DOCSLIB.ORG

Revolution & the Jewish Question

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Revolution & the Jewish Question " i· .. 'Commentary t , ~~ The Bl~fk "Revolution & the Jewish Question I Earl Raab BOUT A HALF-CENTURY AGO, Louis same distinction has been made between "objec­ A Marshall" the eminent constitution­ tive" and "subjective" anti-Semitism, "concrete" al lawyer who was' also president of the American and "abstract" anti-Semitism, and the real Jew Jewish Committee, said fIrmly: "We do not recog­ and the mythical Jew as target. But by whatever nize the existence of a Jewish Question in the names, and whatever the relationship between the United States." That distasteful phrase, "The two kinds of anti.5emitism, Jews know the differ­ Jewish Question," evoked the European model: ence. Not getting a particular job is one thing. A !S pogrom is another. )­ the political uses of anti-Semitism. Marshall made ,n the statement precisely because he saw that the Political anti-Semitism did not become serious Jewish Question in the political sense was coming in America until about 1920. In that year the 'alive in the United States. It did, and preoccupied staid Christian Science MonitO)· carried a lead ed­ the domestic Jewish consciousness for the next itorial entitled "The' Jewish Peril." A few years , quarter of a century. later, a book called The International Jew: The For the past quarter of a century, there has' World's Foremost Problem had a run of half a been no serious trace of political anti-Semitism in million copies. The articles in that book-"The America. Any suggestion today that "it could hap­ Scope of Jewish Dictatorship in America," "Rule pen here," has had an antique flavor and would of Jewish Kehilla Grips New York," and "How be widely branded as phobic, paranoid, and even the Jewish Song Trust Makes You Sing"-and amusing. There is the old joke about three men many others of a similar bent had already re­ who were asked to write an essay about the ele-, ceived wide distribution in Henry Ford's national phant. The Englishman wrote on "The Elephant newspaper. And Henry Ford, it must be recalled, and the British Empire," the Frenchman on "The was not a Los Angeles mail-order crackpot. In :,1\' " Elephant 'and Love-Making," the Jew on "The 1923, at the height of his anti-Semitic fulmina­ ;,1 Elephantand the Jewish Question." But we have tions, Collier's reported that he led all other pos­ ,j learned a great deal about the Jewish Question, sible candidates, including the incumbent Presi­ :;l and if the subject of the essay were ''''estern de­ dent, in its national Presidential preference poll. ~ mocracy instead of el~phants, the joke would no Other straw polls' agreed. William Randolph longer be a joke. The potential for political anti­ Hearst annQunced that he was prepared to back Semitism, aside from its special interest to Jews, Ford for that office. The KKK during the same turns out to be a particularly useful vantage point period had a membership which blanketed at It­ least a quarter of all white Protestant families in es from which to. examine the state of the general cy society. And responsible people are again having America. And at one point in the 1930's, someone In to deny nervously that there 'is a Jewish Question identifIed about 150 organizations whose primary ns in America. The American Jewish community's business was the promotion of political anti-Sem­ 'st concern with its own security may be coming full itism. Father Coughlin, who reprinted the Pro­ circle. tocols of the Elders of Zion in his national news­ From the end of ''''orld War I to the beginning paper, had a regular radio audience of millions. of World War II, the American jew's defense To these seemingly mass assignations with anti­ efforts were increasingly keyed to political anti­ Semitism, the organized Jewish community re­ Semitism, as distinct from garden-variety discrim­ sponded with a program based on the image-of­ ination. Political anti-Semitism may be defIned as the-Jew theory of anti-Semitism. At the national the attemptl~o establish the corporate Jew as a B'nai B'rith convention in 1930, Sigmund Living­ generalized public menace, the implicat,ion being ston said that the necessity was "to educate the that some official public remedy is called for. The great mass in the truth concerning the Jew and to demolish the foibles and fIctions that now are y EARL RAAB is executive director of the Jewish Community part of the mental picture of the Jew in the pub­ ReI.alions Council of San Francisco. He has taught at the UnIversity of California and San Francisco State College, lic mind." The Jewish community mounted what and has written widely on issues of intergroup relations. must certainly have been one of the most prolific J "., ,,' -'-----.... ......... 