Columbia had its semi-annual University Lecture last night: history professor Ira Katznelson's thoughts on tolerance and liberalism, using the example of the history of Jews in England, from their expulsion in the 1200s to their readmission in the 1650s to the granting of political freedoms in the mid-1800s. I went with the hope of an intellectual feast. It was more of an antipasto.
Katznelson it turns out is a scholar of American history. He wrote an important book saying that affirmative action for blacks just reprised the affirmative action that whites got, starting with the New Deal. As soon as he got into his lecture, it was clear that European religious history is not his area. I wondered why he didn't do an American subject. Still he is a very smart guy and had a lot to tell us.
King Edward ordered the 5000 Jews out of the kingdom in part to quiet
unrest. The expulsion was preceded in England by baronial pogroms--and
knights had lost their estates to moneylenders, a trade to which Jews
were of course confined. The expulsion of Jews damaged the monarchs'' ability to finance wars. The point resonates with Israel Shahak's view that Jews played an essential part in the feudal structure and were resented for their economic privilege.
There was a suggestion in the lecture that Jews were sought back as the yeast of a modern economy. That goes along with the famous Jewish threat/truth: a society cannot prosper that does not treat its Jews well. England got there slowly. Katznelson said that Foreign Secretary David Miliband's grandfather was rejected for citizenship in 1945, even after having fought for England, the country he had sought refuge in as a Jew fleeing the Holocaust.
The rotunda of Low Library where the lecture took place is beautiful but a little solemn, ponderous. Dark marble columns. A high dome with a few lightbulbs at the very top, high balconies with unidentifiable statues, and some of the high windows open on the east. As the sun went down, the place became dim. The lecture was long, and the acoustics are terrible. The friend I went with scribbled a note on his pad. "Not enough Jewish humor."
My problem at dignified events like this is that one question forms in my mind, the Seder question: How can you talk of the history of Jewish affliction for an hour and a half, and say not a word about the fact that millions of Palestinians are right now oppressed and American Jewry is a party to that oppression? This question disturbs me: I wonder if I am crazy for thinking it, if I am the only one who's thinking it. Then I get angry at the people around me who are not thinking it. Then I wonder if it won’t be a commonplace in 20 years to talk about this intellectual humbug. Then I wonder again if I have lost my mind.
Katznelson was at his best when he posed the question of whether the progress of the Jews in England came about because of the progress of ideas –-Locke was proselytizing for Jewish emancipation, Spinoza was questioning the idea of the chosen people in Amsterdam—-or on the other hand, per what the professor called the new school of historical realism, was it partisanship, instrumental leadership, and power relationships that did the job? (Having lost my mind, I thought at once of the Israel lobby as an example of historical realism in action.) Katznelson said neither theory fully explained the Jews' progress, but he sort of left it there.
The questioners tried to push Katznelson into today's world. One man asked what he thought of the Madoff case, and everyone prayed for a Jewish joke. Katznelson said with correctness that it wasn’t about Jewishness, it could have happened to any social or business network. (But it didn't, did it?) Another guy asked my Seder question but from the other side: How it is possible to reconcile tolerance with Islamic fundamentalism? Again Katznelson gave the correct answer, that the Muslim community is not simple.
Then he offered a moving statement from John Rawls on multiculturalism, that groups had to give up their particularity in the public square. I wish I could quote it exactly. My tape sounds like we were all underwater. It was a statement that there is a public interest; and again I thought about the Israel lobby and the stunted view it has of the public interest.
But I'm saving the best question for last. The showstopper came from a small older man whom Katznelson identified as Walter Eberstadt (maybe this man):
“I submit that without intolerance there would no longer be Jews.”
Katznelson really didn't have an answer. He said something about an AB Yehoshua novel, his one reference to Israel. But Eberstadt was asking about assimilation, and his question echoed a subtle theme in the lecture itself: part of the motivation of the oppressor, apart from classical anti-Semitism, was the impression that Jews didn’t want to be a part of the society anyway. Well that is changing. Now many of us want to be, and there is nobody to stop us. The Jewish question has become the Jewish quandary.
Katznelson's had referred to important liberal theorists. John Rawls. John Locke. As I left I thought of Steven Smith's work on Spinoza and liberalism that ends with the bracing, conservative statement that "to the extent that the liberal Enlightenment urges the abolition of a particular providence, it will always be at odds with Judaism." This is what Eberstadt was getting at, the Jewish idea of chosenness. It is the tension between Athens and Jerusalem, and it has taken up residence inside Judaism, from Spinoza to Arendt. You get to choose for yourself, it's a free country.
(P.S. My religious friend Mark writes: Quick historical note. The Jews were far from the only medieval moneylenders/bankers who ran afoul of kings who didn't want to pay their debts--Knights Templar come to mind immediately. Cutting the royal nose to spite the face--bankrupting the kingdom by putting out moneylender/bankers (of whatever origin) was common (mal)practice at the time.
Does that translate to individualism versus collectivism?
But, Phil, your desire to join the supposed 'western liberal mainstream' is already too late, in that it is dying. This is the characteristic Jewish Too Lateness Syndrome, another example of which was pointed out by Isaac Deutscher, when he said that Jews endevored to board the train of European colonialism (on their own behalf) when it was already too late historically to do so.
The best example of Jewish hand-wringing I've read in many a year.
You're a good man, but why not add in a few other obsessions. 'Twould do you good.
beautiful essay.
