Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times 9780812291513

Citation preview

Secularism in Question

JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania David B. Ruderman and Steven Weitzman, Series Editors

Secularism in Question Jews and Judaism in Modern Times

Edited by

Ari Joskowicz and Ethan B. Katz

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Martin D. Gruss Endowment Fund of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania. Copyright  2015 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Secularism in question : Jews and Judaism in modern times / edited by Ari Joskowicz and Ethan B. Katz. pages cm. — (Jewish culture and contexts) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4727-5 (alk. paper) 1. Judaism and secularism—History. 2. Religion and sociology. I. Joskowicz, Ari, editor. II. Katz, Ethan B., editor, author. BM538.S43S43 2015 296.09⬘03—dc23 2015005563

contents

Introduction. Rethinking Jews and Secularism Ari Joskowicz and Ethan B. Katz

1

PART I. NARRATIONS Chapter 1. ‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’: Spinoza and Radical Jewish Enlightenment Daniel B. Schwartz

25

Chapter 2. Reading Mendelssohn in Late Ottoman Palestine: An Islamic Theory of Jewish Secularism Jonathan Marc Gribetz

48

Chapter 3. Tradition and the Hidden: Hannah Arendt’s Secularization of Jewish Mysticism Vivian Liska

65

PART II. TRANSFORMATIONS Chapter 4. Messianism Without Messiah: Messianism, Religion, and Secularization in Modern Jewish Thought Christoph Schulte

79

Chapter 5. In the Name of the Devil: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ Galili Shahar

98

vi

Contents

Chapter 6. The Secular and Its Dissonances in Modern Jewish Literature Michal Ben-Horin

115

Chapter 7. Civil Society, Secularization, and Modernity Among Jews in Turn-of-the-Century Eastern Europe Scott Ury

142

Chapter 8. Secular French Nationhood and Its Discontents: Jews as Muslims and Religion as Race in Occupied France Ethan B. Katz

168

PART III. ADAPTATIONS Chapter 9. Galician Haskalah and the Discourse of Schwa¨rmerei Rachel Manekin

189

Chapter 10. Secularism and Neo-Orthodoxy: Conflicting Strategies in Modern Orthodox Fiction Eva Lezzi

208

Chapter 11. Secularism and Nationalism: The Modern Halakhic Discourse on the Identity and Boundaries of the Jewish Community Arye Edrei

232

PART IV. NEW CONCEPTIONS: A FORUM Chapter 12. Between Supersessionism and Atavism: Toward a Neo-Secular View of Religion David N. Myers

261

Chapter 13. Secularism, the Christian Ambivalence Toward the Jews, and the Notion of Exile Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin

276

Contents

Chapter 14. ‘‘Eleven Calendars’’: Beyond Secular Time Andrea Schatz

vii

299

Notes

315

List of Contributors

395

Index

399

Acknowledgments

411

introduction

Rethinking Jews and Secularism ari joskowicz and ethan b. katz

For much of the twentieth century, most secular and religious thinkers believed that they were living in an age of steady secularization. Many perceived the Enlightenment and Europe as the interlinked chronological and geographical focal points that had given birth to secularization before it began its inevitable march across space and time. Depending on their religious outlooks, they saw their own era as ushering in either a ‘‘Golden Age’’ of secularism or a dark period of godless decadence. It was only in the closing decades of the twentieth century—when scholars and pundits began to speak of the global resurgence of religion—that secularism became the center of heated discussions. Today, the secular is no longer considered the norm; it has become something to be explained and studied. This broader shift has also occurred among Jews. After the Second World War, Judaism as a religion appeared to be in decline. A major portion of Eastern European Orthodoxy had been annihilated in the Holocaust, a largely secularist brand of left-wing Zionism dominated the political scene among Jews in Palestine (and, later, Israel), while religious observance among Jewish communities in the Americas began to wane. During the 1960s, traditional Jewish settings—much like non-Jewish religious milieus in the United States and Europe—appeared to be fragmenting. Although many viewed Judaism as a resilient and meaningful force in their lives, few would have defined it as a serious challenge to the secularism of the existing political order. All of this has now changed profoundly. A number of key developments have upended assumptions about the triumph of secularism in Jewish life.

2

Introduction

These include the strengthening of Orthodox movements and institutions in Israel and the United States; the meteoric rise of the Chabad Lubavitch movement; the growth and radicalization of Religious Zionism since 1967; the increased presence of religious themes in Zionist discourse (emblematized and accelerated by the 1977 rise to power of the Likud Party in Israel); and the emergence of a series of new Jewish movements for spiritual renewal. Liberal Jewish commentators in turn responded by expressing their strong objection to many of these developments, which they considered profoundly disruptive to the progressive, secular consensus they sought to achieve. From attempts to create a new type of ‘‘secular Judaism’’ in the United States to clashes around gender-segregated buses in Israel, we are now witnessing the revival of culture wars that recall similar conflicts fought over the preceding three centuries.1 This book probes how these new contestations of secularism force us to rethink a host of questions about Jews and the evolution of Judaism in modern times. Such an undertaking involves bringing together two areas of research that have until recently remained isolated from one another—Jewish studies and the study of secularism and secularization.

A Missed Encounter Until recently Jewish studies scholars engaged only rarely with the longstanding interdisciplinary conversation about secularism and secularization. By the same token, Jews received scant attention in the extensive scholarship on secularism in the broader humanities and social sciences.2 This missed encounter is unfortunate for many reasons. First, many of the key dichotomies underpinning secularist discourse evolved from the oppositions that Christian thinkers historically constructed to juxtapose Christianity and Judaism. Indeed, the idea that a forward-looking Christianity had superseded an archaic Judaism established patterns of thinking about time and meaning in history that shaped notions of progress among religious, non-religious, and anti-religious thinkers alike. Modern conceptions of secularization and its equation with human advancement thus emerged from what Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin and Carlo Ginzburg term the ‘‘Christian ambivalence toward the Jews.’’3 In assessing the role of Christian understandings of history for secular narratives of progress, Raz-Krakotzkin and others

Introduction

3

have contended that as the former evolved into the latter, Judaism retained the role of a foil. As the major non-Christian minority in Western and Central Europe until well into the twentieth century, Jews remained crucial symbolic others who helped to define secularist interpretations of the world, including secularization theory.4 A revealing passage from one of the seminal texts of secularization theory illustrates the persistent symbolism of Judaism as a primitive and non-productive religion. In Max Weber’s lecture ‘‘On Science as a Vocation,’’5 where he coined the phrase ‘‘the disenchantment of the world’’ to describe what he saw as the gradual withdrawal of magical thinking from various spheres of life, he assigned the Jews an emblematic place in this story.6 At the end of his text, Weber declares: ‘‘Integrity . . . compels us to state that for the many who today tarry for new prophets and saviors, the situation is the same as that which resounds in the beautiful Edomite watchman’s song of the period of exile [and] which has been included among Isaiah’s oracles.’’ He then cites an enigmatic passage from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 21, wherein the night signifies the darkness before the expected redemption: ‘‘A call comes to me from Seir: ‘Watchman, what of the night?’ . . . The watchman replied, ‘Morning came and so did night. If you would inquire, inquire. Come back again.’ ’’ Weber concludes: ‘‘The people to whom this was said has enquired and tarried for more than two millennia, and we are shaken when we realize its fate. From this we want to draw the lesson that nothing is gained by yearning and tarrying alone, and we shall act differently.’’7 Thus, at the close of this foundational analysis of secularization, Weber presents Jews as the foil for thinking about the ‘‘disenchantment of the world.’’ In his depiction, Jews remained entombed in their own enchantment and tied to an ancient set of beliefs out of step with science and reason. He thus implies that both their passivity and otherworldly religiosity constitute the very source of the suffering and persecution they have experienced over the centuries. Weber’s words exemplify how frequently, in discussions of the secular, Jews assume roles that are similar to those they have long played in Christian theology.8 Even though Catholic and Protestant thought have historically treated Jews differently, in both cases they were important primarily as symbolic actors rather than as an evolving ethno-religious community. Furthermore, secularist critiques of tradition were often inextricably linked to widespread prejudices against Jews as primitive, obstinate, and incapable of assimilation to European citizenship and values. Reconsidering secularization

4

Introduction

and secularism thus requires a reconsideration of the position of the Jews therein. A second set of factors that calls out for a more direct encounter between Jewish and secularism studies lies in the unique evolution of Jewish history, thought, and literature. Having lived for millennia in settings where another faith served as the official state religion, Jews have long had to negotiate between their own laws and practices and those of non-Jewish sovereigns and societies. As early as the Hellenistic period and the Babylonian exile, Jews began to ask how to assign value to non-Jewish realms of knowledge that they considered non-sacred, or to navigate professional and social relationships that often enticed them to venture outside of the Jewish community. Several premodern Jewish responses to the challenges posed to Jewish law, or Halakhah, by life in a non-Jewish state speak to issues that Jews continue to wrestle with today. To take three notable examples: in order to minimize tensions between the observance of Halakhah and respect for the rules of the sovereign government of the land in which they resided, already in late antiquity Jews developed the principle of dina de-malkhuta dina (the law of the land is the law); similarly, the idea that it is necessary both to learn Torah and Talmud and to engage with the wisdom of non-Jews emerged in response to Jews’ attempts to balance the study of Jewish and non-religious subjects, first in the Talmud and then more systematically in the medieval writings of Maimonides; finally, the invocation of the command of darkhei shalom, pursuing paths of peace, beginning in the Middle Ages enabled a number of Jewish legal leniencies to govern Jews’ relations with their gentile neighbors. As the challenges to traditional Judaism intensified in the era of emancipation, Jewish encounters with the secular allowed a variety of Jewish thinkers and nascent movements to reinforce, rethink, and contest such longstanding principles.9 The nineteenth-century European Jewish experience offers a particularly useful case study of the interplay between secularism and Judaism. At the core of debates about secularism are definitions of religion as well as questions such as these: Where and how should religion be practiced? What is its place in politics and in the formation of proper citizens? How do religious, ethnic, national, and racial identities overlap or diverge? Should certain spheres be reserved for the sacred or excluded from it? All these questions became central to Jews in the era of emancipation, as they sought to remake themselves according to new standards of citizenship.10 In the process, they had to define the role and reach of Jewish law while also proving their loyalty as Jews and

Introduction

5

citizens of both secular and not-so-secular nations.11 Modern European Jews also had to position themselves in a matrix of new relationships, whether as one confession among others or as a national group in need of cultural autonomy or minority protections.12 In each case, Jews’ self-definition required that they negotiate competing expectations about religious and national life. As a result, they were forced to articulate their own relationship to secular understandings of statehood, society, and history. To be sure, the Jewish thinkers who faced these questions rarely analyzed the notion of religion in the systematic way that religious studies has done during the past several decades.13 Yet in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the very era that produced our modern lexicon (including the language of ‘‘secularism’’ and ‘‘world religions’’), European Jews’ literary, philosophical, theological, political, and everyday endeavors challenged the emerging terms of the debate.14 Finally, bringing together Jewish studies and the study of secularism and secularization illuminates how different versions of Judaism and Jewishness have repeatedly defied the frameworks and categories of secularization theory. All too often, exponents of theories of secularization and secularism have drawn their assumptions about religious life as well as the binary of secular/ religious from Protestant European and American life and only subsequently, with insufficient context or care, applied these as broader paradigms to Jews and other religious groups.15 Yet, as various essays in this book make clear, secularization theory and the category of secularism both tend to distort or obscure rather than account for many developments in modern Jewish history, thought, and literature. At the same time, Jewish studies is also enriched once we take into account recent approaches to secularization and secularism more broadly. Doing so offers scholars of Jews and Judaism new perspectives on questions of origins, boundaries, and the significance of numerous Jewish texts and experiences. Together, the individual essays included in this volume underscore the need to recognize the multiplicity of Jewish encounters with the secular. They also encourage us to ask how Jewish secularisms have differed, often markedly, from the conventional narratives and categories of scholarly accounts of secularism and secularization.

Secularization and Secularism In both popular and academic arenas, the meanings of the terms secularism and secularization have been contested.16 Secularization constitutes a historical process with a number of different meanings and outcomes. These include

6

Introduction

the transformation of religious symbols, practices, and gatherings into cultural, political, or social ones; the establishment of legal separation between state and religious authority; the broader differentiation of religion from a set of spheres often understood in the West as strictly ‘‘secular,’’ such as politics, education, and science; and, relatedly, the increasing privatization of religion through its confinement to nonpublic spaces. The term has also denoted the decline of religious belief or practice among individuals or the interiorization of religion as a personal spiritual development that takes the place of outward physical signs of faith, such as religious attire or ritual. In reaction to the rise of politicized religious movements during the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, scholars such as the sociologist Jose´ Casanova and the philosopher Charles Taylor have sought to revise our understanding of the meanings and outcomes of secularization. Casanova and other sociologists have focused primarily on processes of differentiation, in which religion is gradually confined to certain institutions, times, and fields of action. In their attempt to explain new politicized religious movements, scholars such as Casanova have offered ever more complex and nonlinear accounts of the consequences of differentiation for religious faith and practice. Increasingly, their theories offer space for the rise and ‘‘deprivatization’’ of new forms of religiosity and even for political religion. At the same time, Taylor has taken greater interest in what he calls ‘‘secularity’’— a term he uses to describe modernity’s transformation of belief in the transcendent from an unquestioned position into simply one choice among many worldviews. This leads Taylor to contend that secularization has entailed the invention of new conceptions of the self.17 Although reacting to similar developments in the politics of religion, scholars of secularism have taken a route different from those who focus on secularization. Whereas secularization is usually described as a process, secularism is, in the words of one of its most influential scholars of recent years, ‘‘a political and governmental doctrine’’ regulating the practice of religion.18 In response to the rise of new movements that challenge secular arrangements, recent scholarship from religious studies, literature, anthropology, and history has questioned our basic understanding both of religion and the secular. Rather than trace the changing place of the religious in the modern world, scholars such as Talal Asad show the political implications of different ways of speaking about and framing religion—by recognizing the imbrication of these discourses in liberal narratives of progress or explaining their complicity in colonial projects. They also explore the unarticulated

Introduction

7

assumptions about human nature, agency, and power inherent in a secularist worldview. In this context, secularism takes on different meanings. Some define it as the opposite of religion, as the space evacuated by religion, as an ideology created to suppress religion, or as a political doctrine that demands the separation of church and state. These definitions often align closely with popular usage of the term. Others, like Asad or the literary scholar Gauri Vishvanathan, use the term more broadly to describe negative ideas about religion as unsophisticated, passive, repressive, or anti-modern. These scholars see such depictions as embedded in accounts of modernity and in the work of modern statecraft. In each conception, secularism becomes as much an antecedent as a product of secularization. Some scholars have also started to use the plural ‘‘secularisms’’ to highlight the multiplicity of narratives and forms this construction of the religious can take.19 Such questions about the meanings of secularism and secularization have considerable resonance beyond the academy. From North America to the Middle East, terms that seem uncomplicated in everyday language such as ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘religious’’ are now at the center of heated political conflicts over the definition of religious fundamentalisms and the appropriate role of faith and clerics in the public sphere. This book—which examines an array of historical and contemporary settings in Europe and Israel while also touching upon North American and North African Jewish experiences—brings together a number of traditions of thought on secularism. It yields no single meaning for ‘‘secularization,’’ ‘‘secularism,’’ the ‘‘secular,’’ or ‘‘religion.’’ Some authors included in this volume have chosen to engage primarily with secularization theory; they tend to treat religion and the secular as oppositional forces. Others, meanwhile, have sought to question these categories in the tradition of recent secularism debates. Despite these terminological differences, it is crucial to underscore the definitions of the secular that the essays in this volume collectively eschew. For none of the authors featured here is secularism simply the opposite, absence, or nullification of religion; nor do they treat secularization as a linear process of religion’s steady retreat from the public sphere or the collective consciousness. A number of underlying assumptions unite the essays in this book. The first is the authors’ shared conviction that historical and contemporary Jewish experiences can be fully understood only if we account for the many secularisms and dimensions of secularization that Jews have envisioned and confronted. The second is that secularism and secularization have occurred for

8

Introduction

Jews as much through internal Jewish processes and ideas—including those of traditionally observant Jews—as through the developments of wider society. We are similarly convinced that bringing modern Jewish perspectives into a reckoning with the secular complicates both previous approaches to secularism and the historic conflation of Europe, Christianity, and secularization.20 Such explorations provide us simultaneously with the tools that allow for a reassessment of modern Jewish history, thought, and literature, on the one hand, and of the ‘‘secularism debate,’’ on the other.

Jewish Studies and the Secular From its inception as a field in the 1820s, Jewish history forced its practitioners to reflect on the nature of Judaism and, by extension, the meaning of the secular. Both the pressure to strictly reinterpret Judaism as a religious rather than a national category and Jews’ various responses to this pressure inspired a deep narrative engagement with the fundamental issues of modern secularism. These narratives took two principal forms: (1) an embrace of secularism, often without much theoretical debate; and (2) a critique of secularism as part of a critique of assimilation, modernity, or both. Most nineteenth-century Jewish intellectuals accepted the transformation of Judaism into a religion within a secular nation as either a condition for or a corollary of emancipation. Even the large number of Jewish journalists and pamphleteers who wrote against the excesses of atheism and materialism confirmed secularist expectations about religion, suggesting that it should remain secondary to national identity in political matters. There were, to be sure, Jewish writers, including Moses Mendelssohn, who criticized certain aspects or versions of secularism and thus developed what scholars such as Jonathan Hess and Aamir Mufti have identified as alternative concepts of modernity. Yet, until the 1880s, the majority of Jews in Western and Central Europe, and many elsewhere, embraced secularism as part of the ongoing promise of the French Revolution or of European liberalism more broadly.21 In the same way, most Jewish historians working in the tradition of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism), grounded in Enlightenment and liberal thought, implicitly accepted the historical narratives that allowed them to conflate the secular and the modern.22 It is difficult to date the rise of a Jewish anti-secularist critique or counter-narrative. Important debates over the consequences of Jews’ transformation into a purely religious community ensued as early as the 1860s and

Introduction

9

1870s with Heinrich Graetz’s groundbreaking nationalist history of the Jews. Although Graetz rejected the notion that Jews made up a mere confessional group, he did not elaborate a full criticism of secularism per se. By the end of the nineteenth century, Jewish nationalists and autonomists of different stripes, including the historian Simon Dubnow, made it their central plank that Jews constituted a nation.23 Although they critiqued the liberal position that had asked Jews to retreat into a purely religious identity in exchange for membership in the nation-states in which they lived, these late nineteenthcentury Jewish nationalists and autonomists remained committed to secularist arrangements. What they critiqued in European liberal secularism was how it led Jews to think of themselves as part of a group defined only by religion and to assimilate in increasing numbers. Thinkers like Dubnow could thus be, on the one hand, critics of the secularism of liberal, so-called assimilationist Jews and, on the other hand, avowedly anti-religious. Since Jewish nationalists and territorialists maintained that Jewish self-government was the solution to the Jewish condition, they were ultimately uninterested in a wholesale critique of the secular nation-state. When Zionism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, the movement’s adherents similarly proved much more concerned with opposing exclusionary non-Jewish nationalism than with challenging the fundamental idea of the state itself; and it was the state, as much as the nation, that had become variously the site, aim, or enforcer of secularism. Jewish liberals in Western Europe as well as many Eastern European Jewish enlighteners, or Maskilim, by contrast, continued to believe in the state’s role as keeper of social peace—one of secularism’s original and fundamental promises—as well as its right to demand displays of exclusive political loyalty from its citizenry. Such a binary meant that the nascent Zionist school of Jewish historiography, to become known as the Jerusalem School, was implicitly anti-secular, without, however, questioning the fundamental secularist assumptions that Zionism shared with other contemporary European nationalisms.24 A broader critique of the secular nation-state and its demands can be dated to the interwar period and the generation of scholars that grew up around Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Gershom Scholem. For all of their differences, these thinkers shared an abiding opposition to assimilationism and rationalism on the one hand, and a fascination, on the other, with recovering aspects of Jewish tradition. Their conscious decision to break with liberal Jewish outlooks took the form of new historical understandings that challenged many of the assumptions of the Wissenschaft des Judentums.25

10

Introduction

During the same period, Salo Baron’s 1928 article ‘‘Ghetto and Emancipation’’ elaborated one of the earliest comprehensive critiques of secularism’s effects, arguing against the view that the French Revolution and emancipation should be read as a salvation narrative in which the modern age overcame the endless persecution and suffering endured by medieval Jewry. Critical of Zionists, and even more so of religious reformers of the German Jewish tradition, he wrote: ‘‘Now the theory was put forth that the Jewish religion— which the Jew was permitted to keep—must be stripped of all Jewish national elements. For national elements were called secular, and in secular matters the Jew was to avow allegiance to the national ambitions and culture of the land in which he lived. Jewish Reform may be seen as a gigantic effort, partly unconscious, by many of the best minds of Western Jewry to reduce differences between Jew and Gentile to a slight matter of creed, at the same time adopting the Gentile’s definition of what was properly a matter of creed.’’26 Baron did not use the term secularism, but if we read his critique in light of recent debates we can understand his counter-narrative as a critique of secularism as ‘‘the Gentile’s definition of what was properly a matter of creed.’’ Baron’s understanding prefigures a flood of critical Jewish approaches to modernity published after the Second World War and the Holocaust. The broad critique of Enlightenment rationalism as intolerant of difference, especially Jewish difference, also inspired greater scrutiny of the Enlightenment’s secularist legacy. Works like Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Jacob Talmon’s The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1960), and Zygmunt Bauman’s The Holocaust and Modernity (1989) either explicitly or implicitly linked the Nazis’ genocidal politics to the radicalization of demands for uniformity and utility made by the secular nation-state.27 These first two patterns—the embrace of secularism and its selective rejection in nationalist or anti-modernist terms—exerted tremendous influence well into the post–World War II era. In spite of the long history of Jewish intellectual engagement with questions of secularism, as the field of Jewish studies came into its own during the second half of the twentieth century the issue remained more implicit than explicit as a topic of study. Few leading scholars of Jewish history, religion, thought, or literature discussed ‘‘secularism’’ or ‘‘secularization’’ in a systematic fashion.28 Employing the concepts loosely, most accounts of Jewish modernity located secularization or secularism within larger grand narratives of Western progress, Jewish decline, or both. A key if unspoken assumption of this scholarship was a mistaken equivalency between Jewish secularization and assimilation.29

Introduction

11

During the formative scholarly period of the 1960s through the 1980s, the influential work of Jacob Katz reinforced the same teleologies. This was the case despite the fact that Katz was well versed in secularization theory. Indeed, in essays specifically addressing secularism and secularization in Jewish history, Katz offered carefully conceptualized ruminations that anticipated the more critical perspectives on Jews and the secular of decades later; yet in the sociological portraits of his two most noted works, Tradition and Crisis and Out of the Ghetto, he largely packaged his own grand narratives in a linear account of steady Jewish secularization.30 In this manner, Jewish studies—both due to its own internal ideological struggles and under the influence of outside scholarship—shared many of the assumptions of wider academic culture about the equation of secularism with modernity and of secularization with progress.31 This meant that, until quite recently, most work in modern Jewish studies was marked by the unspoken supposition that the Jewish experience of the secular developed in a manner roughly correspondent to that of the wider narrative of Western secularization. Scholars thus said little about what secularism or secularization might mean for Jewish history and Jewish culture specifically. Moreover, they generally treated non-Jewish forces as the primary catalysts for Jewish secularization and secularism, with Jewish figures playing a largely reactive role.32

Post-Secularist Approaches in Jewish Studies Just as rethinking secularism requires taking full account of the Jewish experience, current attempts in Jewish studies to construct new paradigms must engage seriously with ongoing debates over the meaning of secularism. Since the late 1970s and 1980s, a third set of approaches has emerged that we might deem post-secularist, in that they move beyond debates about secularism’s positive or negative impact. This can be seen in a number of major works of Jewish history that have attempted to overcome earlier teleologies, refusing to describe nineteenth-century Jewish history exclusively through the lens of the Holocaust or the State of Israel.33 As a result, they paved the way for a more fragmented and nuanced image of Jewish encounters with secularism. Newer work in German Jewish history, for example, offers complex views of both liberalism and secularism, denying that the latter is either simply coercive on the one hand or politically salvific on the other. Scholarship on Germany shows that Jews found creative ways to break with demands to

12

Introduction

present Judaism as a private religion that stood second to their secular citizenship and their German nationality.34 What is more, some scholars have begun to challenge the notion that most German liberals—as the self-declared heirs to the Enlightenment legacy—demanded that Jews shed non-religious particularity as a sine qua non of emancipation and integration.35 In French history, historians have had to challenge a narrative rooted in French rather than Jewish historiography. The French history of secularism has become a model: invoked by Jacobins during the French Revolution, the concept of a total national unity that does not allow for the political representation of interest groups has become a barometer against which other stories are measured. In Jewish history, Michael Marrus’s depiction of late nineteenth-century French Jews as willing assimilators is exemplary: state and society demanded that Jews be publicly indistinguishable from other French people—what they did in so-called private spaces was largely their own business—and Jews did their best to comply.36 Even today, scholars of secularism still cite Marrus to illustrate the unreasonable pressures of liberal modernity on minorities.37 Yet others, who have challenged Marrus’s depiction of French Jews, have started to unravel the history of French secularism and, with it, one of the foundational narratives of European modernity. We now know that—through their literary production and their public activism on behalf of Jewish rights in France and abroad—many French Jews maintained a visible Jewish identity and ethnic solidarity. Moreover, they often described their Judaism as the source of their devotion to the French nation, the liberal values of the French Revolution, and, after 1870, the Republic. In Ronald Schechter’s formulation, Jews ‘‘assimilated France’’ as much as France assimilated them.38 Scholars working on Eastern European Jewish history have similarly offered fresh approaches to the subject. David Roskies, for example, recounts how in Russia, Poland, and elsewhere, pogroms and eventually the Holocaust provoked crises of faith and new modes of iconoclastic Jewish literature. Yet such changes were hardly absolute ruptures with tradition, he argues; rather, certain modern, secular Yiddish texts retained sacred references from the past, which authors refashioned into sacrilegious parodies or ‘‘pogrom poems.’’39 As Anna Shternshis shows, even early Soviet Russia created spaces for the transformation of Jewish practices, despite the state’s often brutal antireligious policies.40 Since the 1990s, such developments have helped to open the way for the more direct engagement of Jewish studies with secularism and secularization. One of the most exhaustive works of research in this vein has been Shmuel

Introduction

13

Feiner’s The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (2010), which offers a broad and ambitious narrative of individual Jews’ break with traditional Judaism across Europe.41 Feiner’s work engages with, but largely rejects, the recent reassessments of secularism and secularization, reaffirming the conventional boundary between religious and secular endeavors and attempting to reconstruct the advent of secular options in the lives of European Jews. Focusing on those denounced as epicureans and materialists by their Orthodox detractors, Feiner highlights the ruptures between the increasingly polarized camps of traditionalists and progressives. Ari Joskowicz and Lisa Leff take a different approach, accounting for secularism not only as a political program but also as a rhetorical device available to different segments of European Jewry throughout the long nineteenth century. Both authors show that many Jews defined their role as political actors with a religious identity framed along confessional lines. This meant that groups like the Alliance Israe´lite Universelle gained credibility by articulating Jewish solidarity in terms of fealty to the burgeoning cause of liberal secularism.42 By the same token, in France, Germany, and England, secularism could become what Joskowicz terms ‘‘a set of contradictory images and narratives about the modernity of Others.’’43 This meant that Jews often sought to prove their own modernity and dedication to secularism by rhetorically distancing themselves from other groups, particularly Catholics, whom they portrayed as wedded to a backward religion.44 Daniel Schwartz’s study of the image of Spinoza in modern Jewish history tells yet another story of Jewish appropriations of secularism: certain Jews emphasized the particular Jewishness of key figures and ideas associated with enlightenment and progress in an effort to underscore Judaism’s own secular legitimacy.45 A different strand of scholarship has concentrated less on liberal Jewish encounters with the secular and more on the struggle of observant Judaism to maintain or reinvent tradition in the modern world. Michael Silber, Menachem Friedman, and others have shown how, rather than being repositories for the seamless continuity of halakhic Judaism, many of the most traditionalist Orthodox movements—such as Hungarian ultra-Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century and Haredi Judaism in the post–World War II period— emerged in part through radical innovations.46 Seeking to adapt to the challenges posed by the secular to traditional Jewish life, rabbis like the Hatam Sofer in Hungary and the Hazon Ish in Israel set forth novel halakhic rulings and issued new prohibitions in areas previously considered outside the purview of rabbinic authority.47 Scholarship on this period reveals how Orthodox leaders had to develop new approaches to the growing numbers of

14

Introduction

‘‘deviant’’ or secular Jews by erecting new boundaries around their flock as a ‘‘sanctified’’ observant community while also expressing some measure of solidarity with fellow Jews whose practices they deemed inauthentic.48 The work of Aviezer Ravitzky has detailed how the advent of secular Zionism complicated further the question of Orthodox Jews’ relationships with nonOrthodox Jews, producing a range of responses from grudging toleration to Religious Zionism’s articulation of a ‘‘covenant of fate’’ that included secular Zionists.49 While these authors deal only occasionally with secularism per se, they offer crucial insight into how various Orthodox movements were fundamentally products and producers of secular arrangements. Yet because this literature still situates these developments as reactive and posterior to the arrival of larger secularizing forces, it leaves largely intact the binary division of religious and secular. Different authors have attempted to challenge the secular/religious binary by suggesting that secularism emerges from religious debates and sources.50 Following the lead of Marcel Gauchet, who dated the beginnings of the separation of religious and secular concerns to the origins of Christianity, certain scholars have recently sought to show how Jewish tradition generated its own path to secularism. Their approach has produced what we might call a neo-internalist turn.51 This move, still very much underway, has taken a variety of forms. Like Gauchet, David Biale turns to ancient history and the Bible in order to excavate early Jewish sources of modern Jewish secularism. For Biale, Jewish secularism is embodied in the talmudic aphorism that ‘‘the Torah is not in the heavens’’ but that rather the Torah and Judaism are rendered meaningful in the earthly, humanly realm. Biale casts his secular net wide—finding inspiration for modern Jewish secularism in diverse thinkers from Maimonides to Spinoza and from Marx to Ben-Gurion—a fact that has sparked criticism from certain authors.52 Taking a different approach, David Sorkin has offered a new vision of a vibrant ‘‘Religious Enlightenment’’ in the eighteenth century. In this context, he situates Jewish thinkers like Moses Mendelssohn within a wider network of Protestants and Catholics who sought to establish a rationalist religious philosophy in cooperation and competition with more radical critics of traditional religion. Sorkin’s work shows how, for these thinkers, the pursuit of greater secular knowledge was understood not as a threat from the outside, but as a source of insight that had the potential to enhance one’s understanding of God and Torah.53 Other scholars have found the internal origins of secular Jewish thought elsewhere—in the early modern transformations of Jewish public morality,

Introduction

15

communal leadership models, legal theories, and modes of text study, or in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century rabbinic and Jewish lay leaders’ depictions of Judaism as a religion existing outside the purview of political authority.54 Still others have begun to posit a Sephardic genealogy of Jewish secularism, tracing its first stirrings to crypto-Jewish critiques of rabbinic law and authority, particularly in early modern Amsterdam.55 By locating the sources of Jewish secularism and secularization within Judaism itself, such works enable us to see continuities within Jewish history that have long been obscured by the battles between self-proclaimed secularists and traditionalists.

The Secularism Debate and the Jews New literature emerging out of the broader secularism debate has also gradually begun to take account of the importance of Jews. In part, this reflects several of the same factors that have combined to generate the larger critical reassessments of modern secularism and secularization theory during recent decades, including the influence of post-colonial studies and the legacy of Jewish skepticism about Christian concepts of religion. In a growing number of studies, most notably Aamir Mufti’s Enlightenment in the Colony (2007), critiques of modernity, colonialism, secularism, and their interstices have made Jews a central subject of analysis.56 Scholars such as Mufti, Gil Anidjar, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, and Robert Yelle have all issued different challenges to secularism from a Jewish perspective.57 Inspired by Talal Asad’s interventions into the field, each of these authors seeks to disentangle the association between secularism and Western progress. They also ask the following questions: What is the impact of secularism on minorities? How can we think simultaneously about different groups—particularly Jews and Muslims— who have become the foils of secularist discourse at different moments? In spite of each author’s divergent answers to these questions, each sees secularism as inseparable from Orientalism. Their approach has revealed how individual examples of oppression or resistance—ranging from Jewish responses to the efforts of nineteenth-century European liberals to privatize Judaism to the British drive for Muslim ‘‘reform’’ in colonial India—undergird the phenomena of Orientalism, secularism, antisemitism, and minoritization writ large.58 Jews also receive ample attention in recent discussions of the ‘‘secular’’ Bible, a term used to describe the transformation of the holiest book of

16

Introduction

Judaism and Christianity into a central literary and pedagogical text of the modern Western canon. Jonathan Sheehan has traced the emergence of the ‘‘Enlightenment Bible’’ in early modern Germany and England via a stream of projects of translation and scholarship that deconstructed portrayals of the Bible’s divine provenance, transforming it into a ‘‘cultural’’ text. Jews’ changing images played a key role in this process. Indeed, as Sheehan and others have shown, by the late eighteenth century German thinkers increasingly contrasted the Hebrew Bible, as an oriental text emblematic of an outmoded Judaism, with the Enlightenment Bible, a sign of German culture and modern progress.59 Eric Nelson reverses the secularization narrative with regard specifically to European political thought, contending that Renaissance humanism gave way to a reawakened interest in sacred scriptures during the sixteenth and especially the seventeenth century. He thus locates the origins of modern Western political thought in Anglo-Dutch political theorists’ fascination with the Hebrew Bible as well as rabbinic commentaries, a phenomenon that he dubs a ‘‘Hebrew Revival.’’60 Both Sheehan’s and Nelson’s books demonstrate the crucial importance of Jewish texts and images for what Sheehan terms the ‘‘transformation and reconstruction’’ (rather than the disappearance) of religion. This general tendency is also reflected in studies of Jewish literature that have emphasized the reemergence of the Hebrew Bible in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a central and often desacralized text. Perceived as the Jewish people’s greatest cultural asset, it became the subject of fierce political contestation in Europe, the United States, Palestine, and, later, Israel. Through its repeated literary transmutations, the ‘‘Hebrew Bible’’ both produced and symbolized many of the contradictions of secular Israeli culture.61 Scholars sensitive to the intersections between questions of gender and sexuality, on the one hand, and secularism or secularization, on the other, have similarly begun to intervene into debates in the field. This has been particularly true of the literature that examines the significance of the hijab, or the Islamic veil. Taking the veil as a point of departure, scholars such as Sabba Mahmoud and Joan Scott have recast the relationship between secularism, traditional Islam, and female agency, highlighting the gender-specific aspects of secularism. In their analysis, proponents of secularization have often made assumptions about sexuality and the body that have done as much to repress women as to liberate them.62 In Jewish studies, Paula Hyman, Marion Kaplan, and others have illuminated how secularization historically proceeded differently for women than

Introduction

17

men. In Eastern Europe, secular education was sometimes available sooner for women than for men. This fact, coupled with the limitations that traditional Jewish society placed on women’s learning and leadership roles, made the prospects of secular schooling and professional life particularly appealing for women. In Western and Central Europe, Jewish embourgeoisement had a paradoxical effect. Here Jewish women had fewer opportunities than did their husbands to pursue an education (whether secular or religious) or to join the workforce. They were expected instead to maintain a home with strong religious values. This dynamic corresponded to the idea of separate, gendered spheres that lay at the heart of a secular, bourgeois vision of society. Yet the privatization of Judaism did not lead to the decline of observance. Across Central and Western Europe, Jewish women often remained rooted in Jewish traditions longer than their husbands through a set of ritual practices such as upholding Jewish laws around food preparation and consumption (kashrut) and Shabbat.63 Drawing upon disciplines ranging from sociology and gender studies to cultural psychology, authors such as Susan Sered, Tova Hartman, and Orit Yafeh suggest that examining contemporary Orthodox Jewish women’s lives offers new insights into secularization’s multiple meanings as well as its relationship to feminism. Entering the fray of contemporary debates about women and traditional Judaism, these scholars focus particular attention on Orthodox women’s agency, their quotidian bodily rituals, and the ways that they operate according to a distinct, gendered Jewish temporal rhythm.64 Such work thus shows how Orthodox Jewish women have come to articulate new forms of agency through traditional practices long associated by secularist observers with restrictions on women’s autonomy.

(Re)writing Histories of Secularism and the Jews Different approaches to the processes and ideologies of secularization and secularism have developed out of multiple disciplines. Our efforts to remap these discussions through the lens of the Jewish experience are thus, of necessity, interdisciplinary. The various essays featured here comprise aspects of modern Jewish history, religion, thought, and literature, while many authors use approaches, perspectives, or texts drawn from more than one of these areas. A number of authors have undertaken studies meant to achieve greater precision regarding the meaning of the secular in the context of specific

18

Introduction

themes, movements, thinkers, or texts. Others have sought to ‘‘think big’’ about Jews and the secular and have thus offered more programmatic positions. Although each essay highlights the multivalent nature of the encounter between Jews and secularism, we find it useful to categorize this encounter according to three overarching themes, which we have classified as narration, transformation, and adaptation. With these terms, we seek to move away from the more familiar terms of the field, such as differentiation (of spheres), decline (of belief and practice), or deterioration (of communal structure and authority), all of which have tended to have unidimensional and unidirectional implications. The book’s first eleven chapters are divided into three sections that correspond to our three analytical categories. Since at least the nineteenth century, competing stories in which secularization liberated, destroyed, transformed, or bypassed Jewish life and Jewish lives shaped Jewish understandings of the secular. Part I shows how three pivotal intellectual figures of modern Jewish history—Benedict Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, and Gershom Scholem— have seen their thought repeatedly narrated by Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors in accounts that seek to describe the Jewish experience of secularization. Daniel Schwartz demonstrates how scholars of the Eastern and Central European Haskalah reclaimed Spinoza as a distinctly Jewish figure and even as a believer. It was in this context that Spinoza became, in the words of one Maskil, ‘‘our rabbi Baruch.’’ Jonathan Gribetz examines a little-known manuscript authored by the Palestinian Arab politician and intellectual Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi. Here Gribetz interprets al-Khalidi’s account as an ‘‘Islamic theory of Jewish secularism’’ centered around the notion of Mendelssohn as a figure of path-breaking importance for the self-definition of Judaism. Finally, Vivian Liska offers a rereading of Hannah Arendt’s secularism through an analysis of Arendt’s enthusiastic if idiosyncratic reaction to Scholem’s seminal Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Throughout each of these essays, we are reminded how competing narrations can construct ‘‘the secular’’ as a category, defining its expanses and limitations as well as which types of thought, action, speech, and persons it should include and exclude. In Part II the focus turns from ‘‘narration’’ to the ‘‘transformation’’ of phenomena traditionally construed as religious into categories framed as secular. By this, we mean the often self-conscious refashioning of symbols, tropes, objects, practices, concepts, or institutional arrangements that were

Introduction

19

originally understood as sacred and traditional. This transformation has often involved the unmooring and differentiation of particular elements from the larger body of religious observances, teachings, or texts of which they long formed a part. Christoph Schulte shows how Jewish secularization entailed the remaking of messianism—one of traditional Judaism’s most central and sacred ideas. In the next chapter, Galili Shahar undertakes a close textual reading of Walter Benjamin, one of Schulte’s ‘‘messianists without messiah.’’ Shahar explains how Benjamin sought simultaneously to recover and remake the ‘‘sacred sparks’’ of Jewish tradition that had been shattered by the forces of modernity. Chapter 6 presents a similar pattern on a wider scale, as it returns us to Palestine and, later, Israel. Here Michal Ben-Horin examines how Jewish musical figurations—of biblical origin and traditional significance—underwent processes of transfiguration, mutation, subversion, and retrenchment in modern Hebrew literature. Chapters 7 and 8 explore political rather than literary contexts for transformation. Scott Ury draws out the meaning of secularization for Polish Jewry, examining the emergence of a Jewish public sphere in early twentieth-century Warsaw. A burgeoning Jewish associational life, he tells us, at once imitated larger patterns of the Eastern European public sphere and constituted a Jewish subculture built in part on formerly religious ties and conceptions. In Chapter 8, Ethan Katz traces a parallel shift in the meaning of public Jewishness in a very different setting—Vichy and Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. Katz focuses on the numerous Jews from North Africa and the Middle East who tried to evade persecution by ‘‘passing’’ as Muslim, seeing this as a choice that at once mimicked and sought to circumvent the period’s larger racialization of religion. Part III, entitled ‘‘Adaptations,’’ addresses several settings in which religious Jewish thinkers and societies sought to adapt new ideas emerging out of the debates on secularism and secularization, both in order to reconfigure and to strengthen traditional Judaism. Most broadly this has meant adjusting to a changing world that calls for the theorizing of theological approaches in response to secularization, including the incorporation of secular concepts and developments into religious theology and practice. Rachel Manekin examines a striking instance of this pattern: the role that the wider contemporary discourse of Schwa¨rmerei, or religious enthusiasm, assumed among proponents of the Galician Haskalah during their early nineteenth-century struggles with Hasidism. An altogether different adaptation to secularization occurred among the writers examined by Eva Lezzi. She discusses how the

20

Introduction

modern Orthodox fiction that developed in Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century at once attempted to account for the traditional messages of the Orthodox community and the processes of secularization occurring around and within it. In Chapter 11, Arye Edrei elucidates how the emergence of modern Zionism, and the founding of the Jewish state in particular, presented unprecedented challenges to traditional halakhic views regarding the place of Jewish ‘‘transgressors’’ (what we now call secular Jews) within Jewish life. Despite their placement into one of three categories of narration, transformation, and adaptation, most of these essays treat issues that straddle the boundaries of at least two of these themes. Competing Jewish narrations of secularization proved crucial to efforts to transform tradition or incorporate secular ideas within it; likewise, what we have termed adaptation and transformation frequently occurred simultaneously in the same society, movement, or even text. Thus our efforts to categorize a series of developments should not be understood as seeking to erect fixed boundaries but rather as an attempt to theorize the shared patterns within the fluidity of religioussecular definitions and encounters. The book’s final section, a forum entitled ‘‘New Conceptions,’’ steps back from the focused studies of the preceding chapters to propose new directions in the field. David Myers, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, and Andrea Schatz have written three pieces, all in conversation with each other, that ask us to rethink secularism both as a force and a concept in the Jewish past and present. These three scholars, who initiated the year-long research group ‘‘Secularism and Its Discontents: The View from Jewish Studies’’ that laid the groundwork for this book, offer reflections that are at once empirical and programmatic. Myers focuses on the example of an ‘‘American shtetl’’ that has grown up in the state of New York—the homogeneous Satmar Hasidic town of Kiryas Joel. In this essay Myers proposes that the self-declared defenders of traditional Judaism who live in this Hasidic enclave are not merely reacting to secularism and secularization but rather constructing new interpretations of secular arrangements. The ‘‘neo-secularist propositions’’ he suggests ultimately highlight the mutability—both historical and ongoing— of religion as well as the secular. Raz-Krakotzkin’s essay exhumes neglected continuities between Christian millenarian, secularist, and antisemitic ideas about Jews, ultimately calling for a reassessment of secularism in contemporary Israeli society. In the final chapter, Schatz shows how, in the late eighteenth century, leading Jewish enlighteners and their traditionalist detractors

Introduction

21

alike sought historical antecedents that helped them to situate their proposed innovations within longstanding notions of Jewish sacred time. Schatz suggests that in order to overcome the hegemony of secular conceptions of time, we must recognize the continued relevance of Jewish temporalities. The programmatic components of these final essays speak to this book’s effort to sound a call for new terms and conversations about Jews and secularism. The book’s findings remind us that both historically and today, Jews have acted not only as subjects, imitators, or resisters but also as agents of broader secularizing developments, at once responding to wider forces and charting their own distinctively Jewish encounters with the secular. Moreover, by illustrating how permeable ‘‘religious’’ and ‘‘secular’’ boundaries and categories have so often been, the essays included here repeatedly raise the possibility that the opposition between these two categories is ill conceived and false. In short, we hope that our efforts to rethink the meaning of secular and religious in a variety of contexts—from Zionism and Haredi Judaism to Jewish literature and Jewish-Muslim relations—allow for a rethinking of the very terms that animate many of the most contentious debates in contemporary Jewish life.