24/COMMENTARY JANUARY 1969· mass educational programs of all time. Yet anti­ from the Civil Rights Revolution to the Negro Semitic activity and popular support of avowed Revolution. The shift should have been quite pre­ anti·Semites were at their height when summarily dictable. Equal opportunity is not equal achieve­ cut off by America's bitter embroilment with the ment, except for those who are equally equipped world's arch anti-Semite. to compete. An' enclave population now existed A few short years later, America seemed to whose cultural and educational "equipment" had emerge from the war as a nation in which the been comprehensively' stunted for generations. Jewish Question was miraculously dead. Ameri­ The American society, moreover, had deliberately can Jews, of course, felt that the war had been created this enclave population_ For the impov­ fought-and won-around the Jewish Question. erished and uneducated immigrants to America Maybe they believed thatlother Americans felt the equal opportunity had been enough, because same way. Maybe they believed that other Ameri­ other societies had depressed them. In their cans were responding en masse to the revelations minds, America owed them no more than an op­ of the Holocaust. In any case, political anti-Sem­ portunity, and the gradualist road to parity itism seemed stripped of any respectability; in­ which all emerging groups have traveled. But deed, anti-Semitism became one of the cardinal America owed the Negroes more than opportu­ political sins. The nation was even able to sustain nity. The battle-cry of the Negro Revolution was a major red-baiting demagogue who carried Cohn not opportunity, but parity in the economy as and Schine on his hip and flirted with anti-Sem­ well as in the society, starting with an instant end itism not at all. Israel was established. Stalin died. to poverty. Toward that goal, the demands were American Jews settled down to a new security. not just for equal treatment, but for compensa­ tory treatment on a kind of reparations basis. T THE SAME TIME something else was For the Negro community, this stage was a log­ A happening in the country. The Jew­ ical extension of the Civil Rights Revolution. ish Question was apparently being supplanted by But for the organized Jewish community some the Negro Question. And the defensive energies adjustment was required. The apparatus <;>f the and apparatus of the Jewish community moved Jewish community committed itself to the cam­ from one to the other. At least, that is the way it paign against poverty, and throwing the slogans turned out. A surface theory relating to Jewish se­ about equal-opportunity-under-the-Iaw into the attic, began to look for a role in that campaign. 1 curity ratiomilized the move: Equal opportunity for one means equal opportunity for all. But no one ex­ Consideration of Je~vish security became even '1 amined this dubious axiom very closely. America . more remote_ I seemed to be approaching a state of perfectibility: There were only a few years of war-against-pov­ The nation's great flaw, slavery, was being brought erty .innocence before the third stage set in. It to account; democracy was marching to fulfillment, quickly became apparent that the billion·dollar and the Jewish community obviously belonged anti-poverty programs were not suddenly going on such a march, whatever the reasons. Several to turn history on its head; and with that realiza­ motivational streams in Jewish life merged at this tion, the Negro Revolution began to be overlaid point, as they never had before: the instinct for by the Black Revolution. Since New Deal days, at self· preservation; the religious ethic, invoking the least, Americans have subscribed to the social en­ prophetic tradition; and the political program­ gineering fallacy: Any problem can be solved if liberalism-for which so many Jews had devel­ only we devise enough programs and spend oped a special secular affinity. On this level, the enough money_ The fallout of the massive anti­ Jewish community found itself with a coherent poverty programs of the early 1960's created a and organic position. salaried black bureaucracy in the ghettos and un­ Of course, this preeminent concern with civil doubtedly helped a number of individuals up the rights swiftly and inevitably became a predom­ ladder-but finally these programs were more ef­ inant concern with the needs and aspirations of fective in raising expectations than mass stand­ the Negro community. After the FEPC principle ards of living_ The goal of instant parity seemed had been established in the North, the laws that more desirable and further away than ever. were passed and the court cases that were pressed Against the background of such frustrations, and had less and less direct application to the security other frustrations provided by society, there has of the Jews.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Antisemitism and the Left
    2 Marx’s defence of Jewish emancipation and critique of the Jewish question The Jew … must cease to be a Jew if he will not allow himself to be hindered by his law from fulfilling his duties to the State and his fellow-citizens. (Bruno Bauer, Die Judenfrage)1 The Jews (like the Christians) are fully politically emancipated in various states. Both Jews and Christians are far from being humanly emancipated. Hence there must be a difference between political and human emancipation. (Marx and Engels, The Holy Family)2 Capitalism has not only doomed the social function of the Jews; it has also doomed the Jews themselves. (Abram Leon, ‘Toward a Solution to the Jewish Question’)3 Within the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the perspectives of Jewish eman- cipation and the Jewish question were synthesised to the extent that emancipation was justified in terms of solving the Jewish question. Within the French Revolu- tion, the inclusive face of universalism that was articulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was synthesised with the terror directed at those labelled ‘enemies of humanity’. In both the Enlightenment and the revolutionary tradition, however, there were alternative ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation that sought to break radically from the prejudicial assump- tions of the Jewish question. In the nineteenth century, the synthesis of Jewish emancipation and the Jewish question was to be torn apart. On the one hand, the Jewish question was set in opposition to Jewish emancipation; on the other hand, Jewish emancipation was justified independently of the Jewish question.4 The tensions contained in the eighteenth-century synthesis could no longer be held in check.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Jewish Question” (1843)
