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Understanding Anti-Semitism and Jewish Identity

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Understanding Anti-Semitism and Jewish Identity (MIS-)UNDERSTANDING ANTI-SEMITISM AND JEWISH IDENTITY From Bernard Lazare to Hannah Arendt by Milen Gotchev Jissov A thesis submitted to the Department of History in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada April, 2009 Copyright © Milen Gotchev Jissov, 2009 Abstract This study examines the responses of European intellectuals since the 1880s to an increasingly virulent and organized anti-Semitism in Europe, and the ways in which they sought to understand the character and origins of the hatred, and to fathom and work out the problems, terms and possibilities for Jewish identity. Focusing on the French figures Bernard Lazare and Marcel Proust from the time of the Dreyfus Affair and then on the Frankfurt School of social theory and Hannah Arendt from the period around and after the Second World War, the thesis argues that these thinkers created a common historical-psychological discourse on anti-Semitism, which attempted to confront, comprehend and explain the historically critical issues of anti-Semitism and Jewish identity. The study explores the discourse’s fundamental assumptions, insights, and arguments regarding the origins, character, and magnitude of anti-Semitism. It also analyzes its contentions concerning the contradictions, sources, and alternatives for Jewish identity. But, more, it claims that, despite their frequent perceptiveness, these figures’ interpretations of the two concerns proved limited, deficient, even deeply flawed. The thesis seeks to show that its intellectuals’ attempt to understand the twin issues was hence a failure to grasp and interpret them adequately, and to resolve them. It contends further that what impaired the authors’ engagements with anti-Semitism and Jewish selfhood were ideas that were fundamental to their thinking. These intellectual factors, moreover, connected the figures solidly to important historical contexts that they inhabited, thereby implicating the significant settings in the epistemological errors and defeats. These momentous ideas thus operated as both contextualizing and destructive ii forces—linking the intellectuals to their home contexts and transforming their understanding of their historic problematic into a misunderstanding. iii Acknowledgments Many individuals provided help towards the completion of this project. Research for it was carried out at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bibliothèque de l’Alliance israélite universelle in Paris, France, and the Queen’s University libraries. I am grateful to the staffs at these institutions for their friendly professionalism. I also offer special thanks to Marcel Duran Pujol for guiding me through the unfamiliar book delivery and photocopying procedures at the Bibliothèque nationale. The Interlibrary Loan unit of Queen’s University’s Stauffer Library proved to be a model of efficiency, and an important aid. Colleagues and friends also made significant contributions. For the many conversations and discussions that helped my ideas crystallize, for pointing me to literature relevant to my research, for their comments on draft parts of the thesis, and for their criticisms and suggestions regarding my work, I am indebted to Ivan Stoiljkovic, Dr. Silviya Lechner, Dr. Nolan Heie, Dr. Gordon Dueck, Christopher Churchill, and Dr. Tim Conley. For her devoted friendship, I am grateful to Iva Tonchev. I also thank Yvonne Place, for her patient help with the administrative formalities involved in pursuing graduate studies. My greatest intellectual debts I owe to my professors. Dr. Ian McKay and Dr. Sandra den Otter were inspiring teachers during my first year at Queen’s. Dr. Sonia Riddoch and Dr. Gerald Tulchinsky showed a keen interest in the topic, and shared their knowledge of German history and the history of anti-Semitism. I am especially grateful to Dr. Robert Shenton, for his friendship, intellectual mentorship, and constant iv encouragement. Dr. Shenton’s support went far beyond what I could have expected. Above all, I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Harold Mah. The intellectual elegance of Dr. Mah’s work has been my main source of inspiration. His sensitive advice influenced and shaped every key argument of the thesis. In a very real sense, his intellectual generosity and dedicated guidance made the completion of this project possible. Finally, I incurred a debt of an existential order, my greatest one. Along the journey that this study was, I learned a lesson, which I have always known, but which only my doctoral work fully impressed on me: the lesson that I have been blessed with a truly wonderful family. In my brother and sister-in-law Ivo and Hristina Jissovi, in my niece and nephew Niya and Georgi, and in my parents, Nenka and Gotcho Jissovi, I have found only love and utterly unflagging support. Without them, this thesis would have been unthinkable. The dedication only hints at the extent of my indebtedness