PA R T I

Narrations

chapter 1

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’: Spinoza and Radical Jewish Enlightenment daniel b. schwartz

In 1845, the Haskalah’s republic of letters was roiled by a brief biographical portrait published in a Hebrew periodical. The author of the sketch was the Galician Hebrew poet and Maskil Meir Letteris (1800–1871); the subject, the rationalist philosopher and notorious Jewish heretic Benedict (ne´ Baruch) Spinoza (1632–77). Nearly two centuries earlier, in 1656, the Sephardic congregation of Amsterdam had excommunicated Spinoza for his ‘‘horrible heresies’’ and ‘‘monstrous deeds,’’ expressly prohibiting all contact with, as well as reading anything by, the future author of the Theological-Political Treatise (1670) and the Ethics (1677).1 Letteris was not the first Jewish thinker to seek to rescue the pioneering biblical critic and pantheist philosopher; nor was he the first to reclaim him for Jewish culture and identity.2 His 1845 essay was nevertheless a landmark in the history of Spinoza’s Jewish reception. Titled ‘‘The Biography of the Sage and Scholar Baruch de Spinoza, zl,’’ complete with the standard abbreviation of the eulogistic phrase ‘‘may his memory be for a blessing’’ (zikhrono li-verakhah, or zl) traditionally appended to the names of the departed, the six-page article was the first ever to be devoted to Spinoza in Hebrew literature. It was also, as the name of the piece indicated, a thoroughly hagiographic portrait, which pictured the excommunicated Spinoza as a prototype of the persecuted Maskil, while claiming that the Theological-Political Treatise contained ‘‘not a whit of heresy’’ and that Spinoza’s pantheism ‘‘rested on the foundations of our Sages.’’ By including Spinoza’s profile in a series devoted to illustrious Jewish lives,

26

Schwartz

Letteris indicated that he viewed Spinoza as not simply a ‘‘good Jew,’’ but a great one, and certainly as a worthy hero and exemplar of the Haskalah.3 With Letteris’s article, the opening shot was fired in a battle that would reverberate for decades thereafter in Central and East European Jewish culture. In the 1840s and 1850s, the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment—which had migrated from Prussia to Austrian Galicia and the Russian Empire earlier in the nineteenth century—grew increasingly polarized. On the one side stood moderates and conservatives committed to keeping the Jewish Enlightenment moored in rabbinic law and culture; opposing them were Maskilic insurgents, intent on a no-holds-barred critique of tradition. Such rifts had occurred before, but here, for the first time, the divide took the form of an open controversy over Spinoza and Spinozism specifically. The most scathing riposte to Letteris’s encomium came from the pen of the Paduan rabbi Samuel D. Luzzatto (1800–1865), a scourge of Enlightenment rationalism and longtime gadfly of a Maskilic public sphere to which he remained, notwithstanding, a regular contributor. In acid terms, Luzzatto branded Spinoza an atheist undeserving of rehabilitation in any language, not to mention in the ‘‘holy vestments’’ of Hebrew.4 If Luzzatto hoped his polemic might stem the growing attraction to Spinoza within the Haskalah, he was to be disappointed. While Letteris essentially folded, a younger generation of Maskilic iconoclasts redoubled their efforts to claim Spinoza as their precursor; they openly defended his rationalist and pantheist heresy in the face of Luzzatto’s relentless attacks, which ended only with the latter’s death in 1865. By the time of the first translation of the Ethics into Hebrew in 1885, the fashioning of Spinoza into what the late Yosef Yerushalmi called ‘‘the first culture-hero of modern secular Jews’’ was largely complete. The archetypal secular rebel had become the radical Haskalah’s ‘‘Rabbenu Baruch’’ (our Rabbi Baruch), a label given him by one of his more ardent admirers. Historians of the Haskalah have long been aware of the close relationship between the reception of Spinoza and the radicalizing of the Jewish Enlightenment in mid-nineteenth-century Eastern Europe.5 To date, however, this phenomenon has not received attention in Enlightenment studies more broadly. Developments in the field over the past decade indicate that such notice is overdue. Since the turn of the millennium, Jonathan Israel—still best known in Jewish studies for his pioneering argument for an early modern period in Jewish history—has emerged as one of the most authoritative voices in debates over the Enlightenment.6 Starting with his magisterial Radical Enlightenment (2001), and continuing with the subsequent volumes of his

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

27

now completed trilogy, Enlightenment Contested (2006) and Democratic Enlightenment (2011), Israel has proposed a new interpretation of the Enlightenment that stresses the decisive impact of radical thought on the origins of modern ideas of democracy, equality, and individual freedom.7 The story he tells centers on an inexorable war of ideas between two rival ‘‘Enlightenments’’: a ‘‘Radical Enlightenment’’ that reduced God and nature as well as mind and body to the same thing and rejected any compromise between religion and philosophy, refusing to paper over its break with the past; and a ‘‘mainstream moderate Enlightenment’’ that sought ‘‘a viable synthesis of the old and the new’’ and was reflexively accommodating of scriptural authority and the status quo.8 In its eighteenth-century heyday, the ‘‘moderate Enlightenment’’ enjoyed both state support and a sizable advantage in numbers, but, according to Israel, it was the smaller, largely clandestine, yet more coherent and cohesive ‘‘Radical Enlightenment’’ that proved, in the long run, the more consequential. Israel spurns the dominant trend in late twentieth-century Enlightenment scholarship toward disaggregating the Enlightenment along national and religious lines.9 Instead, he argues for the cosmopolitan and relatively constant character of the ‘‘moderate’’ and ‘‘radical’’ camps, as well as the controversies between them, across Europe.10 He also vouches for a comparatively early periodization of the Enlightenment that treats the years 1650 to 1750 as formative and regards all later developments as derivative of concepts introduced previously. Perhaps Israel’s most genuinely revisionist claim, however, concerns the intellectual origins of ‘‘radical Enlightenment’’ itself, which he traces to the philosophical system of Spinoza. For Israel, Spinoza, by crafting a system that identified God with the totality of nature, emasculated all claims to religious or political authority rooted in the supernatural, divine right, or providence and thus laid the philosophical foundations for revolution. Spinoza and Spinozism were ‘‘the intellectual backbone of the European Radical Enlightenment everywhere,’’ both source and symbol of its metaphysical and political secularism.11 And since modernity, rightly understood, and the ‘‘intellectual package’’ of values associated with it— ‘‘democracy, racial and sexual equality; individual liberty of lifestyle; full freedom of thought, expression, and the press; eradication of religious authority from the legislative process and education; and full separation of church and state’’—is moored in radical Enlightenment alone, it is Spinoza, as the main source of this tradition, who stands as the first authentically modern thinker.12

28

Schwartz

Israel’s case for the primacy of Spinoza in the genealogy of modernity has provoked considerable and, at times, caustic debate.13 Skeptics have taken issue with Israel’s understanding of Spinoza’s thought and influence; in particular, they have questioned the evidence for those he fingers as Spinozists.14 As yet, his thesis has not been critically evaluated in any kind of sustained way from the vantage of Spinoza’s reception in the Haskalah. This lacuna is especially glaring when one considers the importance Spinoza has traditionally assumed in pedigrees of modern Jewish thought and identity. Rightly or wrongly, Spinoza—who broke decisively with the Jewish community after his ban for heresy, but without converting to another religion—has been called the first modern or secular Jew far more often than the first modern thinker tout court. Moreover, the view of modern Jewish thought, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, as in essence one long response to the Spinozan challenge has become something of a ‘‘master narrative’’ in its own right, a cornerstone of course syllabi on the subject and of many an attempt at comprehensive synthesis.15 Whatever the merits, then, of Israel’s thesis regarding Spinoza’s impact on modern Western thought in general, a substantial literature suggests that it is even more apt as a description of his impact on modern Judaism in particular. The reception of Spinoza was indeed a spur to, as well as a source and symbol of, the secularization of Jewish thought and identity. At the same time, there are certain aspects of the Jewish Maskilic encounter with Spinoza that distinguish this reception from the global definition of radical Enlightenment developed by Israel, and that indeed raise questions about the universal reach of this model. One involves periodization. Whereas Israel contends that Spinozism proved just as obsessive and divisive in eighteenth-century Jewish circles as it did in all other early Enlightenment milieus, I contend that it only emerged as a clear focus of controversy between Jews in the nineteenthcentury Haskalah of Central and Eastern Europe. My other criticism concerns the nature of the reception—that is, how radical Maskilim actually read, understood, and represented Spinoza. The hallmark of radical Enlightenment, in Israel’s view, and likewise of Spinozism, was the jettisoning of tradition, the refusal of any of the myriad compromises with religion that characterized the ‘‘moderate Enlightenment.’’ For all the revisionist elements of his thesis in Enlightenment historiography, the narrative that unfolds in his multivolume history is basically a variation on one of the most classic of secularization stories: it is a story of rupture with the past and negation of religion, inaugurated by Spinoza and pursued

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

29

with relish by his intellectual children. The eighteenth-century radical Enlightenment celebrated Spinoza as a nonbeliever, revolutionary, and cosmopolitan. The Maskilim in the Jewish version of radical Enlightenment likewise heralded the Amsterdam heretic as a symbol of modernity, anticlericalism, and the ‘‘freedom to philosophize.’’ Yet I want to underscore here that they also appropriated him somewhat differently: as a pantheist rather than as an atheist; as an heir to an underground history of Jewish esoteric thought rather than as an advocate of total break from tradition; and as a ‘‘Jewish’’ rather than strictly universal thinker and hero. In short, the Maskilim perceived Spinoza’s modernity, and by extension their own, less as a flat repudiation of the medieval than as a revolution from within. In what follows, after a brief discussion of the periodization of Spinoza’s Jewish reception, I analyze the image of Spinoza in the work of the two Eastern European Jewish freethinkers who were the greatest champions of Spinoza in the Haskalah and can thus serve as case studies: Salomon Rubin (1833–1910), who produced the first translation of Spinoza into Hebrew and was the most avid Spinozist in nineteenth-century Hebrew literature; and Abraham Krochmal (1818–88), who coined the label ‘‘Rabbenu Baruch.’’ Their reclamations of Spinoza reveal not only what Jewish intellectual secularization shares with the secularization of modern Western thought more broadly—namely, a common source in Spinoza. They also reveal how it differs. And by yielding a more complex view of a radical Haskalah consisting of both accommodations and repudiations, continuities and ruptures, perhaps they can point the way to a more flexible and pluralistic concept of radical Enlightenment.16

Periodizing Jewish Spinozism When did Spinozism become central to the history of Jewish culture? Despite its vast sweep, Israel’s Radical Enlightenment contains hardly any references to Jewish thinkers who hailed from, and often continued to identify with, the people that had originally expelled him. There are good reasons for this omission: the writ of excommunication against Spinoza issued by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam had expressly stipulated that no one should ‘‘read anything composed or written by him.’’ However scrupulously obeyed, it is a fact that for the first hundred years after his expulsion we know of but a

30

Schwartz

single written rejoinder to Spinoza’s philosophy from the pen of a Jew, the Certamen Philosophicum (1684) of Isaac Orobio de Castro. Nevertheless, as if to preempt the charge that the allegedly pan-European character of the preoccupation with Spinozism prior to 1750 might have at least one notable exception, Israel has since vouched for the existence of a ‘‘pre-1740 Sephardic Jewish Enlightenment’’ or simply an ‘‘Early Sephardic Enlightenment’’ concentrated in the major urban centers of northwestern Europe and steeped in the same brew of Deistic, Spinozist, and materialist ideas that underpinned the radical Enlightenment in all its incarnations.17 In support of this argument, Israel relies heavily on one source, the six-volume Lettres juives (1738–42) written by the French freethinker Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’Argens (1703–71). Specifically, he contends that d’Argens’s fictionalized portrait of the correspondence between a small cadre of philosophically disposed and culturally refined Sephardic rabbis and travelers skeptical of talmudic law and revealed religion more generally was not a story invented with no basis in fact. On the contrary, it bore witness to an actual social phenomenon—the emergence of ‘‘a freethinking, Deistic and perhaps irreligious, fringe’’ in port cities like Amsterdam, Hamburg, and London that was ‘‘in some degree influenced by radical philosophical ideas, Deism, and Spinozism.’’18 Beyond the testimony of the Marquis d’Argens, Israel presents other proof for his positing of both an early Jewish Enlightenment and ‘‘the pervasive presence of Spinozism and quasi-Spinozist deism’’ therein. His evidence includes the case of three self-identified ‘‘Neo-Karaites’’ expelled from the Portuguese synagogue of Amsterdam in 1712 for their denial of the Oral Law and rebellion against rabbinic authority, in which for the first and only time since 1656 the rabbinate resorted to the exceptionally harsh formula used in the writ of excommunication against Spinoza.19 He also points to the controversy provoked in 1703 by Hakham David Nieto, the chief rabbi of the Bevis Marks synagogue of London. Seeking to combat the Deist heresy, Nieto insisted that ‘‘what they call Nature [is] nothing other than the Providence of God,’’ but his sermon was misconstrued by some members of the congregation as an endorsement of the pantheist heresy in its place.20 Finally, Israel relies upon Orobio’s polemic against Spinozism, which he maintains had a Jewish target audience at least in part, even though the critique was written solely at the behest of a Dutch Collegiant troubled by Spinoza’s geometric proofs for a metaphysical monism and determinism, and in fact dealt only obliquely with Spinoza and not at all with the devastating criticism of Judaism in the Theological-Political Treatise.21

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

31

Indeed, Israel and others have convincingly shown that, by the first half of the eighteenth century, freethinking, anti-rabbinic tendencies were increasingly rife among a rarefied clique of upper-crust and cosmopolitan Sephardic (and a smaller number of Ashkenazic) Jews living in port cities like Amsterdam, Hamburg, and London.22 It stands to reason that many of these disaffected Jews would have read Spinoza or at least absorbed his ideas secondhand. No less likely is it that their opponents within the Jewish community— defenders, like Orobio, of miracles, divine providence, and the binding authority of both Written and Oral Torah—were compelled to develop working knowledge of the Deistic and pantheistic heresies they were countering. These qualifications aside, however, Israel provides virtually no proof that this irreligious fringe constituted a distinctively Jewish Enlightenment in even a loose, thinly coherent sense of the term. Certainly, they represented no organized challenge to rabbinic Judaism; the attitudes of these Deists to their Jewish background tended more toward indifference than strong identification. As for the connection between this ‘‘specifically Jewish brand of early Enlightenment thought’’ and Spinoza, here the argument is, if anything, even weaker.23 Israel fails to substantiate his contention that the increasingly secular outlook of Sephardic and Ashkenazic elites in eighteenth-century Europe was caused by the reading or reception of Spinoza’s works, or even through the assimilation of his ideas by osmosis. It remains a fact that until the middle of the eighteenth century, Jewish voices were almost entirely absent from the discourse about Spinoza. They may have read him, but they did not—at least to our knowledge—write about him. This is true of both the majority who detested Spinoza (and would be expected to submit more readily to the terms of the ban) and the radical fringe receptive to his biblical criticism and onesubstance doctrine. Of the various freethinking tracts affirming Spinoza and his philosophy that were written in this period and that have trickled down to us, we are aware of not one from the hand of a Jew. While the absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence, there is little to suggest that Spinozism was as critical a factor in early modern Judaism (Sephardic or Ashkenazic) as it was, per Israel, in other Early Enlightenment milieus. Nor is there persuasive proof of Spinoza’s centrality to what, in Jewish historiography, has been traditionally (if, increasingly, controversially) regarded as the first stage of the Jewish Enlightenment: the Berlin Haskalah of the latter decades of the eighteenth century.24 While the two greatest philosophers of the time, Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) and Salomon Maimon (1753–1800), did indeed engage with Spinoza’s metaphysics in ways that

32

Schwartz

dramatically affected the image and interpretation of the heterodox thinker in German thought, the impact of their interventions on the Jewish thought of the Haskalah was, in the short term at least, limited.25 At no point did intra-Jewish debate over Spinoza reach such a pitch that it became a crucial part of the intellectual history of the eighteenth-century Haskalah. The picture changes when we turn to the Haskalah of nineteenthcentury Jewish Eastern Europe. Here, for the first time, we have clear evidence of Spinozism functioning as a radicalizing and polarizing agent in Jewish culture. This came on the heels of a sweeping revision of Spinoza’s image in European thought in the wake of the landmark ‘‘pantheism controversy’’ of the 1780s and 1790s. What had started as a private exchange between two rival thinkers, the Enlightenment philosopher Mendelssohn and the Counter-Enlightenment philosopher Friedrich H. Jacobi (1743–1819), about the ‘‘Spinozism’’ of the late Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), spiraled into an epic feud that, through no intention of the original antagonists, vaulted Spinoza from the shadowy world of underground literature into the mainstream of modern thought. This was especially the case in Germany, where thinkers like Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, and even the young Hegel played a key role in the Spinoza renaissance.26 Of the many facets of this volte-face in Spinoza’s image, two are most relevant here. To begin with, the perception of Spinoza as a prototypical modern thinker gained in authority. His one-substance doctrine was increasingly regarded as a defining juncture in the history of thought, a challenge to be confronted by friend and foe alike. Hegel stated this most memorably when he called Spinoza a ‘‘testing point’’ and stated, ‘‘You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all.’’27 The other notable development was a new understanding of Spinoza’s identification of God with infinite nature. The German Idealists and Romantics were nearly united in rejecting the view of Spinoza as a figure of godless impiety. They stressed the Deus in Deus, sive Natura (God, or Nature) and thus saw Spinoza primarily as a pantheist (for whom God and the world are one) or even panentheist (for whom God fully permeates the world but at the same time exceeds it) as opposed to an atheist, and as an idealist rather than a materialist. In the well-known words of the poet and fragmentist Novalis, Spinoza was immortalized as ‘‘that Godintoxicated man.’’ This sharp turn in Spinoza’s reputation formed a crucial context for the Maskilic encounter with the arch-heretic. For one, the increasingly dominant image of the philosopher as God-intoxicated at the very least complicated

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

33

the nexus between Spinoza and secularization. Nineteenth-century Jewish enlighteners found themselves heir to a newly romantic view of Spinoza as a dissident who was opposed to religious orthodoxy to be sure, but who was a deeply religious soul nonetheless. Heinrich Heine would famously write in 1833 that ‘‘all our contemporary philosophers, perhaps often without knowing, see the world through lenses that were ground by Spinoza.’’28 Of Maskilic admirers of Spinoza like Letteris, Rubin, and Abraham Krochmal, this statement could be slightly modified to read that they not only saw the world through lenses ground by Spinoza; they also saw Spinoza through lenses ground by the German Romantics. (Just how important these lenses were becomes clear in our discussion of Krochmal’s Spinoza.) Understanding that the recuperation of Spinoza in European thought occurred prior to his Jewish rehabilitation also brings a central motivation for the latter into sharp relief. Repossessing Spinoza in the nineteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment was, at least in part, a gesture of emulation and ‘‘catching up,’’ even when this act bore with it a particular ‘‘Jewish’’ claim to the Amsterdam philosopher. The bidding up of Spinoza’s stock among non-Jews first lent critical encouragement to liberal and revolutionary Jews, eager to demonstrate the contributions of a Jew to modern thought, to follow suit. In other words, the Jewish recovery of Spinoza bears out what students of the specific dimensions of Jewish secularization (contributors to what Naomi Seidman calls a ‘‘Jewish ‘secularization thesis’ ’’) have long recognized— namely, the close link, in the Jewish case, between modernization and westernization or Europeanization.29 For all the spirit of revolt that was evinced in the repatriation of a notorious heretic—revolt against the traditional rabbinate and community, even against advocates of a more conservative Haskalah—the knowledge that Spinoza had been rehabilitated by exemplars of ‘‘high culture’’ like Lessing and Herder, and consequently the sense that there was symbolic capital to be had in claiming at least a share of his inheritance, conditioned this reception from the start. Already by the appearance of Letteris’s article in 1845, German Jewish reformers and radicals had begun to evince a new enthusiasm for Spinoza. The year 1837 saw the publication of two books that testified to this development: Berthold Auerbach’s Spinoza: A Historical Novel, which presented a fictionalized version of Spinoza’s evolution from rabbinic prodigy to lonely dissenter; and the self-proclaimed ‘‘Young Spinozist’’ Moses Hess’s Holy History of Mankind, which portrayed Spinoza as the founder of a global and pantheist religion of reason that would supersede both Judaism and

34

Schwartz

Christianity and culminate in a classless society. Common to both was a perception of Spinoza as both herald and messiah of modernity, as well as prototype of the emancipated Jew.30 The significance of the comparatively ‘‘late’’ periodization of Spinoza’s reception in the Haskalah for understanding Jewish intellectual history, and the role of Spinoza and his new secular philosophy therein, is twofold. First, it suggests that Spinozism was not the only or even the chief source of the crisis of authority in eighteenth-century Jewish society and thus serves a cautionary note against those who would treat ‘‘Jewish intellectual history [as] essentially derivative, representing no more than a Jewish version of a universal European trend.’’31 Second, it indicates that the intellectual context for the Maskilic reception of Spinoza, shaped as it was by the residues of Romanticism, differed sharply from that of the eighteenth-century thinkers studied by Israel.32 Differences in the periodization of the Maskilic encounter with Spinoza, in other words, are intimately connected to differences in the Maskilic image of Spinoza. We cannot properly understand the how until we have an accurate grasp of the when.

The New Guide for the Perplexed The Eastern European Hebraist Salomon Rubin was a member of the last generation of Maskilim from Habsburg Galicia, which became a focal point of the Hebrew Enlightenment in the early nineteenth century.33 Over his long career, he produced an amazingly diverse scholarly and journalistic oeuvre spanning some six decades of Hebrew literature. This body of work included several Hebrew books on Spinoza, among them translations of the Ethics and the unfinished Compendium of Hebrew Grammar.34 His championing of the Amsterdam philosopher began in 1856, by mere coincidence the two hundredth anniversary of Spinoza’s excommunication. That fall, out of the Hebrew press of Vienna, there appeared the first volume of a work entitled Moreh nevukhim he-hadash (The new guide for the perplexed). By this point, the thirty-three-year-old Rubin had already cemented a reputation as a radical Maskil with his 1854 Hebrew translation of the ‘‘Young German’’ Karl Gutzkow’s well-known drama Uriel Acosta, a play that, appearing not long before the 1848 revolutions, had become a symbol of the liberal cause throughout Europe.35 Now Rubin turned his attention to the other legendary

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

35

heretic of seventeenth-century Sephardic Amsterdam. In two volumes of roughly thirty pages each, Rubin provided a rambling apologia for an audacious venture—a proposal to translate Spinoza’s two most famous works, the Ethics and the Theological-Political Treatise, into Hebrew. Yet the justification for this project was in fact already inherent in Rubin’s title, which cast Spinoza as the heir to Maimonides—the ‘‘Great Eagle’’ of medieval Jewish philosophy—and conferred on his system the arresting label of a ‘‘new guide for the perplexed.’’36 Maimonides was arguably the most venerable of Haskalah heroes, his eminence in the pantheon matched only by that of Mendelssohn.37 This prestige extended to the Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides’s tour de force of rationalist metaphysics. Well into the nineteenth century, this centuriesold classic of Jewish philosophy was regarded as de rigueur reading for the aspiring Maskil. Though the medieval Aristotelian framework of the work was widely perceived as passe´, this did not lead to a wholesale repudiation of its perceived authority. On the contrary, as Amos Funkenstein has shown, many—including major thinkers such as Salomon Maimon and Nachman Krochmal, supposed exemplars of ‘‘radical’’ and ‘‘moderate’’ Haskalah, respectively—responded to this obsolescence by seeking, whenever possible, to reconcile Maimonides with current knowledge.38 Rubin balked at such deference. By titling his work The New Guide for the Perplexed, Rubin came, in essence, not to praise Maimonides but to bury him. Just as Spinoza, in the Theological-Political Treatise, cast his repudiation of the allegorical method of biblical interpretation as a break with Maimonides in particular, so too Rubin equated his repossession of Spinoza with the liberation of the Haskalah from the shadow of the titan of medieval Jewish rationalism.39 For too long, he argued, ‘‘the Maskilic youth of our people’’ have been compelled to begin their pursuit of hokhmah (‘‘philosophy’’) with ‘‘the learned works of the sages of Spain and Arabia,’’ the Moreh nevukhim chief among them. ‘‘Yet the philosophy of the Guide, with its reliance on the doctrines of Aristotle, is as remote from the truth as east from west, as the days of yore from the present.’’ Rather than starting with Maimonides, the young scholar alienated from the traditional beit midrash should begin his intellectual journey with Spinoza, via the familiar Hebrew of Rubin’s promised translation. As one of the founders of modern philosophy, it was Spinoza, not Maimonides, who was best suited for the role of nineteenth-century ‘‘guide for the perplexed.’’40

36

Schwartz

The problem with Maimonides, however, was not just the dated quality of his metaphysics. Rubin also finds him wanting as a model for the Haskalah. His Maimonides has all the stereotypical features of the dithering moderate in the eyes of the ideological purist. He is antiquated, derivative, lacking in boldness, desperate to please everyone; above all, he is internally divided, ever the scholar-rabbi, the philosopher-politician. Spinoza, on the other hand, is the ideal fantasy of the radical Maskil. He represents a fresh type of Haskalah hero, one beholden to no wealthy patron or religious authority and aspiring only to the ‘‘freedom to philosophize.’’ Marginal and impoverished, like many a Galician Maskil, he is for this very reason intellectually free—and thus able to become the founder of ‘‘a new path that our forefathers could not have imagined.’’ The image of Spinoza presented by Rubin is thus, on the one hand, quite revolutionary. In the context of a Hebrew Enlightenment traditionally anxious about embracing innovation too openly, Rubin’s Spinoza—for all his residual ties to Maimonides—appears bluntly novel. Witness how Rubin introduces the Theological-Political Treatise to the reader: ‘‘There,’’ he writes, Spinoza ‘‘demonstrates that all the prophecies were only imaginary visions, and all the miracles mere exaggerations hanging by a thin hair on the laws of nature, and Moses only a wise politician who was great in his time.’’41 This summary does little to extricate the pioneering biblical critic from radical heresy. It is passages like these that lead Shmuel Feiner to claim in Haskalah and History that the Spinoza of The New Guide for the Perplexed ‘‘was not a legitimate bearer of Jewish tradition but a religious revolutionary relying solely on his own intelligence . . . an example of Kantian man, proclaiming his own full freedom.’’42 In this view, rousting Maimonides from his perch in the Maskilic pantheon and installing Spinoza in his place was a challenge to the Haskalah to grow up—to wean itself, finally, from the old in favor of the new. Yet the relationship between Spinoza and the Jewish past, as represented by Rubin, is in fact more complicated. For all his emphasis on the trailblazing nature of Spinoza in contrast to Maimonides, Rubin also meant to show that Spinoza’s ‘‘modernity’’ was secreted in Jewish sources and was thus not the product of a total break with Judaism. Spinoza, in other words, was a distinctively—and not merely accidentally—Jewish thinker. The Hebrew language, by blurring the boundaries between the old and the new, the holy and the profane, was critical to this ‘‘Judaizing’’ of Spinoza. In part, the use of Hebrew by the Eastern European Maskilim was a tactical

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

37

move, a way of broadening the cultural horizons of young Jewish males (and a smaller number of females) in a language that would supposedly be familiar to them, while avoiding a Yiddish vernacular seen as irremediably corrupt. Yet it was also supported by a genuine if rudimentary ideology of Haskalah Hebraism, which drew on the traditional sanctity of the language and imagined Hebrew as a formative and organic factor in Jewish peoplehood. (This was yet another consequence of the survival of a Hebrew ‘‘Enlightenment’’ movement well into the nineteenth century: its inflection by language-based concepts of identity more typically associated with Romantic nationalism.) We find this reasoning in Rubin’s defense of his plan to render Spinoza in Hebrew: ‘‘Who, then,’’ he asks, ‘‘will deny to our holy language the right to restore to her bosom the words of Spinoza, her Hebrew son?’’43 Thirty years later, upon finally completing his translation of the Ethics, Rubin would reiterate this rationale for rendering Spinoza in Hebrew with the blunt assertion that ‘‘ours is the birthright’’ (lanu mishpat ha-bekhorah).44 Another element that must be considered is the rhetorical nature of Haskalah Hebrew itself. The Maskilim tended toward a highly florid and allusive Hebrew known as melitzah.45 This form favored the use of biblical and, to a lesser extent, rabbinic phrases, so as to create a virtual echo chamber of canonical references within the text. There was a double-edged thrust to this Maskilic strategy. On one hand, the heavy dose of citations might serve as a bridge between traditional Jewish literature (itself laden with intertextuality) and Haskalah writing, obscuring the novelty that characterized the latter. Yet this essentially classicizing impulse could easily be adapted for subversive ends, since it abetted the transposition of deviant subject matter into a familiar register. Moreover, it did so often in a veiled and indirect manner, without clearly delineating for the reader the passage being quoted or the parallel being drawn. Haskalah Hebrew thus facilitated a recovery of Spinoza for Judaism at the level of style alone, over and beyond any explicit rationale detailed on the surface of the text. In one of his many flourishes, Rubin writes at one point that ‘‘everyone, young and old, cleric and layman, rabbi and philosopher now supplicate before the dust of Baruch, and to his name and memory all say: ‘Glory’ [kulo ’omer kavod].’’46 No Hebrew reader familiar with Jewish liturgy could miss this reference in the coda to Psalm 29, traditionally recited every Friday evening during the inaugural Shabbat service and again Shabbat morning with the returning of the Torah to the Ark. No Hebrew reader, moreover, could fail to be struck by the change of addressee, as the numinous God whose kingship over nature is celebrated in

38

Schwartz

the psalm—the God whose voice ‘‘causes hinds to calve and strips forests bare, while in his Temple all say, ‘Glory!’ ’’—is replaced, in Rubin’s account, by Spinoza. Sly or sincere, or somewhere in between, the splicing here of a well-known biblical fragment speaks to the multivocal quality of appropriations of Spinoza in Hebrew. Even a text with a clear secularizing objective— enlarging the boundaries of Hebrew literature to include the writings of a historical heretic—operates within a horizon of the sacred. Yet Rubin also sought to reclaim Spinoza for Judaism at the level of content. Alongside the image of Spinoza as the founder of ‘‘a new path that our forefathers could not have imagined,’’ one finds another view of the seventeenth-century heretic in Rubin’s account, that of an heir to a subterranean legacy of metaphysical speculation within Judaism. This perception is most acute in the exposition of Spinoza’s pantheism. Rubin presents Spinoza’s argument for the ultimate unity of God and nature, ostensibly one of his most radical heresies, as derived from an essentially mystical and esoteric interpretation of the divine concealed within a long line of premodern Jewish texts. Echoes of this tradition could be found dating back to the Bible and Talmud, yet its most noteworthy exponents were the medieval Jewish Neoplatonists and kabbalists, including thinkers such as Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, and Moses Cordovero. Maimonides and his school, seen here as representative of an ‘‘official’’ Jewish philosophical orthodoxy opposed to this monistic undercurrent, were largely excluded from this list of Spinozist precursors. Once again, then, Maimonides is effectively repudiated through the elevation of Spinoza; only here the emphasis is not on the Amsterdam heretic’s break from the medieval Jewish intellectual tradition in toto, but rather on his emergence from a select layer of this tradition— from the realm of speculation known in Hebrew as hokhmat ha-nistar, the knowledge of hidden matters.47 Thus we hear Rubin arguing in a sequel to his New Guide, written to rebut criticism of his earlier work, that ‘‘our philosopher Baruch whose source is blessed [barukh] is our brother, our kith and kin even in his outlook. His words are words of tradition, the foundations of his thought are in the mountains of Zion, and the axioms of his system rest on the pillars of the wisdom of our people from of old.’’48 Years later, in the introduction to his translation of the Ethics, he would put this more succinctly: Spinoza’s ideas, he claimed, were ‘‘fundamentally Jewish from beginning to end.’’49 Rubin’s Spinoza was thus at once a rebel against the Jewish past, and a revealer of its pantheistic secrets. This ambiguity in the constructed Spinoza

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

39

of Moreh nevukhim he-hadash suggests a more complex vision of ‘‘the first modern Jew’’ than mere foil to a caricature of the medieval Jewish intellectual (or moderate Maskil) represented by Maimonides. Rubin may have questioned the relevance of Maimonides to the mid-nineteenth-century Maskil. He did not question the interpretive frame of a ‘‘guide for the perplexed.’’ For the very premise of the Guide endures here: that by burrowing beneath the literal, exoteric sense of Jewish sacred texts (the nigleh) one might arrive at an esoteric truth (the nistar) capable of resolving the ostensible contradiction between reason and faith, revelation and contemporary thought—indeed, between Spinoza and Judaism. To summarize, Rubin, in his reception of Spinoza, presents two fundamentally distinct visions of radical Jewish Enlightenment, of what it is and where it comes from. The first—which pivots on the contrast between Spinoza and Maimonides—is a vision of irreversible rifts and implacable oppositions, of zero-sum contests between moderates unable or unwilling to push away from the safe harbor of tradition and radicals who bravely cut their moorings and embrace the ‘‘new’’ qua new. It is, essentially, the ecumenical vision of radical Enlightenment endorsed by Jonathan Israel. The second vision, on the other hand, is one of surprising oscillations between the sacred and the secular and subterranean links with the Jewish past; of the survival of ‘‘medieval’’ genres like ‘‘chains of tradition’’ and ‘‘guides for the perplexed’’ supposedly the crutch of moderate Maskilim alone, concerned to mask innovation as tradition. In short, this is a vision of radical Haskalah as a revolution from within, of a ‘‘secular’’ rebellion against the existing order that draws its legitimacy from ‘‘religious’’ potentialities immanent to Judaism.

Rabbenu Baruch The label ‘‘Rabbenu Baruch’’ appeared for the first time in Even ha-roshah (Foundation stone), an 1871 text that was one of the main apologetic works about Spinoza and his thought to emerge from the nineteenth-century Hebrew Enlightenment. Its author was Abraham Krochmal, a radical Maskil who was the son of the more illustrious (and more religiously moderate) Galician thinker Nachman Krochmal (hence the first word of the title, Even, an acronym of Abraham ben Nachman).50 On the title page, in a sly echo of the divine promise recorded in Zechariah 3:9—‘‘And I will remove this land’s sin in one day’’—the younger Krochmal wrote, ‘‘And I will remove this

40

Schwartz

land’s sin against the philosopher Rabbenu Baruch d’Espinoza z l in one day.’’ Despite its title, Krochmal’s Even ha-roshah was in fact a loose ‘‘translation’’ of Johann Gottfried Herder’s God, Some Conversations, a 1787 work often credited with spearheading the revitalization of Spinozism in German Idealism and Romanticism.51 Krochmal’s only acknowledgment of this debt came in a postscript to his promise to ‘‘remove this land’s sin against the philosopher Rabbenu Baruch d’Espinoza zl in one day,’’ to which he added ‘‘in the manner of one of the righteous gentiles, the wise German philosopher Herder, zl.’’ What we have here, then, is an appropriation of an appropriation—a ‘‘Judaizing’’ not only of Spinoza, but of a landmark work in his reception. A work like Even ha-roshah thus makes for a fascinating and illuminating case study of the dynamics of Spinoza’s reception in the Haskalah, since it testifies to the entwining of this reception in an intellectual field occupied by both Jews and non-Jews, while also furnishing evidence of its eccentricities. Abraham Krochmal was one of the most radical Maskilim of his day.52 Along with his fellow Galician gadfly Joshua Heschel Schorr, he was one of the founders and early editors of He-Haluts (The pioneer), a journal, inaugurated in 1852, that sought to advance the cause of comprehensive halakhic reform by overthrowing the cautious approach to the historical criticism of tradition exhibited by the elders of the Haskalah.53 If his early essays lacked the sardonic bite of Schorr’s prose, they were no less assiduous in their withering critiques of rabbinic interpretations of the Torah and the legislation to which they gave rise. Krochmal was especially exercised by the Jewish dietary restrictions. Repeatedly, he bemoaned the talmudic amplification of the biblical ban on terefah (signifying originally an animal mortally wounded— literally, ‘‘torn’’ to pieces—by beasts of prey) to include myriad prohibitions far removed from the meaning of the term in context, and he blasted contemporary rabbinic authorities for the waste and hardship caused by their upholding of such stringencies.54 Yet Krochmal did not fix his arrows on the Oral Torah alone. His radicalism was most conspicuous in his rejection of the Mosaic authorship of the Written Torah and of the infallibility of the Masoretic text. In Ha-Ketav ve-ha-mikhtav (Scripture and original), a work of biblical text criticism published in 1874, three years after Even ha-roshah, Krochmal made several emendations to the work of the Masoretes, though he attributed these changes to a more august thinker than himself. In a wholly fictitious preface, Krochmal claimed to have ‘‘found’’ these fixes in never-before-published writings by Spinoza, which had survived thanks to a

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

41

rather preposterous chain of transmission that stretched from Amsterdam to Galicia and included among its links none other than the Ba’al Shem Tov (c. 1700–1760), the founder of Hasidism.55 Many nineteenth-century Maskilim were first exposed to modern biblical criticism, and likely Spinoza as well, via Krochmal’s writings. In his landmark Hebrew autobiography Hata’ot ne‘urim (Sins of youth), the Russian Maskil and later Zionist Moses Lilienblum (1843–1910) would recall having lost his entire spiritual inheritance the instant Krochmal persuaded him of the falsity of belief in the divine origin and Mosaic authorship of Torah, adding that from that point on ‘‘the God who guided me was like the God of Spinoza.’’56 In turning to Herder for inspiration, Krochmal was far from alone among modern Jewish thinkers. Herder’s appeal to European Jewish intellectuals of his own and later generations was broad and diverse. Maskilim eager to forge a ‘‘Jewish Enlightenment Bible’’ found inspiration in his defense of the imaginative riches of biblical poetry; nineteenth-century Wissenschaft scholars and popularizers of Jewish history valorized his historicist method and Humanita¨tsideal; and later cultural nationalists appropriated his concept of Volksgeist.57 Another aspect of the early German Romantic thinker’s legacy that resonated with future Jewish thinkers, and that so far has mostly escaped notice, was his path-breaking reevaluation of Spinoza. Writing in the midst of the ‘‘pantheism controversy,’’ Herder challenged the very premise that Spinoza’s radical scientific naturalism was atheistic by definition. He composed God, Some Conversations as a set of five dialogues between Theophron, an apologist for the seventeenth-century philosopher and a stand-in for Herder himself, and Philolaus, who begins by voicing all the common prejudices against Spinoza yet is ultimately persuaded of their groundlessness by his own reading and Theophron’s defense. Herder himself admitted that his was hardly a literal reading of Spinoza’s philosophy. To rescue Spinoza’s monism, Herder transformed the static substance of the Ethics into a vitalistic ‘‘primal force of all forces’’ that accorded better with the organic concept of nature then emerging. Moreover, he tiptoed around Spinoza’s stern objection to teleology of any kind, arguing that the exclusion of an extra-mundane God arbitrarily directing the affairs of the world from without did not rule out the existence of ends that would be fully internal to nature. But Herder did not think any creative reinterpretation was required to free Spinoza from the charge of atheism. That he was no atheist was ‘‘plain on every page’’ of the Ethics since ‘‘for him the idea of God is the first and last, yes, I might even say the only idea of all.’’58 Nor, according to Herder,