    KARL MARX, “On the Jewish Question” (1843) In: The Marx-Engels Reader. Edited by Robert Tucker, New York: Norton & Company, 1978. p. 26 - 46. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The German Jews seek emancipation. What kind of emancipation do they want? Civic, political emancipation. Bruno Bauer replies to them: In Germany no one is politically emancipated. We ourselves are not free. How then could we liberate you? You Jews are egoists if you demand for yourselves, as Jews, a special emancipation. You should work, as Germans, for the political emancipation of Germany, and as men, for the emancipation of mankind. You should feel the particular kind of oppression and shame which you suffer, not as an exception to the rule but rather as a confirmation of the rule. Or do the Jews want to be placed on a footing of equality with the Christian subjects? If they recognize the Christian state as legally established they also recognize the regime of general enslave- [27] ment. Why should their particular yoke be irksome when they accept the general yoke? Why should the German be interested in liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German? The Christian state recognizes nothing but privileges. The Jew himself, in this state, has the privilege of being a Jew. As a Jew he possesses rights which the Christians do not have. Why does he want rights which he does not have but which the Christians enjoy? In demanding his emancipation from the Christian state he asks the Christian state to abandon its religious prejudice.
    [Show full text]
  • Communism's Jewish Question
    Communism’s Jewish Question Europäisch-jüdische Studien Editionen European-Jewish Studies Editions Edited by the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam, in cooperation with the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg Editorial Manager: Werner Treß Volume 3 Communism’s Jewish Question Jewish Issues in Communist Archives Edited and introduced by András Kovács An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License, as of February 23, 2017. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. ISBN 978-3-11-041152-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-041159-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-041163-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover illustration: Presidium, Israelite National Assembly on February 20-21, 1950, Budapest (pho- tographer unknown), Archive “Az Izraelita Országos Gyűlés fényképalbuma” Typesetting:
    [Show full text]
  • Down with Britain, Away with Zionism: the 'Canaanites'
    DOWN WITH BRITAIN, AWAY WITH ZIONISM: THE ‘CANAANITES’ AND ‘LOHAMEY HERUT ISRAEL’ BETWEEN TWO ADVERSARIES Roman Vater* ABSTRACT: The imposition of the British Mandate over Palestine in 1922 put the Zionist leadership between a rock and a hard place, between its declared allegiance to the idea of Jewish sovereignty and the necessity of cooperation with a foreign ruler. Eventually, both Labour and Revisionist Zionism accommodated themselves to the new situation and chose a strategic partnership with the British Empire. However, dissident opinions within the Revisionist movement were voiced by a group known as the Maximalist Revisionists from the early 1930s. This article analyzes the intellectual and political development of two Maximalist Revisionists – Yonatan Ratosh and Israel Eldad – tracing their gradual shift to anti-Zionist positions. Some questions raised include: when does opposition to Zionist politics transform into opposition to Zionist ideology, and what are the implications of such a transition for the Israeli political scene after 1948? Introduction The standard narrative of Israel’s journey to independence goes generally as follows: when the British military rule in Palestine was replaced in 1922 with a Mandate of which the purpose was to implement the 1917 Balfour Declaration promising support for a Jewish ‘national home’, the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine gained a powerful protector. In consequence, Zionist politics underwent a serious shift when both the leftist Labour camp, led by David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), and the rightist Revisionist camp, led by Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky (1880-1940), threw in their lot with Britain. The idea of the ‘covenant between the Empire and the Hebrew state’1 became a paradigm for both camps, which (temporarily) replaced their demand for a Jewish state with the long-term prospect of bringing the Yishuv to qualitative and quantitative supremacy over the Palestinian Arabs under the wings of the British Empire.
