cultural tradition that in the quality of his imagination
and the nature of its assumptions, in the poise and cadences of his
prose, in all the minute calibrations of his intellectual life, he
is thoroughly a spiritual compatriot of Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Newman, Matthew Arnold."xix
duck 4a High culture
Man Ray and Berenson as opposites but both re-exports seeking
new identity. Neil Baldwin, Man Ray American Artist
p. 6
Radnitskys parents were tailors. p. 81 In subsequent years, when
visitors to his studio probed his ethnic origins or took stabs at
guessing his "real" name, he always made the same reply: "That's
not me, I'm Man Ray."
p. 177 "You're the first person in Brooklyn to say anything to
me about my wonderful son," she told her friend as they walked home
along Stuyvesant Avenue. "He's a genius and he's living in paris,
and we never see him anymore,"
Berenson section
Meryl Secrest, Being Bernard Berenson p. 57: Berenson, writing
for the Andover Review in 1888: "It is only by a study of Jewish
institutions and literature that we shall begin to understand the
puzzling character of the Jews. Begin to understand, I say, for
comprehend them we never shall. Their character and interests are
too vitally opposed to our own to permit the existence of that
intelligent sympathy between us and them which is necessary for
comprehension."
p. 63: he was fascinated by aristocracy and society, "I was
attracted by its seeming access to a larger, more intense, as well
as freer life. Its manners, its customs, its habitations, its
relations to others seemed more beautiful intrinsically than ours."
p. 86: went to a beautiful Jewish synagogue in Berlin and
found much to admire, except the congregation who, he thought,
"seemed to be selling old clothes."
p. 118-19: In 1891, Berenson joined the Catholic Church but
did not long practice the faith very much, being more attracted to
its art than to its ritual. I wanted so much to...thank God that he
16
had led me to him so much just by those beautiful pictures.
Without them I should have been nowhere...How I used to loathe
myself for being one of those whom I knew, as Dante describes,
Heaven rejects and Hell disdains...How glad I am to take sides, to
give up the fancied freedom."
p. 159: Among the immigrants to America, sons were supplanting
fathers because of their greater education, acculturation, and
command of English. The loss of respect for the father became a
questioning of what he represented (see Groucho, for example) an
impractical religion which did not put food on the table or honor
from others. The parents were ashamed to be ignored as "nobodies"
but this shame in turn brought feelings of guilt to the children.
Like what Zangwill describes in England and also happened in
Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary as Jews migrated to cities.
p. 229: the Berensons social standards were not so
aristocratic as to escape being set by profitability. "Mr. Loeb
came to lunch," wrote Berenson's wife, "a handsome, fat,
prosperous, philistine Jew, classmate of Bernhard's....As he may be
very useful to us financially, B.B. and I listened politely while
he expounded on these views. It is astonishing how interesting and
un-boring society becomes when you have something to get out of
it." "A Jew from the ghetto" became Berenson's catchall term to
condemn any Jew he disapproved of, combining antisemitism and
snobbery.
p. 354-55: heard of persecution, round-ups and concentration
camps and wrote angrily about it in his journal. The irony, he
reflected, was that the Jews were absolutely harmless.
No
law-abiding citizen was ever more bourgeois or conservative than
the average middle-class Jew.
Through the influence of Walter
Lippmann, (appropriate) Berenson was given State Department
protection
p. 356-57: He asked himself the definition of this strange
people, coming to the conclusion that "at times I seem to myself to
be a typical `Talmud Jew.'" Soul-searching during the war. He later
wrote, "A day scarcely passes without my feeling deeply penitential
about my life."
pp. 357-8 He came from a culture in which a profound respect
for learning was uppermost, and which consequently made a sharp
distinction between the learned and unlearned man.
"I never
noticed considerations of money or worldly values, but became aware
of an almost ferocious idealism."
A man equipped for a loftier
role should have kept his intellectual gifts sacred for
scholarship, if not for God. He admitted he had always tried to be
someone else, "trying to live up to something, and a continuous
self-reproach when I slipped....So what I really am--is there such
an animal? What should I have been, left to myself - but what self
was mine?"
He had simply been wearing the mask of not being a Jew. How
wonderful it was, he later wrote, to "drop the mask of being goyim
and return to Yiddish reminiscences, and Yiddish stories and
17
witticisms! After all, it has been an effort...to act as if one
were a mere Englishman or Frenchman or American..."
feeling of being an exile, with no roots anywhere. He had
always felt an outsider, "not one of us"; elsewhere, he wrote that
the Jew wants to side with "nice" people in the hope that "...he
will attain complete assimilation, and cease to feel...not quite
`one of us.'"
A further price which the false persona had exacted was the
feeling that he had to amputate unacceptable parts of his
personality, in order to arrive at what he now began to see was a
spurious inner harmony:
"...How much one has to put aside and
ignore in order to integrate oneself into a magnet attracting what
constitutes one's own universe." That a conscious attempt at
integration was necessary points to a real feeling that he was in
danger of falling apart.
That there was, indeed, a fundamental and underlying
self-dissatisfaction is evident from the following: "I have not yet
learned to like myself as I am. I still wonder and question and
look for flashes of hope that I am not so worthless as I often
feel..."
It was because of this that he felt a fraud whenever
people took him seriously; because of this that the whole world
was rotten, stupid, and bad, himself included, and because of this
that, he wrote, Jews need freedom from contempt. By that perhaps
he meant self-contempt.
p. 395: Brass replied that he was a lawyer.
"Ah," said
Berenson, "then we are colleagues."
"Why is that?" said Brass.
"Well, I am an art critic and you are a lawyer. Lying is common to
both." he still referred to himself as an Anglo-Saxon (in a postwar
letter to Learned Hand).
When he once spoke of "our puritan
forebears" art historian Meyer Schapiro remarked, "His ancestors
were Rabbis on the Mayflower."
pp. 395-6 he complained to a German Jewish correspondent that
they seemed to have lost all pride in their Hebrew past and would
prefer to be uneducated goyim;
yet almost simultaneously argue
that assimilation was the only solution for the Jewish race, and
that Jews must learn to be as proud of Christ as the Greeks were of
Socrates.
Berenson had reluctantly converted to the necessity of a
Jewish state, but feared the influence of rabbinical orthodoxy.
One finds frequent references to the dirt of the Middle Ages
coupled with the rabbis of his childhood who "certainly never
washed and used to wipe their noses on their sleeves." An almost
irrational horror of dirt found its counterpart in a disgust of his
body's animal functions; self-contempt fused with Jewishness, like
sides of the same coin.
When elderly, he had a dressing gown designed for him. With
it he wore a matching cap which some people thought a cardinal's
cap. "What do I remind you of?" Berenson asked prince Clary and
received an aristocratic shrug. Berenson continued, smiling, "An
old Rabbi by Rembrandt."
18
Berenson had the last rites of the Catholic Church but in
obedience to Jewish custom he was buried in a shroud. One day, he
asked a friend "Don't these converts give you a pain?" She replied,
"That's a strange statement, coming from you." Berenson answered,
"They got me to the door of the Church several times, but they
never booted me in." false Grouchoism Meryl Secrest, Being Bernard
Berenson p. 43 Here, Albert was a nobody, a nothing, despised as a
peddler and despised as a Jew. That he, a learned man, should be
forced to grub for food from the streets, the very earth, maimed
Albert's spirit and beat it into the ground.
p. 48 His self-confidence was spurious, rather than real,
undermined with inner criticisms and doubts, vulnerable to the
least challenge from without. Others' opinions mattered far more
than they must do for any one who wants peace of mind, and this
emotional vulnerability was further eroded by the all-pervasive
anti-Semitism of society itself. Buffeted by the hatred of others,
the already self-doubting boy came to accept the verdict as valid,
to loathe and despise himself. He wrote to a Jewish correspondent
that Jews tended to think of themselves as prejudice painted them.
In old age, he was still using the present tense.
Meryl Secrest, Being Bernard Berenson p. 19 born in Lithuania
in a tiny village Berenson's family name was actually Valvrojenski
p. 20 Berenson is emphatic on the subject: "I knew from infancy
that I was to be the first in my village and it bred in me a sense
of being anybody's social equal that I have never lost..." p. 24
But Alter no longer believed that scholarship should be devoted
exclusively to studies of the Scriptures.
He had become an
unbeliever, or as his family termed it, "a free thinker," a member
of Haskalah. Adherents of the movement dressed in a German style
and spoke pure German among themselves, instead of Yiddish. It is
perhaps significant that, asked to record his native tongue on a
college questionnaire, Berenson wrote "German." So Alter, an
otherwise impeccable product of the Lithuanian-Jewish tradition,
spoke learnedly of Darwin, Emerson, Browning, Karl Marx, and
Voltaire in his Boston living room.
In essence, Berenson bought a round-trip ticket to Europe
using America to launder himself. What could be more appropriate
than his becoming the authority on deciding what was counterfeit
and what was genuine?
Bernard Berenson, 10 year old immigrant from Lithuania into
Harvard student. complained commercial needs made him fall short of
his intellectual goals. idea of dedicating life to learning (where
does that come from). his escape was not one from family: he was
very generous with his relatives, he authenticated, his dealer made
sales and thus he was paid. no authentication, no sale, no pay.
rages: there was no one he could trust, he hated the house and
Italy, life was hell. one sister wrote, "What food for thought in
this whole situation. Culture almost over-acquired, great wealth
amassed, exquisite beauty enhaloing their lives, yet the flavor of
dust and ashes." his style was impressionistic, not scientific. in
19
old age, his attitude changed, honorary gentile having converted to
Catholicism though transient phase. also hostile to German Jews for
snobbery toward Eastern ones. "Letter to American Jewry" in 1944
not published, do not stir up envy, "Even if you were as innocent
as the angels you could not escape its venom, and you are far from
that...." "irresponsible wealth" and arrogance in leadership "that
led to the periodical persecutions and massacres." Js "cannot be
too modest, too unassuming, too discreet." in nineties wrote among
Jewish friends "when we drop the mask of being goyim and return to
Yiddish reminiscences, and Yiddish stories and witticisms." (see
Freud).xx Samuels on Berenson: born in Butrimonys in Lithuania.
made himself into myth. Bernhard name. age of 10 left to join freethinking father in Boston, public library, Boston Latin School, BU
and Harvard. resolved to be aesthete his patrons beginning to
invest in art. Italy.
161: quick to see antisemi if people cool to him as in case of
Henry James. Irony that Berenson to be assimilated reemigrated for
he ultimately, like most Jews, made his own choice about what he
was going to assimilate to and it was continental, not American;
high culture, not low. Reason for his conversion and the curious
duality in that it did not take and his different behavior toward
the WASpS and the fellow Jews he met.
Man Ray
But what has been so romantic and exotic for Disraeli (he had
been the offspring of oriental princes; the American Jews saw
themselves as the offspring of pickle and rag merchants) was banal
for them, Man Ray (d. 1976 at age 86) photographer, painter,
designer, romantic, high art and low society (like so many others)
was just Emmanuel Radnitsky born in philadelphia but went to paris
in 1921, friend of picasso. wore black and black beret, silverheaded cane, never spoke about his roots, begging a niece not to
tell about family history, but had Brooklyn Jewish accent,
outsider, tailor's shop father, wore bright red shirt at high
school graduation. hung out at Alfred Stieglitz gallery. "I thought
of myself as a Thoreau," he wrote, "breaking free of all ties and
duties to society." scarcely five feet, thick and wavy, garrulous
and energized. fast cars, beautiful women, famous friends. "amuse,
annoy, bewilder" redefine art.xxi
Nelson Algren was Nelson Algren Abraham until 1944; machinist
father and wanted to be called "Swede" by the Irish and polish kids
he hung out with. pool halls and speakeasies, edges of crime,
drinker, womanizer, gambler, sports fan, importance of being tough
but not very good at it.xxii
duck 4b. popular Culture
Jewish invention of Superman and other comic book heroes in
1930s, as outsiders, as those who hide their true identity, based
on Samson? Kryptonite for hair? rescuers of Jewish fantasy from
pogroms and from terrible threat at time. Compare to prague Golem.
20
A. Hollywood, 1580 R Judah Low to protect from blood libel
"The Jazz Singer"
The main moguls Louis B. Mayer; Adolph Zukor, Jack and Harry
Warner, Harry Cohn, and Carl Laemmle [Goldwyn, Mayer, Cohen, and J
Warner all had second intermarriages] all Eastern European
immigrants. idealized Norman Rockwell America, which was their
ideal of the country. Mayer changed his birth date to July 4. MGM
especially American fantasy. custom clothes, thoroughbred horses,
teaching children to be aristocrats and then suffering from their
distance. superpatriotism. fearful despite power but perhaps made
better movies. Gabler suggests left utopianism of writers etc., is
mirror of rightist utopianism of rightist studio heads. Was fleeing
their Judaism and remaking themselves the most Jewish thing they
had done? classic question of choosing allies with whom to
assimilate: the right with the patriots, small-town vision--America
as was defined--the left with urban, working class multi-ethnic.
America as they would make it.xxiii
Ironically,the great love of Goldwyn's shiksa wife was the
Jewish homosexual director George Cukor.
Chetkin: Kirk Douglas (Issure Danielovitch-Demsky); Dinah
Shore; Edward G Robinson (Emanuel Goldberg; Judy Holiday (Judith
Tuvim);
Julius Garfinkel (John Garfield); Ivo Levi Yves Montand
born in Italy. Joseph Levitch Jerry Lewis; Milton Berlinger;
Benjamin Kubelsky (switch from Chi to Waukeegan birthplace. Asa
Yoelson, Al Jolson. The list is endless.
Clifford Odets, "waiting for Lefty, one-act pay about leftist
underground in Germany, Awake and Sing! NY Jews, Golden Boy, moved
away from J material. crashed in Hollywood
Neal Gabler asked, "Why write this book when it will only be
fodder for antisemites?" this is security? and publisher wanted to
drop subhead. Show business presents curious problems: not to show
Jews at all which was historic approach, or to show them as heroes
or as good Americans or as what? Holocaust easy. June 16, 1991,
Simon Weisenthal Center [comment on] held dinner National
Leadership Award, bush spoke, $50,000 a table for Museum of
Tolerance. honoree: Arnold Schwarzenegger who reportedly had given
$5 million. chairmen peter Guber (Sony) Jon peters (former Sony)
cochairs included most powerful in pictures: Studio bosses Sid
Sheinberg and Tom pollock (MCA/Universal), Barry Diller (Fox),
Michael Eisner (Disney, irony of this), Martin Davis (paramount)
Terry Semel and Bob Daly (Warner brothers) plus former studio heads
and big agents and independents. Father a Nazi, he consistent
supporter and friend of Kurt Waldheim, apparently confirmed rumors
that he enjoyed playing and giving away records of Hitler's'
speeches. one guest said, "Arnold's very big right now, and
everybody wants to work with him. Besides, this is Hollywood, and
these guys would hire Hitler if it meant making money."xxiv
Did they create the America of small-town virtue, myths and
traditions, of say "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Andy Hardy", the
Anglophile East of Ralph Lauren (Ralph Lipshitz) perhaps as seen in
21
the movies on Laurence Harvey or Leslie Howard? of perfection, old
money--in their own eyes? or did they simply take what they found.
I think the latter.
Burg, falsified birthdate. 5: "He spent year covering his
tracks, erasing those details of his origins that embarrassed him."
told psychotherapists is ever since childhood he "wanted to be
somebody" (was it Mayer who made birthday 4 july?) Shmuel Gelbfisz,
grandfather was a mohel, cheder, Orthodox, spoke Yiddish. America
"was a vision of paradise," he said. p. 8. walked almost 300 miles,
smuggled out of Russia than 200 more miles to Hamburg. 10: said
impressed by a Ben Franklin quote "America, where people do not
inquire of a stranger, `What is he?' but `What can he do.'" Yet
like many who profess to believe such sentiments in various
countries his whole career was a denial of that idea. glovemaker,
Jewish first wife. saw first movie and decided to go into the
business in 1913. their drive for power made the moguls quarrel
incessantly, each seeking their own unrestricted empire. but
retained strong family feeling, many grown up without fathers. 66.
But they didn't convert, America didn't require it, though the
intermarried. last Jews. 163: character and situation made them
name children "Jr." Edgar Magnin. "They were men who made all that
money and realized they were still a bunch of Goddamned Jews. So
they looked for other ways to cover it up." they wanted their sons
to be educated and their daughters to marry nice Jewish boys [so
contradiction?]. Carmel Myers, Goldfish told her he could make her
a big star but had to change name. why? "Oh, Carmel, there's so
much antisemitism in the world. Why play into their hands?" but
Myers also pointed out, "He knew none of the other moguls was about
to make a leading lady out of a Jewess named Myers." but even
assuming antis, the question was what to do about it. answer was to
hide (whereas Mendelssohn had been offered up on stage as the Jew
of virtue. Magnin. "wish they didn't have to be Jewish." "Sleeping
with a pretty Gentile girl made them feel, if only for a few
minutes, `I'm half Gentile.' No wonder they made idols out of
shiksa goddesses. They worshipped those blue-eyes blonds they were
forbidden to have." in Goldwyn's case his second wife, the actress
Frances Howard, insisted on bringing up Jr. as a Catholic. when he
was in NY had him baptized. [Jazz Singer as exception] Harry Cohn
of Columbia born in US. Eddie Cantor very Jewish. Was it
inescapable that being Jewish was the same for them as being poor
in a shtetl, they were not going to break away but it had negative
associations for them quite different from the more cultured,
affluent German Jews. the friends, the card-playing buddies were
almost all Jewish. Sophia Kossow/Sydney. 228: when daughter of
first marriage going to marry a Christian grandmother Sarah Lasky
objected, "Jews make the best husbands."
"You mean like my
father?" she said silencing her. he didn't pay her allowance. p.
293: cleaning up the carefully strewn garbage in the slum picture,
"Dead End," G said, "There won't be any dirty slums--not in my
picture." even the soundtrack had to be clear of city noises. The
22
moguls met Schonberg and the other European Jewish writers,
filmmakers forced out. 365: Ben Hecht as co-chair of the Committee
for a Jewish Army, said mobilized on feeling of guilt. early 1942
asked David Selznick to help, refused, "I'm an American and not a
Jew." [interesting that they saw it as more a national than a
religious identification, also insecure, there was antisemitism]
said would call three friends and ask, "What would you call David
O. Selznick, an American or a Jew?" if unanimous would join. all
three non-Jews said the latter. Sam Goldwyn quietly contributed to
Jewish charities and then listed in yearbook as such. [they were
not self-haters, they were just scared and doing what they thought
they should be doing]. 345-7: Goldwyn sent checks to relatives in
poland as well as America, his brother became a Christian Scientist
and denied having him. never saw sister either. one of his sisters
and her husband killed at Treblinka, tried to get other relatives
out too late. Joseph Kennedy representing America First 1940 spoke
to power brokers, said America should distance itself from England
in case that country lost and said stop making anti-Nazi pictures
because Jews were being blamed for war, "You're going to have to
get those Jewish names off the screen." encouraged hiding out.
Consider though that the mythology was not distinctly Jewish
in Hollywood, but the Italian-born Frank Capra was much shaped by
his Jewish writers; William Saroyan, Armenian-American; Thornton
Wilder. Again, the split--the moguls all-accepting wanting to
integrate; the writers often slashingly critical. Nordau versus the
Jewish bourgeois.
Sam Spiegel man of chutzpah, Otto preminger and Spiegel fled
Austria in 1935. preminger said of him, "Don't turn your back on
him, or your hair will be stolen." allegedly. producer of "The
African Queen," "On the Waterfront," "The Bridge on the River
Kwai," and "Lawrence of Arabia." buccaneer [Maxwell style] b 1901
in Galicia, his older brother was a Talmudic scholar. family moved
to Vienna. he reinvented past, claiming university degree, learned
to "to avoid war and taxes, to disbelieve governments and
stability, to trust only in money and himself." q from Sinclair.
went to palestine as laborer (claiming later he was a drainage
expert) married, abandoned family and returned to poland as stock
promoter and cotton broker, many languages and bad checks, moved
around, 1929 sentenced for passing a bad check, deported to poland.
films in Berlin in first half of 1930s, Spiegel on escape: "These
are the accidents of history that prevent you from becoming a
lampshade." Vienna to paris then London and more bad checks, a
short term and deported again, Mexico and more financial misdoings,
across border in September 1939 under assumed name. Movie moguls
from the Almanach de Ghetto; "poland to polo in one generation."
S.p. Eagle. stole stories, built stars by claiming to have others
already, prostitutes to build network, huge parties, married a
starlet, didn't pay creditors, by the time the next deportation
hearing came along he had plenty of friends and payoffs. put
23
together four great films, accomplishing seemingly impossible tasks
of logistics and persuasion. For Lawrence he entertained King
Hussein on his yacht. the women, the demand for control, his wife
committed suicide, died alone in 1985 on the Caribbean island of
St. Martin's.xxv on one hand, entertaining tale (for those who did
not know him or swindled by him); embarrassing story, gives a bad
name. but socialization: rules to be flaunted, hypocrisy, survival
necessitates all, having turned back on values of own community and
acquired no new ones was purely hedonistic, immune to appeals of a
surrounding culture alien to him. He was the worst nightmare of the
Mayers and Warners yet co-existed on the same turf.
B. The Comedians. The Jewish comedians were totally Jewish but
identified with that immigrant milieu of the Lower East Side,
Brooklyn, something in the past they wanted to escape not something
to be passed on. The dead end kids were a dead end. But they all
liked being together [see Berenson] Burns, Benny, Marx, Jolson,
Cantor, Jessel.
Marx Brothers, Benny, Burns
George Burns, The Third Time Around, p. 23 when I was seven
years old. I was singing with three other Jewish kids from the
neighborhood. a big department store, Siegel & Cooper, which threw
an annual picnic. a little presbyterian church minister asked us
four kids to represent the church the peewee Quartet - four Jewish
boys sponsored by a presbyterian church - and our opening song was
"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."
We followed that with "Mother
Machree" and won first prize. The church got a purple velvet altar
cloth, and each of us kids got an Ingersoll watch which was worth
about eighty-five cents.
Well, I was so excited I ran all the way home to tell my
mother. When I got there she was on the roof hanging out the wash.
I rushed up to her and said, "Mama, I don't want to be a Jew
anymore!"
If this shocked her, she certainly didn't show it. She just
looked at me and calmly said, "Do you mind me asking why?"
I said, "Well, I've been a Jew for seven years and never got
anything. I was a presbyterian for one day and I got a watch," and
I held out my wrist and showed it to her. She glanced at it and
said, "First help me hang up the wash, then you can be a
presbyterian." While I was hanging up the wash some water ran down
my arm and got inside the watch. It stopped running, so I became a
Jew again.
p. 26 He had long since given up his job as a pants presser
and now spent most of his time at the synagogue reading religious
books and discussing philosophy with other scholars. Occasionally
he would bring a little money into the house which he earned as a
mashgiach. also a part-time cantor.
My father was laughing and joking and teasing us kids;
he
seemed unusually elated. My mother didn't exactly share his mood
because she was busy trying to water down a stew to the point where
24
it would feed a bunch of kids who hadn't eaten in twenty-four
hours. She looked at my father and said, "What are you so happy
about, that synagogue is paying you nothing." My father turned to
her, and with a big broad smile said, "I know, but they asked me to
come back again next year."
p. 27 Although his religion was the most important thing in
his life I don't think I ever saw my father unless he was wearing
either his hat or his yarmulke. The day my father died left a
lasting impression on me. Since I was only seven (compare to
singing contest. Seven years old!)
p. 35 St. patrick's Day, so we all put on something green and
went up into the Irish neighborhood around Eighteenth Street and
Tenth Avenue. All the saloons were jumping that day. The first
one we went into we started right off with "MacNamara's Band," and
we were a smash. We hit every saloon in the neighborhood, and by
the time we were finished we had made over seventeen dollars, which
to us was a fortune. We were standing on a street corner counting
the money, when we looked up and there were ten tough-looking Irish
kids coming down the street towards us. We didn't wait to find out
if they were friendly or not, we just ran. And they took off after
us. All we wanted to do was get back to our own neighborhood with
that seventeen dollars. We must have run about two miles until we
spotted this Jewish Boys' Club, and in we went. Inside there was a
bunch of sixteen--and seventeen-year-old boys shooting pool, so we
told them our problem. We explained that we had made over seventeen
dollars and these Irish kids outside were trying to take it away
from us. The biggest one in the group patted me on the head and
said, "You boys are lucky you came here, we'll take care of this."
With that they went outside with their pool cues and chased the
Irish kids home. Then they came back inside, took our seventeen
dollars, and chased us home.
Well, that taught me a lesson that's still with me: Never
go to a Jewish Boys' Club on St. patrick's Day.
p. 201 he was starring in The Jazz Singer on Broadway. And
Jessel was really a great actor. I saw the show one night and it
affected me very deeply. The story was about the son of a Jewish
cantor who goes into show business against his father's wishes.
Just before the High Holidays the father dies, and the son gives up
show business, comes into the synagogue, and takes his father's
place. At the finish of the play he sings "Kol Nidre," the holiest
of all Hebrew melodies. Well, when the curtain came down I was a
wreck, I was crying like a baby. I felt I had seen my own life,
because my father was a cantor. I ran backstage to congratulate
Jessel on his marvelous performance, but Jessel's manager was
standing at the dressing room door and told me I couldn't go in.
"Why not?" I asked. "I want to tell him how much I enjoyed his
performance."
He said, "I'm sorry, you can't go in, he's in there naked."
"So what?" I said. "I've seen a naked Jew before. I want
to tell him how great he was."
25
"Mr. Burns," he insisted, "he's got a girl in there." So I left. I
was really shocked.
I didn't think anything could follow "Kol
Nidre."
Considering comedians, George Burns and Jack Benny had totally
non-Jewish
persona,
not
only
never
bringing
it
up
but
indistinguishable from anyone else, both intermarried with
wife/partners. Marx brothers were never explicitly Jewish but had a
more Jewish style. Henny Youngman, Milton Berle, Alan King more
explicitly though very toned down. ?
Groucho, Harpo... Sam and Minnie Marx. names in reverse:
Leonard to Chico, many of the Js in show business rejected and were
not good for education. Chico learned how to adopt whatever accent
necessary to avoid hostility. Harpo was of all things Adolph. Whole
Hollywood/entertainment scene, very J but without any way to
continue. Julius was Groucho (another favorite assimilationist
name). Wild leaps of logic on both newness to English but also
religious logic.
Milton (Gummo) and Herbert (Zeppo) sense that
their real names were ridiculous and had nothing to do with them.
when told mother wanted to marry Gracie, a Catholic, she said
"If they'll have you, that's fine." Her mother said, "Maybe he'll
get over it!" His brother Sammy made an arrangement with his wife,
"Sarah was Italian, and she stayed Italian; Sammy was Jewish, and
he stayed Jewish." joked had delicious dinner at their house, If
you happen to like spaghetti on a bagel." Their daughter treated
them to their first trip out of US to Israel and Rome, spent half
time in each. He wrote long letter about how great Israel was. but
didn't mention Rome. Sarah wrote long letter about Rome and didn't
mention Israel.xxvi
All My Best Friends, Burns: 19: all very poor immigrants.
Berle's family was evicted from a tenement in Harlem, Burns family
of 12. "The kids in my neighborhood would do anything to make
money." wild, Benny's father a saloonkeeper wanted him to be a
classical violinist; Mathau's to be a doctor or lawyer. 32: Groucho
started his career as a soprano in an Episcopal Church but was
suspended for puncturing the organ bellows with a hatpin. Minie
Marx was a stage mother. Jolson's to be a cantor. Benny's father,
Meyer Kubelsky hit him with a prayer book for showing up n the
middle of a Yom Kippur service. that night trying to apologize p.
34 he told his son, "You know, in our religion it's considered a
great blessing to be hit by a siddur on Yom Kippur." Jolson sang in
his father's choir but would sneak away to sing at Baltimore
burlesque houses, then ran away from home three times and ended up
in the St. Mary's Home for Boys, where Babe Ruth had lived. stage
debut in Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto. Benny's family slightly
better of.
Grouchoism. equal alienation from Jews and from general
society. Didn't come to Hillcrest often and the committee said if
he sent in his resignation they would return his unused membership
fee, later tried to rejoin.xxvii
Groucho story: George Burns Sophie Tucker sang a song, "If You
26
Don't See Momma Every Night You Can't See Momma At All." for two
years when Burns ordered Sea Bass, told story "If You Don't Sea
Bass Every Night..." Finally Burns asked him, do you know any jokes
about whitefish... "No." Ordered Groucho "If you don't see
Whitefish..." like situation of Js and antis
one of Groucho's wives not Jewish and had daughter named
Melinda, one day went with friends to club that didn't allow Jews
and wouldn't let into pool, Groucho wrote president of club, "Since
my daughter is only half-Jewish, would it be all right if she went
into the pool only up to her waist?"xxviii
That half obscenity, half dream "To Be or Not to Be."
C. Irving Berlin
Bergreen? March 30, 1926 issue of Jewish Theatrical News an
editorial "On Changing Your Name" gave list: Asa Joelson to Al
Jolson, Fanny Borach to Fanny Brice, but Israel Baline was not
listed, perhaps because on publications editorial board. success
story. family arrives poor in America, cantor father died early,
struggle to rise "Alexander's Ragtime Band" "Blue Skies" to "God
Bless America," "Easter parade," and "White Christmas" wealth,
fame, and even long life. George Gershwin. Bergreen: believed that
"being American and successful were practically synonymous" but
being American and Jew were not. only J themes are negative,
avarice--"Business is Business Rosie Cohen" "Cohen Owes Me NinetySeven Dollars" or Jews ridiculed. adopted prevailing society's view
on Jews. also liked black face. "This is the Army," a World War Two
morale booster. complained there were "too many Jews in the show."
Berlin claimed in an interview with the Saturday Evening post,
which was to magazines what the Hollywood moguls small American
town life, claimed he "had nostalgic memories of childhood
Christmas on the Lower East Side" married daughter of an antisemite
Catholic millionaire, their children were protestant. Did the
blandness of his songs--as well as their success--have something to
do with his assimilation strategy?
Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century (NY, 1954) p. 12-13: "I was
an apostle of human reason. As such, I looked on God as an enemy.
He had an ugly history on our planet, comparable to the most
virulent bacteria. All the deadly sins appeared to be His
trainbearers, chief among them being brutality." not a typical
Jewish view--found in many Christian intellectuals--but one much
easier for Jews to believe since a) criticizing or disagreeing with
God not such a sacrilege and b) God's record toward the Jews. "The
reading of history and the observing of my fellows had convinced me
that the presence of God in the human head induced lunacy and
outrage, and dammed the progress of reason. I believed that the
secret of human salvation lay in people's changing from the
disordered worship of the unknowable to the reasonable study of the
known." belief in rationality part belief to be realism, part
wishful thinking. then later concluded "I believe in God because I
have lost my faith in reason and the progress of thought." in large
part, Holocaust. belief in reason and progress turned out to be an
27
"empty superstition." saw man as a creature in the making rather
than a worthless product. Yet also very unJudaized point of view,
no religious education at all, in fact relatives--large, warm,
colorful, very Jewish immigrant family (which arrived for reunion
"with suitcases full of spicy Yiddish foods." interesting to
compare with language, ie of old country--which no one would do
today) was inhibited from talking about such matters. 15: does not
need to demonstrate his belief "I could no more think of going into
a church and praying and singing than of running around in an
Indian war bonnet." "hosanna" "catechism." Christian words and
categories as part of language. Greek myths, references
106: much of what did as a "Jewish propagandist has been done
because I loved my family. It was they who were under attack by the
German murderers and the sly British....Although I never lived `as
a Jew' or even among Jews, my family remained like a homeland in my
heart." he had pageant about victims of Holocaust during war, when
"respectable" leaders inveighed against it and assimilationist Jews
did not want to identify separately as Jews, since this would cause
antisemitism.
The German Jews learned German culture almost as good as the
Germans, the American Jews learned American culture far better.
note Hecht's title as a cutting off of history.
And yet Hecht becomes one of the most outspoken as Jew in
country as part of struggle for Jews to fight in war and for
Revisionists in palestine, because of strong ethnic feeling
(conveyed through family) and pride and combatativeness.
18: They were successful for the same reason that their kind
were usually failures. Their success was founded on the fact that
they were not themselves. They had borrowed identity from the world
and not out of their own souls....Lacking individuality, they can
only become big with the world. They feel their importance as their
only identity."
76-77: How saw self, what side take in history, with Crusaders
and kings and monks and aristocrats? "the significance of my ghost.
It is a Jew." "I have met numerous zanies who insisted the spirit
of a pharaoh or a Caesar was spelling out words and dreams for
them." who occupies one's counterlife. For Hecht a 14th century
pirate of the Mediterranean fighting all the kings and armies.
354-55: "I had always considered myself as un-Jewish...without
effort or self-consciousness. I would have said in the days before
I came to New York that I was a Jew by accident, and that I had
shed this accidental heritage as easily as ridding myself of some
childhood nickname." but as easy as it was to think so personally,
could not in huge numbers. "It took me a long time to stop
counting, furtively, how many Jews were at a dinner table, and how
many famous Christians had intruded. The score ranged from two-toone to ten to-one in favor of Judea." while he felt pride, "I
noticed that my colleagues were no prouder of being successful Jews
than they would have been of being unsuccessful ones. Their pride
began where their Jewishness left off." (interesting point)
28
"Twenty-five centuries of identity are a lot of baggage to unload
overnight" but outside of family names--that too often lost
elsewhere--they seemed to have jettisoned it quickly, celebrities
and celebrity fanciers. and the fact that their parents had been so
thoroughly ethnically and religiously Jewish made this "seem more a
piece of legerdemain than cultural evolution." they "had discarded
their Jewishness out of the belief that as Jews" they would be ripe
for a snubbing. As Americans or, more particularly, as egoists and
talents, they could step forth as superiors and even as snobs." but
the rebel mentality like Hecht and others later revelled in being
snubbed. like the assimilator they waited in expectation of a snub
but for them it was an occasion for a good battle. 355: "A
wagonload of popes, backed up by the entire [social elite] all
pointing belittling fingers, would have fetched only sneers from
the souls of my uncles, tantes and parents." but seeing what seemed
a reaction to antisemitism looked around for antisemites and didn't
find any locally. "To become un-Jewish involves no pretense. The
pretense lies in the delusion that, having ceased to be a Jew, you
have become something else." their motive was fear, not sacrilege
or indifference "and this fear stayed in them." pretense made them
easy victims. the situation had the opposite effect on him (rebel
mentality) began to look with pride "on what was obviously a
Jewish-dominated
culture."
publishing,
entertainment,
songs,
concerts, plays, poetry, best parties, best stores, even in
newspapers, comedians. Marx Brothers, Al Jolson, George Jessel,
Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Ed Wynn, the Ritz Brothers,
Smith and Dale, phil Silvers, Milton Berle, George Burns, and many
others. "In their presence Jewishness was not Jewishness. It was a
fascinating Americanism."
492: when first heard about Zionism, the first thing that
sprang to his mind was the Irish nationalists he had heard speak.
504: Jewish moguls eager to support Jewish charity, "a guilt
that blooms in the soul of the immigrant Jew who turns into an
American nabob. This ex-steerage passenger who achieves fortune in
the U.S. is bothered by a sense of renegadeism. He finds it
convenient to forget his Jewishness in the high-class world into
which he has vaulted. He is thus eager to prove his Jewishness
secretly by donations to Jews in distress." support a synagogue
with large gifts for 30 years without ever entering it. "Though
they seldom turned down a chance to help Jews in trouble, I knew
there was small likelihood of their helping Jews make trouble."
totally against Jewish army proposals. frightened of standing out,
distinction, horrified by the idea of seeming to criticize England,
if Jews acted "The whole world would get disgusted with Jews, and
they would be hated worse than ever. A Jew, each explained in his
own way, could do anything he wanted to as an American, but as a
Jew he must be very careful of angering people and very careful not
to assert himself in any unpopular way. As Americans they could
boast and swagger, apparently, but as Jews they must be as
invisible as possible....My twenty moguls were men loud with ego,
29
but the Jew in them was a cringing fellow almost as frightened of
the world as the Jew in a German-policed ghetto. They could not
visualize Jews as heroes--only as victims."
505-6: David Selznick story about refusing to sign telegram,
full of arguments. Selznick story "I don't want anything to do with
your cause for the simple reason that it's a Jewish political
cause. And I am not interested in Jewish political problems. I'm an
American and not a Jew. I'm interested in this war as an American."
if prove would sign? how? call up three people you choose and ask
how think of him, as American or Jew. (seems as if all three nonJews. so he signed.
516-18: assembled 30 famous writers at George Kaufman's house
all plays or novels, box office success, all had in common were
Jews, dinner, told them 1943 two million Jews killed in Europe
without protest in America, asked to speak out and dramatize
murders. spoke saying if banded together and express moral passion
might halt massacres since Germans thought world indifferent to
extermination, if roar of horror, spoke of Danish king and yellow
star. also affect British so let Jews into palestine, no applause,
a half-dozen got up and walked out. Edna Ferber, "Who is paying you
to do this wretched propaganda. Mister Hitler? Or is it Mister
Goebbels?" one fried said, "I didn't expect anything much
different. You asked them to throw away the most valuable thing
they ow--the fact that they are Americans." but the guests,
ironically, "had not behaved like Americans but like scared Jews.
And what in God's name were they frightened of? Of people realizing
they were Jews? But people knew that already....Or did they think
they would be mistaken for `real' Americans if they proved they had
no hearts at all?" Moss Hart and Kurt Weill the only two who
offered to help. (Billy Rose joined them) also found Jewish
organizations badly divided but rabbis supported. Good example of
Jewish Variation, non-Jews more willing to support because less
intimidated and saw as application of universals.
A Child of the Century Ben Hecht, p. 486-7. on persecution of
the Jews, the unassimilated speaking in Jewish newspapers and
synagogues, "The Americanized Jews who ran newspapers and movie
studios, who wrote plays and novels, who were high in government
and powerful in the financial, industrial and even social life of
the nation were silent." "the incredible silence of New York's Jews
in this time of massacre." movie chieftains told Ambassador Joseph
Kennedy had told Jewish movie makers in a secret meeting at one of
their homes that they must not protest as Jews because this would
impede victory over Germans and make world feel this was a "Jewish
war." argued that would help and also there would be no respect for
Jews. made him feel Jewish. "My angry critics," he wrote in 1941,
all write that they are proud of being Americans...and that they
are sick to death of such efforts as mine to Judaize them and
increase generally the Jew-consciousness of the world....It is not
I who am bringing this Jew-consciousness back into the world. It is
back on all the radios of the world."
30
duck Conclusion
[was arrival culture American or American Jewish culture]
What did it mean to escape the ghetto? just poverty? just
geography? or was it also to become Americanized, to escape the
Jewish as much as immigrant stigma, to be accepted, to gain wealth
and fame and success, to stand astride the larger stage as
"humanist" "American" "citizen of the world," shorn of the label,
and the label they were trying to leave behind was not "German" or
"Russian"
or
"pole"
or
Austro-Hungarian"
but
Jew.
As
religion/nation/ethnicity and Reform was an adaptation of that.
But if no secure, why act insecure. if so pluralist, why drift
away? generational process of immigrants, not unlike altogether
what seen in England and France though since into pluralist system
more egalitarian but the mind-set of the Jews had as much or more
to do with effect as did the society itself. Freedom to be oneself
or freedom to escape? This was a decision each had to make. nd what
did it mean to be an American? Something there Jewish background
greatly influenced them in defining.
Baumgarten p. 1.: classic story, emergence from shtetl,
finding a place in the "freer, more complex, and cosmopolitan life
of the city." how the fictional protagonist (and writer) "might
escape from the traditional tribal realm, as it simultaneously
explores the possibilities of citizenship in the newly found civic
arena." In America, the shtetl can indicate the European starting
point, or it may be Brooklyn or the Lower East Side. 4: strange
Jewish characteristic, in discussing Kazin, "delighting in the
pleasures of the moment" while not fully granting its reality.
freedom may bring terror, emancipation, anguish. But often what
starts in free-thinking (p. 16) ends with a new understanding of
what Jewishness means. 18: there was a time when utopia would be
when there was no Jewish question but there were still Yiddish
newspapers [makes me think of the Bund]. 19: q Arendt who finds
modern Jewish writing The Jew as pariah 67-68, "for over a hundred
years the same basic conditions have obtained and evoked the same
basic reaction." Citing Veblen, p. 21 "Intellectually he is likely
to become an alien; spiritually he is more than likely to remain a
Jew." he will see the strange new culture but not necessarily adopt
it. 22: Richard Stern, "attributed what I thought of as my artist's
disposition to the slight displacement from ordinary life which
being a Jew allowed me, just as I attributed my distaste for what I
thought of as the mundane affairs of my family to my artist's
disposition. I liked being a bit of an outsider, not a penalized
outsider but a glamorous one." [that last phrase is very
interesting and applies to many contemporaries. for a while, at
least say between 1950 and 1980 they could be glamorous riding on
the Holocaust and the achievements of a generation of Jewish
intellectuals but then became less glamorous as things were
forgotten and Israel sometimes fell into disfavor.
The ethnic factor in America: Jews were part of the immigrants
as part of themselves they wanted to leave behind publicly through
31
privately preserve in friendships, style etc and of course one
wouldn't pass on being immigrant/Jewish to a generation that was
native-born.
Jerold S. Auerbach, Rabbis and Lawyers
p. 13: The persistent
attempts to demonstrate the compatibility of Judaism and
Americanism suggest some interior doubts that needed to be overcome
- the legacy perhaps of the very disadvantages Jews had suffered in
America.
p. 14: Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, the intellectual leader of Reform
Judaism, concluded a lecture on July 4th by describing the United
States as "the land where milk and honey flow for all."
Rather
than lament the destruction of the ancient Temple, Jews could
fulfill their messianic yearnings in "the Holy Land of Freedom and
Human Rights."
Kohler heard "in the jubilant tocsin peals of
American liberty the mighty resonance of Sinai's thunder."
Jacob Katz, Emancipation and Assimilation p. 74 traditional
obligations became modern options, obedience to law ceased to
define what it meant to be a Jew. Each Jew could choose;
p. 76: During the nineteenth century, "American culture was so
suffused with evangelical protestantism that it is difficult to
determine where one ended and the other began. In fact, if not in
law, protestantism was the established American religion." So... p.
78: When the first rabbinical class graduated from the Hebrew Union
College in 1883, it celebrated with a banquet of oysters, shrimp,
and crabmeat, in flagrant violation of the laws of kashrut.
Judaism, as Wise had proudly proclaimed a few years earlier, had
truly been reformed "to correspond with the spirit and tastes of
this age and this country." (or was it Christianity which dominated
the age and country?)
p. 79-80: The distinction, to Wise, was self-evident: "We are
Americans and they are not." Kaufmann Kohler said Jews had to
choose whether to mourn the loss of the Temple or to celebrate the
American "Holy Land of Freedom and Human Rights."
Only in the
United States, "the land where milk and honey flow for all," could
those human ideals "which form the essence and soul of our
religion" be realized. To pray for a return to Jerusalem was
"blasphemy." Nor could they "remain Hebrews in garb and custom, in
views and language." But the irony was that Berenson thought his
assimilation incompatible for remaining a Jew at all.
p. 81: Felix Adler (the son of a Reform rabbi and founder of
the Ethical Culture movement) was prompted to inquire after the
pittsburgh conference, "Why did the gentlemen not go all the
way and declare themselves to be Unitarians?"
Milton Goldin, Why They Give p. 52: The New York Jewish elite did
not want more immigrants and a leading Aid Sjociety official said,
"Only disgrace and a lowering opinion in which Israelites are
32
held...can result from the continued residence among us...of these
wretches..."
p. 53: Hirsch hobnobbed with royalty and believed assimilation
the "salvation" of Jews. Nonetheless, he was alarmed by pogroms and
gave the Alliance Israelite 1 million francs for refugees. In 1885,
he offered the czarist government 50 million francs to build Jewish
trade and agricultural schools in the pale. The price was Jewish
equality with Russians, a condition St. petersburg would never
accept; the Russians insisted that all funds had to be under their
control, a condition Hirsch would not accept. The offer was dropped
after Hirsch advanced 1 million francs, which was used by the
Russians to train priests for the Russian Orthodox Church. Hirsch
was convinced that mass emigration was essential if lives were to
be saved.
p. 58: Zangwill in 1906. "The Jew has been accustomed to being
`moved on' by all the nations. He does not want to be `moved on' by
his own people." The Industrial Removal Office in New York insisted
that emigrants work on the Sabbath. the clause was amended
emigrants were simply advised that strict Sabbath observance would
be difficult if not almost impossible.
p. 60: Nothing was so distasteful as to be thought a
greenhorn, an immigrant just off the boat. Those who had arrived in
July felt superior to immigrants who arrived in August.
p. 106: The highest-placed Jew in the U.S. government was
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Grandson of the
poor Bavarian cantor Lazarus, and son of a wealthy, self-made real
estate magnate who was ambassador to Turkey during World War One.
Henry Jr friendly to his neighbor FDR. Robert Morgenthau US da for
Southern district. a fellow member of that fourth generation, Joan
given first coming out party at WH for non-pres family member.
"Let's call a spade a spade," Morgenthau told a staff meeting. "I
am secretary of the Treasury for one hundred and thirty-five
million people, see? That is the way I think of myself; I represent
all of them. But if Mr. Hamilton Fish, Jr. [Republican congressman
from New York] was to go after me, he goes after me because I am a
Jew. Let's use plain, simple language. He doesn't go after me
because I am Secretary; he goes after me because he thinks that I
have done something for the Jews because I am a Jew."
Morgenthau's staff prepared a bitter memorandum on State
Department foot-dragging for Roosevelt and the president was so
impressed that he created the War Refugee Board soon thereafter, in
January 1944.
pp. 30-1: during the Civil War there were frightening
eruptions of anti-Semitism in the press and wealthy Jews faced
discrimination at clubs and resorts in the 1870s.
p. 31: Sephardim of the 1830s, elegant, aristocratic, and well
on their way to full assimilation through intermarriage, found
newcomers aggressive, ill-mannered, and crude, poor, the wrong
characteristics, which called attention to "Jewish" features better
left unnoticed by Christians: large noses, outlandish clothing, and
33
conversations
Hebrew."
in
Yiddish,
an
"abominable
garble
of
German
and
Myron Berman, The Attitude of American Jewry Towards East
European Jewish Immigration 1881-1914, p. 140 over two million
Jewish immigrants from 1880 to 1914 had swelled its Jewish
population from a few hundred thousand to an estimated three
million.
p. 504 Louis Marshall, president of the American Jewish
Committee,
not
convinced
that
"the
nationalistic
movement
represented by the Zionists possesses any element of practicality."
p. 505 In the pittsburgh platform, the Reform Rabbinate stated
uncategorically: "We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a
religious community..."
In the year following the birth of
political Zionism, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations
stated its opposition to the new movement in these terms: "America
is our Zion. Here, in the home of religious liberty, we have aided
in founding this new Zion, the fruition of the beginning laid in
the old.
The mission of Judaism is spiritual and not political.
Its aim is not to establish a state, but to spread the truths of
religion and humanity throughout
p. 517
American Jewry who in the eighties and nineties feared
and tried to discourage East European Jewish immigration, by 1914
considered these coreligionists as welcome additions to the
population; p. 518 The leadership of the Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society of the United
States, Jewish immigrant aid societies throughout the United
States, and the United Hebrew Charities of New York - all opposed
the unrestricted immigration of East European Jewry. Officers of
the HEAS warned Jewish relief committees in Europe to stop
forwarding refugees to this country and even returned many families
to the lands from which they came. Immigrant aid societies in
different cities advised the HEAS that no further shipments of
immigrants would be accepted. petitioned the government for more
effective immigration laws.
p. 520 from 1900 American Jewry welcomed the immigration of
their East European brethren and spared no effort to foster their
adjustment to their new environment. Nativism now developed racial
overtones and secured powerful support. p. 521 supported liberal
immigration policy.