Phil writes: "My problem at dignified events like this is that just one question forms in my mind, the Seder question: How can you talk of the history of Jewish affliction for an hour and a half, and say not a word about the fact that millions of Palestinians are right now oppressed and American Jewry is a party to that oppression? This question disturbs me: I wonder if I am crazy for thinking it, if I am the only one who's thinking it. Then I get angry at the people around me who are not thinking it. Then I wonder if it won’t be a commonplace in 20 years to talk about this intellectual humbug. Then I wonder again if I have lost my mind."
Academics are great at compartmentalizing, as it's the easiest way of imposing order on an enormous amount of material. It's what we do best. Tragically, we still have a deep suspicion of interdisciplinary and what's called "relevance." Activists just have to take academic work with a grain of salt: it's valuable, but it's up to you to make it usable. So, no, you are not losing your mind; you're just frustrated that not everyone whose work touches on Jewish history has a desire to fuel the flames of resistance. Besides, this guy probably knows not a helluva lot about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "Not my field, old chap."
"This is the characteristic Jewish Too Lateness Syndrome,"
Rowan, Phil probably does what I and almost all enlightened, assimilated, slow-talkin' modren Jews do. He sets all his clocks twenty minutes fast.
"But, Phil, your desire to join the supposed 'western liberal mainstream' is already too late, in that it is dying."
Rowan Berkely
You know it, Rowan. You just keep that claim for the baronetcy going in the Court of Chancery, it'll pay off big one of these days. Monarchy's bound to come back bigger than ever!
Edward kicked the Jews out pretty much after he and his father Henry III had exhausted Jewish financial resources to pay for their wars. Edward was able to turn to an alternative source of finance that was crowding the Jews out everywhere by the fourteenth century–the Italian bankers. Ever wonder why the main financial street of London is called Lombard street?
Phil's question about why no mention of the Palestinians is a good one. I have a parallel experience, though not in as dramatica venue as the Low Library Rotunda, but in my local church. During Lent, the rector is showing movies and discussing them. Last Wednesday he showed the neo-realist Rosselini classic Open City, about the last days of the Nazi occupation of Rome, shot in 1945. Torture plays a big part in it. During question period, I simply said the film made me a little uncomfortable, because "occupation" and "torture" are very much on our front pages, and Nazis have nothing to do with it. He said, "Yes, actually i was thinking about Gaza when I saw this movie this time. Your're not supposed to say that. There I said it. "
Gee, obsessive type knows he/she has to rank them–there's only so much time… And, I'm not even Jewish and I go through the same stuff Phil describes. Lastly, Scott–telling little story. Gaza. Wonder if Obama will resign us from that treaty with Spain that allows Spanish courts to look into
some US activities in its War ON Terror.
Katznelson appears to have left out a lot.
Jews were in banking and medicine because some very wealthy Jews were in slaving. Slave purchases might require financing. Slavers were willing to pay for medical care, and people that could not pay their debts could be taken as chattel in many localities.
In theory William the Conqueror banned the taking of English subjects as slaves, but debt servitude persisted, and I have often wondered whether the blood libel might be related to Jewish slaving because enslavement historically meant social death. In any case, English slaves were still being sold around the Mediterranean in the fourteenth century according to Egyptian documents.
In Eastern Europe, Jewish estate management grew out of the slave trade and in many regards as a substitute when the slave trade routes we closed off by the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople and later by the Wars of the Reformation.
Joachim, I should think that it was more a matter of domestic rural serfdom and debt peonage being enforced by them, in all the various countries where they acted as middlemen at the relevant class interfaces (if I may coin a rather jargon-sounding term, which is at least exact).
Phil,
You have come to worship the Palestinians. You may not know, when the British came to Palestine after World War I, they noted that many Palestinian Arabs kept africans as slaves particularly the rich class. Susan Beckerleg has written about slave trading in historic Palestine in her book "The Africans of Palestine". Palestinians may be under occupation now and I have no problem talking about it, but less then 70 years ago it was your beloved Arabs who were the racist colonizers and slave traders? Why cant you recognize the crimes Palestinians have committed as well as those that they have endured. It is relevant to talk about the arab slave today because it exposes the hypocrisy of certain Palestinian leaders who came from rich families who owned slaves. Imagine Khaled Meshaal or Marwan Barghouti admitting that their ancestors committed genocide as well. It would be an interesting turn of events…
janey, are you going to take over from Suzanne as resident sleaze-bag? I hope so, because this will allow Suzanne to develop her more mature sides.
What nation hasn't participated in slavery at some time in it's history, Janey? Right off the bat, I can't think of any, which doesn't mean there aren't any, but rather that I don't recall it being a major feature of known history – "THIS nation never engaged in slavery."
Is there some reason for requiring the Palestinians to confess to every crime they share with the rest of humanity? When does everyone else join in, or is this a special guilt trip for the Palestinians… and Phil? Is he, perhaps, not thinking the 'right' thoughts.
Janey's right! Can't love both Palestinians and Jews! Can't be done, damn it! Gotta choose sides, one or the other, everybody knows that.
Hey Janey, the Germans pulled a loota bad stunts in WW2, why can't the Jews have a big slice out of Germany?
"Phil,You have come to worship the Palestinians."
So I guess you don't sleep with anti-Zionists, huh?
Joachim, I have read more than a few claims of white Europeans being sold into slavery in the North American colonies. Debt slavery and tenant situations were common, so I have to believe that at least some white Europeans were sold into slavery along with Africans.
I've never linked medicine with slavery, but the first Jews were allowed to settle in the Georgia colony because the group contained a doctor, and slavery (which was banned at the time) soon followed. I don't know that the two events can be linked, but it doesn't take much effort to uncover Jewish names in the old records of the local slave trade.