    [Show full text]
  • LVOV's OJCZYZNA (1881-1892) Paweł Jasnowski Introduction
    SCRIPTA JUDAICA CRACOVIENSIA Vol. 13 (2015) pp. 55–65 doi:10.4467/20843925SJ.15.005.4227 www.ejournals.eu/Scripta-Judaica-Cracoviensia THE FAILURE OF THE INTEGRATION OF GALICIAN JEWS ACCORDING TO LVOV’S OJCZYZNA (1881-1892) Paweł Jasnowski (Jagiellonian University, Kraków) Key words: integrationist, integration, assimilation, Polonization, Lvov, Galicia, Polish-Jewish relations, anti-Semitism Abstract: The article is devoted to the pro-Polish integrationist group, an important part of the modernizing section of the Jewish community in Poland, in the second half of the 19th century. The author focuses on Ojczyzna, a Polish-language bulletin and the first regular Polish-language newspaper of the pro-Polish integrationist group in Galicia. The study is an attempt to show how the idea of integration was finally abandoned at the turn of the century, and integration ceased to be seen as the solution to “the Jewish question.” Introduction The pro-Polish integrationist1 group was an important part of the modernizing sec- tion of the Jewish community in Poland. Its origins date back to the end of the 18th cen- tury. It was at this point that Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) began to take root in Galicia.2 In the early days, the most influential leaders of the Haskalah movement were Menachem Mendel Lefin and his famous disciples, Joseph Perl (1773-1839) and Nach- man Krochmal. The main centers of the movement were the towns of Brody, Lemberg (Lvov, now Lviv), and Tarnopol. Unlike in the Kingdom of Poland, right from the begin- ning a prominent characteristic of Haskalah in Galicia was its uncompromising struggle against Hasidism.3 In contrast to the Kingdom of Poland, in Galicia the Haskalah move- ment was not deeply immersed in the Polish language and Polish culture; in Kingdom of Poland these sympathies could be described as a Polish version of integration with 1 In the use of the term “integrationist” (instead of “assimilationist”) I follow Mendelsohn’s (but also Wodziński’s) suggestion.
    [Show full text]
  • Jay Geller Associate Professor of Modern Jewish Culture Vanderbilt
    Geller, Jay Curriculum Vitae—1 Jay Geller Associate Professor of Modern Jewish Culture Vanderbilt Divinity School/Jewish Studies Program Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37240 (615) 343-3968 Affiliated Senior Research Fellow Woolf Institute Wesley House, Jesus Lane Cambridge CB5 8BJ, UK [email protected]; [email protected] Educational History: Ph.D. 1980-85 Duke University (Religion) Dissertation: "Contact with Persistent Others: The Representation of Woman in Friedrich Schlegel, G. W. F. Hegel, and Karl Gutzkow." Advisor: Charles H. Long M.A. 1977-80 Duke University (Religion) B.A. 1971-75 Wesleyan University (Religion) Books and Edited Volumes: Bestiarium Judaicum: (Un)Natural Histories of the Jews (New York: Fordham University Press, under contract; expected submission 31 May 2015) The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011 http://fordham.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5422/fordham/9780823233 618.001.0001/upso-9780823233618) On Freud’s Jewish Body: Mitigating Circumcisions (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007) Postmemories of the Holocaust, editor, special issue of American Imago 59,3 (Fall 2002) Reading Freud's Reading, co-editor with Sander Gilman, Jutta Birmele, and Valerie Greenberg (New York: NYU Press, 1994) Current Research: “Bestiarium Judaicum: (Un)Natural Histories of the Jews” explores how Jewish identifications also drew upon the millennia-old tradition of natural history—the observation, description, categorization, and exhibition of animal life—to generate an entire menagerie of Jewish creatures: apes, mice, rats, vermin, vipers, vultures—and lizards. This project maps and analyzes these efforts (e.g., by Heine, Kafka, Salten) at promoting or subverting—and often both—the bestialization of the Jew in the Central European cultural imagination.
