Simon Rawidowicz BETWEEN BABYLON AND JERUSALEM Selected Writings Edited by David N. Myers and Benjamin C. I. Ravid library of jewish history and culture Volume 2 Bibliothek jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur Library of Jewish History and Culture Band / Volume 2 Im Auftrag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig On behalf of the Saxonian Academy of Sciences and Humanities at Leipzig herausgegeben / edited von / by Dan Diner Redaktion / editorial staff Marcel Müller Momme Schwarz Franziska Jockenhöfer Markus Kirchhoff Cyra Sommer Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Simon Rawidowicz Between Babylon and Jerusalem Selected Writings Edited by David N. Myers and Benjamin C. I. Ravid The “Library of Jewish History and Culture” is part of the research project “European Traditions – Encyclopedia of Jewish Cultures” at the Saxonian Academy of Sciences and Humanities at Leipzig. It is sponsored by the Academy program of the Federal Re- public of Germany and the Free State of Saxony. The Academy program is coordinated by the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. This volume is co-financed by tax funds on the basis of the budget approved by the Saxon State Parliament. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über https://dnb.de abrufbar. © 2020, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Satz: textformart, Göttingen | www.text-form-art.de Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2197-0904 ISBN (Print) 978-3-525-31125-7 ISBN (PDF) 978-3-666-31125-3 https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666311253 Dieses Material steht unter der Creative-Commons-Lizenz Namensnennung – Nicht kommerziell – Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International. Um eine Kopie dieser Lizenz zu sehen, besuchen Sie http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Simon Rawidowicz (Chicago, 1949) Contents Foreword . 11 Editors’ Introduction . 13 1. On the Scope and Motives of this Volume . 13 2. The Peripatetic Journeys of a “Solitary Man” . 17 3. On the Texts in this Edition . 41 4. Acknowledgments . 43 Figures . 45 Selected Writings Transcription Conventions . 56 I. Studies in Jewish Philosophy . 57 1. Introduction . 57 2. Yehuda Halevi (On the Eight Hundredth Anniversary of his Death) . 63 3. Yehuda Halevi. His Philosophy of Nation and Land . 68 4. Introduction to Maimonides’ Sefer ha-madda . 72 97 . מבוא לספר המדע של משה בן מימון 5. Introduction to the Second Edition of the Writings of Rabbi Nachman Krochmal . 112 122 . מבוא למהדורה השניה של כתבי רבי נחמן קרוכמאל 6. 100th Anniversary of Nachman Krochmal . 128 II. Rawidowicz as Ideologue of a Hebrew Cultural Nation . 133 1. Introduction . 133 2. On the Establishment of the Brit ha-ivrim . 138 170 . ליסוד ברית העברים 8 Contents 3. The Existence of the Diaspora . 189 196 . קיום התפוצה 4. Address to the Hebrew Youth League. Delivered at the Anglo-Jewish Youth Conference for Hebrew . 201 5. A People and Its Language . 210 214 . עם ולשון לו 6. I and Not My Messenger . 216 III. Appreciations of Jewish Cultural Figures . 227 1. Introduction . 227 2. The Twentieth-Century Job . 233 3. Bialik the Man as Revealed in His Letters . 237 4. A Great Jewish Historian and His Life . 243 5. Humanistic Nationalism . 247 6. Martin Buber and the Hebrew University . 251 IV. Occasional Writings in a Time of Crisis, 1938–1939 . 255 1. Introduction . 255 2. Creative Fanaticism . 259 3. A Bulwark of the Hebrew Diaspora . 263 4. Planning for a True Jewish Life. An American Experiment 268 5. “A National Language is Irrelevant …” . 273 6. The Virtue of Self-Criticism . 279 7. Jewish Renaissance. One and Indivisible . 285 8. Jerusalem and Yavneh . 292 9. Jerusalem and Yavneh. The Fundamental Problem . 295 10. The Dangers of “Substantialism” . 301 V. Shoah . 305 1. Introduction . 305 2. Introducing “Yalkut” . 310 312 . ה"ילקוט" – פתיחה Contents 9 3. To Our Brethren the Children of Israel in Europe . 313 316 . לאחינו בני ישראל באירופה 4. Anti-Semitism and the War . 318 5. On the Precipice . 321 6. The Involuntary Martyr . 325 341 . קדוש על כרחו VI. Jews and Arabs. A Distinctive Perspective . 351 1. Introduction . 351 354 . בין עבר לערב [Between Jew and Arab] .2 Bibliography . 383 Bibliography of the Introductions . 383 Bibliography of the Texts . 391 Selected Bibliography of the Writings of Simon Rawidowicz . 399 Index . 