Charles Angoff and Meyer Levin, The Rise of American Jewish
Literature, p. 10 Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky, the
story of a truly lost immigrant generation failing to find a bridge
between the Eastern European and American ways of life, might have
proven the seed for a self-interpretive literature, but it fell on
arid ground. [writers, post immigrant generation]
The sons of the ghetto had reached writing age. Encountering
neighborhood bullies as children, and collegiate anti-Semitism as
they grew, many young Jews reacted with inner resentment against
the Jewish handicap, and writers among them began to produce
34
"realistic" portraits that, in a closed ghetto world, might have
been accepted as self-critical, ironic, and satirical, but that in
an open English-reading world had the unhappy effect of confirming
from Jewish sources the most strident anti-Semitic summations of
"Jewish character." Thus, Ben Hecht's A Jew in Love was about a
name-changed Jewish publisher who put all of his energy into
seducing young women, usually Gentile.
This best seller was
followed by Jerome Weidman's I Can Get It for You Wholesale and
Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run?, two skillfully written
novels about Jewish business cheats--in the garment and film
industries--both doubtless written, with corrective zeal, as
satiric exposures, yet raising complex questions of Jewish
self-hatred.
Other works "pictured Jews as gangsters and
exploiters, to the point where the Jewish community began to ask,
`Isn't there anything decent to write about?'"
Magazines and book publishers did not want books about Jews,
feeling that non-Jewish readers were uninterested and even Jews
preferred to identify with "real Americans" in novels.
Writers
understandably abandoned such subjects entirely or turned Jewish
characters into those with bland names. "Homey Dr. Shapiro could
always be endowed with a country twang and changed into Dr.
Carruthers." p. 12 Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to become an
associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, who had been
said to be toying with the idea of joining the Unitarian Church,
turned actively to Zionism. Then professor Lewisohn, who also had
seemed to be preparing to convert to Christianity, made a complete
return to Judaism and wrote his rousing novel The Island Within to
explain the persistence of identity. p. 13 there was finally an
audience for Call It Sleep thirty years after it was originally
published. For several years in succession, Jewish authors won the
National Book Award with works about Jews. Jewish novels headed the
best-seller lists. What a change from the time when Jewish material
was poison in the publishing world!" (their work was parochial, in
US, not about Holocaust or birth of Israel even as effects on
American Jews. (symbolic: their material is the past they and their
readers had outgrown) p. 14 The typical Jewish character in their
fiction was a professor totally detached from the Jewish community.
NOTES
i. Azriel Eisenberg, The Golden Land (NY, 1964) p. 73.
ii. Auerbach, p. 78.
iii. Hertzberg see 1988 New York Times article on Supreme Court
35
justice Benjamin Cardozo descendants.
iv. Pierce Butler, Judah P Benjamin (Philadelphia, 1907), p. 46.
v. Merchant Princes, pp. 57-58.
vi. Merchant Princes, pp. 29-30.
vii. Milton Goldin, Why They Give, pp. 32-3.
viii. Merchant Princes, pp. 54-55.
ix. Goldin, pp. 38-42.
x. Merchant Princes, pp. 44-45.
xi. Stephen Birmingham, The Rest of Us, p. 313.
xii. Merchant Princes, pp. 31-33.
xiii. Stephen Birmingham Our Crowd (NY, 1987), pp. 4-5.
xiv. Jerusalem Report, December 27, 1990.
xv. Goldin p. 141
xvi. Lionel Abel, The Intellectual Follies, p. 267.
xvii. Mortimer Adler, Philosopher At Large, (NY, 1977) pp. 15-16.
xviii. Alan Mintz, review of Klingenstein, New Republic, March 9,
36
1992, p. 44..
xix. Robert Alter, Defenses of the Imagination, p. 53
xx. Rosemary Dinnage, "Fanning the Gemlike Flame," New York Review
of Books, October 8, 1987.
xxi. "The Omnivorous Eye of Man Ray, Washington Post, December 2,
1988.
xxii. Thomas Edwards, "Underground Man," New York Review of Books,
June 28, 1990.
xxiii. New York Times Book Review, October 23, 1988.
xxiv. Charles Fleming, "Arnie's Army," Spy Magazine, March 1992, p.
62.
xxv. John Gregory Dunne, "The Check is in the Mail," New York
Review of Books, March 17, 1988.
xxvi. Burns, Third Time Around pp. 50, 57.
xxvii. All My Best Friends, p. 180.
xxviii. All My Best Friends, p. 190.
37
CHAPTER FIVE
SELF-INVENTION, AMERICAN STYLE
The simple child asks: `What is this?' As for the child who
does not even know how to ask a question, you must begin for him."
--The Passover Haggadah
unclassified
America, where culture comes from show business
Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley.
Mailer writes of `the white Negro' but to the European
antisemites there was nothing new in this idea. Wagner and
Lowenfeld quotes for example. The white Negro was a Jewish
Variation. The common pattern of taking an insult and turning it
into a boast. Lenny Bruce and Shelly Berman and Mort Sahl. Perhaps
the main difference with a Jessel or Groucho is simply they talked
on stage as the earlier generation did in private. In Europe, Jews
had been a disproportionately large segment of modernists but many
others in America numbers far more overwhelming. WASPs and their
Southern Variant.
Donald Katz, Home Fires (NY, 1992). In looking at the
disintegration of a "typical" American family he chose a Jewish
one. Went from Yosef and Yetta Goldenberg [biblical figure names]
to Samuel and Eve Samberg to movie star names Susan [Hayward] and
Lorraine [Laraine Day] to Shiva. Sam liked the
"mysterious"
Paulette Goddard. [nature of mystery]
p. 4: watching refugees as a soldier during World War Two, Sam
saw families trudge one way and then the next, thinking they could
do so remaining emotionless and strong because their parents and
grandparents had made the exact same journeys. wide application.
pp. 19-21: Yetta kept the dietary laws; Eve went to trouble to
prepare for her. Eve saw Jewish as also being funny; Yetta didn't.
Sam had been involved in inter-ethnic fistfights as a kid. Knew
antisemites in the army including being victimized by one. A young
Jewish officer urged him to go to OTS saying, "This war is being
fought for the Jews." shocked by news of Holocaust but not so much
affected by it.
p. 23: attributed Yetta's preference for a blond, blue-eyed
child cousin to the dark Lorraine because looked non-Jewish.
disintegration of family--hard to remember that a century ago
Jews were extolled for having strong families--because of modern
life but heightened by assimilation. each generation was now
culturally/ideologically/religiously
different
instead
of
continuity with each looking down on the previous one's lesser
degree of assimilation. Lack common values or institutions,
tendency to hide past or to run harder away from it. attributes of
many Americans but particularly strong among Jews.
46-8 after seeing film of Nuremberg Trials, daughter began having
nightmares that Nazis came to her class and take her away, common,
about the same time family changes name, argument Ellis island name
or used to escape from Old Country but more immediately Sam did
1
work for a Catholic group and thought change would help get
contract. Katz writes, saw leaving behind name as something of "an
American tradition" since "many of the Americans Eve admired most
had smoothed and celebrated their emergence from the past by
shedding Kaminsky for Kay (Danny), Levitch for Lewis (Jerry), and
Berlinger for Berle." (gee, what do they have in common) chose name
of a Scots clan (so is not just American but Anglo) (and of course
so many Jews chose it would become identifiably Jewish. See Mary
Gordon.
49 Joe McCarthy "terrified and infuriated urban children of the
Depression years." saw performers (mostly Jews) turn up on
blacklists, "The Goldbergs" canceled because Philip Loeb one of the
leads on a list. Is this typical or mainly a Jewish variant?
62 when moved to a suburb, Harbor Isle, most of the families were
Jewish.
75 "Rebel Without a Cause" upper middle class father Jim Backus
appears feminized and humiliated by son Katz: "who is troubled not
by poverty but by his family's way of life."
Alan Fried and rock and roll
129-31 Sam told daughter that serious association with people who
were not of her race--was bad for the Jews. Rebels "We bring them
to a place full of Jewish kids, and they go out to find goyim." Sam
claimed Jews drank less, worked harder, treated women with respect
so he wanted his daughters to marry Jews, and went to extremes to
try to prove his points. asked why didn't have more Jewish friends.
daughter would point out that his closest friend from the old
neighborhood was not Jewish. "Eve, how is it possible that we have
two anti-semites for daughters?" thought blacks less persecuted
than Jews in Europe; Sam had moved his family to get away from
poverty. so while doing little or nothing himself having to do with
Jewish rituals or traditions, he tried to get his children to do
so. Of course, this pattern was repeated over and over and did not
work. One daughter referred to Harbor Isle as a "ghetto" but she
meant an island of privilege and isolation from the American
mainstream. Sam described this as "hands reaching into my belly and
ripping out my guts." "How much farther from a ghetto could we have
taken them?" he asked his wife. which was the point.
150 quotes Bob Dylan "Our parents were in a sad situation. They
were probably just into no down payments and aluminum cans. I don't
know what kind of knowledge they could have really passed on." the
materialism was a despiritualization, an end to transcendence, so
the children were rebelling as much for what their parents had
discarded as for what they had picked up. A vacuum, no spiritual
values, no ideology, but this is hardly what was happening to
Catholics or evangelicals who--while rebelling in relatively
smaller numbers--had a whole different frame of reference. It also
paralleled what had happened in Jewish communities in Germanspeaking and Eastern Europe beginning a bit less than a century
earlier.
154 Susan was a rebel who would eventually go to the left yet when
coming home from Vassar she was embarrassed for snobbish reasons.
2
Her mother understood that she was to daughter the embarrassment
that her mother-in-law was to her, that "Vassar is her Harbor Isle.
I am a source of shame." put on phony accent. At the same time, at
school she talked to a Rothschild friend watching fellow students
passing under their window, "Which ones would hide you from the
Nazis?" An old combination of assimilation: left/right approaches
simultaneously.
161 Casino Beach, the community next door of Catholics, called
Harbor Isle, "Hebrew Isle" and one of their daughters married a boy
from there.
196 Lorraine named daughter Magdalena inspired by Nikos Kazantzakis
Last Temptation of Christ
198-9 Sam refused to attend mixed wedding of daughter, promises to
disown. "For a thousand years not one member of my immediate family
has ever married outside religion." Betty Friedan The Feminine
Mystique a Smith graduate. grew up in Peoria, Illinois, because
Jewish not welcomed into high school sororities and elite social
cliques, freelanced, three children.
218 studied Japanese cooking and lots about every other culture and
ethnic group--Buddhism, folk music, gospel, Sanskrit and had a
daydream that but for some cosmic error they would have been born
Japanese.
249 Lorraine spoke about her father's and her own desire to be
normal to be part of a normal family.
269-71 gay son had his bar mitzvah not knowing what words meant but
had mastered pronunciation (typical and symbolic. the attitude was
that this was the language's fault rather than that they might
learn it.) knew little about his religion. being Jewish meant
getting out of school for Jewish holidays, saw "Fiddler on the
Roof", considered his grandmother's faith "seemed to be largely
compounded of superstition and fear." dreams of Nazis from The
Diary of Anne Frank. Judaism was associated with "loss and terror"
surmised that "for his grandmother being Jewish was like being
haunted." the father's sacred institution was the Masons, sisters
decried hypocritical, ornamental Judaism, an ethnicity left back in
the Bronx. by some estimates over one-third of New Left activists
were Jewish. Abbie Hoffman versus Judge Julius Hoffman. "You're a
disgrace to the Jews, runt!" Abbie had screamed. "You should have
served Hitler better!"
362-4 daughters become cult members, with Indian and Chilean gurus.
378 The Indian guru said, "Where do you go if your institutions
don't offer you anything? To a tepee in Vermont, that's
where....They are all searching for the necklace that's around
their necks." but by that he mean transcendental mediation. More
than half his serious followers were Jewish.
402 Werner Erhard was Jack Rosenberg (?) by practicing his
exercises, Erhard said, a person could create his or her own
universe. (different from other oriental religions saying they
would discover the true reality but very American and Jewish
Variation.
438 at her TM place, one of their daughters got to play the Virgin
3
Mary in a Christmas play.
518 the oldest daughter became a junkie, living among blacks in
Minneapolis and affecting a black street accent. Katz: "To Susan's
ear the street idiom sounded like real Americans talking." Why
wasn't her family's talk like that? Would most Americans think this
way? [only Jews had an institutionalized, inherited cultural
vacuum.
532 Son learned in therapy, "The pain and the joy I can feel seems
like it's a thousand years old. There has to be more to existence
than the history of me." so he turned to new age mysticism
558
AA a form of spiritual reconstruction, inspired by Moral
Rearmament, a religious if nonsectarian sect
goose Jay Leno had just achieved a lifetime ambition, perhaps the
greatest achievement in American comedy. After years of competition
and speculation, Leno had been picked to succeed the legendary
Johnny Carson, as host of "The Tonight Show." The 41-year-old Leno
was described as "The Chosen, The Anointed One, The Heir Apparent"
who would "ascend the throne" when Carson retired after 30 years as
king of American entertainment.
"This is a job I always wanted," said Leno. "But I can
remember casting people, people in television, saying to me, `It
will never go to someone who looks like you. Nor will it go
probably to a Jewish guy. The show is too mainstream for that.'"i
What!? Leno did neither looked like Woody Allen nor talked
like Lenny Bruce. He was a mainstream, easy-going comic, goodlooking and with a non-Jewish appearance and name. A study of
antisemitism would ask whether Leno's fear was accurate. The
interesting question from the standpoint of assimilation is whether
Leno believed such a thing--even a bit--and how it affected his
life and behavior. Yet if there was a problem it was not from
antisemitism but from a) Jews in the industry worrying about it and
b) Leno's own anxiety.
American Jews have the reflex of worrying about making the
Christians angry not having grasped--at least those who are
consciously Jewish--that the Christians don't care at all. Lenny
Bruce, Philip Roth, and so on. understandable generational. Jewish
Variation.
The American Jews are very like the German Jews but the
Americans are very unlike the Germans. America is the land of the
mass market so on the one hand, the Jews wanted to be commercial
but on the other hand they were not dealing with an already
formulated market with clear ideas--the Germans, the British, the
French--to which they had to adapt themselves 100 percent to
existing tastes and beliefs.
After that first breakthrough generation, creativity may dull
because the edge is not so sharp and also success works against
making a sudden leap. But the edge/alienation changes in quality
and even if it declines it does not disappear.
excessively Jewish is not commercial, or at least most people
do not think so which, for them, amounts to the same thing.
The psychologist Bruno Bettelheim's comment on Philip Roth's
4
comment on Portnoy describes a large element of the Jewish
intelligentsia: "He can neither let go of nor enjoy the specific
Jewishness of his background."ii connect Varnhagen, Borne, Heine,
etc., with literary critic quote about Portnoy by Bettelheim in
chapter 8. as also stereotype of American intellectual. why can't
Jewish experience be positive? because--in literary terms--this
would be the sentimental, apologetic, stance they rejected; in real
terms, they had broken with this; in philosophical terms, whatever
they had in the past they wanted to reach a universalist future;
and precisely because it was negative and depressing, so closely
identified with being neurotic while it was their flight from
selves that made them shattered and neurotic. of course, this was
profitable: Woody Allen's story, but we need the eggs is very
revealing here (cite and explain)
so the rebel mentality of post-World War Two writers and
cultural figures a reaction against this approach while keeping its
assimilationist content. Believed they had to keep trying to do
something which--they rightly or wrongly believed at the same time-the could not do. No wonder so much anger and frustration.
the man who stands nowhere. this self-image was once a staple
of antisemitism but now the note of pride of intellectuals and
academics as their highest value. anyone who tried to invoke Jewish
consciousness threatens this stance of nothing, of objectivity, and
must be fought fiercely. But objectivity does not consist of caring
for no idea or cause but being most conscientious in trying to
express truth as best as possible, the results must be judged not
the individual's standpoint. but this is a more sophisticated level
difficult to reach for many. Thus, the trend was to deny the Jewish
elements in one's thought--for to do so would subject one to
discrimination and persecution and to undermine the universal code
of humanity which was supposedly the basis for Jews being accepted.
such a stand was then frightening and threatening and provoked
strong emotional reactions (this whole worldview must be built up
in course of book) the assimilationist was threatened both by those
who rejected his assimilation and those who called attention to his
difference--and more often saw the latter as the greater threat.
Yet ironically and simultaneously, being Jewish is enviable,
for first time in history reverse and into postwar America even
more...at least for a while. Compare to Woody, Cole Porter told
Sammy Cahn, "What I wish more than anything else is that I had been
born like you on the Lower East Side. Just think what I could have
produced." called "That most Waspish of WASPs. Sam Katz told him of
his song, "Goodbye Little Dream, Goodbye," "That song is beautiful.
Why, it's...it's...Jewish."iii
WASP ascendancy in American cultural history, a revolution in
culture before and after World War Two, disproportionately, even
mostly, Jews which is why at the moment the rebellion won, in the
1950s, Jewish writers and themes became so important. Jews became
spokespeople for all the immigrants. How many Irish, Italian,
German, East European writers in American literature, letters,
film, theater? Whatever, relatively small. Not only question of
5
individuals but of themes. But no anti-Jewish reaction whatsoever.
New Deal coalition of culture. First elite, then mass culture going
into television.
To embrace or to reject, Jack Benny or Lenny Bruce; Philip
Roth or J.D. Salinger (see The Ghost Writer) and speaking of that
book, is this a symbol--make clear not necessarily intended by Roth
but for reader--of Ann Frank's fate, to be Sandra Bernhard's
paradox. Fear, not heroism, is the ordinary human response to
danger. The "running away" effect of the Holocaust.
different J writers corresponded to different periods: Kafka
still a writer of siege; Zangwill of hopes that assimilationists
would reconcile themselves with tradition; Nordau of nationalism;
Zweig of humanist internationalism; of left:
then of American
self-assertion--postwar, Bellow, Roth, Malamud; and of relatively
indifferent but still consciousness (last Jews) Mailer
But also what it means to be Jewish has changed generational,
both in terms of current life and memories. Speaking Yiddish and
living on the Lower East Side gave way to living on the Upper West
Side--the intellectual, wry view of life is as recognizable in
Woody Allen, Sandra Bernhard or Jerry Seinfeld--or suburbia, in
Philip Roth and ... The nature of the differentness has changed,
evolved but the differentness remains. Expand.
The escape from Brooklyn story--like the escape from the Lower
East Side worldview--is waning as there are fewer left to escape
and perhaps will be replaced by the rebellion against pseudonormality, those growing up in small towns or other cities, middle
class suburbs who perceive they are different.[the two lefts, the
Old one as integration, the New as separation] (Roseanne Barr...)
Explore this idea. In other words, the progression from the
integral Jewish neighborhood to where the world is discovered:
goyim, America, "normality", the discovery of the world of
knowledge (Goodbye Columbus, indeed. the American Jew as Columbus)
assimilation, from taking those as starting points (see in
literature of new generation of Jewish writers. Not the fish
jumping into the sea (Bruno Shultz) but the fish looking around in
the sea.
"Eli, the Fanatic," in which Eli Peck. his partners Lewis and
McDonnell. spoke for the Jews of Woodenton. zoning. boarding
school. who just wanted "to get things back to normal" [the hasid
haunting was not for Annie Hall's parents but for Woody Allen.] "If
I want to live in Brownsville, Eli, I'll live in Brownsville."
another "When I left the city, Eli, I didn't plan the city should
come to me." But he is guilt-ridden and not eager from the
beginning. 146: long home of well-to-do Protestants, only since the
war Jews have been able to buy property there. and adjustments have
to be made for amity. complained about suit "The suit the gentleman
wears is all he's got." [not just can't buy another one, but only
memory/association with his murdered world. "You talk about leaves
and branches. I'm dealing with under the dirt." says the
headmaster. Eli thinks: "What peace. What incredible peace. Have
children ever been so safe in their beds? Parents--Eli wondered--so
6
full in their stomachs? Water so warm in its boilers? Never. Never
in Rome, never in Greece. Never even did walled cities have it so
good! No wonder then they would keep things just as they were.
Here, after all, were peace and safety--what civilization had been
working toward for centuries....It was what his parents had asked
for in the Bronx and his grandparents in Poland, and theirs in
Russia or Austria." Or "Studying a language no one understood.
Practicing
customs
with
origins
long
forgotten.
Suffering
sufferings already suffered once too often...Why keep it up!
However, if a man chose to be stubborn, then he couldn't expect to
survive." gives suit, man leaves clothes and he puts them on. the
two men meet, each in the other's clothes. "And then Eli had the
strange notion that he was two people." unhappy, wife into
psychoanalysis as solution. he wore the clothes walking up and down
the street. "To think that he'd chosen to be crazy! But if you
chose to be crazy, then you weren't crazy. It's when you didn't
choose." grabbed and anaesthetized. "The drug calmed his soul, but
did not touch it down where the blackness had reached."
A new generation, neither grateful or cross the oceans looking
immigrants, rebels against that, the piously moving up. Immigrants
children rebel against parents. Now the product of suburbia/middle
class life, Philip Roth (even if red diaper--Allen Ginsberg; Woody
Allen; Lenny Bruce; or Midwest, Bob Dylan and Abbie Hoffman. rebels
against American society who had lost any connections to
traditional knowledge and most of the effect in them submerging to
their audiences. Why felt uncomfortable and alienated had ceased to
understand as dominant ideology rejected differentness, so the
society must be at fault. Made for great cultural achievement but-like modernism and Communism in Europe--terrible politics. "You
know there's no success like failure, and failure's no success at
all." must lose to prove virtuous--very Jewish (though also
Southern, Irish, and Polish). But part of rebellion was that Jewish
part of shtick, because was rebellion against parent's hiding it or
shaped by alienation.
Productivity of abnormality: Woody joke about man who thinks
he's a chicken but family cannot dissuade because, "We need the
eggs." The Jews abnormality too culturally and intellectually
valuable to abandon.
"Good-bye Columbus," not making fun of middle-class suburban
Jews at all, joking at their foibles, so American, yet this wealthy
plumbing-supplies family so obsessed with sports, the mother keeps
kosher, is active in Temple, and in Hadassah, (the uncle is the
"Kosher Hot-Dog king" it is spiritually empty but it certainly is
not empty of being Jewish. The immigrant generation living in
Newark for whom life is "a throwing off" and the third generation
of the suburbs for whom life is "a gathering in." The march to the
suburbs, "Since when do Jewish people live in Short Hills? They
couldn't be real Jews believe me." Yet for hero the issue is upward
mobility tied up with specifically Jewish issues. the brother a
jock, the title taken from his record of college days with glee
clubs and sports, very American. The hero prays, but ironically
7
having ducked into a church, "If we meet You at all, God, it's that
we're carnal, and acquisitive, and thereby partake of You. I am
carnal, and I know you approve....Where do I turn now in my
acquisitiveness? Where do we meet? Which prize is You?" and when he
goes outside onto Fifth Avenue he sees the answer, "Which prize do
you think, schmuck? Gold dinnerware, sporting-goods trees,
nectarines, garbage disposals, bumpless noses, Patemkin Sink,
Bonwit Teller...And God only laughed, that clown." And there is
thus America, safety, fun, good food, prosperity, but is that the
goal of life, is that what there is? The story does not attack or
savage those who chose otherwise, it's certainly understandable.
from the generation of Newark (the desert) ethnic and both loveable
and smothering, what one would run away with; to the parents'
generation, to the wholly Americanized kids. Columbus is Ohio, not
Christopher but the metaphor works well both ways. A cheap shot
when young man asks the mother about Martin Buber, "`Buber..Buber,'
she said, looking at her Hadassah list. `Is he orthodox or
conservative?' she asked." told he is a philosopher, she is "piqued
either at my evasiveness or at the possibility that Buber attended
Friday night services without a hat and Mrs. Buber had only one set
of dishes in her kitchen." easy fun at the American lack of
historical knowledge and ideas but would his character know who
Buber was or his ideas. Even integrated parents regret loss of
Jewish knowledge, if only because son is a jock with no business
sense. Despite their education, the children's protection from the
world makes them less worldly.
In "The Conversion of the Jews" Roth runs through all the
Jewish reactions to Christianity, brilliant in its basic portrayal
of these ideas: in a conversation among children discussing their
religious school, the bizarre nature of the idea that Jesus was
part person, part God, the virgin birth, how could Jews be the
Chosen People if the Declaration of Independence claimed all men
are created equal (because he insisted on the question his mother
had to come to school) his grandmother and mother counting Jewish
names n a plane crash and why did they do that. his mother hit him
for asking too many questions (just after she lit the Sabbath
candles, theme of violence with religion as hypocrisy, see Jack
Benny and rebellion against shtetl schools). "Ozzie suspected he
had memorized the prayers and forgotten all about God." p. 110. the
rabbi insisting he read Hebrew faster even though he then didn't
understand anything. and the rabbi hits him for saying "You don't
know anything about God." (his mother is a widow). things were
defined in two categories: good-for-the-Jews, no-good-for-the-Jews.
Boy on roof makes rabbi say he believes in Jesus by threatening to
jump off. "Defender of the Faith," Jewish sergeant caught in
between as an unpleasant Jewish private tries to exploit what they
have in common for own good. thin line between demanding rights and
exploiting--go to services not to pray but to avoid Friday night
cleaning
of
barracks,
sergeant
caught
between,
lack
of
understanding by captain--but not antisemitic contrary to European
possibility--and concern private will stir antagonism, a metaphor
8
for assimilation. but also problem: army a national institution,
what food to eat, when to work. ironically, Grossbart stirs Sgt.
Marx's own ethnic feelings while also disgusting him (if Grossbart
had been sincere the story would have been an easy--and typical
"Jewish" story it is the twist that makes it. when the soldier gets
his orders switched so he's the only one who's not going to the
Pacific the sergeant switches them back, when Grossbart tried to
use antisemitism as an argument, "You call this watching out for
me--what you did?" answers, "No. For all of us." also when switches
says Jewish kid wants to help out who wants to go into combat to
avenge brother killed in Europe, "Says he'd feel like a coward if
he wound up Stateside." In other words, he reverses the notion of
what doing something means--still identifies as Jewish but turns
into positive in context, hence the title.
conversions relatively rare: Bobby Fischer symbolism: Lessing
J Rosenwald Trophy Tournament first made mark. Louis Lehrman
duck 1. US intellectual post-1960
Abraham Chapman, Jewish-American Literature
p. 626 Norman
Mailer "Minority groups are the artistic nerves of a republic"
"They are both themselves and the mirror of their culture as it
reacts upon them." "no antisemite can begin to comprehend the
malicious analysis of his soul which every Jew indulges every day."
p. 627 "their buried themes...are charged with paradox, with a
search for psychic extremes. To a Protestant, secure in the middle
of American life, God and the Devil, magic, death and eternity, are
matters outside himself. He may contemplate them but he does not
habitually absorb them into the living tissue of his brain. Whereas
the exceptional member of any minority group feels as if he
possesses God and the Devil within himself...that his purchase on
eternity rises and falls with the calm or cowardice of his actions.
It is a life exposed to the raw living nerve of anxiety, and rare
is the average Jew or Negro who can bear it for long--so the larger
tendency among minorities is to manufacture a mediocre personality
which is a
dull replica of the conformist, more Square, more
profoundly depressing than the Jew-in-the-suburb, or the Negro as a
member of the Black Bourgeoisie. It is the price they pay for the
fact that not all self-hatred is invalid--the critical faculty
turned upon oneself can serve to create a personality which is
exceptional, which mirrors the particular arts and graces of the
white gentry, but this is possible only if one can live with one's
existential nerve exposed. Man's personality rises to a level of
higher and more delicate habits only if he is willing to engage a
sequence of painful victories and cruel defeats in his expedition
through the locks and ambushes of social life. One does not copy
the manner of someone superior; rather one works an art upon it
which makes it suitable for oneself. Direct imitation of a superior
manner merely produces a synthetic manner. The collective
expression of this in a minority group is nothing other than
assimilation. To the degree each American Jew and American Negro is
assimilated he is colorless, a part of a collective nausea which is
9
encysted into the future."
p. 628
"with minorities, one must look for more than the
insurance of their rights--one must search to liberate the art
which is trapped in the thousand acts of perception which embody
their self-hatred, for self-hatred ignored must corrode the roots
of one's past and leave one marooned in an alien culture. The
liberal premise--that Negroes and Jews are like everybody else once
they are given the same rights--can only obscure the complexity,
the intensity, and the psychotic brilliance of a minority's inner
life."
p. 631
Yet to our knowledge, no Messiah was brought forth
from the concentration camps. Or were a hundred delivered to die
with the victims, secret Angels of Death? It is possible the Jews
will never recover from the woe that no miracle visited the world
in that time. Perhaps that is why we are now so interested in
housing, in social planning, interfaith councils, and improvement
of the PTA in the suburbs. Perhaps that is why half of the American
Jews have fallen in love with a super delicatessen called Miami,
and much of the other half have developed a subtly overbearing and
all but totalitarian passion for the particular sallow doctor who
is their analyst. Perhaps that is why we have lost the root.
p. 632 the conventional Jews in America, which is to say the
ones who are formally attached to the religion, build new
synagogues which look like recreation centers and go to them
because it would make their mothers happy. Angst is left to the
mechanical formulations of the analyst who now leans less on Freud
and more on Equanil.
Bellow: a story contains the hope of vindication and justice
and gives the universe a meaning.iv
suggested
American-Jewish
writers
alienated
from
both
communities, overlap from Trotsky to Freud to Benny Goodman or
Lenny Bruce. assimilation was eroding Jewish ethos, moral edge
declining. now that precarious, unstable, hemmed-in, contentious,
revered conditions of the Diaspora disappeared in America--which is
land of Jewish freedom, security, and normality, can look to Israel
for that. disdain versus envy of WASP elite. List of books about
new urban pluralist society: Saul Bellow, Adventures of Augie
March, Paul Goodman, The Empire City, Norman Mailer, The Deer Park,
Grace Paley, Little Disturbances of Man, David Riesman, The Lonely
Crowd, Trilling, Liberal Imagination, Daniel Bell, End of Ideology,
Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot, Leslie
Fiedler, End of Innocence.v On other side, assimilated sons and
immigrant fathers, but great differences since some aspired to
elegance and others to tough outsider status so two polar groups
created (as had been in Europe between the Rothschilds and the
radicals, between the Cassels and the Communists. "Though the
writer liked to think he was manning a risky outpost, he was often
destined to find the day that the letter arrived from the National
Book Awards or the American Academy of Arts and Letters or the
English department at Amherst that he had been all along riding an
escalator." but replaced by new European arrivals.vi "the end of
10
the Diaspora mentality that was taking place in America." a
disjunction with all the generations which had come before, both in
the full shell and in transition. "Instead of the burdens of the
chosen people there were now the exhilaration of a choosing one."
though the "mind-set of centuries doesn't vanish overnight." so
tensions, sharp shifts of focus, mood swings continue. "fiction of
conscience" even if stopped observing High Holy Days still mental
attitude of criticism and self-criticism. Saul Bellow, "The Victim"
1947 shows fallen WASP saying Jewish colleague ruined him; Philip
Roth, "Goodbye Columbus" 10 years later. Malamud, "The Assistant"
Jews not always in good light, have power. J.D. Salinger on the
Glass family (an interesting name) and "Death of a Salesman". some
writers Ozick, Singer "drawing its intensity from the death pangs
of the Diaspora: the moral imagination of the writer reconstituting
the ethos of Jewish survivalism even as it is fading from the lives
of her or his secure middle-class American readers."vii Shuki
Elchanan in The Counterlife, "In the Diaspora a Jew like you lives
securely while we are living just the kind of imperiled Jewish
existence that we came here to replace....We are the excitable,
ghettoized, jittery little Jews of the Diaspora, and you the Jews
with all the confidence and cultivation that comes of feeling at
home where you are." [inasmuch as don't look at selves as Jews,
feel as secure as other Americans--which is not so perfect as it
may seem--but also subconscious and conscious levels of Jewish
perspective. feeling of duality persists, know how to talk the talk
and walk the walk but are really so rid of everything? just
knowledge? also feeling? (GW students and pogroms, what of students
who wouldn't come to talks, who are indifferent)
the abandonment of the tallit [prayer shawl] and tefillin. In
Malamud's The Fixer the main characters tallit and tefillin fall
out of his pack. Perhaps Patrimony will be the last such example in
American fiction, the changing of clothes, the geographic movement
whether from country to city or to a new country altogether, the
encounters with oppression from horrifying to imaginary (Annie
Hall's opening, "Did you eat?" suggests that there is no oppression
but it is very much alive in the protagonist's mind as if he has
lost all history and culture and situation and has to make it up
because no one cares. He has no real sense of what it means to be
Jewish, nobody else cares any more--but then in America people
don't much care about ideas any way.
Malamud's "The Jewbird" story, the bird flew in the window to
the Cohen family's dinner table, significance since mother was
dying. the bird speaks Yiddish. tries to tutor son but thrown out
by father the same day the grandmother dies.viii
Trilling's mother kept kosher and lit Sabbath candles; father
had him put on tefillin and pray daily through high school "but
this does not mean...that Lionel was brought up in a religious
household. His parents were only moderately observant even at home"
and ate at non-kosher tables (including at son's and daughter's,
indicating how difficult it was to maintain) and even ate
shellfish. parents read widely. Jewish culture not dominant. first
11
published in Menorah Journal but did not write about Jewish themes,
but then does one have to write about these specific themes when
one has already made the choice of writing there? hence in a
community even if not focussing on that culture.ix
Mailer section
The Jewish Variant was often handled in a commercial way by
creating characters or situations obviously Jewish to Jews but
homogenized enough (no mention of religion especially) to be
acceptable to Americans in general or at least as examples of the
general immigrant experience. "Death of a Salesman" Jewish in
everything but explicitly, to "Avalon."
Mailer's transformation in myth to the opposite. The Naked and
the Dead and CIA book. Bailey: A Calculus of Heaven early 1944
story include priest, Jew, Indian, an Italian, the main character
and officer is given WASP name Captain Bowen Hilliard. Wexler is
courageous--making analog to football game but dies. NM admires
Malraux(8). American society as pluralist. The Naked and the Dead
internal struggle in the face of external battles. antisemitism,
fascism and liberalism, conflicts among worldviews on a very
individual level. WASPs are central figures. Rootlessness theme and
fascination with the rooted? Kennedy is almost like a Mailer
character come to life, hence fascination mixed with contempt.
(Does one want patrons--Lessing, or to stand on own. the problem of
power for Mailer. White Negro to exist without roots (yet blacks
have very much roots, J history--did not use for certainly without
roots. also: to cast off the inefficient and often antiquated
nervous circuits of the past. The importance of acting in regard to
writing. need a persona which one can write out of. fascinated by
changing voices, beginning with (x p. 68). fascination with Marilyn
Monroe's two marriages to Joe Dimaggio and Arthur Miller, the
former as the essence of athlete as sexual man--Woody Allen
thinking of Willie Mays--J fascination with physical rather than
intellectual--Arthur Miller wanting to capture the "beauty of her
soul" [140] projected on characters. sees in Henry Miller that a
lack of identity is associated with creative talent. (See preface
to Ancient Evenings.
Marge Piercy 1/2 Jewish. 1974 National Book Award Ginsberg
and Adrienne Rich (b 1919, mother Protestant, father sent daughters
to Episcopal, married agnostic Jew, felt an outsider in Jewish
culture, feels fiction is misogyny. Denise Levertov, also half
Protestant "Split at the root, neither Gentile nor Jew, Yankee nor
Rebel, born in the face of two ancient cults, I'm a good reader of
histories." 413-14. Chapman. When one's own existence is a
rebellion against tradition gives one such an attitude. "By No
Means Native"
Yet man will have his bondage to some place;
It not, he seeks an Order, or a race.
Some join the Masons, some embrace the Church,
And if they do, it does not matter much."
Alicia Osterreich, Christian until recently. Louis Oofsky.
Cahan, The Bread Givers, Anzia Uzuskia Edward Hirsh, Lawrence
12
Liebman (Lieberman?) Wallace Shawn, rebellious son of Mr. gentility
who was the editor of New Yorker the ultimate assimilationist high
culture (American style) activity. "The Fever"x: Woody Allen if
even one person suffering "it puts a crimp in my evening.
"despairing, disturbing" "luridly visceral" unearned well-being and
indefensible. fantasizing about being tortured by the revolutionary
oppressed. give the beggar everything (SSinger), guilt but the
oppressed are just props in the story of the suffering protagonist
whose own agony and privileged guilt are the center. either he
romanticizes them or they are fantasy-retribution figures. line
from play: "We will stop at nothing to give [our children] the
best." is this autobiography? father gave him the best position in
life. The respectable father, ultra-assimilated enough to become
the beloved and long-term editor of the ultimate WASP magazine, The
New Yorker, producing fire-breathing, scatological, subversive son.
Nothing left but the energy and the hatred. Ordeal of Civility
indeed.
story about man who threw brick through window, valued
customer, what have you done. challenged Maimonides.
Philip Roth section
The explorer of options, obsession with sex and experiment
with self-criticism, yet despite his self-proclaimed status as
community nemesis and hated, this is a fictional pose. father's
tefillin, explores all options: self-advertising (the J Marine
nudnik), the WB settler, the Last Jew with a vengeance in England
where he betakes himself so as to experience old-style antis, the
ultimate Groucho-nik. Yet in no way anti-J or self-hating. but in
pretending rebellion he seems to be reliving the conflict of
earlier generations, while J establishment of his day was almost
completely prepared to accept him. As example of Last Jew, decision
not to have children. Nathan Zuckerman. In a sense, in characters
developing a version of himself, then resenting it and playing off
of it. in part reaction to larger fate of a writer, spends most of
time alone behind typewriter. so all his characters and their
adventures are largely a form of "counter-life." in discussing The
Facts consider how his marriage was a war of assimilation and to
what extent it was just dealing with someone from a difficult
personality, but note his description about her appearance blonde,
Midwestern, the seeming situation of American dream (as pictured by
the Hollywood moguls) which turned quite horrific [compare to Woody
Allen scene in "Annie Hall" of visit to ideal midwestern home
(where he is seen as hasid) and riding back to airport with
brother. Newark: cultural homogeneity so secure and pervasive that
weren't even aware of it. had to go outside--to insurance company
where father discriminated against or to turf of gangs that would
beat you up. Thomas Edwards, "`America' was what you wanted, but it
only seemed to exist away from home, out there where things could
be uncomfortable or dangerous for Jews."xi this is how Roth
interpreted out there. baseball as metaphor. again theme of new
life; alternative self. but Roth's characters do not run away,
13
chooses to confront and even seek confrontations; moreover, they
don't want to stick to one identity and embrace it (like others)
but hop from one to another. fraternity: could become honorary WASP
but choose Jewish house, gentile literature and women [at some
point put forward theory of seriousness, has to be permanent and
children with Jewish woman so postpones, perhaps permanently,
keeping mental reservation] and perhaps deliberately chose with all
her problems--angry, bad father, bad previous divorce, in trouble.
to rescue? to prove his worth to her? because knew would blow up
and let him escape or prove his doubts or punish himself for
lusting after her? R suggests J discovery of an America without
Jews that has its own problems. can suggest that in her history and
behavior it is that of Russian/Polish peasants to grandparents,
Edwards writes, "He needed her to be different."
In The Facts at least, Roth courts the split personality he
has otherwise rejected, holding a dialogue between himself as self
and himself as Zuckerman. He has created a doppleganger but it is
not--as in the case of many other assimilationist experiences-opposed to himself but rather an extension and modification,
perhaps an intensification. Zuckerman suggests that it is
accommodation with Jewishness that undermines the creative
properties of self-hatred (self-rejection?). It is now assimilation
to Judaism which is the problem. Being a novelist, as Roth is well
aware, allows him to rewrite life but as he has Zuckerman's English
wife, Maria, say, "Existence isn't always crying out for the
intervention of the novelist. Sometimes it's crying out to be
lived." More than any American Jewish writer, Roth is fascinated by
the creation of reality and the self-creation of personage as a
centerpoint in literature, this makes him more Jewish (i.e., Jewish
confronting assimilation) than other writers who choose one side or
the other. The fact that he makes his central characters Jewish
intensifies it. He does not "support" all that his characters say
and do--he's just showing the varieties of choice--but in this
enterprise, he is the writer who does not flinch and for those who
do his work is very unsettling.
Roth, Patrimony 29: father had compulsion to throw away
"everything `useless' to which any of us might have been thought to
have a sentimental attachment." [my mother threw out all the family
pictures, including those from European relatives). 30-32 coming
back from the cemetery after mother's funeral, throwing away her
clothes. including her favorite mementos. "the sentimental
keepsakes of someone whose sentiments had been snuffed out forever
two nights earlier." pitilessly realistic but also "ran counter to
just about every mourning rite that had evolved in civilized
societies to mitigate the sense of loss among those who survive the
death of a loved one." The paradox of Roth's parents and of a whole
generation: so essentially and self-consciously Jewish without any
belief about it, because it was the ethnic remnants of religion and
immigration, yet would not be passed on very much to the third
generation. Roth decided out of pain to break the chain of being,
14
not to marry again or have any children. 92-7: gave away tefillin,
in the Y where he went to swim and kibitz, put in paper bag and
left in locker room, didn't take to rabbi because didn't want him
to think less of him (J story about wishes people were as afraid of
God as of their neighbors) 96: saw as "a declaration that the men's
locker room at the local YMHA was closer to the core of the Judaism
he lived by than the rabbi's study at the synagogue...that was
their temple and where they remained Jews." didn't ask why didn't
give to him instead of "all those napkins and tablecloths and place
mats" might well have cherished them, "But how was he to know that?
He probably thought I would have scoffed at the very idea of his
handing his tefillin to me--and forty years earlier he would have
been right." didn't want to be put "back inside that corny
scenario" his nephews wouldn't know what a tefillin was. father
suffered from antisemitism at Metropolitan Life. 181-88: 182:
described his Newark neighborhood as a "protective sanctuary for
the Jewish children who grew up there during the thirties and
forties, when I for one had felt menaced, as an American, by the
Germans and the Japanese and, though only a child, `was not
unaware' as a Jew, `of the power to intimidate that emanated from
the highest and lowest reaches of gentile America." Last line: 238:
"You must not forget anything."
Woody Allen, God 17: Actor: She's pretty, but she doesn't
belong." (play set in classical Greece) "She's a philosophy
student. But she's got no real answers....Typical product of the
Brooklyn College Cafeteria.
126 Saul bellow? "his sickness was also at the root of his
salvation" "it was his very disorder that made a hero of him."
Woody Allen is a Zelig, someone who excels at the imitation or
parody--whether it be of Ingmar Bergman or the mock-academic style
in his short stories--but there's no there. psychiatrist-going,
over-intellectualized and physically timid New Yorker but what is
his culture, where is his stand? Hence, metaphor for the
assimilationist, the Zelig, who can imitate. Because "second
generation" has no tradition to fall back on and--most noticeably-not much growth. Hints at intellectuality but never actually brings
it to play, part of his appeal is the perennial student who never
makes much progress on the subject of life.
Attitude toward Jewish women riddled with irony, for the very
features
which
allegedly
caused
their
rejection--banality,
appearance, materialism--were precisely the things (exoticness,
adventurousness, intellectual orientation--which attracted nonJewish men to them. Couple with Allen, Roth, and Cowan, Marjorie
Morningstar. Then bring in Mailer, "The Time of Her Time."
Eric Lax, Woody Allen (NY, 1992) 26-7 his alternative world of
movies. The sense of dread in facing reality after hours of escape
is, "the worst experience in the world." after hours of fantasy and
candy, "You would...leave the world of beautiful women and music
and...bravery or penthouses or things like that. And suddenly you
would be out on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn and the trolleys
would be passing and the sun would be blinding and there was no
15
more air conditioning." "the ugly light."
30, in unpleasant school, Woody likened the student monitors to
prison-camp Kapos. lack of real consideration of Holocaust, never
mentioned, and expansion of own sufferings to cosmic proportion.
history begins and ends with self. his prison and limitation
40, "I was unmoved by the synagogue, I was not interested in the
Seder, I was not interested in the Hebrew school, I was not
interested in being Jewish. It just didn't mean a thing to me. I
was not ashamed of it nor was I proud of it. It was a nonfactor to
me. I didn't care about it....I cared about baseball, I cared about
movies. now consumed with questions of God's existence and morality
and justice--ie., the issues raised by his background, the seeds
perhaps planted there (as Kafka knew)--but not in Jewish context
[a good example of ethnicity. In "Husbands and Wives," one vignette
has a couple named Rifkin coming out of their church wedding.]
58 Milton Mezzrow, Really the Blues Mesirow fobbed himself off as a
black, even in the army, and became a jazz clarinetist [pre Mailer]
[check book]
150-51 self-study course on Greek and Christian philosophers.
Konigsberg home of Kant, Lax writes that the town was a shrine of
philosophy. "Now, no know relative of Woody's studied under Kant,
or for that matter even dined with him." his family did not discuss
it. "But his European and Russian lineage is an integral part of
Woody Allen's psyche and creativity. It is the clearest sign of
where he comes from as well as of where he is coming from." because
he has daily preoccupations seeking "a philosophical model to
explain a metaphysical order, the search for a proof of God, and
the problems inherent in the existential dilemma of man" leaning
over backward to avoid Jewish content, Jews not completely
cultureless idiots as if had no culture, comes from a vacuum or at
least peasants who soaked up the air Kant breathed. so instead has
Dostoevski, with his Russian sense of guilt and quest for
absolutes; Camus who felt life absurd but should try to make it
better; Soren Kirkegaard and Nikolai Berdyaev.
165-7 "He is a Jew, as people are quick to point out and as if it
mattered more than it does." he doesn't deny it, everybody reminds
him but has little to do with his humor. "Under different
circumstances of birth" his references "could just as easily have
been those of a lower-middle-class Irish Catholic in Boston who saw
prettier women and a more interesting life across the river and set
out to get there." [which is why so many major comics come from
that background?] his humor is not about the outsiderhood of Jews
but from his anxiety "by his wanting what he doesn't have and by
the discomfort the world inflicts on him for being the things he
is." [Lax does not understand the difference between universal
appreciation (although anyone who has seen a Woody Allen film in a
small town or Jewless area--at least in Lenny Bruce's definition-knows the laughs are fewer and many points missed) and being able
to create something. Indian or African-American music can be
enjoyed by many but that doesn't mean it could be written by
someone in a different culture. it was to appeal to "any person
16
with cultural and intellectual ambitions and pretensions who wanted
to move from his figurative Brooklyn to a figurative Manhattan"
227 a typical bit, "If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists (A
Fantasy
Exploring
the
Transposition
of
Temperament)"
like
Metamorphosis, putting together disparate elements.
232 "Retribution" whose characters in a love triangle between a
man, a mother and her daughter. "That Connie Chasen returned my
fatal attraction toward her at first sight was a miracle
unparalleled in the history of Central Park West. Tall, blond, high
cheek-boned" but witty, sexy, and intelligence, too, "That she
would settle on me, Harold Cohen, scrawny, long-nosed, twenty-fouryear-old budding dramatist and whiner, was a non sequitur on a par
with octuplets." physical attributes and contrast may correspond to
any Irish schlemiel but...
234 for "Don't Drink the Water" wanted Lou Jacobi for lead, David
Merrick wanted a more commercial, less ethnic actor. Woody: "David
was trying too hard to Anglicize it. He isn't antisemitic but he
has an aversion to anything too Jewish."