    [Show full text]
  • The Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: an Examination of Legal Rights - a Case Study of the Human Rights Violations of Iraqi Jews
    Fordham International Law Journal Volume 26, Issue 3 2002 Article 6 The Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: An Examination of Legal Rights - A Case Study of the Human Rights Violations of Iraqi Jews Carole Basri∗ ∗ Copyright c 2002 by the authors. Fordham International Law Journal is produced by The Berke- ley Electronic Press (bepress). http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj The Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: An Examination of Legal Rights - A Case Study of the Human Rights Violations of Iraqi Jews Carole Basri Abstract Although the issues surrounding the Palestinian refugees are frequently addressed at the United Nations (”U.N.”), in the news media, and in legal journals, very little has been written about the Jews displaced from Arab lands. In light of the little known fact that approximately 50% of Israelis are Jews from Arab lands or their descendents, this Article will use Jews from Iraq as a case study in examining the history and rights of Jews from Arab countries, who were expelled or forced to seek refuge elsewhere. Part I of this Article examines the historical legal status of Jews in Iraq and the discriminatory and prosecutorial events that triggered the expulsion of Jews from Iraq. Part II demonstrates that actions taken by Iraq against Jews violated international law stan- dards and other laws applicable now and at that time. Part III addresses the question of whether Jews from Arab lands currently have any available remedies for these violations of their rights. Finally, the Article concludes that a full accounting of the rights of Jews from Arab lands must accompany any discussions aimed at providing a regional peace agreement for the Middle East, if such an agreement is to have strength and legitimacy under international law.
    [Show full text]
  • Lenin on the Jewish Question
    University of Central Florida STARS PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements 1-1-1934 Lenin on the Jewish question Vladimir Ilich Lenin Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Book is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, "Lenin on the Jewish question" (1934). PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements. 840. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism/840 C" THE INTBRNiATlONAL PUBLISHERS NEW YORK , .i 5 cent3 EDITOR'S FOREWORD of Use Jews constitutes one of the darltest and blowliest chapters in the bistory of the tsarist empire, equalled, if not exceeded, onlg by the record of fascism in Germany. Previously, Rd,''the prison of nations," was considered the classic hdof the pogrom, Today, the Suviet Union, a free fademtion of Soviet nattwa kd upw the right of self-d-tion, has wiped out all natid opprdon axld persecution; Nazi Germany h become the land of the pgrom. The United Stah has no h Moody a record Jn regard to tbe Ntgraes. The lynch terror is the Amerian munter-part of the ppgrwn; Nqmphobia is even more viht than aatiSemihn. The system oi -tion aad Jim C& has matedwery phase of Amtri- mn life; at every turn the Amen'ean Negro is dqpded, insulted, pmemkd The violent national oppessIon of the Negroes in the United Statw, as weIl as the remgence and intensification of anti- Semitism, pushes the question of struggle against "race apriority" iddvgy and against ail form of national persecution to the forefront.
    [Show full text]
  • Ilya Ehrenburg, the State of Israel, and the Jewish Question in the Soviet
    Sarah M. Zaides Stalin’s Intellectual? Ilya Ehrenburg, The Jewish Question, and the State of Israel In his 1965 memoirs People, Years, Life, Ilya Ehrenburg reflects “I love Spain, Italy, and France, but all my years are inseparable from Russian life. I have never concealed my origin. There were times when I did not give it a thought, and others when I said wherever I could: I am a Jew, for to my mind solidarity with the persecuted is the first principle of humanitarianism.”1 Ehrenburg, a Soviet Jewish intellectual, a correspondant for Isvestia during the Spanish Civil war, a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, co-author, with Vasily Grossman, of The Black Book, a collection of first hand accounts of Soviet Jewish suffering in Nazi occupied Russia, is often cited as a prototypical “assimilated Jew” of the Soviet Union, who lacked “Jewish national consciousness.”2 He represents a “strange blend of nihilistic and alienated sentiment with regard to Jewish national culture and boundless admiration for the culture of the host nation, was characteristic of assimilated Jews the world over.”3 Any “national consciousness” that did emerge, for Ehrenburg, was in response to anti-Semitism, reinforced after World War II, which provided the “raison d’etre for the Jews.”4 But as his memoirs indicate, Ilya Ehrenburg's identity as a Soviet Jewish intellectual is a paradox in and of itself, whose contradictions need to be teased out and read closely in the context of the Soviet State. This assimilationist argument is made famous by Yuri Slezkine and, as one reviewer put it, his “hermetic academic exercise” The Jewish Century, which distinguishes the twentieth century, the modern age, and modernization, as the “Jewish age.”5 Russian Jews, who remained in Russia after the revolution, did 1 I.