42

Schwartz

was Spinoza a pantheist in the strict sense of one who equates God with the material universe. While Spinoza’s God was fully omnipresent in the cosmos as its immanent cause, he was not crudely identical with it. A distinction between God and world persisted, since the universe might be conceived as endless in both time and space, yet it remained conditioned by these categories; whereas only God was truly eternal in the sense of being absolutely selfsufficient and unconditioned—the ‘‘Infinite One’’ who is the metaphysical ground for all being. ‘‘I now see,’’ Philolaus confesses, ‘‘that our philosopher has been as unjustly accused of pantheism as of atheism.’’ Though Herder does not use the term, his Spinoza is more panentheistic than pantheistic, in that the world exists within God, yet God is not enclosed in the world.59 Herder thus reclaimed Spinoza as both an exemplar of a consistent and thoroughgoing naturalism and as a bona fide religious thinker.60 His 1787 tract was central to the striking revival of Spinozism in German Romanticism. The work also captured the attention of later Jewish thinkers eager to rehabilitate Spinoza. If Herder had been concerned to show that one could embrace Spinoza’s unorthodox concepts of God and freedom without abandoning Christianity, nineteenth-century Maskilim would seek to demonstrate the same with regard to Judaism. Toward the end of his groundbreaking 1845 Hebrew sketch of Spinoza, Letteris furnished a list of all the prior references to Spinoza he had encountered in Hebrew literature while singling out one non-Hebrew (and, indeed, non-Jewish) work for mention—Herder’s God.61 Abraham Krochmal went considerably further, producing a Hebrew translation of God for the Haskalah nearly a century after its composition. Yet his was far from an entirely faithful rendering. Rather, in a manner typical of Maskilic translations, he altered Herder’s text in ways both small and significant, all with the aim of abetting its domestication—and, by extension, the appropriation of Spinoza—within Jewish thought and literature. Let me here briefly discuss two modifications of the original that speak to this overriding objective. By far the most important change to Herder’s God in Krochmal’s Even ha-roshah involves the identity of the interlocutors. In place of Philolaus and Theophron, Krochmal substituted two venerable figures of the Galician Haskalah. The part of Philolaus—the critic of Spinoza eventually won over—was assigned to the Galician rabbi, noted Talmud scholar, and conservative Maskil Tzvi Hirsch Chajes (the ‘‘Maharatz Chajes’’), under whom Krochmal had studied for a time in his youth. Closer to home, the role of Theophron—Spinoza’s defender (if occasionally also

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

43

critic)—was given to none other than his father Rabbi Nachman Krochmal. ‘‘RaNaK,’’ the so-called ‘‘Galician Socrates,’’ had been a hero and mentor to successive generations of Eastern European Maskilim, and by 1871 his posthumously published The Guide for the Perplexed of the Time (1851), a dense me´lange of metaphysical speculation, idealistic philosophy of Jewish history, and historical criticism of Jewish religious literature, was already regarded as a classic of nineteenth-century Jewish Religionsphilosophie.62 To the limited degree that scholars have taken note of Even ha-roshah, they have generally read it as an attempt to reconstruct conversations that actually took place or at least a good faith effort by the son to convey the father’s true if typically concealed thoughts about the Amsterdam philosopher. Virtually no one has pointed out that the historical Chajes and the elder Krochmal are surrogates for the wholly fanciful Philolaus and Theophron of Herder’s God and that at least the majority of the dialogue is a fairly loyal translation of the original German.63 It is hard to imagine that Abraham Krochmal would have credited his father with sympathy for Spinoza if he knew this to be a bald-faced lie. Still, the casting of Nachman to play Theophron should, in my view, be seen first and foremost as a strategic choice on Abraham’s part, a calculation that an apology for Spinoza and Spinozism would carry more weight if ascribed to the most towering thinker in the history of the Eastern European Jewish Enlightenment, and one associated with a moderate brand of Haskalah to boot, rather than to a ‘‘Young Hebrew’’ along the lines of Rubin, Schorr, himself, and other radical Maskilim. But what made this choice credible? The Guide for the Perplexed of the Time contains but a single reference to ‘‘the philosopher Baruch,’’ whom the elder Krochmal groups with the early Christians as ‘‘those who were close to us and distanced themselves’’—a description that does little to absolve Spinoza of heresy and mitigate his rupture from Judaism.64 Moreover, throughout the work, Krochmal defends, however unconventionally, the basic principles that Spinoza had undermined in the Theological-Political Treatise, from the metaphysical chosenness of Israel to the spiritual content of Jewish law, from the belief that the Bible contains esoteric truth to the integration of religion and philosophy. He reinterprets the tradition instead of rejecting it, taking Maimonides rather than Spinoza as his model. The second major deviation from Herder’s God that I wish to address sheds light on how enlisting the elder Krochmal to serve as emissary for Spinoza might pass the plausibility test. Abraham supplements the first of the

44

Schwartz

five conversations in Herder’s text with a totally original segue into the discussion of Spinoza. Rabbi Nachman greets the Maharatz Chajes at his home and, after some initial back-and-forth about the value of hokhmat ha-torah— literally the ‘‘wisdom of Torah,’’ but here clearly a reference to philosophical exegesis—Krochmal the father poses a question: ‘‘What novel interpretation have you found today in the House of Study (Mah hiddush matz’ata ha-yom be-vet ha-midrash)?’’ Chajes answers: I focused today on the secrets and allusions of R’Abraham Ibn Ezra and came across statements like ‘‘and if you understand the secret of the All (ha-kol),’’ ‘‘and if you understand the secret of fifty-five’’ [the gematria or numerical value of the Hebrew ha-kol]. And I admit, unashamedly, that his line of thought was hidden from me. Is it possible that he also followed the teaching of Spinoza? Could our rabbi Abraham, whom the Rambam exalted above himself, comparing him to Abraham our forefather in spirit, have gone astray, Heaven forbid, like that unbeliever Spinoza, who said in his heart there is no God, and identified God with everything (ha-kol)?65 At this point, Abraham Krochmal begins his translation of Herder’s God, placing the opening remarks of Philolaus in the first dialogue into the speech of Rabbi Chajes. Yet this is a crucial interpolation. References to the secret of ha-kol are rife in the biblical commentary of Ibn Ezra—to wit, in his glossing of Genesis 1:26, ‘‘Let us make man in our image,’’ where he writes, ‘‘God is the One, and he is the creator of All, and he is the all, though I cannot explain.’’66 How to interpret the term ha-kol in Ibn Ezra—whether it is an epithet for God that points toward an immanent deity or only a hypostasis beneath God (the hidden ‘‘One’’) that preserves his radical transcendence— has been a mooted topic among supercommentators and scholars for centuries.67 For our purposes, what is important is that by using Ibn Ezra’s secret of ‘‘the All’’ as the pivot into a discussion of Spinoza, the younger Krochmal, in the first place, frames his translation of Herder with a suggestion of a medieval Jewish precedent for the metaphysical monism of the Ethics. He also forges what anyone familiar with The Guide to the Perplexed of the Time would recognize as a clear connection to his father Nachman. One of the principal aims of the Guide was to show that a philosophy that stressed God’s immanence in the unfolding of nature and history could be developed more

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

45

convincingly from Jewish sources than out of the Christian symbols relied on by the German Idealists. And despite the title of his magnum opus, it was not in Maimonides but rather in Ibn Ezra—the medieval Jewish thinker with whom the nineteenth-century philosopher most identified—that Krochmal found such a pedigree. From Ibn Ezra, Krochmal derived a distinctively Jewish lineage for panentheism, the view that the world (the ‘‘All’’) inheres within God (the ‘‘One’’) as one possible limitation of His infinite intellect. While clearly distinct from a Spinozism understood along atheistic or even strict pantheistic lines, such an immanentist theology was not far removed from the reinterpreted Spinozism of Herder’s God. In this respect, the selection of Rabbi Nachman to play Herder’s apologist for Spinoza—whatever he may have confessed in private to his son Abraham or to others—could, at least in principle, come off as convincing.

The Distinctiveness of Radical Haskalah Let me conclude by highlighting three of the main challenges that the nineteenth-century Haskalah, as seen through the lens of the reception of Spinoza, poses to Jonathan Israel’s global model of Radical Enlightenment. The first involves the issue of secularism. Secularism, for Israel, is, in essence, the signature of Radical Enlightenment, the key measure of its distinction vis-a`-vis not only the Counter-Enlightenment but also the ‘‘mainstream moderate Enlightenment.’’ Against the grain of most recent research, which stresses the varieties of secularism or secularisms, Israel’s understanding of the term appears utterly uniform.68 Put simply, secularism is religion’s opposite. Radical Enlightenment thus stands for a critique of religion that, by virtue of its secularism, situates itself by necessity outside a religious framework. Radical Haskalah, however, resists this characterization. Well into the nineteenth century, even the most iconoclastic of Maskilim—those who challenged both biblical and rabbinic authority—tended to be more reformist than revolutionary; they saw themselves as engaged in the unearthing of a more authentic Judaism and not in a refutation of Judaism in toto. Spinoza’s appeal to this group had much to do with his symbolizing of rationality, individuality, freedom of thought, and intellectual daring—all values that commended him equally to Israel’s radical enlighteners. Yet—drawing on the German Romantic reinterpretation of the Amsterdam heretic, while adapting it to their own idiom—the Maskilim appropriated him largely as a religious philosopher: a

46

Schwartz

pantheist or panentheist as opposed to an atheist, a ‘‘new guide for the perplexed,’’ even as ‘‘Rabbenu Baruch.’’ Only in the wake of the Haskalah altogether, with the rise of more radically secular forms of Jewish nationalism and socialism, do we begin to find Jewish efforts to reclaim Spinoza even while eschewing the image of him as a ‘‘God-intoxicated man.’’69 The second challenge to Israel’s thesis involves the issue of justification. Israel contends that the flinty refusal to hew to the moderate course of seeking accommodation with tradition—the willingness to stare rupture from the past straight in the face and to openly commit to the modern and secular as such—was one of the hallmarks of the Radical Enlightenment and, likewise, of Spinozism. Again, I would argue that in this respect, within the Haskalah, the line between ‘‘moderates’’ and ‘‘radicals’’ was less clearly drawn. No doubt, a good part of Spinoza’s allure for the latter was his trailblazing reputation, his signifying of a break with the old and the advent of the new. Yet in their efforts to reclaim Spinoza, even the radicals took great pains to highlight resemblances between his monistic thought and fragments from medieval Jewish Neoplatonic and mystical literature, and even—as in Abraham Krochmal’s Even ha-roshah—to ascribe their own apologies for the Amsterdam philosopher to distinguished figures within the moderate Haskalah. In justifying Spinoza by anchoring him in a secret history of Jewish speculative thought and biblical interpretation, they were also seeking to justify themselves. The radical Maskil, in this view, would neither cling to tradition, even if only for show, nor unmoor himself entirely from the Jewish past. Rather, modeling himself after Spinoza, he would guide underground traditions from the periphery to the center of Jewish cultural memory, revealing what previously had been concealed. Finally, my third criticism pivots on the issue of identity. Israel is committed to the claim that Radical Enlightenment was not significantly refracted in the course of its border crossings, a claim that would seem to hold for the reception of Spinoza and Spinozism as well. Yet the encounter with Spinoza within the Haskalah was not simply a copy, or even a variant of a larger cultural phenomenon, in large measure because of its preoccupation with the problem of whether the philosopher was, in fact, ‘‘one of us.’’ ‘‘Lanu hu ’o lo lanu hu?’’—‘‘does he or doesn’t he belong to us?’’—‘‘is he or isn’t he a Jewish thinker?’’—this question reverberates throughout the Maskilic discourse on Spinoza. As the continued resonance of Spinoza for constructions of modern Jewish identity makes clear, it is an obsession that shows no signs of abating.

‘‘Our Rabbi Baruch’’

47

One might argue that Rubin and Krochmal, by seeking to ‘‘Judaize’’ Spinoza and Spinozism, were not truly radical, that they forfeited or at least qualified this status by mitigating the extent of the Spinozan rupture. But this is precisely the problem with a historical model that allows only for strong antagonisms and not for shifting positions along a spectrum, and that assigns thinkers to one ‘‘Enlightenment’’ or another based on their conformity to a general theory, or to what one holds to be the correct interpretation of a particular thinker. By reclaiming Spinoza as the replacement for Maimonides in Moreh nevukhim he-hadash, and doing so with such militant modernizing rhetoric to boot, Rubin was unequivocally and intentionally staking out a radical position in the mid-nineteenth century Haskalah. By lauding Spinoza with the honorific ‘‘our Rabbi Baruch’’ and conferring Jewish legitimacy on his biblical criticism and metaphysics, Krochmal was doing likewise. Rubin and Krochmal saw themselves, and were certainly seen by others, as Maskilic insurgents. Yet in rehabilitating Spinoza they resorted to some of the same adaptive, even conservative strategies of the Maskilic moderates they opposed. We should neither smooth out this tension to force their receptions of Spinoza to conform entirely to a transnational and transconfessional ‘‘radical’’ Enlightenment nor seize on this ambiguity to open a gaping chasm between the two. Instead, by inscribing, rather than dissolving the local in the global, we might see in the nineteenth-century Maskilic Spinoza the possibility of alternate configurations of ‘‘radical’’ Enlightenment where the ‘‘radical’’ and the ‘‘religious’’ are not at odds per se, and where cultural differences, while not absolute, continue to matter.

chapter 2

Reading Mendelssohn in Late Ottoman Palestine: An Islamic Theory of Jewish Secularism jonathan marc gribetz

‘‘German Philosopher, translator of the Bible, and commentator; the ‘third Moses,’ with whom begins a new era in Judaism.’’ So opens the 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia article on Moses Mendelssohn. The authors of this encyclopedia article did not specify the nature of the ‘‘new era’’ ushered in by Moses Mendelssohn, but one of this encyclopedia’s readers believed he knew, and he wrote an Arabic book about it called Zionism or the Zionist Question. During the final years of Ottoman rule in Palestine, Muhammad Ruhi alKhalidi, a Muslim Arab from a distinguished family in Jerusalem, wrote a manuscript about Jewish history and Zionism; al-Khalidi’s understanding of what he dubs ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ is central to the author’s narrative and his argument. For al-Khalidi, ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ defined Judaism exclusively as a religion in contrast to its earlier status, as al-Khalidi saw it, as a religion entangled with a nationality. This change in the definition of Judaism or Jewishness plays a critical part in the thesis underlying al-Khalidi’s book, namely that Zionism is an illegitimate movement not merely because of its impact on Palestine’s Arab population (though, as one of Jerusalem’s representatives in the Ottoman parliament, he was none too pleased about this impact) but also and especially because Zionism was problematic from an internal Jewish perspective.

Reading Mendelssohn

49

This chapter explores al-Khalidi’s reading of Mendelssohn and draws upon al-Khalidi’s perspective for insights into the role of religion in secularization, as well as the challenges and benefits of interpreting religious processes through the lens of other religions. The essay begins by analyzing alKhalidi’s rendering of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ in light of Mendelssohn’s writing. While acknowledging the problematic aspects of al-Khalidi’s interpretation of Mendelssohn, I suggest that al-Khalidi’s view is reasonably grounded, especially in Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem. This piece further places ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ into the theoretical language of secularization theory. In particular, drawing upon the work of Jose´ Casanova, I argue that alKhalidi’s conception of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ can be understood as an expression of twentieth-century sociologists’ differentiation thesis. Finally, the essay draws attention to perhaps the most curious aspect of al-Khalidi’s reading of Mendelssohn: al-Khalidi’s perception that ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ was granted a universal rabbinic imprimatur and thus fundamentally altered the nature of Judaism thereafter. Though, as we shall see, al-Khalidi may have had several important moments from Jewish history in mind when he imagined this imprimatur, I argue that it was an Islamic theory of law that guided al-Khalidi’s misunderstanding of (European) Jewish history. The conclusion will briefly consider what contemporary discussions of Jewish secularism might nonetheless learn from al-Khalidi’s idiosyncratic reading of Mendelssohn.

Muhammad Ruhi Al-Khalidi Born in Jerusalem, Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi (1864–1913) was the scion of one of the wealthy, elite Muslim Arab families of Ottoman Palestine.1 Ruhi, as he was known, grew up in the Ba¯b as-Silsila neighborhood of the Old City, steps away from the Dome of the Rock. He spent his childhood years in Jerusalem obtaining a traditional Islamic education in religious schools and at the al-Aqsa mosque. His religious training continued in Jerusalem as well as in Nablus, Tripoli, and Beirut, where his father, Yasin, took up Ottoman-appointed religious positions at various times during Ruhi’s youth. At the same time, as al-Khalidi became a young man, he acquired those elements of a Western education that began to be offered in the new Ottoman state schools2 and at the Jewish Alliance Israe´lite Universelle school in Palestine, where he apparently studied briefly.3

50

Gribetz

Al-Khalidi’s secular studies began in Palestine, but they continued, with much greater intensity, when he left the Levant. In 1887, at the age of twentythree, al-Khalidi went to the Ottoman capital of Istanbul where he commenced a difficult, long-term course of study at the Mekteb-i Mu¨lkiye (the School of Civil Service). Following more than six years of study in Istanbul, al-Khalidi, by this point nearly thirty, traveled to Paris, where he took a three-year course in political science and then enrolled in the E´cole des Hautes E´tudes at the Sorbonne. Under some of the most distinguished French Orientalists of the day, including Hartwig Derenbourg,4 he studied the philosophy of Islam and literature. Al-Khalidi even went on to a brief career as an academic in France. He taught Arabic to students and scholars of Oriental studies and presented a scholarly paper at the 1897 International Congress of Orientalists in Paris on ‘‘Statistics from the Islamic World,’’ which he published in both French and Arabic. Al-Khalidi’s remarkable curiosity and broad range of interests led him to write such varied treatises (in Arabic) as The Eastern Question; Chemistry under the Arabs; and The History of Literature among the Europeans, the Arabs, and Victor Hugo.5 An academic-cum-politician, al-Khalidi served as Ottoman ConsulGeneral in Bordeaux beginning in 1898 and then, between 1908 and his death in 1913, as one of Jerusalem’s representatives in the newly reconstituted Ottoman parliament in Istanbul.6 It was during these final years of his life (though he was only in his late forties) that al-Khalidi began to write his work on Zionism, a 120-page manuscript that appears to have been in the final stages of copying and editing before imminent publication when its author died and its contents were abruptly rendered outdated by the radical changes that occurred to the region during the course of the Great War.7

‘‘As-Sayu¯nı¯zm’’ Al-Khalidi’s composition may be divided into six chapters.8 The first offers an introduction to Zionism and lays out the general narrative to be explored in greater detail in the course of the book. The second chapter deals with the religious roots of Zionism in the Bible and the Talmud. Next, al-Khalidi offers a survey of the history of the Jews from the death of King Solomon through the destruction of the Second Temple. This is followed by a chapter on the dispersion of the Jews and the places in which they took refuge and settled over the ensuing centuries. The fifth chapter then returns to the

Reading Mendelssohn

51

subject of Zionism, outlining the history of the modern movement. The final chapter looks at the major Jewish organizations of al-Khalidi’s time, explaining the various religious and ideological positions found among them. In constructing large portions of his book, al-Khalidi followed the basic outline of Richard James Horatio Gottheil’s twenty-one-page entry on ‘‘Zionism’’ in the newly published Jewish Encyclopedia. At points, al-Khalidi’s text is simply an Arabic translation of Gottheil’s words. At first glance, the fact that this English Jewish Encyclopedia article reached the desk of an Arab intellectual in Jerusalem, and that the latter used it as an authoritative source, may seem odd. Moreover, one would not necessarily suspect that an Ottoman Arab politician would have used an article written by an American Zionist (indeed, the first president of the Federation of American Zionists)9 as a primary source for the history of the Jewish relationship to the Holy Land. But both al-Khalidi’s access to Gottheil’s article as well as his selection of it as one of his main sources are not quite as extraordinary as one might suppose. In fact, that a Muslim Arab notable from Late Ottoman Palestine was familiar with the new Jewish Encyclopedia points to the often overlooked intellectual interchange between Jews and Arabs during this period. While it is not known where alKhalidi found the copy of the Jewish Encyclopedia that he used (it is not currently present in the Khalidi family library, but it was presumably available in the nearby Jewish National Library10 in Jerusalem), it is possible that Gottheil himself shared his article with al-Khalidi. Between 1909 and 1910, Gottheil lived in Jerusalem, where he headed the American School of Archaeology;11 it is likely, given their shared Orientalist interests, that Gottheil and al-Khalidi came to know one another during that period.12 It is also possible that the two were known to one another—or had even met in person—more than a decade earlier. When al-Khalidi presented his academic paper on Muslim demographics to the 1897 International Congress of Orientalists, Gottheil was already Professor of Semitic Languages at Columbia University, an active member of the American Oriental Society,13 and head of the Oriental department of the New York Public Library.14 Al-Khalidi’s scholarly work was known to the editors and writers of the Jewish Encyclopedia; the encyclopedia’s entry on ‘‘Islam,’’ for instance, notes that al-Khalidi’s article on the demographics of the contemporary Muslim world ‘‘should especially be mentioned.’’15 AlKhalidi, in other words, was an acknowledged colleague of Jewish scholars such as Gottheil, Kaufmann Kohler, Ignaz Goldziher, and others in the international fin-de-sie`cle scholarly effort toward understanding Islam and the Arab world. They were reading his work and he was reading theirs.

52

Gribetz

Al-Khalidi’s decision to use Gottheil’s article as a primary source in his own manuscript offers a number of clues about his purpose in writing this book. First of all, in constructing his ‘‘as-Sayu¯nı¯zm,’’ al-Khalidi did not simply aim to offer his readers a polemical screed against Zionism. Rather, his text was meant to provide readers with a sophisticated, nuanced narrative of Jewish history and Zionism. For this reason, out of the many possible articles and books about Zionism, one that was meant to be encyclopedic,16 but still written by a sympathetic insider (like Gottheil’s), was an ideal match. At the same time, of course, al-Khalidi’s manuscript has its biases, and, as we shall see, they are not always subtle. Al-Khalidi’s use of the Jews’ own encyclopedia, and of an avowed Zionist’s article to boot, might be seen as part of an effort to establish legitimacy and credibility for al-Khalidi’s own critique of Zionism; by using an internal Jewish document he could not readily be accused of misunderstanding or misrepresenting the Jewish national movement. While al-Khalidi’s Arabic translation of Gottheil’s article serves as one structural core of al-Khalidi’s text, the manuscript is decidedly more than a simple translation of a single encyclopedia entry. It draws on many varied sources,17 and, though it essentially presents itself as an objective historical treatise, a close reading of the text permits us to discern al-Khalidi’s own philosophy and perspective.

‘‘Mendelssohn’s Theory’’ and Mendelssohn’s Theory Al-Khalidi uncritically accepts the historical link of the Jews to Jerusalem, whether he calls it Urshalı¯m or al-Quds, and to the Holy Land, whether he denotes it as S.ahyu¯n or Filast.¯ın.18 Consider these lines, which al-Khalidi writes of the exiles to Babylonia: ‘‘The captives in Babylonia demonstrated their abundant yearning for Zion and Jerusalem. No nation among the nations reached their height of grieving over their homelands and the degree of their longing for it. They wandered along the banks of the Euphrates crying over Jerusalem and bewailing her in poems and psalms.’’19 Al-Khalidi, it would seem, had read these ‘‘poems and psalms’’; he cites their ‘‘style,’’ ‘‘allegories,’’ and ‘‘metaphors’’ as having served as models for such literary talents as Victor Hugo, the subject, as noted, of another book al-Khalidi was writing at this same time.20 As sympathetic as al-Khalidi may have been to the legacy of Jewish attachment to Palestine, he was certainly not a Zionist. Contrary to other

Reading Mendelssohn

53

contemporary Arabs’ arguments against Zionism that stressed the demographic reality of an Arab majority in Palestine or Palestine’s central place in the Islamic world and consciousness, al-Khalidi’s opposition to Zionism, as formulated in this manuscript, seems to be on another plane entirely: one internal to Judaism, Jewish discourse, and Jewish history. While the vast majority of Jews may not have chosen to return to Palestine in the many centuries following the Roman conquest and exile (just as was the case, alKhalidi does not fail to observe, with the meager return from the Babylonian exile),21 al-Khalidi still does not impute any illegitimacy to the Jewish will to return. Rather, al-Khalidi exhibits what would seem to be a true respect for this ancient and long-lasting hope. The Jewish relationship to Palestine changed, however, in the modern period, according to al-Khalidi, who links this transition to the eighteenthcentury German Jewish political and religious philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86). In al-Khalidi’s rendering, with the advent of what he calls ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ (naz.ariyyat mindilsu¯n), Jewish identity underwent a radical transformation that indicted any manifestation of Jewish nationalism thereafter as a clear violation of its principles. Mendelssohn is a key figure in al-Khalidi’s narrative of Jewish history, and one finds various formulations of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ at several points within the text, beginning with the very first page of the manuscript. ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory,’’ writes al-Khalidi, separated the Mosaic religion from Jewish nationalism [qawmiyya]22 and abolished this nationalism. It obliged the Jews to acquire the citizenship of the countries in which they were born, such as Germany, Austria, France, and England, to imitate23 the rest of the Christian peoples of these countries, and to enter with them [the Christians] into European civilization. It [‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’] made them forget the land of Palestine from which they left and [made them forget] the Hebrew language, which they stopped speaking two thousand years earlier.24 For al-Khalidi, ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ was the bold disentangling of Jewish religion and Jewish nationality. This theory, according to al-Khalidi, embraced ‘‘the Mosaic religion’’ while it decisively and irrevocably disposed of the nationality and all its concomitant marks of distinction: Jewish language, land, and customs. Al-Khalidi asserts that ‘‘whoever looked upon’’ Western European Jews—who embraced and modeled ‘‘Mendelssohn’s

54

Gribetz

theory’’—‘‘saw nothing other than Frenchmen or Englishmen, for example, without regard to their being Jewish or Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant, due to the great degree of similarity between them.’’25 Al-Khalidi mixes a sociological observation—that the Jews (at least in Western Europe) did in fact acculturate among their Christian neighbors— with the doctrinal statement he names ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory.’’ Strikingly, it is the latter, the theory, that is critical for al-Khalidi. ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory,’’ in al-Khalidi’s conception of modern Jewish history, is not merely the translation of sociological reality into ideological terms. Rather, ‘‘naz.ariyyat mindilsu¯n’’ has prescriptive, even binding, force. In a restatement of this theory, al-Khalidi writes, ‘‘it is not permitted for a Jew who was born in Prussia or Austria or France, for example, to consider himself anything but a Prussian or Austrian or Frenchman.’’ Moreover, ‘‘he does not have the right to call for Jewish nationalism. . . . It is not permissible to consider his nationality to be Jewish nationalism, nor his homeland [wat.an] Palestine.’’26 The language al-Khalidi uses in describing ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ is overwhelmingly legal in nature. This theory has the power to ‘‘abolish’’ nationalism; to ‘‘oblige’’ the acquisition of citizenship; to ‘‘not permit’’ Jews to think of themselves in particular ways; to deny Jews ‘‘the right’’ to make certain political or ideological proclamations. Before attempting to account for the immense power al-Khalidi ascribes to ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory,’’ it is worth considering the extent to which alKhalidi’s presentation of the theory corresponds to the views Moses Mendelssohn actually articulated in his philosophical, political, or polemical writings. In reality, Mendelssohn never claimed that the Jews were no longer a ‘‘nation’’ and that they were henceforth merely a ‘‘religion,’’27 even if, as Leora Batnitzky has argued, he ‘‘invent[ed] the modern idea that Judaism is a religion.’’28 In this sense, al-Khalidi’s rendering of Mendelssohn’s theory is not an accurate representation of the Jewish philosopher’s position. But this is not to say that al-Khalidi (or his source on this matter) was wholly unjustified in linking the distinction between Jewish religion and Jewish nationhood to Mendelssohn.29 A primary assumption of what al-Khalidi labels ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ is the contention that there is a meaningful distinction between ‘‘religion,’’ on the one hand, and ‘‘nation,’’ on the other. For Mendelssohn, especially in his classic treatise Jerusalem, or, On Religious Power and Judaism (1783), the relevant dichotomous categories were not religion and nation but rather religion and state. Mendelssohn argued for a distinction between these latter

Reading Mendelssohn

55

spheres and insisted that ‘‘religion’’ as such had no place in affairs of the ‘‘state.’’ He did not see this distinction as novel to his own day. Rather, he projected it into the biblical past: once the ancient Israelites accepted a monarch, ‘‘state and religion were no longer the same, and a collision of [civic and religious] duties was no longer impossible.’’ In this vein, Mendelssohn approvingly cites Jesus’s ‘‘cautious advice,’’ which he repeats numerous times in Jerusalem, that one must ‘‘render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.’’30 For Mendelssohn, following the New Testament language, there were two realms: that of Caesar (the state) and that of God (religion). Though the conceptual distinction between state and religion is obviously not identical to that between nation and religion, it is nonetheless important for our assessment of al-Khalidi’s reading of Mendelssohn insofar as it demonstrates Mendelssohn’s insistence on a separate sphere called religion. While Mendelssohn grants this sphere biblical vintage, scholars and theorists of secularization have argued that it is rather a modern construction and, according to some, the hallmark of secularization. In his review of the various theories of secularization, Jose´ Casanova asserts that ‘‘secularization as differentiation’’ is ‘‘the valid core of the theory of secularization.’’ As he writes in Public Religions in the Modern World: The differentiation and emancipation of the secular spheres from religious institutions and norms remains a general modern structural trend. . . . Each of the two major modern societal systems, the state and the economy, as well as other major cultural and institutional spheres of society—science, education, law, art—develops its own institutional autonomy, as well as its intrinsic functional dynamics. Religion itself is constrained not only to accept the modern principle of structural differentiation of the secular spheres but also to follow the same dynamic and to develop an autonomous differentiated sphere of its own.31 Mendelssohn’s claim that ‘‘religion,’’ as such, may be differentiated from other spheres of life—be they the state, the nation, or something else—is, in large part, what makes Mendelssohn a useful figure for al-Khalidi. Even if alKhalidi was not quite correct in attributing the separation of ‘‘nation’’ and ‘‘religion’’ to Mendelssohn, he was correct to note Mendelssohn’s assumption of and insistence upon ‘‘differentiation.’’ If, as Charles Taylor puts it, in

56

Gribetz

ancient societies, ‘‘religion was ‘everywhere,’ was interwoven with everything else, and in no sense constituted a separate ‘sphere’ of its own,’’32 al-Khalidi recognized that Mendelssohn asserted both the conceptual distinction and the imperative principally to distinguish religion from other spheres. For alKhalidi, concerned as he was with matters of nationalism and the nation in the very different environment of the early twentieth century (rather than Mendelssohn’s eighteenth-century Europe), the critical sphere from which to separate religion was the nation (as opposed to Mendelssohn’s state). Differentiation, however, is only one way in which al-Khalidi’s version of ‘‘Mendelssohn theory’’ represents a fair reading of Mendelssohn (regardless of whether al-Khalidi actually read Mendelssohn). Al-Khalidi, as we have seen, highlighted the degree of acculturation effected by Jews, particularly those of Western Europe, in the period following Mendelssohn. Though alKhalidi perceived a direct, causal link between Mendelssohn and this acculturation, the latter was a social phenomenon that began before Mendelssohn and that had numerous, complex causes. Nonetheless, Mendelssohn was a vocal and important advocate of acculturation in certain areas of Jewish life.33 In the final pages of Jerusalem, he contended that there was ‘‘no wiser advice’’ that might be offered his fellow Jews than to ‘‘adapt yourselves to the morals and the constitution of the land to which you have been removed,’’ even while ‘‘hold[ing] fast to the religion of your fathers too.’’34 Al-Khalidi would seem justified in reading these lines as a call to acculturation in all spheres of life aside from those explicitly deemed ‘‘religious.’’ Finally, along with differentiation and acculturation, ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory,’’ as articulated by al-Khalidi, severed the Jews from Palestine, renouncing the historic links between the people and the land that had been preserved over the previous centuries. Again, though Mendelssohn did not exactly express this view, this claim, too, has a basis in Mendelssohn’s writings. In this case, it is necessary to look beyond Jerusalem to Mendelssohn’s polemical exchange with Johann David Michaelis. In the early 1780s, Michaelis, a Christian opponent of the emancipation of the Jews in the German lands, contended that the ‘‘messianic expectation of a return to Palestine’’ casts ‘‘doubt on the full and steadfast loyalty of the Jews to the state and the possibility of their full integration.’’ The Jews, Michaelis wrote, ‘‘will always see the state as a temporary home, which they will leave in the hour of their greatest happiness to return to Palestine.’’35 In his effort to counter Michaelis’s argument against Jewish emancipation, Mendelssohn claimed that Michaelis had misunderstood or misconstrued the impact of the Jews’ messianic expectation. Mendelssohn

Reading Mendelssohn

57

wrote that ‘‘the hoped-for return to Palestine’’ has ‘‘no influence on our conduct as citizens.’’ He continued: This is confirmed by experience wherever Jews are tolerated. In part, human nature accounts for it—only the enthusiast would not love the soil on which he thrives. And he who holds contradictory opinions reserves them for church and prayer. In part, also, the precaution of our sages forbids us even to think of a return by force.36 Without the miracles and signs mentioned in the Scripture, we must not take the smallest step in the direction of forcing a return and a restoration of our nation.37 Mendelssohn explained that the Jewish hope for a return to Palestine could have no impact on the loyalty of the Jews toward states that tolerate them. In making his case, Mendelssohn appealed first to a psychological observation that people tend to love a place where they are able to live and flourish, and second to a rabbinic prohibition that, in his view, expressly forbade the Jews from restoring their nation in Palestine on their own, without the miraculous, divinely ordained redemption.38 Though he minimized the significance of the wish to return to Palestine (an apologetic attempt that must be understood in the context of the eighteenth-century political debate over Jewish emancipation), Mendelssohn did not propose severing the Jews’ link to Palestine or ceasing to pray for their return to the Holy Land. He argued, rather, that this link and hope had no practical influence on the way the Jews related to the states in which they lived. Al-Khalidi, or whatever textual or oral source he was using for his presentation of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory,’’ misunderstands (or interprets liberally) the actual argument Mendelssohn made concerning Palestine. At the same time, it should be noted that in the subsequent debates over the assimilation of the Jews within European Christian society, both supporters and opponents pointed to the earlier figure of Mendelssohn as having heralded the assimilation that they either desired or dreaded. In the Jewish Encyclopedia entry on Mendelssohn, for instance, the authors write: ‘‘The translation of the Pentateuch had an important effect in bringing the Jews to share in the progress of the age. It aroused their interest in the study of Hebrew grammar, which they had so long despised, made them eager for German nationality and culture, and inaugurated a new era in the education of the young and in the Jewish school system.’’ Similarly,

58

Gribetz

fin-de-sie`cle Zionists also associated Moses Mendelssohn with anti-Zionism (via the Jewish Reform movement, of which Zionists considered Mendelssohn to be the founder). Consider, for example, the perspective offered by the Zionist leader Max Nordau, who insisted that the Jews’ prayers to return to Palestine were always meant literally until ‘‘towards the middle of the eighteenth century the so-called ‘movement of enlightenment,’ of which the popular philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, is recognized as the first herald, began to penetrate Judaism.’’ The followers of this movement, according to Nordau, saw ‘‘the dispersion of the Jewish people’’ as ‘‘an immutable fact of Destiny’’ and they ‘‘emptied the concept of the Messiah and Zion of all concrete import.’’ The ‘‘Mendelssohnian enlightenment consistently developed during the first half of the nineteenth century into ‘Reform’ Judaism, which definitely broke with Zionism.’’39 In imagining Mendelssohn as a proto-anti-Zionist, al-Khalidi was in good company.

Differentiation as a Religious Act Seeing Mendelssohn as laying the philosophical groundwork for antiZionism is one thing; insisting that ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ is binding on postMendelssohnian Jewry is something else entirely. What is it, in al-Khalidi’s view, that endows ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ with such considerable power? The answer, I propose, lies in what al-Khalidi understands to have been broad rabbinic consensus on Mendelssohn’s principles. Again, on the very first page of the manuscript, al-Khalidi explains that the Torah, the Talmud, and Jewish medieval literature all foresee a Jewish return to Palestine, though the Jews were ‘‘not sufficiently powerful to realize’’ this aspiration. This ambition nonetheless persisted until ‘‘the last centuries,’’ writes al-Khalidi, when with the advent of freedom, Mendelssohn ‘‘created a modern theory whose correctness was certified by the community of rabbis, asqa¯mah.’’ Later on in his manuscript, al-Khalidi mentions this word ‘‘asqa¯mah’’ again, in explaining why some rabbis religiously forbid Zionism. Al-Khalidi notes that these rabbis rejected Zionism because of its violation of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ and its ‘‘infringement of the rules of the religious assembly, ‘asqa¯mah.’ ’’ The text proceeds to cite the 1908 proclamations of opposition to Zionism issued by various Ottoman Jewish religious and communal leaders, published in the Ottoman Turkish press. ‘‘We, your Mosaic citizens,’’ asserts one such Jewish

Reading Mendelssohn

59

leader from Izmir, ‘‘are the greatest opponents of Zionism.’’40 Such, alKhalidi infers, is the power of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory.’’ The reader finally encounters al-Khalidi’s clearest explanation of this ‘‘asqa¯mah’’ half-way through the manuscript in yet another discussion of ‘‘naz.ariyyat mindilsu¯n.’’ ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory,’’ al-Khalidi writes, ‘‘means that there is never again to be Jewish nationalism [al-qawmiyya al-yahu¯diyya].’’ Al-Khalidi emphasizes that ‘‘Mendelssohn was not alone in this view.’’ Rather, all of the Jews of Western Europe agreed with his theory, and thus ‘‘it was certified by the community of rabbis.41 Their people resolved to accept it and they named this consensus with the term of their religious-law42 ‘asqa¯mah,’ which means the consensus of the people. Their acceptance of this theory was not political only, but rather religious and religious-legal [dı¯niyyan wa-shariyyan].’’43 With this last explication of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ and its binding ‘‘religious and religious-legal’’ authority over contemporary Jewry,44 we might finally decipher al-Khalidi’s theory of modern Jewish history and identity. Al-Khalidi notes a dramatic change in the ways in which Jews in the modern world conceived of themselves—and particularly of their national identity— and he is correct to do so. Though he may have been mistaken historically, or at least overly simplistic, in linking this transformation directly to Moses Mendelssohn, al-Khalidi was hardly exceptional in associating Mendelssohn with an opposition to Zionism; Jewish Zionists and anti-Zionists of alKhalidi’s time did the same. What, specifically, did al-Khalidi have in mind when he wrote of this socalled ‘‘asqa¯mah’’? This term appears to be a corruption resulting from the Arabic transliteration of a European-language transliteration of the Hebrew ‘‘haskamah,’’ agreement.45 Given al-Khalidi’s many years in France, one possibility is that the broad rabbinic consensus to which al-Khalidi refers here is Napoleon’s 1806 Assembly of Notables, which declared that ‘‘in the eyes of Jews, Frenchmen are their brethren,’’46 and the subsequent 1807 Paris Sanhedrin, which claimed that ‘‘the learned of the age shall possess the inalienable right to legislate according to the needs of the situation,’’ and thus demanded of Jews ‘‘obedience to the State in all matters civil and political.’’47 Al-Khalidi had twice lived in France for extended periods, first studying in Paris under Hartwig Derenbourg and beginning in 1898 as Ottoman Consul-General in Bordeaux; it is likely that he heard from French Jews about this watershed event, which seemed to be challenged and undermined by Herzl’s newly founded Zionist movement.

60

Gribetz

Alternatively, al-Khalidi might have been thinking of the resolutions of the various Reform rabbinical conferences of the mid-to-late nineteenth century.48 These conferences are mentioned in Gottheil’s encyclopedia article on ‘‘Zionism,’’ which cites the 1845 ‘‘Conference of Rabbis’’ in Frankfurt am Main, the Philadelphia Conference of 1869, and the 1885 Pittsburgh Conference. The rabbis of the Frankfurt conference, Gottheil writes, ‘‘decided to eliminate from the ritual ‘the prayers for the return to the land of our forefathers and for the restoration of the Jewish state.’ ’’ The language cited by Gottheil from the Pittsburgh Conference’s resolutions even more closely matches al-Khalidi’s version of ‘‘naz.ariyyat mindilsu¯n’’: ‘‘We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community,’’ proclaimed these Reform rabbis, ‘‘and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine . . . nor any of the laws concerning a Jewish state.’’49 To al-Khalidi, these rabbinical assemblies—articulating what came to be known in modern Jewish historiography as ‘‘classical’’ Reform ideology50 and what al-Khalidi names with the shorthand ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’—irrevocably altered the nature of Judaism. Al-Khalidi’s theory of the illegitimacy of modern manifestations of Jewish nationalism, as I have thus far portrayed it, is remarkable for its concern with the internal dynamics and reasoning of Judaism. Yet I would suggest that al-Khalidi is actually reading this history through the lens of a traditional Islamic understanding of the way in which religious law is established.51 Consider once more the language al-Khalidi uses in defining the ‘‘asqa¯mah’’: wa-ajmaat ummatuhum ala¯ qubu¯liha¯ wa-sammu¯ ha¯dha¯ al-ijma¯ biis.t.ila¯h. sharı¯atihim (asqa¯mah) wa-mana¯hu ijma¯ al-umma. And their people [umma]52 agreed to accept it [Mendelssohn’s theory] and they named this consensus [ijma¯] with the term of their religious law, ‘asqa¯mah,’ which means the consensus [ijma¯] of the people. I emphasize the Arabic terminology here because the word ijma¯ that alKhalidi equates with asqa¯mah is of utmost importance. Ijma¯ is the term used for the Islamic theory of ‘‘consensus,’’ one of the four recognized sources for determining law in Sunni Islam. As Wael Hallaq, scholar of Islamic law, explains, ijma¯ ‘‘functions both as a sanctioning instrument and as a material

Reading Mendelssohn

61

source of law. Once agreement has been reached on an issue, usually a question of law, that issue becomes epistemologically certain and thus insusceptible to further interpretation. . . . The epistemological value attached to consensus renders this instrument so powerful in the realm of doctrine and practice in the community that it can override established practice as well as clear statements of the Quran.’’53 This is precisely the function and power alKhalidi imputes to the rabbis’ so-called asqa¯mah concerning ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory.’’ In their consensus, their ijma¯, they have overridden the established national nature of pre-Mendelssohnian Judaism, and have thereby delegitimized any subsequent expression of Jewish nationality. ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ has become, to use Hallaq’s words, ‘‘epistemologically certain and thus insusceptible to further interpretation.’’ Zionism, then, is not merely a violation of the opinion of a group of rabbis; it is a blatant contravention of now unquestionable law.54 If, in al-Khalidi’s mind, the consensus, formal or otherwise, of the Jews in premodern Jewish history was that they were not merely a religion but a nation55 and that their nation retained historic links to Palestine, to which it wished to return, how could this new consensus adopting ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ overturn the earlier belief ? To attempt to answer this question, we must consider al-Khalidi’s particular religious milieu. While al-Khalidi was indeed trained in traditional Sunni Islamic studies, he and his family were intimately involved with a new religious reformist tendency within nineteenth-century Islam, known as the Salafi movement.56 The Salafis sought to reform Islam by looking to the model of the earliest followers of Muhammad (known as as-salaf as.-s.a¯lih., ‘‘the worthy ancestors’’). These new Muslim thinkers contended that much of contemporary Islam did not conform to the original practices of the Muslim community, and was burdened with habits and practices that had no justification in the religion. Islam, thus, could and should be creatively transformed to accommodate the new social and intellectual realities of the modern world, just as those original Muslims exercised judicious creativity in interpreting the Qur’an and the Sunna for their own time.57 One of the most prominent and influential figures within the late nineteenth-century Salafi movement was the Egyptian mufti Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905). Abduh, according to scholar George Hourani, ‘‘denied that priority in time necessarily meant superior wisdom, except in the case of the Companions and Successors’’ of Muhammad, that is, as-salaf as.-s.a¯lih.. As a result, Abduh was open to the possibility of modifying the legal rulings of

62

Gribetz

earlier generations, whether because they could now be judged as having been mistaken or because, given new historical circumstances, the older views were obsolete or even harmful.58 In Abduh’s words, a generation’s ‘‘obligation to obey consensus is due to the public interest, not to infallibility . . . and interest appears and disappears, and varies with different times and conditions.’’59 Al-Khalidi—whose family library in Jerusalem contains many of Abduh’s works, including one autographed by Abduh himself—seems to have been influenced by this Salafi conception of evolving ijma¯. If there had been an ijma¯ among premodern Jews that held that the Jews were a nation, al-Khalidi might have explained, the consensus had since evolved, given the ‘‘different times and conditions’’ in which post-Mendelssohnian Jewry lived. A new consensus declared that the Jews were now no longer a nation but rather purely a religion. That is to say, not only did al-Khalidi read an Islamic notion into Jewish history, he employed a particular theory thereof that Muslim thinkers were developing in his specific intellectual, religious, and social context. Al-Khalidi’s interpretation of Mendelssohn and his conception of modern Jewish history are striking for, among other things, the way in which they propose an alternate narrative of Jewish secularization. If we follow Casanova’s understanding of secularization as the differentiation of realms and the construction of a religious realm separate and distinct from all others, then in al-Khalidi’s view it may be said that Jewish secularization was enacted by a religious body. It was by rabbinic, religious-legal consensus that the formerly integrated spheres of ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘nation’’ were formally separated and Judaism rendered nothing more than a religion. Moreover, if we take this logic further, Jewish secularization—understood as the differentiation between a private religious identity and a secular and national public identity—is legitimate, valid, and unassailable precisely because the act of instituting it followed religiously sanctioned guidelines and procedures (the ijma¯ or asqa¯mah of the rabbinic authorities). Secularization as differentiation, then, was not an act of rebellion against the hegemony of religious authority; it was an act of that religious authority itself.