239 : "The first Humphrey Bogart movie I saw was `The Maltest
Falcoln. I was ten years old and I identified immediately with
Peter Lorre."
249 on "Oedipus Wrecks" "This film is going to resonate in
Israel. It'll be the `Gone With the Wind of Israel."
257 "Take the Money and Run," the minor hood volunteers to try
an experimental vaccine in return for a possible parole, "The
experiment is a success," says he narrator, "except for one
temporary side effect. For several hours he is turned into a
rabbi."
317 with Mia "His whole family strikes me as exotic because their
world is so alien to me." "Exotic?" says the narrator in a Woody
story, "She should only know the Greenblatts....Exotic? I mean
they're nice but hardly exotic with their endless bickering over
the best way to combat indigestion or how far back to sit from the
television set." [from Disraeli to the Greenblatts in less than a
century.]
Joseph Heller section
Yossarian's surprising response in Joseph Heller's novel,
Catch-22. Heller chose a parallel-to-Jewish character, an Armenian
descendant of victims of genocide (in this sense, Yossarian is more
an immediate post-Holocaust personage than he would have been if he
had been an American Jew in 1943 and thus representative of one
generation later of American Jews than his "contemporaries". (A
Jewish rejection of World War Two would also have been more
problematic narratively.) Yossarian wants to stop flying and when
the psychologist/or chaplain? says to him, "What if everyone
thought they way you do?" Replies, "Then I'd be a fool to think
anything else." [exact quotes]. This is hardly an anti-conformist
attitude but it illustrates the problem of Jews--if everyone else
believes in Christianity, doubts their role and need for their
continuance, then how can one continue to believe that one's own 3
percent minority view is true? One approach is the seclusion of
17
ultra-Orthodoxy or the semi-seclusion of Orthodoxy. Another is a
"sect" point of view (see Howe's life in a sect chapter) that a
small proportion holds the truth which can lead to cultism or
leftism--the whole society is wrong except for a minority of
members in the Marxist party or followers of the particular guru. A
more likely is the assembly of one's own world view--having no
integral one to start with, picking and choosing.
Good as Gold as a novel about assimilation and power, prompted
by two distinct responses: the narrator's and Gold's, figure
modeled on Kissinger, one hand the most European of figures in
American politics--and Jews played a central role in conveying
European culture and ideas to America in twentieth century, note
that the closest intellectual equivalent of Kissinger is Hans
Morgenthau. unsentimental European view of power politics and
interests but also a Jewish sense of the dangers of totalitarianism
and the need to block it.
Leslie Fiedler
Mordechai Richler
Brenner on Richler: "mistrust of liberal ideals inhibits
integration into Gentile society, whereas fear of victimization
prompts denial of bonds with ethnic heritage." a reversal of
traditional predicament: rather than seeking assimilation one
already has it and can't stand it. Holocaust as contradiction. See
Kazin. on left and assim. 23: four novels of Gentile protagonist
but in each outside of natural environment: expatriates in Spain,
two in England, and an expatriate Eskimo in Toronto. in each meet
Jews. in others, reject J heritage to assim; in others achieve in
Gentile world but still have ambivalent attitude. deep mistrust
which manifests itself as aggressive attitude (being Jewish, in
words not violence. anyone might be an antis. Notes: 32-education
as healer. The Richler/Roth type J has such a chip on his shoulder
because his definition of being a Jew is almost completely defined
by antisemitism, hence he must go in search of it, provoke it,
smoke it out for otherwise he loses his own identity. By the assim
standard, if the goyim are indifferent to his being Jewish--which
they probably are the vast majority of the time--then he has no
excuse for standing aside. Reverse Grouchoism: The club, he
insists, does not want him.
Brenner: fear of the Holocaust and envy of the Gentile world
(combined with antagonism) p. 100, is unpleasant tension, attracted
to Gentile society whose life is unrestricted and free from fear of
persecution, so goes to London, but attitude stops full
assimilation despite mixed marriage, despite all "all the same I've
managed to remain an alienated Jew." his novel. the tension of
Christmas "his forebears hadn't fled the shtetl, surviving the
Czar, so that the windows of the second generation should glitter
on Christmas JEve like those of the Black Hundreds of accursed
memory." image of the Horseman as the Jewish hero. The Golam leads
to Superman, created by two Jews in the 1930s, also hero like the
strong anxiety-free gentile. Babel: "When a Jew gets on a horse he
stops being a Jew." p. 100. Yet for all their power and prosperity
18
in a real sense the Galut Jews have not stopped being Jews of that
sort in terms of psychology. For Richler the International Brigades
of the Spanish Civil War played this role. [advantage that the
Republicans lost, so can be heroic without coping with the problems
of victory since there is still a refusal to accept power and
responsibility in their own right. Jewishness presents a danger to
masculinity (p. 125). and also IBs were fighting for someone else,
which seems to preserve their cause's purity from any taint of
self-interest. Richler's characters always have to decide whether
to identify themselves as Jews or not which gives them more freedom
but forces them to make a demeaning choice, comprising a material
privilege and a psychological burden. guilt vis a vis Europe, in
one Richler novel his stand-in character is asked by a Jewish
refugee, "`What's the worst thing that ever happened to you?' Max
asked. `Wait. I'll guess. Your dog was run over by a car. No, you
were naughty and your mummy made you go to bed without your supper.
Have you ever eaten the flesh of sewer rats?'" [compare Woody
Allen's puncturing of this with non-Jewish would-be intellectual.
Annie Hall wonders how she would stand up to torture, says if they
took away your Bloomingdale's credit card you'd tell them
everything. also on self in "Sleeper" and "Love and Death" as
unwilling Resistance fighter against dictatorship.]
146: Richler
identifies self as writing "within a moral tradition" "moral
office" the liberal ideal of unbiased social criticism, liberated
from ethnic prejudices (which is different from saying that one is
right because one's ethnic prejudice coincides with truth which
opens one up to attack and ridicule.) Richler calls himself "the
loser's advocate." (but what if the Jews win? the moral superiority
of losing is especially attractive to those who carry two cards: as
Americans, Canadians, British, or French they are among the
winners; as Jews they are among the losers. Their moral position is
impregnable and also cost-free. sees French Canadians as underdogs
(but historically the French more antisemitic) the English were
seen as the privileged. but the two underdogs did not join common
cause. very parallel to old European views. Richler welcomes the
Quebecois cause (147-48) but for the real Jews of Montreal it
represents a cut-off for their future, as English-speakers, and
many left. the triumph of imagination over real interests. Richler
admits Quebecois nationalism makes him feel uneasy because of
childhood memories. Because their is also a strong Jewish belief
that under the surface the Gentiles are all antisemites. liberal
universalism is thus a way to healing which does not heal, a Jewish
Variant not a basis for alliance in most cases. The opposition is
not necessarily antisemitism but--in the U.S. for example, is
indifference which is perfectly acceptable as a social attitude-far superior to the attitude toward the Jews in Europe--but not a
basis for those who want ideological resolution not mere happy
coexistence. 150: Richler accuses the Jewish community of being
parochial, "It's time to abandon the old, humiliating ghetto
standard, `Is it good for the Jews?'" for this would accept the
ghetto standard and antisemitism that Jews stand alone. Yet he also
19
criticizes for seeking individual success and material advantage-which is the non-sectarian approach. 151: "What I long to see is
the same rabbis who invoke the six million murdered in Europe also
remind their congregations of those other innocents who perished in
the Hiroshima of our own making. I would also like to hear them say
a sad word for those Germans whose cities were criminally battered
beyond strategic need." 152: antisemitism in Canada more subtle,
hotels, country clubs and entire suburban area, daily exposed to
the possibility of small insults [stress word possibility since it
is always possible since in his mind]. "Therefore, I am certainly
not grateful...to be a Jew in this country. True, I've never been
sent to a concentration camp. But no Gentile is expected to give
thanks to the government that does not intern him. So why should
[it] be expected of me?" [note Duddy Kravitz as equivalent of
Philip Roth; bitterness see Midler below. causeless bitterness? not
oppression but loss of identity, but this may be a sociological
creation but is an individual fault] [those fearing stripping away
identity, not the hunger artist but the identity artist--like
Zelig] 153: interesting observation by author: "The tone of
aggression, noticeable in his statement directed towards Gentile
society, differs to a great extent from the forceful tone of
persuasion discernible in his liberal humanistic argument directed
in the same article towards the Jewish community." community's
rejection of criticism on the very ground that its situation is
precarious. [the artist is precarious not because threatened from
outside but from inside, hence need for criticism; the community
exaggerates current threat, based on real past threats, and perhaps
the real threat is the slow fading away while the artist does the
fast burn] they want artists, Richler complains, "to serve as
publicists not critics." but how much of his writing is fulfilling
an emotional rather than artistic need? article "We Jews are almost
as bad as the gentiles." In another article he writes, "Germans are
abomination to me. I'm glad that Dresden was bombed for no useful
military purpose." [!] criticizes Israel for not living up to his
standards, negative qualities of a reactionary state which
persecutes minority. he reverts to protector of the loser, more in
common with Arab underdog. after 1967 defends Israel, attacking
non-Jews who take a position which seems to be like his. assumes
great knowledge while understanding very little. The cultural
figure thus constantly makes a fool of himself but then continually
forgives himself and forgets it, as the history of support for
leftist (more common in America and in recent decades) but also
rightist causes shows. In fact, Richler's views can live only in
his books. He has no power over Canadian gentiles or Germans and
thus is not responsible for what happens to the Germans, his moral
postures remain mere words--safe, deniable, and allowing him to say
the reverse the next day. a life of rage and deliberate alienation
may be helpful to a writer's craft--at least a certain kind of
writer, it may be a late-twentieth century error to see that as a
universal.
Dershowitz overestimates antisemites, makes Jewish defensive
20
rather than "constructive" but political indifference decide what
to be and then defend result if necessary.
duck Jerzy Kosinski
JD Salinger
Cynthia Ozick, only Jewish child in her school, trying to
create a new generation of Jewish literature
Allen Ginzberg
David Mamet
Jews more open to the European influences, which shaped modernism,
and less committed to classical values and styles. Their families
had a cultural level above and a set of values more sophisticated
than their class.
Tom Friedman is like the Monte Python skit of the Australian
university where the professor was allowed to teach about Marxism
as long as he taught it was wrong. contrast between journalists and
professors--who must maintain distance--and literary figures, who
could express their feelings of closeness more.
Grouchoism of American intellectuals
overprotecting and overestimating children
Isaac Rosenfeld was one of the few postwar intellectuals to
study Yiddish heard at home, wrote about European Jewish writers.
3. duck books and movies
A. movies and tv 84 Charing Cross Road; Prince of Tides; Harry
Met Sally; Thirtysomething; Homicide; The Way We Were Scene in
"Chariots of Fire" where Chr girlfriend takes for ham from
harmlessness in invisibility to harmlessness in dissolution talk to
Medved? "Avalon" no reference to Jews or religion but suffused with
tat spirit, Avalon is the Anglo-Saxon utopia. Presumably it is like
speaking Yiddish in that the Jews will know and to the non-Jews it
is a generalized ethnic tale. Feivel the Mouse, commercially deJudaized immigrant, to Feivel the Christmas promotion.
Barry Levinson films about Jews without ever saying so,
"Diner," ?, "Avalon," "Bugsy." Bugsy is Gatsby who recreates
himself, practicing his elocution, dresses well. "Everybody
deserves a fresh start now and then." hence drawn to movies.
Hollywood
"that
vehicle
of
fast-track
Americanization
for
generations of well-tailored Jews." Jack Zipes, The Operated Jew an
1893 antisemitic novel by a German Oskar Panizza, a very ugly
Jewish medical student undergoes plastic surgery, speech therapy,
hair is blond, blood transfusion to make himself into heroic Aryan.
the "great Jewish dilemma of our time: how to cease being victims
without turning into victimizers."xii
duck 4. US popular
Arnold J. Band, "Popular Fiction and the Shaping of Jewish
Identity," Gordis and Ben Horin, Jewish Identity in America, p. 215
Bellow, Malamud, and Roth. Just what identifies these writers as
specifically Jewish, however, is usually a source of perplexity,
even embarrassment, for the critic and historian. a group of books
of less critical acclaim but of clearer Jewish resolution, books
which have enjoyed enormous popularity and have had a significant
21
impact on American Jewish life. Leon Uris's Exodus, Marjorie
Morningstar, Fiddler on the Roof, The Chosen, and Wiesel's Night.
p. 218 Exodus Jewish history was portrayed in bold colors as a
smashing success, and there is nothing so validating to an American
as a sense of being on the winning team. The American Jew,
furthermore, discovered in the 1950s that he was a member of one of
the three accepted American religious denominations in Eisenhower's
America.
p. 219
The Ben Canaan, formerly the Rabinsky family,
shook off its East European notions and habits as pioneers in
pre-Israel Palestine, just as Jewish immigrants did in America.
They are attractive precisely because they are unlike the
stereotype of the East European Jew in the mind of the Jewish
audience. p. 220 The immigrant neighborhood and poverty is behind
them. Their exodus is not from the Egyptian bondage to the Promised
Land, or even from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side, but
from
Manhattan
to
Mamaroneck.
This
journey,
despite
its
interruptions and divagations, is presented approvingly, even
triumphantly compared to Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, published
only five years later: (1960). p. 221 The ideal Jew portrayed in
Marjorie Morningstar is not the rootless intellectual but the happy
citizen at home in Mamaroneck, the Jew living the American dream
which he himself invented. p. 222
Fiddler is a commercialized
fantasy. p. 224 it glorifies "tradition" as the way "everyone knows
who he is and what God expects him to do" but never explains what
this was. To keep traditions is authentic and admirable but not
emulated, "And yet, in no way is it suggested that tradition is
something we American Jews might care to adopt outside the hall of
the musical--or those musical-like occasions of our communal lives
like weddings or synagogue socials." [but the romanticization of
eastern Jewry in the tradition of Heine, Buber, and others] The
intellectuals had tried to create a Jewish history to replace a
relatively timeless but now declining religious framework.
[American lack of interest in content--like Woody Allen and the
European intellectual tradition]
A. The Jewish assimilated Jew (play on Deutscher)
Bernhard: 1: "Someone calls from the midst of their Christmas
crisis, somewhere from the cold flat badlands of the American
Midwest, where all dreams are born and radiate east and west."
interesting formulation: 1) Christmas; 2) crisis but a different
kind for Js; 3) most would say ideas originate on coasts but idea
of America--from assim perspective--is in heartland. J movie
moguls, Annie Hall, Philip Roth search. the mythical real America
(see Lenny Bruce's view of J/non-J. 2: mother had tree for a few
years before born, grew up among Gentiles and all best friends C.
5: matzo an instant coffee, brother's bar mitzvah amidst blueberry
jam, English bulldog. fascinating juxtaposition for her living in
Michigan enough J reality not to leave it, enough Amer C dreams to
make those the object of her yearning. Christmas tree of aluminum,
Hanukkah candles. Hebrew school. A & P, Buicks, not NY. b 1955.
34-35: Barbra Streisand, then Phoenix. Christmas among strongest
memories. older rels speaking Yiddish and American popular culture.
22
There is something about the mixture of high and low, of
eternity and the banal, of God and of cloak ownership that is so
central in the Jewish Bible and the Talmud. Jesus, as God, and the
saints, are God related and thus cannot be questioned or satirized,
but the Jewish leaders can be, not only because it is a minority
culture but also because they are shown to be very human and wrong
at times. Those throwing around "Talmudic" as a term of ridicule
for petty, disingenuous dispute are not aware that the Talmud is
full of logical debate and majority rule, nothing to apologize to
when it comes to the Greek philosophers or the Roman Senate.
Lenny Bruce word "mockie" mock means artificial, imitating,
counterfeiting
B. Jewish complexes
Isaac Asimov, laws for robots, morality for machines! How J!
Was Superman a J creation? fairness/underdog, Asimov on father
telling how grandfather grain merchant, put out a 10 kopek piece
for each weight and how peasant would steal thus shortweighing
himself, Asimov reaction that this was shameful cheating.
The assumption that power is obscene and thus eschew, rebel
against or--if use--see in realpolitik sense, HAK/Morgenthau
Js as conveyors of European culture to America
Shiksa goddess, woman chasing, like imitating a form of
behavior. the psyche: have more respect for women in background and
more shyness--less self-confident arrogance or disdain for women of
playboy type, then success or money opens door. What it represented
see Portnoy and Richler
In Brooks' history of the world part one he deals with a
Jewish comic in Rome and the persecution in the Spanish
Inquisition. two of his three vignettes. joking about oppression
not out of bitterness at presence but at distance.
Woody Allen section
Woody Allen The cliche galut J, brilliant, but wimpy, neurotic
but highly principled, seeking high philosophic truth in the
absence of certainty, subversive to the bland shortsighted people
around him who live for the moment, are athletic and beautiful in
an Aryan manner. Diane Keaton and then Mia Farrow gave away his son
(LJCmplx), only joking images of Jewry except in "Crimes and
Misdemeanors" name Judah, rabbi as positive character. comic
questions but no answers. an apostle of assim but good example of
the emphasis on differentness. But ultimately, beyond the quite
good comedies and the failure to make drama, he is not an
intellectual but just throws around an outer show, a few references
to big books, great directors, and large questions about goodness
and death. there is no depth and no content because he has no
culture. His Judaism too is empty, the cowardly intellectual rests
on the most obvious caricature of Jews. In Night and Fog--a
reflection of the Holocaust movie, he comments, "My people pray in
another language. I don't understand it. Maybe they're calling
23
troubles down on themselves." It is his emptiness and alienation
from his own tradition or absorption of a new one. Many of his
films are still marvelously entertaining. The total failure to
understand time and place, the fact that all characters sound like
him--he has no ability to portray the different culture around him,
so that Diane Keaton does not become a believable WASP in Annie
Hall (Interiors is a full-length example). Gentle nihilism. It is
not that Allen should be more Jewish, it is his interpretation of
Jewishness.
Allen
as
outsider
to
European--not
American-intellectual tradition, one of the aspects of J, especially of his
generation. he can throw around Kirkagaard or Hegel and get a laugh
from those who have not read or do not know them much beyond the
name, just as they do not know the Jewish tradition beyond name.
But his attitude toward intellectualism, like his attitude
toward Judaism, is never to go in the door but merely plays off the
wall. There is no real dialogue (even in "Crimes and Misdemeanors"
where the rabbi is just a general representation of goodness and
morality. Also, as a substitute to being Jewish he seeks to be
European (Jews are the ethnic group most attuned for a variety of
reasons (what?) to European intellectual trends and vanguard
culture (if not high culture). there isn't five minutes in any
movie of serious discussion, or even a joke made on any Jewish
reference not immediately accessible to the most ignorant. He deals
with and jokes about symbols, never essences.
"Sleeper" as double socialization of immigrant
the man who has no `self' or `identity'" as superior for
lacking any standpoint and inferior for not being adjusted.
"Zelig." the man who is whatever is expected of him and nothing in
himself, he was once "tradition-directed" from silly Jews old,
received values, old view has no merit in itself. becomes "innerdirected" setting own values (ignores what is past). Note other
"socialization" scenes: the man who goes to the future in "Sleeper"
and must be brainwashed and taught how to act. Allen's cynicism is
appropriate since there is no position worth taking. except for
getting laid and worrying about death. See Bloom 144-46. Other
Jewish works of inner-directed, Fromm and Riesman. Woody Allen: the
man of the comic residue. He is every stereotype of his generation
of Jew: urban, nerdy, intelligent, progressive, witty, yet aside
from believing that God is dead and that this is a problem, he has
no content. reasonably affluent. His comedy is the quick switch,
the disconnectedness of the Marx brothers rather than the smooth-more assimilated--style of Benny and Burns, romantic yearning for
something or someone better than he currently is: American, with
the women, the athletic success. Marx brothers: outsiders, can't
speak language, iconoclastic, linguistic play; analytic.
Alan Stewart Konigsberg of Brooklyn, not a good student.
interested in magic, loved comedy. 8: "I would be doing references
to Freud and sex...without knowing who he or what it really was."
in school. joke writer. one semester at NYU. the outsider both to
America and to intellectual life. Mort Sahl, Allen, and Lenny Bruce
very Jewish but ethnically quite different from Henny Youngman or
24
Milton Berle (how?)
Woody Allen Three Films of Zelig, the phenomenon who mimics all
societies. he speaks as a Republican with an upper-class Boston
accent, as a man of the people with the kitchen help and as a
Democrat. Leonard Zelig. baseball player Lou Zelig. a gangster, a
black jazz musician. even Chinese. taken to a hospital he disguises
himself as a psychiatrist. he claims to work "mostly with
delusional paranoids p. 18 son of a Yiddish actor p. 20: "As a boy,
Leonard is frequently bullied by antisemites. His parents, who
never take his part and blame him for everything, side with the
antisemites." his father tells him on his deathbed "that his life
is a meaningless nightmare of suffering, and the only advice he
gives him is to save string." [no tradition or anything useful to
pass on. his siblings break down. p. 5: Dr Birsky says his delusion
is a fatal illness] "And I should not be surprised if within
several weeks he died." but ironically he is the one who dies of a
brain tumor in two weeks. 26: "Leonard Zelig is fine." (predictors
of J demise, fossil, etc) not a physiological disorder but a
psychological one (not race or innate). Why does he do it, under
hypnosis admits 32: "It's safe....S-safe...t-to be like the
others....I want to be liked." human chameleon. But 38: the left
says he personifies capitalist man to achieve "the exploitation of
the workers by deception." The KKK saw him as a threat because of
his ability to change races. Zelig becomes fashionable for a while.
77: The 12-year-old Zelig runs into a synagogue and asks the rabbi
the meaning of life "He tells me the meaning of life...but he tells
it to me in Hebrew...I don't understand Hebrew...then he wants to
charge me six hundred dollars for Hebrew lessons." cut off from
tradition, which may have the answers but not for him, ends with
anti-J type joke. On the eve of happiness, marriage to his WASP
psychiatrist, the roof falls in, he is sued for things he did under
all his personalities "responsible for the behavior of each of the
personalities he assumed" p. 106. Zelig is branded a criminal,
attacked by Christian fundamentalists (the 1920s into the 1930s? as
politics. people want to lynch him. 110: "He longs desperately to
be liked once again--to be accepted to fit in."
He disappears
after being labelled the "Zelig Menace"
Jacobs: 14: his parents interests are "God and carpeting" a
clever idea of the mixture of religious belief and materialism
which became closely associated and which Jewish intellectuals of
the younger generation rejected at the same time--immigrant and
ultra-American, tradition and accretion. Far enough removed in
space and time from real persecution that it could become a joke:
he was married by a Reform rabbi, "very Reform, a Nazi" his wife
made dishes from German recipe like "chicken Himmler" (14). 15:
hired by an advertising agency because needed to show they had
minorities, he tried to look more Jewish, read memos from right to
left, but fired for taking off too many Jewish holidays. He is
asked to advertise vodka but his rabbi advises him that this would
be immoral. Then he sees his rabbi's picture in Life magazine "with
a cool vodka in his hand." He is not afraid of playing publicly--
25
instead of just inside the community--to stereotypes. He neither
considers anything sacred nor fears the gentiles. Those who have
suffered mistreatment or fear antisemitism are outraged but Bruce,
Roth, and Allen do not share their feelings.
outsmarting or at least out-talking the bully. the playful and
flexible nature of reality for one whose reality is not all of a
time and place, who can imagine being someone else because this is
what the game of assimilation of outsider/insider has taught. the
absurdity of things to one for whom it is not the only possible
game, the only interpretation, the only reality.
To some extent in America, the society became what had been,
say, the German antisemite's worst nightmare in which the whole
society began to some extent to identify with the Jew or at least-as in the case of blacks and others--to identify with a parallel
view of repression, assimilation, self-rejection of assimilation,
the whole complex balancing act. and perhaps that lies in Europe's
future with the Caribbean and South Asian immigrants to Britain,
the Turks in Germany, the Africans and Algerians in France.
Jacobs 21 through a complex of circumstances, Allen winds up
taking a moose to a costume party but the moose loses the best
costume award to the Berkowitzes, "a married couple dressed as a
moose." eventually, Mr. Berkowitz is shot, stuffed and mounted at
the NY Athletic Club "And the joke is on them," because it doesn't
admit Jews. No Jews but Jews in moose's clothing.
Being such a schlemiel, an outsider, a neurotic, maladapted
creature wants to be someone else: Willie Mays, a basketball player
or a black jazz musician (very few whites wanted to be black in
those days, see Mailer the White Negro; Humphrey Bogart ("Play it
Again Sam,") everybody ("Zelig") or for others--a greaser (Andrew
Dice Clay), a WASP sex goddess (Sandra Bernhard), a pugnacious
Irish boxer (Norman Mailer), a WASP member of the elite (Darman) or
even the most average of average Americans. As Freud showed, such
denial of self does psychological harm as well as making possible
creativity. Allen wrote (p 25) that his first reaction on seeing
"the Maltese Falcon" was to identify with Peter Lorre, "The impulse
to be a snivelling, effeminate, greasy little weasel appealed to me
enormously." but this was his persona as a character, and Lorre was
Jewish. but later Allen decided he wanted to be like Bogart, who
wouldn't make that choice? [a 1969 Life cover story, "How Bogart
Made Me the Superb Lover I Am Today," at the end concludes, "The
only safe thing is to identify with the actual falcon itself. After
all, it's the stuff dreams are made of."
in a television special, Allen plays a rabbi to Candice
Bergen, the ultimate WASP beauty, she wants to be one of the
"smart, cultured people who always have something to say." a spoof
on Pygmalion, he promises in three months to pass her off as "one
of the country's leading pseudo-intellectuals" and succeeds 48-49
he throws off his disguise revealing he isn't old and ugly but the
dim-witted beauty and he get married "living in mutual harmony-until the divorce." 48-49
67: Diane Keaton becomes the tall blonde acolyte, dumb (unless
26
he trains her), yet also alike in being neurotic, insecure, a nonJewish Jew. 68: "While their opposition heightens erotic and
romantic tensions, there's also a sense in which Allen and Keaton
are one whole being."
Erno the handsome rebel and Ivan the neanderthal brother, in a
sense these are "normal" men of macho and bravery compared to
Allen's coward. [once the Jew was derided as coward, now he insists
on it] Of course, it is only to be expected that such normal men
would "get the girl" in the end Allen wins in what is clearly wish
fulfillment--the end of "Annie Hall", too. Being the writer one can
make it all come out the way one wants.
Jewish comedy: irreverence, for what is there to be reverent
about since one's own tradition has been overthrown and one doesn't
believe in the other. Puncturing of romanticism, because the world
isn't beautiful. in fact, it doesn't make any sense despite the
constructs you use to explain it.
But what if Woody Allen looked like George Segal or Mark
Harmon. Would he be less Jewish, not Jewish at all? condemned by
name and/or appearance.
Yet except for throwing around the word "rabbi" or "kosher"
Allen never satirizes the actual Jewish tradition because he
doesn't know it--and his audience doesn't either. There is only one
scene where Jews are referred to in "Love and Death" for example,
from the standpoint that one doesn't know anything about them and
the same is true of "Fog." in a real sense, Allen's concept is that
a Jew could only live in New York or, conversely, that everyone who
lives in New York is a Jew.
110: view of "real America" in "Annie Hall" where the Halls
drink, pick at their ham dinner, discuss alcoholic friends and 4-H
clubs while Singer family drinks seltzer, gorges, let it all hang
out about illnesses and death. see Philip Roth. Annie is happy in
California, her background's equivalent of New York. Tony Roberts
become assimilated there, too. "Interiors": a "serious" film
because there are no Jews in it. In Manhattan Isaac Davis religion,
family, ethnic never mentioned. 145-6: Stardust Memories, the two
trains, Woody is on the one with all the anguished, funny-looking
people, on the opposite track there are well-dressed people
celebrating. How's that for an image! He desperately tries to get
off the train, then both trains end at a barren junkyard. death.
what is the point of life, what is the point of children to the
totally detached man? how can romance survive? what is there to
pass on?
but for Allen, like Simon, Jewish existence in the world of
his childhood, of Brooklyn in the 1940s, it is a point of time
which is gone, an immigrant background which has been escaped. the
assimilationist present and the nostalgic but well-rid-of past.
interesting reaction to "The Sorrow and the Pity," we don't
know what it is about, the content does not enter in. does an
obsession with death have anything to do with the Holocaust or is
the character merely going to the film for--as his bookstore
purchases show--he is fascinated with morbidity.
27
Jewish galut humor leaps in a non-linear manner and plays with
a language which is often new or, at least, approached from a
slightly different direction which treats it as arbitrary rather
than given. From the 1850s to the 1939 and beyond, the Yiddishspeakers or immigrants from other language areas dominated the
adult Jewish generations in the United States, Germany, Austria,
France, Russia, and to a lesser extent Britain.
In his ignorance, Allen never explores the actual tradition
and its ideas but only plays with the fading, very incomplete
remnants he knows about second-hand. He has devolved from Kafka.
Saved by the fact that much of his audience knows little more, but
thus condemned to go around and around in circles.
Other? Having rejected tradition themselves, the Jewish rebels
recommended it to others, which is why the guardians of tradition
on the right hated them and those establishing a new one on the
left also thought almost inevitably suspect. They were brave for
liberty and pluralism but what to do once one had it? to seek more,
meaning the liberal struggle of ACLU, etc. Jacobs end.
Bette Midler, "one of the 100 most powerful people in
Hollywood, but she still worries about being loved for herself." "I
have a pretty serious character. I like to laugh, but there's not a
lot to laugh about." AIDs, environment, like Barr rural reaction,
non-J husband. December 1991 Vanity Fair profile. On AIDS: "If it
had been 129,000 little white children [who died], you can bet they
would have raised a stink. You say to yourself, `Is that how the
government's going to treat me if I don't fall into the category
they cherish?'" [suspicious bitterness, no matter how well they do,
the game is fixed, the judges are corrupt. poor home in Honolulu,
family from NJ, won a prize in first grade for rendition of "Silent
Night" "Fiddler on the Roof" three-year run as Tevye's eldest
daughter but no opps for a while. "For a while she supplanted Snow
White as Disney's figurehead." father was atheist, husband German.
"I'm raising my kid definitely to believe in God. But we talk about
all the gods. We're very interested in the gods as a group."xiii
C. duck Double personality (performers unlike writers have a
public personality, though see Mailer and Roth)
two leading "greaser" played ironically by Jews, Henry Winkler
and Andrew Silverman. Andrew Dice Clay, Pee Wee Hermon (Andrew
Silverstein/Paul Reubens with muscles) Japanese "They're taking
over. Didn't we drop two bombs on them a few years ago? What was in
those bombs, [expletive] fertilizer?" protests. one comedian called
it "Brownshirt humor" banned, but does the off-limits, one man's
Andrew Dice Clay is another man's Lenny Bruce." exceeding limits,
smashing idols. He stumbles onstage as the utterly inept `Eugene
Moscowitz' before metamorphosing into a black-leather-jacketed,
obscenity-spouting hoodlum. insults and crude talk. began dressing
like the character off-stage, too. On "Arsenio" almost broke into
tears--planned--as self pointing out had failed 10 years earlier as
a comedian and had now become "the hottest comic in the world" then
transformed said, "You believe in yourself, and you don't listen to
28
nobody." Sharp contrast with Sandra Bernhard who is feminist/antifeminist, brainy/vulgar, anti-"outsider"/pro-"outsider" in common
the desire to be accepted by audience, she flaunts her
vulnerability while he projects power.xiv
Bernhard, daughter of a doctor and an abstract artist.
"Without You I'm Nothing," her show, reference to audience--which
makes her. While Clay lives this transformation, she talks about
it--note that as a third generation she supposedly is already
assimilated and totally at ease, she talks about how "though there
was really something great about growing up in a liberal,
intellectual, Jewish household" she dreamed of being a gentile with
Laura Ashley dresses and glazed ham with cloves at Christmas. not
at home with body which is also a physical problem with her
appearance, not blonde and willowy and small-nosed. she wears her
insecurity on her sleeve. smart and imaginative, raw edge. puts
self on display. plays tough, too, on stage. Hal Hinson, "What we
see when we watch Bernhard onstage is the spectacle of a woman
turning herself into something she dreams of being, into something
she's not." being loved, glamorous, and sexy and really there is
nothing different in kind between Bernhard and Clay, merely their
specific choice of persona. with a "hard to believe face" not
fitting in. lived eight months on a kibbutz as a volunteer. [Debra
Winger] Bernhard wants to be a glamour star from the past, but
Barbra Streisand is acceptable.xv
The Washington Post feature section for July 22, 1990 contains
four articles: Andrew Dice Clay, Sandra Bernhard, Herbert von
Karajan? and Allen Ginsberg, all Js of greatly different
interpretations....xvi
Roman Polanski; Jerzy Kosinski (the imagery of suicide, see
Benjamin, Zweig, and Koestler
Dylan, the two modern performers who had the most tortured
relationship with Judaism were among the few of the generation
changing their name--Bob Zimmerman; Allen Konigsberg (sp?) Dylan's
imagery. sound system failed and stormed away in Jerusalem. gospel
choir. Sultan's Pool. bombed in Tel Aviv. born 1941 Hibbing
Minnesota, bar mitzvah. Biblical themes, You've Got to Serve
Somebody--more Christian than Jewish in imagery but a point about
roots and orientation. visited in 1969, 1970, certainly in 1971.
"There is no problem, I'm a Jew. It touches my poetry, my life, in
ways I can't describe. Why should I declare something that should
be so obvious?" late 1970s proclaimed born-again Christian, three
fundamentalist records. by 1983 "Infidels" shows him in Jerusalem,
son bar mitzvahed, reportedly spent time with Lubavitchers.
"Neighborhood Bully" 1982. little or no talk. 1961 "Talkin' Hava
Nagila Blues" "With God on Our Side" 1963. 1966 motorcycle
accident. 1967 John Wesley Harding, father's death. met with
kibbutz representatives to consider living there, yet in 1976 said
visit of "no great significance" late 1970s, crisis, marriage
breakup, drinking, drug abuse. "mystical experience" seeing Jesus
in a hotel room, baptized, "Slow Train Comin'" "Saved" "Shot of
Love." two sons bar-mitzvahed "The neighborhood bully just lives to
29
survive/He's criticized and condemned for being alive/He's not
supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin/He's
supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in."
Lubavitch, on telethon where actually sang "Hava Nagilah." ended
Jerusalem concert with evangelical song when sound system shortcircuited. claims to be close to Judaism but still believes in
Jesus. 1985 Spin: "Whether you want to believe Jesus Christ is the
Messiah is irrelevant, but whether you're of the messianic complex,
that's all that's important."xvii indeed but why be of the messianic
complex, especially unless needing one since one hasn't yet
arrived.
Bob Spitz, Dylan: A Biography (NY, 1991). 125 created
character he then inhabited, like Benny, Burns, Groucho, Pee Wee
Hermon.
Orthodox
forebears
and
parents
active
in
Jewish
organizations. 17: fantasies, Dylan was mother's name, he was an
orphan, was from Oklahoma or New Mexico, carnivals or Las Vegas
gamblers. father had appliance store and sometimes took to do
repossession which upset him 63 felt like oppressor. one man blamed
exploitation and made reference to religion. typical Jewish father
and mother of their generation, more controlled emotion father,
somewhat yentaish mother. would not talk about father. hung around
with greasers. has straight Jewish girlfriend. folk music break out
of pattern. 125: an early friend said, "I never knew when he was
playing a role or being himself." copied Woody Guthrie, ultimate
man of the people. but, of course, what a non-man of the people he
was. The irony of the strange models people chose. 197: When
girlfriend's mother understandably tried to break them up, said
"The trouble with you is you're an antisemite." said didn't
believes lies, "I think Zimmerman must be your real father and not
your adoptive father." got into black music, looking for roots and
identity in a culturally starved environment. 277: connection with
women, shiksas but Jewish intellectual when in troubled times.
430: rumors about Israel connection, trips, but concerts there not
critical success-despite audience appreciation--began in "Maggie's
Farm:. 441: producer pointed out that a day for recording was Rosh
Hashonah, indifferent. 1978: vision, interpreted by current
girlfriend as Jesus [because of her born-again Christian since any
culture would have interpreted it accordingly. systematically
recruited (528-32) Bible study (which presumably had not done
before, not giving him own interpretation opened him to another as
the only one). [the continual difficulty of principled atheism,
especially across generations.] brainwashing techniques used by
such cults. reborn, effect on music. May 1970 baptized and
immediately brought explicitly into music (note that Judaism had
never been so brought). "Slow Train Coming" gospel music. (Paul
Simon, too?) and concerts, to deal with heavy drinking. to deal
with problems. point is: many people turn to religion to deal with
problems, but which one? lost interest. intolerant. gradually wore
off. Note how the 1960s in more emotional/artificial stimulants
terms reproduced the 1930s, Koestler as example, drifting from cult
to cult, idea system to idea system, from pharmaceuticals to
30
alcohol to fanatical abstinence; from Communism to eastern
religions to self-improvement systems. Not typical of Jews but a
reflection of a wider rootlessness parallel to that of the secular,
non-identified generation.
Paul Reubens, Pee-wee Herman. always in character, children's
host (like Soupy Sales) Honey and Herman said parents name, really
Reubenfeld. merged with character.xviii
D. duck Jew as voluntary hate figure--see Esquire Howard Stern
Roseanne Barr/Arnold. He converted and had star tattooed,
after ceremony. married civil in early 1990 than J wedding.
outsider, never nominated, delights in outsider status: writes
nasty letters to critics, sets self up as "hate figure" in bad
singing of national anthem at a San Diego Padres game and flashing
tattooed butt at crowd in 1990 world series and yet phenomenally
popular (Howard Cosell). says sexually abused by parents who
denied.xix exhibitionism (well, what about Madonna). to parents:
"They're dead to me." food and alcohol abuse. (Roseanne from Utah;
from Hawaii: Bette Midler). As silly as the issue was, it was
remarkably revealing. Barr sang the "Star-Spangled Banner" during a
San Diego Padres-Cincinnati Reds doubleheader in San Diego in July
1990, the fans booed her poor singing and the star of "Roseanne"
responded by grabbing her crotch and spitting on the field.
President Bush said, "It's disgraceful." ABC-TV which aired her
"Roseanne" program issued a statement that Barr "meant no
disrespect for the national anthem." she refused to apologize,
media frenzy but no J issue.xx
Howard Cosell, 40 years, dugre style, left television in 1985,
quit "Monday Night Football" in 1984 season saying, "Pro football
has become a stagnant bore." 1982 quit boxing in disgust. "I am
tried of the hypocrisy and sleaziness of the boxing scene." went
into broadcasting in 1953, beginning in Little League program.
defended Mohammad Ali.xxi
Lenny Bruce, overdose. rebellious who exalted in being
outsider (Cosell). very open "A lot of people say to me,`Why did
you kill Christ?' `I dunno....it was one of those parties, got out
of hand, you know." and so on.xxii showing Spellman and Sheen
freaked out that Jesus and Moses have actually returned. The Almost
Unpublished Lenny Bruce (Philadelphia, Pa., 1984) p. 9 "To me, if
you live in New York or any major city, you are Jewish--doesn't
matter if you're Catholic or Italian....But if you live in Butte,
Montana, you're Goyish even if you're Jewish." Evaporated milk,
fudge, and span are Goyish; rye bread, chocolate, is Jewish. guilt
at being a bad boy, devout Orthodox and this exceeds their love
for him, big divider between them "and I realize, according to
their standards, the disgrace and humiliation I must have caused
them." (interesting how the all-time bad boy feels guilty toward
parents--that is in Bruce's term--very Jewish for the rebellion is
usually a shy and limited one. Jim Morrison of the Doors talked of
killing parents, there is something in the Jewish rebellion that is
limited, embarrassed by violence--yes, even Mailer--and misogyny--
31
yes, even Andrew Dice Clay. Lenny Bruce real name L. Schneider.
Bruce: The Essential, ridicules religion as business,
hypocrisy of antisemitism, reminder that Jesus was a Jew,
prejudice. unmasking: the Pope is Jewish, the Lone Ranger is
Jewish--by portraying the Jew behind the myth of assimilation,
exposing the hypocrisy of all. "Religions Inc" routine. Hypocrisy:
we know who you really are, would-be Eichmans, intolerant
hypocrites.
not just an American phenomenon: Weimar...
Albert Goldman with Lawrence Schiller, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Lenny Bruce!! (NY, 1975). p. 54 change of name a friend teased him,
"All you guys who try to get away from being Jewish by changing
your last name always give the secret away by forgetting to change
your first name. What kinda goy has a first name Lenny?" good
statement of ambiguity. Leonard Alfred Schneider which wasn't so
Jewish.
p. 69 Sally, "Lenny, I'm just a Jewish mother who can't help
worrying about her son." this Jewish mother at 49 married a 19 year
old Chicano. a professional dancer, she changed her name from Sadie
Kitchenberg to, at one point, Boots Malloy.
p. 94 father among other things a podiatrist, lived in semirural Long Island in a little house with a picket fence, rose
bushes, and maple furniture. incident of father refusing to let him
hae over a Puerto Rican friend when living with as married adult.
"What will the neighbors think?"
p. 103 had moved out there to get away from the ghetto, being
Jewish wasn't fashionable, as American a place as one could get. p.
115 "It looks like the birthplace of Richard Nixon." not poor boy
but spoiled rotten and like many of his European middle class
counterparts he would struggle with this issue and high parental
expectations.
pp. 153-54 over-protective parents, frightening about the
outside world 162: much of their humor was "directed against those
loved-hated, hated-loved Jewish parents whom the kids regarded as
virtual cliche machines."
p. 271-274 jazz influence, Mort Sahl, political themes in
nightclubs.
as
Jules
Feiffer
did
in
cartoons.
hipster,
nonconformist. "hep" a supposed jazz word which wasn't (276) ironic
history of hep) Goldman: "They thought that if you said `Man' and
`dig' and `hep' you were coming on like a Bopper. You were coming
on--to tell the truth--like a kikey little fart who would have
fained if a real Bopper hit on him for two cents!"
288 the essence of his comedy: "What if all the great people in
this world--heroes of legend, leaders of nations, powers,
potentates, principalities, the mighty God Himself--are simply the
sort of crude, cynical shyster businessmen and degenerate hustlers
that you find on Broadway" and peddling aluminum siding? sad,
regretful cynicism that has characterized so many Jewish
intellectuals.
p. 409 fascinated by extreme goys, wearing rough clothes and
boots, riding on motorcycles while Lenny was still wearing "tight
32
dark suits and white shirts with cuff links." bathing daily and
clean sheets and two or three changes of clothes. the fascination
of bad boys for good boys, of workers for intellectuals, men of
action for thinkers. the passive non-doing ghetto Jews (part of the
transformation of Israel) the heroic pirate of Ben Hecht, the
sweating proletarians of the left, Erno for Woody Allen. Norman
Mailer's fantasies.
443-4 haunted by disciplinarian father, unable to break with
crazy yenta mother. shot up in a veinwhere it hurt more, suffering
to seek forgiveness, provoking conflict so he could either beg for
it or be granted it. masochism, gave away pills "because he liked
the feeling of panic, having to scramble. That's paying dues. Good
Jewish dues." as one of his friends said.
475 [in Jewish terms, hedonism had to be justified by philosophy
and world view much more than lived. he rode roughshod over
convention, trying to be more and more outrageous, "He seemed to
get a kick out of rubbing salt in the wounds he made in many
people's sensibilities." [Trilling at first signed up on a petition
to defend in NY obscenity trial--thinking they were kindred souls-and then the DA sent routine and pulled out, realizing they were
playing in the same ball park but were opposites.]
536 "The world is sick and I'm the doctor. I'm a surgeon with a
scalpel for false values....I can't stand rejection. I can't give a
good performance if the people in the audience reject me."
647 Goldman: he had "an almost infantile attachment to
everything that was sacred to the American lower-middle class."
from romantic love to incorruptibility. he used imperfection as
part of "his ruthless moral conscience....A world where things were
not conceived in the first instance in moral terms was unthinkable
to him--as nthinkable as a world where sin did not instantly bring
punishment down upon it."
785 when he wanted to get people to work a bit longer for him on
his legal research he's say, "Just stay an extra hour because I got
it! I got it! After tonight, it's not going to be any more. I got
the whole answer to everything tonight!" or a piece of tape he was
searching for, "has the answer to everything on it!" The "eternally
elusive" yet about to be discovered answer.
783 a routine shortly before he died "And while we're on the
subject of stars I'd like to give information, a seldom known fact-but important to the Christian people living out there." Tony
Curtis's real name "is Bernie Schwartz! I want to repeat that, too.
Bernie, B-E-R-N-I-E S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z. Schwartz! He is obviously not
a Curtis. A Curtis is never a Schwartz." [it would be reading too
much into it to take this as symbollic, but perhaps I can be
forgiven for pointing out that the taken name sounds like
"courteous" and that Schwartz means black. Not gentlemanly, but the
opposite of white WASP. I'm not suggesting Bruce thought in this
way.
Lenny can't stand rejection but courts it. tries to be prophet
inviting own crucifixion, the scapegoat offering himself up for
society's sins. The good boy pattern is hard to break so is good
33
boy by not rejecting society but demanding it live up to its own
professed standards. Yeheshua ben Yoseph, Epstein sculptor, Heine,
Nordau, Kraus, Marx, Freud, Roth, Cosell, Roy Cohn, Frankfurt
School,
Luxemburg.
troublemakers
rather
than
the
soothing
conformity of assimilation but as another way to assimilation.
humanist, scientist, fearless artist in service of some new truth.
But protest through words or ideas, theories and views, not so much
through deeds.
Bruce like so many others, simultaneously intensely and not at
all Jewish.
Lenny Bruce: A heavy drug user who the courts couldn't punish
or didn't want to, harassed by police and courts but winning. Fell
in love with the idea of being persecuted, and with fighting the
law to the point of self-destruction. whose comedy was based on the
idea of hypocrisy of all. Metaphor for Jews who America wouldn't
punish or hate but kept expecting it, sometimes raging, the land of
Grouchoism or cringing out of European expectations in a totally
different place.
Jerzy Urban,
eight years spokesman for unpopular Polish
government, then editor of satirical weekly Nie caustic,
unscrupulous, cynical, now making lots of money. "a mixture of
clown and executioner" "the most despised person in Poland" now
irreverent, vicious, scatological, anti-Catholic. 700,000/wk.
attacks church, wealth, also antis. Urban: "The majority of Poles
know me by sight and by name and are aware of my Jewish
origin."xxiii
E. duck Waspaphilia
Leslie Howard and Laurence Harvey. and Ralph Lauren. [how to
genuine British people see Harvey and Howard, ask Simon. Tempting
to say not giving them "real" WASP but fake WASP, WASP as mediated
by Jewishness but this does not seem to be true for otherwise the
fabrication would be obvious. Hollywood small towns may not be like
most American life-styles but were they like the mainstream culture
saw them at the turn of the century? (ironically the anti-Jewish
populism which saw immigrants and Jewish banks and big cities and
radicals endangering Protestant America. In a sense, not fighting
the antagonist but taking him over, yet in doing so not
transforming him (which is what the antisemites fear).
