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Introduction Dissertation Shaun Halper UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Mordechai Langer (1894-1943) and the Birth of the Modern Jewish Homosexual Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5zz859g4 Author Halper, Shaun Jacob Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Mordechai Langer (1894-1943) and the Birth of the Modern Jewish Homosexual By Shaun Jacob Halper A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor John M. Efron, Chair Professor Thomas W. Laqueur Professor Robert Alter Spring 2013 1 Abstract Mordechai Langer (1894-1943) and the Birth of the Modern Jewish Homosexual By Shaun Jacob Halper Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor John M. Efron, Chair This dissertation takes up the first truly Jewish homosexual identity, which Mordechai Jiří Langer (1894-1943) created in Prague during the 1920s. It is a study of the historical conditions— especially the exclusion of Jews by the masculinist wing of the German homosexual rights movement in the two decades bracketing World War One—that produced the need for the articulation of such an identity in the first place. It enters the cultural and intellectual world of fin de siècle homosexuals where “Jews” and “Judaism” were used as foils, against which some homosexuals were defining themselves politically and culturally. Langer defended the Jewish homosexual from German masculinist attack in the form of two literary projects: his theoretical study Die Erotik der Kabbala (1923) and his first volume of Hebrew poetry, Piyyutim ve-Shirei Yedidot (1929). Pushed out by German masculinists, Langer turned inward to the centuries-long Jewish experience to assert a distinctly Jewish homosexual identity. He reconciled homosexuality with Judaism, Hebrew culture, and Zionism and introduced the male homosexual experience to Hebrew poetry for the first time. His reconciliation of homosexuality and Judaism involved five constituent elements: the adumbration of a homosexual Jewish history; a homosexual Jewish theology; a Jewish aesthetic of homosexuality in Hebrew; a sociology of Jewish homosexuality in Hasidism; and a homosexual Jewish politics (a Zionist homosexuality). Langer’s was not merely a story of exclusion and apologia; he built his specifically Jewish identity in no small measure on his own Hasidic experience and through an exploration of homoerotic Hebrew source material from a time period spanning antiquity to modern times. He combined this material with distinctly German masculinist categories of thought (which included a psychoanalytic and sexological vocabulary). In his theoretical writing, for example, Langer used the Jewish historical record to prove that “male-male Eros” was not only normative, but was the driving motor of its history, which would culminate in a Jewish state. Although primarily incited by German masculinist ideological considerations, I show too that Langer also absorbed ideas and forms used by a broader range of homosexual writers beyond German masculinism. As a Hebrew poet, for example, Langer was deeply influenced by forms used by homosexual poets within Decadence and Symbolism. In the second half of the dissertation, I use literary-critical methods to prove that Langer employed strategies of representation that were common among a broad range of contemporary homosexual poets, from Stefan George to Arthur Rimbaud. Still, while the content of Langer’s poetry moved beyond apologetic and ideological 2 considerations, I show that he even conceived his poetic project as a corrective to German masculinist attacks on Jewish aesthetics. Langer can thus be considered not only a man of Jewish and Hebrew letters, as he is known to a handful of scholars today, but a participant in the burgeoning homosexual public sphere of his day. To tell his story, this study bridges Central European Jewish history and the history of homosexuality as never before. It recovers Langer as the first intellectual in Jewish history to seriously engage with homosexuality as a Jewish issue. Langer also offers scholars an alternative model in which Zionism and homosexuality were conceived as compatible. His story is a case study in the role of religion in the formation of modern homosexual identity. i ראיתי, שמחתי, וגאות לבשתי, על-אשר גם-אני כמוהם, אדם. לכשאמות — יבואו הבריות, וטוו מלבושי לבדים לטף. —מרדכי לאנגר, מתוך "גאות לבש" I watched, I was glad, and I donned pride, because I am like them, human. When I die—people will come, and thread fabric from my clothes for the children. —Mordechai Langer, from “Dressed in Pride” העבודה מוקדשת לאמי ציפורה הלפר ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments iv Introduction 1 Mordechai Jiří Langer as a Homosexual Writer 4 Interventions in Jewish Historiography, the History of Homosexuality, and Hebrew Criticism An Unexamined Problem 5 “Jews” and “Judaism” as Critical Categories in Homosexual Self-Definition 9 Zionism and Homosexuality 11 Homosexuality in Hebrew