    [Show full text]
  • The Jewish Question Revisited: Marx, Derrida and Ethnic Nationalism,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 23 (1997), 47-78
    The Jewish Question Revisited: Marx, Derrida, and Ethnic Nationalism* Pre-Print Version Gordon Hull – [email protected] Abstract: The question of nationalism as spoken about in contemporary circles is structurally the same as Marx’s ‘Jewish Question.’ Through a reading of Marx’s early writings, particularly the ‘Jewish Question’ essay, guided by Derrida’s Specters of Marx and Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, it is possible to begin to rethink the nationalist question. In this light, nationalism emerges as the byproduct of the reduction of heterogenous ‘people’ into a homogeneous ‘state;’ such ‘excessive’ voices occupy an ontological space outside of the categories within which the state operates, and thus return to, in Derrida’s terms, ‘haunt’ it. When viewed in this way, contemporary solutions to the nationalist question which depend on reproducing this reduction are called into question. Keywords: Marx --- Derrida --- Nationalism --- Gottlieb, G. --- Kaplan, R. --- Anderson, B. * I would like to thank Gregg Horowitz, Maya Socolovsky and Minette Watkins for their generousGordon Hull, help “The with Jewish earlier Question versions Revisite ofd: this Marx, paper. Derrida and Ethnic Nationalism,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 23 (1997), 47-78. (pre-print version) 1 ‘We are now leaving little by little.’ --- Sergei Esenin1 We will begin with the observation that the question of nationalism as spoken about in contemporary political circles --- ‘Serbian Nationalism,’ ‘Chechnya,’ ‘Palestinian National Authority’ --- was articulated more originally by Marx and named the ‘Jewish Question.’ This is not to say that either nationalism or the Jewish question began there --- Benedict Anderson finds traces of what will later be called ‘nation’ in the middle ages.2 Rather, it is to disagree with Tom Nairn that ‘the theory of nationalism represents Marxism’s great historical failure’ (qtd.
    [Show full text]
  • Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands
    Out of the Shtetl Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands NANCY SINKOFF OUT OF THE SHTETL Program in Judaic Studies Brown University Box 1826 Providence, RI 02912 BROWN JUDAIC STUDIES Series Editors David C. Jacobson Ross S. Kraemer Saul M. Olyan Number 336 OUT OF THE SHTETL Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands by Nancy Sinkoff OUT OF THE SHTETL Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands Nancy Sinkoff Brown Judaic Studies Providence Copyright © 2020 by Brown University Library of Congress Control Number: 2019953799 Publication assistance from the Koret Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non- Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecom- mons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact Brown Judaic Studies, Brown University, Box 1826, Providence, RI 02912. In memory of my mother Alice B. Sinkoff (April 23, 1930 – February 6, 1997) and my father Marvin W. Sinkoff (October 22, 1926 – July 19, 2002) CONTENTS Acknowledgments....................................................................................... ix A Word about Place Names ....................................................................... xiii List of Maps and Illustrations .................................................................... xv Introduction:
    [Show full text]
  • A Nazi German Cartoon Circa 1938 Depicts the Jews As an Octopus Encircling the Globe.1
    A Nazi German cartoon circa 1938 depicts the Jews as an octopus encircling the globe.1 1 Plank, Josef. “Churchill and the Great Republic: Seppla, Jews as an Octopus Encircling the Globe.” Library of Congress. 1935-1943. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive/_html/wc0213.html ANTI-SEMITISM IN NAZI GERMANY Isaac Farhadian From the first century of the Christian Era, economic powerhouses, media owners, for a period reflecting two thousand years of Marxists, World War I backstabbers, and anti-Semitism, there have been three singular World War II instigators.4 The third and final anti-Judaic measures implemented against stage of Hilberg’s cyclical triad was fully European populations of Jewish people: executed under the Nazis’ fanatical belief conversion, expulsion, and complete that Jews initiated the Second World War. annihilation.2 Raul Hilberg argues that anti- The National Socialists did not ―discard the Semitism has had three successive goals past; they built upon it; they did not begin a during its post-Roman era. Hilberg proclaims development; they completed it.‖ 5 that the ―missionaries of Christianity had said The earliest accounts of National Socialist in effect: You have no right to live among us anti-Semitic policies towards Jews originated as Jews. The secular rulers who followed during the infant stages of the socialist proclaimed: You have no right to live among movement which gained ground under the us. The German Nazis decreed: You have no 6 3 highly unpopular Weimar Republic. The right to live.‖ Why was anti-Semitism so lack of stability of the Weimar regime was widespread in Germany, both in the political largely attributed to the humiliating defeat of sphere and in the cultural sphere, and what the Great War, the subjugation of foreign were the contributing factors that led to the oppression, and the economic depression that near-annihilation of European Jewry? 7 followed soon afterwards.
    [Show full text]