Cathy Horyn, "Ralph Lauren, Suiting Himself," Washington Post,
May 24, 1992. The Jew (Lifshitz) had become not only accepted as
fashionable but the very author of fashion. He had out-assimilated
the originals. made himself into an aristocrat (in a country where
birth counted for relatively little) Paul Goldberger, a Jewish ?
architecture critic for The New York Times said Lauren possesses an
"authenticity of conviction." but Michael Thomas of the New York
Observer a more conservative publication had a different vision:
"Imagine you are a former stroke for the Harvard crew sitting on
the beach at, oh, Lyford Cay. Suddenly you notice that the vile
fellow sitting a few yards away" from a somewhat sleazy company and
a suburban nowhere background "is wearing a crew shirt beribboned
at the neck with the same colors you puked your guts out to win at
34
Henley 20 years earlier." except it has the tiny polo pony
[Lauren's symbol, compare to Hollywood Poland to polo, a symbol
still only to Jews? see Kosinski] on it "Your likely reaction is to
become apoplectic." Lauren examined the late Duke of Windsor's
clothes and was enchanted by his style. Duke antisemite and
collaborator. Selling the Wasp look to the goyim is like selling
ice to eskimos. There is nothing wrong with it as haberdashery-Lauren is raising the level of taste and providing good quality-but psychically it is fascinating. "No other designer, American or
European, manages to provoke such contempt while achieving so much
success." [yet no mention of Jewish angle, more a class thing and
the outrage of the aristocracy making it so easy to copy them. a
whole world created: napkin rings, rugs, towels. the first to sell
clothes as a self-concept. "wispy women, leathery cowboys" log
cabins, worn leather hairs "too consciously rustic" "too deeply
English." author writes very American, questions whether the critic
and snob "has a greater claim to chintz sofas and bearskin rugs."
Lauren the opposite of exclusionary, liberalism in clothes. Lauren:
"I liked his clothes, his style." author: "Which is to say, he
liked only what he saw." reproduced West before ever being there.
"driven as much by restlessness as insecurity." his office created
by those who did adds. points out that Bill Blass was from Indiana,
Halston in Iowa. "We were all born somewhere else." he says, but
not just geographical issue? or in America, perhaps it is. but once
told reporter he was in awe of Bill Blass. When getting Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America
by Audrey Hepburn, hugged her and told audience: "You want to know
what the lifetime achievement is? Steve, remember we went to the
movies in the Bronx 30 years ago? Remember the princess? I got
her." [Hepburn is a Dutch aristocrat, too] Not only the American
dream, but the assimilationist dream from Galicia and all the
little shtetls, and the migrants to Berlin and Vienna, and later to
Paris and London as well. very unconventional, contrasting with
stuffy image. If the critique is that he is rootless, outsider this
quality makes it all the easier for him to survey tastes, to bring
together the mass and the elite, to distill the essence. [this was
now bereft of any meaningful antisemitism but is interesting to
compare to a Viennese or German reaction 50, 100, or 150 years
earlier. The Jews' revenge.
remarkable to remember that Irving Berlin wrote White
Christmas, and Leonard Cohen wrote the Sisters of Mercy and the
second verse of Suzanne.
The golden shiksa
Association of Anglophilia with antisemitism in American
culture--Henry Adams, Henry James, T.S. Elliot
F. duck Angry displacement, "no direction home" no safe
ground, literally nothing sacred except the critique of everything
Mamet's character like all Jews in peaceful times has four
basic choices: to join his own people, to join the "oppressed
masses" meaning either liberal reform or radical revolution
35
depending on the individual and specific society; to integrate as
much as possible into the existing society (the more conservative
approach though it does not exclude number 2); or to be cynical in
thinking that no such path exists and that everything is rotten,
one gets along as well as one can. Mamet begins with three, flirts
with one and ends up with four.
Richard Alpert, thrown off Harvard psychology faculty in 1963
for advocacy of LSD, in India became a Hindu Ram Dass [Servant of
God] but then studying Jewish texts many years later. lives in
Marin county. His father was a founder of Brandeis but found
religious practice at home sterile, "Basically, we were liberal
Conservative. We only ate pork in Chinese restaurants." 1971 book
Be Here Now never denied Jewishness but used it as jokes. resisted
contact with community. 1991 visit to Dachau began process of
change to point Dass "appreciates that Judaism is a path to God."
took almost three decades to gain minimally over childhood trauma.
supposed tolerance but has such trouble even giving a little
ground. believes in reincarnation. but argues born into Judaism as
a stage in live "From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you
need to deal with and if you just try and push it away it's got you
in terms of your mind." [a form of Freudianism, since Jewishness is
a basic experience.]xxiv
Julia Phillips, You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again
compare Woody also NY, same business but different environment.
What in common?
it is strange to remember from the standpoint of the late
twentieth century and America that the Jews were once renowned for
the strength of the families.
G. duck Post-assimilation fashionable
The Odyssey of Reform
Ivan Reitman, Czech Jewish refugee made "Twins" and
"Ghostbusters" next to 1980s second only to Steven Spielberg in
box-office revenues. Arnold Schwarzenegger's main producer/director
(Hollywood makes strange bedfellows). his mother was in a
concentration camp, his father was caught and escaped. family got
out of Czechoslovakia after Communist takeover, to France, then
Canada in 1952. Hebrew day school, worked for dry-cleaning father,
successful producer in Canada, Zionist camps. French-Canadian wife
converted, bringing children up J, visited Israel.xxv
Israel less popular in contemporary Hollywood, Holocaust a
safer issue, Habad symbolizes the spirituality which one wouldn't
want to have for oneself but can support for others.
Habad has
drug rehabilitation programs and other non-sectarian projects.
Joseph Papp created Minyan of The Stars to observe holidays for
show business people. Succa in the Sky, a lavish succa on the 50th
floor of a Manhattan highrise. Joan Rivers, Still Talking said not
allowed in to Temple Emanu-el to say kaddish for husband because
arrived late for YK services. supporters include Issur Danielovich
Demsky (Kirk Douglas), Neil Sedaka, Dustin Hoffman, Aaron Chwatt
(Red Buttons), Goldie Hawn (TA Cinemateque), George Segal, Leonard
Goldstein (Tony Randall), Nathan Birnbaum (George Burns). American
36
Friends of Peace Now and New Israel Fund turn to Richard Dreyfuss
and Barbara Streisand, latter donated a wing of HU in honor of
father a Hebrew teacher. Yitzhak Eddie Asner (Ed Asner) religious
upbringing. Woody Allen 1988 Times op-ed. Douglas especially active
(but son?) Barry Levinson 1990 "Avalon" word Jewish not mentioned.
sitcoms have one character. so reverse of expected assimilation
pattern, less so than earlier decades. perhaps in response to
nearness of end.
H. Choices
Not discussed explicitly save perhaps in Roth and in 1950
Asimov novel, Pebble in the Sky: the Kafka hero Joseph (note)
Schwartz is thrown into the far future, when earth is a backward
planet under occupation by humans from the stars who forget that it
was the birthplace of humanity. Now earthmen are considered
repulsive. 43: "What planet has so much ritual in its daily life
and adheres to it with such masochistic fury?" 43-44 An Earthman
apologist explains, "We are no different from you of the outer
worlds, merely more unfortunate. We are crowded here on a world all
but dead, immersed within a wall of radiation that imprisons us,
surrounded by a huge Galaxy that rejects us." As long as prejudice
"and as long as we of Earth are treated as pariahs, you are going
to find in us the characteristics to which you object." hating they
hate, being pushed they push. Dr Shekt, the earthman. Earth had
revolted three times "under the banner of a claimed ancient
greatness." and failed. breaking with Custom is a capital offense.
The Society of Ancients claims that earth was the past center and
future center of humanity. destroying the empire. which wants them
to "abandon their cliquishness, their outdated and offensive
`Customs.' Let them be men and they will be considered men. Let
them be Earthmen and they will be considered only as such." says an
imperial official. p. 64. An earth scientist discovers that a band
of fanatics are planning to use bacteriological warfare to wipe out
all other humans. "anti-Terrestrianism" "Give us but the chance,
and a new generation of Earthmen would grow to maturity, lacking
insularity and believing wholeheartedly in the oneness of Man."
Assimilationists versus Zealots, scientist betrays the earth plot.
asks to intercede against reprisal. the bias has some basis,
However, Schwartz sides with earth but realizes he has more in
common with Outsiders and destroys the toxin, saving the universe,
convinced this is better. The moderates took over but then normal
soil being delivered they would remake their own planet. to "build
once again the home of their fathers" laboring with their hands,
"making the desert blossom in beauty once again." pp. 221-2.
"making the desert bloom." Asimov a strong assimilationist but his
ending has it both ways.
Isaac Asimov, In Memory Yet Green strong ego it takes to be a
last Jew. 44: "Every greenhorn was embarrassed and humiliated fifty
times a day through an ignorance that was not his fault. All selfrespect was gone, all feeling of intelligence. It was as though one
were the focus of laughter--and this was from other Jews." the
37
gentiles couldn't tell the difference and the Jews didn't care what
the Gentiles thought. "my parents went from top to bottom in the
space of time it took them to go from Petrovichi to Brooklyn." 67:
no religious training "I was spared the great need of breaking with
an Orthodox past and, after having done so, of playing the
hypocrite for the benefit of pious parents, as so many of my
generation had to." 178: the dramas "I found inexpressibly dreary"
because they dealt with long-suffering, noble immigrant parents and
their
ungrateful
Americanized
children.
178:
isolated
in
neighborhood but when moved to Gentile neighborhood did not observe
the Sabbath or kosher any more. no traumas or soul-searching in
realizing the Bible was primitive legends
Asimov. Jerusalem Report, April 23, 1992, pp. 31-2. but went
beyond Anglo-Saxon hero into anti-hero. A critic wrote "Asimov
attends no Jewish religious functions, follows no Jewish rituals,
obeys no Jewish dietary laws, and yet he never, under any
circumstances, leaves any doubt that he is Jewish." this view is
somewhat out of date, though, since he also joined no Jewish
organizations, did not visit Israel, supported no Jewish causes.
Like the nineteenth-century figures who did not convert only
because it was demeaning, but he does not because there is nothing
he wants to convert to. "I really dislike Judaism," Asimov once
said. "It's a form of particularly pernicious nationalism. I don't
want humanity divided into these little groups that are firmly
convinced, each one, that it is better than the others. Judaism is
the prototype of the `I'm better than you' group--we are the ones
who invented this business of the only God....I have a deep,
abiding historical guilt about that. And every once in a while,when
I'm not careful, I think that the reason Jews have been persecuted
as much as they have has been to punish them for having invented
this pernicious doctrine." a) of course, those who did the
punishing were the ones who also believed it (and, of course, many
of those in Biblical times thought the same thing, viewing God as
being for their nation) b) perhaps science fiction is to project a
future of cosmopolitan, non-national earth, but it is also fiction.
felt like traitor so tried to make up "by making sure that everyone
knows I'm a Jew, so while I'm deprived of the benefits of being
part of the group, I am sure that I don't lose any of the
disadvantages, because no one should think I am denying my Judaism
in order to gain certain advantages." indeed, this is Woody Allen
view, but also leads to thinking being Jewish is only disadvantage-an idea Rachel Varnhagen would have understood. Moreover, it is a
profoundly reactionary doctrine disguised as progressive--like
early emancipation by individual talent, transferring attention to
own ego, not humanity or group. Seeking advantage by portraying
oneself as noble but has no content--though for Asimov, as others,
it was pure science and anything short of that was superstition.
Eugene L. Meyer, "The Massacre At Volozhin," Washington Post,
May 31, 1992 European ancestors thought of "as 16th-century Hasids.
Fiddlers on the Roof with long beards and payess, sideburn curls of
the ultra-Orthodox. They were remote, alien, manifestly un-
38
American. This made it easier for me to distance myself in any but
the most impersonal way from the unpleasantness of the Holocaust."
grew up in the 1950s, "I marched in Memorial Day parades to the
Roslyn, Long Island duck pond, where wreaths were laid at monuments
to Our American Fighting Men. At home, an American flag flew from
the garage, but no mezuza adorned our front door." and most of
family had changed name from Perski to Pearson (or in the case of
one Perski to Lauren Bacall. In Israel, Shimon Peres) "In college,
I joined a non-Jewish fraternity. I even took offense once when, as
an adult, a Swedish Jew in Stockholm called me a landsman; I am a
person, not an ethnic group, I thought." turning point: seeing
pictures of relatives in book on Volozhin as having died in
Holocaust. and in the end says "I now have the answer to those most
basic of questions: Who Am I? What am I? an American and a Jew as
well, as well as profession and family role. "In this knowledge
there is comfort, and also a small knot of fear."
implicit
intermarriage
argument
on
television
"Thirtysomething" and in a huge number of films and programs both
well-known and obscure, as explicit part of plot or as subtlety.
this is the granting of the wish to deal with Jews in film.
Jerusalem Report, April 16, 1992, pp. 35-6. play "Sight
Unseen," humorous drama by Donald Margulies [married to non-Jew]
about a successful American Jewish artist in London. written for
Jewish Repertory Theater, one play about the shiva for the death of
a mother who chokes on Chinese food (how about this: no dairy with
meat). character has non-Jewish girlfriend; when interviewed by a
German journalist who calls him a Jewish artist he is quick to
correct saying American but takes every criticism or question of
paintings as attack on Jewish people, belligerent, defensive,
character skipped father's shiva to come to London [the cultural
message of America--success is more important than anything]. the
author was dismayed by some critics assessment of the German
journalist as an antisemite. he leaves it open as to whether she is
antisemitic or he is overly sensitive, but leaves aside the
implication that an antisemite is a person who identifies someone
as a Jew, the good Christian is one who ignores this fact.
duck Conclusion
But ultimately the question must be asked, Chutzpah for what?
what is the goal, a touch anger and pride but which exists only
when pushed? which sleeps when it is not being insulted. satirized
by Woody Allen's character at the beginning of Annie Hall who
transmutes the question, "Did you eat?" to "Did Jew eat?"
Jerry Seinfeld, woman obsessed, very Jewish persona but all
implicit, NY intellectual type, instantly recognizable but no
particular content. Brooklyn born. Scientology, mediation and yoga.
"I'm very interested in Eastern thought and I like to explore a lot
of different ways of thinking."xxvi
Racial antagonism, on both sides of the color line but
primarily white, is the antisemitism of America.
in America, one has both the exaggerated idealism and
universalism of the left and the exaggerated paranoia of the right,
39
both Jewish products.
In America, ethnic identity--except, perhaps, for foods which
become universally accepted; Jews eat in Chinese or Italian
restaurants, WASPs eat bagels--does not have ongoing qualities but
is simply a matter of heredity.
movies "Shining Through"; "Stranger Among Us" Hasid detective
story; "Homicide."choice of heroes important, see Naked and the
Dead for a nebbish Jewish character. "Witness" the Amish Jerusalem
Report, August 13, 1992, p. 45. "charmingly anachronistic, and
their value system, based on New Testament principles [! can't be
too NT since Hasids also like that] of non-violence and turning the
other cheek, resonated appealingly among viewers." while they have
[this next part comes from the screenwriter an Orthodox Jew Robert
Avrech!] "this bucolic, pastoral landscape, this sea of golden
wheat, and they all look wonderful. The hasidism in this film, in
contrast, are seen within the framework of a horrible urban
nightmare where nobody looks good." in short, the Amish are Aryan
Hasidim. Sidney Lumet son of Yiddish actor and had been a child
actor on that stage himself, "The Pawnbroker," "Bye Bye,
Braverman," and "Daniel." Avrech called booing by French film
critics antisemitism, because he spoke of anti-Jewish sentiment in
France and terms it "cultural genocide" because producers didn't
want to do the project. without being critical of Lumet, the point
was that to make a Hollywood plot had to violate Hasidism's
reality--genius son of rebbe working in diamond district, spending
time alone with woman.
people walking around with a chip on their shoulder
desperately waiting for someone to knock it off. because this-fighting antisemitism is their only rationale for being [Asimov,
etc.] in Jewish terms, if no one persecutes have no personality as
Jews [some displace on persecution of anybody] thus, in a sense,
hoping it will happen. qualifies them as among the persecuted,
underdogs. antisemitism is defined as the identification of the
Jews as dominant, powerful, rich. The Jew is not someone with a
particular culture and history but someone with a record of
persecution and alienation. [Chinese curse, may you live in
interesting times]. persecution, alienation, division if not of
loyalties of consciousness become addictions, the edge, the high.
Or is Ralph Lauren like the Hollywood moguls who sold small
town values and established it as the American paradigm.
Jane Horwitz, "The Strangers Among Us," Washington Post, July
19, 1992, subtitled, "Hollywood's Troubling Inability to Portray
Jews as Real People." [an innate problem: must be sentimental or
otherwise could seem antisemitic, a problem the Yiddish novelists
didn't face.) "short-hand stereotyping." "Enemies, a Love Story"
"Crimes and Misdemeanors" "self-hate" of "White Palace" Fievel
Mousekewitz has parents with Yiddish accents. did the movie
industry's inability to deal with Jewishness also handicap it on
dealing with other ethnic/national groups? "Crossing Delancey"
"Baron Fink". "Homicide" concludes that the isolated outsider pose
is the only one that doesn't lead to disaster. "Avalon" Barry
40
Levinson, Krichinsky family they "have no spiritual life"
Thanksgiving and Fourth of July but no religious holidays, how know
Jewish? "the accents, the one-liners--shtick masquerading as
substance." but in "White Palace" what identifies them are "East
Coast accents, their arrogance, their expensive dress, their overly
decorated homes." "In `Avalon' the Jews live a positive stereotype
but deny who they are. In `White Palace,' they live a negative
stereotype and still deny who they are." but is that all so
inaccurate?
idea of ethnic/national, a fragment of a nation which has come
to America and is now part of that country without losing its
distinctiveness.
Henry Feingold, "The American Jewish Experience," in Gordis
and Ben Horin, Jewish Identity in America *raw notes*
p. 78
American individualsim threatens Jewish community, "From the need
for a quorum for prayer to the rituals of birth, marriage, and
death, Judaism is [group oriented]. The covenant is between the
Jewish people and the one God, not merely each individual Jew. In
America that corporate communal character is diminished. In its
place there are 5.5 million tribes of one. The free secular Jew
chooses those aspects of the religious culture which please him.
His criteria for belonging are comfort and convenience, which are
important in the American secular life-style. Like all modern men
his loyalties, after commitment to self, are multiple. The American
Jew is no longer only Jewish. He is also a lawyer and professional,
a golfer anxious to better his game, and an American, committed to
all that entails. Many of the trappings of traditional Judaism have
been abandoned. Survey researchers ask the definition of
Jewishness, and American Jews are hard-pressed to answer." p. 79
but if apart from tradition are rarely hostile to what their
parents once were.
Sir Jacob Epstein, "I am most often rather annoyed than
flattered to be told that I am the best or foremost Jewish
artist. Surely to be an artist is enough."xxvii
theories that no contradiction exists usually fall. Jewish
philanthropists gave millions of dollars to help establish New York
University's Martin Luther King Afro-American Center only to find
its director saying Jews castrated blacks and practiced genocide in
black neighborhoods.xxviii
1969 p. 218: In December, 250 students picketed CJFWF's annual
conference, demanding it put more emphasis on "Jewish values" and
Judaism.
R. Alter, America and Israel p. 8 that the Jew has become an
American cultural hero is "unfortunate...a sort of mythical image
in which there are many bogus elements....For intellectuals, the
Jew is the symbol of alienation," which they see as a good thing.
"If you are alienated you have cut loose all the ties and bonds
which cripple you morally, which obscure your vision, which stupefy
your imagination so that you accept the false and hypocritical or
at least superficial assumptions of bourgeois society.
So to be
alienated, to feel that you really don't belong, that you're an
41
outsider, an outcast, is to be born morally and to have a true
perception of what the human condition is.
Rosenfeld, for instance, tore himself away from his Jewish
family and milieu, and was thus alienated. He interpreted his
experience--of accepting alienation to break away from the Jewish
context, into the exact opposite--that isolation "was the essence
of being a Jew." In a distinctly unintellectual if not antiintellectual era of the 1950s--when political radicalism was
stifled or discredited and the status quo seemed immune to change,
alienation was seen as a moral stance, intellectuals seemed to be
saying to the Jews: "You people know. You're alienated. You come
from a long history and tradition of alienation. Tell us what it's
all about so we can be alienated too."
p. 9 "Many Jews leaving the community of Jewish life in the
modern period became alienated, but Jews have also been strongly
community-oriented
people,
family-oriented,
and
though this
orientation away from the individual toward the group obviously has
its dangers, and can be psychologically or morally harmful, there
is no question that it has its very strong positive side; but the
preachers of alienation seem to leave out this whole aspect of
group solidarity among Jews." "So let's say, Lenny Bruce is a more
authentic Jew than Ben Gurion or Martin Buber. Or perhaps the most
Jewish people of all are the black militants.
(A turnaround from old view: assimilate to avoid alienation,
now assimilate by being alienated)
The Jew has come to be a magical, fascinating, appealing
person because he is distinctive. If you look around to see what
has happened to American society in the post-World War II period,
you'll find a lot of flattening out, of homogenization.
ethnic groups, as geographical groupings, as religious groups,
is disappearing.
p. 10 Yiddishisms become part of the American vocabulary to
such an extent that by 1960 one could find Yiddish obscenities in a
novel by Robert Warren set in Tennessee. "The Jew has a special
language, a unique system of gestures, a different kind of history
which goes much further back than that of other Americans, a
different cuisine, a kind of humor and irony that other Americans
don't have, the colorfulness and pathos which other Americans
aren't supposed to possess any more."
that world of Sholem Aleichem which did have its spiritual
riches and its human depth, was after all, a very grim world. It
was a world constricted by Czarist repression, a world in which
Jewish families lived in miserable one-room shacks as Negro tenant
farmers in the South live now.
the shtetl community could also be painfully coercive.
p. 11 the material has for American readers this added appeal
of the exotic. certain very visible aspects of all this activity
are quite phony, less evidence of a renaissance than a lack of
authentic cultural life among American Jews; but if one goes beyond
the images of the Jew as a cultural hero, the Jew as an alienated
man, as the new embodiment of pathos, of colorfulness and all the
42
rest in American life, we find that the medium of fiction has also
been used as a serious means for American Jews to explore the
social and moral conditions of their own lives in this country.
p. 16 Roth in this respect that he is unfortunately a rather
typical product of the Jewish cultural and educational system for
people of his generation, where the Bar Mitzvah was an empty
experience, the Cheder an exercise in non-education; where his
experience of Jewishness was a family structure and community,
which on the one hand had moments of warmth and reassurance but
could also be smothering, cloying, hateful, and could make him feel
desperately that he needed to escape.
Roth clearly has an extraordinary recall of the minute details
of what it was like to be a child and a teenager in an Eastern
urban center during the 1940s. If you look at Portnoy's Complaint,
for instance, you have the recall of all the minor characters on
Jack Benny, the complete lineup for the Giants and the Dodgers,
circa 1943, the peculiar batting habits of Duke Snyder, the ten
most popular songs on the Hit Parade of 1944, and so forth.
p. 17 At the novel's end, "Portnoy flees from Athens to
Israel, (a comically symbolic itinerary, of course)." and arrives
in Israel, "Roth has been to Israel, but you could never guess it
from the novel" because every aspect of his description of the
country and the Israelis is either completely wrong or very much
outdated. His portrayal of two women are "an especially grotesque
caricature" "There is no novelistic realism at all in there."
[Israel not an alternate but a toy to be manipulated as a mirror
for American Jews.]
p. 6 [Jewish effect on American culture, the revenge of the
nerds, the triumph of the misfits, the victory of the outsiders]
1953 was the turning point.
Augie March is, on the one hand, a
novel of ghetto experience about a young man, the son of Jewish
immigrants, growing up among people who are almost all Jews with
all kinds of distinctively Jewish habits, mores, gestures and so
forth.
Yet, on the other hand, Augie March is very much an
American novel, and it tells you this from the first word.
The book begins, "I am an American, Chicago born,"--virtually
throwing down the gauntlet to the American reader and American
literary tradition.
That is, "I, a Jew grown up in a
Yiddish-speaking milieu, born in Chicago, am an American like all
other kinds of Americans. This is one legitimate variant of the
American experience."
pp. 5-6 "For the first time, a novelist of an immigrant
background flaunts his immigrant background," incorporating it in
pluralist American culture "rather than adopting the chameleon-like
camouflage of the facsimile WASP and submitting himself to the WASP
hegemony. This is, I think, a crucial turning point in American
literature," but not the end of the problems of American Jewish
writers with Jewish material. They knew the life of Jews best but
also don't want to be limited, locked out of the mainstream of
American fiction, in short, unassimilated. The results include
Bellow's Henderson the Rain King "where there are no Jews anywhere
43
in sight. The hero, Henderson, is a big 6-foot-4, hairy-chested,
muscular, Westchester County millionaire whom we see at the
beginning of the novel wallowing among pigs." Similarly, Malamud's
first novel, The Natural, is about baseball--a key American myth
(but there is also Jewish baseball, Brooklyn, radios playing
through the windows on hot sumer days) and Philip Roth's, When She
Was Good, so self-consciously "American" that it is set in
Libertyville in "the middle of America" and all the characters are
Protestants of "Nordic or Anglo-Saxon descent, with blue eyes and
flaxen hair and snub noses and all the rest of it." In most cases,
the limits on their knowledge make these books more or less, "a
rehashing of stereotypes". Thus, the American Jewish writer--at
least of that generation, but not the following one?--is both
trapped and advantaged by his Jewish material.
L. Abel, The Intellectual Follies p. 258 his father, a Reform
rabbi taught him about God and the Jews customs "And this faith I
chose to abandon (also at an early age), and not for some
alternative faith, but for no faith at all." One reason was the
embarrassment of not wanting to be different from other children in
the small town public schools who were not Jewish, reading, and
reacting against father's indoctrination for Jewish things. p. 259
my father's fervor for "Jewishness" was, I thought, and still
think, political through and through.
Being a rabbi, his
enthusiasm for things Jewish served his interests - this I knew.
But how, I wanted to know, could a like enthusiasm serve mine?
[rejection of self-interest for self, though acceptance for others]
For he was egotistical about being Jewish, as he was
egotistical about every one of his personal traits and even his
oddest personal habits, some of which were no end strange. I knew
that he would have taken pride in whatever creed had been foisted
on him from birth.
He was one hundred per cent for whatever he
was, and I, as it fell out, was not for him.
Jews, if mentioned in literature at all, were not treated
favorable.
J. Cohen, The Essential Lenny Bruce p. 51 "every kind of shule
--a drive-in shule, Frank Lloyd Wright shule, West Coast
shule...that A-frame shule that they just put the statues in: `Are
you putting a madonna in the shule?' 'Yes, its' contemporary."
Reformed rabbis who are "so reformed they're ashamed they're
Jewish." They sound like British gentlemen, "This sabbath we
discuss Is-roy-el. Where is Is-roy-el? Quench yon flaming yortsite
candle!...Do you know, someone had the chutz-pah to ask me, `Tell
me something, doctor of law, is there a god, or not?' What cheek!
To ask this in a temple! We're not here to talk of God--we're here
to sell bonds for Israel!" And then afterward speaks off-guard in a
Yiddish accent, "Ya like dot? Vat de hell, tossetoff de top mine
head, dot's all." so there are more shules and the mezuzahs are
empty or at most have a paper inside that says "Made in Japan."
p. 51 "Now the Jews celebrate this holiday, Rose-o-shonah and
Yom-Ky-Poor, where they, actually, they celebrate the killing of
Christ. Underground. You know, when they all get loaded, and you
44
know, they just. `Oh ho ho! We killed him! Ho ho! More Chicken
soup!"
pp. 54-5 "Now, a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is
descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded
as descended from that tribe.
That's what it says in the
dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is--One Who Killed Our
Lord....We did this about two thousand years ago--two thousand
years of Polack kids whacking the shit out of us coming home from
school....Alright.
I'll clear the air once and for all, and
confess. Yes, we did it. I did it, my family. I found a note in
my basement. It said: `We killed him. signed, Morty.' And a lot of
people say to me, 'Why did you kill Christ?' `I dunno...it was one
of those parties, got out of hand....Or maybe it would shock some
people...to say that we killed him at his own request, because he
knew that people would exploit him....In Christ's name they would
exploit the flag, the Bible, and--whew!
Boy, the things they've
done in his name!"
p. 52 But Filipinos know this for sure: that as beautifully
liberal as any Jewish mother is--she'll march in every parade--yet,
let the daughter bring home a nice, respectable Filipino
son-in-law, with a nice, long, black foreskin and a gold tooth....
`Ma, this is my new husband. I met him at college.'
`Ahhhhhhhh Ahhhhhhhh!"
`He's a very sensitive man, and he's Phi Beta Kappa.'
`Ahhhhhhhh Ahhhhhhhh!' [are Js hypocritical, though, in
accepting integration and equal rights while being upset by
intermarriage? if no other reason is given for preserving Jewish
people than this does seem irrational--purely prejudicial (the real
test would be whether the parents would react the same way if
brought home a WASP. Lenny dealt with own mom and theme occurs in
"My Favorite Year.")
p. 53 "Faye Bainter, Andy Hardy's mother, screwed up every
mother in the world....Dig, who can be like Faye Bainter, man?
Faye Bainter was always in the kitchen sweeping with an apron. And
Anglo-Saxon--and my mother was sweating and Jewish and hollering,
man. Why couldn't she be like Faye Bainter?" [not his mom]
pp. 53-4 [mutual rejection by mother/child, break up of family
over immigration strain] "Now we take you to a young boy who's
returning home from Fort Loeb.
But first we dissolve to the
interior of the home, on Second Avenue.
JEWISH MOTHER: Soon, he'll be home.
Our boy's comink home from
military school. I saved every penny vot ve had to bring him der
success dot der outside vorld vud neffer gif him. Ah, soon our boy
vill be home, from overseas in Delaware."
Meanwhile the kid is saying: KID [Ivy League voice]: I don't
wanna be there with those Mockies!
I don't wanna look at them
anymore, with their onion-roll breaths. I found something new at
Fort Loeb, and a girl who doesn't know anything about the Lower
East Side."
p. 56 "Dig: I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is
Jewish. Eddie Cantor's goyish. B'Nai Brith is goyish; Hadassah,
45
Jewish. Marine corps--heavy goyim, dangerous. Koolaid is goyish.
All Drake's Cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish, and, as you
know, white bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes--goyish. Black
cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are very Jewish--very Jewish
cake. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime jello is goyish. Lime soda is
very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that Jews; won't go near
them.
Jack Paar Show is very goyish. Underwear is definitely
goyish. Balls are goyish. Titties are Jewish. Mouths are Jewish.
All Italians are Jewish. Greeks are goyish--bad sauce. Eugene
O'Neill--Jewish; Dylan Thomas, Jewish."
Jennifer Bailey, Norman Mailer Quick Change Artist
p. 30
existential hipster(The Jew, having been the most bound by
tradition becomes the most free) moral indifference to his actions'
consequences. Mailer insists that with the removal of 'every social
restraint or category man would become more creative than murderous
and so would not destroy himself.'
p. 31 he expresses the buried infant within himself and
represents the affirmation of the barbarian, for it requires a
primitive passion about human nature to believe that individual
acts of violence are always to be preferred to the collective
violence of the State'
p. 33 "the wise primitive in a giant jungle'
p. 34 He abandons her, waits till she unwillingly pleads for
more and then buggers her. When he feels her hanging back, he says
'"You dirty little Jew"' (414) which finally carries her to her
climax.
p. 38 he stabbed his wife, Adele Morales, barely missing her
heart, putting into practice the violence he advocated in 'The
White Negro' and discovered '"it was phony...It wasn't me"'.
p. 42 Rather than aspire to integration with the uniform
middle of American life, the member of a minority group should
maintain his social alienation.
He will then feel 'as if he
possesses God and the Devil within himself, that the taste of his
own death is already in his cells, that his purchase on eternity
rises and falls with the calm or cowardice of his actions'.
p. 54 metaphor for Mailer's creative will
p. 55-6 Immediately after he murders Deborah, Rojack goes into
the bathroom and experiences a heightening of the senses similar
like a drug. Finally, he looks in the mirror: "My hair was alive
and my eyes had the blue of a mirror held between the ocean and the
sky - they were eyes to equal at last the eyes of the German who
stood before me with a bayonet...I looked deeper into the eyes in
the mirror as if they were keyholes to a gate which gave on a
palace, and asked myself,'Am I now good? Am I evil for ever?'"
p. 58 a sexual marathon with Deborah's German maid, Ruta
p. 68 "A FRUSTRATED ACTOR"
p. 91 confrontations, occurs with the American Nazi and the US
marshal in the truck that will take them to jail.
"'You Jew bastard', he shouted.
'Dirty Jew with kinky
hair.'They didn't speak that way. It was too corny. Yet he could
only answer, 'You filthy Kraut'.
46
'Dirty Jew.'
'Kraut pig.'" [playing at being a hero like Richler but never
actually doing anything. Mailer revels in finally finding the
antisemite he has been seeking, needing to complete his self-image
and, of course, to vanquish easily. It is a postulate of
assimilation--or
more
specifically
incomplete
or frustrated
assimilation--to feel the need for antisemites just as in its
milder, more adjusted form, it cannot imagine life without
gentiles.]
The Almost Unpublished Lenny Bruce p. 9 "Goyish" means
Christian but that is not the way I mean to use it. To me, if you
live in New York or any major city, you are Jewish--doesn't matter
if you're Catholic or Italian or what have you--you're Jewish if
you live in New York. But if you live in Butte, Montana, you're
Goyish even if you're Jewish. In other words, evaporated milk is
Goyish even if the Jews invented it. Chocolate is Jewish and fudge
is Goyish, Spam is Goyish and rye bread is Jewish, etc.
My basic problem stems from my guilt about being a bad boy. My
Mother and Father have been fanatically devoted to me all my life,
but their devoted fanaticism is dwarfed by their addiction to
Judaism.
They are devout Orthodox Jews.
This has been a big
divider between my parents and myself for years. They are in their
twilight years now, and I realize, according to their standards,
the disgrace and humiliation I must have caused them. [retreat from
assimilation to break out in a different direction]
In his myth, refused to be bar mitvahed, discovered the rabbi
exposed himself on the subway so made a deal. he told Bruce's
parents that he couldn't learn and Bruce kept his secret. "I heard,
years later, that his career had been cut short when someone had
shoved him at an inopportune time as the doors closed." (Dylan,
Midler, etc., propaganda, all is phony.)
Getting back to being Jewish, my Father didn't give up
however;
he drilled me with the Talmud, daily.
Things were
looking brighter until I fell in love with a girl - horror of
horrors - who wasn't Jewish.
But I thought the fact that her
Father was a Doctor would soothe my family.
He was the only
colored doctor in Freeport, Long Island.
When I brought Rebecca and her Father over to the house for
dinner at my Mother's suggestion ("Nu, so bring Beckie and her
Totta over and I'll make a kigel"), I forgot that I hadn't
mentioned what nationality they were...it didn't seem to matter.
When my Mother answered the door, the Doc introduced himself. My
Mother turned a darker shade than Beckie and the Doctor.
These
incidents seem to add up. I never saw Beckie after that. But now
that my parents are going down the home stretch, I am really trying
to be Jewish.
p. 10 For a while, and it's still prevalent, mention of Jews
or being Jewish was a sticky subject.
Miami Beach, which is at
least 75 percent Jewish during the season, is so sick that owners
who are Jewish request the performers, who are usually Jewish, "not
to work so Jewish. The people want to get away from that."
47
Well, fortunately, by some twist of Fate, it's becoming in to
be Jewish. Sammy Davis, Jr., started it and now all the hippies
dig it...Even Baby Doll Carroll Baker and Elizabeth Taylor. Even
the Vikings were Jewish: Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas. The only
Gentile was Ernest Borgnine, and he got killed....Seriously,
though, even the best-sellers in books are Jewish, such as Exodus
and Only In America.
And the best Broadway shows like Paddy
Chayefsky's Tenth Man are Jewish.
(civil rights integration: as Jews dealing with assimilation
from the inside out)
Robert Alter, After the Tradition, p. 112 the Jew is often
portrayed "as the archetype of modern alienation" yet this had
never been true historically. [Jews were not outsiders because they
were Jews but because they were assimilated enough to have lost old
community without being completely in new one] Jews "were not
alienated from themselves...they were merely considered aliens by
people whom they tended to look down upon." They did not "revel in
suffering; they lived on terms of contemptuous familiarity with
it," never thinking of suffering "as a means of fulfillment or a
condition indispensable to human life."
p. 116 Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, for example, "a novel of
immigrant experience...the principal characters happen to be Jews"
but everything could be transferred to "a family from some other
immigrant group. (American Jewish novels focus unrelentingly on
consciously isolated individuals while East European Yiddish novels
were about communities)
p. 120 The "idea of Jewishness as imprisonment occurs in The
Assistant which "is suffused with images of claustrophobic
containment, and Morris Bober's grocery, which is the symbolic
locus of being a Jew with all the hard responsibilities entailed
thereby, is frequently referred to as a prison.
Sandra Bernhard, Confessions of a Pretty Lady, "I dream about
some Christmas a long time ago, walking to school in snowdrifts up
to my chest. I'm just trying to make it home, for a big bowl of
Campbells' bean-with-bacon soup and a bologna sandwich with Miracle
Whip, cut crosswise the way our maid always does it
in America, transcendence from the all too narrow confines of banal
life are provided by horror and fantasy movies, conspiracy
theories, self-improvement cults and other dubious ventures.
Rachel Brenner, Assimilation and Assertion: The Response to
the Holocaust in Mordechai Richler's Writings (NY, 1989). p. 5
Kazin New York Jew "the faster time carried us away from it, the
closer the gas came. It stole up our skin without our always
knowing it...the abyss was at our feet because we believed in
nothing so much as what Trilling called `the life of the mind.' The
life of the mind was of no use unless it addressed itself to the
gas. And what then? Letters of fire had been read at Nurenberg
[check spelling]." but it took years, even decades, for the effect.
Kazin recalls "the left had nothing to say, did not even include
the gas in its summary view of Hitlerism as the latest decadent
48
stage of capitalism. The right excused everything and everyone:
there is evil in all of us." [check note 20 for that chapter]
p. 6 Howe [check note 25] "We might scorn our origins; we
might crush America with discoveries of ardor; we might change our
name. But we knew that but for an accident of geography we might
also now be bars of soap. At least some of us could not help
feeling that in our earlier claims to have shaken off all ethnic
distinctiveness
there
had
been
something
false,
something
shaming....But Jews we were, like it or not and liked or not."
p. 8 Arthur Miller, Incident at Vichy Jew as symbol of
universal victim, alienated from the rest of the world and
condemned to suffering [nothing left but as victim, hollow men, the
suffering servant, a mirror reflection of the traditional Christian
view. it is not surprising that this would be the view of the
largely--but not completely--assimilated liberals who wanted to
show something of their Jewishness. Kafka, the Jew as defendant but
Kafka knew more, the devolution of Jewish knowledge. typical of the
1950s/1960s view along with hipster, Mailer, Bruce, and so on, q
from play [check quote] "Jew is only the name we give to that
stranger, that agony we cannot feel....Each man has his Jew; it is
the other. And the Jews have their Jews." [just that last point to
show that Jews are no better, no special favor, Miller neutral.
Goes back to 1848 view of presenting Jewish needs as subsumed in
universal, but back then still knew that there were Jewish needs
separate from universal] nothing special or particular about
antisemitism. but creates a conflict: how to explain becomes
harder.
p. 9 Mailer [check quote] the hipster exists by acting "to
divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots...to explore
the domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore
sickness."
p. 10: rage and mistrust from the hatred of Jews; helplessness
and impotence made want to flee suffering through liberal humanist
myth. Canadian Jews very nonconfrontational makes him angry at
them, a rebel and a fighter--an angry young man. 17 profound
mistrust of the Gentile world, author: "The wish to assimilate is
constantly mitigated by the sense of historic and personal
injustice inflicted by the gentile world." so liberal ideology
undermined by consciousness of suffering. 88 parents teach children
to seek social success and fame achieved away from ghetto and
children follow this blueprint. so placate goyim rather than
confront them. leaders come from being big financial givers, which
has
an
effect
on
leaders
while
alienating
and
angering
intellectuals. the gap between the Holocaust and the construction
of big fancy synagogues, while Jews being killed in Europe, "in
Canada we had never had it so good."
p. 89 Richler insists that appeasement and submissiveness will
never achieve security for the Jews. This is not true but the real
point is that survival is the optimal comfort and wealth rather
than raising generation proud of its heritage. no Jewish ideals
worth fighting for had been passed down, that is why young Jews
49
abandon community and will support any oppressed minority except
their own. author: "The older generation presents the young with a
paradoxical proposition. they are expected to `make it' in a world
they cannot trust; they are supposed to build their future in the
Gentile world and, at the same time, to believe that `Scratch the
best goy and you find the worst antisemite.'" The idea of the
1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were remarkably like those of the 1850s,
1860s, and 1870s, form an alliance and fight for others rights;
free themselves of fear and mistrust of past, mutual interest with
liberal causes, the rationality of ethics: merge pragmatism and
morals. It is both right and advantageous and expected others to
act likewise. Richler's character can equate a minor problem with
U.S.customs to the Holocaust.
93 compare to Homicide, self-assertion becomes an end in
itself, the character is so aggressive with American officials, so
ready to fight that he makes things worse. so Jews in America are
supposed to be submissive, this is what Gentiles expect.
NOTES
i. Washington Post, June 27, 1991.
ii. Bruno Bettelheim, Surviving, and other essays (NY, 1979), p.
392.
iii. The Economist, June 15, 1991.
iv. Baumgarten, p. 42.
v. Ted Solotaroff, "American-Jewish Writers: On Edge Once More,"
New York Times Book Review, December 18, 1988, pp. 1, 31.
vi. Ibid.
vii. Ibid., p. 33.
viii. Murray Baumgarten, City Scriptures: Modern Jewish Writing
(Cambridge, Ma., 1982), pp. 24-25.
50
ix. Diana Trilling, letter to New Republic, April 6, 1992, p. 4.
x. Washington Post, November 11, 1991.
xi. Thomas Edwards, "Vita Nuova," New York Review of Books, October
13, 1988.
xii.
Stuart
Schoffman,
"Bugsy's
Masquerade,"
Jerusalem
Report,
March 26, 1992.
xiii. Washington Post, November 27, 1991.
xiv. Washington Post, July 22, 1990; Variety, November 28, 1984.
xv. Washington Post, July 22, 1990.
xvi. The only other name mentioned in the headlines was Jack
Kerouac, who like Ginsberg, had a recording out.
xvii. Washington Post, September 9, 1987; Jerusalem Report, May 30,
1991.
xviii. Jerusalem Post, August 22, 1991.
xix. Washington Post, November 12, 1991.
xx. Washington Post, July 28, 1990.
xxi. Jerusalem Post, February 2, 1992.
xxii. Joel Lewis, "Looking for Lenny Bruce," Forward, September 6,
51
1991.
xxiii. Anna Husarska, "Urban Blight," New Republic, December 9,
1991, pp. 11-12.
xxiv. Jerusalem Report April 2, 1992, pp. 30-31.
xxv. Jerusalem Post, April 4, 1991.
xxvi. Washington Post, April 22, 1992.
xxvii. John R. Gilbert, Famous Jewish Lives, p. 252.
xxviii. Milton Goldin, Why They Give, pp. 216-7.
52
CHAPTER SIX
IN DUBIOUS BATTLES: THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT
Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich Bronstein) told a
village rabbi that the Revolution would bring the
Jews equality, justice, and prosperity. "All I know,"
said the rabbi, "is that the Trotskys may get the
power but the Bronsteins will get the blame."
--Apocryphal story
On the night of November 8, 1918, Werner Cahnman went out to
see what was happening in Munich's anarchic streets. Imperial
Germany had collapsed and just the night before, the socialist Kurt
Eisner had proclaimed the Bavarian Republic. The 16-year-old
Cahnman was a confirmed monarchist. His father asked a man on the
tram, "What do you think about the situation?" He answered, "The
Jew is sitting on top!" Cahnman was shocked: what did his ultrarespectable middle class family have to do with revolutionaries?i
Indeed, the ill-fated Communist experiments just after World
War One in Germany--led by such anti-Jewish Jews as Eisner and Rosa
Luxemburg was called a "Jewish republic" by many Germans. The same
could be said of parallel movements in Hungary, Russia, and
elsewhere. Yet these groups had little interest in Jewish concerns
and received the support of only a minority of Jews. Still, the
identification of Jews with the left was a major image of the
twentieth century and one with a great deal of truth when applied
to Jewish artists and intellectuals.
The Jews, among the first to promote the idea of "progressive"
dictatorship were also among the first to abandon it. (some subtle
echo of the progressive monarchs of earlier centuries--Oliver
Cromwell, Napoleon, Joseph II--who in breaking with tradition also
were open to Jewish emancipation?
Ernst Bloch: militant optimism,
a struggle to ensure--in the words of two Czech Communist Jewish
martyrs--"singing tomorrows." [as ambitious outsiders, with fewer
prospects of rising among existing cultural institutions or
political parties, joined or created new ones. ] Intellectuals-especially Jewish ones--could not understand why these concepts
were so logical in their own heads and unworkable in reality.
socialism a denial of Judaism but also presented as its fulfillment
but socialists, like Reform Jews, used traditional Hebrew sources
to break with Jewish tradition
two years before first Zionist Congress, in August 1895,
Shmaryah Levin wrote from Warsaw, "Jews will always follow any
false prophet preaching in the name of justice and progress, who
will promise [the Jews] shamelessly and with unbridled chutzpa a
better future Here and Now."ii
The
Communists,
like
the
Christians--often
of
Jewish
background--persecuted the Jews who did not join their new creed
and dissolve themselves. The former Jew, starting with the early
Christians, was always most threatened by the continuing Jew, the
assimilationist by the activist
1
Concept of prophetic tradition
1. the philosophy of the left was that the Jews should assimilate
with the people, that the threat to the Jews came from the right,
that Jews themselves were divided by class, that the valuable part
of Judaism was its prophetic role demanding justice above all, to
create a heaven on earth. Yet there is a problem for, if the
people's will must always be foremost, than an anti-Jewish peoples
will must be acceptable; opportunism. q: anti-S is the socialism of
fools?
A paranoid element in style, since the right of center
are seen as, at best, rejecters of Jewish integration and at worst
closet fascists
the existing order has no legitimacy for its glories are ashes
compared to current--or past--persecution. 1. its claims to
legitimacy are not accepted. 2. its assumptions are not shared. 3.
its claims to justice were known to be false. 4. its status quo-either economic or psychological and social--not beneficial 4a. the
rich, the powerful, the aristocrats are not the cream of society
but thugs and parasites [after the decline of the court Jews, who
secured protection by relations to elite in parts of the Middle
Ages and in the early days of the banking system up to the last
quarter of the nineteenth century); the excluded are the virtuous;
the intellectuals are proper wielders of power. 5. at worst it shut
them out, at best it divided them off within their class. 6. but an
alternative is possible, establishing justice. 7. a set of laws
must control the nature of reality and they can be explored and
found (replacing the religious laws abandoned). Christians may be
appealed to by social justice or the imitation of Jesus but not so
much by the sense of underlying laws which is present in the Jewish
framework. 8. search for ideology to replace the lost one. (most
feel no need for ideology. 9. search for identity to replace the
old one (most feel no need since already have one). 10. view that
the
right/conservative
is
the
repository
of
historical
discrimination, current refusal to accept, and future persecution.
these attitudes reinforced by the rise of fascist movements but
even earlier the right closed to them without baptism and maybe
even with it. Once this pattern set it strengthened itself by the
force of example and hospitality. This set of attitudes strongest
in Europe between 1900 and 1950 but still found in diluted form
later. Not necessarily Communists but also socialists, anarchists
or left-leaning liberals.
