INFORMATION ISSUED by the Assooaim Or SWISH RETIKEES HI OIEAT BRITAHI

Volume XXXI No. 12 December, 1976 INFORMATION ISSUED BY THE AssooAim or SWISH RETIKEES HI OIEAT BRITAHI Eva G. Reichniann challenge to Jewish thinkers ever since. Pros perous and miserable, envied and despised, weak and allegedly endowed with mysterious powers, deprived of their earthly past and THE GREAT PARADOX yet exalted in the hope for a glorious future— they grew into a perpetual irritant defying Early Marxists and Judaism normal classification. It was only consistent that their post-emancipatory existence con "I believe that for internationalism to take of the Russian Revolution—^they all met their tinued to pose questions both in the social and root, it is necessary that human groups fate as valiant defenders of their high socialist in the intellectual field. ideals, but in pathetic ignorance of the equi should previously have won their autonomy ; It is this phase of their pilgrimage through it is necessary for them to be able to express vocal role they played on the political stage. This is in no way to belittle their aspirations history which led to the great paradox themselves freely, it is necessary for them described by Mr. Wistrich. Driven by their to be aware of what they are". (Bemard and achievements. Who would dare in this age of Marxist and neo-Marxist renaissance to remaining disabilities the Jews flocked to the Lazare, quoted after Robert S. Wistrich, great new doctrine of a brotherly world to Revolutionarv Jews from Marx to Trotsky, doubt the momentous impetus caused by its initiator ? Who would feel tempted to detract be created by socialism. Surely, not all of P. 133.) those who embraced the new creed had If this conviction of one of the heroes of from Lassalle's brilliance as an orator and organiser or from Rosa Luxemburg's formid suffered personally from antisemitic maltreat Robert Wistrich's book ("Revolutionary Jews ment. Some of them may have only become from Marx to Trotsky"; with a foreword by able intellectual capacity ? And yet, they all were beset by a common disease : their Jewish witnesses of it among fellow-Jews far and James Joll. George G. Harrap, Londan, 1976, origin. They suffered from it, they could not near, either in the full light of tangible evi £6-75) that is of the French socialist-anarchist come to terms with it, they succumbed to it. dence or through rumours which vaguely Bernard Lazare, had become the guide-line Both their human qualities and their socialist aroused their emotions. Justice had been the of the European socialist movement, Robert energies were afilicted. Ten profiles of Jewish crowning idea of their religion as long as Wistrich could have dispensed with the revolutionaries: while not strictly contem their forefathers or — in rarer cases — they stimulus to write this book. We would have poraries in a narrow sense, they all were bom themselves had been under its influence. foregone a wealth of information and startling in the nineteenth century which gives them Messianic hopes for a better world had im inquiry; but we would have been spared no some sort of temporal coherence. They be printed themselves on their minds, whether small amount of perplexity and distress. longed to the first or second post-ghetto they had still preserved any shade of their Because this is a book calculated to destroy generations; they were still standing on the original meaning or had vanished to the point more cherished opinions than we are readily threshold of the free world, they were of a minute particle of the traditional inclined to give up. True, it is not the first marginal men. ambience. attempt at undermining the wide-spread belief It is in this connection that Mr. Wistrich that the socialist philosophy has consistently The Post-Ghetto Generation appears to be rather too sceptical. As certain been a bulwark against antisemitic aggression. as there did not occur a straight transforma But its impact in this direction is so strong No need to mention that the author selected tion from religious to socialist Messianism because it is written throughout with an exem only a few characteristic figures out of a (p. 5 seq.), it is equally certain that the plary authenticity and faimess, neither multitude of active Jewish socialists who sur psychological conditioning of the Jewish mind ^^ggerating nor extenuating the sombre facts faced at the same time. It was an indisputable outlasted the original faith. "The subconscious 'he author feels duty-bound to divulge. Though fact that to this movement, meant to hring is always stronger than the conscious", are ploughing through a particularly onerous field about the emancipation of the industrial words of Nicolas Berdyaev quoted and partly of anti-Jewish stereotypes, an operation aggra proletariat, middle-class bourgeois Jews were contradicted by Wistrich (p. 4). He restricts vated by the necessity to destroy so many time- attracted in disproportionate numbers. The here his argumentation too