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The Jewish problem

Juha Janne Olavi Uski, Roskilde University, CUID/History Temakursus i historie, Fall 2010

In this essay, I will explain the so-called Jewish problem as it appears in 19th and 20th Century discourses and events related to those discourses. Introduction: the birth of a problem Jews have lived in Europe for hundreds of years, and since the European Middle Ages until late 20th Century they were the only significant religious minority that wasn't Christian. The social structure of the Middle Ages had been full of varied kinds of antagonisms and differences among different population groups, and diverse contracts applied. The increasingly modern and secular nation-states that were forming in the 19th Century were, on the contrary, based on national norms that each member of the formally democratic arrangement should share equally. As the society was becoming secular, the Jews began to be viewed rather as an ethnic minority group than a religious minority group. The question arose, whether the Jews shared the national norms or were they outsiders. The norms themselves were disputed and varied interpretations and declarations of the norms of each nation-state were proposed by the various factions, as occurs in representative democracies. The Jewish question increasingly began to be seen as something problematic and unpleasant. Being different in their origin and culture, the Jews had never been particularly popular in Europe, despite their contributions to the society. With the new situation, the prejudices and resentments towards the Jews took a vigorous form in an ideological current known as anti-semitism, which consisted both of assimilated, self-hating Jews and the far more regular brand of Jew-haters, in Janet Ward's words. The psychopathological self-hating aspect was later also used as a mobilizing cry in the reactionary indigenous-nationalist political agenda, following the famous thinker Otto Weininger, who wrote in 1903: [W]hoever hates the Jewish being, hates it first in himself. Thus for the anti-semites, the Jews (and Jewishness) were a problem a problem of the anti-semites, and the anti-semites were set to do something about it. Further in the essay I will attempt an outline of the anti-semite formulation of the Jewish problem. But let us first consider the Jewish responses to the Jewish question. Jewish perspectives

Most of the European Jews obviously did not hate themselves and would not agree with the antisemitist discourse and its hatred towards all that is Jewish. However, Jewish writers both from Eastern and Western Europe did agree that the Jews had a problem. In Russia, the assassination of the Tsar in 1881 triggered a massive outbreak of violence against the Jews. The attacks were not only blind acts of rage by uneducated masses, but both the government and educated and well positioned men participated in the arbitrary activities. This event led Leo Pinsker, a formerly patriotic Russian Jew, to a search for new answers to [t]he eternal problem presented by the Jewish question. Pinsker had considered himself as a well assimilated Russian patriot, but the pogroms led him to conclude that the Jews cannot be assimilated to other nations whereas on the other hand they are also lacking those long-lost attributes that enable a national life: a common language, common customs, and a common land. Therefore, the Jews are a dead nation, in a state of decay. They cannot stand equally among the nations of the world, but they are not intrinsically rotten the anti-semite condemnation of the Jews as a whole is not justified. Similarly in the West, the Hungarian-born German Jewish writer Theodor Herzl had earlier on believed in the possibility of a peaceful coexistence between the Christians and the Jews in Europe, but the anti-semitism displayed by the French establishment in the court case against Alfred Dreyfus (1894) made him change his mind. The world resounds with clamor against the Jews, wrote Herzl. According to him, among the many reasons for such anti-semitism, the decisive factor is the national question the Jews are a misfit nation mixed within the well-established nations of the world and they cannot be assimilated even if they want to. During the same period Asher Ginzberg, who wrote under the Hebrew pseudonym Ahad Ha'am (One of the People), followed along the same lines, but included the idea that the Jewish nation has a specific mission in the world. Dependence on the will of other nations, exile from their own nationality has made it impossible for the Jews to fulfill their mission. Ginzberg did not put emphasis on anti-semitism, but rather on the need of the Jews to realize their own genius. The opinion that it was impossible for the Jews to become assimilated in European nation-states was expressed by Jewish thinkers such as Moses Hess already earlier during the 19th Century, but I am focusing on the above-mentioned three thinkers specifically, because they will be especially relevant also in the later chapter on the possible solutions to the Jewish problem.