Kim Chernin, In My Mother's House, (NY, 1983) 88 mother
Communist leader, talking of KKK and lynchings. "All this reminded
me of the pogrom; this we were used to for the Jews in Russia. But
here in America?" 91 when police in New York charged an unemployed
demonstration in the 1930s' to me it seemed we were standing in a
village and the cossacks were riding down." the Jewish analogy of
victimization was always available, arising bidden or unbidden to
the mind. 124 attitude to the USSR, There "the impossible was
happening. This made you feel that even to a worker, to a poor Jew,
even to a woman, the world, history even, the whole future
belonged." but daughter's discovery on trip that things were not
2
so, relatives said, 268-9: "To be a Jew in the Soviet Union I
wouldn't wish on my worst enemy." suffered from eating disorders,
became a lesbian.
But while the right was the "elite", could be siding against a
liberal or tolerant conservative elite (as in Weimar) or right
could also mobilize the population, sometimes some of the same ones
who were on left. As in the Marxist distortion of fascism, refusing
to accept it was a mass movement since that challenged the whole
concept.
Combined two approaches: a. combine with masses so can take
power and face society to treat Jews fairly but almost immediately
told that in order to gain their sides victory have to change
means, Jews fighting antisemitism can't be too obviously prominent
in leadership because that would alienate those same masses, this
fight not necessarily primary (third period). b. also see after
revolution in USSR and Eastern Europe wherever Jews are active in
numbers a new oppression of both community and Jewish Communists.
workers and peasants do not usually provide revolutionary
leaders but rather people with educations and/or middle to upper
class backgrounds, which are the almost unique qualifications of
the Jews. Jews in search of an ally, a historical moving force:
Paul Goodman and the young,
analogy to Christian role in A nationalism (Chinese in Malaya)
or other minorities in leftist movements. the closest thing to
clean slates. The difference between the rebelling first generation
which knew tradition and of those later who did not. The double
rebelling against tradition and authority/dominant culture which
had so long mistreated Jews, the feeling that all the values held
up and those honored are hypocrisy. in Bob Dylan's words,
"Propaganda, all is phony."
The Christian had grown used to thinking himself as part of
the mass and mainstream, the dominant group and hence could think
himself part of the proletariat; the Jew had an intellectual
structure of being part of the chosen, of the vanguard, a sense in
which radicalism justified itself by making him as an intellectual
part of the vanguard and a counter-elite to those in power. But
even the alienated Jew could not forget that trans-class
organizations existed (thus undermining notion of class) though
nationalism might be harder for him to conceive unless he was the
victim of it as happened in the 1930s.
In the true humanistic sense the Jews were to be allowed to
fight and sacrifice for the well-being of their fellows as long as
they ignored their own interests and to be vilified if they voiced
grievances beyond opposition to the right to dissipate.
Ausmus ix: "In our age, Spes, the goddess of hope, has become
the towering head of our modern pantheon" taking over from others.
The belief in some change which defies the preceding history. One
version is to say that the laws are headed toward something
different (Marx) utopian; another says we must uncover some truth
(Freud) and a third that the perspective given by the common victim
nature, harder to sentimentalize--though not to romanticize--the
3
masses and the average human behavior. The romantic part was the
belief that it could be made better easily if everyone would just
open their eyes and reject patterns and tradition as they had
done.The life outside tradition, outside anchorage
Jews below level they would otherwise have been at because
pushed and held down artificially by system historically and by
laws and bias. Transferred to proletariat or masses the artificial
nature of pushing down, the possibility of all classes being raised
up, the assumption that everyone had learned the lessons they had
learned of universalism, ethics, solidarity. There had to be some
proletariat and relatively poor in any system but the Jews did not
have to be in it as a group. Also, the system in many countries was
changing, letting them rise, and combination of impatience and the
pattern in which progress makes people most rebellious. Wishful
thinking, overestimated humanitarian instincts of fellow citizens.
Marx's doctrine an exercise in self-hatred, not only of self
as J but more broadly and philosophically of self as bourgeoisie,
intellectuals, and member of nation-states--and by later historical
extensions to ones being white or male in the 1960s versions.
duck 2. Marx and other early. 1844manuscripts Marx's family
history taught him about the hypocrisy of the law, authorities and
injustice; how drastically the framework of the state and its
thinking might change; made him a man without a strong identity and
a cynicism toward nationalism and religion, attitudes he then
assumed into history and into the minds of others.
Marx: "Where, then, is the positive possibility of a German
emancipation? In the formation of a class with radical chains, a
class of civil society which is not a class of civil society, an
estate which is the dissolution of estates, a sphere which has a
universal character by its universal suffering and claims no
particular right because no particular wrong but wrong generally is
perpetrated against it; which can no longer invoke a historical but
only a human title; which does not stand in any one-sided:
antithesis to the premises of the German state; a sphere, finally,
which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all
other spheres of society, which, in a word, is the complete loss of
man and hence can win itself only: through the complete rewinning
of man."iii 1844, introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy
of Law.
Trotsky/Luxemberg: Jewish Variant because a) most fanatically
anti-nationalist both in terms of their analysis and their
prescription; also the most utopian, sweeping aside existing
society and human limitations.
Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current, p. 225: He unconsciously
transferred bitterness at discrimination against himself to
identify his grievances with those of the insulted and oppressed
everywhere. He demanded and prophesied justice and revenge, making
the inevitable human assumption that others thought as he did. But
the psychological basis of this approach was indicated by his
hostility for the Jews as a repellent symptom of the existing
system. They were, in Berlin's summary, portrayed as "not a race,
4
or a nation, or even a religion to be saved by conversion to some
other faith or way of life, but a collection of parasites, a gang
of
money-lenders
rendered
inevitable
by
the
economically
self-contradictory and unjust society that had generated them - to
be eliminated as a group by the final solution to all social ills the coming, inescapable, universal, social revolution."
269: never mentioned Jewish background, references to
individual Jews--especially in letters to Engels--are virulent.
"His origin was evidently a personal stigma which he was unable to
avoid pointing out in others; his denial of the importance of
racial categories, his emphasis upon the international character of
the proletariat, takes on a peculiar sharpness of tone, directed as
it is against misconception of which he himself had been a
conspicuous victim." Lassalle his principal political rival in
life. 145-46 Hess favored socialism on ethical grounds and warned
that class warfare and violence were means which would destroy the
end. 4:KM Harsh, aggressive, lacking in introspection. merciless
laws of history. 25-33:Jews who had benefitted from Napoleon's
decrees of emancipation had to decide whether to abandon
emancipation or Judaism when the decrees were rescinded by the
restored German prices. Herschel Levi, descendant of rabbis,
received secular education, rationalist, detached from family
changed surname to Marx (he was his own ancestor) legal practice.
1816 anti-Jewish laws cut off his livelihood, had no strong
attraction to church, became Lutheran early in 1817. Heine/Disraeli
remained with a foot on both sides. complexity of position
"perpetually suspicious of latent contempt or condescension
concealed beneath the fiction of their complete acceptance b the
society in which they lived." Hersh became a passionate Prussian
patriot and monarchist. (thus a reactionary) took Christian name
Heinrich. timid. when said favored mild reforms under the wise and
benevolent ruler, the police looked into it and he retracted.
believed that human emancipation was dawning. Hess: the proletariat
could not be left out of emancipation, private property was the
source of all evil, national frontiers should be removed, a new
rational society. Hess converted Friedrich Engels to communism.
1844: Bruno Bauer had written that the Jews need to be baptized
before emancipation. Marx said Jews purely economic and all
European society had to be emancipated. the Jewish question was not
a real problem and hence was not his problem.
Marx's concept of alienation as very much corresponding to
Jewish condition, separateness from society probably more profound
than proletariat's. 144 Hist, Truth and Liberty Aron quoting Marx
(compare to the Jewish situation (xerox))
Hess and Ferdinand Lassalle early socialist, contemporary of
Marx. Lassalle as sort of an aristocrat-oriented lawyer (wrote play
with liberal sentiments expressed by German knights of an earlier
period) not unlike disraeli (?)
Avineri, Hess p. 15: moving to Paris late in 1842, Hess
never again lived permanently in Germany. (like Marx, Heine and
Borne)
5
p. 22: Hess' closest friend, Berthold Auerbach, published a
biography of Spinoza, in which he is depicted as the first modern
Jewish thinker, maintaining his Jewish identity while breaking out
of the physical and intellectual ghetto of medieval Judaism. Hess
tried to make a socialist synthesis of Judaism and Christianity.
p. 23: Christianity is a regression compared to Judaism, and
the Church's claim to true universality should be taken with a
grain of salt.
p. 42: "Mosaic legislation referred to the inner as well as to
the outer man. Religion and politics, Church and State were
internally interwoven, possessed one root, bore one fruit. The Jews
did not know the difference between religious and political
commands, between the duty to God and the duty to Caesar." "The
Christians never possessed a social order based on God; they never
had a holy state or a divine law." Christianity thus abandoned
terrestrial life to alienation, inner tensions, social cleavages,
the war of the poor against the rich - for its kingdom was not of
this world. Judaism always tried, though with limited success, to
legislate for social life, since it did not recognize a dichotomy
between body and soul, between the human and the divine, but saw
life as one totality. Hess saw Jewish social legislation as an
attempt to create a historical world after the image of God. Jesus,
on the other hand, despaired of this attempt, and Christianity
resigned itself to the contemplation of the City of God which would
be divorced from the profane and terrestrial finite life of human
beings.
p. 229: Hess characterizes the Mosaic law as "social
democratic"
*Adolph Joffe, a veteran Bolshevik and post-revolution Soviet
diplomat wrote in a 1927 letter to Trotsky on committing suicide,
of his "philosophy that human life has meaning only to the degree
that, and so long as, it is lived in the service of something
infinite. For us humanity is infinite. The rest is finite, and to
work for the rest is therefore meaningless." "work and struggle for
the good of humanity." and having been cut off and in poor health
he ended his life. told he needed Western treatment he was refused
an exit and denied medicine. p. 325. He advised "the certainty of
the victory of your truth lies precisely in a strict intransigence,
in the most severe rigidity, in the repudiation of every
compromise, exactly as that was always the secret of the victories
of [Lenin]." 331 Leon Trotsky, The Real Situation in Russia (NY,
1928).
Edward Bernstein, Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer p. 182
Lassalle fell in love with an aristocrat and her parents were
unlikely to agree. But Lassalle had not the faintest doubt that the
influence of his personality must overcome this difficulty. (in
contrast to view that structure determines--Jewish) "man who went
to duel "was not the Socialist Lassalle, but Lassalle the would-be
aristocrat merchant's son." p. 184
Lassalle recruits the
government, Richard Wagner, and a Catholic bishop (offered
6
Lassalle's conversion if he succeeds) to intervene on his behalf
with the father. "Here where he might have shown pride, where he
should have shown it, he did not. He did not succeed. The bishop
could do nothing because the woman's family was Protestant.
p. 16 Lassalle found his Jewish origin painful.his parents'
wealth saved Lassalle from many of the miseries suffered by poorer
Jews but it did not protect him from all sorts of petty
mortifications, to which all belonging to an oppressed race, even
those in good circumstances, are exposed. The result in such
personalities was "first a defiant fanaticism of revolt, which
later not infrequently veers round to its very opposite." [compare
Lassalle to Disraeli] In 1840, the 14-year-old Lassalle wrote in
his diary: "I think I am one of the best Jews in existence,
although I disregard the Ceremonial Law. I could...risk my life to
deliver the Jews from their present crushing condition. I would not
even shrink from the scaffold could I but once more make of them a
respected people. Oh! when I yield to my childish dreams, it is
ever my favorite fancy to make the Jews armed--I at their head-free." But he wrote at the same time, "A people that bears this is
hideous; let them suffer or avenge this treatment....Even the
Christians marvel at our sluggish blood, that we do not rise, that
we
do
not
rather
perish
on
the
battlefield
than
by
torture....Cowardly people, thou dost merit no better lot."
p. 17-18 This stigma doubly incited the precocious Lassalle to
secure recognition and respect for himself at all costs. "Had I
been born prince or ruler I should have been an aristocrat, body
and soul. But now, as I am only a poor burgher's son, I shall be a
democrat in good time."
p. 19 And with this Radicalism there grew in him an ever stronger
longing to shake off the Jew in him, a longing which at last
becomes so overwhelming that when Lassalle informed his father in
May, 1841, of his "irrevocable" determination to go to the
university refused to study medicine or law, for "the doctor and
the lawyer are both tradesmen who traffic with their knowledge."
He would study "for the sake of what can be done with knowledge."
his father consented to the university. irony: anti-Jewish in
attitude to trade, but Jewish in thirst for study. Note: antagonism
to Jewish and middle class makes one ally with aristocracy or
workers. In this case both.)
Shlomo Avineri, Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism
p. 54: "breaking out of his Jewish particularism Hess did not want
to adopt another particularism--German nationalism, for example-but reached out for the level of an all-encompassing
universality, that is, a transnational Europe."
p. 58: The French Revolution was not just a political but "an
ethical revolution."
p. 70: Judaism is characterized by a permanent unhappiness
about the world as it is, a dissatisfaction with existing
conditions, a perennial quest for a better world, an eternal dream
of looking for new horizons.
p. 71: "the Jews are the element of fermentation in Western
7
humanity and have been destined, from earliest times, to
force upon it the element of movement and change."
(see Schnitzler)
In rejecting Jesus, the Jews became nothing else than a
paradigm for a future society beyond religion.
p. 72: In the early 1840s, "The emancipation of the Jews,"
Hess maintained, "is an integral element of the emancipation of the
spirit" p. 73: "We still hear voices maintaining that Jewish
"nationality" is a stumbling block on the road to Emancipation.
Pray tell me--what can the educated Jew do in order to break out of
his "nationality"?" It is society at large which, to Hess, has to
be emancipated from its prejudices
p. 74: Suggested intermarriage without conversion--prohibited
by the German states--inhibited integration.
Avineri Hess p. 123: Judaism always focused on the social here
and now, Hess sees Christianity responsible not only for external
enslavement, but also for enslaving the soul because of its
emphasis on the world after life: "The Christian does not
emancipate himself from his bad conscience by emancipating
suffering humanity from its misery, but by imagining that this
human misery is not something wrong, but on the contrary, it is
something right, that actual life should be something alien and
externalized and that alienated life is the normal condition of the
world." pp. 123-4: Marx adopted many of Hess's ideas but identifies
Judaism, not Christianity, with capitalism because of its
otherworldly theory of salvation, concentration on the individual,
and role as a legitimizing for the existing society just as in the
Middle Ages Christianity legitimized and internalized serfdom.
p. 156: Marx does not mention even once what is the
theological foundation within Judaism which leads it toward a
capitalistic ethics. Marx knows nothing about Judaism.
p. 248: Marx and Engels claim the "proletarians have no
homeland" and argue that capitalism is in the process of doing away
with all the remnants of national difference. (World War I and
fascism contradicted and many other events) Nationalism now
appeared to Marx as the ideological structure used by the
bourgeoisie to legitimize its own class interest for a wider market
(as well as religion--two of Marxism's weakest points traceable to
Marx's own denial of self)
p. 250: Zionist socialist theoretician Chaim Arlosoroff in
1919, "The community of fate and the community of common national
life have a meaning for the worker just as for any other
member of the nation. He too loves his mother tongue...his
country, his people."
duck 3. The pre-Russian Revolution movement and theory Emma
Goldman, Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein: friend of Engels, evolutionary
socialism. argued improvement in worker's status. Austro-Marxism.
Mensheviks: Julius Martov and others mostly Jews.
socialist parties and problem of J leadership (Austria and
elsewhere), Marx's antisemitism, anti-Judaism, and anti-Jews
8
doctrine-theoretical underpinning for evil of Jews/Judaism, for
suppression of Judaism as religion, for suppression of Jews
community and majority preference.
Peoples Will and anti-J pop; Bund; Luxemburg, Trotsky and rejection
of nationalism
Luxemburg section
Bronner: RL born in 1871 in Zamosc, family had no ties to J
community in town, moved to Warsaw at age of 2, family spoke German
(not Polish) enlightenment. p. 13: wrote about sorrow not spending
more time with late parents, "I constantly had to look after the
urgent business of humanity and make the world a happier place....I
never did `have time' for [my father] or myself." radical politics
in high school. always opposed romantic ideas like liberation of
Poland, just working class. 1887 fled to Zurich. book: Polish
industrial development depended on Russia, 17: no partnership
between
nationalism
and
socialism,
only
agitation
within
nationalist boundaries. Lenin argued against her on right of
national self-determination, internationalism required equality
among nations and cultures (his theory, not practice of course).
support progressive factions. Otto Bauer supported cultural
national autonomy within federated state. [in a sense, the Bundist
program?] she rejected national self-determination 21 as having
nothing to do with working class. 23: "the International is the
fatherland of the proletariat." RL herself changed states to German
party: Jewish, Polish, Russian, German. What did they mean to her?
Nothing. But to most of the people: everything. Hence, fundamental
distortion in her perceptions.
Robert Wistrich, "Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches and the Jewish
Labour Movement, 1893-1903," Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven
Zipperstein Jewish History (London, 1989). Bund, Social Democracy
of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. the upper Jewish classes
were assimilated, the masses less so. Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)
born in Russian Poland, family spoke Polish not Yiddish, father
timber merchant sympathetic to Polish nationalism. She went to
elite high school where few other Jews admitted (or even Poles)
mother loved Polish and German literature (her mother's father and
brother were rabbis. mother also loved the Bible, mother, L wrote,
believed that King Solomon "understood the language of birds" a
view which she attributed to "simplicity" tradition/superstition
(which it often was). Polish socialist movement while still in high
school, fled to Switzerland, founder of Social Democratic party
(with three of four founders as Jews: Julian Marchlewski (not),
Adolf Warski, and Leo Jogiches. Other assimilated Jews prominent
among the nationalist Polish Socialist Party (both parties later to
turn against Jews though must be fair to PPS and Pilsudski). Social
Democrats opposed Polish independence as Utopian and reactionary
(all this pp. 529-30). territorial autonomy within Russia
[ironically, same as Bund]. explained why Poland could not and
should not exist [similarly to anti-Zionism]. J movement began in
Vilna, Yiddish speaking. Jogiches also wealthy family. J had
sympathy for Jewish workers, particular oppression and oppressive
9
laws, pogroms and realize they are used to try to divide the
workers. but want to separate Jews on class basis. The SD paper
praised Polish workers for refusing to participate in pogrom "You
have shown the whole world that for you a Jew or a German does not
exist, that you know your enemies well, the capitalists of all
faiths and nationalities--that a Jew like Poznanski or a German
like Scheibler are your deadly enemies, but that the poor Jewish
tinker or German textile worker are your comrades in misery and
oppression." p. 532. so underestimated workers antisemitism, saw as
merely bourgeois. but J workers should rise above particular
oppression. 533: "The yoke which they perpetually bear as Jews
could conceal from them the yoke which they suffer as workers. In a
word, they could fall into a trap and perceive their chief enemies
as foreign nationalities rather than the capitalist class and the
Czarist regime." Bund (1897) also favored a common struggle but
from own position (alliance rather than assimilationist) but
alliance with the Russian proletariat--part of Russian Social
Democratic party. [the irony is that the left was following the
same strategy as the "bourgeoisie" (which either wanted to
assimilate with the elite or supported a left-of-center Polish
nationalism in the PPS as the road to equality), the Jewish
Marxists were simply choosing to assimilate with a different
group.] hence four positions: assimilate with the workers,
assimilate with the elite, be a nationality to create own state, be
a nationality to ally with other masses but retain identity and
autonomy]. Bund and Social Democrats also indifferent to Polish
independence. [they claimed to be helping Polish masses but opposed
what the people wanted, just as their Communist successors would
later betray the country's independence to the USSR]. 537: Julius
Martov, later a Menshevik but taking a Bundist position in 1895,
suggested the national indifference of Jewish masses would retard
the development of their class consciousness. Over time, Bund took
a more nationalist position. Lenin and Trotsky argued at the 1903
Congress of the Russian Social Democrats that the Bund's separatism
implied doubt that their party was sincere in fighting antisemitism
and protecting the Jews' rights--which of course was a correct
assessment on the Bund's part. Lenin's increasingly violent
polemics against the Bund. PPS also becoming more anti-Jewish in
response both to traditional Polish attitudes and the anti-Polish
nationalism of the Bund and Social Democrats.
541: Karl Kautsky, the main theoretician of the German Social
Democrats said of the Kishinev massacre of 1903 that the Jews'
distinctiveness--which he identified as involuntary, i.e., that the
Russian government forced them to live in a ghetto--was the cause
of Russian antisemitism. As long as Jews retained their "alien"
national characteristics they would remain scapegoats, rapid
assimilation through common revolutionary struggle, anything that
retarded fusion was to be condemned. In essence, the sooner the
Jews ceased to exist as a separate community, the better.
Distinction meant more persecution; revolution meant automatic
resolution of this and all other problems. 542: there was no
10
special corner in her heart for the sufferings of the ghetto.
Robert Brym, The Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism p.
37 in 1848 nearly 2,500 conversions took place. Six years later
the number grew to 4,500. One writer in 1839 estimated, "there are
about 40,000 [converted Jews] in Petersburg and Moscow" alone.
p. 38
The leftists had parents already wholly or largely
alienated from Judaism. p. 39
The father of Lev Kamenev was an
engineer, one of the few Jews who managed to become a professional,
and Kamenev, like most of his ideological comrades, never saw the
inside of a traditional Jewish school. p. 43 Leon Trotsky had very
little exposure to Jewish culture. His education at school was
largely Russian and modern European.
p. 44 Zalman Shazar, a leading Labor Zionist who would become
Israel's first president came from a strongly Jewish family and
attended Jewish schools.
p. 53
In 1875 Jewish participation in the revolutionary
movement was lower than the proportion of Jews in the population.
By 1905 it was over nine times higher.
p. 73 about 23 per cent of the Menshevik leadership and only
11 per cent of the Bolshevik leadership was Jewish. two of the
seven top Bolsheviks and five of the eight top Mensheviks in the
period 1903-7 were Jews.
p. 74
"Alexander Helphand (Parvus): Today nationalism is
meaningless. Even the manufacture of my coat demonstrates the
international character of the world:
the wool was taken from
sheep pastured in Angora; it was spun in England; it was woven in
Lodz; the buttons came from Germany; the thread from Austria...
Nachman Syrkin: And the rip in your sleeve comes from the pogrom in
Kiev!" an exchange at a meeting of the Russian-Jewish Scientific
Society, Berlin, about 1890.
p. 76
(maskilim disillusioned with assimilation but not
Judaism; became Zionists)
p. 82
heightened oppression in the early years of the new
century led nearly the whole Jewish community to become more
concerned with specifically Jewish problems. It was in 1901, at
its fourth congress, that the Bund took its first official step
away from its old position on the Jewish question (which involved
nothing more than the demand for equal civil rights). "Russia be
reorganized into a federation of nationalities, each with full
national autonomy, independent of the territory which it inhabits."
Emancipation and Counter-Emancipation "Bund Ideology" 288:
Rabbi of Minsk proclamation after attempted assassination of the
governor of Vilna by a Jewish revolutionary in 1902, "terrible
news" how do we Jews get messed up in such matters? meddle in
politics "Oh, beware, Jewish children! Look well at what you are
doing! God only knows what you may bring upon our unfortunate
nation, upon yourselves, and upon your families." 289: one of the
early Russian revolutionary Jews commented they were negative
toward Jewish religion, Yiddish, Hebrew, traditions "sincere
assimilationists, and it was to the Russian enlightenment that we
looked for salvation for Jews....Russian literature, which
11
implanted in us love of culture and of the Russian people, also to
some degree implanted in us a conception that Jews were not a
people but a parasitic class...and that, it seems to me, was one of
the causes that explains our defection."
290-92 urban centers of Pale, Jewish intellectuals free of
inferiority feeling, still on their own turf, looked to Jewish
labor movement rather than Russian. Martov 1895 speech, the
Russians may make concessions at the expense of the Jews so Jews
had to be organized too to protect their interests "A working lass
that is content with the lot of an inferior nation will not rise up
against the lot of an inferior class. The national passivity of the
Jewish masses, therefore, is also a bar to the growth of its class
consciousness. The growth of national and class consciousness must
go hand in hand." Bund far more workers at top than other
movements. Bund rejects assimilationism and traditionalism 1909
Medem, p. 302, "All attempts to combat nationalism through the old
method of ignoring and hushing up the very facts of national
differences and national character," he wrote in 1909, "have proven
themselves to be useless, mouldy and outworn."
303: Medem "Nowhere does this striving to assimilate bloom so
profusely as among Jews." saw as bourgeois "The Jew, trembling and
humiliated, accustomed to have other people spit in his face, found
no other way to make his rights secure than by himself spitting at
his own nation and renouncing his own national identity. In order
to become a citizen of the world, he was forced to become a
Frenchman, a German, etc."
307 the Jewish Kautsky said that language and territory was
indispensable for nation, thus defining Jews as not one and laying
groundwork for Lenin and the other Marxists to deny the Jews
nationality.
309: national cultural autonomy. History forced them to defend
the Jews more and more, but the Bolsheviks victory led most
Bundists in Russia to join them, though many paid for this choice
with their lives in purges.
duck 4. Russian revolution
A. struggle over J issue, J communist section and suppression
Communist theory: Jews not a nation, owed existence to
antisemitism, after revolution antisemitism would be abolished and
Jews would assimilate. economic structure of Jewish society must be
changed and Jews made productive. but since existing Jewish
society--including religion--an enemy and anything that smacked of
nationhood--ie.,
language--must
be
broken
down,
there
was
discrimination against things Jewish, thus the abolition of
discrimination against Jews would entail discrimination against
Jews (unless they change themselves). The Jewish Communists,
because any assertion that Jews were a nation threatened their own
position both in terms of their identity and their role as leaders
of the whole country, were especially adamant in persecution. if
the Bronsteins would pay the price for the success of the Trotskys,
the Trotskys worried that they would pay a price from the continued
existence of the Bronsteins. Thus, the Jewish Commissariat was
12
begun but important Jewish Communists did not want to have anything
to do with it and none of them could write very well in Yiddish
Samuel Agursky one of those drafted into it wrote, "No money on
earth could produce a Jewish writer willing to translate Bolshevik
literature." p. 5 Gurevitz. Jewish Communist leaders also feared
that Commissariat might turn into a new Bund. careful to ensure had
no independence, merely a transmission belt for party and its real
job was to dismantle any independent Yiddish, religion, or national
Jewish life. Bund and United Jewish Socialist Workers Party. Both
split with the majority trying to work with the Communists, but no
autonomy admitted only on an individual basis, most followers did
not join party.
B. purge trials, 1930s Leon Trotsky and the purged Bolsheviks:
Kamenev, Zinoviev, Radek, Nikolai Bukharin and other J exBolsheviks opposed Third Period of Stalin perhaps because J roots
made them more sensitive to the threat of Naziism..... The Jews
suffered most because they were the most sincere, consistent
believers in the revolution. The ultimate in rev assimilation. Joke
about Bronstein/Trotsky. To prove universal brotherhood, had to
change name (note to al-Afghani), demander of permanent revolution
and ultra-anti-nationalists as J holdovers.
Brym shows, p. 45., that those most embedded in Jewish
community became Zionists, those from families just beginning to
break out especially through work were Bundists, and the
Mensheviks--and even more the Bolsheviks--were those already very
much a part of Russian structure and education. One Jew told (p.
46) a Russian official criticizing Jews in 1872 Vilna, "As long as
we educated our children there were no nihilists among us; but as
soon as you took the education of our children into your hands,
behold the results!"
The emotionally intoxicating notion of simultaneously joining
the nation and making it a utopia/saving it.
Russian revolutionary allegiances correspond to cultural
background, education, and geographic location. of course, the
victorious Bolsheviks had fewer Jewish leaders than the Mensheviks
and, of course, the Bund and Zionists. Zionists had connections to
haskala in background
C. doctor's plot [irony of cosmopolitan charge, since that is
what communists supposed to be. Russian antisemitism was denounced
by the Communist regime which was all the while absorbing it. 1952
Stalin's execution of Jewish cultural figures. Stalin's doctor's
plot 1953 nine charged of conspiring to murder leaders, six Jewish.
plan for a great purge. Stalin infected with deep-seated
antisemitism. Jews were criticized as bringer of Western approach
but that was precisely what Marxism constituted in Russia. Trotsky
reportedly declined CP leadership on grounds that his background
would give enemies an argument. probably not true but indicative.
the only thing that prevented a new anti-Jewish pogrom--a handful
of years after Hitler's defeat--was Stalin's death.
duck 5. Communist Parties 1920s-1950s
13
Rosenberg case. Morris and Lorna Cohen, later arrested for
spying in England, Soviets revealed involved in case. 1953
executed. were working for Stalin at the very moment he was
destroying J culture, anti-Semitic purges, preparing major
deportations. Harry Gold, David Greenglass defending Soviet Union
from charges of anti-S. cynically Communist manipulation of anti-S
charges. Itzik Feffer and Solomon Mikhoels.iv
b 1908 to bourgeois family in Munich, Social Democrat as
father lawyer helped poor. 15 became dedicated Communist, 20 armed
attack on Berlin prison to free Communists including Otto Braun her
mentor and lover, fled to Russia. instructed to go to Brazil to
help head of CP there Luis Benario Prestes went back, plot failed,
Brazil shipped Olga to Germany as gift to Hitler, gave birth to
daughter who eventually returned to Brazil, killed in concentration
camp in the spring of 1942.v
Communism, as practiced by the Communist parties, was a form
of double loyalty--and to a really pernicious though superficially
noble cause at that, one oppressive of the values that the
idealistic Communists thought they had. Jewish support for it was
an example of imperfect assimilation--along with their Russian
background and the right-wing's anti-semitism. McCarthy era refusal
to admit, even boast about, beliefs and loyalties was a policy to
benefit the party but it was also a reflection of the fears and
insecurities of the largely Jewish party following. Both the
Rosenbergs and Roy Cohn engaged in games of "root-seeking"
Diaspora: a number of Js in E Germany: Albert Norden,
propaganda minister; Gerhard Eisler, director of television and
radio, and many others including Arnold Zweig. but most left
because of Stalinism. a few who felt themselves very German. 13-19.
Jews were both the most questioning minds in the Communist
Parties and only slightly less often its most narrow minded
apparatchiks. Henry Roth Call it Sleep 1934 remarkable book. talent
destroyed. tried to write proletarian novel, bitter outcome. CP did
not like. 1967 war turned, in 1963 had declared that the greatest
boon Jews could now confer on humanity was to cease being Jews but
when this seemed possible had new turn. in 1971 announced he had
"adopted' Israel "as a symbolic home" by giving himself away--the
Jewish identity and community which inspired his great work, Roth's
form of assimilation had destroyed his talent. published at age 27,
married daughter of a Baptist minister. broke down, Orthodox
childhood. only 1967 snapped out of funk and blockage. obsessed
with the antisemitism of Waldheim's climb to presidency, T.S.
Eliot, Ezra Pound, "It was the fashion in the 1920s. Certainly,
there's scarcely a writer, not even excluding Joyce, who was not
anti-Semitic. To tell the truth, you know I, in my...alienation
from my own folk, was considerably anti-Semitic also. I...found
much that I detested and disliked about Jews and their singleminded pursuit of success. There is in this whole business of being
in exile an inevitable formative force on people that makes them
fantastically acquisitive in their insecurity and makes them-because they're not allowed in normal channels of society--find the
14
interstices, like money lending. Who likes a moneylender?" predicts
disappearance of American Jews.vi
masochism for the masses, parallel to elite assimilation
distortions. the suffering servant of the proletarian, paying for
the sin of the bourgeoisie and the privilege intellectual (what was
the other 1930s case of an autobiography?)
Roth criticized as introspective. so merged with proletariat
as tool-maker and then as farmer with masses, New Mexico from
Maine, far from New York. Roth statement was to readers of
Midstream "It was an enormous sense of guilt that I had to tear
myself away." from the disaster of Communism. Roth sought one
dominant figure after another: a woman far older than he, a working
class character, looking for guide and some superior. the
"portrayal of proletarian virtue" was not his natural bent, but he
threw himself on the procrustean bed.
Times put it" "His
proletarian novel was an attempt at a wholly American project--no
Jews in sight." interesting language) he said: "I was not able to
integrate the new cosmopolitan world into which I was now
plunged....I was no longer at home."vii
Willi Munzenberg, Victor Gollancz whose father was an active
Jew went to Oxford, anti-conformist, both loved and reviled his
religion. created Left Book Club. Ilya Ehrenburg 1891-1967 19081938 in West mainly Paris.; spies
The passionate embrace of the left by so many young European
Jews for whom nationalism was not an option and the right was a
would-be executioner. The left opposes nationalist aspirations--of
the Jews and of others who blamed the Jews involved--sought to win
over people to aims but not Jewish aims but humanitarian, liberal,
modernist, or "proletarian" interests.
Ion Iliescu, grandfather a Transylvanian rabbi, his father was
an International Brigade and Communist Party member. Romanian CP
party of minorities, hence anti-nationalist and anti-Romanian.
duck 6 The intellectual left, including Frankfurt School.
Horkheimer; Ernst Bloch (1885-1977), George Lukacs (1885-1971),
Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), T.W. Adorno (1903-1969), Jurgen
Habermas and Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) had big effect on student
rebellions of 1968, they left Germany in 1930s, had contempt for
liberalism. "valiant biters of the hand that fed them." New
Republic, March 9, 1987. Bloch? middle class home, father senior
railroad official. obsessed with the idea of a philosophical system
to account for world from his early days. romantic Marxism. first
book The Spirit of Utopia 1918. socialism with messianic spirit of
Bible, Marx with apocalypse. Thomas Munzer, rev follower of Luther.
Christian doctrine, never engaged in political activity.
Gershom Scholem, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and
Gershom Scholem 1932-1940 p. xxv: In 1931 Benjamin justified his
communism by likening himself to "a castaway who drifts on a wreck
by climbing to the top of an already crumbling mast.
But, from
here, he has a chance to give a signal for his rescue." (Jewish
story: God and the 3 boat rescue attempts)
15
Frankfurt school[problem: why the masses not progressive-evidence of their antisemitism, suspicions even of left leadership
because of treatment, utopian import Jews put on socialism]
Bottomore: as pessimism, not win so easily, terrible setback in
Germany, where win not so wonderful, also challenge to whole
assimilationist approach of progress, justice, mass support. clear
why both sterile and appealing to intellectuals: because of
detachment to reality, insistence as to answers for reaching utopia
on earth. established 1923 affiliated with the University of
Frankfurt: almost entirely Jewish. exile in NA 1933-50. effect on
New Left. Thodor Adorno 1903-69. studied composition with Alban
Berg in Vienna, studied in Oxford and in NY. Habermas 1929 studied
with Adorno and became his assistant; Horkheimer 1895-1971 father
manufacturer, Geneva then NY [note: all three returned to Germany]
Marcuse 1898-1979 stayed in US. 19: "self-destruction of the
Enlightenment" "false clarity" "culture industry" "enlightenment as
mass
deception".
Fromm,
psychoanalysis-Marxism.
focus
on
individuals. personality traits and authority, antisemitism. many
of its key people had strong authoritarian tendencies (?). Thus,
Horkheimer and Adorno, "Elements of antisemitism," in Dialectic of
Enlightenment "bourgeois antisemitism has a specific economic
reason; the concealment of domination in production." The bottom
line is that they could not deal with issue. but largely saw as new
type of society, domination of politics over economy, exploitation
of irrational sentiments.... ideology becoming more and more
primary rather than material forces, moving away from classical
Marxism. the alliance becomes increasingly tenuous, with the
proletariat as the motive force but also capable of being totally
misled. 30: correct social consciousness had to be brought from
outside. thinker must connect with proletariat. most crudely: facts
and empirical observation inadequate (if the facts don't show what
I want to hell with the facts.) increasingly acknowledged that
their criticism detached from any possibility for action. in a
sense, first explain why their concept of revolution impossible and
then assert a critical leap of faith to attain it. bleak pessimism.
the last stage of Marxism. Aron and Bell stressed diminution of
class differences and conflict and hence of ideology. [ie.
assimilation succeeding but results are banal rather than romantic,
are Js being lowered to mass level rather than apocalyptic. also
reflect rootless, traditionless anomie for someone with a strong
sense of identity can resist far more easily the media etc. hint
that there is no effective dissent, history is ending in a new
global fascism. critical of mechanical materialism, law of history.
It is hard to hold up the proletariat as hero when its members are
shooting one's family and guarding the concentration camps.
Horkheimer and Adorno comments "Elements of Antisemitism" in
Dialectic of Enlightenment, among the exquisitely intellectualized
double-talk stands for the view of the left. 204- "The dialectic of
Enlightenment is transformed objectively into delusion." and yet
doesn't take it seriously. 207: antisemitism after all their class
analysis and critique of bourgeois society, in the fascist leaders
16
"could just as easily replace the anti-Semitic plank in their
platform by some other just as workers can be moved from one wholly
rationalized production center to another." removes not only the
horror but the social and historical meaning, as if the whole issue
was merely to be taken up inasmuch as it was of use to them.
Adorno The Jargon of Authenticity consciousness misrepresents
social relations and historical forms of domination. the historical
possibility is greater than the consciousness. proletariat has
failed to transform itself and hence Frankfurt School analyzes the
blockages to liberation. false consciousness. Jewish application is
both in perception of failure, to they aren't listening to us--real
reason because of different experience and national issues but
don't understand this because that would be to abandon their
universal enterprise. there is no agent of social change. Thus,
believing in a critique of action offer no program of their own.
radical Christian inwardness evades actuality of secular injustice
and inequality. [on broader scale, the failure of humanism and
modern civilization in Germany; the inability of the Marxist
movement to overcome it leads elsewhere in the search for
transcendence. instead, mystification of human domination--which
the Jew as underclass is very much concerned with. language and
truth are blocked (which leads to deconstructionism and hence to
pc) "jargon" "aura" "false consciousness" things are not seen to be
as they really are. Fear of subjectivity and mysticism (critique of
Buber) thus also critique of Christian concept of faith.
capitalism's oppression is not merely socio-economic but also its
domination over the mind (a broad theme of the Frankfurt school, as
in Marcuse. but very Jewish for must explain the continuity of
antisemitism, the "irrationality" of Nazism. p. XXI: "The
physiognomy of the vulgar jargon leads into what discloses itself
in Heidegger." and we know what happened to him. "It is nothing new
to find that the sublime becomes the cover for something low. That
is how potential victims are kept in line." [anger, deep cynicism
and bitterness). 4: this school acted "as if it elevated the inner
rank of a person to follow the teaching of higher ideals" though
quotes Christian Bible against Pharisees as example. criticizes
them as fearing "reflecting their reflections--as if they didn't
completely believe in themselves."
Where did Fascism come from? in part through philosophical and
linguistic notions. p. 5: the "jargon of authenticity" is a
language that "is a trademark of societalized chosenness--noble and
homey at once." p. 7 the fascist manner "wisely mixes plebeian with
elitist elements."
the language of p.10: "a lower middle class
which is threatened and humbled by societal development."
(challenged by the proletariat or the Jews? immutability is a
threat because it poses a society which excludes assimilation or
acculturation, it shuts out everything, it remains static, it
repels rebellion. [philosophy, like politics, makes strange
bedfellows). 20: "The jargon affirms the reliability of the
universal by means of the distinction of having a bourgeois origin,
a distinction which is itself authorized by the universal." 21:
17
"The jargon secularizes the German readiness to view men's positive
relation to religion as something immediately positive, even when
the religion has disintegrated and been exposed as something
untrue." It praises the love of the fatherland "even when the
fatherland in question covers up the most atrocious deeds."
24: quoting the optimistic lines of a German poet writing in
1950: "What comes from pain was only transient. And my ear heard
nothing but songs of praise." an affirmation of being, harmony with
the very existence of man, Adorno writes, that this volume of
poetry "is only a few years closer to us than the time when Jews
who had not been completely killed by the gas were thrown living
into the fire, where they regained consciousness and screamed."
while the poet "heard nothing but songs of praise." what exists,
stinks but rather than put this onto German society it is bourgeois
and capitalist society, everything which exists. This is not the
best of all possible worlds, talk of innocence is indicted by p. 26
reports that younger sons of farmers committed the worst atrocities
in the concentration camps.
61: critique of man is good, childlike sense of universal
humanity. 66: the totalitarian state likes the idea of universalism
(it receives all the votes), humanity is a state of privilege, but
this is a caricature of the equal rights of all who were a human
face "since it hides from men the unalleviated discrimination of
societal power." and "whoever refuses this appeal gives himself
over as non-human to the administrators of the jargon, and can be
sacrificed by them, if such a sacrifice is needed." (though they
don't say so this applies to the left as well) 67: "Man" is an
empty phrase, for the Jews know they were not included in it.
76: "the fraudulent National Socialist Volk-community which
led people to believe that all kindred comrades are cared for and
none is forgotten." anger at media, films, commercials (mobilized
as new weapons in an old battle) which Hitler so effectively used.
The language of kindness and false warm relationship which turns
into a horrible monster if thwarted. The two faces. brings up
Kafka.
83 a graphic image of the SA man, administration and
terror, the folder of documents above, the high boots below. The
exterior of legitimate and even-handed bureaucracy, the reality of
terror. 87: "Even death is handled by the book." There is violence
and death behind the words of the status quo, evil behind the
optimism, murder behind the smugness, torture. (And also the
terrible frustration of men who see utopia yet cannot persuade
others to reach it. of the perpetually losing side.
Daniel Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm pp. 15-17 Fromm's
doctoral dissertation compared Jewish communities and his first job
was editing a small Jewish newspaper. He became a psychoanalyst in
private practice and worked at the Frankfurt Institute for Social
Research with Horkheimer and Marcuse, before coming to the United
States in 1933. p. 29 a permanent rebel, denouncing religious and
psychoanalytic practice, a deep faith in humanity typical of
assimilating Jews in pre-Holocaust times.
Adler, Truth in Religion pluralism, tolerance, and commonality
18
of structure. God exists, three religions of book most true,
overlapping but not mutually exclusive but one cannot say which is
more accurate. The point is not to pick among them--that Adler
should say Judaism most true--but has no position of his own. high
objectivism good for some philosophers (Adorno would not approve)
but not very good for human beings and communities.
To carry a philosophy linking the Germany of fascism to
America is bound to produce ridiculous excesses but in academic
such things may not only be tolerated but are seen as a badge of
honor since a deviation from common sense becomes a break with what
is common, in both senses of the world--the masses and accepted
truth. Leftism which always portrays itself as an ideology of the
masses is often contemptuous of those same masses, particularly
when they reject it. It has been transformed, ironically, into a
form of elitism, the only form of elitism tolerated among the
intellectual classes in the late twentieth century.
Adorno: hatred of his society, all literature and culture a
mask to hide the evil behind it (a posture not altogether like that
of Marx) accepts no legitimacy. hatred and anger. Notes on
Literature p. 3"the failure" of the Enlightenment, "In Germany the
essay arouses resistance because it evokes intellectual freedom." p
4: opposition to "efforts to penetrate what hides behind the
facade." "The person who interprets instead of accepting what is
given and classifying it is marked with the yellow star of one who
squanders his intelligence in impotent speculation, reading things
in where there is nothing to interpret." !!
Legacy of Fromm: increasing interest in religious topics
Escape from Freedom and in late years a return to Freud. If
consensus, consumerism, mass culture, positivism not so great,
perhaps had made mistake of leaping into the culture. had the
benefits of assimilation then been merely material, a mass of
pottage. Erich Pinchas Fromm 1900 Frankfurt. great-uncle moved him
to Talmud study. Father from line of rabbis, active in Jewish
community, Fromm p. 10 embarrassed by businessman father. World War
I made antipathetic to all kinds of nationalism. 11: credo, of so
many "of all one must doubt." mixed religious instruction with
mysticism,
socialism,
psychoanalysis,
conservative
Judaism.
influence of Cohen.
Fromm was more at peace with own identity,
idea of community, and tradition (he might not accept it but he did
not feel threatened by it) than his colleagues, thus the tone of
his humanism is less doctrinaire, and shrill.
The humanist prefers Marx, Freud and Einstein--but this is the
image of Jew as revolutionary which stirred much antagonism among
the masses--leaving aside Marx's antisemitism--while ignoring the
strong Jewish identity of the last two. Yet he is also distancing
himself from other Jews who do not accept his definition, just as
the snobbish Jews of Vienna and Berlin looked down on the ostjuden.
The ultimate irony: it is safe--even beneficial--for the humanist
Jew to endorse the struggles of the south Moluccans, the blacks,
even the Palestinians. In America or England there is no danger in
that to himself personally. But once he identifies with the Jewish
19
community, his whole constructed self-image can collapse. To most,
the Other is a source of anxiety or prejudice, for the Jew, to talk
about the Other is much safer for it is in this way that
universalist credentials are safeguarded.
The Legacy of Erich Fromm Daniel Burston, p. 12 "As he grew
older, Fromm's distrust of all official ideologies expressed itself
in his attraction to psychoanalysis and Marxism, and soon
thereafter in his forthright challenges to the prevailing
orthodoxies within these schools of thought." [but if so
iconoclastic then why seeking out these doctrinaire schools in the
first point? hence, search for ideology--life had to have some
meaning, filling a vacuum--combines with difficulty in accepting
one and skipping around, like Koestler] Erich had received an
intense religious education, mixed conventional Talmud instruction
with mysticism, philosophy, socialism, and psychoanalysis, all in
conjunction with conservative Judaism. he repudiated Zionism in
1927, the same year he commenced clinical practice, and one year
after he abandoned religious observances.
p. 30 Freud rebuked Marxism for its disregard of the
irrational in social or "mass" psychology. In his New Introductory
Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud observed that "Mankind never
lives entirely in the present. The past, the tradition of the race
and the people, lives on in the ideologies of the super-ego, and
yields only slowly to the influences of the present."
p. 68 paper in 1939 in which Fromm's break with Freud had
become quite apparent.
In "Selfishness and Self-Love," Fromm
already distinguished between a reactive or rational hatred, which
is a biologically conditioned response to (real or imaginary)
threats to one's well-being, and a characterologically conditioned
hatred, which is an abiding quality, rather than a transient
response to a noxious stimulus.
p. 69 "In the act of creation man transcends himself as a
creature, raises himself beyond the passivity and accidentalness of
his existence into the realm of purposefulness and freedom. [choose
life] To create presupposes activity and care. It presupposes love
for that which one creates. How then does man solve the problem of
transcending himself, if he is not capable of creating, if he
cannot love? There is another answer to this need for
transcendence: if I cannot create life, I can destroy it. To
destroy life makes me also transcend it. Indeed, that man can
destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it,
for life itself is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of
destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as
creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for man, inasmuch as he is
driven to transcend himself, is to create or destroy, to love or to
hate.
p. 87 Without an ostensibly universal norm for human
development, critical thought loses its bearing, its point of
reference. It is impossible to speak of a deformation of
subjectivity without some notion, however implicit, of what an
undistorted subjectivity is like. Yet any norm of human development
20
held in contrast to the prevailing cultural pattern is itself a
cultural and historical product and is often modeled on the
idealization of previous epochs or other cultures
p. 88 On reflection, three of Fromm's existential needs are
basic: (1) a framework of orientation and devotion, (2) a sense
of rootedness, and (3) a sense of transcendence.
p. 94 "Man has to experience himself as a stranger in the
world, estranged from himself and from nature, in order to be able
to become one again with himself, with his fellow man, and with
nature. He has to experience the split between himself as subject
and the world as object as the condition for overcoming this very
split. His first sin, disobedience, is the first act of freedom;
it is the beginning of human history. It is in history that man
develops, evolves, emerges.
