Assimilation and Its Discontents / Barry Rubin

Copyright © 1995 by Barry Rubin All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published. material: RAM’S HORN MUSIC: Two lines from “George Jackson” by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1971 by Ram’s Horn Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission. SPECIAL RIDER MUSIC: Three lines from “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1965 by Warner Brothers Music. Copyright renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music. Two lines from “Highway 61 Revisited” by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1965 by Warner Brothers Music. Copyright renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rubin, Barry M. Assimilation and its discontents / Barry Rubin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index, ISBN 0-8129-2293-X 1. Jews—Cultural assimilation, 2.Jews—Identity. 3. Jews—Intellectual life. 4. Civilization, Modem—Jewish influences. I. Title, DS148.R83 1994 305.892’4—dc2o 94-30991 Manufactured in the United States of America on acid-free paper 9876432 First Edition FOR JUDY 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 Contents Introduction ……………………………………………………… xi Chapter 1: The House of Bondage: 1789-1897 …………………… 3 Chapter 2: The Burst Cocoon: Europe 1897-1940 ……………… 32 Chapter 3: America’s Founding Immigrants …………………… 62 Chapter 4: Self-Invention, American Style …………………… 87 Chapter 5: The Mystery People ………………………………… 115 Chapter 6: In Dubious Battles: The Revolutionary Left ……… 129 Chapter 7: The Last Jew ………………………………………… 156 Chapter 8: Other People’s Nations ……………………………… 183 Chapter 9: The Contrary Children ……………………………… 204 Chapter 10: Philosophy Wars …………………………………… 222 Chapter 11: Nationhood, Diaspora, Galut ……………………… 247 NOTES …………………………………………………………… 265 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………… 295 Introduction If we act like other men, what shall we do on the day of the Lord?… If thou art of the 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 Esau** HE SUBJECT of the Jews is nearly inescapable, though much of it concerns Tthose escaping being Jews. How could it be otherwise with a highly literate, obsessively self-reflective people whose social and intellectual role far exceeds its numbers, whose survival and persecution has been so dramat- ic, and whose members are so unique yet—paradoxically—somehow seem to embody the human condition? And the issue of assimilation is always pres- ent—implicitly or explicitly, as subject or basis—in an outpouring of books, articles, films, music, or plays by and about Jews. Yet it is quite different to see this phenomenon as a discrete historic process. The Jewish question has always given rise to a variety of answers. Whether or not contemporary Jews are aware of previous events and ideas, these still shape their lives and attitudes. The choices they have and decisions they make are often remarkably similar to those of their predecessors. Not only does a broader view of the assimilation process reveal what lies behind its many specific products, but it also brings to light fascinating individuals and experiences forgotten or suppressed despite their relevance for people today. Jews were detached from the dominant society where they lived by having * … Midrasb ha-Gadol, cited in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1968), p.320. xii INTRODUCTION a separate tradition—with its own worldview and past experiences—and by being in a different situation, that of assimilation itself. They saw the existing society’s shortcomings more clearly, its advantages more originally, and its basic beliefs more skeptically. Thus arose the Jewish Variant: the twist, special spin, unique emphasis, or disproportionate preference that Jews put on any political or cultural concept or movement. Of course, anything Jews did was also done by others. Christians, too, changed religions, chose other identities, joined new causes, and so on. But this happened less deeply, thoroughly, and frequently among them in proportional terms and along somewhat different lines. This book discusses these issues not in institutional or sociological terms but through the behavior of leading intellectual and cultural figures, the van- guard of assimilation and those most often agonizing over these problems in ordering their own lives. It compares the era of Jewish assimilation in Europe and America, examining how assimilation played a central role in Western history as well as in the lives and work of many great intellectuals, writers, and artists. An author knows a subject is compelling when it seems omnipresent. For example, the April 1991 Vanity Fair alone contains four relevant articles con- cerning: Alfred Stieglitz, scion of a rich German Jewish family who founded art photography in America and wed Georgia O’Keeffe; Lady Mary Fairfax, whose family migrated from Poland in the 1920s and who became a powerful press lord and doyenne of Australian society; Charles Feldman, head of Fa- mous Artists Agency and the great love of Jean Harlow; and the actress Ali MacGraw, whose Hungarian mother would never admit to being Jewish. Many books could be filled with anecdotal material of this kind. Listening to the radio while writing, I heard a program about Muriel Spark, a leading British novelist who converted to Catholicism—though her son decided to be Jewish—and refused to discuss her Jewish background. I opened a new book by Mary Gordon, America’s leading Catholic-oriented novelist, to find that her father, too, had been a convert. In films or television programs, intermarriage recurs as a remarkably common theme; Jerry Seinfeld and Roseanne Barr rule television comedy with extremely different styles. Schindler’s List was the most important American film of 1994; a Jewish writer begins a New York Times lead story on crime with a Yiddish proverb. The 1994 world trade agreement was negotiated by Jews representing both the United States (Mickey Kantor) and Europe (Leon Brittan). Introduction xiii To pick two more random examples, three of four main articles in the July 22, 1990, Washington Post features section were about assimilating Jews who had made widely differing choices—Andrew Dice Clay, Sandra Bern-hard, and Allen Ginsberg. That newspaper’s October 18, 1992, reviews section is full of books by or about Jews: on sports and the American Jewish experience; a biography of Bill Graham, a Holocaust survivor and leading rock & roll impresario; the story of an upper-class New York family infected by antisemitism; a South African woman’s group portrait of her set of Jewish friends; a Jewish couple’s volume on foreign investments in America, ana- lyzing problems of multiple loyalties and foreign influence paralleling issues in assimilation; and a Jewish author’s book on politics in higher education, discussing multiculturalism in terms drawn from the integration of Jews into American society. Despite such success for Jewish assimilation, the cost has been high. This book’s title reflects this situation, recalling William Shakespeare’sKing Rich- ard III, whose opening line—”Now is the winter of our discontent”—express- es ambiguity and dissatisfaction at the very moment his group’s cause has triumphed. The same word appears in Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, which analyzes compromises required for survival in society that are both necessary and yet intensify certain personal problems. Franz Kafka, exemplifying a Jewish suspicion of contentment—as being a temporary, illu- sory state and also implying surrender to the dominant society—wrote, “While I was still contented I wanted to be discontented and with all the means that my time and tradition gave me plunged into discontent—and then wanted to turn back again. Thus I have always been discontented even with my contentment.”* The word civilization here also raises a question of which civilization assimilating Jews would join or build. The German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine called conversion a ticket to Western civilization while Freud himself saw education in that role. Obviously all Western history of the last two centuries is not related to Jewish assimilation, but that assimilation was a leading factor in shaping the course and content of Western culture. Marx, Kafka, Freud, and many others did more than just describe or embody the contemporary Jewish situation, but much in their lives and thought reflected the issues of assimilation. Nor can one precisely define a Jewish style or ideology, but elements * Frederic Grunfeld, Prophets Without Honor (New York, 1980), p. 200. xiv INTRODUCTION of such clearly exist, despite the fact that individuals used remnants from traditional Jewish life or thought intermingled with the unique assimilation situation and experience itself in reaching very different—sometimes op- posing—conclusions. The term assimilation is used here to mean a process of seeking integration in a larger society and increasingly taking one’s ideas and customs from it. There is a spectrum of assimilationist solutions, with remarkable parallels among people who lived in different countries or centuries.

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