and gratitude. I hope that it was all worthwhile. v To my parents, Nenka and Gotcho Jissovi vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv Dedication vi Table of Contents vii CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1 Notes 32 CHAPTER 2 Literature Review 34 Notes 49 CHAPTER 3 Bernard Lazare: The Enigma and the Traps of the Jewish Question 51 Introduction 51 Background, Initial Pursuits and Influences 54 First Encounters with the Jewish Question: The Trap of Hate 62 Rethinking Hatred: Lazare and the History of Anti-Semitism 69 The Dreyfus Affair, and Its Outcome—Jewish Nationalism 85 Conclusion: Meanings of a Pioneer’s Quest 103 Notes 108 CHAPTER 4 Remembrance, and Lapses Therein: Marcel Proust on the Dreyfus Affair, Anti-Semitism and Jewish Identity 113 Introduction 113 Proust and the Dreyfus Affair: Issues of Representation 117 The Storm and Its Echoes: The Affair in Remembrance 122 Proust and Anti-Semitism 139 The Issue of Marcel’s Anti-Semitism 161 Proust and the Conundrum of Jewish Identity 171 Conclusion: Fateful Patterns 178 Notes 183 vii CHAPTER 5 Challenging Diagnoses: The Frankfurt School and the Disease of Anti-Semitism 188 Introduction 188 Studies in Prejudice: The Empirical Dissection of Anti-Semitism 195 Dialectic of Enlightenment: Anti-Semitism and the Philosophy of History 252 By Way of Conclusion: A Cunning New Context 275 Notes 283 CHAPTER 6 The Perplexities of History: Hannah Arendt on Jewish Identity and Anti-Semitism 292 Introduction 292 Arendt’s Conception of Mental Activities: Thinking and Judging 300 Deluded Transcendence, Hopeless Embeddedness: The Story of Rahel Varnhagen 309 The History of Anti-Semitism Revisited: Transcendence as Method 321 The Peril of Embeddedness in Origins and Eichmann in Jerusalem 346 Conclusion: Elusive Hopes 358 Notes 362 CHAPTER 7 Conclusion: A Retrospect of a Discourse Past 365 Bibliography 403 viii Chapter 1 Introduction “Vandals knocked over 23 headstones and 10 short pillars in [Berlin’s] largest Jewish cemetery. Located in the eastern … district of Weissensee, it is also one of Europe’s largest Jewish cemeteries with 115,000 graves and elaborate tombs….” Had it appeared in a European newspaper in the 1930s, such an account would have been unsurprising. As it happens, it does not come from the bygone age of the mass-circulation paper and the radio. It appeared on the Anti-Defamation League’s website. The date of the incident is … April 28, 2008!1 And this is not the only hateful offense the site reports. Berlin was also disgraced five years before, on July 8, 2003: “A Jewish memorial … was vandalized. The vandals apparently threw small paving stones, gouging the surface of a memorial dedicated to the former Levetzowstrasse synagogue, which was used by the Nazis as detention center to deport Jews.”2 Nor does Germany stand alone as a scene of ignominy. Firmly on the list is also France. Not one, but two, incidents occurred in a major urban center on January 20, 2004. First: “[a] parked minibus used to transport children to a Jewish 1 school in the eastern French city of Strasbourg was burned.” Second: “[p]olice reported that a group of assailants hurled stones at the door of a Strasbourg synagogue.”3 Students of history and the politically conscious know that outbursts of anti- Semitism do occur. But the reports of them somehow always surprise us. The news never sounds quite believable. One asks every time how such outrages could be possible now, in the age of cyberspace, in the twenty-first century. And one is always perplexed with how they are possible after—and so many years after—the Holocaust. But even less credible than usual is the following account. “This past weekend, described by one Jewish leader as ‘a weekend of hate’ aimed at the Jewish community, was capped by the actions of unknown vandals who knocked over 22 gravestones in Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park….” Earlier the same weekend, swastikas were painted on the walls and seven stained glass windows were broken at the Pride of Israel synagogue on Lissom Crescent. Two windows were broken at the Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Educational Centre on Patricia Avenue. And seven swastikas and profanities were painted on United Jewish Appeal signs and a swastika on a clothing donation box at the B’nai Torah Community Centre….4 What is shocking about this description is that these anti-Semitic incidents occurred, in March 2004, in tolerant Canada. They were, in fact, part of a larger outburst that included the firebombing of the United Talmud Torah elementary school in Montreal, in April 2004.5 To be sure, the incidents were unrelated to each other, and were not the result of an organized anti-Semitic campaign.6 But they do show, perhaps even better than the examples from Germany and France, that anti-Semitism is still very much alive, that it is an all too active abscess of political realities all over the globe. How this is, indeed, true was revealed in a journalistic comment on the firebombing of the Jewish school in Montreal.
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