He develops his reason and his
capacity to love. He creates himself in the historical process
which began with his first act of disobedience, which was the
freedom to disobey, to say "No." (reinterpretation of Eden: to
Christians, sin; to Jews, taken for granted)
p. 117 (Jews pioneers in opposition to consumer society
(Frankfurt) because of sense of moral values, previous history as
well as leftism. Decision whether to take for granted what exists-assimilation; try to revise it--transformative assimilation)
p. 146 The revolutionary character, he declared, "is one who
is identified with humanity and therefore transcends the narrow
limits of his own society, and who is able, therefore, to criticize
his or any other society...He is not caught in the parochial
culture which he happens to be born in, which is nothing but an
accident of time and geography.
He is able to look at this
environment with the open eyes of a man who is awake and who finds
his criteria of judging the accidental in that which is not
accidental (reason), in the norms which are in and for the human
race." [this is ideal, not practice, but is very much accepted
today. a Jewish Variation
p. 147 In contrast to the conformist, whose picture of reality
is culture bound, the productive or revolutionary character cleaves
to what is universal--namely, reason. His allusions to an
indefinite future, when nature will be "humanized" and humanity
"naturalized," conjure up Marx's vision of the postrevolutionary
social order, which, as Fromm never tired of repeating, represents
a secularized embodiment of the messianic kingdom.
Horkheimer/Adorno "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception," Dialectic of Enlightenment (culture is not a way of
life to be taken for granted as a result of history or people but
an industry to produce socialized, accepting--assimilated--people.
a sham because it is not expression of self--objective, rational-but a manipulation of self to be a product. a theme also in Freud:
adjustment to social reality cannot be taken for granted as either
happening or a logical, inevitable process. Jewish Variant.
p.
139: "The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what
it perpetually promises." delivery is never made "the diner must be
satisfied with the menu." in the end there is only "a commendation
21
of the depressing everyday world it sought to escape."
p. 166 Innumerable people use words and expressions which they
have either ceased to understand or employ only because they
trigger off conditioned reflexes; in this sense, words are
trade-marks which are finally all the more firmly linked to
the things they denote, the less their linguistic sense is
grasped.
pp. 166-7 All are free to dance and enjoy themselves, just as
they have been free, since the historical neutralization of
religion, to join any of the innumerable sects.
But freedom to
choose an ideology - since ideology always reflects economic
coercion - everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always
the same. The way in which a girl accepts and keep the obligatory
date, the inflection on the telephone or in the most intimate
situations, the choice of words in conversation, and the whole
inner life as classified by the now somewhat devalued depth
psychology, bear witness to man's attempt to make himself a
proficient apparatus, similar (even in emotions) to the model
served up by the culture industry. [people used to conforming to
model of assimilation rather than seeing behavior as "natural" it
is conditioned on external demands or manipulations] The most
intimate reactions of human beings have been so thoroughly reified
that the idea of anything specific to themselves now persists only
as an utterly abstract notion: personality scarcely signifies
anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odor
and emotions. The triumph of advertising in the culture industry
is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even
though they see through them.
The idea of a Homburger fleeing the Aryan supremacists to
become an Erikson presenting himself as an expert on identity
without dealing with this transformation should provoke only mirth.
Not only does he take on a super-nordic name but also the
psychological ramification are stunning--Erik son of Erik, his own
father, Man Makes Himself, no ancestors, a blank slate. Once again,
humanism turns into its opposite. Or of Gay....
see story from Bloch as great ending for chapter on left: it
is all untrue and yet still hope in it, substitute for religion
It is understandable at the bitterness of Bloch and the
others, the preference of man to escape from freedom rather than to
join them in the great effort of making utopia on earth, of
building the domain of freedom. The society of propriety became
that of only following orders, of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms of
Buchenwald, and so on. The Jews, already suspicious of European
culture had all their worst fears confirmed. In America, this could
be ignored by Adler and Strauss but in Europe the problem was much
clearer. (Adler did want to strengthen democracy, of course, to be
fair but didn't see it as a more profound cultural problem.)
understandable that the PC and deconstruction approaches taken
by other minorities who felt shut out, that the humanistic canon
concealed oppression but it was more realistically part of the
canon or the misuse of it.
22
The bizarre experimentation of the intellectuals in Europe and
America during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s can be partly explained
by their desire to overcome their isolation from society as
intellectuals, but it was intensified by their isolation as Jews;
it can be partly explained by the desire of writers and artists to
rebel against the existing society, but it can be partly explained
by the lack of commitment and acceptance by the Jews among them of
the existing society; it can be partly explained by the rugged
history of the period--the failures of capitalism, the threat of
fascism, the hope of social justice in socialism--but these were
events which particularly affected the Jews. Russia had been the
essentially anti-Jewish state, seemingly transformed by Communism;
Germany had been the quintessential accommodating state to Jews,
transformed into murderous danger by fascism. Jews had less
commitment to their class, whatever it was, for if they were rich
they were in families of recent wealth which remembered their rise,
held their status with fragility (objectively if not subjectively),
and were discriminated against by other wealthy (hence, an
oppressed class within their class who could much more easily
understand and be conscious of oppression. Among the poor, they
could feel their status as artificial, temporary, unhallowed by an
acceptance from tradition. In short, whether rich or poor they
could see these things as transient, unnatural rather than ordained
by God or nature. And as people who were geographically,
religiously, and culturally in transition they saw change as both
more natural and more acceptable.
Existing society was "abnormal" and "wrong" (an idea not so
obvious to non-Jews who were more integrated) and must be
drastically changed. There was an answer--a theory of humanity--for
doing so. Marx, Freud or some combination. Some of this was the
natural role of the intelligentsia (critic, outside of power,
dissatisfied, doubting legitimacy) but especially salient for Jews.
Incidentally--but importantly--this same structure applies on the
cultural side for modernism.
Subverters of Weimar, Tucholsky and Kraus
Having joined Western civilization on the basis that it was a
search for truth and open, would not accept limits on what could
study, hence the eclectic approach of the J leftist intellectuals
between the wars, like Benjamin who having once declared as
assimilationists "nothing human is alien to me" were reluctant to
start making distinctions ordered by commissars. Yet the paradox
for these men was that to remain universal they had to be careful
of their origin their "special concern" (whatever Luxemburg's
phrase was) had to be avoided, a lighthouse on the promontory to
warn them off. Hence, alienation and rootlessness as a way of life;
huddling together in their little schools pointing with chutzpa the
way for humanity. In practice, they had cut themselves off from
community in their sects, their vanguard parties, their tiny
schools locked out of the mainstream in the very doctrine which
purported to lead it. They had abandoned their own community,
23
rejected the existing majority community, and remained in between,
on the border calling for unity as looked on with hatred, disdain,
or indifference. But to be hero to academics at least means one
will be celebrated in their books, given a spiritual life out of
all proportion to the pitiful reality of failed doctrine and
absence of achievement or, at worst, leading people to disaster.
Thus, in the end the final irony is that those who proposed to
liberate humanity--when no one followed--are celebrated for their
individualism and sentimentalized for their isolation.
xerox: Scholem's last letter to Benjamin who had asked what he
thought of Horkheimer article, while about to flee for life from
situation denies exists.
Ausmus on Herberg. sociologist and theologian. American way of
life prismed through faith communities. xv: "Will Herberg is an
example of those people who seek a reason for living even if life
is meaningless." Communist to anti-Communist, but always an
individualist. born 1901 in Russian shtetl. family economic
situation worsened after immigration. little religious instruction.
emphasis on education. studied Hebrew in high school. CCNY but did
not graduate. he and wife decided not to have children because of
party demands. in CP but left with Lovestone (many people
experience oppression but Js are more likely to think it has to be
explained--that it is not natural state--that theory can be devised
to explain it--intellectual orientation--and that can be defeated-this world, action orientation. religion as class domination (no
experience of its power and value)(Js more thoroughly atheist
because not only raised without religion but also in society with
different symbols and customs and attached with immigrant past to
be discarded.) a constant student and reader. ILGWU employee. Like
many other Jews on left particularly worried by fascism. 53:
favored
"the
annihilation
of
religion
through
social
consciousness." Hitler Stalin pact; Reinhold Niebuhr on morality.
saw
tendency
of
revolutionary
movements
to
develop
into
totalitarianism p. 69: "Marxism was to me, and to others like me, a
religion, an ethic, and an ideology; a vast all-embracing doctrine
of man and the universe, a passionate faith endowing life with
meaning." it was also--me--a substitute loyalty for those who had a
vacuum unfilled either by nationalism, communal loyalty or
religion. 70: J as giving high worth to individual. 71:
Christianity and socialism had identical structure of belief
system. intermediary stage: grounding Marxism in J-C tradition.
Heavily
influenced
by
Franz
Rosenzweig
who
had
stressed
compatibility of J religious thinking and modern culture. religion
as part of one's existence was more important than whether the
faith was true. (religion as a secular ideology--me) J/C similar
religions with different constituencies. Yet also retreated into
extreme position that religion was completely God/man relationship
and hence reacted to earlier activities, the same reaction which
would make him a political conservative. 137-8 Prot, Cath, J three
generation model: first mainly ethnic; second, a few remain
mediators but most identify completely and seek to become
24
religionless; third while thoroughly American seek ethnic identity
but because so American religion was the way of expressing it.
religions Americanized: optimism, activism, moralism, and idealism
Leon Blum scandalized bourgeois society in 1907 with his
widely read book on marriage, dedicated to his wife and touting his
own happy marriage but advocating premarital sexual experimentation
for young people. pp. 21-2 the vast majority of Jewish
intellectuals, radicals, and artists rejected that community but
they were the people the public identified as Jews, symbolizing a
subversive role, seeming to assail the traditions which formed the
basis of the majority's culture and spiritual beliefs. Romain
Rolland, himself a man of the left, wrote, "Unfortunately, the past
does not exist for the Jews." But this was a ridiculous statement,
it was only true of those Jews who had abandoned the Jews and for
whose actions the Jews would be held responsible.viii
But then a great deal of left-wing politics, philosophy, and
culture has always been a cleverly disguised defense of the
privilege of those who produce it: the middle class and wealthy
intellectuals, the comfortable academics, and the well- over overpaid artists. By claiming to ally with the masses, they justified
their existence and sought a refuge from being oppressed by them, a
situation similar to the beleaguered assimilationist situation
though also one likely to increase rather than assuage the often
more powerful rightist forces which loathed such ideas, activities,
and displays.
Duck 7 --E European revs, purges and later antisemitism
Ana Pauker, party founder, also Jewish, paradox of winning pop
support and then displacing Jews, a paradox later. Bela Kun
Samuel Zivs, law professor and propagandist, early tried to
change designation from Jew to Latvian, thus abandonment but then
made career out of for KGB and anti-Zionism committee, insisting
Jews well treated in Soviet Union, attacking dissidents, those in
concentration camps, justifying Soviet policy said Jews did not
wish to emigrate.
duck 8. NL
Fay Stender story as metaphor. J rad atty defended George
Jackson. refused to provide weapon for escape. 1979 shot five times
at point blank range by member of gang, paralyzed and in pain
committed suicide a year later. dedicated life to radical and
feminist causes. Gloria Steinem father J. self-esteem. yet one
wonders how this hole is related to the argument. mixed marriage,
married secretly before publicly, family disapproved although
mother/mother-in-law developed good relationship and latter first
female school board member in Ohio. taught about Holocaust. Letty
Cottin Pogrebin and Andrea Dworkin. says hatred of women and Jews
similar. little interest. says difference between religion which
teaches chosen and that which teaches sinful.ix
Jews in the New Left, already--though usually not aware of it-somewhat
separated
from
society--made
laughably ridiculous
25
assertions about it, as if they were speaking from little direct
knowledge and from thousands of miles away. a caricature in time
and space. While the generation of European Jewish intellectuals
born between the 1880s and 1910 grew up in a strongly structured
framework of immediate post-tradition and the parallel American
generation of 1930s' radicals were first generation Americans
rebelling against it or their parents' immigrant status, the New
Left generation of America born in the 1930s and 1940s
overwhelmingly had an intellectual/traditional vacuum. Jews as
overwhelming influences not only the most famous but more obscure.
Leaders of both Weatherman Dohrn and RYM-2 Klonsky, some "Red
Diaper" babies. So did their liberal and socialist critics.
Bill Graham, rock music's great entrepreuner, was the refugee
Wolfgang Grajonca, born Berlin 1931. fled across France, 13 year
old sister died, mother killed in gas chambers. organized SF rally
against Reagan's trip to Bitburg, blocked his appearance at Live
Aid.
Abbie Hoffman dies in 1989, probably a suicide "Intellectual
arrogance and moral indignation grow out of the ghetto history,"
Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980) "For 5,000 years, Jews
always had the opportunity to rebel against authority, because for
5,000 years there was always someone trying to break their backs."
b. 1936 son of pharmaceutical salesman. the destiny of the Jews was
to be rebels--a common leftist approach, but then could not rightly
enjoy fruits of society and had to remain outsiders. 1958 Brandeis
graduate, civil rights movement, 1968 Democratic convention. 1973
arrested for selling cocaine to agents. Jerry Rubin
duck Section 9. post-Communist revenge, the fall of the house
of Lenin post-Communist: Romania--Petre Roman, leader of the Front.
Jewish father Walther was a co-founder of the party in the 1930s,
became head of National Salvation Front. also possible Js National
Salvation Front Silviu Brucan, Parliament President Alexandru
Birlandeanu, and spokesman/UN envoy Aurel Dragon Munteanu. rumors
about others Js or J connections. Right: "We want a Christian
government."x
Adam Michnik, activist for human rights and democracy in
Poland. Jewish origin affirms nationality as Polish. key theorist
for change, imprisoned, calls his action "plucky chutzpa" Pope gave
him a "New Testament" grew up in Communist home and came to believe
ideas of Communism as for justice, fairness, and truth. Common
Jewish experience, taking ideas seriously but since continued to do
so then rejected it. "Normal people were afraid of Communism.
Normal people knew that Communism meant terror, lies, imprisonment.
We didn't know that. We thought it meant liberty and truth." The
end for him was 1968: invasion of Czechoslovakia attacks on
students in Poland, and anti-Semitic campaign. repeatedly in jail,
helped form Solidarity. "The situation is different when you have
10 million people behind you than if you have a few thousand."
referring to transition but problem faced earlier by the left,
embracing populism against Jews. also a wry comment about the
26
political growth possibilities of assimilation. not his intention
of course nor any criticism against him.xi
Critics see Michnik and Geremek too soft on the Communists and
too cool on the churchxii
duck 10 Other movements,
Cheddi Jagan's wife, Janet New York Review of Books, April 11,
1991. at Wayne State she tried to be friendly to blacks and
Chinese, "There was some urge within me to reach out to those
groups."
Albie Sachs, a leader of the SACP and ANC coined the slogan,
"For the nation to live the tribe must die." he argued that
people's power must be unitary, cannot be shared among ethnic
groups. the "organized form of the rule of the masses which
overrides all ethnic divisions." is he the one who went to
Israel?xiii
at least five Jews on the ANC National Executive
Committee
PC
Noam Chomsky
Marge Piercy, He, She, and It (Knopf, 1992) Issac Asimov (see
Earth is Room Enough) and also Robert Silverberg) end of days,
swords into plowshares the Golum. soc/fem/J. J mother, welsh
father,
working
class
family
in
Detroit,
leftist.
Reconstructionist. polemical, unpeople.
extremist feminism
Nadine Gordimer, leadership must be in black hands,
revolutionary romanticism, nonetheless the left as the only choice,
cynicism toward the claims of Western civilization, selfabnegation, the willingness to be the suffering servant, the urge
to sacrifice oneself for others' welfare and thus win their love
(nationalism chapter?) and acceptance. Yet in more cases than not,
as the Communists had learned, the sacrifice may be willingly
accepted--even demanded--but it does not win the masses' love. Too
much Jewish participation endangers the success of the enterprise,
to win the people's support it will be jettisoned and attacked. The
People's Will as model. Those complain Jews are usurping their
cause--if they support it--or perverting it--if they don't, and
then blamed for imposing it later. With black movement, Stokely
Carmichael, Jesse Jackson hostility, Malcolm X, by coming closest
Jews posed the greatest threat. Gordimer's own role is not
politically important and her Jewish identity is overwhelmed by her
far more important (for South Africa) white skin. Yet the impulses
which motivate her remain similar. Janet Suzman.
young Jewish entrepreneurs helped market and spread rap music,
arguably more popular among whites than blacks. Rick Rubin, from
suburban Long Island founded his own record company while in
college and produced and marketed Public Enemy, children of black
middle-class professionals who were extreme and made anti-Semitic
remarks in records. Jonathan Shecter founded a rap music magazine,
attacked for being Jewish in some radical black papers. He
responds, "Given what I'm doing, my viewpoint has to be that
27
whatever comes of the black community...is the right thing. I know
my place." A classic pattern of assimilation producing friction.
Shecter said thought rap music bring races together and teach black
children about their culture and history. This meant largely
Malcolm X, when pointed out anti-Jewish implications, Professor
Griff saying stumbled on Protocols and found impressive, Shecter's
face brightened, "Of course, I hadn't thought about it that way.
That stuff's been around since the Thirties, hasn't it?"
Farrakhan."xiv
Abraham Serfaty, exiled to France 1991. "Arab-Jew" arrested
1974 and sentenced 1977 for anti-regime, founder of CP and left in
1970, from old Casablanca family. married by rabbi of Kenitra
prison to French wife Christine. King Hasan protector of Jews.
refused to recognize Israel, refuses to accept even two-state
solution to "allow the Jews to rediscover their universality as
Jews" criticize PLO for not being more effective. said learned as
child that Israel contrary to Judaism, studied Kabbalah and Zohar,
1944 into CP engineer, director of state company. yet even he--or
perhaps this is his motive--"was made to feel completely isolated."
understood the structure of the CP was "as racist as all the
parties of the Moroccan bourgeoisie." but it was not only all
existing parties but also Israel that left him outside of all he
wanted.xv The masses do not behave as the Jewish radical expects-and hopes--because he never really understood their life and mind.
The suffering servant: Mitch Snyder hunger strikes, dedication
to the homeless coupled with showmanship, like an early Christian
leader, an RC yet committed suicide. hung himself. ascetic, took
Christianity more seriously than most of the Christians (Werfel et
al). born in Brooklyn, high school drop out and petty criminal,
married a woman (Ellen Kleiman, J? now Ellen Daly, mixed marriage?)
bad checks, met Berrigan (anti-Jewish leftists taught radical
Christianity, irony, merging of roles.) 1973 came to Washington.
hunger strikes.xvi
duck 11 intellectual counterreaction against left
a discussion on France: Marek Halter from Maoist, also the
nouveau philosophes
Wolf Biermann, the singer and poet expelled from East Germany
for his opposition to government and a long-time pacifist (whose
father was killed at Auschwitz)xvii
Soviet Jewish rebirth
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, close ally of Stalin, willing to
have his two brother's killed to maintain his power. Some of his
descendants settled in Israel as did those of Leib Davidovich
Bronstein; Yakov Sverdlov (first SU president) and Samuel Agursky,
founder of the party's Jewish section which repressed Jews and
independent Jewish institutions. Trotsky's American-born great
grandson David Axelrod became a religiously observant rightist who
settled on the West Bank; Mikhail Agursky son of Samuel, a teacher
and Labor party activist. Maurice Yakir who helped create the
28
Soviet air force and Yonah Yakir armored car and only Jewish Soviet
marshal-both shot in 1937. Five Kaganovich brothers, Mikhail and
Yuli were high-level officials dismissed in purges of late 1940s,
one given no medical care died, the other accused of helping Nazis
and shot himself. Andrei Reznitsky had four great-uncles who were
early Bolsheviks, all shot in 1935, demonstrated for the right to
emigrate. "They made stupid choices and they paid for them with
their lives." said the artist. Maya Ulanovsky's parents were spies
who were later sent to labor camps.xviii
[the Marxists were radically assimilationist. the sequel was
the Soviet Communist Party's suppression of Jewish life after the
revolution, aided by its Jewish section] radical assimilationism
and antisemitism had joined hands and many of the Bolsheviks'
Jewish helpers became its victims, though some also became its
executioners. Yiddish, traditional, customs, festivals, literature,
haskalah, and Zionist Jewish culture were all threats, suppressed
by intimidation and force.
[was the idea that the masses could unite regardless of
personal distinctions and people unite regardless of ethnic
distinctions--overrating both possibilities--a product of the
assimilationist experience and the Jewish Variant philosophy which
preached and predicted it. Similarly, the expectation that the
masses would not support their rulers for traditionalist purposes
or the right because of nationalism was also understated. Was the
sense of impending transformation related to the earthquake and
transformation experienced in the Jewish life of these families? Of
course, many non-Jews accepted the same idea but it especially
appealed to Jews--or recent ex-Jews like Marx himself--for whom
such ideas were taken for granted and seemingly validated by their
own life experience and personal philosophy. Having "outgrown"
nationalism, [see Herzl on unilateral disarmament in this regard]
they expected everyone else to do so. Christian revolutionaries
like Lenin and Stalin were far less utopian in their thinking. They
knew how strong were the "old" forces are and how much violence
would be needed to seize and retain power, including the repression
of other "progressive" forces and rival factions or leaders.
duck 12 Conclusion
if Christianity worshipped a dead J or ex-J as basis for
persecuting Jews, why should not Marxists follow a dead ex-J as a
basis for persecuting Jews. since in both cases they continued as a
people/faith which the founder abjured. It may be argued that
radicalism was not realized but in the case of treating the Jews it
largely was.
For every prophet, there are many false prophets. The danger
is that the Jewish impulse can become nihilist if only its
destructive--or deconstructive--side is taken with no respect for
tradition (which in part is silly superstition and in part is the
learning about the permanent aspects of human life over centuries
and generations.; prophetic critiques and messianic utopianism
without set of moral laws. a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
29
And for those in rebellion against themselves are dangerous both
outwardly and inwardly; easily manipulatable by ideas which can
play on their guilt or self-mistrust; having forgotten history,
lost all sense of precedent or the gravitational pull of historical
experience, humans' nature and life's limitations. Trying to storm
the heaven's (Marx's? phrase for the Paris Commune) or imitate
Daedalus in flying may find they have flung themselves off a cliff.
Also this same rebellion against tradition by non-Jews have often
seen Judaism very negatively as part of the tradition they hate,
holding back humanity.
Part of the assimilation process was for Jews to understand
the society they were entering into and the revolutionary left
situation was partly a stage of that development when learning to
comprehend it., a misunderstanding. of course, due to a lot more
than the Jewish assimilation stage but that was a big part of it
politically and even more intellectually. The utopianism--we are
new to the society and therefore the society is "new", malleable-that began with Hess and Marx and running through the Socialist and
Communist politicians
and the Frankfurt School and other
intellectuals had failed. The collapse of the Soviet bloc was the
end of a historic epoch which had already begun dying from the
Hitler-Stalin pact through the 1950s' purge trials, the alternative
pose by Israel, Jewish social mobility and growing integration.
The leftist Jews congratulate themselves on their universality
of feeling, but it is nothing of the sort. Having already excluded
their own, they simply find another cause or causes to be loyal to.
Replacing the lack of a core with a passion for anything--the more
distant the better to prove their virtue--from animal rights to
Communist rebels, to Oriental religions.
although in no way personally or politically admirable, Trotsky's
life recapitulated that of Jewish history, a strange negation and
full-circle fate for the story of Trotsky and the rabbi.
Turn on head Marx critique of anarchism anecdote at beginning
of The German Ideology.
Jacques Derrida 1978 "a likeness of writer and Jew in the
condition of exile. Each is the product of a writing; it is the
`ground' from which each springs" but which resist "stable
definition."xix [deconstruction is a process of analysis like that
in Jewish tradition but there is a loss of "good faith" of "belief"
which characterized Jewish scholarship, thus the text is seen
analytically by way of a trick in which it means whatever the
"scholar" says it does. The writer is irrelevant. Yet this is
opposite and same as Marx who saw reality as determined by science
yet both are self-definition. How to resolve? Jacques Derrida born
in Algeria and went to France in late 1940s to study, ironically
heir of German philosophy from thinkers generally anti-Jewish,
though he moved their rightist views to the left as Deconstruction.
apologist for Heidegger, perhaps the root of idea that things means
something very different from what they seem. Holocaust an
important theme.
30
As a God, Marxism did not merely fail but misled, corrupted,
and murdered its followers in the process.
William B. Cohen and Irwin M. Wall, "French Communism and the
Jews," in Malino Wasserstein, The Jews in Modern France p. 82
Proudhon wrote in 1847: "The Jew is the enemy of the human race.
One must send this race back to Asia or exterminate it." pp. 83-4
Socialism
was
attractive
because
it
claimed
"universalist
aspirations, promising assimilation in a better world in which all
differences among peoples were obliterated, not the disappearance
of Jews into Christianity but of both Jews and Christians into a
secular republic of justice, science and reason." it also offered
some key elements for a Jewish variant: a new dogma, a complex set
of writings to be studied, debated and analyzed, parallel to the
attitude taken in tradition toward the Talmud. also there was a
special sense of mission to fulfill a historic role, leading to a
messianic era. Some saw the parallel clearly--justice based on
Jewish moral teachings--others angrily and fearfully rejected it.
Jerold S. Auerbach, Rabbis and Lawyers p. 15: 1883, the poet
Emma Lazarus (in her essay on "the Jewish Problem") insisted that
socialism was rooted in Mosaic laws that protected worker's rights,
assured a harvest portion to the needy, and restrained the property
rights of landlords. p. 16: David Edelstadt, the Yiddish poet spoke
of the "new prophets" who will "deliver us from exile." But he had
in mind Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle, not Amos and Isaiah.
Lassalle saw in the Jewish people "nothing but the degenerate sons
of a great, but long past epoch."
William B. Cohen and Irwin M. Wall, "French Communism and the
Jews," in Malino Wasserstein, THE JEWS IN MODERN FRANCE Annie
Kriegel at age 16 joined a Communist resistance group. Her
patriotic French family had the rug pulled from under it, while the
Communists seemed to offer a new fatherland transcending national
boundaries, "all those people who did not want us to be French,
well, we had become stronger than they, we had compatriots all the
way to Vladivostok!" p. 88 Communism claimed it recognized only
class differences and Communism's universalist claims seemed for
many to supplant those of Judaism. One Frence intellectual said
Communism lifted his "Jewish burden." But others complained
Communism rather simply ignored the Jews' existence, The party made
heroes of resisters and martyrs of the slain at fascism's hands,
but did not pay homage to the murdered Jews or mention the Jewish
identity of underground fighters. [but why should it?]. p. 90-1 The
French Communist party's propaganda sometimes seemed anti-Jewish.
It kept Jews out of the top leadership during the Stalinist era and
claimed, as one leader wrote in 1948, "We, Communists have only
genuine French names." p. 95 In the 1967 war, it suggested France
must choose between the national interest or "Rothschild and
Dassault." p. 98 And so later, many of the party's main dissidents
were Jews, talking about the oppression of Soviet Jews, sympathetic
to Israel, and accusing Moscow of antisemitism. Antoine Spire,
grandson of the famous Jewish poet Andre Spire, himself the son of
a convert to Catholicism, rediscovers Jewish values. p. 101 "Why is
31
the left so uninterested in Soviet Jews and other issues while
obsessed with the Palestinians while ignoring refugees in other
parts of the world?" The French Jewish philosopher Alain
Finkielkraut accused the Communists and left of trying to portray
Israel as nazi so as to erase the memory of the Holocaust. Once
depicted as capitalists, the Jews are now, Bernard-Henri Levy
complains, being ostracized and typed as "fascists."
the topic of the Holocaust was strictly banned in the USSR, even
after it was permitted to write about Stalin's repression.xx
Irving Howe, "Range of the New York Intellectual," Prodigal Sons,
p. 272: his father was proud of his articulateness but worried his
political behavior would get him in trouble, "Suddenly at dinner,
with a certain sardonic touch, he said to me, `What do you have
against the man who owns the bakery shop? He's a poor Jew, trying
to earn a living and you want to ruin his business.' I remember
blushing and wondering how he knew. It turned out that one of his
[friends] had seen me on the street corner and had stopped and
listened. Then he called up my old man and told him about it."
p. 273: "If we spoke in Jewish neighborhoods, there was rarely
trouble. Venturing into non-Jewish neighborhoods to expand your
social base meant taking your life in your hands: in the Bronx the
non-Jewish neighborhood meant the Irish neighborhood" with a strong
anti-Semitic tendency. "Those people didn't like a bunch of sheeny
kids coming in and telling them about politics. We used to wish we
had an Irish speaker--not likely in the Socialist movement! And
when we went up to Fordham Road, to a totally Irish area, we had
good reason to be nervous. Later on, when I got more involved in
politics, I would attend meetings in Manhattan which had
essentially the same pattern. In a Jewish neighborhood you might
get called pisher but you were all right. The worst that could
happen was that somebody would throw a tomato, but you could hardly
call that violence.
"We roamed around the whole borough, but with some care. Why
the circumspection? We didn't articulate the reason because I guess
we felt uneasy about admitting that fundamentally we disliked
leaving
the
Jewish
neighborhoods.
(experience
contradicted
universalism).
Hannah Arendt, Rachel Varnhagen p. 130 Perhaps in this new
world everyone would be welcome. After all, anyone could acquire
clear understanding; anyone could participate in the future if its
basis was to be "the governed, the citizens" (Fichte). Belonging,
in fact, was promised precisely to the person who had "annihilated"
himself as a "sensuous individual" (Fichte), in his sensuous
specificity, with a particular origin and a particular situation in
the world.
No matter how much one talks about the Jewish tradition of
justice and so on, the fact is that the philosophy of the left very
much met the psychological and ideological needs of Jewish
intellectuals. Ironically, it suited their material needs on some
occasions--but mainly when it had a professional value to them and
32
sometimes when it projected them to power--and spelled disaster on
others. While the intellectuals or party officials got the benefits
far more than Jews themselves. we are talking here about
revolutionary movements not about social-democratic reforms.
Avineri, Hess p. 11: "My main problem was, naturally,
religion: from it I moved later on to the principles of ethics.
First to be examined was my positive religion [i.e. Judaism]. It
collapsed. So I wanted to base myself on natural religion: but my
agony was so great, that this [foundation] also collapsed before my
eyes. Nothing, nothing remained. I was the most miserable person in
the world. I became an atheist. The world became a burden and a
curse to me. I looked at it as a cadaver. Nature appeared to me as
chaos without order. About history I have not yet heard.
I could not stand this situation. I worked without rest to
rediscover my God, whom I had lost...Nor could I remain a skeptic
for the rest of my life. I had to have a God--and I did find him,
after a long search, after a terrible fight--in my own heart."
"This heart, with its love and kindness, inspired the world with an
ethical order, created unity within diversity. I did not possess a
personal God anymore, but I had a moral world order, which
satisfied me."
Sachar p. 152: Sidney Silverman, Liverpool-born son of a poor
Russian immigrant, he become a confirmed Socialist in his teens.
As a conscientious objector in World War I, he was in prison for
two years and half starved by refusing to eat nonkosher food (it
was not a matter of piety but of principle). In 1927, Silverman
became a worker's lawyer, elected MP in 1935 and served until his
death, Silverman attacked the Tories with scorn and passion. After
the war, horrified by seeing the concentration camps, he helped
draft the White Paper on Nazi crimes against the Jews and became an
impassioned Zionist.
p. 319: The main enemy in Eastern Europe was not portrayed any
more as "bourgeois nationalism" but Zionism, picking a target the
masses might hate. Within five years, Communism mirrored the
political strategy--if not the extent of crimes--followed by the
fascism it had defeated. At the 1952 Czech purge trial the chief
defendant was Rudolf Slansky, secretary-general of the party and a
vice-premier. Of the 14, 11 were Jews, and after the name of each
Jewish defendant the indictment added the words "of Jewish origin."
The defendants' alleged Zionist conspiracy was depicted as a
widely based plot, led by Jewish leaders in the United States and
Israel, to overthrow the regime. The Joint Distribution Committee
was identified as the conduit of this Zionist penetration, its
techniques purportedly ranging from espionage and sabotage to black
market operations and smuggling.
Even the charge of medical
assassination was raised in the Prague Trial (two months before the
Doctors' Plot in Moscow), with the Joint accused of helping Slansky
arrange the attempted poisoning of President Klement Gottwald. p.
320: death sentence for Slansky and 10 other defendants, with three
receiving life terms. an intensive press and radio barrage was
mounted. Jews were expelled from their positions in government,
33
party, industry. Jewish communal leaders were jailed, then tried
secretly on charges of "economic crimes" or of illegally restoring
Jewish properties during the early postwar period.
p. 332 "Party-organized meetings demanded that Jews identify
themselves and condemned `Zionist' influences." There was a massive
purge of Jews Jerzy Panski p. 336 had become secretary of the Union
of Polish Jews exiled in Stockholm. "The first time in my life I've
been active in anything Jewish....I try not to think of the years I
wasted in that pitiful love affair [with Poland and Communism]. It
was all one way." p. 337: become pro-Israel. "After the 1973 war, I
began attending a synagogue for the first time since my Bar
Mitzvah. Just to show that I'm part of the Jewish people." They
registered their daughter with the Jewish community "to help her
find her own identity." He smiled again, this time with a certain
shy pride. "I'm satisfied that she's learned a good lesson from
her old father's mistakes. There has to be at least one identity
no one can ever take from you."
p. 344: Matyas Rakosi, illegitimate son of a Jewish miller's
daughter and a Gentile coachman, was a brilliant student who
attended the Hapsburg monarchy's elite school for diplomats in
Vienna before becoming a Communist. A thoroughly unscrupulous and
ugly apparatchik. He spent 15 years in Hungarian prisons after an
international campaign saved him from a death sentence for his role
in the 1919 revolution. In 1940, he was released and went to
Moscow.
Returned at the head of a quintet of Jews who ran the
country. Of 25 members of the first ruling Communist central
committee, 9 were Jews. They tolerated a renewed wave of
antisemitism rather than risk their own positions when pogroms
broke out in 1946 against Jews trying to regain homes and
businesses seized by the Nazis. p. 345: So Rakosi trated the Jews
badly but at the same time his regime was blamed on the Jews. He
both tolerated and inspired antisemitism.
pp. 345-6: Stalin's 1952 anti-Semitic campaign persecuted
Rudolf Slansky in Prague and Anna Pauker in Bucharest, culminating
in the Doctors' Plot in Moscow, Rakosi tried to save himself by
purging his closest Jewish colleagues and arresting scores of
Jewish professionals and party members. But knowing how much Jews
were hated in Hungary, Stalin ordered Rakosi's resign as premier
and installed Imre Nagy with orders to purge more Jews.
Bruno Kreisky, pp. 36-7: After a brief stint in prison
following the Anschluss, left the country in 1938. Afterward, he
found refuge in Stockholm, and in 1945 became Austria's first
postwar diplomatic representative in Sweden.
Yet politics, not
diplomacy, was his metier. A veteran Social Democrat, he began his
parliamentary career in his native country in 1951.
Later, as
secretary of state from 1953 to 1959, and then as foreign minister
until 1966, Kreisky was largely responsible for charting Austria's
neutralist role in world affairs. Throughout those years of
eminence, nevertheless, he often admitted to journalists that
"there are two things I can never achieve in [Catholic] Austria
because of my Jewish origin:
to become head of my party or to
34
become the nation's chancellor."
Suddenly, in the election of
1970, by his party's and country's choice, he became both.
In
fact, Kreisky no longer meaningfully identified himself with the
Jewish people, even as his militant Socialist background permitted
him no accommodation with the Austrian Zionist movement. Once in
office, his attitude toward Israel was coolly "objective."
p. 37: In September 1973, two Palestinian terrorists kidnapped
three Soviet Jewish emigrants and an Austrian customs official at a
railroad station outside Vienna. Kreisky agreed to a "compromise"
of closing the Jewish Agency hostel at Schonau Castle.
p. 38: he had a brother living in Israel, until the latter's
death in 1973.
Political writers tended to describe Kreisky as
"too clever," "tricky," "shrewd," "a useful outsider in difficult
times." His party was defeated in the spring 1983 elections, for
reasons that probably had little to do with his Jewishness; but
the distrust was a characteristic Austrian reaction.
A public
opinion poll in November 1974 revealed that 70 percent of adult
Austrians nurtured anti-Semitic feelings, and of these, 21 percent
felt that it would be best if there were no Jews at all in Austria.
Philipp Lowenfeld Richarz ed
p.
241:
"Despite
all
its
assurances to the contrary the party had a lukewarm attitude toward
the Jewish Problem." and had avoid running Jews for parliament.
"Notes To Literature II, The Jargon of Authenticity Adano
p. 215 Benjamin once said of Bloch: he can warm himself at
his thoughts. The expectation that something will come is paired
with a profound skepticism.
Karl Kraus: "Nothing is true, and it is possible that
something else will happen," [sounds like Woody Allen]
What one might call the idiocy of the geniuses, the inability
to understand the real world and real people, the difference
between the resolution of problems in mind and in society.
L. Abel, The Intellectual Follies, p. 261-2 If one was Jewish,
one was expected, almost automatically, to join up with some group
on the Left, and accorded very little credit for having done so
when one did. It was assumed that if you were Jewish you had no
right not to be in a left-wing group, whereas non-Jews had such a
right, and so gave greater evidence of seriousness and judgment in
becoming left-wingers." It was also assumed that Anglo-Saxon
leftists of Christian background would have more success in
recruiting workers. "Jews in the left-wing movement were supposed
to give up, or at least forget about, their Jewishness for the sake
of the universalist (not truly universalist, by the way) principles
they were supposed to serve." [supposed to be altruistic, the
suffering servant, ironically, of Catholic doctrine] "even in this
elite circle, composed almost entirely of Jews, one felt at a
certain disadvantage in being Jewish."
The drive to extol man as the collective master of the world
may unite humanity but while abolishing national loyalties, it
might end in unifying humanity into "one immense army, one immense
factory," complained the French Jewish intellectual Julien Benda in
the 1920s, that would "denounce all free and disinterested
35
activity...[and] would have no God but itself and its desires."xxi
Walter Benjamin, Reflections p. ix the gifted sons turned
against the assimilated businessmen fathers, reaction against
bourgeois success and, "in building their counterworlds in
spiritual protest, they incisively shaped the future of science,
philosophy, and literature."
p. x brother, George wife, Hilde Benjamin, was to serve the
German Democratic Republic as a fierce state prosecutor
PC: the assimilationist and leftist Jews had come to define
ethnicity only in negative terms of avoiding oppression, definition
in terms of what others said instead of what they did. hence
obsession with what the "gentiles" said. PC offered Jews one of
those unattractive choices constantly being foisted in the
assimilation process: to shut up about themselves and to dedicate
themselves to others altruistically or to demand a place among the
oppressed which was equally a trap, aside from not being very
accurate, since the only people oppressing them were their
perspective allies.
Aron wrote just before the 1967 war, "The fact that President
Nasser openly wishes to destroy a state that is a member of the
United Nations does not trouble the delicate conscious of Madame
Nehru....And the French Jews who have given their souls to all the
black, brown, or yellow revolutionaries are now crying out in
sorrow, while their friends are calling for blood."xxii
NOTES
i. Werner Cahnman, German Jewry (New Brunswick, NJ, 1989), p. 105.
ii. A.L. Motzkin, "Ancestors," New Republic, April 13, 1992.
iii. Raymond Aron, History, Truth, Liberty, p.144.
iv. Forward, June 7, 1991.
v. Fernando Morais, `Olga': The Gift to Hitler
vi. Washington Post, October 25, 1987.
vii. New York Times, November 29, 1987.
viii. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, p. 21.
36
ix. Jerusalem Report, March 5, 1992.
x. Jerusalem Report, January 2, 1992, p. 2.
xi. Michael Kaufman, "Poland's Plucky Activist," New York Times
Magazine, April 26, 1987.
xii. See, for example, Timothy Garton Ash, "Eastern Europe: Apres
le Deluge, Nous," New York Review of Books, August 16, 1990.
xiii. Hermann Giliomee, "Mandela's Mess," New Republic, October 19,
1992, p. 18.
xiv. David Samuels, "The Rap on Rap," New Republic, November 11,
1991. See also New York Review of Books, April 11, 1991 need
reference check p. 58.
xv. Forward, September 20, 1991.
xvi. Washington Post, July 6, 1990.
xvii. New York Review of Books, April 25, 1991, p. 27.
xviii. Tom Sawicki, "My Uncle, The Butcher," Jerusalem Report,
August 22, 1991.
xix.
Cited
in
Haim
Chertok,
"Agnon
Processed," Jerusalem
Post
Magazine, July 24, 1992, p. 28.
xx. Shimon Markish, "Officially Published Russian Literature," in
37
Y. Roi and A. Becker, Jewish Culture and Identity in the Soviet
Union, p. 224.
xxi. Julien Benda, Treason of the Intellectuals p. 202.
xxii. Aron, Memoirs p. 335.
38
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE LAST JEW
"Everything had been prepared beforehand; a thin crust of
earth had been constructed only for [appearances]; immediately
beneath it a great hole opened out, with steep sides, into which K.
sank, wafted onto his back by a gentle current. And while he was
already being received into impenetrable depths, his head still
straining upwards on his neck, his own name raced across the stone
above him in great flourishes. Enchanted by the sight, he woke up."
--Franz Kafka, "The Dream"
Peretz Smolenskin, novelist and editor 1842-1885. a wealthy
Russian Jew visited him in Vienna, he brought his daughter-involved in the Populist movement--to hear Smolenskin's advice but
she fled to Switzerland on the way, the father complained bitterly
that Smolenskin who had taught others wisdom could not prevent his
daughter's flight. S said he was trying to teach the parents not
the children, "How did you bring up your daughter? You had
governesses and tutors, teaching her foreign languages. You sent
her to high school, where she learned about other peoples. Did you
teach her about our own people? Did you teach her our own language?
Did you interest her in our own history? Did you want her to know
about our own people and our own national aspirations. To whom,
then, should you bring your complaints, if not to yourself?"i
The Debre family's history is typical of many: grandfather
Simon, come from Alsace to serve in Paris as grand rabbin; son
Robert,
an
outstanding
physician,
professeur
de
Faculte,
freethinker, host to guests of all persuasions; grandson Michel, a
Catholic, prime minister to de Gaulle and a spokesman for his
president's anti-Israel policies.ii
Yet if--as in Kafka (see, for example, "The Dream," pp. 399401)--the European Jews saw a dead end, it was not only due to
antisemitic persecution or a foresight of the Holocaust. For the
best case alternative was equally an end: assimilation, the death
of the community.
Daniel Chwolson, Vilna poverty converted in 1855 to become
professor of semitics at the University of St. Petersburg, asked if
he changed religion from conviction, supposedly replied, "Yes, I
was convinced it is better to be a professor in St. Petersburg than
a melamed in Eyshishok." though worked to help Jews but children
socialized with other converts and disappeared. professor of
Hebrew. fought against prejudice and superstition, denied blood
libel, though an Imperial commission submitted fabricated evidence
but not his presentation. in 1881 passed Kutais where accused had
been earlier found not guilty, taken to synagogue. Holy Ark opened
and was blessed. wrote letters on behalf of Jews to Minister of
Interior after pogroms.iii
There were other such, Jan Bloch, b 1836-1901. financier and
scholar, baptized as young man 344: "I was my whole life a Jew and
I die as a Jew." community work, studied conditions of Jews to give
data to show antisemitic arguments untrue but all the completed
1
volumes destroyed in the 1890s by fire in plant. friend of Herzl,
pacifist. contributor. yet five children estranged from community.
railway contractor. father a dyer, clerk in a lawyer's office,
business. wanted to accomplish something for Jews. in 1880s
activity. helped Baron de Hirsch. Nahum Sokolow, the Zionist leader
wrote of him, "Thus are we bereft of strength. So, without leaving
a trace behind, vanishes [349] what the potential energy of the
Jewish race accumulated through a thousand years, what Jewish
industry has built up, so does it all vanish through want of a
national foundation....And so they will continue to fade as long as
we have not a foot of earth we can call our own beneath our feet,
nor a stretch of heaven above our heads."
Henri Bergson 1859-1941 said saw Catholicism as fulfillment of
Judaism but did not convert he said because of persecution. B
concluded that with intellect alone man cannot comprehend the
truth. only philosophy and intuition can do so, intuition (which
obviously ed him to Catholicism) ENS graduate. French philosopher,
Nobel. rejected offer of Vichy of exception to anti-J laws.
Merchant Princes the contrary pulls of liberalism and the
thirst for honors. Marx's talk of how workers build the edifice of
their own repression--which was also true of the Jewish Marxists.
E.A. Filene founded City Club in Boston and also Chamber of
Commerce then National and International CC to make business more
humane and democratic instead became strongholds of reaction, his
lawyer Louis Brandeis declared, "Filene is forever making weapons
for the enemy." at the insistence of his wife, Therese, and for
social benefit of daughters Catherine and Helen became a
Congregationalist. C married a right-wing congressman and gave Wolf
Trap.iv
Jewish Apostasy Todd Endelman, "Conversion in Germany and
England," p. 88: in Germany, the son interested in civil service or
university might convert and the one to take up the business not.
Richard Lichtheim, Zionist, recalled father had asked if he wanted
to convert as had most of his relatives, said if son wanted to
become lawyer not grain merchant. 1-2 percent of Jewish children
born between 1880-1910. 10 Jewish professors at University of
Strasbourg all had baptized his children to protect them from
humiliation. promotion pushed others, some refused and some agreed.
one of the baptized children married Albert Schweitzer. as women in
the lower middle class entered professions they increasingly found
conversion helped them find a job. or it could be marrying
Christian aristocrats. 91: Bleichroder, founder Samuel became rich
in Napoleonic wars in 1830s, son built firm and had good ties with
Bismarck in 1893 as the richest man in Berlin. next generation
remained Jewish with active interest in communal affairs. but his
children all became Protestants, married non-Jews and his three
sons were playboys--truly integrated into the dissipated life style
of the nobility. 93: nominal Jews became nominal Christians. Nobel
laureate chemist Fritz Haber said he was demonstrating his cultural
allegiance to the German people.
94 Charles de Rothschild at Harrow in 1890s, "If I ever have a
2
son he will be instructed in boxing and jiu-jitsu before he enters
school, as Jew hunts such as I experienced are a very one-sided
amusement, and there is apt to be a lack of sympathy between the
hunters and hunted." 98: "Jews were ceasing to be Jewish in England
because resistance to their incorporation into society was weak; in
Germany, their ties to Judaism were being sundered because the
resistance was strong." 99: a British rabbi wrote of "those who
measure their success in life by the distance to which they are
able to withdraw themselves from all Jewish associations." 99: but
a convert recalled that it was harder at Harrow since Jewish boys
were proud of their religion and confident of their equality while
converts are in between. 146-53: in Budapest, "Christian Jews" were
17.5 percent and in Hungary 10 percent between the wars. In 1822
the chairman of the Jewish community in Pest became a Catholic and
was soon ennobled, could buy a land. [the comforting legend of the
helping convert, even up to a Medieval pope.) and in 1848 the same
thing happened. the later ones became due to dedication to Magyar
nationalism. to win the Magyars one had to become just like them.
Harold Laski, father was leader of the Manchester community,
secretly married a Christian in 1911, father became ill with shock
and reconciled only a decade later though daughter-in-law to avoid
friction promised to convert and raise their child as Jewish.
Samuel Montagu died 1911 disinheritance clause in will, must stay a
Jew and not intermarry. Edwin clashed repeatedly, later said trying
to get out of ghetto all his life. said he considered himself an
Englishman by race. his sister worked in a club for Jewish girls
disapproved as working for "sectarian purposes" and strengthening
"barriers" but needed father's allowance to stay in politics.