Anti-semitic views What the Jewish reactions to anti-semitism reveal, is how strong the belief on the ideology of the nation-state was on that period. People were no longer serving primarily the King and the church, but the State and the People (the Nation), but often with the same kind of an authoritarian mindset, where loyalty to the cause was the central norm, more important than any other values. And since the Jews did not have a proper national life, they were lost. From the point of view of the most fanatic European nationalists (anti-semites), the Jews were not only lost. They were also dangerous possible, likely, even inevitable traitors, and not only in the military-political sense (condemned as spies like Dreyfus), but also in an economic, cultural and even biological sense, as agents of the degeneration of the nation. One of the most well known texts expressing anti-semitic views is Otto Weininger's writing on Judaism from 1903. In it, Weininger explained his conviction that men are in every way superior to women, but according to him this is not so clear in Judaism, because the Jewish men are so feminine and weak. He did not speak of the Jews as an inferior race, as many others did, but of Judaism as a cast of mind, a psychic constitution. Thus, although Jewishness had become realized in historical Judaism, the degeneration could possibly take place in a person of any nation. In fact, Weininger did not even consider himself anti-semitic, but contended that the most aggressive anti-semites have some Jewish traits in their personality or physical build. In spite of Weininger more or less defining himself as an anti-anti-semite, his text became a favourite among the anti-semites and one can quite safely say that the views expressed there are in fact anti-semitic or in the very least gave form to those prejudices about Jews, that anti-semitism thrived on. Weininger's Jew is on the other hand dependent, slave-like, needing domination by an alien force (as is shown by the Jewish type of religiosity), and on the other hand materialistic, soulless, lacking depth; lacking dignity, morality (not being anti-moral, but having no moral at all), greatness and humility. Not only is the Jew a lowly character, but he is also socially unfit: he lacks social tact, is irreverent and vain, humorless but inclined to mockery; he is weak (less sexually potent than others) but lustful, and as already the Bible describes, Jews are liars and cheats. It is also socially rather problematic that the Jew is a blurrer of boundaries, not respecting the necessary social boundaries and manners. The Jew, Weininger wrote, only values (his) money, but even in business is dishonest and dubious;

and because the irrational Jew cannot comprehend the idea of a state, a partnership of rational beings, the Jew tends towards communism. What ultimately defines the Jew according to Weininger is that he has no individuality and no deep convictions the Jew is psychologically divided and incapable of the highest creativity. Weiningers writing ends with a declaration that modernity is despicable and its spirit is Jewish, and that humanity must choose between Judaism and Christianity, which exclude each other. Where Weininger discussed Judaism as a psychic constitution, others opted for a discourse based on biological metaphors. Already in 1784 Johann Gottfried Herder described the Jews as a parasitic plant, which may be related to the traditional Jewish occupation of moneylender, userer, which in German is Wucherer, rather like Wucherung - a growth or a tumor. I sympathize with the political argument, if such was meant to be given by Herder, that usury has characteristics of a parasitic activity; today the irrational growth of the financial sector is a worldwide catastrophe. However, the association of an occupation with a population group, without an analysis to the reasons for the prevalence of that specific group in that specific occupation, only strengthens irrational prejudices and scapegoating. That was to be the case during the 19th Century, as this analogy of the Jews as a parasitic plant became very popular in anti-semitic discourses, continuing to the 20th Century and finally to Adolf Hitler, who in Mein Kampf described how the parasite-Jew like a vampire rapes and poisons with his blood the pure German race. As the modern natural science was developing and the society was being modernized during the 19th Century, biological discourses appealed to many as the revelation of scientific truths. Thus antisemitism was associated with ideas of the purity of blood and the fear of the nation being contaminated by the Jewish genes, thus undermining the health of the nation. But the Jew was not necessarily only seen as an unhealthy tumor that should be eliminated or removed; for example Dietrich Eckhart in 1919 contended that Jewishness belongs to the organism of mankind as, let us say, certain bacteria belong to the human body - the Jews are a necessary evil that needs to be kept under control but should not be entirely removed. Nietzsche: Assimilation as a solution Other writers of the turn of the century proclaimed opposition to the anti-semites, expounding antianti-semitic views. As with Otto Weininger, some of the ideas of the anti-anti-semitic writers were later adopted by the anti-semites, whereas the anti-semite-critical parts of the writings were discarded and censored. Such was the case of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who was a national-minded