Conclusion Because his manuscript has remained unpublished, the theories al-Khalidi propounded in it had no discernible influence on subsequent politics or intellectual debates in Palestine or beyond. However, as this essay has suggested,

Reading Mendelssohn

63

there are certain important implications to the study of al-Khalidi’s text beyond the analysis of an idiosyncratic, forgotten idea of a bygone era. In particular, I would like to highlight two very different fields into which an understanding of al-Khalidi’s theories may contribute in useful ways: first, the study of Jewish secularization and of secularization more generally and, second, the study of Late Ottoman Palestine and the early engagement there between Zionists and Arabs. Al-Khalidi’s understanding of the asqa¯mah supporting ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ points to the real role of religiously legitimated authorities, i.e., rabbis, in carving out a space called ‘‘religion’’ in the life of the Jews. Whether we think of signal events in nineteenth-century Jewish history, such as the Napoleonic Sanhedrin or the Reform rabbinical conferences, or more quotidian moments in the lives of European Jewish communities during that period, al-Khalidi was right to notice the part played by rabbis in articulating and reifying differentiation. Moreover, if we consider the case of the supposed theorist of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory,’’ we recall that Mendelssohn himself wielded certain religious authority, by virtue not of rabbinic ordination but of renowned rabbinic (and philosophical) learning and religious observance, and thus his notion of the distinction between spheres had an effect— granting communal and perhaps even religious legitimacy—that may have been impossible for earlier articulations of similar ideas, such as those of the more overtly iconoclastic Spinoza. This reading of al-Khalidi’s manuscript, then, may encourage us to think more carefully about the place of religious figures and authority—and not only those who opposed them—in the processes of differentiation that are central to secularization. Remarkably, al-Khalidi’s important insight into modern Jewish history emerges from what seems to be a misunderstanding that stemmed from his projection of Islamic religious principles onto Judaism. A number of scholars of secularism in recent years have begun to criticize those readings of nonChristian or non-Western religions and societies that are rooted in the assumptions of the Christian West. These critics are undoubtedly correct to caution scholars against teleological approaches that see the European Christian case as a universal and ineluctable model or against theories that presume all societies to function in the same ways, regardless of historical, cultural, religious, or other particularities. At the same time, it is worth recognizing that cross-cultural or inter-religious attempts at understanding others— however flawed and fraught—can produce, even through misunderstanding, crucial insights into societies that might otherwise be missed. In projecting

64

Gribetz

Islam onto Judaism, al-Khalidi read Jewish history in a problematic but nonetheless perceptive and potentially enlightening way. While remaining cautious about cross-cultural interpretation, we are also reminded by al-Khalidi of its promise. Finally, notwithstanding the preceding discussion, in writing this manuscript al-Khalidi obviously did not seek primarily to articulate a theory of Jewish secularization. He was chiefly concerned with Zionism (that is, with the element of ‘‘nation’’ rather than of ‘‘religion’’ in his perceived dichotomy). Al-Khalidi wished to account for the Jewish nationalist movement’s roots and to present an argument against its legitimacy in his day. His eyes were focused more directly on Herzl than on Mendelssohn, more on Palestine than on Paris or Pittsburgh. What might we learn from al-Khalidi’s perspective about the encounter between Zionists and Arabs in the fin-desie`cle Middle East? Though al-Khalidi’s particular approach to the question of Zionism was surely uncommon and probably sui generis, it reveals an aspect of the challenges that Palestine’s Arabs faced in trying to make sense of the Zionist movement of which they began to hear and whose members they began to meet in their homeland.60 Palestinian Arab interpretations of Zionism were, perforce, informed by political interests. Nonetheless, alKhalidi’s account of ‘‘Zionism’’ and his peculiar notion of the rabbinic consensus on ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ reveal the extent to which some individuals within the Arab-Zionist encounter undertook bold efforts to engage in substantial and sensitive ways with the history and ideas of their counterparts, if necessarily on their own terms. Moreover, al-Khalidi’s manuscript reminds us that arguments against ostensibly or self-defined ‘‘secular’’ movements (such as Zionism) may be made in religious terms and, indeed, that such religious argumentation may constitute a central tenet of yet another ostensibly or self-defined ‘‘secular’’ movement. Article 20 of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s National Charter—which declared Zionism illegitimate because Judaism is a religion and not an independent nationality—is but one piece of evidence of this phenomenon. It is also testament to the persistent power of ‘‘Mendelssohn’s theory’’ in the most unexpected of places.

chapter 3

Tradition and the Hidden: Hannah Arendt’s Secularization of Jewish Mysticism vivian liska

Recent discussions of secularization have undermined the notion of a linear transformation from traditional religious ideas and concepts to ‘‘enlightened,’’ profane, and disenchanted worldviews. The sinuous paths from tradition to modernity are particularly striking when elements of both are intermingled, which calls into question any attempt at drawing clear-cut distinctions between them. At this point secularization appears as an unfinished and unfinishable process of modernization. Neither can the contours and borders of secularization ever be clearly delineated. Even within a single tradition, in this case the Jewish one, drawing sharp divisions between religion and modernity and within different modes of secularization proves to be a fragile and ultimately untenable construct. In his essay ‘‘Le Fil de la tradition est-il rompu? Sur deux formes de modernite´ religieuse’’ (Is the thread of tradition broken? On two forms of religious modernity),1 Ste´phane Mose`s, one of the foremost scholars of German-Jewish thought, distinguishes between two forms of secularization of the Jewish tradition among twentieth-century thinkers, which he calls normative and critical modernity. Neither approach described by Mose`s rejects the tradition as such; rather, both transform it, adapting it to different degrees to modern times, the second being more radical than the first. Mose`s speaks of a normative modernity in cases where, in opposition to

66

Liska

assimilationist views and against the positivism of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the content and teachings of the ancient Jewish scriptures are preserved, continue to be endowed with authority, and are regarded as truths even as they are being reinterpreted and translated into a language appropriate for the modern world. Mose`s considers Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Le´vinas as exemplary representatives of this tendency and contrasts their work to the critical modernity of authors and thinkers ranging from Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin to the German postwar poet Paul Celan and the French neo-mystical writer Edmond Jabe`s. For the latter group, the contents of the Jewish tradition have lost their validity, and all that remains of them ‘‘in a world without God’’ (M, 106) are mere scattered remnants—‘‘textual fragments, categories of thought, modes of argumentation and sensibility’’ (M, 106)—that can be retained and recycled to serve secular values and ideas. Mose`s’s categorization is useful in telling apart two forms of secularization that are often falsely amalgamated. However, his typology, which draws a sharp dividing line between the two groups of thinkers he invokes, risks both obliterating the specificity of their various approaches to the encounter between the Jewish tradition and modernity and disregarding the complexity of their sometimes surprising interactions. This is particularly true for Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, two figures whose encounter is mostly remembered for their conflicting views on the meaning and importance of belonging and loyalty to the Jewish people. As this essay shows, a close reading of Arendt’s references to Scholem’s work on Jewish mysticism—in her essay on Walter Benjamin and especially in her earlier essay ‘‘Jewish History, Revised,’’2 her response to Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism—calls for a revision of Mose`s’s views. I contend that Arendt’s reactions to Scholem illustrate the porosity of the boundaries between Mose`s’s two paradigms of ‘‘normative’’ and ‘‘critical’’ religious modernity. They also illuminate the specific dynamics of Arendt’s secularization of Scholem’s approach to the Kabbalah and to the Jewish tradition as a whole. The intricacies of this exchange between Arendt and Scholem challenge attempts to classify modes of secularization and instead invite an analysis of the singular processes at work in the transformation of elements of the religious tradition into ideas and phenomena of the modern world. For Mose`s, Hannah Arendt is the thinker who most radically epitomizes critical modernity. She is, according to him, ‘‘diametrically opposed to Rosenzweig or Levinas’’ (M, 107). In contrast to the latter thinkers, Arendt,

Tradition and the Hidden

67

for Mose`s, ‘‘defines modernity as a time when tradition can no longer reach us’’ because ‘‘the process of transmission has irrevocably been interrupted’’ (M, 107). Any attempt to deny this rupture is, for her, a sign of philosophical and ethical blindness. Mose`s quotes Arendt’s approving view of Kafka and Benjamin, whom she regards as paradigmatic witnesses of this rupture of the tradition, and contrasts such approval with what he describes as her puzzlement about Gershom Scholem’s ‘‘strange decision to approach Judaism via the Cabala’’ (M, 107).3 Mose`s states that ‘‘Arendt was shocked about Scholem’s attitude, not so much because of his choice of the Cabala as an object of study but rather because for her the Jewish mystical tradition was absolutely incapable of guiding modern man in his concrete ethical, and above all political choices’’ (M, 107). Arendt’s disapproval, Mose`s explains, derives from her conviction that the moral vocation of man is essentially political and expresses itself in the concrete judgments informing his actions. For Mose`s, Scholem, unlike Arendt, is situated ‘‘exactly at the threshold of the tension between normative and critical modernity’’ (M, 108) because, on the one hand, like the thinkers of ‘‘critical modernity,’’ he regards his generation as one that can no longer decipher the ancient scriptures, but, on the other hand, he nevertheless continues to believe that the awareness of the value and relevance of the Jewish tradition could reawaken at any moment. Mose`s maintains that Scholem’s own study of Jewish mysticism partakes in this reawakening. While Mose`s is undoubtedly right to point out the divergence of Arendt’s and Scholem’s attitudes toward Judaism, he fails to realize that Arendt, too, at least in some of her writings, expresses her appreciation of Jewish mysticism and thereby blurs the boundaries between Mose`s’s two paradigms. Mose`s’s misunderstanding springs from a misreading of a comment by Arendt in her essay on Walter Benjamin. He sees her brief reflections there on Scholem’s Kabbalah studies and their political impact as a disparaging dismissal. More importantly, Mose`s seems to ignore Arendt’s significant interest in Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.4 As we shall see, in her essay on this very topic, entitled ‘‘Jewish History, Revised,’’ where she hails Scholem’s magisterial exploration of the essential role of mysticism in Jewish history, Arendt regards the Kabbalah as one of the most valuable and politically relevant relics of the Jewish tradition. To illustrate his claim about Arendt’s rejection of Scholem’s work on Jewish mysticism, Mose`s quotes sentences from her essay on Walter Benjamin, where she describes the Jewish tradition as an apolitical anachronism, as

68

Liska

‘‘exotic matters . . . that don’t commit to anything’’ (M, 107) and that seem to still be relevant only because of their exoticism. Mose`s paraphrases Arendt’s approving description of Benjamin’s ideas thus: ‘‘The past spoke directly only through things that could not be transmitted’’ (M, 107). However, upon a closer reading, what Mose`s reads as a derogatory attitude toward Scholem in fact has an altogether different tonality in its original context in Arendt’s essay. There, as we shall see, her reflections on Scholem’s work on Jewish mysticism are in fact embedded in an enthusiastic parallel that she draws between Benjamin and Scholem. Arendt particularly values that both authors deal with topics of study that have not been ‘‘handed down’’ and therefore have not become part of an established tradition that claims authority for itself. In this context, she compares Scholem’s research on Kabbalah with Benjamin’s decision to work on what were considered similarly marginal and forgotten topics in European literature and culture. Arendt describes Scholem’s study of the Kabbalah in the most positive terms, and acknowledges its rebellious and subversive power. For her, Scholem’s interest in the Jewish mystical tradition is the ‘‘exact counterpart of Benjamin’s choice of the German Baroque Age as a topic for his Habilitation thesis’’ (WB, 195). What Benjamin’s and Scholem’s chosen topics have in common is precisely that they were considered by the mainstream traditions of their respective fields of interest—in the one case European culture, in the other Jewish culture—as ‘‘something downright disreputable’’ (WB, 195). A valorization of these topics therefore constituted a ‘‘ ‘return’ neither to the German, nor the European, nor to the Jewish tradition’’ (WB, 195, translation modified). Thus, for Arendt, the very fact that their topics of choice were ‘‘untransmitted and untransmissible’’ (WB, 195) was not, as Mose`s surmises, a sign of their failure, nor was their ‘‘exotic character’’ a superficial and fashionable attraction. Instead, these qualities were precisely the evidence of such topics’ liberating potential, grounded in the awareness of the rupture of tradition in modernity. For Arendt, this potential inherent in Benjamin’s and Scholem’s topics stemmed simultaneously from their invocation of the tradition and their position outside of its continuous, transmitted, and established manifestation. Arendt’s attraction to Benjamin’s and Scholem’s approach resided in their common awareness that tradition in its accepted form had lost its validity as well as their shared resistance to ‘‘all claims to a binding authority’’ (WB, 195) and a canonized, ‘‘obligative truth’’ (WB, 195). Arendt’s view of Scholem’s study of the Kabbalah in her Benjamin essay, dating from 1968, is prefigured more than twenty-five years earlier in ‘‘Jewish

Tradition and the Hidden

69

History, Revised,’’ an essay ignored by Mose`s and rarely discussed in the literature on Arendt. This essay in many ways confirms Mose`s’s characterization of Arendt as a thinker of ‘‘critical modernity,’’ since it indeed translates selected elements of the Jewish religious tradition into secular terms. However, this essay also shows that Arendt, at least in her early writings, regards certain of these ancient religious views and practices as valuable precursors of modern ideas and does not fully adhere to the premises underlying an interpretation of enlightened modernity as formed by complete rupture. In a letter dated April 25, 1942, Arendt requested that Scholem send her what she called ‘‘a copy of your Kabbalah,’’ his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.5 On November 4, 1943, she wrote: ‘‘Don’t judge me too harshly [for replying so late]. Since I read your book—and I have read it repeatedly in the spring, when I finally got a copy—I have written many ‘love’ letters— ‘Liebes’Briefe—to you [in my mind]’’ (BW, 37). On May 20, 1944, she wrote: ‘‘I thought a lot about you, not only because I spoke with many people about your book, but also because it doesn’t leave my mind and accompanies me in all of my own work in unexpressed—but,’’ she added parenthetically— ‘‘(certainly not unconscious) ways [in einer unausgesprochenen (aber bitte nicht unbewussten) Weise]’’ (BW, 47). Scholem, in turn, on March 26, 1944, asks the editor of the CJR, a journal published by the American Jewish Committee: ‘‘Do you happen to know Mrs. Hannah Blu¨cher in New York? . . . She is one of the best minds who have come over from Europe and she has sent me one of the two intelligent criticisms of my book’’ (BW, 51). Among the many unwritten ‘‘love letters’’ to Scholem that Arendt claims to have written in her mind, the one that materialized and that her addressee accepted so graciously was Arendt’s essay ‘‘Jewish History, Revised.’’ It was originally published in 1948 in the newspaper The Jewish Frontier but written as early as 1944. It is a short text that can be read as a review of Scholem’s book, but also as a blueprint of her own later political and philosophical writings. In spite of Scholem’s enthusiastic response, Arendt’s review is a ‘‘love letter’’ that is possibly far from pure in more ways than he may have realized at the time. The subsequent, notorious quarreling between Scholem and Arendt concerning her critique of Zionism that started soon after this epistolary exchange—as well as later and more vehemently over her book on the Eichmann trial6 —is prefigured between the lines of her reading of Scholem’s book. Arendt’s essay, pace Mose`s, shows that she did endow the Kabbalah with the capacity to guide ‘‘modern man in his concrete ethical and, above all, political choices’’ (M, 107).

70

Liska

There is little doubt as to what, on the surface, motivated both Arendt’s interest in Scholem’s book and Scholem’s approval of her response: a common aversion to Jewish assimilation and the desire to establish a Jewish history sui generis rather than one motivated primarily by external forces consisting essentially of a ‘‘monotonous chronicle of persecutions and pogroms’’ (JHR, 303) through the ages. Instead, both Scholem and, in praising his book, Arendt focus on an inner-Jewish dynamic that would—not surprisingly given the moment of this exchange, the period during and after the Holocaust—restore the dignity and unity of the Jews as a people. Arendt insists that Scholem’s reconstruction of Jewish mysticism culminating in the glory and downfall of the Sabbatean movement radically revises previous versions of Jewish history, in which the Jews were depicted as mere passive victims. Simultaneously, this revised Jewish history sought to counteract apologetic attempts (presumably by the members of the Wissenschaft des Judentums whom Scholem attacked) to deny the Jewish people’s specificity and particularism. As we shall see, Arendt’s characterization of mysticism and her description of the impact of mystical practice capture the gist of Scholem’s book, though in a selective way and with ever-so-slight shifts in style and vocabulary that co-opt his basic thoughts and foreshadow important categories of her own thinking. Generally, Arendt’s insights are motivated by recognizably secular ideas and, in sometimes barely plausible ways, project modern categories onto Jewish mysticism—with, as I argue here, one notable exception. In her analysis of ‘‘Jewish History, Revised,’’ Seyla Benhabib speaks of ‘‘a curious dialectic twist’’ by which Arendt sees in Jewish mysticism the source of revolutionary or, more generally, concerted popular action.7 The same could be said of the ways in which Arendt turns Jewish mysticism into a precursor of modern materialism, empiricism, and Cartesian philosophy. It is indeed surprising to see Arendt defend mysticism as a forerunner of these modern movements, but the logic informing her praise of the Kabbalah is not, in fact, exactly dialectical: Arendt had her misgivings about ‘‘dialectic twists.’’ In her essay on Walter Benjamin she acquits Benjamin of the ‘‘dialectical subtleties of his Marxist friends’’ (WB, 200), which in another text she disparages as ‘‘a trick where one thing always reverses into its other and produces it’’ (bei dem immer das Eine in das Andere umschla¨gt und es erzeugt).8 Rather than twists and tricks, Arendt, in her response to Scholem’s book, argues mostly genealogically as she describes the characteristics of Jewish mysticism and makes it correspond with the values informing her own burgeoning political thinking.9

Tradition and the Hidden

71

It is indeed fascinating to see how Arendt derives from Jewish mysticism man’s ‘‘world-building capacities.’’10 One recognizes in her praise of the mystics the essential values determining Arendt’s political thought: she celebrates their inclination toward action rather than passivity, their sense of reality based on experience rather than exegesis, and their founding of a countertradition that would inaugurate a new era in which the Jews, as a unified people even when scattered in the Diaspora, would play a major role in the emergence of modern man.

Action, Reality, and Counter-Tradition Among Arendt’s fundamental ideas prefigured in her praise of Scholem’s depiction of Jewish mysticism is the importance of action over passivity, the latter of which she equates with political irresponsibility and calls here, rather harshly, ‘‘something essentially inhuman’’ (JHR, 304).11 Arendt opposes rabbinic Judaism and Orthodoxy, which she accuses of merely interpreting the law and encouraging submissiveness. However, unlike Scholem, she is less interested in an antinomian, transgressive, and anarchist ‘‘redemption through sin’’12 than in the impact of mysticism to encourage action. Although the Sabbatean movement endowed Jewish mysticism, which, until then, had ‘‘kept itself within the Law’’ (JHR, 309), with antinomian forces, the source of the movement’s political importance, for Arendt, did not derive from this rejection of the law. Instead, it is, for her, the drive to collective action instilled by the Kabbalah that made the rabbis turn away from ‘‘the mere interpretation of the Law’’ (JHR, 309), which had for centuries kept them outside the sphere of history and politics. Furthermore, the new collective political action created a bond that could replace Halakhah, which had formerly been ‘‘the only tie of the people in the Diaspora’’ (JHR, 309).13 What matters to her, then, in her discussion of the antinomian messianic movement is not the transgression or deactivation of the Law but the empowerment of man on the ‘‘public scene of history’’ (JHR, 311). Furthermore, Arendt argues away mysticism’s esotericism, as it would hardly fit her idea of politics as the founding of a public sphere—a crucial element of her later political thinking—by showing how it appealed to all those who were ‘‘actually excluded from action’’ and felt that ‘‘they were helpless victims of incomprehensible forces’’ (JHR, 306). Mysticism gave them a sense that they were part of a larger whole and participated in influencing it. A crucial quote from Scholem resonates with her own imperative

72

Liska

of human empowerment: through a mystical understanding of the mitzvot, Scholem writes, ‘‘the religious Jew became a protagonist in the drama of the world; he manipulated the strings behind the scene’’ (JHR, 304). Arendt secularizes Scholem’s description of the transformation of the mystic’s understanding of Halakhah and transposes it onto her understanding of man as a zoon politicon. It is indeed the intervention in the world suggested by Scholem’s view of the Kabbalah that matters to Arendt. The confidence that mystical practice could partake ‘‘in the power which rules the world’’ liberated the mystics, as well as the masses that were attracted to their views, from being mere victims of incomprehensible forces, and it made them discover ‘‘a working knowledge of reality’’ (JHR, 306–7). Arendt portrays the mystics’ approach to reality as an early form of modern empiricism. In her description of mystical practice Arendt stresses the distinction of Jewish kabbalists—whose ‘‘main mystical organon of cognition is experience and never reason or faith in revelation’’—from rabbinic Judaism, which relied on ‘‘interpretation and logic’’ (JHR, 307). The former approach, Arendt writes, ‘‘comes very close to the modern notion of experiment’’ that ‘‘could be repeated and tested’’ (JHR, 307), as in modern science; when applied to one’s inner self, such a method could provide reliable insights into the psychological workings of human reality. Arendt even links this idea of mysticism as a precursor of modernity to Descartes’s Cogito, where the inner experience becomes the foundation of the reality of being. She relates this idea to the mystic’s impersonal foundation of the real, in contrast to Christian mysticism’s concern with the autobiography of saints and mystics. What she deems praiseworthy in this rejection of autobiography —that runs counter to her later affirmation of the biographical that ‘‘always yields a story’’14 —is that ‘‘for Jewish mystics, man’s own self was not subject to salvation and therefore became interesting only as an instrument of supreme action’’ (JHR, 308). This disregard for the autobiographical among Jewish mystics, in opposition to their Christian counterparts who were concerned only with the individual soul, turned their mystical practice into ‘‘instruments for active participation in the destiny of mankind’’ (JHR, 308). In the immediate aftermath of the war and the Jewish catastrophe, Arendt here simultaneously endows Jews—those formerly ‘‘excluded from action’’ (JHR, 306)—with a power to act and to ‘‘participate in the formation of modern man’’ (JHR, 304). Another prefiguration of Arendt’s modern political thought is revealed in her understanding of the mystics’ creation of an alternative Jewish tradition derived from what she regards as their ‘‘workable notion of reality’’

Tradition and the Hidden

73

and their foreshadowing of modern experiments: Unlike Christianity, which, because of its concern with autobiography, individual salvation, and inwardness, ‘‘had hardly a continuous tradition of its own’’ (JHR, 308), Jewish mystics’ impersonal and ‘‘repeatable instruments’’ with which they apprehended reality ‘‘founded a genuine tradition running parallel to the official tradition of Orthodoxy’’ (JHR, 308). In insisting on the distinction between Orthodoxy and mysticism, Arendt diverges from the primary opposition that concerns Scholem: that between mysticism as a crucial anti-rationalist force in Jewish history and the prevailing ideas of the rationalists, ‘‘both medieval and modern,’’ such as Maimonides and Hermann Cohen (Major Trends, 38). Arendt thereby secularizes Scholem’s appreciation of mysticism,15 which he views as a force still very close to the Jewish religious tradition. Furthermore, this counter-tradition, thanks to what Arendt refers to as ‘‘the Myth of Exile’’—the idea that the Diaspora was a punishment (cf. JHR, 309)—could now encompass ‘‘the whole Jewish people’’ including the Jews living outside of Palestine, because of the Lurianic Kabbalah’s idea of a mission to ‘‘uplift the fallen sparks from all their various locations’’ and the ‘‘enormous force of action’’ released by messianic mysticism’s interpretation of ‘‘exile as action instead of suffering’’ (JHR, 309). In this way Arendt projects onto mysticism with its ‘‘tension towards action and realization’’ (JHR, 310) the possibility of gathering the entirety of the Jewish people including its most contrasting manifestations, from Hasidism to Reform Judaism and the ‘‘proponents of an apocalyptic revolution’’ (JHR, 311), based on a common historical origin and a common, active contribution to modernity. The contributions that she attributes to mysticism as a counter-tradition undermining Orthodoxy—an empowerment to action, an experimental approach and, above all, an insistence on political participation—can all be subsumed under the dimension of Arendt’s thought indebted to the secularism of the Enlightenment. There is, however, one element that does not quite seem to fit: just as, in her letter to Scholem, she speaks of the impact of his book on her entire thinking as something that remains unexpressed, she repeatedly affirms in her text an aspect of mysticism that runs counter to the Enlightenment idea of transparency and the openness of the public sphere. On almost every page of her text one finds the word ‘‘hidden’’ used in an affirmative sense at least once: she writes of the ‘‘hidden God’’ (JHR, 304) of the mystics that goes hand-in-hand with the idea of the ‘‘hidden path’’ (JHR, 305) of emanation as a limitation of self-determination (JHR, 305); the ‘‘hidden experiments of the Jewish mystics’’ and the ‘‘secrecy of their speculations’’ resembling the ‘‘discovery of the philosopher’s stone’’ that

74

Liska

is kept ‘‘hidden’’ (JHR, 306); the mystic’s ‘‘efforts to attain a higher reality that was hidden rather than revealed in the tangible world of everyday life’’; the ‘‘ ‘laws’ which, too, work hidden from the eyes of ordinary men’’ (JHR, 305–6); and the hiddenness of the mystic’s belief in an ‘‘impersonal force as opposed to the God of revelation,’’ a force that is ‘‘concealed rather than revealed in the revelation of the Bible’’ (JHR, 305). Arendt undoubtedly deviates here from Scholem’s own description of the mystics’ idea of the hidden God of Gnosticism. The latter involves a strong separation between God as creator and God as revealer, which Arendt changes into an impersonal God, a God as force rather than as ‘‘personality.’’ Here Arendt’s quasi-Spinozist view of emanation offers a key example of her secularization of the writings of Scholem; the latter explicitly had remarked that the Jewish mystics’ understanding of ‘‘creation out of nothing’’ simply means ‘‘creation out of God.’’ According to Scholem, their understanding of emanation therefore ‘‘stands farthest removed’’ from what the term stands for ‘‘in the history of philosophy and theology’’ (Major Trends, 25). But more striking than this rereading is what remains Arendt’s own emphasis on a notion of the hidden that understands revelation itself as a form of concealment. How is such an emphasis to be reconciled with her later political critique of secrecy ‘‘as a basic mode of operation in totalitarian regimes’’?16 In the context of her analysis of totalitarianism, concealment serves to ‘‘diminish the very sense of reality’’ with ‘‘its ultimate goal as obliterating the distinction between truth and falsity altogether.’’17 In the context of her political writings, hiddenness aims at precluding ‘‘our capacity to share points of view, to form communal and public experiences and understandings.’’18 Given her critique of the hidden, one also wonders how to understand Arendt’s enthusiastic insistence, voiced in her ‘‘love letter’’ to Scholem, that his book exerts an ‘‘unexpressed’’ influence on her work. Can one also read it, as I have suggested, as an influence on her later work, including her essay on Benjamin? And could it be that the hiddenness Arendt addresses in her comments on Scholem’s book is precisely what forms this subterranean trace of Scholem’s impact on her work? Hidden in her affirmation of hiddenness may be more than just an acknowledgment of Scholem’s insights into Jewish mysticism. There is possibly another, earlier addressee of her love letters, the one for whom concealment is the precondition of one of his most important ideas, the notion of truth as a-letheia. Martin Heidegger’s idea that truth originates from the hidden, and requires Entbergung—a bringing forth that occurs in a continuous temporality of becoming—and that is inextricably

Tradition and the Hidden

75

linked to Verborgenheit, concealment or hiddenness, is stated by the German philosopher and teacher of Arendt as early as 1924, in his lectures published in English under the title Plato’s Sophist,19 which Arendt must have witnessed while studying with the one she called the ‘‘hidden king who reigned in the realm of thinking.’’20 Throughout Heidegger’s work, his conception of truth relies on the privileged role of the hidden. Heidegger, defining truth as a-letheia, which literally means ‘‘unconcealedness,’’ insists on its hyphenated spelling as ‘‘un-concealedness’’ which points to the necessary condition of hiddenness for truth to emerge: ‘‘The uncoveredness of the world,’’ Heidegger writes in Plato’s Sophist, ‘‘must be wrested,’’ and ‘‘is initially and for the most part unavailable. The world is primarily, if not completely, concealed.’’21 More explicitly, Heidegger concludes his introduction to Parmenides written in 1942: ‘‘Indeed it appears that un-concealedness is involved with concealedness in a ‘conflict,’ the essence of which remains in dispute.’’22 This conflict may be secretly at play in Arendt’s reading of Scholem’s Major Trends and her confrontation with the Jewish tradition.23 Possibly—though this must remain a speculation—the role of the hidden in Scholem’s description of Jewish mysticism brought forth echoes of Arendt’s earlier teachings. At the time she wrote her review of Scholem’s book in 1944, this linkage allowed her to reconcile, or else to transpose onto a Jewish context, truths she could now—given Heidegger’s past political choices—only face in conflict and dispute, and possibly in hiding. It is striking that more than two decades later, in her essay on Walter Benjamin, Arendt indirectly reconnects Scholem and Heidegger in praise of the hidden. Immediately following her comparison between Benjamin’s choice of the Baroque as a topic of his scholarly pursuits and Scholem’s ‘‘strange decision’’ (merkwu¨rdigem Entschluss) (WB, 195) to work on a topic as ‘‘exotic’’ as the Kabbalah, she speaks of Benjamin’s idea of truth as ‘‘concerning a secret’’ (WB, 196). Quoting Benjamin that truth is not ‘‘an unveiling which destroys the secret, but the revelation which does it justice’’ (WB, 196), she brackets two seemingly incompatible modes of this revelation: Truth gains a similar ‘‘consistence’’ when it ‘‘comes into the world at the appropriate moment in history—be it as the Greek a-letheia, visually perceptible to the eyes of the mind and comprehended by us as ‘unconcealment’ [Unverborgenheit—Heidegger], or as the acoustically perceptible word of God as we know it from the European religions of revelation’’ (WB, 195–96). In this sentence, Arendt literally in one breath—between two dashes— associates revelation both with Heidegger’s a-letheia and with the Sinaitic

76

Liska

event, the two dimensions almost imperceptibly linked in her essay on Scholem’s book. Together, though in opposite directions, Arendt’s reference to both Greek and Jewish notions of revelation blurs the boundaries between an affirmation of continuity with Enlightenment secularism and traditional Judaism. However, and in this respect Mose`s’s assessment is accurate after all—the former ultimately has the upper hand. The unresolved tension between Arendt’s attraction to Scholem’s mystics and her insistent adherence to the secularism of the Enlightenment emerges in a final, obscure fragment of writing. What has long remained hidden not only from the English edition of Arendt’s Jewish Writings but already from the initial version of her article published in 1948 are the essay’s last three pages. These are found in Scholem’s library in Jerusalem, only as unprinted notes. Here, we discover that in the very last lines of the letter, after reiterating once more her agreement with Scholem on the working powers of mysticism, she closes on a major objection that points ahead to the core of her political thought: What the ‘‘enlightened professors of history in the nineteenth century [presumably those associated with the Wissenschaft des Judentums] didn’t know,’’ Arendt writes, ‘‘was that mysticism can actually work.’’ Yet she immediately adds a crucial remark that begins with a ‘‘however’’; this ‘‘however’’ is crucial, particularly in view of her earlier, unlikely appreciation of emanation theory as a predecessor of modern beliefs in the hidden hand pulling the strings behind the scenes. ‘‘However,’’ she continues, ‘‘however fascinated we may be that mystical thought has fuelled our will to action and to the political realization of our own history, we may not forget that it is finally up to man to decide over his own political destiny, and not the ‘invisible stream,’ the catastrophic course of which Scholem has revealed to us’’ (BW, 483). That these lines remained for such a long time hidden from public view is one of the many paradoxes in this surprising tale. For, with these words, Arendt refutes the legitimacy of the hidden as the nexus that allowed her to connect Scholem with Heidegger, the German with the Jewish past and, last but not least, modernity to religious tradition. And yet, although this ending may appear to confirm Mose`s’s characterization of Arendt as a thinker of ‘‘critical modernity,’’ the essay as a whole testifies to her interest in reinventing the special role that can be played by the Jewish tradition, in particular the Kabbalah, in building the modern world.

PA R T I I

Transformations

chapter 4

Messianism Without Messiah: Messianism, Religion, and Secularization in Modern Jewish Thought christoph schulte

In the midst of the turbulent Bavarian Revolution, in January 1919, only two months after the end of the First World War, a group of university students invited Professor Max Weber to speak at a Munich bookshop. There, he delivered an emotional speech, without notes, in which he addressed the ‘‘disenchantment’’ of the modern world and warned students against yearning for a prophet or redeemer. There is no such phenomenon in the modern, contemporary world of science and technology, a world alienated from God and free of prophets, he claimed. Weber’s speech was stenographed and later published under the title Science as a Vocation.1 Until today, this speech, which was originally directed against the utopian political fervor in the Bavarian revolutionary republic, led among others by Jewish socialists, anarchists, and communists—including Kurt Eisner, Gustav Landauer, Eugen Levine´, Erich Mu¨hsam, and Ernst Toller—has remained one of the pillars of secularization theory. In its original context, the speech was a liberal’s plea against the normative reenchantment of science and politics through prophetic, charismatic leadership and utopian Gesinnung. Together with Weber’s other famous speech on Politics as a Vocation, delivered in Munich in February 1919 under similar circumstances, Science as a Vocation defends the seemingly irreversible modern separation of science, technology, politics, and religion as different

80

Schulte

spheres of life, action, and vocation. If we historicize Weber’s speeches and his concept of the disenchantment of the world, we see that they were a reaction against the wild utopian mixture of prophecy and politics current among the revolutionaries of his day and characteristic of the messianisms without Messiah that I wish to discuss here. In order to distinguish these messianisms from traditional rabbinic notions in the most general way, let us recall verse 12 of the Yigdal prayer: ‘‘Yishlah leketz yamin meshiheinu’’—God will send our Messiah at the end of days. That the Messiah will be sent by God at the end of days is never challenged in rabbinic Judaism. Nonetheless, two crucial questions remain unresolved even within traditional interpretations based on the Babylonian Talmud (BT), Sanhedrin 97a–99a: whether Jews can guess the date of the end and whether they can—and should—actively hasten the end. This ambivalence disappears in modern messianism without Messiah, as we shall see, since it is based on the idea that man makes history and politics, not God, and that God does not send a personal messiah. There is no supernatural intervention into this-worldly history, made by man. This essay traces and analyzes the evolution of the relationship between messianism, religion, and secularization in modern Jewish history. The essay’s first section examines the literature on messianism and the nineteenthcentury emergence of several different messianisms without Messiah. In the essay’s second half, I focus on what I term the leftist, socialist Jewish messianism without Messiah that emerged in the late nineteenth century. I seek to show how several Jewish philosophers of history of the nineteenth and twentieth century reflected key characteristics and evolutions in this messianism without Messiah. By analyzing such thinkers in the broad historical and discursive context of Jewish messianism, I also seek to rethink the meaning of secularization in modern Jewish thought. I argue that the use of messianic motives in socialist models of history describes a different story than the usual discourse of the ‘‘disenchantment of the world’’ that has greatly influenced the study of philosophy, history, and the social sciences since Weber. Rather, the introduction and use of messianic motives in essentially secular, this-worldly, leftist philosophies of history does not fit the Weberian one-way secularization theory, wherein religious or theological discourses or worldviews are replaced with a secular political one and the secular thus defined as inherently incompatible with religious or theological notions. Instead, Jewish philosophers of history consciously reintroduce fragments of Jewish religious tradition into

Messianism Without Messiah

81

the secular discourse of socialist and Marxist philosophies of history without making them less secular. The reference to Jewish messianic tradition in their weltanschauung does not imply a divine, supernatural intervention into the course of this-worldly universal history—in contrast to the rabbinic ‘‘Yishlah leketz yamin meshiheinu,’’ which forms the model of a religious position. I shall argue that this reference to messianism is not a brute reversal of secularization and a neo-theological return to a religious universal history guided by divine providence. Rather, messianism, the messianic, the days of Messiah, and related references are religious tropes in this-worldly historical discourses of Jewish philosophers, socialists, and revolutionaries. These tropes do not imply the return to a religious worldview or concept of history, although they do allude to Jewish religious sources, traditions, emotions, and overtones. Indeed, the tropes of messianism indicate something else: they signal a rupture with deterministic theories or fatalist notions of history. Against deterministic, immanent economic ‘‘laws of history’’ or the historical materialism propagated since Marx and Engels, messianism is a trope for an open future of humankind in history, open for change, reform, or revolution. The messianic vocabulary is a reminder that man (like God in the rabbinic tradition) can change the course of history, and it is not determined how, when, or in what form he will do so. He is not a fatalistic prisoner in the ‘‘iron cage’’ (Sta¨hlernes Geha¨use) of modernity, to use the Weberian metaphor. Thus, the end of man-made history is as unpredictable and unforeseeable as the coming of Messiah. Second, the recourse to the tropes of messianism is an identity marker within the often antisemitic socialist and communist debates. The reference to ‘‘Messiah’’ or ‘‘the messianic age’’ indicates, by the introduction of specifically Jewish terms and notions (the Christian word for Messiah, ‘‘Christ,’’ meaning Jesus of Nazareth, is never used) into a secular historic discourse,2 that the authors of those philosophies of history were self-conscious Jews. Such references blend publicly an element of traditional Judaism, messianism, with the authors’ own modern leftist political weltanschauung, ambitions, or identity. Messianism or the ‘‘messianic’’ become tropes, figures, or identity markers in discourses, discussions, or confessions negotiating modern Jewishness or modern Jewish leftist identities—as Elke Dubbels has demonstrated in her recent study Figuren des Messianischen (Figures of the messianic).3 As a consequence of this methodological approach, any scholarly analysis pertaining to the use of elements of messianism in philosophical discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jewish or Christian,

82

Schulte

must presuppose not a wholesale secularization of all of messianism, but rather a piecemeal reference to diverse elements of messianic teachings of the past. In this process, Messiah, messianism, or the ‘‘messianic’’ can mean a historical person, event, or concept, but mostly it means a trope, a code, an allegory, a symbol, an allusion, an analogy, which refers to a somehow Jewish weltanschauung. It is this specific element of the discourse that brings the twentiethcentury Jewish philosophers of history into stark contrast with Weber’s fatalistic notion of modernity as an ‘‘iron cage’’ in a disenchanted world dominated by capitalism, natural sciences, and technology that lacks any alternative vision of the future. As Norbert Bolz has argued, the messianism of Jewish philosophies of history can be interpreted as a ‘‘departure from the disenchanted world’’ of modernity.4 Socialist messianism is not the illegitimate profanation of theological terms and content in modern discourse, as Carl Schmitt argues in his Political Theology.5 Rather, one can interpret it in the way in which Jan Assmann reformulates political theology. Against Schmitt’s argument that all major modern political terms are secularized theological terms, Assmann shows that in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Israel central religious terms were theologized political terms.6 This is, by the way, true for the term ‘‘messiah’’: mashiah in the Bible first designated the anointed kings of Israel, starting with Saul and David. Only centuries later, in exilic and postexilic times, did mashiah become the religious word for a future redeemer of Israel that we know from the Yigdal prayer. This essay demonstrates that leftist Jewish philosophers of history, by introducing a messianism without Messiah, at least semantically retheologized and reshaped secular socialist political discourses and blended secular political terms, on the one hand, with traditional messianic vocabulary or tropes, on the other. This blending allowed them to articulate their claim that even in a disenchanted world there are historical and political alternatives to a seemingly predetermined fate of humankind suffering from capitalism.