[Edwin was the most important contemporary opponent of Zionism and
the Balfour Declaration.]v
Samuel Montagu strict on Sabbath observance, prohibited
croquet but not tennis, since one was more likely to damage mallet
in former. could ride in a chair at Brighton pushed by a man but
not by a horse, since the man could observe a day of rest on Sunday
and chose to work. 88: When Arthur Cohen's daughter married out in
1895 he resigned as president of the Board of Deputies, a post he
had held for 15 years; another leader who participated in his
daughter's church marriage was asked to resign as president of the
Anglo-Jewish Association. Embittered, he had himself buried in a
churchyard. In contrast to central and Eastern Europe, Jews who
converted or intermarried in England suffered little more than a
social chilliness that was not career-threatening, much less life
threatening. The community's lack of intellectual or cultural
interest perhaps made it more British.vi
Todd Endelman, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World (NY, 1987)
Gershom Scholem's father called baptism (p. 85) "an unprincipled
and servile act" at a time antisemitism was on the rise; Rathenau
loathed his origins and officially withdrew from community in 1895
but said conversion for opportunistic reasons was degrading and an
acceptance of Prussia's discrimination. others who did not feel
cowardice and treachery within were afraid of accusations of it.
3
The official Jewish organizations agreed, seeing as "renegades who
sacrifice their honor and conviction to win recognition." and
delayed true emancipation. as Endelman points out, 98: "To put the
comparison crudely, Jews were ceasing to be Jewish in England
because resistance to their incorporation into society was weak; in
Germany, their ties to Judaism were being sundered because the
resistance was strong." [[perhaps a crisis of conversion or
departure from community in intermediate stage between the
immigrants whose alienness runs deep and fundamental loyalty to old
way of life--even if discarding many aspects--and those who feel so
comfortable in the environment that they refuse to discard what
they have left, but in latter group a slower drift away.
on being the last Jew (Maxwell interview in JP or JR late
March 1990. Robert Maxwell buried in Jerusalem as virtual hero
after November 1991 death, Mount of Olives, once announced
converted to Anglican church but later became supporter and big
investor. Daily News, Mirror. Hirsh accusations. no connection
until 1988 at age of 65. reportedly helped arrange the transit of
Jews leaving in Eastern Europe. cried talking to journalists saying
wished parents had lived to see Jerusalem. son Philip "Throughout
his life, he never forgot his Jewishness," in eulogy. "He wanted to
close the circle of his life and return in death to his origins."vii
Terrible scandal, taking $750 million out of pension funds,
unable to repay debts, left his sons in a mess.viii "All of us here
are Englishmen together," Maxwell liked to tell audiences. "The
difference is that you are Englishmen by accident. I am an
Englishman by choice." newspapers made fun of him for calling
aristocrats by first names, pushing himself next to members of the
royal family at public functions. Wrote Anthony Delano, a former
editor and a biographer for him, Maxwell "loved England but never
learned to understand what it meant to be an Englishman." "Maxwell
could never understand why England did not love him as much as he
loved it." flamboyance, egotism, ruthless drive, changed name. made
his maiden speech on first day, saw as being too aggressive. kept
Peter Jay, former British ambassador to the US on payroll but
insulted and demeaned him treating as office boy. and so on. 1964
told Jewish Chronicle wrong to refer to him as Jewish member of
parliament, "Now I am a member of the Church of England."ix
Percy Straus's three sons: Ralph Isidor sent to Groton where
beaten up to antisemitic curses, his father told to stick it out
and finally permitted to transfer; family went from percy Solomon
Straus to percy Selden Straus to his second son's becoming percy
Selden and withdrawing from family. third brother Donald said,
"Jewishness was like sex. It was absolutely taboo as a subject for
discussion with either of my parents. By example rather than by
word they raised the three of us to be antisemitic." the goal was
to get on boards of directors of non-Jewish institutions. "It was
just as clearly preferable to meet and take out Christian girls and
of course we all married Christians." supposed to revere family but
family undermined itself. uneasiness at enjoying self. did what did
because what supposed to do not because one enjoyed. taught, "All
4
religions were merely a cause of wars, cruelty, and prejudice."
[have to talk not only about German/Viennese Jews but the
American/British Jews who were the extension of that culture!!]
"Don't make yourself conspicuous." Many Strauses joined St. James's
Episcopal Church which was logical since religion was regarded as
having no content but merely value as social status. the
glorification of the bland.x
C. Douglas Dillon the grandson of Sam Lapowski, polish-Jewish
storekeepers in Texas, father changed name to Dillon at Worcester
Academy and Harvard and gave his father's name as Dillon. son
raised as presbyterian and switched to Episcopalian at Groton.
ambassador to France, secretary of the treasury, president of
Metropolitan Museum and member of many clubs. admitted to Chevy
Chase Club when members assured that he was only 25 percent
Jewish.xi
Circumstances of death: November 5, Lady Ghislaine, 180-footlong, 450-ton yacht. sea calm. floating in sea near Canary Islands.
accident? suicide? murder? due to speak at a dinner of a British
Jewish group. b Jan Ludvik Hoch, 1923, poor Orthodox family in
Czechoslovakia, most of his family died in the Holocaust. arrived
in England in 1940, joined British army, rose to rank of captain,
Military Cross for bravery in Normandy Invasion, intelligence
officer in Germany interrogating prisoners. at one point,
Department of Trade declared him unfit to run a public company.
Holdings included Daily Mirror, Sunday Mail, MacMillan publisher,
European. bought New York Daily News. Labor member of Parliament
1964-1970. played down Jewish origins most of his career, became
involved in 1980s buying Maariv and other companies, some of which
he made big profits on. boasted of contacts with senior Israeli
leaders, helped organize transport of immigrants through East
Europe from SU.xii Accounts for after me the deluge approach?
intermarriage is a classic example of Grouchoism. One the one
hand, Jews demand the right to intermarriage--not being barred by
law or custom, not good enough?--then repelled from results.
marriage to antisemite, Woolf, Mariano D'Amelio as pres of
Supreme Court of Cassazione for almost 20 years and one of most
legal minds. his wife was Jewish. everywhere one turns,
intermarriage, even when not looking for it and the most apparently
solid families are crumbling around the edges. a smaller percentage
raised Jewish, a looser connection of those who are and are just as
likely or more likely to intermarry, diluting further. The American
Jewish community will not disappear--that false issue has obscured
much debate on the subject--but will be smaller
Leslie Fiedler, the last Jew of his family, he married out as
did his eight children, in WW2 more interested in Communism than
Holocaust, saw a seder only as an adult, never joined any Jewish
organization. preoccupation with antisemitism is his sole remaining
connection.
[preoccupation
with
antisemitism
as
distinctly
assimilationist issue]
5
Mary Morris, Wall to Wall: From Beijing to Berlin by Rail (NY,
1991). in search of roots in Ukraine shtetl--which she could not
get
to
because
of
Chernobyl.
p.
87:
"I
am
orphaned,
disenfranchised, removed....A Jew, a lost one, searching for my
clan. I have no been able to find my mate, my place. Like most
Americans I dwell far removed from the source--in deserts where no
one knows where we've come from, in cities where no one cares. Like
the ghost of a restless soul, it seems I must search until I find
what I am looking for--community, family, the place to belong."
88: "We live alone. Our families are elsewhere. We wander from city
to city...." 240: though parents lived far away from European
battlefields, in 1947 when she was born, "they named me Mary so no
one, my mother told me years later, would know by my name that I
was a Jew."
and there must be many such cases, including well
before the Holocaust. The fear of death always brings far more fear
and flight than courage and steadfastness when there is a choice.
Berenson?
Mary Gordon essay
A tendency toward self-extinction which reflects both selfabnegation and egoism.
The significance of Philip Roth's childlessness and of Woody
Allen's giving away his only begotten son. again, the tefillin of
Patrimony there is no one to hand it on to since even if gives it
to PR, PR has no one to give it to.
something on Isaac Babel and Red Cavalry and how the writers
who would not abandon being Jews entirely--no matter how much they
raised the red flag--were wiped out, often by other Jews for whom
they posed a terrible threat. For did not Hess give the lie to
Marx, Babel give the lie to ____, and the Zionists or Bundists to
Trotsky and (Stalin's henchman). There must be a last Jew to
protect the first assimilationists.
mixed marriage became the conversion of the late twentieth
century but unlike the latter, the former could not be criticized
because it was a seeming admission of equality--antisemitism had
made Christians reject Jews in their family. In fact, the Jews
propagandized for it in movies and television programs and novels,
mostly males, antagonism to Jewish women; jokes and so on; but like
everything in American life it was not so much ideological but
practical, easy and sensuously rewarding. Whereas once Jewish women
in Europe had married aristocrats, now for beauty.
The
necessary
historical,
cultural,
and
psychological
distance--and acceptance of secular Jews--to effuse traditional
Jewish life in a rosy glow. For if it was so wonderful why not
return to it? Or identify secular Jews with it? Not only a question
of antisemitism, for if it is so attractive, then why not return to
it? This must be unimaginable to make it acceptable to talk of the
traditional. One way is to make it remote in time and place--the
East European shtetl. solitary, inside, without world, feeling no
right to pass on either because it should bring suffering or
6
because of a principled belief that rootlessness was superior and
that each generation made itself (an illusion of each generation
but not a fact).
The desire everyone feels that he is the world and that it
should end with him. Freud called the death wish. Often have
trouble producing off-spring or marrying. Kafka, Woody Allen
assimilation to whom? for hipster in 1950s and early 1960s; for
radicals the masses and blacks in 1960s and 1970s (the role once
filled by Russian peasants and workers for earlier generation there
in the 1880s through 1920, then for American workers in the 1920s
and 1930s.
Heine book p. 66-7: He feels that the poor Polish Jews have
been left behind, that their religion and culture is corroded by
superstition, but also admires them for their history and
steadfastness, a wholeness of character which contrasts with the
self-division, Heine was to diagnose so frequently in his
contemporaries and self and of the in-between state of the
fashionably-dressed German Jew. But this phrase cost nothing and
had no effect. perhaps over-stated by Heine-watchers
M. Richarz, JEWISH LIFE IN GERMANY Paul Muhsam p. 256: there
was such a lack of discipline, such a babble of voices,
conversations, whispering, looking around, and letting oneself go,
and the service was so far removed from any solemnity of atmosphere
and ceremony that it could only be called an utter and complete
chaos.
Already at that time I asked myself what all of these
repulsive carryings-on had to do with God and religion, and if
since my schooldays, except for special occasions, I have never
again attended services.
pp. 256-7: I would probably have been more enriched by the
Jewish spirit if my father, instead of urging me to attend those
services, had imparted to me the knowledge of holiday customs and
had observed the family celebrations, which at all times have
contributed most to the bond among Jews through living tradition
and reverent cultivation of the heritage of the past. For us, too,
a holiday came but once a year, and business made it unavoidable
that these were always the Christian holidays. Even on the High
Jewish Holidays the store remained open.
The only thing that
reminded one of Jewish custom was the habit of commemorating the
day of our grandparents' death by a night candle that floated on a
layer of oil in a water glass placed on the sideboard. My uncle
Samuel always informed us on time on which day these anniversaries
of death, regulated by the Jewish calendar, came. At Christmas no
tree was set up, but we did exchange presents.
The religious
holidays, Shabbat, the Haggada, the tabernacle, etc. remained mere
names for me, and I did know when Christmas was, but not Chanukah.
To be sure, every Friday evening I saw my mother quietly praying
to herself from her prayer book, conscientiously rising up at the
prescribed places, but I myself did not have the urge to do the
same.
7
p. 257: (having been denied own community as well as religion,
nation, and culture, searched for another. own parents had
acquiesced in this surrender of all but the smallest externals) If
due to such rebellion I intentionally rejected the jargon
expressions of my parents, this occurred in pursuance of an attempt
at assimilation, which in other families had already been realized
by the preceding generation. It was an expression of the wish to
live in a community, which was possible only by getting rid of
every trace of otherness.
I don't know what I would have given if it had been possible
for me to belong to the school fraternity, in which all members and
elder fraternity brothers were on familiar terms, and in which
there reigned a spirit of unrestrained gaiety.
p. 258: Certainly such symptoms could have been a warning sign
to me that the road of integration into the Christian world is
passable only for a stretch, but then ends before a closed door and
does not lead into the open. Nevertheless, I lacked absolutely all
of the inner and external qualifications for pursuing the path to
the Jewish community. I knew nothing about Judaism. It offered me
nothing whatever. For me it was only an empty shell, and I saw in
it nothing but a burdensome fetter. The idea of baptism, however,
which I frequently considered, I rejected for reasons of filial
love and also because it would have taken place without an inner
need, and it seemed to me to be cowardly, characterless, and
contemptible to abandon the oppressed and join the side of the
oppressors, embracing a religion for which, despite the most
radiant genius from whom it took its name, almost 2000 years had
not sufficed to fill its followers with a humanity that would have
made such oppression impossible.
Philipp Lowenfeld, SDP p. 235-6: some Jews "imagined that they
were more refined if they socialized with Christians than if they
were in the company of members of their own religion." Many "also
found a child to be prettier if it `did not look Jewish.' My mother
prided herself on the fact--in her opinion--this held true for her
children. But the same Jewish circles were deeply indignant if a
Jew was not loyal to the Jewish community, especially if he had
himself baptized. My father used to express this by saying that
"one does not abandon a besieged fortress." Thus, for many of the
Jews of this generation it was much more a question of character
than of awareness to stick to one's Jewish guns. [but as most
normal people in a besieged fortress want to leave--Yossarian in
Catch-22 if everyone felt that way... when fortress is no longer
besieged it is an empty ruin.
p. 236: The inner contradiction of these tenets was, to be
sure, often painfully realized by us children, although not by our
parents. Why should it be a question of character to remain within
a group if it was more refined to associate with the others? And
why, conversely, should the others be better than us if, in our
opinion, we had a true religion, and, according to our religion
teachers, the only true one? It was not clear to us, of course,
that the retreat into the religious community represented a more or
8
less conscious attempt by the Jews to pretend to themselves,
through assimilatory gestures, that their recently attained
emancipation was the expression of genuine equality.
Philipp Lowenfeld Richarz ed 241-2 My fiancee, on the other
hand, came from a family in which a mixed marriage with a Jew was
something unknown. To be sure, in school she had Jewish girlfriends
to whom she was bound by genuine liking. But owing to tradition and
home influences, the thought of marriage to a Jew had been, until
very recently, something so completely alien that by her admission
she had said in company when discussing the problem of mixed
marriage that one could just as soon marry a negro as a Jew." His
fiancee's father was a high-ranking official for the Krupp company,
active in right-wing causes. His father accepted; his mother showed
mild horror but afterward acted in a familiar manner. Grandfather,
from whom one could also no longer keep the engagement a secret,
declared that he would jump out the window on the day that this
wedding took place. The wedding took place, and he did not jump out
the window. He overcame his negative feelings and not only behaved
toward my wife in a formally correct way but also showed her his
genuine liking.
The girl's father received him icily, sitting down, and had me
remain standing. "What can I do for you?" "I have come to tell you
that your daughter Lotte and I intend to marry." "That is out of
the question." "Then I can leave. I just wanted to do my moral duty
and behave decently by informing you in person. As you know, as
adults we do not require your approval in order to marry." Then,
using the familiar form of address, he asked me to sit down. The
ice was broken. The father was convinced that resistance was futile
and "his shock that I was a Jew was somewhat neutralized by the
fact that I was a professor's son, that in my career until then
there was nothing bizarre
Philippine Landau, p. 249: His parents only observed the main
holidays with their rules, fasting on Yom Kippur and going to
services. "But all that was now observed not so much from an inner
need, but...from custom and habit" and concern over the criticism
of the local Jewish community. "Lacking were the prerequisites that
allowed things to become truly alive and necessary: true belief
and genuine piety." Formal observance of fasting, keeping kosher,
and going to synagogue were like "a structure from which almost all
the supports have been removed in the end only barely holds
together in its old form as long as no one touches it. A fresh
wind, isolation from the old companions that used to surround it,
knocks it over."(if only people feared God as much as neighbors)
p. 251: Then, when one had passed through this turbulent world, in
which all the interests of the world outside were still palpable,
and when the peculiarly heavy door of the synagogue had shut softly
behind one, then one was immediately seized by the sacredness and
solemnity of the place, and it filled the heart of the child, who
had entered here still overcome by the light outside and the noises
of everyday life.
One was surrounded by another world, whose
strangeness, whose detachment from everything that was common and
9
usual, and whose sacredness at one and the same time enchanted,
elated, and solemnly, almost painfully moved one. When the sounds
of the organ resounded, the candles of the altar shone quivering
through the twilight of the room, and the cantor's and the
community's singsong chanting, which progressed in strange
harmonies, reached my ear, I was in an enchanted, better world,
full of holiness, in which only kindness, love, and noble thoughts
had a place, and I felt strangely purified and lifted up into
another, noble world.
It was probably this pervading feeling of
exaltation, which oddly enough was not linked to any concrete
religious idea, that drew me to the synagogue, a feeling that even
today still comes over me with the same indefinable quality when by
chance I am to be present at a Jewish service. Is this perhaps the
dormant memory of the feelings of departed generations?
p. 252: 1871-1918. the Yom Kippur when his father did not fast
for the first time, while observance at home increasingly lax,
father had needed to set example for his young employees and due to
"superstition and fear that he would die that year" if he did not
fast. "But the spread of liberal views on religion, and further the
liquidation of the business, which also relieved him of the duty to
set a good example to a number of young Jewish people in this
domain, and not least the influence of mother, who with her
easygoing nature found that one could also be religious selectively
and comfortably, caused him to take this step, which was very
drastic and momentous, as far as he was concerned. Thus, on this
memorable day I witness lunch being served. Oddly enough, contrary
to all custom, father is at home and not at the synagogue, as
usual.
He hesitates to sit down at the table, and I sense the
importance of the moment and the tension as to what will happen
next. My heart comprehends the difficult struggle that my father
is fighting, but my mother urges him on and ridicules him.
But
only after she, laughing and joking all the while, has securely
drawn the curtains and windowshades so that no eyes of the
surrounding neighborhood can see the outrage, does he sit down to
eat. After this decision, which was certainly very difficult for
him, and after the belief that if he violated the prohibition he
would bring severe punishment upon himself in the course of the
next year had also proven to be false, my father, too, parted for
good from the old strict customs, to which he had been bound, not
by a true heartfelt need but rather only by fear, habit, and
piety."
Philipp Lowenfeld Richarz ed Clara Geissmar pp. 160-1: "My
unsatisfied religious need was fulfilled by the firm belief in a
moral world order that runs like a red thread through everything
that Treitschke discusses. When the year 1866 later proved that he
was right in saying that `the brutality of the petty German
provinces can be overcome only by another kind of brutality,
through the brutality of the Prussian sabres,' he appeared to me to
be a prophet. No Jew and no Catholic can write that way, I told
myself. Only a Protestant can achieve something like that. When
we were alone, we spoke much about the religious education of our
10
children. We agreed that our life in the Judaism of our childhood
had left something within us, an extract upon which we could draw
for the rest of our lives. We also agreed that children could
encounter the essence of religion only through its external forms.
Josef desired that we introduce these external forms into our
home. As he never bothered with the practical details in any real
matters, it was hard to figure out what these individual forms were
to be.
Above all, Friday evening and the Sabbath were to be
celebrated.
But if Saturday is not also celebrated by other
friends and acquaintances, and especially if the children see their
father carrying on his weekday activities on Saturday and that he
has his holiday on Sunday like everyone else all around us, then
Saturday can hardly be maintained as a day of rest.
The outward forms of Judaism, this wall with which it
surrounded its God, can only stand when the many Asiatic stones and
pebbles from which it is formed hold together. If one removes a
single stone, the whole wall shakes and finally collapses. Only
Orthodox Judaism is stable. Every reform means collapse. Nothing
could be done. Now I wanted the children to be raised as
Protestants.
Frau von Rechthaler, with her zeal for the liberal
Protestant cause, told me what her friend Zittel in Heidelberg had
once said:
"All of the churches are educational institutions;
Protestantism is the best." Josef wanted to know nothing of it. If
only because of his father there could be no thought of it. The
children were still so small that the question was not critical.
That one visit to church still made itself felt within me;
it
would not have been easy for me to send my children to the
Protestant church. But since that time, because of its effect, I
was won over by Protestantism, despite all of the negative sides,
which in later life did not remain hidden from me.
I was not
interested in Christ. Not even if regarded as a human did this
noble, majestic figure attract me.
His lack of human weaknesses
repelled me. We come to love personalities who are far superior to
us only through their weaknesses, and these were nowhere to be
seen.
The only thing in the New Testament that gladdened and
enriched me were two pronouncements: "And though you have all but
have not charity, etc." And "You shall know them by their fruits."
I believed to see the fruits of Protestantism, palpably, in the
national and national-economic sense.
I believed in what it was
destined to be, perhaps in accordance with its nature, and I found
that in this sense Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe had also been good
Protestants....I discussed my religious problems with my Protestant
friends, who would have been happy if we were to have had our two
children baptized.
A tender soul once had tearful eyes at the
thought of how our little Leopold would someday fare in the world,
at all that he would have to suffer if he were to grow up a Jew.
Whenever we talked about it, Josef said again and again that, as
best as possible, the children simply were to be given a Jewish
religious upbringing. Both of us felt the same aversion to modern
Judaism, with its abundance of stringency and its lack of depth,
and which maintains itself only through negation.
But Josef was
11
unable to help me in my distress;
more than once he was quite
impatient at my abnormally one-sided stress on the religious
question.
Protestantism, whose merits he did not fail to
appreciate, was in his eyes certainly a good school for humane
upbringing, but he said that it had destroyed so much that was
vital to our life that he found it unacceptable. My father-in-law,
to whom in my distress I had explained my reasons for baptizing the
children, wrote me an incensed letter that upset me completely.
Karoline found that earlier she had liked me much more. My brother
Leopold pointed out to me that in order for a person to live
successfully for himself and others he has to do justice to a whole
series of claims.
intermarriage has replaced conversion
Todd Endelman, "German Jews in Victorian England," Frankel &
Zipperstein, Assimilation and Community
p. 64 Jacob Behrens, who failed to establish even nominal
links with the Anglo-Jewish community.
"All forms of service
conducted on lines strictly laid down and according to dogma find
no response in me, even if they do not repel me.
When either
Christian minister or Jewish rabbi calls on the inscrutable God
with the audacity and familiarity of an old acquaintance, I can see
nothing but a hollow lie or an unfathomable depth of stupidity."
Reasonable men, he felt, could not believe in the personal God
of organized religion.
Thus he refused to give his children any
religious training, convinced that it was hypocritical to educate
children in a faith in which one did not believe.
However, his
descendants and those of his brothers Louis and Rudolf drifted
contentedly into the Established Church.
For them and other
English-born
offspring
of
German
Jews,
free-thinking
anticlericalism was neither attractive nor relevant to their own
experience. They were eager to get on in polite English society and
principled opposition to institutional religion was simply not
socially respectable.
pp. 64-5 The religious outlook of Ludwig Mond was as sharply
deistic as that of Behrens. For him there was no such thing as a
reasonable religion.
He and his German-born Jewish wife were
completely alienated from Jewish practices.
p. 65 The third generation of Monds in England, not
surprisingly, were raised as members of the Established Church,
although two of Alfred's children, much to their mother's distress,
later embraced Judaism and Zionism.
p. 80 Fredric Elias Warburg emigrated from Sweden to London
around 1860. made a fortune in the City, largely through financing
London's first underground railways in association with Ernest
Cassel.
He and his wife never attended synagogue or in any way
practiced Judaism. Two of their three sons married Christian women
and ceased to be even nominal Jews on their marriage, raising their
children eventually in the Church of England.
A generation strained to escape being Jews--though sometimes
rebelled by shoving it in everyone's face--denied the necessary
12
knowledge to the point they cease to be aware of its existence and
also escaping all the constraints of Jewish life--ritual, diet,
moral code, family--to burst out in celebration. Why would anyone
want to go back? Plus poverty and outsider and American ethos.
Clarence Brown, Mandelstam pp. 19-20 His parents were not
religious. "Once or twice in my life I was taken to a synagogue as
if to a concert," he felt it had nothing to do with him, referring
to "Judaic Chaos" which he contrasts with Russian order in its
formal ceremoniousness and dignity. He felt himself a Jew by
accident, wrongly placed by a fate to which he owed nothing. (But
no accident, implicitly educated to think so.) pp. 20-1 He visited
his grandparents unwillingly, "It seemed to me that I was being
taken to the native country of my father's incomprehensible
philosophy" "My grandfather, a blue-eyed old man in a skull cap
which covered half his forehead and with the serious and rather
dignified features to be seen in very respected Jews, would smile,
rejoice, and try to be affectionate - but did not know how. Then
his dense eyebrows would draw together. When he wanted to take me
in his arms I almost burst into tears...Suddenly my grandfather
drew from a drawer of a chest a black and yellow silk cloth, put it
around my shoulders, and made me repeat after him words composed of
unknown sounds;
but, dissatisfied with my babble, he grew angry
and shook his head in disapproval.
I felt stifled and afraid."
[like Berenson, kidnapped by Gypsies but had been prepared to think
this way. Conformity with parents' rebellion, the child taking
credit for the parents' rebellion]
But the ceremonies of his inherited religion inspired him with
other emotions than terror. Chief among them was disgust "But how
offensive was the crude speech of the rabbi - though it was not
ungrammatical; how vulgar when he uttered the words "His Imperial
Highness," how utterly vulgar all that he said!' [two positions
possible: all holy men vulgar (militant atheist or leftist; Russian
Orthodoxy (or Catholicism or Protestantism) noble, mysterious or
rational)] In the bookshelf "the books relating to Jews occupied a
despised position."
"I always remember the lower shelf as chaotic: the books were
not standing upright side by side but lay like ruins: reddish
five-volume works with ragged covers, a Russian history of the Jews
written in the clumsy, shy language of a Russian-speaking
Talmudist. This was the Judaic chaos thrown into the dust. This
was the level to which my Hebrew primer, which I never mastered,
quickly fell. In a fit of national contrition they went as far as
hiring a real Jewish teacher for me." His refusal to remove his cap
"made me feel awkward.
His correct Russian sounded false.
The
Hebrew primer was illustrated with pictures which showed one and
the same little boy, wearing a visored cap and with a melancholy
adult face, in all sort of situations...I saw nothing of myself in
that boy and with all my being revolted against the book and the
subject. There was one striking thing in that teacher, although it
sounded unnatural:
the feeling of national Jewish pride.
He
talked about Jews as the French governesses talked about Hugo and
13
Napoleon. But I knew that he hid his pride when he went out into
the street, and therefore did not believe him."
Worst of all perhaps was simply the intolerable sense of
otherness, of isolation from the world that he saw around him and
loved with all his heart.
As a child Mandelstam evidently felt
that to submit to his Jewish heritage would have meant to renounce
the festive splendor that the real world held and was always to
hold for him.
"The strong, ruddy, Russian year rolled through the calendar
with decorated eggs, Christmas trees, steel skates from Finland,
December, gaily bedecked Finnish cabdrivers, and the villa.
But
mixed up with all this there was a phantom--the New Year in
September - and the strange, cheerless holidays, grating upon the
ear with their harsh names: Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur."
He could speak of "the honorable name of Jew, of which I am
proud" but this was rare. The lack of such identity was a more
shaping factor in his search for religion. In a letter written in
1908, when he was 17, Mandelstam said of himself that as a result
of the unreligious surroundings in which he had grown up, his
family and school, he had 'long since striven toward religion.'
Charles Angoff and Meyer Levin, The Rise of American Jewish
Literature Y.L. Peretz when accused of parochialism and chauvinism
and ghettoism. "Don't you want us to be human beings too, not just
mere Jews?" the emancipated progressives asked him. He answered,
"I am not talking of shutting ourselves up in a spiritual ghetto.
We want to get out of the ghetto, but with our own spirit, our own
spiritual treasure, and exchange - give and take, not beg...If you
have no God you look for idols. From them comes no Torah." p. 545
Identification with the Jewish past, Roth would seem to be saying,
drives the modern Jew off balance.
Joan Comay, Who's Who in Jewish History, p. 286 Alfred
Melchett (Lord Mond) established the giant Imperial Chemical
Industries (ICI) in 1926. Alfred Mond became a Liberal member of
Parliament in 1906. His wife was not Jewish, and his two children,
Henry and Eva Violet, were brought up as Christians. Mond became a
Zionist at the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and from
then on played a prominent part in the movement. pp. 286-7 After
Hitler took power, Lord Melchett's two children converted to
Judaism and shared his Zionist enthusiasm. Henry (1898-1949), the
next Baron Melchett, was chairman of the Jewish Agency Council and
president of the World Maccabi Union. Eva (1895-1973) became
chairman of the British section of the World Jewish Congress,
vice-chairman of the International Council of Women, and president
of the Liberal and Progressive Synagogues.
Jean Goodman, The Mond Legacy p. 39
The chilrdren had a
German governess, German educational toys and books carefully
chosen to avoid anything frivolous. The Bible was barred because
its cruel stories were considered unsuitable reading. Instead both
parents showed Teutonic discipline and seized every opportunity to
encourage their sons' curiosity about the origins and purpose of
everyday happenings and objects. p. 43
The boys received no
14
religious instruction at home. At age 13 they went to Cheltenham
College to discover the more casual British life-style, a far
preferable world. Yet there were also problems "In chapel for the
first time, his trained reasoning violently rejected the story of
the Virgin birth and, from there, all religious instruction. [J
variation] he argued with his housemaster until, to his disgust, he
learned that the man had never read Darwin. On the playing-field
his clumsiness was a disadvantage he could never overcome although
he spent hour after hour alone, trying to master the art of kicking
a soccer ball to no avial. p. 59 He had no social pretensions at
all, was clumsy where she was elegant, as plain as she was
beautiful, insecure where she was confident, an atheist with a deep
Jewish feeling as yet unrecognized, whereas she was a devout
Christian.
As an Anglophile Alfred saw Violet as the
personification of English womanhood while she found his foreign
accent and continental manner intriguing. They married in 1892 at
St. Mark's Church after the bridegroom had exerted his considerable
powers of persuasion to convince Canon Duckworth of Westminster
that there was nothing out of order in his marrying an
non-practicing Jew and a Christian in church. p. 67 Mond founded
and endowed the Davy-Faraday Laboratory and presented it to the
Royal Society.
'In the mind and in the action of Ludwig Mond,'
said Professor F.G. Donnan, during an address to the Royal
Institution in 1939, "As in the case of Benjamin Disraeli, it
required a great Jew, with the divine fire burning brightly in his
spirit, to express and to embody in action the somewhat vague hopes
and aspirations of the British Race.' [more British than British,
Russian than Russians; French than French, and American than
Americans]
For England, despite the success he had found there,
was never Ludwig's country. More than twenty years after he had
made it his home he wrote to a friend:
"However great the
advantage of position and fortune may be, the feeling is that of a
stranger in a foreign country. Relations with people brought up
with different language, literary tastes and prejudices always
remain formal and can never create true bonds of friendship...If my
children were not of English birth and education, I might
contemplate going back to Germany."
p. 69
1898 Ludwig's son
Robert married like him she came from a wealthy Jewish family of
German origin, but after her parents' deaths she had converted to
Christianity.
p. 72 Bainbridge "There have been great chemists who were
not Jews, but it so happened that in the greatest chemist I found
also the greatest Jew...I formed the opinion then that not only was
Dr. Mond a Jew but that in him Judaism had produced one of its
finest examples. All that is best in Judaism - the 'here and now'
as Zangwill puts it, the sanctity of everyday life and work, the
sanctity of the sensuous, of beauty, of art, the getting of the
best out of every earthly thing now today, the conception of
Charity and Faith and Hope as Sciences for everyday use instead of
virtues to lead to heaven tomorrow, the influencing of character
through conduct and not through emotion - all seems utterly healthy
15
and a sure way of turning this old earth of ours into the heaven
which it should be." Neglect his religion though he might, Ludwig
Mond was its natural emissary. p. 74 At Christmas the Mond family
usually went to Rome. When in England went to hotel and on
Christmas Eve, presents were handed out, carollers sang round the
giant tree p. 75
All Violet's children were brought up as
practicing Christians and their father did not object. 'If you want
to believe that stuff, go ahead,' [Christians never said that, what
Jews saw as tolerance history saw as weakness] and for nearly
thirty years Violet's sincere Christian views prevailed. But he was
a man of obdurately independent judgement and, although not a
practicing Jew, he never regarded himself as other than a Jew and
was always conscious of his Semitic roots. He had no instruction
in the Jewish faith nor did he give any to his children, yet
through him the two elder children imbibed or inherited a deep
feeling for Judaism and a sense of racial tradition. p. 86 Now,
for the first time in his life, he asked to see a rabbi and,
because he had been born a Jew, circumcised according to the
covenant of Abraham and confirmed into the Jewish faith, it was as
if, in the spiritual sense, the intervening years counted for
nothing. The Jewish funeral service would be read at his burial in
the plot he had bought in St. Pancras Cemetery, East Finchley.
There, one day, his sons would build a family mausoleum.
p. 87
Ludwig Mond died 1909 p. 93 Alfred to son: "Next time anyone calls
you `A dirty Jew,'" he told Henry, "hit him on the nose and if he
does it again hit him harder." p. 94 When speaking in the House of
Commons one day, he was persistently interrupted by a new young
member, Lord Winterton, who was also known as Lord Turnour. As an
Irish peer he was allowed to remain in the Commons.
Eventually
Mond tired of his interruptions and admonished him sharply saying,
'Silence in the nursery,' whereupon Turnour shouted, 'Silence in
the ghetto.' There were shocked cries of 'Order' from all parts of
the House, but Alfred Mond continued as if nothing had happened. p.
96
Eva, as a baptized Christian, had planned to marry Gerald
Isaacs in Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, but at the last
moment the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to authorize the
marriage between a believing Christian and someone who did not
affirm to a similar belief.
Gerald wrote to his fiancee:
'The
natural religion for me to follow was that of the Jews. Strive
'though I might (and please God I never will) I could not rid
myself of the mantle of the old race even 'though the shackles of
the old faith have fallen by the way. You know I am obstinately
proud of my people for bad as are the worst of them, so good are
the best of them!' Twenty-two years before, the bride's father had
been in a comparable position. Since then he had constantly been
forced to define and defend his own racial and spiritual loyalties,
to such an extent that he could not longer bring himself to exert
the persuasion that had been effective in the case of his own
church wedding, even for the sake of his wife and their beloved
daughter. Eva too was less intent on a church wedding than Violet
had been. Seven weeks after Britain declared war on Germany she and
16
her handsome soldier were married in a register office and
afterwards the bridal party went to church for a special blessing.
The Mond Legacy p. 169: Henry wrote Weizmann "We envy you the
joyful atmosphere of Eretz Yisrael. Life away from it seems without
taste or color. One only really lives in contact with its spirit."
But he was speaking only for himself; Gwen, for her own reasons,
never returned there.
Under Weizmann's presidency, Henry became chairman of the
Jewish Agency, and took over his father's unofficial role as
political negotiator between Weizmann and the British government.
His enthusiastic efforts to organize a ceremonial Passover
meal were met with amused tolerance by the children, while the
provision of black skull-caps for the men to wear at meals reduced
the occasions to the level of secular parties. Eventually he
reconciled himself to vesting his religious aspirations, like all
his hopes, in Derek: 'Derek is the scientist like his
great-grandfather,' he declared loud and often, 'and Derek is the
Jew.' Both boys had been baptized, but in the summer of 1936, when
Derek went to Eton, it was arranged that a rabbi should visit the
college every Saturday morning to give him--and in time Julian-religious instruction.
180-81 1940 Henry asked Dr. Perlzweig to come to his hotel and
told him that Gwen wished to be received into the Jewish faith as
soon as possible.
Her sudden decision had been prompted by the
fact that Henry had been warned not to fly because of his heart
condition, and to travel by ship, in view of the intensified U-boat
campaign, had become increasingly dangerous.
'If we go by boat
across the Atlantic we may never arrive,' she said. 'If I die I
want my children to know that I died a Jewess.'
p. 210: In 1947, Julian, the third Baron Melchett, was married
at St. Paul's Church and when he died (245) he had a memorial
service in Westminster Abbey. (all family Christian by 1950s)
ch 11: Dost
without God
recognized
problem
of
providing
morality
in
life
But the concept of the outsider can be very misleading as if
Jews were a border around the edge of society in fact they were
women through it like a brightly colored pattern, to some extent
mimicking the main themes. The key element was the Variant, which
made the pattern different in each country.
The Essential Lenny Bruce J. Cohen pp. 58-9 "Now, the reason,
perhaps, for my irreverence is that I have no knowledge of the god,
because the Jews lost their god. Really. Before I was born the god
was going away. Because to have a god you have to know something
about him, and as a child I didn't speak the same language as the
Jewish god.
To have a god you have to love him and know about him as kids
- early instruction - and I didn't know what he looked like. Our
god has no mother, no father, no manger in the five and ten, on
cereal boxes and on television.
The Jewish god - what's his
17
face?....
The Christian god, you're lucky in that way, because you've
got Mary, a mother, a father, a beginning, the five-and-ten little
mangers - identity. Your god, the Christian god, is all over. He's
on rocks, he saves you, he's dying on bank buildings-- he's been in
three films.
He's on crucifixes all over. It's a story you can
follow. Constant identification.
The Jewish god - where's the Jewish god? He's on a little
box nailed to the door jamb. In a mezuzah."
Meir Ben-Horin, Max Nordau, Philosopher on Human Solidarity p.
86 Nordau admits that his assimilationist orientation might have
led him to conversion if not for his abhorrence, on the one hand,
of embracing a faith in which he did not believe, and, on the other
hand, for his sympathy with his mother, "lest I embitter her life
by leaving the religion of my ancestors, and lest I bring disgrace
upon the memory of my revered father which I cherish in my
heart...Thus I remained without any contact with Judaism from the
sixteenth year of my life to my forties.
In accordance with my
views, opinions, and feelings I considered myself a German national
from head to toe."
p. 89 Nordau did not agree to his bride's proposal that she
convert to Judaism, and Herzl wrote to him intermarriage "Citizens
of the ideal Jewish state whose establishment appears to us the
most beautiful content of our life. When our work will be done, I
believe a Jewish citizen, that is a citizen of the Jewish state,
will not be forbidden to marry a foreigner. She will become
politically Jewish, irrespective of her religion...Incidentally,
you could advance some striking precedents: if I am not mistaken,
Moses was married to a Midianite."
Orphan in History pp. 112-13 Marjorie Morningstar on him, a
turning point, had earlier dated Jewish girls now non- "I wanted
to use my romance with a blond woman who played the harp
beautifully, sang American folk songs, and had a father who was in
the State Department, as a way of proving that I could gain the
approval of the society that had spurned me." fear Jewish women
would imprison me, destroy spontaneity. invited over girlfriend
Episcopalian, Smith, to come to house at Martha's Vineyard, made
talk about changing name to Saul Cohen a test, he thought a flash
of bigotry "That's not you. You don't want to be back to the
ghetto." sister had glanced at her at dinner and said "I feel proud
to be a Jew. Don't you?" he nodded. girl felt so hurt she went
outside and wept. "For years I remembered her as a latent
antisemite. She remembered me as one of the chosen people, who
secretly believed that everyone else was inferior."
Palgrave family, originally Francis Ephraim Cohen, bankrupted
(like Heine's family) friend of Sir Walter Scott and Isaac
D'Israeli. took wife's maiden name. admitted to bar, knighthood,
archivist and historian. four sons: one a secretary to Gladstone a
second a diplomat and traveller in Arabia [but became priest, then
Protestant, took name Cohen; a third a leading banker and economic
scholar, the fourth an expert on parliamentary procedure and Clerk
18
of the House of Commons. historian of early England, never referred
to background. but distinct character to historian, history of law.
"the character of the People mainly depends on their Laws."xiii
Marcel Dassault Mirage fighters, converted after release from
Buchenwald concentration camp and ordered employees never mention
in his presence that he was born Marcel Bloch, said clashed with
other inmates saying they put Jewish ties ahead of solidarity with
other French prisoners. changed his name legally, brother highranking army officer, gave large amounts to build or restore
churches and small amounts to Jewish charities. "I think he gave
out of solidarity because he didn't forget his father and mother
were Jewish. There are certain things in your blood which you
cannot forget." apparently gave the same amount each time--as
symbol--even though currency reform cut that steeply. His priest:
"Dassault felt it was a duty because he had not renounced his
origins when becoming a Catholic." 1967 embargo stopped Israel from
getting, never skirted embargo and sold to Libya and Iraq. [Cauld
q. son also converted to Catholicism but attends functions of
cousins who did not. (less threatened).xiv
On one hand, Woody Allen's much-publicized affair with
"adopted" daughter was to love a person very close to him as being
his daughter--the utmost proximity, called incestuous--but at the
same time, she was at the furthest distance from him in background.
This embrace in otherness to be contrasted to the preference for
sameness, the latter is much criticized as being narrow and
exclusionary and is often also practiced by Jews but perhaps less
often proportionately--though such things cannot easily be proved
statistically--this is a total turnaround of assimilation from a
cohesive culture to one which values its own negation, the embrace
of assimilation as the ultimate value--or cosmopolitanism, variety,
the embrace of everything a society has to offer--but is ultimately
distructive of the original society. The number of Jews in America
in 1992 is only a little more than the number in 1918 and it will
decline further.
NOTES
i. Lucy Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought
in Eastern Europe (NY, 1967), p. 142.
ii. David Landes, "Two Cheers for Emancipation" in Wasserstein, p.
293.
iii. Todd Endelman, Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World (NY, 1987)
12-13; Lucy Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and
Thought in Eastern Europe (NY, 1967), p. 338.
iv. Merchant Princes, pp. 22-3, 29.
19
v. Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History pp. 105, 128-9.
vi. Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, p. 83.
vii. Washington Post, November 11, 1991.
viii. The Economist, December 7, 1991.
ix. Washington Post, November 7, 1991.
x. Merchant Princes, pp. 61-63.
xi. Merchant Princes, p. 67.
xii. Washington Post, November 6, 1992.
xiii. Braude in Apostasy, p. 117.
xiv. Jerusalem Report, February 20, 1992.
20
CHAPTER EIGHT
OTHER PEOPLES' NATIONS
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found
himself transformed in his bed into...
--Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis"
The influential maskil and Zionist Moses Leib Lilienblum from
Lithuania wrote after the 1881 pogroms, "Why should we Jews
relinquish our nationality and assimilate with the people we live
among? We will not be merging with all humankind, but only with one
people. The name of Israel will be erased but the division of
nations will remain and humanity will gain nothing from this."i
In Schnitzler's novel about early twentieth-century Vienna,
one character comments that "a Jew who loves his country...with a
real feeling of solidarity, with real enthusiasm for the dynasty,
is without the slightest question a tragi-comic figure."ii
Intro: Hannam, Mond, Heine's poem
--to be Jewish first, often after rejection: Begin, Singer
--to be only the citizen of state in which resident
--to be both
[3 stories: dialogue; army identity; antisem identity
One of the most affecting tales of a personal battle to
identify and integrate with a country is Charles Hannam's
autobiographical account of a young German Jewish refugee to
England during World War Two.iii Since the Nazis had begun their
persecution, "Karl had learnt to hate the Jewish part of himself."
The religion had meant little to him or his family and he had
received an insufficient education about it to have "either pride
in his Jewish heritage or an understanding of the history and fate
of the Jews. Then, in some way, the hatred the Nazis had directed
at Jews had become part of Karl's inner feelings about himself.
Why after all had he been thrown out of the country where his
family had been settled for many generations unless he or other
Jews had done something to deserve their fate?
He had come to
believe that if only he had not been a Jew all would have been
well." Among the other Jews and refugees, "he felt a stranger. He
detested their bad English; their mixture of German, Yiddish and
English words seemed to him alien. They talked with their hands and
they wore continental clothes. Karl wanted to be like his teachers
and friends at school whom he admired, whose manners and attitudes
he was learning to respect and adopt; most of all he wanted to be
accepted, and if the price was the rejection of the people to whom
he had once belonged, it seemed well worth paying at that time."iv
When a sympathetic teacher asks him, "What is it like to be a
Jew?...Do you know I am fascinated by the Jewish religion, the
sense of uniqueness and the tremendous achievements of the race,"
he is pleased at the attention but angry at the implied threat to
1
his new-found Englishness. His immediate thought was to say, "I am
not fascinated by the religion at all. It is meaningless to me. It
destroyed our family."He wanted to separate himself out as an
individual: "The Germans claimed that they had discovered Jewish
racial characteristics, but look at me....Do you know, at school
once I was made to stand in front of the class and the teacher used
me to show the "typical" Aryan head shape." Now, "More than
anything he wanted to become an Englishman, to disappear forever
into a new identity, a new language, and clothes that in no way
distinguished him from other boys."v
A second round of struggle over identity is initiated by
Karl's induction into the British army. Asked what religion he
wants put on his dog tags, Karl thinks, "This is the moment to shed
my religion.
I can be rid of it, I am sick and tired of being
asked about and labelled with a religion I do not believe in....So
he answered `Leave it blank, please, no religion.'" But here, of
course, in trying to shed his Jewishness he acknowledges it with a
Jewish Variation. After all, how many real, Christian Englishman
would make such a request. And when the soldier refuses and
suggests putting in Episcopalian, "That was too much for Karl,
leaving it blank was one thing," but to declare himself a
Christian--even a member of the Church of England, the ultimate
identification with the nation, was too much. "What's the matter
with you?" asked the annoyed corporal, "Don't you even know what
your religion is?" By trying to blend in, he only makes a scene
drawing more attention to himself. In the end, he is happy to
receive a blank disc.vi
After finishing the army and becoming a teacher, he is
confronted with still another critical contradiction. On his first
day, he meets a colleague who has just returned from serving in the
British army's Palestine Police. Karl had heard much about their
antisemitism and mistreatment of concentration camp survivors
trying to reach refuge in Palestine.
"Yes, the Palestine Police....Those blasted Yids, they tried
to blow us up, terrorist bastards. I know what I would have done if
I'd had my way....I want to kick them in--yids....Hitler had the
right idea, should have gassed the lot, then they couldn't have
killed my mates. Yes, gassed the lot."
"Karl wanted to say, 'Look here, I am a Jew, you can't say
things like that.' But then he felt it was too late.
He had
concealed his origins, and now he would either have to leave or
have it out with Gravell. He felt utterly depressed.
`Is it ever going to stop?' he wondered.vii The answer, of
course, is "No." Gravell, of course, had been carrying out British
policy, wearing his country's uniform. Karl's challenge was to deal
with the double stress of his inner differences and his adopted
country's discrepancies with himself.
duck link of emancipation in exchange for assimilation. Count
Clermont-Tonnere concluded his appeal for Jewish equality saying
Jews should become Frenchmen or "let them be banished."viii See
2
proposal.
the romance with other nations is almost invariably
disappointed because they did not undergo similar experiences, grow
nervous at too tight an embrace, have at least some--even if minor-contradictory interests which are magnified in the Jewish
perceptions. Marx line about workers building the edifice of their
own oppression. Recall Schnitzler q on parties and betrayal.
To be a German patriot in the early nineteenth century was to
decide with one's own anti-Jewish country against its enemy France,
which freed the Jews. At first, Rachel was friendly to the French
occupiers until she realized that this was isolating her. Then she
became a German patriot, taking the side of her less friendly
compatriots.