much to Marx as nonoured illusions, Robert Wistrich misses no reasons are fairly obvious. While legally an individual. Even if it seems doubtful that Opportimity of professing his own Jewish con- emancipated in the course of the nineteenth even Marx's subconscious had been totaUy cut actions, his Jewish pride and his unshakable century, their emancipation remained mani off from the mode of thinking of his rabbinical oelief in the Jewish future. festly incomplete. Far from producing a ready- ancestry, the almost unanimous traces of And here it is where the great disillusion- made instantaneous change of circumstances messianic touches in his socialist partisans are ''lent sets in. Most of the ten profiles of Jewish it gave in fact only rise to a new development sufficient proof that a Jewish pattem of mind i"evolutionar>' leaders with which the author whose shortcomings and obstacles far out remained operative in them all. lived the era of its validity. Jews continued Presents us were distressingly free from such It was onlv one of many tendencies favour fellow-feelings. They were indeed bent on the to be subjected to discriminations of all kinds ; they suffered from prejudices and resentments. ing their socialist decisions. Others have been disappearance of Jewry hy its total absorption mentioned before. But all of them, while still "Ito its Gentile entourage. The majority of the While, in public life, they enjoyed on the whole the equal rights they were entitled to, strong enough to exert their influence, had r^wish leaders were set to create a future to face a relentless struggle with the rigorous fr^_ from social and racial strife, were anti- their acceptance as friends and neighbours in private life proved a tough, up-hill straggle. facts of Jewish reality. ?^niites themselves. With the exception of This anomaly was strangely emphasised hy the It was the well-known socialist dogma that ^uard Bemstein, Bemard Lazare and L6on material success which part of Jewish business religion was a reactionary force counter-acting ^'um, they all denied any attachment to their men achieved in trade and industry, especially the social revolution. To the Jewish revolu "'ewish origin, unless a wilfully suppressed as bankers. While the vast majority of the new tionaries depicted hy Robert Wistrich—always attachment should be detected in the irrespon Jewish citizens had long to straggle in the with the few exceptions mentioned above— sible vilification they allotted to all matters lower strata of the economy to make their this did not present a serious obstacle. They "'ewish. They ignored their Jewish origin, de- living, the image of the "rich Jew" emerged hardly hesitated to overcome it by severing /^"^ed it, despised it, hated it; no shade of from the ambiguous picture as the dominant their ties with the inherited religion. Either epudiation is missing in the deplorable cata feature of the Jewish group. did they declare themselves as free from any logue of their defamations. Karl Marx, "the confession, or they converted to one of the J<»noclast", Ferdinand Lassalle, "the Gladia- The life of the Jews has never lacked in Christian denominations. However, this was the ^', Rosa Luxemburg, "the Internationalist", contradictions. Their whole existence, one era of emergent racialism and the abandon ^ Austro-Marxists Victor Adler and Otto might say, since their dispersion from the ment of the Jewish religion became all but «auer—^victims of the internecine stmggles perilous statehood into the even more perilous meaningless under the impact of racial philo- Jithin the multi-national Hahsburg dynasty— multitude of the world was a contradiction ""nlius Martov and Leon Trotsky, the martyrs whose enigmatic profundity has remained a Continoed on page Z, column 1 Page 2 AJR INFORIVIATION December 1976 considerable power among the Jewish workers mostly thanks to their non-Jewish fellow- The Great Paradox in the East. But the rejection of any attempt fighters that, as time went on, it not only Continued from page 1 at a Jewish group identity within the frame diminished, but managed to change the move sophy. Jew remained Jew, whether baptised work of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy by ment into a party of admirable objectivity or not. Nothing changed the fact that the new the Jewish socialists was only another proof and fairness towards the Jews within their epoch of what was to become the all-embracing that no collective Jewish consciousness other midst. Socialists became their reliable defen brotherhood of proletarian fighters was than their own was to be tolerated. This ders, convinced campaigners against anti initiated by leaders who were neither prole animosity contributed no doubt to the un semitic propaganda. While this amazing pro tarians nor free from the tinge of being willingness of Austria to grant, in spite of cess must, of course, not be wholly attributed religious or tribal outsiders.

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