Types of Messianism Without Messiah There are three general types of Jewish messianism without Messiah in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: first, the messianism of Reform Judaism; second, modern Zionism; and third, modern Jewish socialist messianism. Reform Judaism since the 1840s has often depersonalized messianism and

Messianism Without Messiah

83

even sometimes eliminated the Messiah from prayer books.7 The statement of principles decided at the Philadelphia Rabbinical Conference in November 1869 reads, for example: ‘‘The Messianic aim of Israel is not the restoration of the old Jewish state under a descendant of David, involving a second separation from the nations of the earth, but the union of all the children of God in the confession of the unity of God.’’ The Reform movement in such instances gave up the Mashiah ben David and national restoration in the name of the unity of humankind confessing the unity of God. Modern political Zionism, the second type of messianism without Messiah, refers to a quasi-messianic return of the Jewish people to their ancient lands without waiting for, and without need of, a messianic figure. In its goal, namely the recovery of the sovereignty of the Jewish people over Palestine or Zion, political Zionism has similarities to a specific element in the exilic messianic tradition. However, the vast majority of Zionists understood Zionism as an areligious or even anti-religious political and cultural movement. As Yaacov Shavit and Eli Lederhendler in their analysis of so-called Zionist messianism have argued, the references to messianism in Zionism were mostly symbolic and instrumental in order to win religious Jews for the Zionist cause.8 The vast majority of Zionist ideologues wanted a Jewish state because of the antisemitism, assimilation, and oppression of the Jews in Europe, not for religious reasons. Moreover, they did not want to wait for the Messiah to come. Rather, devout anti-Zionists accused Zionists of anticipating the Messiah with their actions. The vast majority of Zionists themselves ideologically rejected all reference to religion and thus to the Messiah. The early Zionist movement did not perceive itself as a messianic movement in the traditional sense at all. Only after the Six Day War of 1967 did small groups in the Zionist and settler movements such as Gush Emunim begin to refer to, and identify themselves publicly with, religious messianism. The messianic potential of regaining the ancient lands, which had been present in the Religious Zionism of singular personalities such as Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in the Yishuv, became after 1967 an effective political option for a considerable mass movement. The recourse to messianism served, among other purposes, to aid in the politico-religious legitimatization of the continuing occupation and annexation of the newly conquered territories of ‘‘Greater Israel.’’ Due to the fact that such movements produced a number of fanatical leaders but no messiah, one could, indeed, speak here of an annexationist messianism without Messiah: a messianism that construes as a religious event the profane military

84

Schulte

victory of 1967 and the historically accidental and hardly religiously motivated occupation of the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank. In the settler movement and in some religious parties in Israel, Zionism, originally a secular undertaking, has been resacralized with messianic elements for decades.9 Many religious settlers view secular Zionism as a divine tool to regain the holy soil of Eretz Yisrael. In this context, the politicization of the Haredi camp after 1967 is one of the most striking phenomena in Israeli political history. Whether this politicization has messianic or ultra-nationalist reasons, or both, can be scrutinized in detail for the many parties and movements of the Haredi camp. Next to the resacralization of Greater Israel in the retheologized Zionism of some Haredi groups, an authentic messianic movement with Messiah has emerged elsewhere in contemporary Judaism: Chabad. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, heir and spiritual leader of the Chabad movement, was venerated as the Messiah by many of his followers. Various camps in contemporary Jewry harshly criticized this claim (and continue to do so).10 Indeed, after the Rebbe’s death in 1994, Schneerson’s followers waited in vain at his grave in Queens for his resurrection. The hopes of a messianic parousia of Schneerson have remained disappointed until this day. Instead, as in early Christianity, his followers reacted to the death of their messiah with intense missionary activity. The death of the Messiah is thus compensated through the missionary success of his message, albeit, in Chabad’s case, a message spread not with gospels about the Messiah but rather with pictures, books, tapes, and videos of him.

Leftist Messianism Without Messiah In the following, I focus on the third type of messianism without Messiah, the modern socialist messianism that Max Weber confronted in 1919. The starting point of my discussion of this type of messianism without Messiah is the recognition of the striking return of messianism in the writings of Jewish philosophers of history and Jewish intellectuals on the left in Europe between the mid-nineteenth century and 1989. What makes this so remarkable is that in most of the major movements of Jewish innovation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, messianism hardly played a role, whether religiously, politically, or intellectually. Messianism was entirely absent from Haskalah thought in Ashkenaz. Paradigmatically, one of the

Messianism Without Messiah

85

protagonists of the Prussian Haskalah, Lazarus Bendavid, who lived well into the nineteenth century and who was a leading representative of the enlightened, emancipated liberal Jewish weltanschauung and of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, stated in 1822 that messianism is not essential to Judaism past and present. Bendavid regarded Jewish civic liberties in the bourgeois state as the modern fulfillment of old messianic hopes.11 For liberal Jews such as Bendavid, Leopold Zunz, and Gabriel Riesser, and the Jewish liberal bourgeoisie in Germany, Judaism was ethical monotheism. They considered messianism a Jewish fantasy or folly of the past with no continuing relevance. However, as early as in the 1830s, and alongside the rise of a messianism without Messiah among Reform rabbis in Germany from the 1840s, messianism returned as a concept. It appears deeply embedded in the philosophies of history of Jewish thinkers and intellectuals on the left of subsequent generations, among them most prominently Moses Hess, Hermann Cohen, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. In light of a humanity suffering from poverty, lack of freedom, capitalist exploitation, and social injustice, such figures saw the messianic age or end of days as a perspective for the future, one that represents the idea, hope, or utopia of socialism and societal change—and one that promises the end of the misery of history. In contrast to the rabbinic tradition, though, these Jewish philosophers of history on the left no longer anticipated the coming of the Messiah as a person and liberator of Israel. Instead, in varying manners they included the notions of messianism and the messianic age in their philosophies and created visions of the possible future and universal liberation of humanity through social justice and peace. Here I discuss and analyze the history of ideas of some of these socialist messianisms within the thought of several leading Jewish intellectuals of the left. In doing so, I am especially attentive to the definition of the term ‘‘secularization’’ and to the process of secularization in the modern philosophy of history. Much of modern philosophy of history has argued that there is one profane universal history (Weltgeschichte). Universal history, as Reinhart Koselleck demonstrated, became a widespread concept among European historians and philosophers of the Enlightenment around the mid-eighteenth century.12 With Kant’s critique of metaphysics and the rise of Hegelianism, as Odo Marquard describes, the philosophy of this universal history displaced metaphysics as the leading philosophy in nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury continental thought.13 Jacob Taubes and Karl Lo¨with interpret the occidental philosophies of history from Augustine to Voltaire, Lessing, and

86

Schulte

Kant, and then to Hegel, the Hegelian left, and Marx as the secularization of Christian theology of history. Taubes and Lo¨with treat these secular philosophies of progressive universal history—with humankind approaching universal knowledge, justice, peace, and morality in the final stage of history—as a legacy of Christian theology.14 In this context, it is all the more remarkable that Jewish philosophers of history who embraced one of these secular philosophies of history—Hess building on Hegel’s, Cohen on Kant’s, Bloch, Benjamin, and Adorno on Marx’s—used messianic terminology, ideas, and elements to describe the final stages of world history. According to theologies and philosophies of history shaped by Christianity, Christ the Messiah has already come and thus world history only has to complete his work. By contrast, in the philosophies of history of Lessing, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, Christianity is overcome and merely a past period in universal history. Not God’s divine providence, but rather human reason (Lessing, Kant), Weltgeist (Hegel), or class struggle and the world market (Marx) rule over history. As a common denominator in these philosophies of history, man’s activities make history and the future. This change from a theology of history to a philosophy of history, the replacement of God’s providence by human activity as the driving force in universal history, can rightly be called secularization. However, to which end shall humankind make universal history, starting from the miseries of the present age? What is the future of humankind in universal history? Or, in other words, which variety of secularized thinking is this? This is where the Jewish philosophers of history, Hess, Cohen, Bloch, Benjamin, and Adorno, offer a perspective distinctive from that of their purely secularist forerunners. They do so through the reference to messianism (although, as we will see, each philosopher refers to different elements of messianism). Meanwhile, in contrast to Christian philosophers of history from Augustine to Hegel, for these thinkers as Jews, the Messiah has not come yet, the world is not redeemed, the misery is real, the end of history has not arrived, and the future is open. Thus, Jewish philosophers of history used messianism as a marker for the incompleteness of history, and therewith for its present and future alterability. For them messianism stood for an open, non-deterministic future and for a better world order. In the Jewish philosophies of history, elements of messianism drawn from particular parts of biblical and rabbinic traditions are mixed with a universal idea of history. In the process, some elements of prophetic messianism, such as the Messiah as a person and the rebuilding of the Temple, fall

Messianism Without Messiah

87

by the wayside. Still, the Jewish philosophies of history import identifiable elements of Jewish and rabbinic traditions, such as the ‘‘messianic age,’’ into the secular and often anti-religious or overtly secularist historical discourses of European socialism and communism. Not one of our Jewish philosophers of history is an ideological secularist of the anti-religious type. Unlike many of their liberal and leftist fellow travelers, not one of them favors the eradication of religion. For all of them, religion and religious imaginations reflect the deep concerns and desires of man, as does messianism. They are thus, through the reference to messianic concepts, set apart from purely atheistic, materialistic, secularistic, and deterministic models of history, the most prominent of the latter being Marxist historical materialism. As Pierre Bouretz determines in his outstanding survey Te´moins du futur: Philosophie et messianisme (Witnesses for the future: Philosophy and messianism),15 an open future and the alterability of world history were common premises in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, despite all the ideological differences among the various Jewish socialist thinkers. However, in contrast to cultural Zionists and to Jewish existentialist philosophers of religion (such as Rosenzweig and Buber), of the ethics of responsibility (Hans Jonas), of meta-ethics (Emmanuel Levinas), or of natural law (Leo Strauss), these Jewish philosophers of history saw socialism as the historical force of change. The recourse to the still-coming messianic age brings, therefore, the Jewish philosophy of history into an antagonistic position to both the philosophies of history influenced by Christianity (e.g., Hegel) and those of a purely profane, atheistic, and deterministic nature (e.g., Marxist historical materialism). I consider in my analysis only those Jewish authors who explicitly refer to messianism or Messiah, even if merely in faint hints, tropes, or allusions. I contend that this recourse toward messianic elements from the biblical prophets is exactly that which emphasizes the ‘‘Jewishness’’ of Jewish philosophies of history.16 In a purely Jewish framework of interpretation, this use of messianism marked a clear break from Halakhah and the rabbinical tradition centered on the Torah. Vis-a`-vis the non-Jewish world, however, with their recourse to Jewish messianism, these Jewish philosophers of history identified themselves precisely as Jews. The recourse to ‘‘messianism,’’ to the ‘‘messianic,’’ or to ‘‘the end of days,’’ be it only ornamental, superficial, or rhetorical compared to the real events of material, man-made history, served as a Jewish identity marker. In this respect, socialist messianism could represent a new and specifically modern, universalistic Jewish identity. By referring to messianism, some Jewish socialists and communists identified themselves as Jews.

88

Schulte

This was a rhetoric of self-definition and self-identification on one hand and a conscious attempt to deal with Jewish tradition on the other. This claim of my essay goes beyond Michael Lo¨wy’s statement of a loose ‘‘elective affinity’’ between German-speaking leftist Jews and utopian political thought in the early twentieth century. In his Redemption and Utopia,17 Lo¨wy analyzes this ‘‘elective affinity’’ between messianism and radical thought in the works of some early twentieth-century German Jewish philosophers and writers, but he is silent about the personal motivations and the element of individual choice in this elective affinity. Moreover, he does not link early twentieth-century radical thought to its nineteenthcentury pre-history (e.g., Hess, Cohen, and Chaim Zhitlowsky).18 As is also the case with Bouretz’s study, Lo¨wy’s study considers neither critical differences in the messianic elements among the various philosophies nor the relationship between modern socialist messianism, anarchism, and other secular ideologies (e.g., Zionism) in Jewish history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In contrast to many socialists and communists with Christian backgrounds, however, those with Jewish backgrounds often referred specifically to elements of Jewish messianism in their works. Often, messianism was the only element of the Jewish religious tradition that Jewish secular leftists remembered, the only element with which they could identify, the only element that they could adapt.19 They did not consider a return to the Torah and Halakhah, to observance, to particularistic Jewish communities or customs, in contrast. They saw messianism as the single element of Jewish religious tradition compatible with their ambitions of radical social and political change. In a variety of ways, messianism thus offered Jewish intellectuals of the left in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a common point of identification with an element of the Jewish tradition.20 In the following, I discuss some exemplary representatives of Jewish philosophy of history, all of whom have recourse in markedly different ways to Jewish messianism.

Moses Hess (1812–75) Moses Hess was one of the precursors to modern Zionism. His messianism is situated at the intersection of universal socialism and particularistic Zionism. Arnold Ruge referred to Hess as the ‘‘communist rabbi,’’ because Hess, the

Messianism Without Messiah

89

son of an Orthodox Jewish sugar manufacturer in Bonn, actively pursued political revolution in Germany and the rights of the working class, working together with Marx and Engels during his time in exile in Brussels. Of course, Marx’s philosophy can be interpreted as messianic, but Marx himself never acknowledged the Jewish tradition or messianism. Indeed, he repudiated his Jewish heritage. In contrast, Hess publicly avowed that he was a Jew who knew Hebrew and had received a traditional religious upbringing. In his youth, Hess presented himself as a ‘‘disciple of Spinoza,’’ as he writes in his first work The Holy History of Mankind from 1837, a work that posits that the current, third, and final ‘‘messianic’’ age of humankind began with Spinoza.21 Spinoza, a non-believing Enlightenment thinker often celebrated as the ‘‘first secular Jew,’’22 was Hess’s Jewish role model. Politically and philosophically, though, he belonged to the Left Hegelians. Both his three-step model of philosophy of history and his sociopolitical engagement illustrate that Hess was more of a material dialectician. Politically active as a journalist and speaker, he problematized pauperization and poverty and specifically addressed the potential for change. Later, he joined Ferdinand Lassalle in the General German Workers’ Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein). These activities for social democracy did not stop Hess, as a Jew, from arguing for the socialist settling of Palestine by Jews, most prominently in his major work from 1862, Rome and Jerusalem: The Last Nationalist Question. In light of the incessant antisemitism in Europe, something with which Hess was also all too familiar even among the Left Hegelians such as Friedrich Engels, Arnold Ruge, and Bruno Bauer,23 Hess saw the settling of Palestine as the only solution for the further existence of the Jews as a people. In Rome and Jerusalem, Hess portrays the then-contemporary times as the messianic age: ‘‘The messianic era is the present age, which began to germinate with the teachings of Spinoza, and finally came into historical existence with the great French Revolution. With the French Revolution, there began the regeneration of those nations only through the influence of Judaism.’’24 Hess clearly does not want his concept of socialist Zionism to be mistaken for the traditional concepts of the coming of the Messiah as a human being. For him, the messianic age is the rebirth of the Jewish nation; all other concepts of messianism are merely ‘‘symbolic expressions.’’ He concludes: ‘‘This age will begin, according to our historical religion, with the messianic era. This is the era in which the Jewish nation and all the other historical nations will arise again to a new life, the time of the ‘resurrection of the dead,’ of ‘the coming of the Lord,’ of the ‘New Jerusalem,’ and of all the other symbolic

90

Schulte

expressions, the meaning of which is no longer misunderstood.’’25 In short, Hess determines according to philosophy of history, and in stark contrast to Marx and Engels, that the messianic age after the French Revolution is one of nationalism and nation-states in which national revolutions are necessary for the working class to achieve their rights. For Jews, this means—Hess declares his ‘‘Jewish patriotism’’ here—that they must politically found their nation anew and cultivate a new commonwealth in the Orient by means of the foundation of ‘‘societies for agriculture, industry, and commerce’’ and in accordance with ‘‘Mosaic and socialist principles.’’26 From the traditional concepts of Messiah, only the idea of a national reconstitution of the Jewish people and of its return to Zion as a contribution to the national and social pacification of all peoples remains in this early Zionist and socialist variation of messianism. Hess expressly refuses to conceive the religious customs of rabbinical Judaism as relevant to his time. For him, these customs are outdated and rigid. The rebirth of the Jews as a nation, on the contrary, allows Hess to expect the rebirth of Judaism as a living religion.27 For him, the original Mosaic spirit of Judaism is not Halakhah but social democracy: Religion, philosophy, and politics leave me cold when these do not help improve the situation of the working class through institutions, which put an end to all caste thinking, all class rule. Judaism, however, knows no caste thinking and no class rule. The spirit of Judaism, I repeat, is the spirit of the Jews. The roots of its past, present, and future creations lay not in heaven but in the spirit and heart of our people. As long as this people had a common land upon which its spirit could freely develop, it realized its spirit in institutions and in a literature containing the guarantee of completion for all of humankind.28 Without reference to the coming of the Messiah as a human being, the rebirth of the Jewish people by means of the settlement of Palestine is Hess’s decisive vision for the future in a messianic age. Typologically, this messianism relates to the messianism of the exilic prophets and their hopes toward a national restitution of Israel in Zion. However, this return, according to Hess, is to be brought about not by divine intervention, but rather by the Jewish people and its organizations in this world.

Messianism Without Messiah

91

Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) Hermann Cohen, the first Jewish university professor of philosophy in Germany, a Prussian Geheimrat, and founder of the Marburg school of neoKantian thought, agreed with Hess on two counts: first, that the Messiah is not a person, but rather an idea, a conception of human reason; and, second, that messianism’s goal is, in essence, nothing other than socialism, in Cohen’s case ‘‘ethical’’ socialism. In his political and social ideals, Cohen stood close to the so-called ‘‘lectern socialists’’ and Eduard Bernstein’s social democracy. He differed strongly from Hess in the sense that he distanced himself his whole life from Zionism as a Jewish national movement and that he understood messianism strictly as a universal concept. As early as in his essay ‘‘The Messiah Idea’’ from 1892, Cohen formulated a concept of messianism that he further developed in his well-known works ‘‘Germanism and Judaism’’ from 1915 and Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism from 1919/1929.29 According to Cohen’s philosophy of religion, Jewish monotheism culminates in universal messianism. Universal history will come to an end in a future messianic age, in which eternal peace and universal justice must be realized. It is the moral task of humankind and each human being in his lifetime to bring about this age; ethical socialism is the means to achieve peace and social justice politically. ‘‘Messianism,’’ Cohen writes, ‘‘must be seen as the keystone of Judaism, its crown as well as its root.’’30 Messianism, therefore, and not, as in the rabbinic tradition, Torah and Halakhah, is the kernel of Judaism as religion of reason. Judaism is essentially messianic monotheism. It is important to note that Cohen was in no way anti-religious; he was rather the most important and influential Jewish philosopher of religion of the German Empire. Among his students were thinkers with a wide and diverse array of viewpoints, including Ernst Cassirer, Kurt Eisner (the prime minister of the Bavarian Socialist Republic in Munich in 1918/19), Boris Pasternak, Jakob Klatzkin, Franz Rosenzweig, and Bruno Strauss. Among Cohen’s readers were Ernst Bloch, Chaim Zhitlowsky, Leo Strauss, Gershom Scholem, and Walter Benjamin. Cohen’s philosophy of religion sees Judaism as ‘‘messianic monotheism’’ from the standpoint of the spirit of the biblical prophets and their demands for social justice. As a philosopher with a great knowledge of the scholarly research on the history of religion and theology (he was a student of the Breslau rabbinical seminary and its prominent professor Heinrich Graetz for seven years), Cohen was well aware that the ideas of the Messiah and messianism were

92

Schulte

developed by the prophets over centuries. Only after the end of the Babylonian exile does Jewish theology transform the Messiah from the liberator of Israel to the redeemer of humanity. Later, the image of the ‘‘days of the Messiah’’ at the end of times replaces the idea of a personal messiah and redeemer. With this evolution in mind, Cohen regarded Jews as having universalized the notion of the days of the Messiah; he saw the concept as a ‘‘guiding principle of history.’’31 The messianism of the prophets for the first time constituted world history as the history of humanity in the singular. The messianic age is, accordingly, the historical future of the whole of humanity on earth, and messianic redemption occurs in history and in this world. Not God, not a messianic redeemer figure, but rather human beings must bring about perpetual peace and social justice. ‘‘Political socialism,’’ Cohen wrote in 1915, is the ‘‘natural consequence of messianism.’’32 For Cohen, an international confederation of states and an internationally secured, peaceful world order should make possible and accompany the realization of his concept of messianism, that is, the full development of state social policy and socialism bound to, and supported by, ethics. In his insistence on the intra-worldliness and the intra-historical character of messianism, Cohen echoes the anti-apocalyptic outlook of Maimonides,33 in that like the Misheh Torah, he sees messianism as realized along the axis of this-worldly time and as setting very real political and moral demands on individuals and the state. A new heaven and earth are an illusion and superfluous; instead, humankind itself must realize the messianic age of peace and justice by means of unrelenting moral efforts and reform. For Cohen, bringing about socialism is the moral task of each individual human being. Accordingly, progress in world history, for which all individuals work according to their abilities, will achieve political socialism without fail. Here, Cohen shows an immense optimistic faith in progress; he strives for continual reform, not revolution.

The First World War as a Turning Point Due to the impact and the historical ruptures of the First World War and the October Revolution, Jewish intellectuals of the left during the postwar period no longer shared Cohen’s optimistic faith in gradual historical progress. This would have direct consequences for their concepts of utopia,

Messianism Without Messiah

93

history, and messianism. As Michael Lo¨wy illustrates, the messianisms of the German-speaking left in the 1920s were left-libertarian, anarchistic, and revolutionary-apocalyptic.34 The left thus broke with the optimistic faith in progress and bourgeois culture of the nineteenth century, both of which had been destroyed on the inhumane, barbaric, and bloody battlefields of the war. The only promise for amelioration now appeared to be a radical historical break with the antiquated, ossified, and decayed culture of the liberal bourgeoisie, those who led humankind into the catastrophe of the Great War. Messianists demanded revolution and a new beginning, not merely incremental reform. In the first sentences of his Spirit of Utopia, written during the First World War, Ernst Bloch writes, ‘‘I am. We are. That is enough. Now we have to begin.’’35 Moreover, the title of his last chapter names three of the driving forces behind messianisms of the left at the end of the First World War: ‘‘Karl Marx, death, and the apocalypse.’’ Despite all of the ensuing historical events, and in full disregard of the emergence and course of Stalinism and fascism, Bloch continued to develop his understanding of these utopian driving forces in new variations up through his seminal Principle of Hope from the 1950s.36 For Bloch, ‘‘the messianic’’ takes on an archetypal meaning in that messianism symbolizes, against the dogmas of theology and the teachings of Christianity and Judaism, the liberation of man through man, not through God. In this broad and unspecific sense, the ‘‘messianic’’ stands for an atheistic utopia of a self-liberating humanity without God.

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) Walter Benjamin’s messianism is correspondingly apocalyptic. His theses on history that speak of the Messiah are from 1940, written shortly before his suicide. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact not only divided Poland. In Benjamin’s eyes, it was much worse: the most important revolutionary power in the world, the Soviet Union, had come to an arrangement with fascism, thus betraying in both theory and practice the working class and the workers’ parties of Europe in their desperate struggle against the fascist menace. For Benjamin, the victims of this struggle were lost in vain, and the hope for redemption through the dictatorship of the proletariat after the October Revolution was shattered. Gog and Magog had allied themselves at the expense of the oppressed. Under these circumstances, Benjamin pessimistically interprets all of world history, past and present, as a history of disaster filled with

94

Schulte

oppression, exploitation, and destruction. The future, in contrast, is for the Jews, as Benjamin writes, not an empty and homogenous time, for in the future every second will provide a small gate through which the Messiah can pass.37 Nonetheless, for Benjamin, the coming of the Messiah does not entail a promise for a better future, but instead a breach in the continuing history of disaster on earth in that it disrupts the homogeneity of time and ends the disastrous course of history. Whereas the progress of human history can be conceived only as a storm that blows the ‘‘angel of history’’ and all who observe the heap of rubble (Tru¨mmerhaufen) of history further and further away from paradise, only the Messiah and the last judgment can bring it all to an end. ‘‘That everything just goes on,’’ Benjamin writes, ‘‘is the very catastrophe.’’38 The supposed progress in history, the continuing exploitation of nature and man found in socialism as well, makes the heap of rubble and corpses only larger. The symbol of the Messiah signifies that it could still be possible to stop the history of disaster from unfolding further. Still, humankind can neither bring about the end of history by its own power nor influence the coming of ‘‘Messiah.’’39 Benjamin sees humanity’s hope only in the possibility of ending history, symbolized by ‘‘Messiah,’’ rather than carrying on with the empty hope of successive future amelioration on an endless time axis. Liberal faith in progress, social democratic reformism, and communistic belief in the necessary victory of the proletariat at the end of the class struggles are all illusions. Benjamin’s outline of a theological-materialistic historiography can trace ‘‘messianic sparks’’ (messianische Funken) in the past: redemptive moments of instant happiness (Jetztzeit) in an endless history of disaster are messianic in that they brush history against the grain.40 Nevertheless, such messianism offers neither plan nor perspective nor agency for contemporary —or even future—times and political action.

Messianism After 1945 The Shoah marks a rupture in the attempts on the part of the Jewish left to link together socialism, philosophy, politics, and Jewish messianism.41 The reason for this was, at first, the Shoah itself, for nothing imaginable—no apocalyptic fantasy in all of the apocalyptic literature—could be worse than the reality of concentration and death camps. A messiah did not arise from Auschwitz, and redemption failed to appear. No messiah, as Benjamin had

Messianism Without Messiah

95

hoped, caused history to end; the Red Army had liberated Auschwitz. Theodor W. Adorno was aware that in the Shoah even this last desperate messianic hope of his friend Walter Benjamin had been disappointed. Benjamin had committed suicide in 1940, and Adorno, with Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, took care to publish all of Benjamin’s writings in order to save his intellectual legacy. Adorno reacted to Benjamin’s messianic thought in light of the Shoah and came up with his own messianism without Messiah—and without hope for change. After the relapse into barbarism, as Adorno wrote in his aphorism ‘‘Finale’’ in Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life from 1951, all that remains of messianism is a ‘‘messianic light’’ that allows for the possibility ‘‘to consider all things as they look from the standpoint of salvation.’’42 The universal context of delusion of capitalistic societies can thus be looked upon only as if redemption were possible. Here Adorno never leaves the field of aesthetics. There is no political exit out of capitalism and ‘‘Kulturindustrie.’’ Messianism is reduced to ‘‘messianic light,’’ the mere possibility to observe the miserable reality from another perspective, the standpoint of salvation. Adorno neither hopes nor presses for the realization of redemption. He writes that ‘‘the question of reality or unreality of salvation itself is almost immaterial.’’ The same aesthetical turn, namely, the reduction of socialist messianism to a sheer phenomenon of aisthesis, to a simple change in the perspective of our view of the world, reappears in Derrida at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, fifty years after Adorno. Derrida proposes a notion of ‘‘the messianic’’ without a doctrine of messianism; the messianic represents here the phenomenological experience of a rupture in the normal course of time and history. The messianic thus indicates the radical openness of man to the experience of difference, of heterogeneous otherness.43 Here again, reduced to Derrida’s favorite epistemic notion of ‘‘diffe´rence,’’ the messianic is considered to be a change of an aesthetic point of view. Derrida’s deconstructivism is principally void of a political program or doctrine.44 Adorno and Derrida both represent thinkers for whom messianism has become purely a symbolic or aesthetic prism or vantage point. Further reasons for the fading of utopian messianism among intellectuals of the left exist even after the revolutionary late 1960s. These can be found in two defining movements of the political left in Europe, namely feminism and the environmental movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Feminism is, as a matter of course, not interested in any concept involving a male figure

96

Schulte

of redemption. The environmental movements were—and still are— structurally anti-apocalyptic. They do not want a new heaven and earth, but instead struggle against the threats of a nuclear doomsday and ecological catastrophes and for the preservation and perpetuation of the world and nature. Both threats cannot be alleviated by revolution, by halting history, or by social upheaval; quite the contrary. Activists in this field perceived the idea that the existing world could go under not as a hope but instead as a danger. All forms of utopia, all political and societal concepts of change, as the wellknown Club of Rome report from 1972 ascertains, must take into account the ‘‘limits to growth’’ and the limits of our natural resources.45 These are the most decisive political and ideological factors that make it extremely difficult to connect to utopian or messianic projects that believe in infinite progress and are based on the belief in unlimited growth and natural resources. This is a novelty in the history of utopias: utopia can no longer be conceived as temporal or spatial, nor can it be understood as material expansion and progress, because the limits to growth are already felt every day, in the smog that we breathe, in global warming, or in the asphaltization of all previously green space. It is not hard to predict that, under these limited conditions, utopia will be directed toward social (distributive) justice within natural boundaries and toward spiritual, but not material growth—at least in the ‘‘first world.’’ Utopia is thus no longer conceived as change directed toward a particular place or time in the future, but rather as change directed inward, in the best case, toward global domestic policy in a ‘‘one-world’’ world. In this situation, only small minority groups expect redemption from an external source or from above. For the political left, therefore, messianism and its tropes have lost their political attraction. So large is the disappointment from the revolutions of the last two centuries that the left reacts today as messianic movements have reacted practically since the beginning of time after the Messiah fails to come: one arranges oneself in the institutions, plants trees, builds ecological ‘‘greenhouses,’’ educates children, and develops binding and sustainable moral and social modes of interaction. This is most obvious in the political left’s relation to the state. Until the late 1960s, critics perceived the state as an enemy and an instance of repression that should be overcome. Today, in the age of neoliberal global capitalism, the left sees the state and national and international institutions more than ever as the last guarantors and bastions of social and environmental

Messianism Without Messiah

97

minimum standards, of law, justice, human rights, and peace. Those who, in contrast, demand in the old revolutionary manner that the state and its institutions of regimentation disappear have become perfect consultants for the chamber of commerce. Against the minimization of the state in favor of the expansion of the market concept in a neoliberal economy, the left clearly tends toward keeping state and legal protections intact. It perceives the state predominantly as the antagonist and protector against the pitfalls and crisis of capitalism and global markets. Structurally, this is a conservative position, as is the ‘‘conservation’’ of nature. But political change seems to be possible in all of this. This is why Giorgio Agamben’s apocalyptic political worldview in his homo sacer project fascinates some (mostly European) intellectuals, but has no larger impact on NGOs and active political parties.46 Political and ecological preconditions today are different from those of the messianism without Messiah in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, just in case a utopian messianism emerges in the twentyfirst century—historically speaking, this is not an absurd idea—then, due to the likely future ecological and social conditions, it would probably be more like Cohen’s messianism, a universalistic, reform-oriented, ethical socialism, realized in international institutions, and less like Bloch’s or Benjamin’s antibourgeois concepts of political catastrophes to be overcome for the final liberation of humankind. And, perhaps even the imagined savior will finally be a woman.

chapter 5

In the Name of the Devil: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ galili shahar

This chapter offers a close reading of Walter Benjamin’s autobiographical essay ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ (1933) and discusses its theological and poetical implications as a project that challenges the concept of secularism from a demonic point of view. In Benjamin’s writings the demon represents a radical, destructive, yet creative movement that also carries redemptive implications: the demon is represented as the other face of the messianic force, its double. The demonic perspective here thus involves more than simply the question of Benjamin’s biography as a German Jewish writer in dark times. It rather reveals how Benjamin’s short text introduces essential tensions of the ju¨discher Literat, ‘‘the Jewish man of writing’’ (the instabilities of identity, aporias of assimilation, the vocation of critical writing), and captures the dialectical elements of Jewish secularism (the uncanny return of tradition, the messianic implications of heresy). My reading of Benjamin’s essay is accompanied by the strong and authoritative interpretation given to it by Gershom Scholem, who reveals but suppresses, recalls but denies the radical figures in Benjamin’s texts, figures of heresy and doubt that embody the other side of holiness, the unsacred.

Secularism and Tradition: A Demonic Point of View The secularization of tradition—the act of tradition becoming secular—refers also to its transformation and radical actualization. If one refers to tradition

In the Name of the Devil

99

as a formation for the delivery (hrysm, mesira) of theological knowledge, secularism implies new techniques (or methods) of transmission through which knowledge is reproduced, distributed, and represented. The secular methods are often considered to be deconstructive: secularism is understood as a crisis or as a fall in the realm of tradition, associated with heresy and disbelief, with doubt and temptation. Secularism is seen as a process of fragmentation—it brings about broken, distorted forms of tradition. However, fall and crisis, distortion and fragmentation, heresy and temptation are events through which tradition also gains new and radical implications—demonic ones. In other words, secularism can be seen as a process of opening (break and crisis) in the realm of tradition—an opening (revelation) that creates unfamiliar, inverted bodies of theological knowledge. The secular is not merely the opposite of the holy, but rather the other side—the inverted double of sacredness. Following this view the secular can be viewed as the unsacred—the reversed, impure body of tradition. Here I use the term ‘‘demonic’’ to refer not simply to independent evil but to a particular notion of evil as ever linked to tradition and holiness. According to this definition, inversions, reversals, and impure versions of sacredness and tradition constitute the demonic dimension of Benjamin’s thought, and of Jewish secularism more broadly. The demonic, in other words, describes not desacralization in the sense of making something less sacred but a particular, radical, nefarious implication of the sacred—the materialist, seductive, and heretical. It is Walter Benjamin who often creates in his writings unsacred figures—inverted, broken forms of theological discourse that represent the dialectic of tradition. Benjamin’s writings provide us with significant case studies of secularism. His work is dedicated to exploring the mythical structure and theological depth of the modern existence; in many of his essays he reveals the religious aspects of the secular experience and hints at the traces of holiness in profane life. Benjamin’s works reveal the demonic (inverted, distorted, seductive) element and its reflection in poetry and being. ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ (1933) is no exception. Benjamin uses the name of the devil in the title, which forms a partial anagram of ‘‘Der Angelus Satanas,’’ not only as a manifestation of his destructive power as an author and a critic, but also to invoke radical elements of the messianic tradition and to probe their authenticity in the secular age. In this reading of Benjamin’s piece, I focus on a few figures that represent the inherent complexities of secularism and reveal the theological depth of its poetics. First I deal with the notion of the ‘‘secret name’’ that represents the secular transformation of a theological language texture (the given name) into a literary context. Next I discuss the

100

Shahar

figure of the ‘‘new angel’’ as a distorted image of sacredness that reflects the essence of religious delivery. The third part of this chapter is dedicated to the figure of ‘‘Saturn’’ (Sabbatai) that embodies the dialectic of hope and heresy, redemption and melancholy, in Benjamin’s essay, and hints at the radical transformation of the messianic idea. However, before entering the text and discussing its figures, a short introduction of its context is needed.

The Text, the Double ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ was discovered by Gershom Scholem in the early 1970s, more than three decades after the death of the author. We know where and when Benjamin wrote it—Ibiza, Spain, in the summer of 1933. The text has two versions. The first, the shorter, is from August 12, 1933, the second, the longer, from the day after. This is how Benjamin’s essay reappears—it returns from the Nachlass and carries with it the signature of historical drama, the year 1933. It is a text that was not prepared for publication in its own time but rather was left as a fragment; and this script is revealed and appears in two versions, doubled. It is a text that also represents ein Doppelga¨ngertum, a doubling. Benjamin’s piece is considered autobiographical. What is delivered here is a life story, told from an ironic perspective and through demonic figures of theological discourse. The events in the life of a thinker, a lover, and a writer are delivered by esoteric figures—the ‘‘secret name,’’ the ‘‘new angel,’’ and ‘‘Saturn.’’ But the secret name has a double meaning, the angel has different faces, and Saturn is of ambivalent influence, and all are doomed to demonic transfigurations in Benjamin’s piece. Here too we encounter a double—an inverted appearance of the same. The contexts of Benjamin’s piece are many and rich. A full discussion would demand several introductions; I thus include but two preliminary remarks. First, the piece ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ is an early text from Benjamin’s period of exile. Benjamin left Berlin in March 1933, after the rise of the Nazis in Germany, and arrived on the Spanish island of Ibiza, where he spent six months before moving to Paris in October of the same year. He wrote these texts one month after he celebrated his birthday in July. According to one report, Benjamin was ill that summer and suffered from malaria. Was his text

In the Name of the Devil

101

an outcome of hallucination? We thus deal with a text that is also a representation of historical and biographical crisis. And crisis—the break, the fracture, the fragmentation of being—is imprinted in the form of this text that was left broken, unfinished, undelivered, and also in its content that reflects the radical transfigurations of names and images. Second, Benjamin’s autobiographical piece should be read also as a picture exegesis, as if it were another interpretation of Paul Klee’s famous painting Angelus Novus, or new angel. Benjamin had owned Klee’s work since the beginning of the 1920s. Later it became a source for his well-known ‘‘Theses on the Concept of History,’’ which, like ‘‘Agesilaus Santander,’’ was left as a fragment, unpublished. The Ibiza texts thus belong to Benjamin’s collection of image interpretations. However, following its reappearance, the return of ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ from Benjamin’s Nachlass, it was accompanied by a strong reading—Gershom Scholem’s 1972 essay ‘‘Benjamin und sein Engel.’’ In this essay Scholem offers an intensive biographical illumination of the concealed figures in Benjamin’s text. Scholem reads ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ as a fragment of a love discourse and hints at its theological implications. Our own reading cannot deny the weight and power of Scholem’s interpretation, which is bright and yet exaggerated. Here too we experience, however, a doubling, the Doppelga¨ngertum of Benjamin’s and Scholem’s writings.

Secret Names Benjamin’s texts carry the title ‘‘Agesilaus Santander,’’ which is not mentioned or explained in the texts themselves. Benjamin speaks first of two ‘‘unusual,’’ ‘‘exceptional’’ names (‘‘ungewo¨hnliche,’’ unusual, he writes in the first version, ‘‘ausgefallene,’’ exceptional, in the second) that his parents gave him when he was born. The parents thought that ‘‘he might perhaps become a writer’’ in the future and thus one should conceal his Jewish origin. These names, Benjamin writes in the first version, he does not wish to divulge. The double name remains secret also in the second piece. The autobiographical delivery depends thus on the denied, postponed delivery of the names. The possibility of telling the author’s life story is based on the secret of his names. The names should thus be kept concealed, unknown. The question of the author’s origin, his identity, his being a Jew, is hidden in the play of the secret names.