German, but found anti-semitism repulsive. Whereas Nietzsche also used the metaphor of the parasite in his writings, he did not use it as a basis for reactive hate-speech directed against a specific ethnic group as the famous anti-semitic writer Eugen Dhring did. Indeed it can be argued as Janet Ward does, that for Nietzsche the real parasites are anti-Semites like Dhring and company, the herd whose sickly, vindictive tendencies weaken human spirit from within. Nietzsche wished for a renewal, a transvaluation of all values; discarding of old conventional moralities and the creation of a superior humanity. He had used the metaphor of the parasite as a proactive call for change but after Dhring had infected (to use a biological metaphor) the concept with hate towards the Jews, Nietzsche reworked his concept of the parasite in order to neutralize the anti-semitic influence. The parasite became a noble figure, necessary for giving fertility to the land and the body: a symbiosis existed between the parasite and the host, for whom the tolerance towards the parasite became a heroic and creative act of overcoming oneself. Thus the combination of the parasite and the host will result, when the host digests assimilates the parasite, in the creation of an aristocratic caste, the strongest possible European mixed race instead of a single nation. Similar relation of complementation can be found in Weininger's view that Christianity and Judaism can only be defined through each other, and Nietzsche did develop his assimilation-argument on the religious aspect as well. For the anti-semites, Nietzsche's proposal of inter-breeding was not convincing: for them, such a process, whether cultural or biological, would endanger the life of the host, as the parasite takes it over and sucks it dry. The later version of a biological discourse in favour of some kind of an assimilation by the above mentioned Eckhart could be accepted as in it the Jews remain under control and subordination, but Nietzsche's radical ideas ended up producing arguments for the opponents of assimilation. Zionism Assimilation was not either a complete success for those Jews, who did display the masculine virtues that the European nation-states valued. Alfred Dreyfus was such a man not the feminine nerd outlined by Weininger, but a real man, a strong soldier. Theodor Herzl admired the German culture and its ideal of strong masculinity, and when the Dreyfus case convinced him that Jews would never be fully accepted as real Germans, he started a vigorous effort for the establishment of a Jewish State. The foundation of a Jewish State was according to Herzl the definite solution to the Jewish question and would make anti-semitism cease at once and everywhere.

Herzl was not the first one on that road. Leo Pinsker had reached the same conclusion before him: the Jews have to get their own land so that they are not dependent and subordinate to others, but can live in reciprocity with the other nations of the world. The Holy Land, Eretz Yisrael, the ancient promised land of the Jews, was not the only possible solution for Pinsker, nor for Herzl, but the idea of moving to the Holy Land was so appealing to many that the effective settlements and plans were directed there, and the movement became known as the Zionist movement. Yet the project of the formation of a nation-state put the Jews in front of the same dilemma that the other nation-states struggled with: what kind of a normativity will prevail in the nation? Many Zionists shared some of the critiques of the anti-semites towards the Jews according to them, the Jews had become degenerate, in a state of decay, as Pinsker wrote. According to Jakob Egholm Feldt, Moses Hess considered the Jews without their own nation as weak of character and degenerated, which was their own fault. On the other hand, as it is expressed in the Jewish intellectual Max Nordau's writings from Entartung (1892), the decadence of the times was not something exclusive to the Jews. Many of the weaknesses that Weininger described some years later as Jewish properties, Nordau had already rejected as generalized sickness of the times, also rejecting the idea that degenerates could in some way be beneficial to the development of the society, not even those who were in some way highly gifted. The idea that the Jewish people need a new direction and a radical change of lifestyle had been around in the Jewish intellectual circles already since the beginning of the 19th Century, the period known as the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. Nietzsche's ideas of the transvaluation of values appealed thus to many leading Jewish intellectuals the Jewish nation needed a new direction. It is Nietzsche's writings that Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginzberg) took as a starting point in his essay The Transvaluation of Values. But where Herzl and Nordau proposed Zionism as a political and practical, modern, masculine and active rooting in the physical independence of the nation, disregarding high-minded idealism, for Ginzberg that kind of a direct application of the German fair beast ideal was not compatible with the true vocation of the Jewish national consciousness. According to Ginzberg, Nietzsche's ideas on the transvaluation of values contained both universally human elements and elements, which were only valid for Aryans. What the Jews needed was not the ideal of the Aryan Superman, but an ideal of a Jewish Superman and the Jewish Superman and Supernation has the characteristics of the moral ideals of Judaism: the expansion of moral power, the subjugation of the bestial instincts, the striving after truth and righteousness in thought and deed characteristics of Zaddik, an example of the righteous man from Jewish literature. The establishment of a Jewish colony in Palestine was for Ginzberg and the