415 Foreword Ish Boded – A Solitary Man. This self-attribution meets the intellectual particularity of the Jewish philosopher of religion, scholar of the history of ideas, and enthusiastic Hebraist Simon Rawidowicz (1896–1957), one of the most notable and insightful persons of letters in the Jewish 20th cen- tury. The phrase “solitary man” bears a double meaning: It signifies uniqueness as well as lonesomeness. Simon Rawidowicz neither joined a specific academic school or an established spiritual current of his time, nor was he part of a recognized political faction in the Jewish world. This made him a singular figure in his generation. Well versed in both Jewish and general philosophy, especially in German idealism, Simon Rawidowicz took a distinctive view on ques- tions of Jewish existence and Judaism in the intellectual realm of his time, the interwar period, the Second World War, and the postwar years. Committed to a unique ethno-cultural, national Jewish self-awareness, he was a fervent patriot of the Hebrew language and the Land of Israel. He honoured the Jewish Diasporic existence and its environs as much as he revered the geography and religious metaphysics of the Promised Land. Equalling value and meaning of both the Jewish Diaspora and the Land of Israel, Rawidowicz conceptualized their relation as a fraternal bond, which he iconized in an indivisible fusion: “Babylon and Jerusalem.” Thus, he was equally far removed from an absolute Diasporic orientation on the one and a principled Zionist attitude on the other hand. In a time of crisis, when political Zionism seemed to triumph in face of looming Jewish calamities in the 1930s which materialized in an unprecedented catastrophe in the 1940s, this stance was indeed an expression of solitariness. The bond, the unity of “Babylon and Jerusalem” that Rawidowicz strived for so resolutely, tended to drift apart with the evolution of Jew- ish statehood – of collectively institutionalized power. Apparently, this development was as structurally unavoidable as it was regrettable. In Rawidowicz’s nationalist thought the unity of “Babylon and Jerusalem” was based on a common Hebrew textual culture – i. e., Jewish life rooted in scriptures, literatures and the world of ideas, as well as their exegesis and interpretations. Jewish Palestine, however, basing its self-conception on a substantially political composition as a nation-state, was anchored in the tellurian fusion of land and rule. An estranging distinction emerged: 12 Foreword “Babylon” came to signify the textual dimension of Jewish existence – “Jerusalem” the telluric. This shifting constellation, producing a subtle separation between “Babylon” and “Jerusalem,” between the Diaspora and Israel, finds its pain- ful apotheosis in Rawidowicz’s piece “Between Jew and Arab” – published here for the first time in its Hebrew original in full, expressing the moral dialectics of a diasporic constellation in reverse, while undermining a formerly firm and imperturbable unity of Babylon and Jerusalem. David N. Myers and Benjamin C. I. Ravid deserve great credit for exhibiting a representative cross section of especially lesser known writings of Simon Rawidowicz to scholars as well as the interested non-academic public. Both, Myers and Ravid, Rawidowicz’s son, are the leading experts of the philosopher’s work and legacy. With the present selection of his writings, accompanied by introductory texts, they are responding to the invitation of the project “European Traditions – Encyclopedia of Jewish Cultures,” conveyed at the Saxonian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. This volume appears in the series Library of Jewish History and Culture, which aims to present a representative neckline out of the oeuvre of remarkable Jewish thinkers especially at the threshold from tradition to modernity. I would like to thank the editors as well as the scientific staff of the proj- ect “European Traditions,” first and foremost Marcel Müller and Momme Schwarz, who oversaw the volume. Further gratitude is owed to Markus Kirchhoff, Stefan Hofmann, Ulrike Kramme, Frauke von Rohden, Georg Wehse, Franziska Jockenhöfer und Cyra Sommer, who were involved in various stages of work. Dan Diner Series Editor Editors’ Introduction David N. Myers and Benjamin C. I. Ravid 1. On the Scope and Motives of this Volume The man whose thought stands at the center of this volume is one of the most original, though underappreciated, thinkers in twentieth-century Jewish intellectual life. Simon Rawidowicz (1896–1957) was distinctive in several regards: He was a wide-ranging student of Jewish thought, with expertise in the leading medieval and modern philosophers from Saadia Gaon, Yehuda Halevi, and Moses Maimonides to Moses Mendelssohn and Nachman Krochmal. Alongside his interest in these Jewish thinkers, Rawidowicz was familiar