102

Shahar

However, Scholem was first mistaken when he ventured that the two names Benjamin was referring to were imagined ones. In 1978, when Benjamin’s Gestapo file was discovered, his additional given names were revealed: ‘‘Benedix Scho¨nflies.’’ It seems that Benjamin never used these names, which, Scholem writes in a 1978 addendum, in fact sound Jewish and thus could not be used to conceal his origins. However, when Benjamin writes of his secret names, he does not necessarily refer either to ‘‘Benedix Scho¨nflies’’ or to other, real names. He rather deals with the hidden structure of names and their poetical implication. Benjamin delivers the empty structure of the name, which is the secret of its form—the secret of literature. The secret name, we recall, should conceal the Jewish origin of the author and thus make possible his literary career. The gesture of concealing the Jewish origin by new, additional names cannot be separated from the history of antisemitism in Europe, and should be understood also in the context of Jewish assimilation and secularism. The new, non-Jewish, official name, which Jews often had had to adopt since the French Revolution and the state reforms of early nineteenth-century Europe, is also a symbol of emancipation and autonomy, a sign of the leap from the origin, a word which embodied hopes of cultural progress. However, in Benjamin’s essay the name also reflects the failures, the anxieties, the denial, and the distortions, which accompany the process of secularism in Jewish history. The given name that is kept in secret thus reflects the dialectic of secularism: the hopes and the anxieties that involved the emancipation of European Jewry. At the same time, the secret name of the author also hints at the essence of literature. The denial of the origin, the invention/inversion of the factual, the creation of imagined textures of being, the representation of possibilities, the play of words and ironies of names belong to the core of literature. The secret name marks the field of signs and symbols which are ‘‘invented,’’ ‘‘imagined.’’ The name also embodies the power of signification. The names that are secret and become a riddle define the poetical dimension of a text and the possibility of telling a story that is neither reduced to biographical ‘‘facts of life’’ nor to historical truths. Keeping the name secret means maintaining a degree of freedom, on which the poetical autonomy of the text depends. Benjamin’s secret name, I argue, is the sign of literature. We are dealing here with a ‘‘literary name,’’ the name of the author. The secret name, the hidden sign of the author, delivers the essence of being a writer—the leap from the origin, the decontextualization of biographical experience and the opening of representation. The new, unfamiliar name is the sign of the power

In the Name of the Devil

103

of literature to deliver possibilities, to tell what is possible. The name thus hints at what literature is: a world of ‘‘unusual, exceptional’’ signs. The secret names embody the drama of a German Jewish writer. Benjamin tells the secret of the birth of a literary body. The Jewish ‘‘man of letters’’ (the author) is born with a gesture of denying the origin—the replacement of the Jewish name. The denial of the origin is a literary gesture that reflects the historical complexity of Jewish secularism—the assimilation, the forgetfulness of tradition, the engagement in the field of Bildung (culture and education). However, in his case, Benjamin writes, the plan of his parents to make his literary vocation possible by hiding the Jewish origin was set aside by the writer himself who conceals his literary name and keeps his secrets, ‘‘as did the Jews.’’ Benjamin writes: ‘‘Instead of making it public by the writings he produced, he proceeded with regard to it as did the Jews with the additional name of their children, which remains secret.’’ Benjamin does not reveal the literary names he was given by his parents; in this he behaves like the Jews who keep secret the Hebrew name given to a boy on the day of circumcision until becoming a bar-mitzvah at the age of thirteen, or, as Benjamin puts it, until he becomes mannbar, reaches sexual maturity and becomes a male. Again we encounter a paradox. Benjamin makes the literary name, the one that should cover and hide his Jewish origin, a secret and thus ‘‘Jewish.’’ The hidden structure of the name, the sign of literature, is also a ‘‘Jewish’’ one. The literary sign—the signature of the ‘‘secular author’’—seems thus to follow (to imitate?) the religious name. Is it a case for a critical (‘‘paradoxical’’) understanding of secularism? The birth of Benjamin as a modernist, ‘‘secular’’ writer implies the theological structure of language—the secret name. The paradox of the secret name suffers, however, an additional complication. Benjamin confesses that while der Fromme, the pious, the religious Jew, achieves his maturity (Mannbarwerden) once in life, and therefore his secret name remains the same, Benjamin himself, the non-religious Jew, experiences his maturity more than once in life, and thus suffers changes in his secret name. According to Scholem, Benjamin confesses here to the nature of his discourse of love, and to his body of desire that could not find satisfaction in the realm of the family, but rather continued to travel, to seduce, to be seduced. Benjamin is not fromm, pious, religious; he does not follow the law of tradition. His ‘‘secular’’ experience is of an erotic nature—it implies love

104

Shahar

affairs, seductions, desires, and ambiguous attractions toward the other, the female. However, this experience (‘‘secularism’’)—the break with tradition, ‘‘heresy’’ in the realm of love—expresses itself in the realm of language. The secret name suffers now evil transformations. These are the distortions that the name, the title ‘‘Agesilaus Santander,’’ covers and reveals. The mysterious title of Benjamin’s essay, Scholem argues, is an anagram of ‘‘Der Angelus Satanas,’’ the Angel Satan. It is the name of the devil, which reflects the destructive desire of the author. This demonic name, Scholem writes, is the sign of Benjamin’s erotic discourse that involves destructive relationships with women, whose names Scholem mentions: Jula Cohn and Asja Lacis. Benjamin’s ‘‘secularism,’’ his inability to observe the mitzvot and to remain faithful in the realm of tradition, expresses itself in confusions and misfortunes of love affairs. Scholem’s interpretations of Benjamin’s bodies of desire and his attempt to identify them with certain lovers are convincing, but also reductive, and bring Benjamin’s secret name into an ‘‘explanation’’ (fçp) that denies the hidden structure of language, the ‘‘secret’’ (dws). For when Benjamin writes about the name he does not refer to Benedix Scho¨nflies, nor to Jula Cohn or Asja Lacis. Scholem attempts to deliver something that is not delivered in Benjamin’s piece and thus represents the unrepresentable. The hidden names, the double signs, should remain concealed, like riddles, in order to keep the secret, on which the literary delivery of Benjamin’s text depends. Again: the literary ‘‘value’’ of Benjamin’s text, its poetic possibilities, its openness, its autonomy, its readability, depend upon the secret of the names. Scholem, however, attempts to solve Benjamin’s poetic riddle in historical and biographical contexts. His reading is strong and gives meaning. However, at the same time Scholem’s interpretation denies the poetic structure of Benjamin’s text, which involves the postponement of meaning and the denial of the solutions. Furthermore: according to other sources, while in Ibiza, Benjamin met another woman, a new love, a painter from the Netherlands, to whom he dedicated a few letters and poems. Her name is unknown.1 The secret name delivers itself as a signature of destructive desire (love affairs, the crisis of marriage, the break with tradition, endless travels). However, as such the name also keeps the force of life (Eros). Benjamin admits that: ‘‘It therefore remains no less the name which joins the life forces in strictest union and which is to be guarded against the unauthorized.’’2 The name is the potential—the condensation of paternities of being. However,

In the Name of the Devil

105

the secret name does not only enrich his owner. ‘‘On the contrary,’’ Benjamin writes, ‘‘much of his image falls away when that name becomes audible. He loses above all the gift of appearing anthropomorphous.’’3 In the first version, Benjamin writes about the owner of the name himself who loses the ability of appearing ‘‘wholly as he was of old’’ (ganz der Alte zu erscheinen).4 The revelation of the name causes distortions that are based on discontinuity and a break with the past. Again, we can read Benjamin’s tale of the break with the past and the distortions of representation (the inability to appear human) as symptoms of secularism. Heresy and disorder in the realm of tradition, based on erotic impulses, are reflected in demonic transformations of the human appearance. It is the human condition itself that suffers distortion. This argument should bring us to consider the mythical (or metaphysical) dimension of Benjamin’s essay. Benjamin’s writing on tradition and its crisis and his reflections on secularism are not only historical, but rather refer to mythical structures of thinking and hint at theological figures of knowledge. It seems that Benjamin’s essay is based on the mythical structure of the fall, the tale on the demonic temptation that brings about a radical break in holiness and creates the unsacred—the damaged, impure condition of being. Benjamin’s biographical drama—the drama of the secret names—is based on this myth according to which life is a production of the structural repetition of the fall. In other words, the secular conditions of being—the conditions of the profane order itself—are a result of an inner break in the realm of the sacred. The secular reflects the breaking and the inversion of the sacred— the separation from paradise, the longing for the lost origin (melancholy), the appearance of evil and the sorrows of everyday life. The secular implies in this context the return of the unsacred, which is represented in the demonic portraits of being. I thus argue that Benjamin’s essay refers to a process (that we call secularization) in which the divine origin of being is distorted, damaged, and transformed into inverted forms of representation. This process is reflected in the transfigurations of the given name and the change of its portrait—the image of the ‘‘new angel’’ that turns demonic—the way of signifying, naming the ‘‘other side’’ (‘‘Der Angelus Satanas’’). We should now pay attention once more to the issue of ‘‘giving a name’’ in Benjamin’s text and to its poetical implications. The secret name given by his parents, Benjamin writes in his essay, keeps the strength of life. It enriches its owner. This affinity between the given name and the being of its owner

106

Shahar

¨ ber Sprache u¨berhaupt was already mentioned in Benjamin’s early essay ‘‘U und die Sprache des Menschen’’ (1916). The essay, which was also left unpublished during his lifetime, was based on a correspondence with Scholem (we encounter again the signature of Doppelga¨ngertum—the double Benjamin/ Scholem). In this essay Benjamin writes about the name that is an ‘‘essential law of language.’’ 5 In the name, he contends, language expresses its essence— the delivery of the spiritual content of all things. Names are not representations of objects, but rather expressions of the spiritual being that is imprinted in things that were created by God. Names are spiritual textures—words that express the divine origin of all things. Unlike Gotteswort, the word of God, which is scho¨pferisch, creative (God’s words, his calls, create life and being), the names that the human gave things are Erkenntnis, knowledge/cognition. The names are cognitive reflections of God’s creation.6 In other words: names are the revelations of the divine work of creation. Language is thus first given to man not as a power of creation but rather as reflection of that which is already created. However, in one case the name enters the realm of creation. It is the Eigenname, the proper name that the parents give their newborns: ‘‘The proper name is the word of God in human sounds. By it each person is guaranteed his creation by God, and in this sense he is himself creative, as is expressed by mythological wisdom in the notion (which doubtless not infrequently comes true) that man’s name is his fate.’’7 The given name carries with it the power of creation. In the gesture of giving a name to children the human shares God’s power of creation. With this call—the proper name—the human subject is brought into the world of language. His being, his future, his fate are determined by this call: the name gives him meaning and belonging in the world. It is difficult to separate Benjamin’s theory of the given name from the mythical discourses of language. But the name, Benjamin writes, does not cause a spontaneous creation.8 Names are not magical calls. The name is rather the expression of being in which man appears creative. Giving a name, the call, is the foundation of affinity between humans. The name is not only reflection of being but rather the expression of its foundation. The proper name is the speaking of existence. One should add: the name is the speech of co-existence, an invitation to be in this world, to share it. But this creative and divine power of the names was forgotten. After the fall, language lost its power of creation and declined into procedures of representation. The creative power of the name and its holy origin are denied in what Benjamin calls the ‘‘bourgeois conception of language.’’9 It would

In the Name of the Devil

107

not be a stretch to argue that what Benjamin refers to here as the bourgeois (understanding language as merely representation and communication of things) is analogous to what we call secularism (the secular condition of being). Indeed, this is the meaning of the ‘‘fall’’ in the realm of language: the transformation of the holy names that reflect the divine creation into empty signs of representation, communication, and judgment. This is what secularism means in this context: the denial of the holy names and the transformation of words into signs of knowledge. It is not the holy name, the singular and the concrete reflection of God’s creation, but rather the universal and the abstract names that are the signs of this new ‘‘secular’’ knowledge that follows the ‘‘fall.’’ Secularism, if one follows this path of thinking, is not simply irreligious, but rather is based on deformations and inversions of the divine origin and its transformation into ‘‘demonic’’ textures of critique and judgment (in Hebrew, din). This way of thinking—thinking the secular as an inner break and demonic inversion of the sacred—is one of Benjamin’s methods. Something of this radical view of the young Benjamin on the nature of language and the essence of the given name is found in his entries of 1933. But here the name that expresses life and fate is already secular (i.e., distorted, inverted). The transformation of the secret name, we recall, brings about the name of the devil—Der Angelus Satanas. The source of this angel who turns into a devil is Lucifer. It is the story of the chosen angel who betrayals God and challenges his order, falling into the abyss where he establishes his own kingdom. Benjamin’s ‘‘new angel’’ seems to reflect the poetic fate of the Christian fallen angel. Scholem is right in saying that Benjamin’s image of the devil was influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s poems, their modernist, poetical visions of Lucifer.10 And here again we encounter the dialectic of secularism: the texture of modernist poetry often reflects the distorted theological corpus—the verses of the devil. Benjamin’s secret name, his literary call, is not liturgical in the original meaning of the term. The name does not express itself in songs of glory or in prayer, but rather in new (‘‘secular,’’ ‘‘heretical,’’ ‘‘demonic’’) poetry. And the name that is poetic does not imply the structure of identity (gender, ethnic, religious, or national), but rather the structure of play, transformation, and doubling. Here lies perhaps the most demonic aspect of the secret name: the inability to remain the same, the necessity of change, becoming different, other, unfamiliar. Demonic is this movement of being double, being inverted, unsacred.

108

Shahar

The New Angel, the Demon Let us return to Benjamin’s essay and to the figure of the new angel. The new angel is the reflection (the representation, the image) of Benjamin’s conditions as a writer, a thinker, and a lover. The new angel is the expression of a biographical tension in the being of an author—whose self-reflection we understand here also as a mirror image of Jewish secularism. The image of the new angel, based on Klee’s painting, reflects the dialectic of tradition and the paradoxes of the secular delivery characterized by fragmentation, distortion, and inversions of the origin. In his essay Benjamin refers to the new angel through a reference from Jewish tradition: ‘‘The Kabbalah relates that in every instant God creates an immense number of new angels, all of whom only have the purpose, before they dissolve into naught, of singing the praise of God before His throne for a moment.’’11 Before we deal with this quotation and its implications in Benjamin’s texts, we should first discuss its origin. For what Benjamin refers to in the Kabbalah actually appears in the Talmud, in chapter 2 of Tractate Hagigah. In its discussion on the revelation of the merkavah (chariot), which is based on the visions of the prophet Ezekiel, the Talmud speaks about the creatures and the angels that are interwoven in these visions. But the images of the merkavah are forbidden to the student of the Torah. The Talmud discusses here the angel as a creature of a secret tradition that is to be shared only with a few and only in outline. The new angel thus appears in the Talmud at a crucial moment, as tradition discusses its secret, the hidden knowledge. In this context the Talmud argues regarding the creation of the angels: ‘‘Everyday the ministering angels are created from the stream of fire and say a song and cease to be.’’12 This talmudic theory on the creation of the angels who are devoted to singing God’s glory and disappearing is followed by another argument: ‘‘From every utterance that goes forth from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, an angel is created, for it is said: By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.’’13 According to the second exegesis the angels are created by God’s words and are made by his breath (ruah, air and spirit). This is how the new angels are revealed in the world of tradition: they appear for a short moment in the discussion on the forbidden visions of the merkavah. The theory of the angel is delivered as a secret and bound up with the paradox of tradition (the delivery of the undelivered, the revelation of the unrevealed).

In the Name of the Devil

109

But the discussion on the new angel has another reference, another source in the Jewish tradition: Midrash Rabbah on the biblical portion in Genesis known as Vayishlah. The Midrash discusses the story of the struggle of the patriarch Jacob with an angel and arrives at the question of the angel’s origin and his name. The angel, we are told, is one of those creatures born every day to sing a song of glory before they vanish. According to the Midrash, the angel, seeing that he cannot defeat Jacob, demands that Jacob let him go free in order that he may complete his poetical mission. The angel also denies Jacob’s request to reveal his name, in the Midrash replying: ‘‘Why do you ask about my name, it is my wonder, I do not know into what name I will transfigure myself.’’14 The name of the angel, the Midrash says, suffers changes. The name is not a stable sign, but rather a name to be given anew each time according to the task the angel is accepted to fulfill. The name of the angel is unknown; the name is not to be delivered and thus left a secret. We recall that in the biblical scene itself another drama of the name unfolds. Jacob gives the angel his freedom but demands his blessing. And the angel answers: ‘‘Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed.’’ (Genesis 32:29). Jacob who struggled with God’s messenger is given the name Israel. The one who fought with the angel and prevented him from singing God’s glory was given the sacred name—the name of election. A similar (or at least an analogous) drama is told in Benjamin’s essay. The new angel, Benjamin writes, is one of these angels who were created to sing God’s glory. However, Benjamin hinders the angel from the fulfillment of his liturgy. And the angel pays him back: ‘‘The new angel passed himself off as one of these before he was prepared to name himself. I only fear I took him away from his hymn unduly long. As for the rest, he made me pay for that.’’15 Scholem was aware of the affinity between the tale of the new angel in the Jewish tradition and Benjamin’s interpretation of Angelus Novus. In a long footnote in his essay he discusses this ‘‘almost obtrusive parallel between Benjamin’s relation to the angel and a Jewish tradition about Jacob’s battle with the angel.’’ And so he writes: Just as Benjamin in his encounter with the angel transfigured his own name Agesilaus Santander to a new secret name, so too does Jacob, according to the Biblical narrative, change his own name in his battle with the angel and is from then on called Israel. And in

110

Shahar

the Jewish legend, too, the angel refuses, upon Jacob’s question, to give his own name: ‘‘I do not know into what name I will transfigure myself ’’—completely like Angelus Novus’s not wishing to give his real name to Benjamin.16 Scholem speaks here about a parallelism between Benjamin’s essay and the biblical story. Benjamin tells the story of a German Jewish author whose identity is reflected in the name and the image of the new angel—the angel of a ‘‘new poetry.’’ The author, however, does not find his place in the world of tradition; he does not remain faithful and pious and thus suffers transfigurations in his given names. He continues his revolt when he struggles with his angel and denies his right to sing the song of God’s glory. However, in doing so, in denial and resistance, on his way of departure from the realm of tradition, Benjamin’s story comes closer to that of Jacob—the story of election. Similar to Jacob’s case, the encounter with the angel brings transfigurations in the name. Yet, I would like to argue, in Benjamin’s case the change is not holy, but rather demonic. The secret name is bound with distortions and violence. Benjamin’s theopoetical tradition is also that of Lucifer. Benjamin’s secret name, his literary call, is not liturgical in the original meaning of the term. The name does not express itself in poems of glory or in prayer, but rather in the modernist verses of evil. The angel of the new poem has a short life; he embodies the singular speech, the singularity of language, the unique expression, the musical texture. This is what the secret names maintain—the poetic texture of language. And the name that is poetic does not imply the structure of identity (gender, ethnic, religious, or national), but rather the structure of play and doubling, hybridization and inversion. This is the paradox of tradition that one discovers in Benjamin’s essay— tradition returns through secrets, broken forms, and inverted textures. The secular condition—the decontextualization of the sacred, the distortion of its origins and the inversions of its figures—is also a condition of the (poetical) actualization of tradition.

Saturn/Sabbatai—Messianism and Melancholy Benjamin tells about the angel who pays him back for being delayed from the fulfillment of his liturgical task, the singing of God’s glory:

In the Name of the Devil

111

For in taking advantage of the circumstance that I came to the world under the sign of Saturn—the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays—he sent his feminine form after the masculine one reproduced in the picture by the way of the longest, most fatal detour, even though both happened to be—only they did not know each other—most intimately adjacent to each other.17 The struggle with the angel thus continues. The angel hinders the encounter of the author with his beloved by delaying her appearance. The feminine figure arrives ‘‘sick, aged, in tattered clothes.’’ This figure of a belated beloved is often to be identified in Baudelaire’s poetry. It shares some similarities with the messianic figure (who, as we learn in the Talmud, never arrives in time and his appearance is close to that of a beggar).18 But also here Benjamin offers an essential answer to the demonic work of his angel. The delay, the waiting, the detour, the denial, and the misfortunes he experiences are true expressions of his own character. As a subject of the planet Saturn, Benjamin owns patience (Geduld ) that cannot be easily broken. The biographical remark on Saturn is very significant. In his Trauerspielbuch of 1928 Benjamin writes about the astrological theory of Saturn. Benjamin cites the following argument on the dual influence of the planet: ‘‘Saturn, by virtue of its quality as an earthly, cold, and dry planet, gives birth to totally material men, suited only to hard agricultural labor—but, in absolute contrast, by virtue of its position as the highest of the planets it gives birth to the most extremely spiritual religiosi contemplativi, one who turns his back on all earthly life.’’19 Saturn is the origin of contemplation that is expressed in religious visions (of a certain nature—Christian, mystical, heretical). The planet endows the soul with the ‘‘utmost knowledge and with the gift of prophecy.’’20 But at the same time Saturn is also the source of material being, the foundation of profane order itself—the dry, cold element of earth. The sign of Saturn thus is similar to that of the unsacred. It embodies the dialectic of the profane and the holy, the earthly and the divine. Saturn embodies the inner tensions of holiness which is ruptured, degenerated, and transformed into its inverted side (the material, the destructive).This is the secular condition of Saturn that is reflected in the sad portrait of melancholia. As Benjamin writes: ‘‘Like melancholy, Saturn too, this spirit of contradictions, endows the soul, on the one hand, with sloth and dullness, on the other, with the power of intelligence and contemplation; like melancholy, Saturn also constantly threatens those who are subject to him, however illustrious they may be in and for

112

Shahar

themselves, with the dangers of depression or manic ecstasy.’’21 Saturn is the cosmic reflection of sadness. But, in Benjamin’s reading, the melancholic subject of Saturn is the sovereign himself. The fate of the Baroque ruler of the seventeenth century who experiences the horrors of the religious wars and their aftermath—the age that lost the ‘‘religious solution’’—is represented in the dialectic of ecstasy and sorrow, contemplation and standstill, and in political indecisiveness.22 Saturn, if one follows Benjamin, is the sad portrait of secular sovereignty. Secularism, however, means in this context (the Baroque) a theology that lost its redemptive element and sunk into empty, broken, nihilist play of signs—‘‘allegories’’ of being. A similar dialectic of creation and decline, spontaneous movement and standstill, ecstasy and sorrow, which Benjamin relates to Saturn and its subjects, is reflected also in the demonic portrait of the new angel. Saturn is demonic because of its dual, hybrid nature that finds no solution, but rather expresses doubt and sadness and embodies the inverted side of the holy—the cold, materialist aspect of being. In his essay Scholem refers to Benjamin’s remark on Saturn and writes that ‘‘Benjamin’s genius was concentrated in this angel. In the latter’s saturnine light Benjamin’s life itself ran its course.’’23 Scholem acknowledges Benjamin’s saturnine constellation—his contemplative, prophetic mind that tended to grief and self-destruction. However, Scholem avoids here a discussion on the link/the doubling between Benjamin and the other ‘‘Saturn’’—Sabbatai Tzvi. Here is the messianic figure of the seventeenth century—a prophet, heretic, and melancholic character who was captured between strong inspiration and deep depression, spiritual elevation and standstill, and who carries the Hebrew name of the sad planet (Sabbatai for Sabbath—the planet of standstill and rest). This was the secret of the messianic movement—the Sabbateanism—which, according to Scholem’s well-known argument, caused the deepest of crises in the realm of Jewish tradition and on that path—the path of an inner rupture—also made secular Judaism possible.24 Scholem does not discuss what might seem to us as parallel lines between the case of Benjamin whose angel embodies revolt, melancholia, and messianic hopes and that of Sabbatai Tzvi who, in Scholem’s famous interpretation, experienced the destructive dialectic of elevation and decline, heresy and visions of redemption.25 Melancholia (or what Scholem calls in his study ‘‘mania-depression’’), the tension of spiritual heights and deep anxieties, which he refers to in Sabbatai Tzvi, is imprinted also in the ‘‘psychology’’ of Saturn, which Benjamin refers to himself. Heresy,

In the Name of the Devil

113

demonic gestures, and forbidden deeds are part of Sabbatai Tzvi’s messianic vocation—purifying the evil spirit and the bringing about of tikkun (repair). Something of this messianic vocation is given to the new angel who—we recall—is changing himself into a devil. And even more: the heretical gestures of Sabbatai Tzvi began with the forbidden articulations of God’s names in public26 —a deed that is considered to be of demonic implications.27 Here, too, one might find strange analogies between the two cases. Sabbatai Tzvi, if one wishes, transforms the religious secrets of the name into ‘‘poetical’’ gestures of calls and naming. This is not to argue here that Benjamin’s self-image as saturnine subject, which was affirmed by Scholem, refers to Sabbateanism, the Hebrew version of Saturnism that implies in this context heresy, melancholy, and strong messianic aspirations. Neither Benjamin nor Scholem dealt explicitly with comparisons or with analogies of that kind. It is rather again a paradoxical, denied, inverted affinity that seems to be at play between Benjamin’s and Scholem’s texts regarding the saturnine figure. And yet how should one understand the return of these unsacred figures in Benjamin’s writings? What is the meaning of this secular transformation of theological knowledge in his texts? Benjamin was not a conservative thinker and did not experience the world of tradition in its Orthodox sense. His affinities to the realms of Jewish tradition were ironic, inverted, and often expressed ignorance, lack of knowledge, and misunderstanding. What Benjamin knew about Kabbalah, Midrash, or Talmud was based on rumors (a few of which he gleaned from Scholem himself ). However, out of a great intellectual urgency, desire of study, and the ecstasy of quotations, Benjamin created modernist figures and new symbols that correspond with radical theological figures. Benjamin’s Saturn, which we have read in correspondence with Scholem’s Sabbatai, reflects the dialectic of secularism—a radical messianic thinking embedded in a cold and sad body. This is perhaps how one should understand also the appearance of the new angel in his biographical texts. The new angel is not of Jewish origin. However, he reveals and reflects terrifying analogies with certain ancient figures in the Jewish Midrash and mysticism. This says something about the nature of Benjamin’s thought, its tendencies and capacities—Benjamin knew how to listen to secrets, and he also knew how to retell secrets. The delivery of the undelivered—the representation of that which vanishes, the poetics of the hidden forms, the fragmented textures, the dialogue with the demonic, destructive figures—this was an

114

Shahar

essential part of Benjamin’s work. At the same time, we also learn here something about the nature of tradition that reveals itself through sudden, unexpected messengers. The new angel is a messenger of this kind. His sources are many, his body is hybrid, and his secrets are poetical.

Epilogue We have discussed three figures in ‘‘Agesliaus Santander’’—the secret name, the new angel, and Saturn—that demonstrate the ‘‘demonic’’ transformations of Jewish tradition. We have read these figures as secular textures of theological knowledge, implying the inversion and fragmentation of traditional forms. The secular textures themselves, which express temptation, resistance, and heresy, are read not merely as irreligious, but rather as unsacred—as the inverted, broken, uncanny representation—the double, the ‘‘other side’’ (sitrah ahrah) of tradition. Secularism is thus understood here as a revelation of an inner fold embedded in the realm of tradition. Secularism is a way through which tradition delivers itself and is brought into radical actualization. In other words: secularism should be understood here not only as a modern process in which tradition loses meaning and turns empty, but also as a movement of actualization. What becomes ‘‘actual’’—present, in hand—are poetical/political potentialities. Secularism brings about critical forms of literary expression which, however, cannot be separated from crucial, exceptional forms of sovereignty. The sovereign of our time continues to embody a messianic power, which, however, turns demonic—holy, but inverted, creative, but destructive. Benjamin’s portrait of Saturn—the image of a sovereign who lost his desire for life and experiences the inabilities of power—is reflected in his own text, his own image: the image of a Jewish author, banished and distracted, who prays to return to the place from which he came.

chapter 6

The Secular and Its Dissonances in Modern Jewish Literature michal ben-horin

I suspect that the angels in charge of the Shrine of Music, fearful lest I sing in wakefulness what I had sung in dream, made me forget by day what I had sung at night; for if my brethren, the sons of my people, were to hear, they would be unable to bear their grief over the happiness they have lost. To console me for having prevented me from singing with my mouth, they enable me to compose songs in writing.1

This essay explores the role of musical figurations as a mode of representation in modern Jewish literature. It focuses on how images of musical instruments and musicians, in particular the violin and the violinist, which are embedded in religious traditions and imbued with theological connotations, are employed in the realm of a secular poetics. Transformed into modern literary texts, these musical figurations, which cross historical periods and cultural discourses, are intertwined with contradictory categories: disaster that reverberates with national revival, lamentation that resonates with a promise of redemption, exilic experience that echoes with the visions of a homeland. Music plays a decisive role in poetic representation that challenges official sites of collective identification; this reflects its ambiguous nature as a nonsemantic art. Due to its lack of stable meanings, music interferes with shared ideals and formative doctrines. It also reveals that which modern Western

116

Ben-Horin

institutions and hegemonic cultures tend to conceal: the dialectics of secularism or the unresolved tension of negation and desire between the secular and the religious. More precisely, as I demonstrate in this essay, musical figures that were integral in religious contexts have been transformed, shaped, and ‘‘opened up’’ within literary texts that are grounded in historical and cultural processes of Jewish secularization. In his book Formations of the Secular, Talal Asad argues that a straightforward narrative of progress from the religious to the secular is no longer tenable. Likewise, he contends, thinking of this formative process simply as requiring the separation of religious from secular institutions in government is not entirely convincing. According to Asad, ‘‘What is distinctive about ‘secularism’ is that it presupposes new concepts of ‘religion,’ ‘ethics,’ and ‘politics,’ and new imperatives associated with them.’’2 Following Asad, I refer to the term ‘‘secular’’ as an epistemic category: the word ‘‘secularism’’ refers thus not only to the political doctrine of separation of church and state, but also to a related set of assumptions about the world; ‘‘secularization’’ is the social, political, and cultural processes generated from this separation and its underlying presuppositions.3 Since its inception, modern Jewish literature has been the site of a secularism that entails the constant refiguration of various musical images and literary tropes about music. These tropes create both links and ruptures with the ancient Jewish past and its religious heritage. Within such figurations, old and new identities are revealed, but also confronted and contested. The transformation and transfiguration of theological tropes of music into the realm of modern prose thus not only demonstrate the power of secularism in processes of selfidentification and sociocultural formation, but also testify to its dilemmas: namely, the unsettled tensions and unresolved relationships between heavenly holiness and the earthly profane, sanctified rituals and prosaic repetitions, and between processes of desacralization of the world (depriving of religious values) and sacralization of culture (imbuing with traditional rites), as reflected within the aesthetic domain. In this regard, the musical themes and textures alluded to and configured within the realm of modern Jewish literature and Israeli prose in particular demonstrate the ongoing tensions within secularization as a cultural process of identification. Looking at a variety of texts that resonate with these dissonances—including Yehoshua Kenaz’s reflection on the formation of the Zionist Body, Yoel Hoffmann’s poetics of memory after the Holocaust, and Yehudit Hendel’s narration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—thus sheds new light on the question of the secular and its discontents.4

The Secular and Its Dissonances

117

On the Nature of Transformation: From Pre-Religious to Sacred to Secular Music In Ritual Psycho-Analytic Studies, Theodor Reik explores the transformative aspect of musical instruments by focusing on the shofar, an instrument of Jewish liturgy, particularly during the High Holy Days and the month of Elul that precedes them. According to Reik, music has been an inherent part of religious rituals since ancient times. This linkage endured through the medieval and early modern eras, up to the classical Viennese school and the post-Romantic composers, such as Richard Wagner, who sought to create religious sanctity and new myths with innovative musical means. According to Reik, music has never lost its intimate relationship with religion: from the simple sound of church bells in religious services to the compositions of the great masters, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, music enlisted its force in the service of religion.5 In his essay on the shofar, Reik shows how music developed from ancient primitive rituals and later played a role in the foundation of the religion of the ancient Israelites. Referring to Sigmund Freud’s narrative in Totem and Taboo, Reik claims that music emerged as an ‘‘art of imitation’’—imitating the voice of the ancient father, who was murdered by the sons of the tribe. Throughout the development of culture and the emergence of religion, this crime was transformed and transposed into a memory of the murder (and later into a law of prohibition, a ‘‘commandment’’) that is played out in compulsive rituals, such as feasts, singing, and dancing.6 The sound of the shofar thus imitates the bellowing of an animal (the totemistic fathersubstitute) when it was put to death in a sacrificial rite. This is the voice of the Father, that absent God, who must be recalled and whose murder must be repeated in the sacrifice. In this sense, the sound of the shofar, which evokes fear and anxiety in the believers, reverberates with a ‘‘double trauma’’: the identification with and admiration of the absent Father on the one hand, and the guilt for the murder, on the other: The shofar-blowing thus becomes a reminder of the resolution never again to carry out that old outrage, and to renounce the gratification of the unconscious wishes which supply the incitement. . . . The peculiarly fearsome, groaning, blaring and long-sustained tone of the shofar becomes intelligible in that it revives its serious significance

118

Ben-Horin

from the fact that, in the unconscious mental life of the listeners, it represents the anxiety and last death-struggle of the father-god—if the metaphor be not too forced, one may say, his swan-song.7 For Reik, the shofar constitutes an audible relic, an acoustic residue of the dead father, the voice of God.8 However, he claims, the Bible obsessively conceals the creaturely origins of the Jewish God as it existed before gaining its abstract form of moral enactment (Jewish law). The text carries this hidden meaning under a cover story of the first musician: Yuval, who plays ‘‘harp and organ’’ (Genesis 4:21), carries in his name the hidden word yovel, or the jubilee year—the fiftieth year in a biblically prescribed cycle for the Land of Israel, which is announced by the sounding of the ram’s horn.9 Thus he metonymically alludes to and embodies the totemic animal. Reik shows how ‘‘the Biblical passage has come down to us censored and mutilated as the common noun, ram, has been changed into a proper noun in order to conceal the derivation from totemism.’’10 Using the ram’s horn as a liturgical instrument of Jewish holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur nevertheless reveals the denied murder that stands at the origin of the Jewish religion. Whether one agrees with Freud’s narrative on which Reik grounds his psychocultural analysis, Reik’s arguments raise a number of provocative questions regarding the meaning of music in the development of modern Jewish literature. If, for instance, music developed in the rituals marking the founding events of religion, what happens then to its sounds and figures when transposed and transformed into the secular domain? What role do they play in romantic and modernist aesthetics? How does music, which, according to Reik, has never entirely separated from the religious domain, resonate within modern Jewish literatures? Finally, to what extent do musical idioms and figurations of sound prefigure the complex relationships of negation, desire, subversion, and confirmation between the religious and the secular in Jewish poetics? In his essay on the prophetic mode in modern Hebrew poetry, Dan Miron focuses on traditional tropes and theological patterns transposed into the secular realm of modern poetics. First describing how the romantic view fundamentally humanized and thus psychologized the concept of prophecy, which was in the period understood as emerging not from the transcendental other but rather from the psychic core of the human self as it strove for contact with the transcendental,11 Miron then turns to explore ‘‘secular prophecy’’ in modern Hebrew literature:

The Secular and Its Dissonances

119

Secular or semi-secular prophecy must be recognized as the essence of new Hebrew literature since its inception in the second half of the eighteenth century. The literature of the Hebrew Enlightenment did not dare to imitate prophecy and as a product of the Jewish ‘‘Age of Reason,’’ it was not completely at its ease with the concept of a direct communication between God and man, a communication not mediated by nature, reason, and moralistic deliberation. . . . Nevertheless, even the writers of the Enlightenment could not but conceive of their historic role in prophetic terms.12 Miron shows how even Isaac Erter, ‘‘the satirist who disclaimed all pretension to supernatural omniscience,’’ defined the mission of the modern post-traditional Jewish writer as that of the ‘‘watchman unto the house of Israel,’’ based on the prophet’s mission as defined by the Book of Ezekiel (3:17). However, at the same time, Miron argues for a deep mistrust, skepticism, and disbelief in the theological pattern ‘‘transfigured’’ and transformed into the secular domain, which came to manifest the ‘‘ethos of modern Hebrew literary culture.’’13 This is also demonstrated in the poetry of the two ‘‘masters of the prophetic mode,’’ Haim Nahman Bialik and Uri Zvi Greenberg, who were fraught with inner contradictions, haunting doubts, and subtle dichotomies, aware of the ever-present dangers of losing integrity and abusing authority: From the start Bialik perceived his prophetic mission as doomed and, in a sense, irrelevant. The prophet’s voice spoke, but was a voice howling in the desert. Exploring the full and far-reaching implications of modern, secular prophecy, Bialik recognized that it led to an impasse where it failed. Without God the authority of the poet-prophet was enhanced, in a way, for as the source of prophecy he superseded God. Yet it was tragic authority, since the diminished God reflected a diminished people.14 The question of how to confront and respond to the notion of a diminished or absent God lies at the center of a whole body of work that has emerged since the age of Jewish Enlightenment. With this in mind, Gershon Shaked’s The New Tradition explores modern Jewish literature that ‘‘set in motion both the secularization of religious values and the sacralization of a revived Jewish nationalism.’’15 Inquiring into the axis of identity, language,

120

Ben-Horin

and territory as reflected within this new canon, Shaked tells the story of a literature that has been shaped and developed against the background of secularization processes in Europe since the eighteenth century, and that later found its way to the Jewish national territory—the Land of Israel. At the conclusion of years of creation and cultural renaissance that gave way to despair, disintegration, and decline in the wake of post-1967 emigration and a surge in Orthodox Judaism, Shaked declares: ‘‘Israeli secularism has a right to exist.’’16 Below, by demonstrating the dialectics of secularism in Israel, I argue that Israeli literature in fact can be seen as both a response and a challenge to such a plea. But first, let us briefly explore the role of musical configurations in other modern Jewish literatures. These musical figurations amplify the above-discussed poetic tensions and testify further to the complex relationships between the secular and the religious.

Traditional Melodies of Modern Jewish Literature A fascinating manifestation of a musical pre-figuration that reveals the unsettled relationship between the sacred and secular domains can be found in Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s 1966 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Here Agnon refers to different musical figurations embedded in religious contexts and imbued with sacred liturgy and theological structures: ‘‘I belong to the Tribe of Levi; my forebears and I are of the minstrels that were in the Temple, and there is a tradition in my father’s family that we are of the lineage of the Prophet Samuel, whose name I bear.’’17 Agnon’s self-identification with the character of the prophet Samuel links the role of the prophet and the role of the modern poet. Yet it is the musical aspect of prophecy, and of the prophet’s vision as manifested in musical content and form, that clarifies the nature of the transformation from the domain of the holy into that of the secular. In the same speech Agnon describes a dream, where he sings the songs of David together with his fellow Levites in the Temple—those melodies that later would turn into his own literary writings. The theological patterns of prophecy and revelation are thus transfigured by the power of music into new modes of Hebrew poetics. The musicality of the liturgical task crosses generations, time periods, and places and bridges national experiences and collective memories:

The Secular and Its Dissonances

121

As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem. In a dream, in a vision of the night, I saw myself standing with my brother-Levites in the Holy Temple, singing with them the songs of David, King of Israel, melodies such as no ear has heard since the day our city was destroyed and its people went into exile. I suspect that the angels in charge of the Shrine of Music, fearful lest I sing in wakefulness what I had sung in dream, made me forget by day what I had sung at night; for if my brethren, the sons of my people, were to hear, they would be unable to bear their grief over the happiness they have lost. To console me for having prevented me from singing with my mouth, they enable me to compose songs in writing.18 Based on a musical pre-figuration (the music embodied in the ancient singing of King David and the melodies of the Levites), Agnon’s ‘‘constructed autobiography’’ unfolds an inherent gap between two forms of sanctity: his identification with the sanctified mission (‘‘there is a tradition in my father’s family that we are of the lineage of the Prophet Samuel’’), amplified by the liturgical holy singing mentioned in the speech (‘‘my forebears and I are of the minstrels that were in the Temple’’), creates a linkage and stresses the connection to ancient traditions and Jewish rituals, on the one hand; yet, on the other hand, it cultivates a sense of loss by hinting at and remaining haunted by the void that reverberates with the destruction of the Temple, with calamity and exilic experience. In that respect, music not only exposes the possibilities of a new cultural tradition—that is, modern Hebrew literature, which is none other than the ‘‘songs in writing’’ that the angels in Agnon’s vision enabled him to compose in order to console him for the loss. Music reveals as well the unfulfilled desire for a holy absence. Resonating with the restless longing of this new culture for the old, lost sanctity (in Agnon’s speech ‘‘singing with my mouth’’ reverberates with the minstrels that were in the Temple), music bears witness to this culture’s deficiencies and voids. As shown in the above excerpt, Agnon’s concept of tradition, sanctity, and religion is inseparable from the realm of sounds: the melodies of the Levites as well as the songs of King David. However, what exactly are these melodies and songs? Which concrete sounds do they invoke? What are their instruments?

122

Ben-Horin

To answer these questions, we should return to the beginning: the figure of the first musician, Yuval, who is mentioned in Genesis: ‘‘And his brother’s name was Yuval: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ’’ (4:21). In Hebrew these musical instruments are called ugav and kinno¯r, the latter the Hebrew word also used for the modern violin. Indeed, the kinno¯r of the Hebrew Bible is famous as King David’s harp. However, uncertainty among the experts about the exact nature and shape of the kinno¯r has prompted a resifting, without preconceptions, of the archeological evidence for stringed musical instruments in the Near East throughout antiquity.19 According to the most widely accepted view, the kinno¯r was a lyre distinguished in its developed form by markedly asymmetrical arms, by a yoke resting on and projecting well beyond its points of contact with the arms, and by a usually rectangular or slightly trapezoidal sound box. Curiously, this characteristic shape may have been bestowed on it by the Egyptians; the earliest clear evidence for its evolution has all been found along the Nile. A lyre, still box-shaped, is first represented pictorially in Egypt in about 1900 b.c.e., in the hands of a Bedouin caravaneer who is shown with fellow nomads, entering the country probably from northern Transjordan.20 There are several commonalities between the ancient lyre (biblical kinno¯r) and the modern violin, such as the strings and the bridge. Unlike the violin, however, the number of strings on the ancient lyre varied between four, seven, and ten and it lacked a fingerboard as well as a bow. These differences have not prevented some from seeing the modern instrument as the descendant of the ancient one. Thus, despite their differences, in the following I purposefully use the modern term ‘‘violin’’ when speaking of the lyre (Hebrew, kinno¯r; English, harp), in order to bring out crucial connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. Furthermore, since we are dealing here with sound figures, it is impossible to overlook modern Jewish literary writers’ choice to select and to use kinno¯r as the Hebrew word for violin. As we know, the sounds of the letter order and the syllabi successions (alliteration) do carry meanings. Hence the tones of the word kinno¯r also connect the recipient (listener, reader) to the ancient ritual and liturgy, evoke cultural connotations, and produce and generate significance—that is, the dialectics of old and new, traditional and avant-garde, and of distance and proximity, negation and desire as embodied in the process of Jewish secularization. Understood in this fashion the violin, as we shall see, offers a crucial musical figuration that reappears throughout Jewish poets’ engagement with the sacred and the secular.