Literature 15 Against Assimilation: Between Identity and Subjectivity 16 Homosexual Culture from the Center 20 Homosexual Coding 21 Chapter Overview 22 Chapter 1 Coming out of the Hasidic Closet: Langer in the Age of Homosexual Emancipation I. The Bug 25 II. Jewish Prague on the Eve of WWI 31 III. A “Gay” Hasid at Belze 33 IV. The Homosexual Scene in Prague 39 VI. Jews and the German Homosexual Rights Movement 41 Chapter 2 Mordechai Langer’s Jewish Homosexuality: History, Sociology, Theology, Politics I. A Jewish Homosexuality 54 II. Eros: The Essence of Judaism 55 III. Eros in Context 59 IV. The “Tragedy” of Homosexuality and Judaism 61 V. A Homosexual-Jewish History and The Genre of Homosexual Listing 64 VI. A Sociology of Jewish Homosexuality: Hasidism as Männerbund 70 VII. Gender, Zionism, and a Homosexual-Jewish Politics 79 iii Chapter 3 Jewish Beauty in the Homosexual Mirror: On the Aesthetics of the Modern Jewish Homosexual I. A Desperate Plea 82 II. Freundesliebe in Hebrew 86 III. Exiled from Hellas: Jews and the Problem of Homosexual Aesthetics 96 IV. Hellenism, Aesthetic Sensibility, and the Modern Homosexual as Artist 100 V. Hans Blüher and the Creation of the Jewish Homosexual as an Aesthetic Identity 107 VI. Against Blüher: Poetry as an Ideological Weapon 109 Chapter 4 Mordechai Langer’s Jewish Aesthetic of Homosexuality in Hebrew Part I I. A Jewish Aesthetic of Homosexuality in Hebrew 112 II. Revealment and Concealment in Homosexual Poetics: Speaking to Two Readers at Once 115 III. Secrets, Dreams, and Silence: Representing Homosexuality as Ineffable 128 IV. Langer’s Ghazal: Homosocial Settings, Genre Imitation, and Golden-Age Hispano-Hebrew Homoerotic Allegory 136 Chapter 5 Mordechai Langer’s Jewish Aesthetic of Homosexuality in Hebrew Part II I. Gay Devekut: Representing Same-sex Desire through Mysticism 148 a. Yisrael Najara’s “Intimate Close Touch” 150 b. Male-Male Love as Unio Mystica 155 c. Fatal Attraction: Homosexual Desire and Mystical Self-Annihilation 160 d. On Sin and Performing Shame: Two Types of Gay-Jewish Hero 166 e. Encountering God as Male Lover 170 II. Framing the Jewish Homosexual: The Loner, the “Greek” Artist, and the Search for Family 171 III. Queer Reading and Homosexual Literary References 177 IV. The Overwrought Voice: Camp and the Failed Seriousness of Langer’s Elegy 182 Conclusion 190 Bibliography 194 Addendum I: English Translation of Langer’s Hebrew Poetry (1921-1943) 210 Addendum II: English Translation of Langer’s letter to Yaakov Rabinovich (1921) 245 iv Acknowledgements My graduate career was made possible thanks to the financial support of a number of institutions: first and foremost, the University of California, Berkeley and the Department of History. The Institute for European Studies and Jewish Studies at Berkeley provided a number of invaluable grants for summer support and research trips. I am also very grateful to the Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Quinn Foundation, the Hadassah Brandeis Institute, the Conference Group for Central European History (CGCEH) of the American Historical Association, the Council for European Studies at Columbia University, and the Hellen Diller Foundation for their fellowship aid, without which this dissertation would not have been written. I would also like to thank the Committee on LGBT History of the American Historical Association and the LGBT Religious Archives Network for their kind awards honoring my first preliminary foray into the subject of this dissertation. I have had the honor to pursue my doctoral degree at UC Berkeley under the supervision of some of the finest scholars in the world. I learned tremendously from Professor John Efron’s vast knowledge and profound insights into the long sweep of Jewish history. Professor Efron’s mastery of the historian’s craft is truly breathtaking. His instruction and his writing will always be a model and inspiration for me. I am thankful to Professor Efron for his patience and support throughout my career at Berkeley. He has taken enthusiastic interest in my education and has been my strong advocate from the moment we met. I thank him also for reading drafts of this project so incisively and for pushing me to do my best work. I am also incredibly indebted to Professor Thomas Laqueur, a true master of European history. His infectious passion for cultural history, his creativity and brilliance, and his intellectual rigor have made a deep impression on me. I thank him for his careful readings of this dissertation and for providing repeated encouragement along the way. I also wish to express my gratitude to Professor Robert Alter for his enthusiastic support of this project. I thank him for his meticulous readings of my translations and chapters; his rich and stimulating comments have been invaluable. Professor Alter’s teaching and scholarship, which needs no introduction, has made an indelible impression on me and has stimulated my interest in literature and criticism.
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