In Arendt's words, Rachel was "not seeking
emancipation for Jews but liberation from being a Jew. Not fighting
for the preservation of Judaism but the right to leave it; not
trying to reform it but to escape from it."ix Heine, who lived in
Paris, was accused of being too friendly to that country, too, "I
am a friend of the French, as I am the friend of all men who are
sensible and good." but Germany is his country.x Later, Dreyfus was
accused from the opposite direction. always a problem: Jewish
origin, Jewish interests, revolutionary states from France to the
USSR.
In response to the antisemitism of German nationalists, Jews
created their own alternative patriotism, starting with Heine, for
a democratic humanist Germany, their beloved Germany of Goethe and
Schiller. But it was a Germany which mostly existed only among the
assimilated German Jews themselves.
Gabriel Riesser, a loyal Jew and liberal, said German Jews are
but "a group of people who do not wish to have national existence
of their own, such as had formerly been imposed upon them by their
enemies, but who think and feel as Germans."xi Isaac Mayer Wise
spoke of America being his Promised Land. Thin line between
gratitude and servility. difficult points of Jewish doctrine in
theory--chosen people, reestablishment in the land of Israel--and
daily life--kashrut, celebration of holidays
duck 1. Fear
Benda warned about the rise of passionate engagement. The
Christian churches, socialists, intellectuals, and even Jews
themselves (by supporting Zionism) were exhorting distinctions,
abandoning universalism, glorifying custom over reason. For
centuries, the intellectuals had "preached to the world that the
State should be just; now they proclaim that the State should be
strong and should care nothing about being just." (like Dreyfus
affairs. abandonment of Enlightenment values for patriotism,
radicalism, romanticism, and utilitarianism. The cult of success
for intellectual work rather than rightness.xii J scold a la Nordau
and many others. [threatens both Jews directly and also the Jewish
idea of humanism, universalism, and an inclusive state].
A French Jewish newspaper claimed that Jewish history "is the
3
history of a progressive denationalization...Where [the Jews] live,
there is their fatherland...Let us be Jews above all, and faithful
to the spirit of Judaism. But the spirit of Judaism, as it is
reflected in its history, is the condemnation of Zionism."xiii Did
Zionism threaten Jewish acceptance in Europe [a minor issue,
antisemitism--which was very resurgent before the start of a
Zionist movement] [date of Protocols?] had more to do with racism,
politics, traditional views. but was a view that the Jews all
worked together to serve their own self-interest, one separate from
that of Frenchmen, or Germans, or Poles. It was gain wealth and
political power for themselves in the country, not to leave it. To
say Jews were a people could arguably play into the hands of the
antisemites but they already believed this despite so much Jewish
argument to the contrary. Even more importance was their belief in
the separateness of the Jews from themselves--either openly or
pretending to be assimilated or melding into the society to change
it or take it over.
When Jews claim that they are nothing else than Germans or
French of the Jewish faith, they give themselves a false identity;
by consciously erasing their true historical identity, they appear
to many non-Jews to be masquerading in purloined clothes: "So long
as the Jew will deny his nationality because he does not possess
the courage to acknowledge his solidarity with a persecuted and
despised nation, his false position will become daily more and more
untenable. Why fool ourselves?
The European nations have always
perceived the existence of the Jews in their midst as an anomaly.
We shall always be strangers among nations which may, out of their
feelings of humanity or justice, grant us Emancipation: but they
will never and nowhere respect us so long as we deny our great
historical tradition and so long as we make the maxim, "Where it is
good for me, there is my homeland" into our credo....It is not the
old, orthodox Jew, who would rather have his tongue cut out than
betray his nationality--but the modern Jew, who denies his
nationality, who is being despised."xiv
"Deep down," said one mogul, "I have always had the feeling
that something could be stirred up again; that somebody may start
screaming and shouting and that we may have to take our bundle and
run." Israel was to some extent "an insurance policy."xv
duck 2. choice of nation
a: Jewish or resident. German Jewry Cahnman Ludwig Gumplowicz
Polish nationalism, condemned multilingual states like AH and
Russia and advocated unified national states, sociologist. in
Lemberg where both Poles and Ukrainians, Jews started to think of
themselves as their own nationality rather than choosing.
Gumplowicz wrote one of these people in 1861 who had written him
that Jews are a nationality. "You are right--we are, sorry to say,
still a nationality!" But this view looks backward into the past in
which the Jews are regrettably still stuck. 162-4. soon there will
be civil marriage. our nationality "is long decayed but which for
4
centuries keeps creeping after us like a vampire, sucks our blood
and destroy our vitality. It's from this vampire that we have to
take leave." Jews should merge with the people among whom they live
by accepting their language, a political behavior "which brings us
sympathy." once accepting Polish language must accept lifting up of
Poles and justice for the Poles. Cahnman writes, this liberal
position shows the "eternal optimism" of the Jewish approach "everreadiness to accept the hand-clasp of brotherliness." but hopes
soon to be shattered, feeling his life was wasted because the
Polish nationalists had no interest in breaking with gentry,
church, and monarchy. he became famous academic, the former liberal
idealist became a skeptic (an experience many generations of Jews
would have in various situations--another Jewish Variation--the
disappointment
of
liberal/radical/nationalist/assimilationist
idealism or, even worse, its foolish persistence after it should
have been able to see clearly. became believer in iron laws of
societal development which might be mastered (the two sides,
another Variant, a la Marx though he a conservative. the origin of
the state in the conquest of one ethnic group by another, a sort of
mirror of Marx, elevated to international war and imperialism.
since Jews had no territory they were a fossil as a nation. Otto
Bauer the Marxist theoretician of Social Democratic Austrian party
agreed. Herzl wrote Gumplowicz in 1899. G responded, p. 169, read
speeches of Herzl and Nordau, very angry, repeatedly in a rage
threw them on floor, I understand, see as sad, and believe that it
will do something good, the moral regeneration of the Jews,
"Zionism is much too natural a phenomenon" to oppose but Herzl's
foundations "are all wrong" and is a dream. had written earlier
Jews "in their unnatural stubbornness preferred to keep alive an
eternal race struggle against themselves rather than sacrifice
their outlived and mummified nationality to the rejuvenated and
vital culture of other countries and ages."
(would he have said this meant Jews could not be loyal to
Germany? of course not) Cohen opposed Jewish nationalism, saying
the universalism and humanism of the prophets precluded loyalty to
a state--even a "Jewish" one.xvi
b. multiple choice: side with Germans against Czechs in
Bohemia and Moravia; with Magyars against Slavonic and Romanians in
Hungary; Poles against Ruthenians in Galicia; Russians in Polish
and Ukraine areas; Germany in Polish areas of Galicia. partly
central government more distant and less threatening (like Rome had
been), easier to exercise influence on than masses through
financiers and successful Jews, wanting to belong to higher
cultural level and "safer" political allegiance.
Jews in Transylvania were Hungarian patriots and speakers even
when under Romanian control which did not stop the Hungarians from
sending them to German concentration camps in World War Two.
changing borders: in Czernowitz, Bukovina went from being a
province of the Austro-Hungarian empire being Ukrainian-Ruthenian,
then it became Soviet, Romanian, Soviet
5
Segre. mother buried in convent in Jerusalem. born to wealthy
family the year Fascists marched on Rome, assurance by Mussolini f
non-discrimination 1938 Race Laws. "In a sense, [Jews] are the only
true Italians."xvii as said of Austro-Hungary and other states
(Yugoslavia...) Jewish communities in Serbia and Croatia always get
along but war between them made them divide up. on one hand tried
not to get involved, a Jewish Agency representative said, "They
tell us they are the only real Yugoslavs left."xviii
c. immigrant factor
duck 3. The Jewish Variation on patriotism. stronger sense of
internationalism, moral aspect, national mission, good version of
country-alternative nationalism. Perfected fatherland or earned
fatherland (former, the majority must earn by working with the Jews
to make it better; the Jews must earn. [in America, to struggle
rather than smugness. against racism, sexism, for poor and every
other cause disproportionately large. thus, patriotism is defined
in liberal rather than conservative terms.
Hess wrote that successful Jews feared they might lose their
rights and be pushed back into the ghetto: "For this reason they
evince a much more vociferous patriotism than their Christian
colleagues...at the expense of his solidarity with his Jewish
brethren in other countries. The Jews' patriotism has something
sick about it; it is much tenser and more demonstrative than that
of the Christians, who possess a nonartificial and natural
patriotism." The Jew always seems to be protesting too much, and
ignoring his brother for his own benefit.xix
Rabbi Abraham Bloch, who would die for France on a World War I
battlefield, passionately declared in an 1889 sermon that the Jews
worked to hard to succeed "to show how they cherish their new
homeland [and] to make themselves more worthy of her love and
protection." But French writers and journalists instead highlighted
not the Jew as a "selfless, dedicated patriot but an alien,
exploitative capitalist, subverter of French traditions and
order."xx
merit: Schoenberg, "I have made a discovery thanks to which
the supremacy of German music is ensured for the next hundred
years."xxi
For all their success, Germans still regarded writers and
artists of Jewish origin as strangers by the Germans, even if they
converted to Christianity. "It did not help," the composer Giacommo
Meyerbeer, wrote Moses Hess, "that he was always most careful not
to include Jewish themes in his operas; nevertheless, he became the
victim of German Jew-hatred." German newspapers that mention his
name add, "actually Jacob Meyer Lippman Beer." It did not help the
German patriot [Ludwig] Borne that he christened his original name
Baruch. He himself admits it, saying that `whenever my opponents
are at a loss of an argument against Borne, they always bring up
Baruch.'xxii
Similarly, in 1878, commenting on the accusation that
6
Offenbach is un-French and pro-German, Nordau reflects: "Poor
Offenbach! Had you remained at home and earned an honest living,
you would probably be today a Jewish cantor in an obscure synagogue
and not a world famous composer. However, no French stoker or
ex-stoker could give you moral kick with his feet."xxiii
The issue, Hess explained, was no longer religion but "race"
and neither "religious reform nor baptism, neither Enlightenment
nor Emancipation will open the gates of social life before the
Jews....You cannot reform the Jewish nose, nor can you turn through
baptism the dark, curly Jewish hair into blond one, and no comb
will straighten it....No conversion and no immersion in the great
sea of Indo-German and Mongol nations will help all those Jews and
Jewesses to deny their extraction."xxiv
Adam Michnik and Bronislaw Geremek Jews; Polish novelist
Tadeusz Konwicki; Miskiewicz a Frankist. but they were only
accepted if and when their Jewishness was, literally, forgotten.
like Heine's Lorelei poem.
The poet Julian Tuwim wrote in 1944 a passionate essay
entitled "We--the Polish Jews," "I am a Pole because I like being a
Pole. This is my own business, and I am not obliged to account to
anyone. I do not divide the Poles into those with a pedigree and
those without....I divide Poles, as I do Jews, and men of any
nationality, into intelligent and stupid ones, honest and
dishonest...." "But if you are a Pole, why do you write `We-Jews'?
I reply: Because of my blood.' Then it is racialism? Nothing of the
kind. [It is not] "the blood that flows in the veins [but] the
blood that flows out of them." The suffering of the Jews has been a
holy baptism in this turbulent, foaming river of blood, this
Jordan. "We, Shloims, Sruls, Moishkes, dirty, garlicky, we with our
endless insulting nicknames, we have proved ourselves the peers of
Achilles, of Richard Coeur de Lion and other heroes. In the
catacombs and bunkers of Warsaw, in the stinking sewers....We arose
as soldiers of freedom and honor." Ehrenburg wrote he was deeply
moved, "Tuwim's words were the vow and the curse that lived in the
hearts of many." The love-hate relationship with a country that has
hated one.xxv
Tried to earn nation at the right of sainthood and selfsacrifice: real name: Henryk Goldzmit grandfather and father
assimilationist and father Polish nationalist, worked for Jewish
poor so they could enter Polish life. twice considered emigrating
to Palestine but also Polish patriot. writer for children, pioneer
educator, guilt at privileged middle class background. took
pseudonym from novel. social-democratic nationalist circles, served
in WWI and Polish-Soviet war and wore old uniform during Nazi
occupation. book about trying to maintain democracy despite
persecution. great influence on a generation, administrator of
Jewish orphanage. stressed independence for children, training in
self-government. never wanted to run exclusively J orphanage while
also
criticized
for
being
too
Polish.
set
up
another
nondenominational one at government request. the second one was
7
criticized from right for having no chapel. saw as representative
of third way against exclusiveness of both Jews and Poles but
Poland was becoming more anti-Jewish even before invasion. evicted
from radio program and second orphanage. inappropriate for Jew to
be guiding Catholic orphans. some Poles defended him. He refused to
wear star. his children were starved, he himself was ill, refused
to take advantage of offers to save some of the children, thus
condemned them all to death though did not know this at the time.
went to concentration camp and death with orphans. He could not
give up his dream and the dream killed him.xxvi
As Isaac Bashevis Singer put it after the New York Times
called him a "Polish writer" when he won the Nobel Prize, "The
Poles never thought of us as Poles and we didn't either."xxvii
Yitzhak Shamir later learned that when his family in Poland,
faced deportation to a concentration camp in 1942, his brother-inlaw asked his business partner to hide him and his family. Instead,
the man had them all killed. His father escaped on the way to the
death camp and was murdered by Polish neighbors when he asked them
for help. This experience creates certain attitudes.xxviii
a satire on assimilationist patriotism. "I feel at home here.
I feel part of the place and of the very air they breathe, in a way
that only those who have not been completely naturalized and
thoroughly assimilated can understand." But Romain Gary is writing
not about his love of France but about a German Jewish ghost
haunting a Nazi after the Holocaust, an ironic comment on this
situation. Gary was a French patriot, a pilot in the war and a
cultural diplomat who received high honors. Yet he wrote as Emile
Ajar in later life, the name of a North African Jew and he
committed suicide in December 1980.xxix counterlives as Russian,
Frenchman, Ajar.
When Germany is truly democratic, "When we restore dignity to
the poor people who are deprived of happiness, and to genius
condemned to scorn and to desecrated beauty." then "all of Europe;
yes, all the world will become German." the idea of the corrected
fatherland.xxx
Why did Jews participate in the Revolution? Because they
thought it would ally them with the people and create a better
society for everyone. Why did the Russian people continue to hate
Jews? Because they played such a big role in the Revolution.xxxi and
the same can be said of all the countries ruled by Communism and by
Germany and Austria earlier.
Leon Blum, For All Mankind p. 166 "The individuality of
nations can flower most freely and luxuriantly in the serene
atmosphere of peace and comfort which international solidarity
carries with it, that men become conscious of its full value only
when they can feel its impact in the deepest fibers of their being.
[Hess, Ha-'am] I add, and with some pride, that this harmonizing
of humanism and patriotism comes more naturally and easily to a
Frenchman than to the citizens of any other nation, for it is a
French characteristic, as I have already remarked, to understand-
8
-as France has always understood and still understands today--the
noble urge to think and act for universal causes."[how quickly he
justifies internationalism by an appeal to French patriotism!]
People instinctually reject being rational or objective when
look at own country, denying that it can be wrong, asserting it to
be the "natural and predestined leader of others." This instinct
is not patriotism, but rather "chauvinism." "It breeds arrogance
and hatred, it holds sway in other countries just as it does in our
own, and the conflicts between peoples to which it gives rise admit
neither of arbitration nor--more important--of reconciliation.
Alongside this instinct there is another sentiment, of much more
recent origin, for it has developed only under the impetus of
certain forms of revolutionary propaganda, that is the exact
opposite of chauvinism. In any international dispute its exponents
disavow in advance, on a priori principles, the attitude and
interests of their country. "My country must be wrong, because it
is my country." Those who hold such sentiments become alienated
from the national community just as surely as the blind
nationalists become imprisoned within it. But it would be wrong to
describe it as internationalism; for in reality it is no more than
inverted nationalism. Any attempt to distinguish real nationalism
from chauvinism and real internationalism from inverted nationalism
will reveal that the two authentic sentiments are not only
compatible, but almost always co-existent."
p. 180 in a sense, socialism is a form of religious
propaganda. "Spinoza said, "If we have a concept of God, every
action that falls within our control must be based on our
religion." If for what Spinoza calls "the concept of God," we
substitute the concept of Humanity, of all mankind, of the universe
seen as a whole," that is still true. This idea "corresponds to the
peculiar genius of France, whose people have, throughout their
history, from the Crusades to the French Revolution, held that
human solidarity and a desire for universalism constituted the
highest form of patriotism. This is what men and nations must
teach--I am almost tempted to say preach--if they are to be worthy
of their historic mission." Countries must work "to improve man and
society, to stimulate and encourage man's potentialities for good,
so that he can make his personal contribution toward the creation
of the best possible society." [historic mission, historical
whitewash,
moral
basis,
French
patriotism
is
really
internationalism--compare to Heine--but Jews in the US and other
countries could maintain exactly the same position
duck 4. More Catholic... plus sacrifices
since Dostoyevsky argued that one could not be a Russian
without being Russian Orthodox, hundreds of Jews converted before
and after 1917, Alexander Man, Lev Chestov, and Semyon Frank were
prominent Orthodox theologians. Boris Pasternak son of painter and
pianist, writings lack any J consciousness (to be Russ is to be...)
in 1905 when Czar issued law on toleration allowing Jews who
9
had converted to Christianity to return, hundreds of petitions to
do so, when tide turned, returnees dwindled and new applications
for baptism increased.xxxii
irony of conversion of near-Bolsheviks to Russian Orthodoxy-mutually opposed--but answer is that both were an effort to join
country.
Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam born in Warsaw but most
identified with St. Petersburg wrote poetry about. On being asked
about family, M said (p. 11) "I am not interested in my kinfolk."
father a leather merchant, broke with religious orthodoxy. 46: one
friend as student found him vaguely ashamed and distressed by his
Jewishness. Arrested 1934 murdered 1938.
Alter, Defense of the Imagination: Mandelstam, family must
have gotten "privileged Jew" status to move to Moscow. sent to
secular schools they simply found the substitute religion of
radicalism. studied in Paris and Heidelberg. converted to
Lutheranism in 1911 to escape quota on Jewish students to go to
University though pro forma. estranged from revolution and stopped
writing.
she was also a convert but a more serious believer.
Nadezhda. he did use Christian symbols. in autobiographical
writings (34-5) Jewish aspects of parents home obsolescent rituals
and tattered objects. father read Goethe and Schiller. Hebrew alien
and saw this as empty charade as saw nationalist tutor hide his J
pride in street. [even the outspoken Jews really agreed with him]
Being a J, he had been taught implicitly, was something obsolete
and shameful. in poetry, yellow and black were colors of J apart
from multicolored pageantry of Russian reality. J as image of decay
and interment. 35: "the chaos of Judaism--not a motherland, not a
house, not a hearth, but precisely a chaos, the unknown womb world
whence I had issued, which I feared, about which I made vague
conjectures and fled, always fled." to escape threat of one's
origins. Christian order, aesthetic ideal, dogma attractive.
Ironically, he was also fleeing parents' rationalism for Christian
spirituality and mysticism (opposites) also Christian character of
Russian literary tradition--Dost and Tolstoy! (but Babel not like
Pasternak and M, for him Communism and fascination with Cossacks
were enough. 38: wrote "As a little bit of musk fills an entire
house, so the least influence of Judaism overflows all of one's
life." rarely mentioned parents yet did not change name. later
became more accepting. basic values and ideas. object of
antisemitism and so adopted as badge of honor. as sufferer. 40:
sense of self as J gave inner distance, yearning for Mediterranean-of both the Hebrews and the Greeks. sense of ancient historic
aristocracy as with Disraeli. displacement: Armenia as substitute
merging with Zion.
Mandlestam section. Father was an unreligious believer in the
Enlightenment.
Like
many
Jews,
transferring
his
scholarly
allegiance to Spinoza and Rousseau. "Instead of the Talmud, he
reads Schiller" flees yeshiva to become shopkeeper, expounding to
his "paunchy and astonished customers the philosophic ideals of the
10
eighteenth century." Mandelstam makes his father into a myth, a man
fluent in no language, belonging nowhere, though in fact he
apparently spoke Russian and German very well. In contrast, he
writes his mother's speech was "clear and sonorous without the
least foreign admixture...the literary Great Russian language"
which gave her great joy. His yearning to be a real Russian rather
than a lowly, homeless Jew. If country demands such abandonment,
not worth supporting, if doesn't demand, don't need to do it.xxxiii
turns of the road. Chagall did not have to convert to get into
school because parents paid a bribe and falsified documents to get
him a provisional residence permit in St. Petersburg, where he had
to pose as a servant since he had no permit to stay. Still blocked
from art school by being given tougher examination. homesick,
feeling of being hunted, helped by other Js. Went to Paris. saw R
art there as backward [in contrast to Mandelstam] so not yearning
to join it. 105: "I felt at every step that I was a Jew--people
made me feel it!" the young artists' group hung his pictures, if at
all, in a remote dark corner; not invited to become member of
groups, not exhibited [reacted to discrimination with anger] "And I
thought: it must be because I'm a Jew and have no country of my
own." His wife's grandfather, white-haired old man with long beard
120 prowls around apartment looking for Russian books and throws
into stove to burn, can't stand grandchildren going to R schools
instead of to cheder, prays all day. 170: "Neither Imperial Russia
nor Soviet Russia needs me. I am a mystery, a stranger, to them.
I'm certain Rembrandt loves me." [compare to Mandelstam. Found
inspiration, rather than desert, in background].xxxiv
on a literal level, Paris Archbishop Jean-Marie Lustiger,
grandson of Orthodox rabbi, placed in French Catholic boarding
school to hide him from Nazis, mother died at Auschwitz, converted
in early teens. Oswald Rufeisen, Poland, 17 when war started, poor,
seeking education, passed off as half Pole, half-German translator
and policeman, passed info to Jews, found refuge in a convent for a
year and a half, converted, escaped to woods and joined partisans.
became Carmelite, defined as Christian Jew and Zionist and famous
case. but something of an apologist for the Germans he knew and the
Poles (propensity)xxxv
To outdo people at their own game. (Vienna folksinger?) Irving
Berlin wrote White Christmas, the most American of music (in being
folk and Western, not ethnic, was An American ? but so is Rhapsody
in Blue); Laurence Harvey, the quintessential British snob was a
litvak.
Stage names basis for paranoia--attempts to assimilate scared,
both Germany and America.
Jews find it inappropriate to take top job. Ilya Roitman,
second in Democratic Party of Russia, center-right argued it would
be counterproductive for him to head party. "As a loyal member of
the party, if I am aware that having a Jew in the top position
would cost the party votes, I would put the interests of the party
first. So the question is not whether a Jew can be first, but
11
whether he considers it necessary." Russian nationalist party. "A
Jew can rise to the top position in a party like ours, but a clever
Jew won't want to do it. One should remember that nationalism
remains a serious force in our society." elected vice chairman.
always identified self as Jew.xxxvi
Yet also can be after prove patriotism. Joseph Trumpeldor
first J to receive commission in Czarist army because of heroism in
defense of Port Arthur against Japanese 1904 where lost an arm,
Japanese prisoner produced Z newspaper. went to P in 1912. then
back in 1919
Jean Goodman, The Mond Legacy, p. 97 Alfred Mond had always
passionately longed to be accepted as British and had momentarily
lulled himself into thinking he was nearing his goal, found that he
was further from it than in his unhappy school-days. The taunts of
`German Jewish traitor' were made both to his face and in the press
p. 99 Alfred Mond fought the war nearly twenty-four hours a day
and his fanatical patriotism was contagious. Henry Mond, at
sixteen, lied about his age to become one of the youngest officers
to be sent to France.
p. 100
He ran the Ministry of Works,
building the weapons to win the war.
p. 145 In 1929, as a former cabinet minister, Alfred Melchett
asked British authorities to protect his house in Palestine but to
his anger and bewilderment they refused. He tried to get the
Colonial Secretary to send a Committee of Inquiry to investigate
the anti-Jewish riots and was frustrated when that official's wife
said, "I can't understand why the Jews make such a fuss over a few
dozen of their people killed in Palestine. As many are killed every
week in London in traffic accidents and no one pays any attention."
p. 163 Henry's ingenious solution, told to Randolph Churchill:
"Until now I have always felt more English than Jewish; but now
that the Jewish race is in greater danger of annihilation than ever
before in its history, I cannot help throwing in my lot with them.
There are plenty of people to look after the English; there are so
few to look after the Jews."
duck 5. Germany as rejector; the USSR as rejector
Applefeld, "Every year there were excursions to spas and
holiday resorts." for such assimilated people "Who would want to go
back in time to Palestine, that hole in the old Ottoman empire, and
leave behind the culture of 20th century Europe." but mother
killed, father taken away and as an eight year old was wandering in
the forests alone.xxxvii
In Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe nationalism's appeal
was broken--and in France undermined--by the Holocaust. In the USSR
it was broken by the experience of Communist rule. The main appeal
for them was not so much Mother Russia but a Communist fatherland
which profssed to free them from ethnic oppression. Ludmilla
Tsigelman "The Impact of Ideological Changes in the USSR on
Different Generations of the Soviet Jewish Intelligentsia," Y. Roi
and A. Becker, Jewish Culture and Identity in the Soviet Union pp.
12
43-44 Those growing up before World War Two accepted MarxistLeninist ideology as a substitute for the traditional ideas and
identity by Jewish youngsters filled with idealism for a system
which professed itself implacably opposed to anti-Semitism. They
saw Jewishness as a relic which they had traded in for something
better. pp. 45-6 what they may not have realized is that those most
insulated from anti-Semitism were so because they were surrounded
by other assimilated Jews. Those encountering antisemitism had to
choose which often resulted in a desire not to be a Jew. Often,
though, they began to question a system contradicted by their
experience and went further toward being Jews and independentminded. p. 47 The underlying view was that anyone who opposed the
Soviet line was against internationalism and social justice. This
was the view of antisemites and hence the USSR must be defended
(compare to Blum's and World War I Jewish view of France. p. 48 The
first open aspect of Soviet anti-Semitism was the accusation of
Jewish cowardice in the war, stayed in the rear, and bought their
military medals. These claims particularly outraged those who had
fought or lost their closest relatives in battle. Many felt the
need to prove their patriotism and willingness to sacrifice
themselves. Jewish children got into fistfights at school; others
volunteered for the most dangerous missions and often died, as in
the case of Pavel Kogan, a talented--and almost blind--poet who
demanded to enlist, then recklessly had himself assigned to command
a counterintelligence platoon and was quickly killed, a friend
said, because of "the feeling which I knew so well--what if someone
will think that a Jew is a coward, that a Jew is sitting in the
rear." p. 52 The government-inspired anti-Semitic campaign after
the war was equally painful, making many lose faith. p. 55 Given
the antisemitic anti-cosmopolitan campaign, the "Doctors' Plot,"
the anti-Israel policy, and discrimination in higher education and
employment, Soviet Jews became less enthusiastic about the regime.
East European purges targeted Jews. Czechoslovakia and Hungary
in particular. Out of love of a party which hated them, sacrificed
selves for countries whose people hated them. Rudolf Slansky, an
architect of the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. Foreign
Minister Laszlo Rajk in Hungary so hungry for a home that they
embraced their torturers. These men were no cowards having proved
themselves in war, underground, and Nazi concentration camps. As
Jews they felt a need to prove their patriotism and loyalty. One of
the Soviets who supervised the Czech trial preparations wrote,
quoted by Kaplan, "I don't care how true [the evidence] is....What
do you care about some Jewish shit anyway?"xxxviii Since they were
Jews they were less popular, assumed to be more liberal and open to
the West, their death would be a strange kind of revenge for people
who hated the regimes on the misguided ones who sought to save
them. Originally the Jewish defendants were to be portrayed as
Trotskyites, then Western spies, and finally as Zionists. Since
they were Jews their betrayal as such was considered more credible.
13
Their Soviet comrades gave instructions on Jewish machinations
which would have embarrassed Czarist antisemites. Having abandoned
their own feelings as Jews and their own identity, they were easily
reshaped. Those who refused to go along were tortured. The Soviets
wanted Slansky and the others to be described as of "Jewish
nationality" though the Czechs eventually insisted they be called
"of Jewish origin." They were even to be stripped of the Czech
status they had struggle so hard for. Slansky tried to commit
suicide several times but eventually gave in. Before his execution
in December 1952, Slansky said--rather ambiguously--"I've got what
I deserved."
This experience and Jewish Variation made the remaining Jews
active among dissidents in the 1960s on. New Marranos under
Communism or a generation which had half forgotten but also a
minority and increasing intermarriage. a last flickering--except
perhaps in Hungary--than a revival.
Petre Roman, whose father Walther Neulander was a founder of
the Romanian Communist Party note name change: Newland to Roman
[with Romanian association]. (if Communism above nationalism and
for egalitarianism, why did he heave to change his name?) forced to
resign in September 1991, attacked from antisemitic right. One
leading antisemite said Roman was "one of a series of Jews
who...are hiding under Romanian names." defended his Romanianism.
How? He appeared on TV with a madonna or Christian icon in
background.xxxix The CP betrayed the Jews because it could gain
popularity by doing so and it benefitted individual non-Jewish
leaders by eliminating the composition. The same factors which had
motivated parties fifty and a hundred years earlier. One becomes
an assimilationist, a nationalist to become a Communist which is
supposedly anti-nationalist and internationalist!! demands the
sacrifice of the Jew for the masses who then betray, in a neat
reproduction of the crucifixion.
Two Jews in Lithuania, friends and business partners, had
opposite reactions to the struggle against Soviet rule. One said he
supported Lithuania's independence but decided to move to Israel,
"If I have to fight, I want to fight in my own Jewish army....We
Jews have to stop being bystanders and take our destiny in our own
hands." The other said he was determined to "stand together with my
Lithuanian brothers to prevent those bastards from crushing our
drive for freedom." An older man said he remembered independent
Lithuania which had mistrated Jews and how many Lithuanians
collaborated with the Nazis. A Jew, Emmanuel Zingeris, was head of
the Lithuanian Jewish Cultural Society while being an independence
activist and chairman of Commission for Foreign Affairs which,
Soviet propaganda implied, was a sign of Zionist infiltration.xl
Soviet Jews: said one who returned. "There's plenty of cheap,
delicious food. But it's sleepy, it's hot, it's provincial, there's
no pulse of intellectual life." her father was a Communist.
"Somehow, we thought it would be like Moscow or Leningrad, except
that Jews wold be loved and there would be plenty of food." during
14
coup attempt, felt should be with them. When Russian Jew was one of
those killed, attitude he should not have sacrificed himself for
other people's freedom. "We felt we betrayed those democrats, just
so we could go to a country where there is enough food."xli
duck 6. France as ambiguous accepter
--history
--negative views
--French versus Zionist
--cultural and intellectual contributions
3 waves: AL, EE (before and after WW2; North Africa
Because France declared itself--and was seen by its Jews--as
the champion of liberation--its betrayal of Jewish citizens was
particularly shocking. The Dreyfus trial, Vichy, and De Gaulle's
antisemitic speech of 1967.
character of France: The very nationalist atmosphere of France
had
an interesting
effect. First, Jews could participate
wholeheartedly in it--which was more difficult in Germany and
Russia. Despite virulent antisemitism in the army, there were also
hundreds of Jewish officers including 10 generals.xlii Second,
France's integralism and patriotism also gave the Jews a model for
themselves. Cultural pluralism was an alien notion in France.
Third, high degree of organization of French life was imitated.
Fourth, the conciliation of patriotism and the intellectuals, again
contrasting to other countries where a high proportion of the
intellectuals--especially those who weren't antisemitic--were very
critical of patriotism. Thus not surprising that in France, next to
the United States, was the most active "ethnic" definition of Jews.
The radicals were not typical of the Jewish community but were
disproportionately Jewish. Is it a contradiction to say that the
radicals and the conformists each had a Jewish element: the former
as unrooted, the latter out of nervousness and an energetic desire
to be accepted, though these factors operated sub-consciously. Most
of the native-born were centrists, moderate liberals. dedicated to
the republic and order.
duck pillars of culture: Jacques Offenbach 1819-80 son of
cantor in Germany; Proust his mother from Alsatian Jewish family of
Weill but brought up a Catholic. Swann is of J origin.
Arguing from their own experience, French Jews urged their
government to emancipate Algerian Jews and tried to improve their
education and social conditions. The generation of 1848, rebelled
against the timid notables who ran the community. Adolphe Cremieux
was perhaps the first historic figure to show that it was possible
to be both a Jewish leader fighting for his people's rights and a
leader of his country, as minister of justice in the revolutionary
governments of 1848 and 1871. He fought for abolishing slavery and
granting citizenship to Algerian Jewsxliii
Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy pp. 8-9 French culture was full
of Catholic concepts and symbols but "French Jews selectively
15
adopted the liberal principles of the Revolution" as the basis of
national culture, ignoring other less attractive factors as did the
German Jews for their country. p. 9 French Jews established the
Alliance Israelite Universelle in 1860 to defend and help
emancipate persecuted Jews in other countries but did not deal with
French anti-Semitism. pp. 12-13 the great banking families had come
recently from Germany; working class Jews came from Eastern Europe.
Jewish intellectuals were seen as radical critics of the status
quo. p. 13 Proust's Swann, for example, was considered a Jew
although his family had converted to Catholicism two generations
before. As Paul Claudel noted in his play Le Pere Humilie (1917),
"It takes a lot of water to baptize a Jew!" "For the Catholic, the
ultimate goal remained the conversion of the Jew; for the
secularist, his complete absorption within French society; for the
anti-Semite, restriction of his freedom and economic activity." p.
42-4 after the Dreyfus Affair some intellectuals returned to an
interest in their Jewish identity, led by Andre Spire, who attained
the highest civil service ranks (a pioneer figure like Cremieux).
Changing their earlier ignoring and ignorance of Jewish life, they
wrote poems, novels, and plays on these themes. Edmond Fleg, who
had distanced himself from Jewish concerns as he became a
successful playwright returned to them after the Dreyfus affair and
influenced many younger people to rediscover their routes. p. 46
now they maintained that Judaism should continue existing because
of its cultural and ethical contribution. The relative absence of
antisemitism made it safer to come out on these issues and to
concentrate on something other than self-defense. Like a dress
rehearsal of confident assimilation.
In contrast was the question of immigration, a pattern similar
to England, America, and Austria-Hungary as foreign working-class
Jews came in and frightened the native Jews as much or more than
their neighbors. 49-52 The Jews felt they proved their patriotism
in World War I and believed that France showed their interests were
at one. France's triumph would be that of "the initiator of the
emancipation of [Jews] throughout the world." While the enemy,
Germany, was accused of originating modern antisemitism though, in
fact, many of its creators were French.
Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy p. 118 "These new arrivals,"
Baron Edmond de Rothschild told the 1913 General Assembly of the
Paris Consistory, "do not understand French customs...they remain
among themselves, retain their primitive language, speak and write
in jargon." Another native Jew commented in 1925, "The walls of
Paris must no longer be covered with Hebrew characters; Paris must
cease being flooded with Yiddish newspapers, books, films, and
plays." pp. 118-9, 132 They warned the immigrants to use French,
rather than Yiddish, during World War I lest their foreignness
provoke antisemitism. p. 137
But the leaders also wanted the
immigrants to remain Jews--as in England, new immigrants converted
in larger numbers--becoming simultaneously a good Frenchman and a
good Jew. The 1927 General Assembly of the Paris Consistory noted,
16
"Too many foreign Jews are inclined to believe that to be really
French, it is necessary to abandon any religious practice which
might make them conspicuous." p. 139 the immigrants suspected, as a
Yiddish newspapers claimed, the French Jews want to "revive in him
a feeling for the Jewish religion and kill in him national
consciousness....But we are all suspended like fruits on the
national tree, on the branches of our national consciousness, and
we will always struggle against those who want to rob us of it." p.
154 the eastern Jews supported Zionism or radicalism. p. 203 Baron
Robert de Rothschild, president of the Paris Consistory, warned in
1935 that the immigrants' political activity increased the danger
of anti-Semitism and they must assimilate as soon as possible.
Until they do--and have done army service--they may have their own
ideas but, "One does not discuss the regime of a country whose
hospitality one seeks." Of course, always helped the immigrants
despite reservations and restrictions.
Bourgeois Jews would say of those deemed vulgar, "It's that
kind of people who create antisemitism." those who call attention
to themselves--so as to counter invisibility necessary to
assimilation. "Most French Jews had no feeling of solidarity with
German Jews."xliv
Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy pp. 156-57 Andrew Spire, who led
the Zionist movement, wrote in 1917, "In combatting Zionism our
Jewish elite scarcely perceives that its egoism and incomprehension
make it fail in its clearest obligation as Frenchmen." [like
Brandeis] Why shouldn't France support Zionism and gain the
blessings of the Jews? Zionist leaders also recruited well-placed
French supporters outside the community. p. 171 By the 1930s, the
French rabbis were changing their mind and some Zionists rose to
communal leadership positions. p. 172 1937. in a well-publicized
sermon, Jacob Kaplan, the future Chief Rabbi of France, declared
that French Jews must support Zionism. They need not fear that
their loyalty to France would be questioned, for "we have given
sufficient proof of our patriotism" p. 202 Refusing to recognize
anti-Jewish forces which had their own claim on French traditions,
native leaders stressed France's historic commitment to liberalism
and justice as their protection. 226: Yet at the same time, they
were frightened by the election of a Jewish Prime Minister Leon
Blum, at the head of a left-liberal front, which did make the right
more vocally antisemitic. p. 227: Blum thought these rich Jews
wrongly expected, as they had in the Dreyfus Affair: "that the
anti-Semitic passion would be turned aside by their cowardly
neutrality." Blum son of wealthy merchant, affected by Dreyfus
affair himself at beginning of career and in German concentration
camp at its end.
"We are not Zionists in any way whatsoever; but we are sorry
not to be Zionists." This editorial shows the shift in the interwar period.xlv
France's defeat in 1940 and the collaborationist Vichy regime
was a special shock to Jews like sociologist Georges Friedmann from
17
families "profoundly integrated into France" who had never felt
discrimination and now discovered "the shattering importance that
being labelled Jewish might have for me." Deprived of full
citizenship, Friedmann was determined to prove himself a true
Frenchman. He joined the Resistance under a very French name and
there rediscovered "a community in which all discrimination was
swept away." In short, the Resistance and especially the Communists
were the real France.xlvi
Bloch section, the meaning of being French, Jewish Variation.
Bloch founded Annales in 1929 and killed by Germans in 1944.
He questioned the preoccupation of historians with high politics,
stressed the study of average people, the interconnected nature of
all aspects of society, and comparative studies among countries.
patriot, French army in both world wars, Resistance, captured and
killed. He came from a prestigious and highly assimilated family.
His great-grandfather was a rabbi, his grandfather rector of a
Jewish school (ie, an assimilationist adjustment but still
community), father history of Rome at University of Paris. was 20
in 1906 when Dreyfus reinstated: to see as face of reaction or
success of democracy. ENS school, medals for bravery, College de
France blocked by antisem. Bloch thought assim Js behind quotas.
finally got into Sorbonne but bitter about College, struggle for
rights as French citizen. atheist, no religious instruction but
Jewish wedding. "In a world assailed by the most atrocious
barbarism, is not the generous tradition of the Hebrew prophets,
which Christianity in its purest sense has adopted and expanded,
one of the best reasons to live, to believe, and to fight."xlvii
flatter majority, accept idea that Christianity was improvement.
Bloch saw above all as French "A stranger to all credal dogmas
as to all alleged racial solidarity," always thought of as
Frenchman [but if Fr superior why demand denunciation] "Attached to
my country by a long family tradition, nourished by its spiritual
heritage and its history, and, indeed, incapable of conceiving
another land whose air I cold breathe with such ease, I have loved
it very much and served it with all my strength. I have never felt
that my being a Jew has at all hindered these sentiments."xlviii died
in Resistance for both causes, deny conflict and thus Vichy and
collaborationists were the illegitimate claimants to France.
duck postwar Pierre Mendes-France, A Radical party member of
parliament who held a junior post in Blum's Popular Front
government of 1936-8. In 1954, he became prime minister of a new
cabinet after France's terrible defeat in Vietnam. He carried out
his election promise to end the war within one month. negotiated
integration of West Germany into the European defense system.
Mendes-France was a staunch supporter of the Zionist movement and
of Israel.
The trauma of the war and Holocaust had strengthened some in
their adherence to Judaism but many were determined to shed it by
changing their names, intermarrying, about 15,000 conversions, or
refusing to have their sons circumcised lest that one day be used
18
to condemn them. Realizing that France would not protect them as
Jews, they abandoned Judaism rather than being angry at France. The
idea that persecution increased Jewish identity must be much
qualified.xlix
today [describe monument in Paris, hidden away below splendor
of Notre Dame, like Babi Yar, not Jews quoted). new generation,
resurgence. last Aron quote
Aron did not regard his Jewish background as setting apart
from Frenchman BUT in the 1930s he was inhibited from warning about
Hitler (he was a German expert) because he was apprehensive lest,
because he was a Jew, his objectivity would be questioned.l "If one
wished to be French, if one is French like all one's compatriots,
why should one refrain from comment on any matter of interest?"li
"How could I honestly assert my impartiality, when Hitlerism has
always been antisemitic and while it is now multiplying the risks
of war." he said in a 1936 paper so said clearly is anti-Nazi.lii
contradiction: because either didn't feel fully French or knew
others did not consider, afraid and so timid. very common.
duck 1967: When President de Gaulle in 1967 made his
disparaging statement about the Jews, he thought it reminiscent of
the anti-Semitism of Drumont and of Vichy France and denounced it.
By this time he had ceased to fear that his objectivity or good
faith could be placed in question. French patriot but also a
citizen of Europe in the way in which it was once said of Georg
Brandes that he was a "good European." Aron Memoirs main theme the
right of a small state to survive, if there is "an irresistible
movement of solidarity" with Israel "it hardly matters where that
movement comes from." 336: "I already felt very distant from"
father's generation "who refused to know anything about their
Jewishness." no emotion when Israel created, unsympathetic on first
visit. 337: "A Jew of French culture, from a family that has been
French citizens for several generations, is required by no human or
divine law to consider himself as a Jew." cannot condemn, not a
traitor if has never been part. "One cannot betray or desert a
community unless one has belonged or wanted to belong to it." [far
enough, as long as doesn't seek to do harm in so leaving or proving
separation. "The Jew is born a Jew because his parents were Jews,
but he freely chooses to remain a Jew or not." 341: "During and
after the war, one could hardly attribute my positions to my
Judaism." did not take a hard line against collaborators, urged
reconciliation with Germany. stresses comments on Middle East
politics from standpoint of French interests (and French-Israeli
alliance). 345: a retired French general asked if he would obey a
government order to attack Israel said "I am a French general, and
I carry out the missions assigned to me by my superior and, in the
last analysis, by my government." 347: "I am a French writer, a Jew
who reacts or thinks first and above all as an Israeli is living an
internal contradiction. Why should he not live n his country?"
348: "Contemporary Jews cannot evade this problem: to define
themselves as Israelis or French; Jews and French, yes; Israelis
19
and French, no, which does not prevent them from having particular
sympathy for Israel." 349: "A Frenchman of Jewish origin seems to
me to have a legitimate right to preserve his faith and the
elements of the traditional culture to which he is attached." only
totalitarians demand that one abandon his traditions as the price
of citizenship [but that had been common] 351: "For myself, not a
Zionist, principally because I do not identify myself as a Jew, `I
know, more clearly than yesterday, that the possibility of the
destruction of the state of Israel (which would involve the
massacre of part of the population) would deeply wound me." other
French intellectuals, found "themselves, to their surprise to be
Jews." [But it was the third time in 70 years this had happened]
444: "To believe oneself obliged to maintain one's reserve,
whatever the occasion, is to accept discrimination between oneself
and the others. If one wished to be French, if one is French like
all one's compatriots, why should one refrain from comment on any
matter of interest?"
As citizens of the French Republic, they
legitimately maintain their spiritual or psychological links with
the Israelis, but if these links with Israel become political and
more significant than their French citizenship, they should
logically choose Israeli citizenship."
duck 7. Italy and England
Sachar Diaspora p. 53: In late nineteenth-century Italy, Jews
were among the nation's leading historians, literary critics,
authors, critics, and scientists. By 1894, 11 Jewish deputies sat
in parliament. Between the 1890s and 1910, two Jews served as
minister of finance, two as prime minister, and one as minister of
war and as mayor of Rome. Jews, only 0.1 percent of the population
in 1930, were about 8 percent of Italy's university professors. p.
54: Between 1930 and 1940, some 30 percent of Jewish marriages were
with Gentiles. many Jewish intellectuals joined the anti-Fascist
opposition. p. 63: The novelist Italo Svevo wrote of the
assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie of Trieste and Giorgio Bassani,
whose novels and stories dealt with the Jewish middle class of
Ferrara under Fascism. While Svevo and the Jewish writers Alberto
Moravia (a baptized Catholic) and Natalia Ginzburg rarely portrayed
their fictional characters specifically as Jews, Bassani did,
Israel's creation was a decisive influence in fortifying Italian
Jewish identity and promoting activism and observance. Fewer than
50,000 Jews in Italy before war, 230 were among Black Shirts that
marched on Rome in 1921 to install Mussolini. 1938 Racial Laws.
Ettore Ovassa, of wealthy Turinese banking families, "La Nosta
Bandiera" Jewish fascist organization, tried to fire-bomb a Zionist
newspaper in Florence to show its loyalty. Germans killed, betrayed
by a fellow Italian. More were leading anti-fascists. 30,000
survived war.liii
In February 1945, the Vatican proudly revealed that Rome's
chief rabbi Israel Zolli had converted to Catholicism. Hearing the
news, thousands of Jews rushed to the Great Synagogue to voice
20
their horror and outrage. On the dais stood Alfredo Panzieri,
oldest of the city's rabbis. A frail little man, almost deaf,
Panzieri had conducted services in Rome throughout the German
occupation and barely escaped deportation. He addressed the crowd
in the Great Synagogue, speaking gently of the "joy and honor" of
being Jewish. One Roman Jew later said, "The Vatican would take no
satisfaction for encouraging that betrayal, though. They did not
know us. We would not be erased that easily."liv
strong British tradition of wealthy remaining in community and
leadership though many cases of nonreligious education leading to
conversion. 6 unconverted Jews in the House of Commons in 1869 and
16 by 1906. London clubs were so willing to admit Jews that no
Jewish clubs developed.lv England not much passionate patriotism,
the important thing is to be English.
duck 8. support groups and exotic
How adopting the struggles of others serves to redefine the
identity of Jews. civil rights movement. sympathy for the
Palestinians
duck exotic: (8a)
Memmi Fighter for Tunisian nationalism, thrown out to
rediscover himself, man of the left.
Kurds, Vera Saedpour
A reporter visiting Soviet Georgia asked an old Jew there if
Jews had ever been oppressed. He was insulted, "We have never been
persecuted. These Georgians are not like Russians or Germans, you
know. Georgians are civilized people with culture!"lvi
In Azerbaijan, the Jews spoke as patriots on the conflict with
Armenia, "Nagorno Karabakh is right in the middle of Azerbaijan. It
can't belong to Armenia and it can't be independent."lvii
Brazilian
novelist
Moacyr
Scliar
son
of
Russian-born
immigrants. son of suffering is first name in indian language but
happy, "funny, melancholy stories" says of parents and good example
of Jewish style. educated at Jewish and Catholic schools, "My
`Brazilianness' is not in question. Through my work, I am very
connected to reality." to the misery of the country through public
health work. "melancholic, ironic humor." "Many groups there have
no voice," in Brazil. "We have to restore the roots of these
people. The question of the search for an identity is very Jewish."
immigrants, who are we? very Brazilian. issues of identity, King
Solomon sent emissaries to northern Brazil...lviii
duck 9 conclusion
While the immigrant gets down on his knees to kiss the soil,
the native-born may take it for granted as dirt.
NOTES
21
i. Lucy Dawidowicz, The