The Secular and Its Dissonances

123

The Hebrew Bible tells of King David playing the kinno¯r (1 Samuel 10:5; 16:16, 23). A strong connection between the act of playing the musical instrument and the act of studying the Torah is found in the Jerusalem Talmud, where it is recounted how David used to play the harp so that others would hear Torah: R. Pinhas in the name of R. Elazar the son of R. Menahem [says]: Before retiring at night, he would take the psalter and the harp and place them at his head, and he would arise at midnight and play on them, so that the Torah scholars should hear. And what would the Torah scholars say when they heard David? ‘‘If even King David is occupied with Torah at this hour, how much more so should we occupy ourselves with Torah!’’21 Medieval and modern commentators on this passage have offered several possible explanations of what it has to say about the role of playing and singing versus the act of praying and studying Torah. According to one interpretation, David arose at midnight for two purposes: to thank God by singing His praises, and on account of the necessity to broaden his Torah knowledge. Another commentary says that upon arising at midnight, David composed the specific psalms in which he thanks God for having given us the Torah. A third reading posits that the Jerusalem Talmud implies here that singing Psalms is the equivalent of Torah study.22 Meanwhile, another version of the original discussion of the Sages is found in the Babylonian Talmud: R. Ashi says: Till midnight he studied the Torah, from thence on he recited songs and praises. . . . But did David know the exact time of midnight? . . . —David had a sign. For so said R. Aha b. Bizana in the name of R. Simeon the Pious: A harp was hanging above David’s bed. As soon as midnight arrived, a North wind came and blew upon it and it played of itself. He arose immediately and studied the Torah till the break of dawn.23 After the destruction of the Temple the image of the musical instrument was transfigured into a central trope of calamity, mourning, and lamentation. The symbolic violin previously hung above King David’s bed is now hung

124

Ben-Horin

upon the willows, silent, deprived of its sacred melodies: ‘‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. / We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof’’ (Psalms 137:1–2). The exiled Jewish people sitting by the rivers of Babylon hung their musical instruments ‘‘upon the willows’’ since the sounds of ‘‘Kinnor David’’ could no longer be heard. Torn out of its homeland, the musical instrument goes silent, though its image reverberates with the Jewish longing for Zion—a sacred object of desire. The melodies played by King David in the ancient Land of Israel are missing from Babylon. Their absence points to the gap, a void that cannot be fulfilled, thus becoming a symbol of lamentation and pain. A celebrated allusion and essential configuration of this musical trope in medieval poetry is found in Yehuda Halevi’s ‘‘Zion, wilt thou not ask if peace may be with your captives,’’ where the poet becomes a ‘‘resonating body’’ of musical remnants and acoustic relics, a violin that painfully reverberates with the songs of Zion: ‘‘I am a violin to all your songs.’’ Yehuda Halevi was not the only medieval Jewish poet to use this trope. Other examples of this motif are found in poems by Elazar Hakalir, Shlomo Ibn Gabirol, and Al-Harizi, among others.24 In the age of (Jewish) Enlightenment this biblical trope was transfigured once again, this time into modern secular poetics, removed from Holy Scripture, sacred realms, or liturgical frameworks. Transformed and incorporated into textures of modern aesthetics, these musical figurations demonstrate the secularization of liturgical tropes, on the one hand, and the sanctification of national myths on the other. Certain nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers of Hebrew literature, such as Micha Yosef Levenson or Meir Halevi Latris, associated the violin with longing, lamentation, and the sorrows of exile, as well as the joy of music played on holidays and at celebrations. Similarly, in Shalom Yaacob Abramovitz’s Yiddish story ‘‘Burned Out,’’ the narrator comes across a group of Jewish people on Lag ba’Omer and immediately imagines hearing ‘‘violins and timbrels, flutes and trumpets . . . musical instruments giving voice for brides and grooms.’’ Other writers offer different associations for the musical instrument. In the story ‘‘Thought and Violin,’’ by Y. L. Peretz, the image of the violin is connected with features such as insanity and ‘‘dark’’ desire, but also with a revealing, insightful perspective on being. Here the musical instrument, imbued with kabbalistic imagery, becomes an absolute expression of the ‘‘Jewish soul.’’ Musical idioms play yet another role in the work of the turn-of-thecentury Russian and Yiddish poet Simon Frug, who emphasized his distinct

The Secular and Its Dissonances

125

Jewish identity by alluding to both East European Jewish folklore and to the Bible. In a series of pseudo-prophetic poems, in which all the major biblical prophets commented on the contemporary situation of the Jews, Frug nationalized or even Zionized Pushkin’s universalist prophecy.25 The figuration of the violin plays a constructive role, intertwined with the ‘‘melody of Israel’’—the powerful song that will reunify and redeem the divided, destroyed nation-in-exile; thus, in a poem on the prophet Amos (‘‘The Shepherd the Prophet’’) Frug connects the prophet’s voice and vision with the sounds of musical instruments, such as the violin, harp, and flute. In another poem, dedicated to Yehuda Leib Gordon (‘‘To the Poet’’), he refers to the Maskilic (Jewish Enlightenment) poet as a modern prophet, whose violin song awakens the deformed, wretched people. Finally, when referring to the biblical Saul (‘‘King Saul’’), Frug depicts the latter’s melancholy and preoccupation with David’s melodies. Alluding to a romantic trope of the vibrant power of nature, the violin in Frug’s poem reverberates with the embrace of nature and its tunes—a crystallized embodiment of the ‘‘song of the fields.’’26 By the late nineteenth century, not only Enlightenment secularism and the emergence of the Zionist movement but also increasing currents of antisemitism introduced newly diffuse and contested meanings around Jewish music broadly, and the violin specifically. In this context, several important Jewish thinkers articulated their visions of Jewish national renewal, ossification, exile, and assimilation through musical references or figures, with the violin often playing a key role therein. In Theodor Herzl’s diary reflections on his programmatic pamphlet, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896), which he had written while in Paris, the father of modern Zionism reports about his habit of listening to Wagner’s music, ‘‘especially Tannha¨user, an opera I went to every time it was performed’’; for Herzl, this music resonates with Jewish vitality and a vibrant national power. The musical drama actually becomes a medium of the modern Zionist imagination: ‘‘Only on the evenings when there was no performance at the opera did I feel doubts about the correctness of my ideas.’’27 We can see, then, how the Wagnerian ‘‘total artwork’’ that incorporated old myths and innovative harmonies into the identity of a modern German nation served as a source of inspiration and confirmation for Herzl’s Jewish national imagination. His worship of the myth connected with Wagnerism in general and with Tannha¨user in particular also demonstrates the gendered aspects of the dialectics between negation (of Jewishness) and desire (for Germanness). In referring to the Tannha¨user myth that presents German romantic ideals of masculinity, Daniel Boyarin

126

Ben-Horin

shows how Herzlian Zionism is only one of the manifestations of this transformation in the gender of the Jew—male and female.28 It is important, however, to emphasize the crucial role of music and the musical prefiguration through which ancient and future visions of redemption converged. Herzl’s visionary enterprise evoked the ancient Exodus, but as a kind of inspirational precursor, with preconditions. For Herzl, the old theological pattern had to be refashioned according to modern, secular life. When transposed and transformed into a new context, ‘‘the same melody’’ had to be adjusted with ‘‘many more violins,’’ to meet contemporary needs: We cannot journey out of Egypt today in the primitive fashion of ancient times. . . . The undertaking of that great and ancient gesture of the Jews in primitive days bears much the same relation to ours that some wonderful melody bears to a modern opera. We are playing the same melody with many more violins, flutes, harps, violoncellos and bass viols; with electric light, decorations, choirs, beautiful costumes, and with the first singers of their day.29 In contrast to Herzl’s enthusiastic celebration of music entangled with theological patterns of revelation and prophecy, purification and redemption, Hebrew Revival poet Saul Tchernichovski chose to emphasize the negative components of traditional musical idioms. Thus, for instance, in his poem ‘‘Moans of a Violin,’’ lamentation, suffering, and destruction echo through the image of the exilic Jew. The ambiguous configuration of music seems to reduce itself to a negative depiction of life in exile as deformed, while the longing for redemption and emancipation collapses into a pathetic despair as the passivity resulting from being away from homeland takes over. In a poem called ‘‘El ha-Aggadah’’ (1892), Haim Nahman Bialik, another poet of Hebrew Revival, seen ‘‘in Israel today as the very embodiment of Zionism,’’30 similarly depicts the suffering associated with life in exile. Bialik’s poem connects multiple diasporas, in which the entanglement of ancient and modern diasporic experiences hints at the tragedy of a ‘‘Jewish fate.’’ This condensation and figural displacement of the theological pattern is not an exception, nor exclusive to Bialik. However, Bialik challenges it by entwining early and later calamity with musical tropes, but, unlike Tchernichovski, he allows the multiple tonal colors and melodies of the violin to be heard. The poem begins with the image of the Aggadah, that language of the Talmud, as a hidden shelter, an intimate, protected space of comfort from the distress of

The Secular and Its Dissonances

127

the alienated, displaced life in exile. As the poem unfolds, the reader learns that the Aggadah is actually a transfiguration of the musical trope: ‘‘and the violin turned into a legend’’ (ve-haya ha-kinor le-aggadah). The modern instrument that carries in the sound of the Hebrew word (kinno¯r) the remnants of the ancient instrument is now transformed into the holy script and therefore embodies not only the sorrow of calamity but also the joy of a shared, ongoing tradition. This is not, however, the end of the story. The final turn is the poem itself, as the violin is no longer the source of the Aggadah only, but also the source of Bialik’s ‘‘own poetry’’ (shirati). How to understand this ars-poetic metamorphosis? One of Bialik’s later essays that deals with the concept of Aggadah offers some answers. ‘‘Shall we return, then, to the Shulhan Arukh?’’ Bialik asks the reader, when providing his own compelling reply in ‘‘Halachah and Aggadah’’ (1917): ‘‘So to interpret my words is to misunderstand them completely,’’ goes the authoritative voice. ‘‘The words Halachah and Aggadah come from the Talmud, where they have each a fixed meaning; but from the point of view of their inner reality their meaning is capable of extension and enlargement to cover the whole range of related phenomena, whether earlier or later than the Talmud. They are two definite forms, two distinct styles that go together in life and in literature: To each age its own Aggadah; to each Aggadah its own Halachah.’’31 Bialik demands from his reader to understand these two styles in their extended meaning, beyond the fixed frames of the Talmud. What, then, is the essence of that extension which goes beyond historical categories and that questions the limits of language by challenging its meaning? Is this what characterizes the entanglement of the two forms that ‘‘go together in life and in literature’’? In a recent publication, David Biale suggests the structure of the law as a possible answer to this riddle, arguing that Aggadah must create a new Halakhah (law), which is a new national culture. While Biale is not entirely clear about what precisely characterizes this culture (or this modern Hebrew literature), Bialik, for his part, seems to tell us more: Many generations and many sects of Jews have sinned grievously against Aggadah by severing the vital link between it and themselves. The many simple folk among them have taken it literally, and treated it as a basis of faith; the many clever people among them have also taken it literally, and regarded it as idle fancy. Both alike have shown a lack of culture and discrimination. They have been

128

Ben-Horin

blind to the light of poetry and the figurative truth of Aggadah. They have ceased to understand its language.32 Repeating the accusation of misunderstanding, limitation, and inability to break through enlarged, extended meanings, Bialik uses vocabulary that hints at eschatological patterns and theological structures such as prophecy, revelation, and redemption. The readers are ‘‘blind’’ to the ‘‘light of poetry’’ and therefore miss its message, the ‘‘truth’’ that lies under the ‘‘figurative’’ covers. And yet the cover is the essence. It is the form that is also the content, the music of language that is the law of the Aggadah transformed into poetry (shirah) that acoustically reverberates with and recalls the remnants of an absent God. The connection between Bialik’s spiritual conception and music is discussed in the work of Ariel Hirschfeld, who refers to the poet’s discrete, implicit identification with the figure of the messiah, and deems it inseparable from Bialik’s notion of music. According to Hirschfeld, the crucial point was not Bialik’s contribution to the musical rhythmic revolution in the Revival Poetry. Rather, it was the messianic sphere, through which he sought to have an impact (‘‘eschatological turning point’’) on the linguistic history of Judaism. This sphere was not part of religious, political, or territorial processes of identification, and related neither to the poems’ themes nor to Hebrew language in general. It surfaced in only one aspect of the poetry: its music.33 According to Hirschfeld, for Bialik, music thus has the power of redemption. It carries a messianic potential. By alluding to Bialik’s romantic perception, Hirschfeld shows how music is not a marginal aesthetic means, but the crystallization of the human essence, which can be manifested and conveyed through art only, the ultimate medium for expressing and representing pain.34 And if poetry is the medium, then the poet has to be the crystallizer, namely ‘‘a messiah of music.’’ Music, Hirschfeld concludes, was the highest sphere of Bialik’s spiritual domain, and the highest sphere of his poetic creation.35 Yet again, what does this all mean? How might we connect Bialik’s perception of music to secularism? The beginning of an answer can be traced back to romanticism and the idea of ‘‘absolute music.’’ Developed in the nineteenth century, this notion consisted of the conviction that instrumental music purely and clearly expresses the true nature of music by its very lack of concept, object, and purpose. Detached from the affections and feelings of the real world, instrumental music forms a ‘‘separate world for itself.’’36 Paradoxically, music’s

The Secular and Its Dissonances

129

ability to reverberate with the human (namely, to express pain) lies in its power to transcend the earthly and the profane, to form a separate world for itself. Schopenhauer’s argument about the supremacy of music over tragedy and the other arts illustrates this romantic claim: for tragedies speak only of shadows (they embody the image of the ideas), while music communicates the essence itself (it is the image of the will itself ).37 Now we have to recall Reik’s story on the origins of Jewish law intertwined with the foundation of religion: the prohibition of murder through a ‘‘replay’’ and enactment of the original sacrifice, the voice of the victim. Or we can return to Agnon’s story and constructed autobiography about Jewish ritual music in the Temple (the songs of the Levites), and how it is transformed and transfigured into his literary creation. All these ‘‘stories’’ resonate with musical figurations of the intense relationships between the religious and the secular domains, the divine and the metaphysical. Modern Hebrew literature thus becomes a medium of acoustic relics that echo with the voice of the absent father. In this manner, musical figuration constitutes a mode of transposition and transformation between tradition and innovation. It is the sound within the secular realm of aesthetics and everyday life that resonates with the loss and the void of an absent God. This becomes manifest in the texture of the Aggadah as it has entered modern culture. Here fixed meanings and semantic values are challenged, dissolved into sounds and music. In reverberating with the memory of that which is no longer there, the sonic residue reveals another truth: the dissonances of a so-called secular Jewish culture. The musical figurations of modern Hebrew literature hint at a sense of infinite loss, which can neither be denied nor fulfilled, neither neglected nor resolved. It is such palpable dissonance and melancholia that testify to the discontents of secular Hebrew culture.

Sound Figures in Israeli Literature Modern Hebrew prose has expressed these tensions well beyond the founding of the State of Israel. Indeed, in Israeli literature, the sounds of the violin reverberate too with images of deformation and exclusion, of disaster, pain, and mourning, resulting from the repeated warfare and violence of the twentieth century. In this section, I focus on three texts of Israeli prose. Each demonstrates, from a particular perspective, how musical transfigurations—often revolving

130

Ben-Horin

around the violin—amplify the dissonances embedded within the secular. By alluding to a variety of musical figurations that reverberate with theological tropes, each text reflects the tensions and limitations inherent in secularism: Yehoshua Kenaz reveals the exclusion and the denial inherent in processes of self-identification and the formation of the Zionist body; Yoel Hoffmann hints at a negative redemption that echoes with memory poetics in the aftermath of the Holocaust; and Yehudit Hendel evokes mythical calamity and historical catastrophe with the hopelessness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Music, Body, and Revelation in Yehoshua Kenaz Yehoshua Kenaz’s violinist in the story ‘‘Musical Moment’’ (1980) embodies the dialectics of exile. One of four stories in a book of the same name, its historical setting is Mandate-era Palestine and, subsequently, the early years of Israeli statehood.38 Its main character, an adult narrator, looks back on his life as a child who used to play the violin. Before long, for him, playing becomes linked to the neurotic symptom of blinking. Consequently, the young boy is forced by his parents to give up playing, and he only returns to it a few years later. The second encounter with the violin turns into a different kind of failure. His mature, disciplined playing is precise, yet lacks sensitivity or emotion. After months of playing, the narrator, this time voluntarily, decides to relinquish the violin. Only then does he notice that the blinking disappears. The next story in the collection ends with the narrator and his schoolmates preparing for military service. In the context of the whole collection, this process reflects the development of the Zionist self, an integral component of a collective national narrative. Relinquishing music in favor of militarism—displacing ‘‘playing’’ with ‘‘building’’—becomes, therefore, a necessary stage in an Israeli self-formation ritual. Kenaz’s narrative, however, is far more ambivalent: while the Jewish national community indeed promised its subjects emancipation, the extreme enforcement of similarities on the non-similar, of sameness on selfhood, appears to be quite destructive. This is demonstrated, for example, in a violent fantasy: an ‘‘outsider’’ who is a ‘‘crazy beggar’’ and ‘‘wild man’’ with ‘‘murderous red eyes’’ appears in the narrator’s imagination while he is listening to an outstanding musical rendition of Corelli’s La Follia.39 It is no accident that the beggar shows up during the performing of ‘‘insanity’’—the literal meaning of ‘‘follia.’’40 The beggar’s ability

The Secular and Its Dissonances

131

to menace and terrorize the narrator lies precisely in his strangeness, and connects to the malady resulting from living outside the civil and national order, an order in which differences are eliminated in the course of adjusting to sameness as well as through the process of national identification. Kenaz’s use of another intertext—a short prose piece called The Violin by Gershon Shofman—conveys further the rituals of eliminating difference (cultural, geographical, and political) within a homogenous Zionist narrative. Shofman, a Jewish Viennese writer of Hebrew, interweaves images of feminized masculinity with the musical configurations of the violin played in the Western diaspora. Initially, the author expresses his disapproval of this instrument that creates creaking, unbearable sounds by the ‘‘rubbing of one body against the other,’’ articulating a loathing for a diasporic violin music that seems to evoke the Wagnerian ‘‘take’’ on synagogue music.41 Later, he places such feelings within historical context: with extreme sarcasm, Shofman writes about Jewish families in Europe who, when the Nazis were already sending Jews to Dachau, continued sending their children for violin lessons to non-Jewish Germans. Playing the violin is therefore associated with passivity, melancholy, and death: ‘‘The whole diasporic-ghetto nightmare screams out of these instruments.’’42 In quoting a few paragraphs from Shofman’s text Kenaz introduces this perspective, yet not without irony. The irony lies in his stereotyping the parents of the narrator’s duo-violin partner, quarrelling about their son’s future. Whereas the mother wishes her son to pursue a violin career, the father has already decided on military service. The text thus contrasts the violin with the ‘‘badge of the Palmach,’’43 which may stand for oppression and catastrophe (the exilic narrative) versus domination and independence (the Zionist meta-narrative).44 Only in retrospect, while commenting on the event, does the adult narrator reveal ‘‘love and compassion’’ instead of the ‘‘haughty contempt’’ he felt toward the parents as a younger spectator.45 Yet at that early moment, despite the parodic polarity that characterizes the quarrel, it is precisely the father’s option that the narrator adopts. Shofman’s literary intertext thus reconstructs both realistic and aesthetic motivations for the narrator’s relinquishing the violin, for with this act he seems to complete a crucial phase of his adolescent development, which ‘‘lets quietude descend on his face forever.’’46 In sum, the whole process of Zionist re-territorialization seems to lead to the conclusion that the violin, an acoustic prefiguration of Jewish life in the Diaspora, must be abandoned. And yet, the same violin that embodies

132

Ben-Horin

the negative image of the exilic Jew—the old stranger without a home who cannot enter the revolutionary secularized narrative (Zionism)—also participates in a critical discourse, which calls into question the very negation of exile. More broadly, the excluded musical instrument, which also embodies Jewish traditional music in the diaspora, has been transposed into an innovative medium of writing (the narrator reveals to his readers how writing took the place of playing the violin) that exposes, however, the repressed—the other side of a newly secularized identity. The musical figuration is thus transformed into a modernist poetics that yet inherits and reverberates with traditional modes of exposure and revelation. In writing his story Kenaz’s narrator comes to terms with early ‘‘painful moments.’’ At the same time, this very pursuit entails taking a critical view of collective as well as private processes of identification.

Echoes of Negative Redemption in Yoel Hoffmann Yoel Hoffmann also tells the life stories of strangers, namely immigrants to Israel from Germany, but from Romania, Hungary, and Baghdad as well. Their foreignness is heard in their voices, and Hoffmann depicts the failure of dialogue between different cultural traditions, languages, and religions.47 Musical figurations are crucial to Hoffmann’s constructed memories, which bear the imprint of the catastrophe of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but which are also integrally connected to Israel’s political present. Hoffmann’s poetics of memory blurs the line between past and present. Thus, for instance, in his 1991 novel The Christ of Fish, he explores a musical time structure as an alternative to ordinary, historical time. This occurs through a fragment based on a cinematic scene from Music in Jerusalem (1978), a documentary on the foundation of the Jerusalem Music Center in 1973. One of the characters, Mr. Moskowitz, listens to a musical piece played by the cellist Pablo Casals. Both in the documentary and the novel (the scene refers to the documentary), Casals plays the C minor cello suite of J. S. Bach for Golda Meirson (Meir)—the fourth prime minister of Israel: When Casals played his cello by virtue of such love, he was ninetysix years old. In the middle of Bach’s C Minor Suite, his dim eyes opened wide and it was clear he was looking past death at life. Mr. Moskowitz remembered those notes as though he himself were the

The Secular and Its Dissonances

133

cello. His eyes surveyed his inner organs. He heard the dead breathing. From that day on all the winds that blew were for Mr. Moskowitz internal winds. The reversible motion of Casals’s gaze, which, due to the power of music turns from outside to inside, enables us to ‘‘look past death at life,’’ instead of looking past life at death. This capability, which is soon formulated in terms of time, suggests a poetics that seeks to let the past musically resonate within the present: ‘‘It was a dreadful shock when his hair began to grow inward, into his body. This was the external sign of the breakdown in the flow of time. His hair returned, as it were, to that other time that Casals had seen with blind eyes when he was ninety-six and playing Bach’s Suite in C Minor, almost with no body.’’48 In the documentary film, the institutional, official figure sheds a tear during the music playing and reveals human emotions, while in the novel the human (Moskowitz) turns into a resonating body (‘‘as though he himself were the cello’’) that transcends being. This musical fragment echoes theological patterns of revelation, hinting at eschatological tropes such as break (kilkul) and repair (tikkun) associated with the new time structure borrowed from the musical domain (playing and listening). It seems as if music does offer an answer to the homogeneous empty time. The secular time is confronted here with the time of music. This confrontation that creates a ‘‘breakdown in the flow of time’’ blurs the lines between present and past, the living and the dead. In The Time of Music, Jonathan Kramer claims: ‘‘Under the rigidity of absolute time, past-present-future is governed by memoryperception-anticipation, while in music absolute time does not reign solely.’’49 He thus points to music’s ability to divorce the past-present-future succession from the earlier-simultaneous-later that progresses in fixed absolute time. Likewise, the confrontation between the absolute ‘‘flow of time’’ and the ‘‘other time’’ of music in the Casals fragment demonstrates how Hoffmann’s poetics of memory entails an effort to emancipate oneself from the tyranny of ordinary, secular time. In the same novel, another character who is a musician, the late Uncle Herbert, also blurs the lines between discreet temporal domains such as past and present, and between life and death, again through musical structures and transfigurations. On the Day of Atonement, Uncle Herbert rises out of a glass bowl to the sound of his harpsichord, as if he were ‘‘doomed by some strange karma, to come back from the realms of the dead in times of woe.’’50

134

Ben-Horin

Later he is called ‘‘the Christ of fish,’’ which associates his supernatural reappearance with the miracle that took place in the Sea of Galilee. Instead of the Jewish Yizkor prayer said on the Day of Atonement, the recall of the dead here is connected with Christian imagery and liturgy. Yet beyond the narrator’s ironic tone the reappearance, return and repetition that resonates with musical chords also recall those who have passed away and are lost to history. Musical figurations blur not only the boundaries of temporal domains. Hoffmann uses diverse sound figures as a repetitive means of interference with the dichotomy of religious and secular: ‘‘I immerse myself in the bath and see my father’s body in the water. / A thin man. / A white soundbox. / A slender violin for the reform of the world (μlw[ ˜wqytl qd rwnyk). / A doctor for the vocal chords.’’51 Like Mr. Moskowitz, the narrator’s father too becomes a resonating body, a ‘‘soundbox’’ that transcends, and through which minor redemptive moments are revealed. These are the moments of repair and invocation of past experience lost in a violent history of persecution and pogroms. They unfold through vocal chords and bird sounds that are part of a nostalgic fantasy located in another time and place. For instance, Dr. Staub ‘‘could tell Bachbirds from Mahlerbirds,’’ achieving this with the ‘‘ears he had brought from Braunschweig.’’52 And yet this nostalgic perspective forms part of a critical reading of Jewish history, for Hoffmann’s characters demonstrate an ironic version of the negation of exile. Irony also plays a role in Hoffmann’s 2001 novel The Shunra and the Schmetterling, through the character of another reformer (metaken). Here the physical repair that ironically hints at eschatological redemption relates to Anton Bruckner, the nineteenth-century Viennese composer whose music is embedded within Christian traditions and liturgical texts. Bruckner was also a composer who adored Wagner and was, like the latter, adored by the Nazis during the 1930s. Hoffmann’s Jewish immigrants recall the history of persecution and victimhood that they find engraved in the sounds of Bruckner. They listen to his music in Israel, not in Europe, thus showing their capacity both to negate the horrific experience of exile and emancipate themselves from the experience. Nevertheless, the same exilic experience reverberates and entangles with an earlier iconic exile of Jewish history, once more through the use of musical configuration: elsewhere another of Hoffmann’s musicians ‘‘hung an imaginary violin where one normally hangs up coats.’’ Such a description evokes the biblical trope of the hanging violin, first playing above King David’s bed and later silenced upon the willows of Babylon. In Hoffmann’s modernist text, however, the moment of redemption becomes deprived of

The Secular and Its Dissonances

135

religious content and emptied of messianic promise. Instead, it reverberates with physical images of a profane existence that does not reveal but rather covers, even as it still longs for, a redeemer. This profane existence is one of coats and stethoscopes, such as Uncle Ladislaus’s stethoscope that ‘‘amplifies the sound of the Messiah’s footsteps.’’53 Once again, present invocations of these past experiences demonstrate an ambivalent relation to the diasporic world of Jewish tradition. They refer both to the exile and the liberation from it: Hoffmann’s literary characters carry the acoustic relics and sound remnants of tradition, yet they do not ‘‘return’’ to Europe or to a religious experience. The musical moments in Hoffmann’s fiction draw attention to that which has been lost, a void that cannot be filled. This longing is the other side of a negative redemption that testifies to both the ruptures and hidden undertones of secular Hebrew culture. It reverberates with Hoffmann’s poetics of memory, which continuously mediates cultural traditions and life experiences of the past in order to better listen to the present.

Haunting Voices and Entangled Calamities in Yehudit Hendel As in Hoffmann’s work, musical figurations convey the dissonances of a secular culture in Yehudit Hendel’s novella A Tale of the Lost Violin (2006). This novella draws on Western musical repertoire and European neo-romantic myths to address the inherent complexities of life in Israel. It is set in Haifa, where the narrator visits her aunt’s lover, a European violinist who is dying of tuberculosis. In speaking of his own death, the lover tells the life story of the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach, recounting how this musical genius ended his life in poverty and despair. However, it is not only the narrator who listens to the music of the German composer. Also listening and mumbling to himself is an Arab boy standing outside the window. The violinist wants this boy to have his violin when he dies, but the narrator’s aunt later accuses the boy of stealing the violin and throwing it into the sea. Meanwhile, the 1948 War of Independence breaks out, changing the face of the city. The story ends with the Arabs fleeing in boats, the violinist dead, and the violin lost. How are we to understand the violin’s role here? How does Hendel compose the fictional and the historical components in her story, which also draws on her own biographical material? How does the employment of the

136

Ben-Horin

musical instrument evoke traditional figurations of Jewish music in Hendel’s novella, and to what extent does this reflect political complexities? J. S. Bach’s organ prelude in B minor, which appears near the beginning of A Tale of the Lost Violin, offers a partial answer to these questions. Originally a part of the liturgical ceremony in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, this contrapuntal piece simultaneously incorporates a few voices. It provides the reader with a model of reading based on a musical structure. According to this model, distinct and separate components relate to each other by means of proximity and contiguity. They act as different voices and narratives, life stories that coexist, are similar yet not identical, close yet autonomic; they present themselves simultaneously, without excluding or abolishing each other. A facsimile of the musical piece, composed in 1727 in Leipzig, appears within Hendel’s text, and the narrator likens both visual and auditory score features to the image of a wave.54 The wave figure constitutes an everrepeating constructive and destructive movement, bringing together diverse, contesting forces, without blurring their distinctiveness. Transposed into the narrative structure of the novella, this movement dissolves stable identity markers—religious, ethnic, geographical, and cultural—as seen in associative shifts from Bach’s biography to the story of the Jewish violinist and the Palestinian listener, from the composer of the Baroque age who was regarded as the ‘‘founder of German music’’ to the Jewish musician, whose relatives were murdered by Germans in the Holocaust, from Leipzig to Bat-Galim and the downtown of Haifa, and from the Jewish catastrophe to Palestinian suffering. These reflections occur through a displaced syntax of successive associations and repetitions that feature proximate, yet non-identical, even opposing elements. This musico-poetic syntax can draw our attention to another set of unresolved tensions: between the sacred and the profane, and between the sanctification of cultural repertoire and the secularization of religious rituals, as demonstrated in another central allusion to Bach. Hendel’s references to the church music of Bach evoke a liturgical discourse of calamity and redemption, death and resurrection that reverberates with not only Christianity but also the Jewish national revival.55 Composed for the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity (which fell on October 27, 1726), Bach’s Cantata no. 56 ‘‘Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen’’ (I will gladly carry the cross) sets a text by an unknown author based on the Gospel according to Matthew. Referring to Jesus, ‘‘And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city,’’ the gospel tells of how he heals a paralyzed man.56 The supernatural

The Secular and Its Dissonances

137

cure in the gospel is translated into the redemptive moment in the cantata text. The sea is depicted in the cantata too; it allegorically relates to momentary worship and distress in the earthly world—that will be resolved upon arriving in the divine land. The despair from the ‘‘here and now’’ is manifested in Bach’s cantata as a longing for death, demonstrated by the lyrics of the recitation and the chorale: My wandering in the world is like a journey by ship: grief, suffering and distress are waves which cover me and with death terrify me each day; . . . Come, O death, you brother of sleep, come and lead me away from here; release my little ship’s rudder bring me to a safe harbor!57 In contrast to the original religious text written as Christian liturgy, Hendel’s ‘‘secular’’ Hebrew text does not offer redemption, but rather the violence that brutally explodes in Haifa in 1948. A Tale of the Lost Violin introduces contesting narratives concerning the 1948 War of Independence. It tells about suffering and mourning, horror and death, evoking historical events such as the attack on the Yehiam convoy or the Arab and Jewish car bombs in Haifa, which injured and killed dozens of people.58 The novella recalls multiple traumas, and its report on violence and loss carries a triple meaning (Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian). In this ‘‘story,’’ Hendel writes the history of the Jewish diaspora into the story of Israel’s War of Independence, utilizing a musical structure that brings together different segments into a fragmented totality that avoids synthesis. Hendel’s allusions to the cantata text based on the New Testament’s depictions of the water Jesus crossed over in his ship, which may also be the Sea of Galilee, thus open up a whole reservoir of meanings revolving around this traditionally sacred space. According to the literary critic Hanan Hever, Zionist discourse sanctified the Sea of Galilee as an object of desire that could never be fulfilled. The sanctification of the Sea of Galilee played a fundamental role in the immigrants’ national imagination, as demonstrated by Hebrew poets.59 Hever also shows how in many literary works the depiction of

138

Ben-Horin

another sea, now the Mediterranean, borrows from religious realms and theological patterns, such as the intermediate phase on the Israelites’ journey to the Promised Land. Moreover, the homogeneous national imagination sets in motion hierarchical ascendance (aliyah) that characterizes a movement heading in one direction only (from Europe to Israel). The sea, an unstable, dangerous domain through which one arrives in the safe territory, is therefore kept outside, on the borders, locked behind the territorial lines of the land and its national hegemonic narrative.60 In contrast, in Hendel’s narrative the sea transgresses; its explosive presence occupies not only the shore of Bat Galim, but also metaphorically reflects the violent events in Haifa. At the end of the novella, the narrator, overflowing with melancholic impressions, faces the Mediterranean. Her associative flow of thoughts, which blurs the lines between different events, activates cultural contexts of homelessness and nomadic life implicated in the aggressive exclusion of the other. As a structure, the sea (here the Mediterranean) demonstrates the repetitive movement of the musical counterpoint; a movement that entangles multiple, contradictory voices in a way that defers stable identities. In terms of content, it inflects the narrative with a theological discourse of redemption that has been deprived of its divine promise. Hendel alludes to the liturgical text by pulling out its ‘‘extended meanings,’’ to use Bialik’s words on the Aggadah. Her novella provokes and challenges modes of representation by exploring and reflecting on the politics of ‘‘transformation’’: on the one hand, the transfiguration of theological patterns such as calamity and redemption and the Promised Land into the secular realm; and, on the other, the transposition of earthly components into the sacred domain, such as the secular artist who lives in Haifa, the violinist configured as a prophet or messiah, who has an access to secret contents and ‘‘holds’’ the truth. In order to illustrate this last transfiguration, let us explore another identity displacement embodied in the event known in the history of music as the ‘‘Bach revival.’’ Although Bach was remembered primarily as an organist and harpsichordist after his death in 1750, some of his keyboard music continued to circulate in manuscript and his motets to be sung in Leipzig. It was the first performance in a century of the St. Matthew Passion, in Berlin in 1829, organized by the young Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, that started the great nineteenth-century ‘‘Bach celebration’’; not everybody, however, was happy with this performance. Wagner, in his well-known essay on Judaism

The Secular and Its Dissonances

139

in music, argued that Mendelssohn’s interpretation of the German master mimicked and distorted the musical language of Bach.61 The revival of the German musician and the condemnation of the Jewish one demonstrate the prolonged dialectics of memory and oblivion, exclusion and celebration, appropriation and expulsion.62 Hendel’s story recalls these tensions in its depiction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, noting how the most celebrated German writer and poet refused to acknowledge the greatness of Bach, whose music had to wait for a ‘‘comedian and Jewish boy’’ for appropriate recognition. Hendel literally puts in the violinist’s mouth the words of the singer and actor Edward Devrient, who admiringly declared: ‘‘And to think that it has to be a comedian and Jew-boy who return to the people the greatest Christian music.’’63 Half a century later the Nazis condemned the work of this ‘‘Jewish comedian’’ as ‘‘degenerate music.’’64 This historical exclusion of the Jew in German cultural and political discourse is reflected in A Tale of the Lost Violin by being projected onto the figure of the Arab boy: an ‘‘outsider’’ and a ‘‘stranger’’ who stands at the threshold and whose language or pre-verbal sounds are unintelligible. His movements embody the contradictory forces of nomadic and territorial existence, temporality and eternity; he vanishes and reappears, he flees but stays forever, he becomes the ‘‘riddle’’—a term used by the Jewish violinist to describe Bach’s counterpoint texture and especially The Art of Fugue. The Arab is, in short, the musical dissonance that extends the tensions and resists resolution. The last part of the story focuses on the 1948 war. However, what starts as a semi-documentary report, a chronicle of violence between two rivals, turns into associative and incoherent fragments of identity displacement: a riddle that originated with Bach’s life and musical texture becomes a riddle of the Arab boy and the lost violin. The German genius is reincarnated in the character of the Jewish violinist, just as the wishful death of the liturgical sailor in Bach’s cantata prefigures the fate of the dying violinist. Moreover, the nomadic aspect of the exiled German Jews reverberates with the Palestinians’ experience of 1948, as their boats echo the liturgical ship in the cantata of Bach. Finally, the sounds of the lost violin—‘‘ours, ours,’’ according to the narrator65—are drowned out by Bach’s contrapuntal wave, and the struggle between unity and separation collapses in the face of utter loss. Hendel’s intensive incorporation of musical figurations challenges the dominance of Hebrew as a language, a territory, and a site of homogeneous national identity. In her story the violin, transfigured as a symbol of the exilic

140

Ben-Horin

body, is no longer a Jewish property; and the sea, rather than an image of resurrection and rebirth as in the literature of the 1948 generation (a prominent example is Moshe Shamir introducing the protagonist of his novel In His Own Hands as follows: ‘‘Elik was born from the Sea’’),66 becomes instead a place of loss and mourning. We see different stories that are by no means identical, but rather correspond with each other. They resonate in the embodiment of a non-identical other that is neither German nor Jew, neither Palestinian nor Israeli. A Tale of the Lost Violin thus hints at the ethical potential of a semiotic movement: a monotone, rhythmic repetition, which nevertheless invokes difference. This novella perhaps recalls the nomad Bedouin playing the lyre (the ancient kinno¯r) in the first pictorial representation of the instrument in Egypt around 1900 b.c.67 It may also recall Bialik’s violin, and thus takes us back to our point of departure: we have returned to the Jewish legend of exile and mourning that is always entangled with other, multiple exiles and expulsions; we return to the Aggadah—that discrete space of musical revelation, a new ethics of listening, beyond the dichotomy of secular and religious. In this sense, ‘‘Bialik after Hendel’’ is just one version of the story—a reading that emphasizes the movement and amplifies the tensions and contradictions of a secular text.

A Last Remark on ‘‘Composed Songs in Writing’’ This essay has explored the role of musical figurations and idioms as modes of representation in modern Jewish and contemporary Israeli literature. It has focused on how images of musical instruments and musicians, which are embedded in religious traditions and imbued with theological connotations, are employed in the realm of a secular poetics. I have argued that music as non-representational art both contributes to and exposes the tensions inherent in processes of Jewish secularization. Employed in modern literary texts, musical configurations reveal that which straightforward narratives of secularization tend to conceal: rather than a story of progress from the religious to the secular, Jewish secularism entails remnants of past religious tradition as undercurrents. More precisely, this essay has shown how secularism in modern Jewish literature entails a constant process of refiguration of various musical images and tropes that carry both links and ruptures with the ancient Jewish past and its religious heritage. Starting with the role of music in ancient liturgies

The Secular and Its Dissonances

141

and sacred literature, I have shown how the trope of the violin (kinno¯r) reverberates with the Jewish longing for Zion—a sacred object of desire. The melodies played by King David in the ancient Land of Israel are missing from Babylon. Their absence points to the gap, a void that cannot be fulfilled, thus becoming a symbol of lamentation and pain. In the age of Jewish secularism and national revival, modern writers have transformed those ancient musical tropes that embody theological structures such as prophecy and revelation, redemption and calamity: for Agnon, the music embodied in the ancient singing of King David and the melodies of the Levites becomes a source for his own writing. For Bialik as well music is crucial for understanding the relationships between the sacred and the profane and between heritage and innovation. The musical language of the Aggadah that is heard in his poetry as well thus reverberates with the absence of a sacred source and loss that cannot be fulfilled. The power of music in exposing the dissonances of secularism is also seen in Herzl’s diary report where the musical drama actually becomes a medium of the modern Zionist imagination. Herzl mentions the opera of Wagner, whose aesthetic-political project was grounded in a theological view of redemption. Paradoxically, Wagner contributed to the antisemitic discourse that also related to German-Jewish musicians. This discourse is alluded to and confronted in Israeli literature that demonstrates a critical view of collective as well as private processes of identification. An analysis of Israeli writers such as Yehoshua Kenaz, Yoel Hoffmann, and Yehudit Hendel shows how they employ musical forms and textures that testify to both the ruptures and hidden undertones of secular Hebrew culture. To conclude, in Hebrew literature musical figurations such as the biblical violin that is embedded in sacred traditions of Jewish liturgy become aesthetic mediums of identification and negation, imagination, and documentation. Within such figurations, old and new identities (geographical, ethnic, cultural, and political) are revealed, but also confronted and contested. In this regard, the musical themes and textures, motifs and forms alluded to and configured within the realm of modern Jewish literature, and Israeli prose in particular, demonstrate the ongoing tensions within secularism as a cultural process of identification. Echoing with the void and gaps of ‘‘composed songs in writing,’’ to quote Agnon, these musical figurations are the dissonances that testify to unresolved tensions between the holy and the earthly, the traditional and the revolutionary. They call, therefore, for a critical listening to the discontents and challenges of a secular culture.

chapter 7

Civil Society, Secularization, and Modernity Among Jews in Turn-of-the-Century Eastern Europe scott ury

For generations, scholars of European history and society have bound modernity to intellectual and social processes of secularization. Grounded in Enlightenment-era discussions regarding the nature of humanity, the place of God, and the construction of the modern self, thinkers such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel repeatedly maintained that being modern meant shedding one’s religious faith and becoming a rational, secular individual.1 Such interpretations continued to dominate academic scholarship after the Second World War as scholars from Ju¨rgen Habermas to Jonathan Israel took similar positions regarding the intimate connection between secularization and modernity.2 And so, the twinning, if not conflation, of these two concepts coalesced among generations of scholars who thought about—and determined—what it meant for an individual and society to be considered modern. Ultimately, these and other thinkers advocated and reinforced an interpretation of ‘‘modernity’’ that was grounded in a faith in the supremacy of the individual, the value of reason, and the ideal of self-improvement. Time and again, these and related assumptions regarding modernity revolved around secular interpretations of history, society, and progress; that is, those in which religion was either abandoned, domesticated, or, at the very least,

Civil Society

143

relegated to the private sphere in order to make room for a significantly improved, distinctly modern society rooted not in religion but, rather, in rational thought and individual autonomy. Even if God was not dead, he or she was very often relegated to a different time and place, one regularly referred to as ‘‘the past.’’3 Although much of this scholarship on the nature of modernity focuses on key thinkers and seminal works, one study that highlights the institutional background of modernity’s ostensibly redemptive path is Habermas’s seminal work on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Written in the heyday of post–World War II secular thought, Habermas’s book portrayed the ideal modern society as one that was characterized by the autonomy of the individual self, the widespread implementation of rational public debate, and the drive toward self-improvement, both individual and collective. According to Habermas, these developments were grounded in a series of new, public institutions, such as the coffeehouse, the newspaper, and the theater, that arose across eighteenth-century Western Europe to create what he termed ‘‘the bourgeois public sphere.’’4 Secular in nature—due to their separation from religious institutions and clerical control—these establishments together promoted rational discourse, preserved the autonomy of the individual, and improved the state of contemporary society.5 Thus, secular institutions, rational debate, and individual autonomy were not only intertwined, but they also paved the way for the construction of a new and improved society, one that was—at its core—ideologically modern and institutionally secular. Influenced by Habermas’s interpretation of the central role played by secular institutions in the construction of the bourgeois public sphere, scholarship on east European history and society often highlights the role played by civil society in the transition toward a Western, liberal form of modernity in Europe’s eastern half.6 Like Habermas’s public sphere, the voluntary associations that compose civil society are often portrayed as bastions of rational debate, incubators of democratic behavior, and guarantors of progress that protect both the individual and society from the ravenous modern state, from Prague to Petersburg.7 Thus, while these two concepts—public sphere and civil society—are not synonymous, they are often seen as being intimately related, if not at times interchangeable.8 Ultimately, in this rendering, both the public sphere and civil society are not only grounded in the faith that the voluntary assembly of individuals will promote democratic consciousness,

144

Ury

but also the belief that these social processes and institutional developments will lay the foundations for the construction of liberal societies and the victory of the human spirit.9 Like many other developments in the study of the humanities, these critical studies regarding the nature of modern society were not lost on scholars of Jewish history. Influenced by reigning paradigms, scholars from Jacob Katz to Shmuel Feiner have treated the construction of modern Jewish society as a process inextricably bound to the Enlightenment, the rise of reason, and the subsequent creation of the Jewish Enlightenment (the Haskalah).10 Furthermore, true to their overriding identification with Jewish adherents of the Enlightenment (Maskilim), many depicted traditional, religious Jewish society as one of bygone worlds. Time and again, scholars of Jewish history presented a binary paradigm according to which one was either a modernleaning, secular Jew or belonged to the archaic if not backward forces of religious tradition. Thus, scholars of the Jewish path of modernization often came to embrace a Manichean interpretation, based on the assumption that modernity is an inherently positive form of society, culture, and self. Taking cues from Habermas, the same secularization-as-modernity paradigm has also been embraced by scholars examining Jewish institutional histories. In their accounts of Jewish communal institutions and their histories in Eastern Europe over the course of the nineteenth century, various scholars have pointed to the different ways that new Jewish institutions contributed to the creation of a new, modern Jewish society that was not only secular but was, ultimately, divorced from ‘‘traditional society.’’11 Echoing studies of Russian or Polish societies at the time, such scholars present Jewish communal, cultural, political, and civic institutions as the keys to the construction of a liberal society, the struggle for political emancipation, and the eventual integration of ‘‘the Jews’’ into a new egalitarian, secular society.12 Thus, while the topic of analysis is institutional, the broader narrative arc remains parallel to studies of the Haskalah in Western and Eastern Europe. Indeed, the only major difference regarding the dominant narrative of Jewish modernity in Eastern Europe is that the process is grounded primarily in institutional (or political) changes and not in intellectual developments.13 While these studies are invaluable, few explore extensively whether or not such institutionally oriented interpretations of modern Jewish society highlight an alternative path toward modernity or a different relationship between secularization and modernity. Did the new associations that composed Jewish civil society help create a completely new, inherently secular

Civil Society

145

Jewish society? Or was there, in fact, a deeper connection between the new Jewish civil society composed of university students, lawyers, and voluntary organizations, on the one hand, and more traditional, religious communal institutions, on the other?14 If the latter was the case, how did traditional modes of Jewish communal organization influence the nature of Jewish civil society in Eastern Europe? Lastly, what can the origins and nature of Jewish civil society tell us about the process of secularization and the course of modernity among Jews and non-Jews in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe? The term secular, as used throughout this essay, is particularly focused on the construction and differentiation of separate, at times parallel, social spheres. Inspired by Habermas’s reading of the public sphere as well as much of the scholarship on civil society, secular denotes those entities and individuals independent of religious communities in their actions, identities, aspirations, and underlying motivations. In the context of fin-de-sie`cle Warsaw, it meant an autonomous, neutral collection of institutions, societies, and individuals; all were associated with the Enlightenment and progress, and dedicated to the formation of modern selves in accordance with liberal ideals of individual autonomy, social respectability, and civic duty. Secularization, then, refers to the social process designed to lead individuals and groups away from a status defined by religious communities and categories and toward such new states. While such definitions seem to accord with the terms of previous research on Jewish history and society in Eastern Europe, this essay seeks to explore the precise mechanics through which secularization developed and operated among increasing segments of Warsaw Jewry. In doing so, I hope to highlight some of the fundamental tensions embedded in the dominant scholarly paradigm regarding the construction of liberal, democratic societies grounded in civil society, secularization, and progress. As we shall see, on the one hand, this specific historical process often mimicked the broader story told by Habermas and others about the rise of a secular public sphere and an accompanying civil society dedicated to the cultivation of the autonomous individual and the improvement of society. On the other hand, the emergence of a civil society among Warsaw’s Jews remained distinctly Jewish. In its early stage, advocates of Jewish secularization often drew upon traditional Jewish language, concepts, and institutions; and, even in its later stages following the Revolution of 1905—which marked a sharper break with the traditional, religious past—the resulting social transformations remained ethnically, collectively, and even proto-nationally Jewish. Finally, in many cases,

146

Ury

the relationship between the new civil society organizations and the fate of the modern Jewish self remained unclear, if not at times contradictory: for the emerging secular, autonomous individuals were repeatedly expected to subordinate their personal desires to the demands of the new civil society. How these recurring contradictions appeared, reappeared, and unfolded in turn-of-the-century Warsaw and what these processes tell us about the relationship between the nature of civil society, the process of secularization and the path of modernity among Jews in Eastern Europe are the major topics of this essay. These questions are particularly relevant to the history of Jews in the Russian Empire. As part of tsarist reforms over the course of the nineteenth century, the rights and privileges of Jewish communal institutions in the Pale of Settlement and in the Russian Empire’s Polish provinces were repeatedly restricted. In many cases, the state limited or completely abolished autonomous communal institutions through a series of decrees aimed at wielding imperial control over local communities and subjects, including Jews.15 As a result of such decrees, all new social, charitable, or educational institutions created in the second half of the nineteenth century had to be affiliated directly with an officially recognized religious institution or an already existing communal body. Thus, even those new Jewish organizations that were granted government permission to operate remained bound to traditional religious institutions and communal elites. Despite occasional relaxations, such institutional restrictions remained in place until the Revolution of 1905, when tsarist officials liberalized government regulations regarding the creation and function of voluntary associations. Enacted in the midst of the revolutionary wave in early 1906 as part of government efforts to cull the support of the liberal camp, official reforms eased restrictions regarding the creation of charitable, educational, or cultural societies.16 As a result, newly founded bodies were no longer bound to religious institutions or directly regulated by traditional communal elites or government officials. Soon after the implementation of these new regulations, the nature and shape of Jewish society were radically transformed by the appearance of thousands of new civic organizations and voluntary associations in cities and towns across Eastern Europe. These reforms led to the almost immediate creation of a Jewish civil society and encouraged the separation of these new associations from traditional religious institutions and leaders.