other cultural Zionists important, because it was meant to be a spiritual center for the renewal of Judaism and whether it would also be a politically independent nation-state, was not important for them. The Jewish nation would be united by its historical spiritual mission rather than by material concerns, and Jews could continue to live in varied locations around the world, as long as their national identity was strengthened by the spiritual connection with the Promised Land and the transvaluation of the moral ideals of Judaism. The cultural Zionists basically lost the ideological struggle to the political Zionists, whose agenda became the established plan for Zionism. Theodor Herzl became in the eyes of many like a new Moses, liberating the Jewish people by leading them to the Promised Land. While Ahad Ha'am's idealistic proposal has not lost its relevance, the ensuing historical events gave new weight to Herzl's proposal, and thus the State of Israel was founded in 1948. The Final Solution Eugen Dhring's proposal for the solution of the Jewish problem was that the Nordic man has the duty of exterminating the parasitic races, just as one must exterminate poisonous snakes and wild predators! Nietzsche's clumsy attempt to domesticate the parasite did not help, and the resulting totalized concept of parasitism only strengthened the appeal of Dhring's proposal. Later the Nazis, inspired, among others, by Dhring, Weininger and Nietzsche, put it in practice in what was known as the Final Solution to the Jewish problem also known as the Shoah among the Jews. Similarly, when Nietzsche had talked about cultural reform with metaphors, naming that the invalid should die voluntarily in favor of ascending life, the Nazis considered it good advice to be put in practice literally, not metaphorically. The anti-semitic proposals and practices aiming at the extermination of the Jews had their impact also on wider discussions on the Jewish identity, as already mentioned. In his 2004 article The Negative Jew, Amos Morris-Reich looks at the way three prominent 20th Century European theorists conceive the Jewish identity and contends that their views should be seen exactly against the context of the Shoah. The writers Georg Simmel, Jean-Paul Sartre and Slavoj Zizek all see the Jew's identity as ultimately negative: defined by the society around the Jews, rather than by what the content of Jewishness is in its own right. The Jewish identity is defined negatively in order to defend the Jews against baseless but potentially harmful accusations that their fate as objects of genocide could be justified by supposed objective, inherent characteristics of the Jews. Thus the effect of anti-semitism on theoretical discussions on Jewishness extends to this day.

The Most Final Solution It would be wrong to finish this essay with the Final Solution and the related negativization of the Jewish identity. Today the different forms of totalitarianism are not quite that omnipotent as they were on those critical times of the World Wars, and culturally it is much more accepted to divert from the norms in societies where the later cultural, political and techological processes have made our normativities much more flexible. Despite the tragedies of the past and the current crises such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is easy for us to laugh with Oskar Panizza at poor Faitel Stern, who tries desperately to be German, and at the stiff Germans, who are terrified when finding the cultural transvestite freak emerge among themselves. The most final solution is humanity.

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