Tomorrow night the Center for Jewish History is having an event on Hannah Arendt, reconsidering her Jewish writings, and I’m excited. I find Arendt’s writing thrilling, and the controversies she was mixed up in 40 and 50 years ago anticipate the Zionist/anti-Zionist arguments of today.
For instance, last year Yale scholar Steven B. Smith published a (brilliant, conservative) book called Reading Leo Strauss, which absolved Strauss, who died 34 years ago, of intellectual paternity of the Iraq disaster (a judgment shared on the other side of the radio dial by Anne Norton and John Mearsheimer). In that book, Smith took a shot at Hannah Arendt, quoting an accusation against her by her old friend, the Kabbalist scholar Gershom Scholem: Hannah Arendt had shown a lack of "Ahavat Yisrael," or love of the Jewish people, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.
I got Scholem’s letters to read his full accusation. He wrote to her from Jerusalem in 1963.
[W]hat stands between us… is the heartless, the downright malicious tone you employ in dealing with the topic that so profoundly concerns the center of our life [the Holocaust]. There is something in the Jewish language that is completely indefinable, yet fully concrete — what the Jews call ahavath Israel, or love for the Jewish people. With you, my dear Hannah, as with so many intellectuals coming from the German left, there is no trace of it.
Not so different from the attacks on the anti-Zionist left today from, say, Michael Walzer. But Arendt’s response to Scholem from New York (which Straussian Smith doesn’t quote) is tops:
How right you are that I have no such love, and for two reasons: first, I have never in my life "loved" some nation or collective — not the German, French or American nation, or the working class, or whatever else might exist. The fact is that I love only my friends and am quite incapable of any other sort of love. Second, this kind of love for the Jews would seem suspect to me, since I’ve Jewish myself. I don’t love myself or anything I know belongs to the substance of my being… [T]he magnificence of this people once lay in its belief in God — that is, in the way its trust and love of God far outweighed its fear of God. And now this people believes only in itself? In this sense I don’t love the Jews, nor do I "believe" in them…. We would both agree that patriotism is impossible without constant opposition and critique. In this entire affair I can confess to you one thing: the injustice committed by my own people naturally provokes me more than injustice done by others.
Wow. It’s time to revive Arendt’s universalism, before the neocons have us living in bunkers.
Phil – Arendt's words resonate with me personally very much, and many other Jews I'm sure. One hears similar comments from certain black americans not wanting to buy into a phony afro-centric fetishism promoted by many an opportunistic huckster.
As with both Jews and Blacks however, there is a context of historical oppression, persecution, and dehumanization that makes the type of "love for their people" an understandable and perhaps healthy impulse. Of course Arendt is correct in that true love often needs to be tough and requires honesty and openness.
I have found your writings to provide some of this tough love, but I think that just like that the african-american who deep down hates blacks and his own blackness, you may have some personal demons that make it hard for you to access the healthy impulse to love others.
And, also, there is something apersonal about her responses.
That she has never identified with a community scale, but only individual scale (personal friendships), is perhaps parallel to a cell in a body that only loves those that it is in immediate contact with, and not the body that it is a part.
Perhaps it is true that we live in a world in which we are JUST individuals.
But, perhaps we are also part of something just slightly bigger than ourselves. (Professional, geographic, religious, intentional community.)
For what its worth, the perspective of being just individuals is a primary component of the global consumerist orientation. I've always found it ironic that the left adopts a parallel definition of what identity must consist of, as the global corporate system requires/compels.
That our persons can not consist in caring for those in our community (as we define community), but that the only valid scope of care is individual, is the consumerist/capitalist condition.
I don't find hope in that attitude.
I prefer the attitude and the practicality of "express the sentiments of the universal in a specific context and community", multiple evev.
In this case, in the Jewish community.
Historically, the context of assimilation is modern, not permanent, and historically it has been fragile.
In contexts where the sentiment of universalism is NOT respected, where being solely an individual and a full peer is not respected, other community is necessary.
If you chose that path for yourself individually, that is wonderful for you (or maybe less than wonderful).
But, the jewel of community is better for the world if maintained as a respectable option, even if you or others later need the haven of community (as well as the independantly desirable benefits).
(Not unlike retaining skillsets regionally, so that if the global economy failed as a global economy, there would still be a healthy survival path.)
Have you tried association as a member of Jewish community, not random, but choosing a specific Jewish community and emphasis?
I have, and I like it. There are wonderful Jewish communities, especially among our generation. Many invite and accommodate mixed marriages even. For example, in my community, most of the individuals in our shul also practise yoga and meditation, are musicians, artists, politically active and thoughtful, organize cooperatives, AND are personal individual friends.
But we DO identify as part of the Jewish community, the global one and the local one.
We design by our life. Its not just architects or planners that design. I choose to design options and depth.
I would hate to participate in the design of something so thin as individual only. It conflicts with my understanding of the ecology of the world. Conflicts with my understanding of what reality is.
It strikes me a primarily an urban construct, defined by the scale of urbanity, in which one is an expendible member of a mass.
In contrast, the rural or small-town (in which I live), is more intimate. It is impossible for me to be anonymous.
That is a good. I neither have the illusion of control nor of expendibility.
The Stanford prison experiment was on Terry Gross last night.
Many of us are born sadists. Not me, specifically.
Therefore the statistical probability to turn Israelis, Germans or Americans or Arabs into criminal prison guards, is the same.
==============================
I wish that I could say that Arendt was intelligent.
Konrad is.
Arendt is not. She was just a motorized productive mouth.
============================
The Jewish nation has suffered above average.
It became damaged goods, and time to heed Spinoza and dissolve the Jews. Israel is a good opportunity to melt them together with all good Arabs, Bedouins, Druze, Armenians, Samaritans, Circassians, Turkomans… etc.
The Weizmann Institute can lead the experiment.
===========================
The Jewish era is to me a phony search for spirituality, based on nothing, while has managed to confuse the whole world.
Interesting. Richard, I'm curious about your community. I live in a small town and share your disregard for the city. I agree that small town connections tend to work against individualism, while the city's anonymity tends to increase individualism. Though that tension is throughout western liberalism, I know I've been improved by my communities. And for me, I've gone from being in a wholly Jewish community as a kid to being in a mixed one now, and the close connections to gentiles has shown me that they're human too. The global village. That's the inevitable lesson of American pluralism for me, mixing with a lot of lapsed Catholics and Crhistians for whom their early dogmas also make little sense in a multicultural (yes, privileged) experience.
lihP, you are very diplomatic and kind in your comment, but I sense that it masks v strong difference with me, that you probably regard me as a self-hater. I'm interested by the term, and need to figure it out…
For now, the one strong response I have is that likening Jews to blacks is anachronistic. We're not like blacks now. We were a little bit when I was a kid, and Jews still were outsiders, but my whole experience in life has been one of privilege and opportunity, and I suspect the same is true for most American Jews; and the next generation feels this in its marrow. My mother keeps threatening to bring me round to poor Jews. Yes, I know, there are some, but w/ apologies to Milton Himmelfarb said, We live like Episcopalians and think we're blacks.
That's a vanity and a self-justifyng one, it justifies fighting for the race at every turn. I dont quarrel with you over the history of persecution (though others have also been persecuted); but I am not sure what actual meaning it has today in America. I think Jews are by and large in denial of their considerable power in this society. The victim history is always put forward; at a time when we're 13 Jewish senators and a big part of Bush's braintrust and all over the American Establishment.
Steven Smith in his Strauss book I cite rejects the idea of neoconservative influence and cites Strauss's Jewish experience of discrimination and prejudice, as if it's the reality for JEws today. It's not, this is delusional. Strauss I believe escaped the Holocaust, he died in 1973.
I heard an anthropologist speak recently of a "discourse of scarcity" among today's college youth. (They talk about how hard it is to get jobs all the time.) I want to introduce a discourse of privilege among Jews. Acknowledging our acheivement and powerin American society is an important step towards a more lordly ethos, less self-nurturing ethos.
There is an Iraq component to this for me because Iraq is a hell, and We all know who is dying in IRaq. Barbara Boxer yesterday said, movingly, that of the 14 members of Bush's cabinet table, none of their kids is dying over there. She was talking about the moral hazard of elitism, and urging some humility on the hubristic Bushies. Boxer is a great progressive Jew who thinks about the Other, who is alive to the tremendous suffering our hubristic policy has generated there. The failure of the Jewish intellectual community on Iraq has an elitist sociological quality to me. At bottom, it's not really our problem; as it's not the Bush children's problem. In Vietnam we were engaged as critical outsiders. Today that status is gone..
Now I'm blathering. Sorry
I'll send you an e-mail so I can be more forthcoming.
The shul is led by a former follower of Shlomo Carlebach, and we do a lot of singing. Its an eclectic community that includes new age "Jew-dhists" like myself, as well as some new orthodox. We alternate prayerbooks periodically, though are using a reconstructionist prayerbook for large services. Alternate weeks' services are more orthodox in form, with no formal leader, and nearly exclusively in Hebrew.
It includes all ranges of political spectrum, and there have been angry arguments at times.
There is a very good relationship between the Jewish community and Christian and regional Muslim communities. We jointly do social service and anti-defamation work. There is an ecumenical peace group that sometimes has had strange bedfellows working on specific projects.
Among the Jewish community are definitely doctors, lawyers, lots of therapists, business owners, but also farmers, nurses (including the local union head), journalists, teachers, assembly line workers, professional musicians, etc.
Many mixed marriages (a couple multi-racial) and the non-Jewish spouses are invited into the community, but without dilluting the identity.
Most are selectively practising Jews, indentifying but also largely assimilated.
The community is a step more practicing than my personal upbringing. I don't go to shul much on shabbat, but I do go on other holidays and community events.
I do NOT work on shabbat, though I willingly drive and write on the computer. My understanding of shabbat is that it is in "being" time, rather than in "doing" time.
As a discipline (to not discipline) for one recurring 24 hour period. Lots of room for fun, talk, sport, music, humor, sleep.
Many of political bent regard the spiritual as inconsequential. It is personal, subjective, of feelings.
An informed spirituality however is ethics.
A strictly political perspective is as much of an ethical gamble as a purely subjective.
Community is a paradox. It is not "within one's control" as one's person and to a large extent one's family is.
It is not a laudable "greater good" as in an abiding principle or movement or mystery (as in mystical).
It is however uniquely human scale, effected significantly by each's participation, and affecting others.
In contrast, nation is abstracted and potentially dogmatic and cruel. Ideology is abstracted and potentially dogmatic and cruel.
Don't think I could add anything to what Richard posted, so on another topic:
The most recent Doha Debate was interesting–
MAJORITY OF OXFORD UNION STUDENTS SAY PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY STIFLING DEBATE
link to ynetnews.com
The video will be up at the Doha site soon.
link to dohadebates.com
The Doha series (which usually takes place in Qatar) is an invaluable tool for calibrating the divergence of U.S. and global opinion.
So, if community is a jewel, how does one preserve it?
The lesson of "never again" was learned mostly in response to the feeling of betrayal by fully assimilated German, Hungarian and Polish Jews that were nevertheless carted off to slave and death camps, with the local populous' complicity.
How can one tell that one's acceptance in a community is permanent?
How can a self-identified and somewhat separated Jewish community, be FULLY accepted without fear being evoked?
How can "never again" be absolutely confident, and contain NO speculation?
Or, is a state necessary, assuming that it offers permanent sanctuary?
Richard Witty, regarding your comment that assimilation was no defense in Nazi Germany. Well, you are right. But there was a reason Hiter found it so easy to sell anti-Semitism to the German people against their Jewish fellow citizens. He only had to point eastward to the atrocities commited, enabled or condoned by Russian revolutionary Jews and in some cases the heavily Jewish bureaucracies against Russian Christian or Ukrainian peasants. Even Trotsy complained that Jewish excesses against the Christian masses were counterproductive. The assimilated German Jews suffered from guilt by association.
By the way, Arendt also had some things to say on Richard's favorite topic:
"Jews concerned with the survival of their people … in a curious desperate misinterpretation hit on the consoling idea that anti-Semitism might be an excellent means for keeping the people together, so that the assumption of eternal anti-Semitism would ever imply an eternal guarantee of Jewish existence. This superstition is a secularized travesty of the idea of eternity inherent in a faith in chosenness and a Messianic hope." (from Men in Dark Times)
Karl Popper, assimilated Jews and persecution
__________________________________________
One of the reasons assimilation was no safeguard against Nazi prosecution is his:
The concept that Jewish properties are inborn was held by both mainstaim Judaism and in particular secular Zionism as well as Nazism. The differnce was only what these properties were thought to be and how they were valued: as something good, special and holy or something mean.
Anyway, it was thought that – for racial/holy-anthropological reasons – a Jew could not really assimilate because that would be kind of a switch from one 'species' to another.
Still today, this is not an uncommon view.
—————
Let me illustate this in the case of Popper: He had to leave Austria before WWII because – although baptized – the Nazis of course considered him a Jew by decent.
Here is the Jewish point of view. (I quote from a book by two of his students, David Esmonds and John Eidinow, 'Wittgenstein's Poker',2001.)
" 1969 brought an inquiry from the then editor of the Jewish Year Book as to whether, as he was of Jewish decent, Professor Sir Karl Popper would like to be in the 'Who's Who' section, 'which includes Jews of distinction in all walks of life'. To this Popper replied that he was of Jewish decent but the son of parents baptized years before he was born; that he was baptized at birth and was brought up as a Protestant. And he continued:
'I do not believe in race; I abhor any form of racialism or nationalism; and I never belonged to the Jewish faith. Thus I do not see on what grounds I could possibly consider myself as a Jew.' "
As the authors of the book note: " Being Jewish has been rightly described as belonging to a club from which there is no resignation."
For anyone who wants to check out the above, it's in chapter 10 "Popper reads 'Mein Kampf' ".
It's a great little book on two great Vienna philosophers of Jewish decent. The Wittgensteins were full blown assimilated but still – they were so rich that they were able to buy their way out. It's a case in point of Phil's article 'persecution of Jews and greed.'
Now, now, pseudo Klaus. You must learn to deal with ideas that make you feel uncomfortable without lashing out so.
David, the above: "Hitler reads 'Mein Kampf'" was written by me. It's no joke, that's the heading of the chapter. What I said on the Wittgenstein family is also from the book "Wittgenstein's poker".
By 'poker' the authors mean the thing you use at a fire place. They refer to a legendary argument between Wittgenstein and Popper at the Moral Science Club in Cambridge, England when Wittgenstein, sitting by the fireplace, got angry at Popper's logic and raised the poker in a threatening way.
Klaus
Frankfurt, Germany
It's of course "Popper reads 'Mein Kampf' " – Klaus