Civil Society

147

While there were many Jewish centers across the Russian Empire, the city of Warsaw provides a particularly vivid example of the rapid transformation of Jewish communal organization, activity, and society. On the eve of the Revolution, with a legally registered population of close to 300,000 Jewish residents, Warsaw was Europe’s largest Jewish center and served as fertile ground for hundreds of new associations, organizations, and institutions. For decades, government regulations had bound Jewish social, educational, and charitable institutions to the city’s legally recognized communal organization, the gmina. Administered by a board of fourteen men and commanding an annual budget of close to 350,000 rubles a year, the gmina expanded the scope of its activities considerably in the last third of the nineteenth century.17 By the turn of the century, the body was responsible not only for rabbis, synagogues, and education, but also a slew of charitable institutions including two Jewish hospitals, several orphanages, and other organizations. Although extensive and impressive, these institutions and the traditional communal leaders that administered them had much difficulty keeping up with the changing needs of Warsaw’s ever-growing urban Jewish population. At the end of the nineteenth century, critics repeatedly wondered if traditional Jewish institutions and leaders could recognize and meet the challenges of modern Jewish society.18 Following the 1906 enactment of new regulations regarding collective organization, the growing gap between the traditional communal institutions’ mandate, resources, and capabilities, on the one hand, and the demands of urban Jewish society, on the other, became all the more apparent. Between 1906 and 1914, hundreds of new Jewish associations were registered in Warsaw. This brief period of dizzying proliferation in Jewish groups and institutions offers an unprecedented window into not only the growth of Jewish civil society but also the very nature of these bodies and the ideal society that they hoped to construct. Were these social, charitable, and educational associations created as new, secular alternatives to traditional religious organizations that had, apparently, failed the tests posed by the modern city? If so, what role did secular ideals, institutions, and policies play in this burgeoning Jewish civil society? Was a widespread embrace of secular ideals indeed central to the ways that these new bodies exercised their newfound place and role in turn-of-the-century Warsaw? Lastly, what type of urban citizen and society did these organizations envision for their members, supporters, and other assorted residents of the city?

148

Ury

Civil Society in a Jewish Key? Yehezkel Kotik’s Well-Laid Plans for the Reform of Urban Jewish Society One person well suited to respond to the growing needs of Warsaw’s Jewish residents and the many Jewish migrants that seemed to flood the burgeoning city at the turn of the century was a new arrival from Kiev, Yehezkel Kotik. In many respects a transitional figure, Kotik straddled the line between the officially recognized, traditional Jewish community (gmina) and the new Jewish institutions and associations that came to dominate Jewish society at the turn of the century. Between 1896 and 1913, Kotik, the owner of a popular coffeehouse in the heart of Warsaw’s Jewish district, initiated several self-help organizations aimed at reforming various aspects of urban Jewish society.19 In addition to a body designed to create a synagogue as well as provide assistance to the needy (Ahi-‘Ezer, or Brotherly Assistance), Kotik founded a society dedicated to the education of Jewish youth (Aseret ha-dibrot li-vene Tsiyon, or Ten Commandments for the Children of Zion) and several other projects dedicated to social reform. Much like his cafe´ on Nalewki Street, the different self-help projects that Kotik established exemplify the Jewish civil society and the accompanying public sphere that was beginning to emerge in Warsaw. As voluntary associations that lay beyond the jurisdiction of the official Jewish community, these organizations created alternative social and institutional frameworks for many Jews in the city. Moreover, despite the fervent pleas for widespread political transformation that characterized the period, few civil society associations called for the large-scale restructuring of imperial Russia.20 In both word and deed, they remained committed to bourgeois values of individual selfimprovement, urban respectability, and measured social reform. While these and other ideals characterized many of the new civil society organizations, the various projects created by Kotik toward the end of the nineteenth century also highlight the different ways that traditional religious institutions, concepts, and ideals were used to promote Jewish civil society associations and their goals.21 As part of his efforts to attain the government approval necessary to create and administer these projects, Kotik published detailed bilingual brochures (in Hebrew and in Yiddish) that outlined the organizations’ goals. These brochures offer fascinating insights into Kotik’s own interpretation of the transition from traditional Jewish communal institutions grounded in

Civil Society

149

religious traditions to civil society organizations dedicated to reforming Jewish individuals and Jewish society. Like many other observers of Warsaw and other great cities of the era, Kotik viewed the modern city as a jungle mired in a state of dreadful disarray and in desperate need of repair. As traditional Jewish communal institutions and leaders appeared to be overwhelmed if not frightened by the specter of mass society, Kotik and others increasingly turned to voluntary organizations and self-help societies to ameliorate the situation.22 Kotik’s 1896 brochure for the construction of a synagogue with a substantive charitable agenda, Hatza’at hukei agudat Ahi-‘Ezer (Proposal for the bylaws of the Organization for Brotherly Assistance), reflects not only his own interpretation of the crisis at hand but also the different ways that traditional Jewish institutions helped lay the groundwork for the creation of early civil society organizations. With hundreds of activists and thousands of dues-paying members, Ahi-‘Ezer became one of the largest self-help organizations in Warsaw, and a harbinger of the new civil society that began to coalesce around the turn of the century.23 Because Ahi-‘Ezer was created a decade before the critical change in government regulations, legal necessities mandated—or at the very least encouraged—an institutional relationship between the project’s charitable agenda and traditional religious bodies. That said, the connection between Kotik’s designs for communal assistance and traditional religious institutions, motifs, and ideals was far from instrumental. Similar to the rendition of urban life detailed and canonized by Georg Simmel some ten years later, Kotik’s vision of Jewish society in turn-of-thecentury Warsaw was one in which individuals seemed to be drowning in a sea of strangers.24 The introduction to Kotik’s 1896 brochure for Ahi-‘Ezer reflects this and other anxieties regarding the state of Jewish urban society as a nineteenth-century society once full of hope and optimism seemed to stumble as it approached a new era. Looking out on the streets of Warsaw, Kotik writes: There are here, right now, some two-hundred thousand of our fellow children of Israel who are strangers unto one another [muzarim heme ish le-ahiv], they are like a large forest, with many trees, all of which plant roots in the earth, and none of which are connected to the other; everyone worries only about himself, and no one looks out for his neighbor. . . . There is no love or solidarity between us, each person takes care of only himself . . . and the only thing that

150

Ury

remains between us is hatred and jealousy and a division between the hearts.25 While this interpretation of modern urban society and the problems it posed to the individual and to his or her sense of community reflected a wider, pan-European crisis of modernity, Kotik and his policies of self-help offered an atypical response by repeatedly proposing solutions grounded in different aspects of traditional Jewish society. Unlike other, distinctly secular interpretations of and responses to modern, urban society, Kotik maintained that the most effective response to many of the woes that beset the hundreds of thousands of Jewish residents of Warsaw (and de facto in other urban arenas) was to be found both in traditional Jewish texts and in one of the oldest of all Jewish institutions, the synagogue. Combining these religious traditions, Kotik turned to the words of the talmudic rabbis (Haza l ) and the example of the synagogue as the antidote to what he saw as the most pressing of all modern, urban problems: the impending atomization of Jewish society and the imminent dissolution of the urban Jewish community.26 This appeal to intellectual and institutional atavism not only characterizes the spirit of many of the organizations that Kotik established in turn-of-the-century Warsaw; it also highlights the extent to which many early urban reform projects and associations had yet to internalize reigning conceptions regarding the apparent contradiction between religion and modern society. Time and again, Kotik’s path to a respectable (and therefore domesticated) version of urban society was rendered intelligible and possible by the power and resonance of traditional religious institutions, ideas, and concepts. In the same brochure, Kotik continues by explaining: Our wise men, of blessed memory, who knew our state of dispersion and the division between the hearts that prevailed among us, suggested a way to fix this problem; and this tool became a fortress to organize our society under one roof. . . . This is none other than the synagogue, the house for public prayer; this, in fact, is the best medicine for the disease of division and disquiet that continues to this day.‘‘27 Kotik goes on to outline more fully this strategy of implementing traditional religious institutions as integral parts of solutions to problems that defined and belied urban society, by noting that even though there were many prayer houses in the city, none was structurally able to resolve the dual crisis of urbanization and community that beset so many Jews in Warsaw. This was due to the fact that unlike other European centers such as Budapest or St. Petersburg, Warsaw lacked a large, central synagogue. Combining both

Civil Society

151

the traditional Jewish institution of the synagogue with bourgeois conceptions of an orderly, civilized, urban Jewish environment, Kotik makes the case for the creation of larger communal institutions and actual physical structures that would serve as the center for the reconstruction, reorganization, and rehabilitation of Warsaw’s urban Jewish community.28 As in other places throughout the brochure, Kotik’s language reflects his transitional position between religious society, urban respectability, and proto-national frameworks. Thus, he implores potential supporters: And thus wake and awake all those according to his own desire and ability to work and strive toward creating communal synagogues in which all of our estranged brothers can congregate, especially those that have arrived from the four corners of Russia for their business needs and livelihood. . . . New residents will join with veterans who came earlier or with members of the older generation who live here; the synagogue will include all of the advantages that we yearn for, so that we can achieve the coveted and elevated goal of supporting one another, spiritually and financially; we will support its creation, with government approval, according to the bylaws outlined below; and thus we will become productive and honest people and we will also be well received in the eyes of the government.29 Like many other Jewish reformers and politicians in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe, Kotik repeatedly turned to his own interpretation of religious or historical traditions to help reconstruct a Jewish society that was organized, dignified, and united.30 And yet, like so many other contemporary pleas to atavistic traditions (Jewish, Polish, and other), Kotik’s demands that civil society associations use traditional ideals and institutions to advance their various agendas was, at its very core, an exceptionally modern act. That is, time and again, Kotik and many other representatives of his generation implemented modern means of communication, organization, and action to respond to what he and others viewed as a quintessentially modern problem: the precarious state of the urban Jewish community. The underlying tension between the chaotic, destabilizing urban environment and the turn to civil society associations as bastions of a new social order is reflected further in the brochure’s very publication and structure. Thus, in addition to declaring the organization’s goals, the brochure Hatza’at hukei agudat Ahi-‘Ezer includes detailed regulations regarding the rights and

152

Ury

responsibilities of the society’s different members. In this specific case, the brochure details no fewer than forty-eight clauses and numerous rules, such as who could receive support; how this support was to be distributed; how revenues were to be collected; how the synagogue’s leadership was to be chosen; and how general assemblies would be convened. Like many other champions of urban reform, Kotik’s response to the disorder and division that threatened urban Jewish society was to turn to and create civil society associations. In the minds of the reformers, the orderly nature of these very societies, with their detailed bylaws and regulations, would help redefine and reassert a new sense of social order among the city’s many Jewish residents. As part of this search for a new social order, many of the voluntary, civil society associations created at this time were dedicated not only to reforming urban Jewish society, but also to ensuring that the organization’s members would learn to act and behave as models of urban civility. Ultimately, both ‘‘the Jews’’ and ‘‘Warsaw’’ were meant to serve as models of civility, respectability, modernity, and the nation (Jewish and Polish), and it was up to civil society associations to teach their members how to fulfill properly these critical roles. Driven by these visions of a well-mannered, if not disciplined urban Jewish society, Kotik’s call for the construction of a model synagogue that could be used to advance various aspects of urban reform went far beyond traditional Maskilic goals of reforming religious practice. In the eyes of Kotik and other communal activists, many of those Jews who flooded Warsaw’s streets were in need not only of practical assistance, but also of moral instruction regarding how to act in modern environments. True to Habermas’s model of the bourgeois public sphere as well as the mandate of other voluntary associations, civil society demanded that Jews behave in a civil fashion.31 Lastly, in addition to improving the level of Jewish society, such changes in the behavior of urban Jews would deflect potential gentile criticism of Jewish actions and mores. Commenting on the proper behavior expected of those attending the Ahi-‘Ezer’s general assembly, Kotik again emphasized a mixture of traditional religious concepts and bourgeois values as the key to reforming and rehabilitating urban Jewish society: Anyone can come and suggest a proposal to the general assembly that suits his personal opinion and spirit (as long as he has informed the secretary in writing of his wishes) in polite language, in a moderate manner and with civility [derekh eretz]. And if the proposal is

Civil Society

153

not accepted, he will not turn up his nose in spite, and he will not vent his ire against any particular person and not against the community; everyone will subdue his own desires in favor of those of his brother, and no one will become obstinate, or succumb to excessive honor, but, rather, only consider that which is good and efficient, so that this synagogue can indeed be an example of moral excellence to all.32 The repeated turn to different aspects of traditional society to remedy various modern woes typifies other self-help organizations that Kotik initiated toward the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, a brochure from 1899 outlining Kotik’s voluntary association Aseret ha-dibrot li-vene Tsiyon (Ten Commandments for the Children of Zion), expressed a similar combination of traditional values, bourgeois norms, and proto-national ideals as the oldnew remedy to reform the wayward Jewish urbanite and maintain a sense of order and community in dizzyingly modern times.33 Here, as well, Kotik synthesized longstanding religious concepts and new modes of social and communal organization as the means toward achieving individual rehabilitation and communal reconstruction. Likening himself to a prophet, Kotik begins the brochure by presenting himself as an interested observer who speaks the truth, however difficult that might be. Thus, he declares that he ‘‘will not flatter his people, nor speak lightly with them, but will explain to them the moral ways, expose to them their evil ways, and with a stern face tell them that if they do not return to their true ways, they will be completely and totally lost.’’34 In addition to evoking the prophets of ancient Israel, Kotik also employs the traditional religious concept of exile (galut) as he discusses the state of Jewish society in late nineteenth-century Warsaw: ‘‘I cannot close my eyes in the face of all of the bad habits that we have acquired in our many days of exile [galut]. And, thus, I hereby call on my beloved soul brothers to pay close attention to their ways, to awake and to repair each and every pitfall and to expunge all expressions of evil from their midst.’’35 Alongside the image of the prophet and the curse of exile, Kotik drew on other religious terms and concepts in order to advance his reform agenda. Thus, he invoked the Ten Commandments themselves not only in the organization’s very title but also as the framework for the brochure. Such references implied that his goal was to guide Warsaw’s Jews through the vicissitudes of the modern desert—the urban metropolis—on the way to the

154

Ury

Promised Land of urban civility and civic equality, wherein the Jews would eventually be accepted as equal members. Throughout the pamphlet, each of the program’s ten points was presented as a new, modern commandment. In fact, the first clause in Kotik’s brochure Ten Commandments for the Children of Zion was a secularized version of the traditional, religious commandment. However, in place of ‘‘I am the Lord your God . . . Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,’’ the first commandment is presented as ‘‘All of Israel is responsible for one another’’ (Kol yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh.) Little reflected Kotik’s synthesis of the religious with the secular and the modern more than the way in which the distinctly modern, European concept of nationhood quickly and quietly superseded God as the very foundation of modern Jewish society. In his role as a modern prophet, Kotik, the reformer, frequently invoked traditional religious concepts as he called on his potential supporters to internalize new modes of social and political organization (such as nationalism) that were coming to dominate European society. While the language recalled ancient Jewish traditions and teachings, his message was similar to that of contemporary European political movements. Hence, much like the place and role of the individual in national thought, the place of the Jewish individual was repeatedly subordinated in Kotik’s writings to the fate of the larger collective body, the Jewish nation: We shall implant in the hearts of our children from the youngest age the love of the people which will bring them divine wisdom (binah), because every single person is simply one organ in a much larger body which is the people (am); and whatever serves the individual also serves the people; and if they choose the path of sin, they will bring evil upon the people. . . . And thus the rabbis taught us: ‘‘All of Israel is responsible for one another.’’36 While these and other parts of Kotik’s different reform projects explicitly drew upon religious concepts and language, other sections in this program focused on the need to tame the periodically unruly and potentially embarrassing Eastern European Jew. Thus, while Jewish religious values and traditional institutions were still employed, the rapid changes in the period demanded an approach that embraced reigning European concepts of society

Civil Society

155

and citizenship.37 One part of this program that reflects this growing emphasis on bourgeois concepts of respectability and urban citizenship is the treatise’s third commandment, which called on Jews to behave as ‘‘respectable guests.’’ As in many other cases, Kotik’s anxieties regarding the state of urban Jewish society were rooted in the belief that many Jews in Warsaw behaved inappropriately and the looming fear that their actions endangered the precarious state of relations between Poles and Jews in the city: In those lands in which the Jews are persecuted and harassed, we should implant in the hearts of the children of Israel the understanding that they are ‘‘guests’’ and not ‘‘landlords.’’ . . . And, they will always be considered as guests in the eyes of their neighbors; thus, they should teach their children the ways and the rules and laws of the guest and instruct them to how to behave with those citizens who are the ‘‘landlords.’’ And these are the ways of the guest: when you enter a strange person’s house you should behave with more manners and civility than the landlord himself; when you sit at the table you should sit straight up and eat with your hands and feet aligned and balanced, and all of your movements (gesticulations) should be measured and polite.38 Founded at a time when Jewish civil society was beginning to take hold in late nineteenth-century Warsaw, many of the organizations created and promoted by Yehezkel Kotik reflected a combination of religious concepts, language, and institutions with secular, reform-oriented agendas and projects. On the one hand, Kotik’s repeated turn to traditional institutions like the synagogue and ancient figures such as the prophet, as well as the use of Hebrew texts with frequent religious references, grounded these organizations in a traditional, religious context. On the other hand, the means and goals of both Brotherly Assistance and The Ten Commandments for the Children of Zion were clearly influenced by larger drives for urban reform and national renewal, and in many cases advocated avowedly secular positions. Hence, both these organizations focused on the attempt to reform the behavior of individual Jews, improve the material, physical, hygienic, and spiritual state of Jewish society, and, in the process, transform Warsaw’s Jews from potential eyesores into models of urban civility that would be a welcome part of the city’s growing urban fabric.

156

Ury

Civil Society, Self-Improvement, and the Process of Jewish Self-Civilization As tsarist regulations regarding communal organizations were liberalized in 1906, more and more Jewish social, educational, and charitable societies appeared across Warsaw and other cities. Founded as voluntary associations with social agendas, these bodies advocated clear visions of how Jews ought to behave as both individuals and members of a collective in the urban environment. While these associations often shared many attributes and goals with those bodies created by Yehezkel Kotik at the tail end of the nineteenth century, the hundreds of societies founded in Warsaw between 1906 and 1914 collectively created a new form, style, and space for public assembly, social organization, and political action. Together, these organizations helped establish a Jewish civil society in Warsaw that was not only secular at its foundation and in its outlook but also institutionally separate and independent from traditional religious organizations and leaders. Moreover, while the platforms of these new associations varied considerably, they shared a deeply ingrained faith in the individual’s ability to use modern education and policies of social reform to transform him- or herself as well as society at large. Three different examples that offer windows onto the larger changes taking place in Jewish social organization and action include the Society for the Attainment of Employment for Poor Jews in Warsaw (Towarzystwa Dos. tarcania Pracy Ubogim Zydom w Warszawie), the Warsaw Information Bureau for Jewish Emigrants (Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego dla Emi. granto´w Zydo´w), and The Society for Hebrew Song and Literature (Hazamir). Organizational charters and annual reports published by these associations present a detailed picture not only of their designs for the reform of urban Jewish society but also of the very nature of Jewish civil society and its intimate, if ambivalent, relationship to the urban environment. In many cases, reigning conceptions of civil society and civilization would be implemented to advance the process of Jewish self-civilization. Thus, while many early organizations may have had their roots in traditional Jewish community and society, the rapid development of Jewish civil society in early twentiethcentury Warsaw reflects a growing faith in the connection between civil society organizations, the self-civilization of the city’s Jews, and their eventual integration into the ideal urban society. Time and again, leaders in the new Jewish organizations portrayed these intertwined processes as the key to the transformation of the city’s Jewish residents from Eastern European Jews

Civil Society

157

to Warsawians, proud, contributing citizens of the embattled Polish capital. Acceptance, integration, and equality would all come once the various civil society associations had successfully taught the city’s Jews how to behave as ‘‘respectable guests.’’ Although organizations designed to secure employment for Jews had existed earlier, the annual reports published and distributed by the Society for the Attainment of Employment for Poor Jews for the years 1909, 1912, and 1913 highlight many distinctive aspects of the Jewish civil society that was emerging in early twentieth-century Warsaw. Like many other voluntary associations, the employment society’s conception of social order was highlighted by the very publication and structure of its annual reports. Much like different brochures published by Yehezkel Kotik, these reports lay out clear guidelines regarding the organization’s goals, its leadership, and the responsibilities of the hundreds of dues-paying members. The annual publication of associational guidelines presented the employment society as a bastion of urban civility and social order, while also helping to forge a new sense of community among Jews in the city, one grounded in voluntary associations, self-help, and urban reform. In addition to listing prominently the names and positions of the organization’s officers, board members, and even alternate board members, the society’s annual reports listed individual supporters as members in bilingual (Russian and Polish) tables that noted the amount of money that each member donated.39 Through such listings, one learns that the employment society’s number of supporters grew quickly in the years following the Revolution of 1905 from some 273 members in 1909 to over 670 supporters in 1913. During the same period, the society’s revenues almost doubled from over 5,000 rubles in 1909 to almost 10,000 in 1913. While joining and supporting this society or others was voluntary, those who contributed also received public recognition and a new social cachet in exchange for their annual dues. Indeed, whether it was a modest contribution of one ruble or a more significant donation of several hundred, supporting and participating in this and other voluntary associations made it clear that one had a place and status in the burgeoning Jewish civil society of early twentieth-century Warsaw. No longer rooted in observing religious regulations, mastering traditional Jewish texts, or family lineage, one’s standing in the new Jewish social order was based on a set of values that revolved around openly subscribing to modernizing agendas, publicly joining voluntary associations, and regularly contributing financial support to various reform projects.

158

Ury

In addition to helping redefine and promote a new social order grounded in individual participation in and financial support for a specific social agenda, annual reports delineated the organization’s aims and methods. Like those of many other voluntary associations, these platforms bound the construction of an ideal urban society to secular conceptions of the individual, the role of modern education, and the fate of the community. Like Kotik’s brochures, the organization’s materials focused on the synthesis of individual self-improvement and wide-scale urban reform. However, by contrast, here the role of religious concepts, language, and institutions—so prevalent in the pamphlets published by the coffeehouse owner Kotik—was negligible. While this may have reflected the fact that this particular organization chose to compose its reports in Polish (and Russian), and not in Hebrew (and Yiddish), the language and conception of community and reform were radically divergent from those of the institutions founded by Kotik. In the minds of many, this and other civil society associations would not only correct many of the problems of Jewish urban existence but, in doing so, they would replace traditional religious institutions, leaders, and society. In many cases, these two processes were viewed as being interdependent, thus highlighting how contemporaries associated modernization and secularization. While annual reports published by the Society for the Attainment of Employment for Poor Jews in Warsaw lacked the lengthy, explanatory introductions that characterized the brochures published by Kotik, the employment society’s reports outlined their own program for individual and social reform. Like many other bodies determined to rehabilitate the urban poor, the employment society was grounded in key Enlightenment concepts such as education and self-improvement. Together, these mainstays of civil society and urban reform would rehabilitate poor Jewish boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen who had, apparently, fallen through the cracks of urban society.40 As part of its efforts, the organization provided three different vocational tracks designed to train young Jews for productive professions and respectable futures as locksmiths, carpenters, or bronze workers.41 Although the organization’s educational curriculum also included academic studies, its program remained dedicated to promoting vocational training among poor urban Jews. Thus, the students’ spent the majority of their ten-hour days in pre-professional workshops and a limited amount of time on subjects such as language and arithmetic. Moreover, while religion was listed as one of the topics to be taught, it occupied only a small part of the educational regimen that stretched from eight in the morning to six in the evening.42

Civil Society

159

In addition to professional training for Jewish boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, the organization also conducted classes for students as young as nine, many of whom were described in the annual reports as being poor and illiterate. Here, as well, the organization’s day-long program was part of a larger agenda of reforming and rehabilitating individual Jews and, ultimately, redeeming urban Jewish society. As in many other cases, these projects of productivization, modernization, and citizenship were also designed to keep potentially unruly Jewish youth off the city’s streets and to prepare them for productive lives and a specific social status through years of vocational training.43 Here, too, the part of the curriculum that was not vocational emphasized the study of general, secular topics like Russian, Polish, arithmetic, history, and calligraphy, as well as choir and gymnastics. Once again, the subjects of religion and later Hebrew were only a small part of the larger program attended by hundreds of pupils each day.44 Like the Society for the Attainment of Employment for Poor Jews in Warsaw, the Warsaw Information Bureau for Jewish Emigrants (Warszaw. skiego Biura Informacynjego dla Emigranto´w Zydo´w) was constituted as a voluntary, civil society association dedicated to reforming urban Jewish society. Here, as well, annual reports from the years 1909–13 offer a glimpse into both the organization’s machinations and its role in constructing Jewish civil society in early twentieth-century Eastern Europe. As with the employment society and other organizations, annual reports published by the Warsaw Information Bureau included the names of the organization’s officers and board members as well as several pages listing the hundreds of members who contributed relatively modest sums of ten to twenty-five rubles a year. Here, too, the number of members in Warsaw grew rapidly from about 150 in late 1909 to over 500 by the end of 1913. As in other cases, participation in and support of this and other associations meant that one was taking a public position regarding the nature and direction of urban Jewish society. Like many other civil society organizations in Warsaw, the Information Bureau was created to resolve what many perceived as a pressing and potentially problematic social issue. In this case, the rapid growth of the city’s general and Jewish populations at the turn of the century exacerbated anxieties regarding the fate of the city’s poor and their potential impact on Warsaw’s delicate social fabric. Hence, soon after its creation, hundreds of Jewish men joined this larger effort to address looming anxieties regarding migration, urban order, and Jewish mobility. Looking back on its activities over the year 1909, the organization’s annual report reiterates common wisdom

160

Ury

regarding the connection between migration, poverty, and urban disorder: ‘‘The wave of migration continues to grow just as the economic situation of Jews in Warsaw and the provinces worsens.’’45 However, unlike Yehezkel Kotik’s organization dedicated to reforming the Children of Zion or the Society for the Attainment of Employment, the Warsaw Information Bureau for Jewish Emigrants had one principal aim: the timely and efficient export of poor Jewish migrants from the city.46 Hence, the bureau’s main goals included granting short-term relief and providing advice to potential Jewish emigrants who found their way to the bureau’s offices. There, potential migrants were provided with medical supplies as well as information regarding the nuts and bolts of migration. In addition to details regarding how one might obtain travel documents, potential emigrants received information about the price of tickets and conditions in their city of destination.47 Hence, unlike many other civil society associations in Warsaw and other locations, the Warsaw Information Bureau was concerned with neither education nor reform of the city’s Jewish masses. While it did not abandon all hope that Jewish migrants to Warsaw might someday become productive citizens, the combination of a rising urban population and difficult economic conditions convinced many members of the Jewish middle and upper class in Warsaw that the chances of reforming many of the city’s poorer Jewish residents remained limited. As such, the organization’s primary focus remained the orderly transfer of potential Jewish migrants from Warsaw to different locations throughout the New World, primarily New York and other locations in the United States, including Galveston, Texas.48 As part of its advocacy of Jewish population transfer (and not the rehabilitation of the city’s poor) as a means of averting urban disaster and social collapse, the material published by the Information Bureau appealed to neither tradition nor religion in its attempts to reshape modern Jewish society. Instead, the organization’s literature repeatedly turned to the new science of sociology and the alluring power of statistics to justify its goals. In the bureau’s annual reports, tables and statistics had replaced tradition, faith, and rabbinic wisdom. Hence, in place of the detailed, religiously inflected descriptions of urban decay that colored Kotik’s brochures, the Information Bureau’s reports repeatedly presented numbers, figures, and tables meant to relay a social scientific interpretation of the problems facing urban Jewish society. As the report for the year 1913 explains: ‘‘The wave of migration from Warsaw and from the Kingdom of Poland has markedly increased in

Civil Society

161

comparison to the last few years. This can be seen through the different data collected by the Warsaw Information Bureau.’’49 The faith in the power of statistics was further reflected by the various tables listing the gender, age, and personal status of potential emigrants, as well as detailed information regarding their place of origin, destination, and occupation.50 Together, these statistics reflected the organization’s understanding of both the problem at hand and the necessary solution. Returning to the power of numbers to describe the situation, the report for 1913 concluded: ‘‘Based on the wealth of statistical information presented in the tables above, we can state that the character of Jewish migration from Warsaw and from throughout the Kingdom of Poland does not deviate from the data presented.’’51 For many supporters and observers, a new faith in modern statistics had replaced earlier commitments based in religious concepts, leaders, and institutions. While donating twenty-five rubles a year and participating in the organizational meetings did not in itself constitute an all-encompassing transformation, the continued growth in the number of supporters throughout this period attested to the currency of the bureau’s message.52 Ultimately, the 500 dues-paying members in 1914 subscribed to and accepted—to one degree or another—the bureau’s social-scientific interpretation of what ailed Eastern European Jewish society and what needed to be done to make these particular Jews modern. In addition to organizations dedicated to education, social reform, and charitable assistance, other newly created voluntary associations in early twentieth-century Warsaw supported cultural activities. Reflecting the development of bourgeois culture among Jews in Warsaw and other locations across Eastern Europe, bodies like Warsaw’s Ha-zamir were created not only to redeem and rehabilitate, but also to enrich people’s modern lives. Such associations are particularly significant as they also reflected the growing secularization of leisure time, as well as an apparent need to fill this new time with activities that would be considered both culturally productive and politically innocuous. Thus, while the organization’s primary goals included ‘‘developing and expanding music, especially in Hebrew, among the Jewish residents of the city of Warsaw and its environs’’ through choirs, concerts, and readings, it was also dedicated to ‘‘giving members the opportunity to enjoy their free hours in a pleasant and productive manner.’’53 Nor was this turn to cultural matters and an emphasis on ostensibly apolitical modes of leisure coincidental. Established in September 1906, Hazamir was dedicated to securing the right of its members ‘‘to assemble so that

162

Ury

they can practice musical repertoires’’ and ‘‘hold concerts and festive evenings of music and literature.’’ As in many other cases, public assembly in the name of culture and other apolitical leisure time activities represented a clear turn away from the widespread upheaval that characterized the period surrounding the Revolution of 1905.54 Like many other civil society associations, Hazamir avoided the type of revolutionary political activity that was designed to transform the social and political order.55 As the organization’s charter warned: ‘‘Under no circumstances can one undertake political agitation during any of the organization’s meetings.’’56 In this and other cases, cultural organizations and other civil society associations supported new means of social and cultural organization and activity that would help rein in a potentially restless urban society. While Ha-zamir steered away from projects advocating individual rehabilitation and large-scale urban reform, its organizational structure was similar to that of many other civil society associations at the time. Here, as well, the organization’s charter goes to great lengths to detail the rules of membership and the actual terms of belonging. Thus, Ha-zamir’s brochure clearly delineates who could become a member of the society, what was expected of its members, and what rights they would enjoy. The pamphlet also details the organization’s leadership, the level of annual dues, and specific guidelines regarding the annual meeting. As part of the larger process of creating a specific organizational and social order, potential members were required to present letters of recommendation from two members of the organization. Moreover, once these letters of recommendation were presented, Ha-zamir had up to thirty days to accept the new member or explain why the application was rejected.57 Lastly, the cultural society reserved the right to ‘‘create an honor court that will resolve any conflicts regarding the society that might arise between members of the organization.’’58 Like many other civil society associations, Ha-zamir was designed to promote a specific social order and to ensure that its members understood, subscribed to and internalized the new rules and regulations of social engagement. Ultimately, real change would come from within. Thus, while Ha-zamir claimed to be an apolitical body, it had a clear social agenda and a stated, albeit subdued set of political goals. Like many of the other associations that composed Jewish civil society in Warsaw, Hazamir was determined to transform Warsaw’s Jewish residents into respectable urban citizens. Whereas the Employment Society would achieve these goals through vocational education and productivization, Ha-zamir would teach

Civil Society

163

Jews how to appreciate the finer aspects of culture. Thus, while it was less concerned with the indigent members of Warsaw’s urban population or with other potential dangers emanating from the urban Jewish underclass, the organization’s goals, bylaws, and structure were all designed to inculcate a particular type of social organization and behavior among the city’s Jews. Unlike the young Jewish revolutionaries (or nationalists) who continued to roam the streets of Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok, or other cities confronting authorities, wreaking havoc, and instilling fear, members of Ha-zamir would take part in ostensibly apolitical endeavors like concerts, readings, and public libraries that would teach the city’s Jewish residents how to become cultured urban residents. In this and other ways, many of the new civil society associations that flourished between 1906 and 1914 supported moderate reform of the reigning social and political order. Thus, while its goals differed from that of other civil society organizations, Ha-zamir was similarly dedicated to ensuring, if not guaranteeing, that Warsaw’s many Jewish residents learn to behave and act as civilized urbanites.

Concluding Remarks on Civil Society, Secularization, and Modernity Time and again, the larger process of Jewish self-civilization and the goal of integration into an ideal urban society was to be achieved by joining voluntary associations, embracing a new set of values, and taking part in the burgeoning Jewish civil society as it emerged in Warsaw and in other locations across Eastern Europe. While these intellectual, social, and political transformations were certainly not all-encompassing, their impact should not be underestimated. In a relatively brief period, thousands if not tens of thousands of Warsaw’s Jewish residents joined new types of organizations that were grounded in conceptions of society, progress, and self that were radically different from those advocated by traditional religious organizations, institutions, and leaders. In Warsaw, the long-awaited entrance of the city’s Jewish residents into the fabric of an inherently modern urban society lay neither in traditional, religious ways of life nor in the many new political ideologies that flourished at the time, but in the seemingly simple act of joining voluntary associations that advocated civic responsibility, social respectability, urban order, and moderate, liberal reform. Moreover, in order to complete successfully such transformations, thousands of the city’s Jews would have to join

164

Ury

other urban residents by taking part in a common, secular public sphere, one composed of an array of new, public institutions and associations. Together, these entities would enable all of the city’s residents to take part in the newly refashioned urban society as equals. And thus a wave of new voluntary associations and civic organizations created the institutional frameworks, open spaces, social conditions, and ideological rationalizations necessary for the transformation of urban Jewish society into one that was not only institutionally secular, ideologically modern, and politically liberal but also one whose various members were civilized, productive, and cultured. Ultimately, it was these civil society associations that were supposed to transform the hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jews who swarmed the city’s streets from potential urban eyesores that threatened the city’s delicate social fabric into productive, welcomed, and potentially equal members of a much larger civic project, the resurrection of the embattled Polish capital of Warsaw and the imminent triumph of the Polish nation. That said, while the construction of Jewish civil society repeatedly embraced, preached, and demanded a set of assumptions and practices grounded in secular conceptions of civility, progress, and self, the transformation of Jewish society into an ideal modern one was far from a direct, let alone uniform, process. The different fissures embedded within this project tell us much about the very conceptualization and subsequent path of modernity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. First, while traditional Jewish communal bodies and organizations did not predetermine the development of these new conceptions and practices of urban citizenship and community, generations of Jewish communal organization and activity had an impact on the rise and construction of the associations and institutions that helped create the new Jewish civil society. Admittedly, many of the early voluntary organizations that invoked traditional religious concepts, motifs, and institutions were quickly superseded by a later wave of organizations grounded in distinctly secular assumptions regarding the individual and society; nonetheless, the synthesis advocated by Yehezkel Kotik and others illuminates an initial period in which traditional Judaism—in its various manifestations—influenced different voluntary associations, charitable activities, and other projects for urban civility, reform, and citizenship. Furthermore, these institutions illustrate that while this synthesis of religious ideals into a burgeoning civil society remained a minority position among Jews in early twentieth-century Warsaw, it was not an impossibility.59 Thus, while

Civil Society

165

more and more voluntary associations touted secular agendas of selfimprovement, social progress, and urban reform, Kotik’s activities demonstrate that the development of civil society and the path of modernity were not immediately bound by a totalizing process of secularization and an accompanying rejection of religion. Another discrepancy between this history and prevailing theories regarding the central role of civil society in the creation of liberal, democratic societies was the fact that many of these new organizations were created by Jewish activists to mobilize Jewish residents to resolve what they viewed as specifically Jewish problems. Like the larger Jewish political parties that these associations were often created to circumvent, these civil society organizations were designed for, associated with, and dedicated to members of one particular ethnic group—‘‘the Jews.’’60 Whether they were poor youth in need of vocational training, wayward immigrants who threatened the delicate urban fabric, or members of the burgeoning Jewish middle class who had to be taught the beauty and meaning of culture, they were all addressed as Jews by Jews. Hence, not only were widespread social problems deemed to be specifically Jewish ones, but the means to be implemented and the ultimate course of action were almost always envisioned as being rooted in and limited to members of one particular ethnic group. This repeated turn to an imagined public consisting of members of one specific ethnic group raises additional questions regarding the very nature of civil society and its ostensibly critical role in the construction and guarantee of liberal, democratic societies.61 As a result of these and other practices of assembly, organization, and action, an ethnic or national body politic, and not a liberal, democratic one, crystallized at the very time that tens of thousands of Jews began experimenting with and experiencing new, quintessentially modern means of political organization and behavior. Ironically, the very institutions that many hoped would serve as the building blocks of a liberal, democratic, if not cosmopolitan urban society were ultimately used to bolster and solidify ethno-national modes of social organization and political action.62 These deeply ingrained contradictions regarding the place of religion and ethnicity in turn-of-the-century Jewish civil society point to another, even deeper tension regarding the nature of modern civil society: the place and fate of the individual. In this and other cases, the path toward the liberal, Western model of modernity was dependent upon individual decisions to join new types of social organizations grounded in a new social contract.

166

Ury

Repeatedly civil society associations offered Jewish men (and a small but growing number of Jewish women) exactly what their modern, urban world lacked: order. Hence, those who joined received a well-defined social group of like-thinking peers, detailed instructions regarding acceptable behavior, and a set of ideals to guide them through the perplexities of modern, urban life. Furthermore, as the records show, thousands if not tens of thousands of Jews embraced these new organizations and the secular social order that they helped create. Moreover, the implications for those who failed to join these and other bastions of modernity and progress were abundantly clear: political radicalism, social anarchy, and financial if not moral abandon and decay. Thus, many of the brochures distributed by various civil society associations detail the frightening sight and dismal plight of those lost Jewish souls who flooded the streets of Warsaw and slipped through the growing cracks that threatened to devour the very fabric of the urban Jewish community. While these descriptions may have been designed to generate support, such renditions of urban life also preyed upon the looming fears of many members of the new Jewish middle class. Indeed, while many had embraced the bourgeois values that lent a certain order to urban society, they were also acutely aware of the precarious nature of their newly adopted status in times of instability and flux. Hence, many of these organizations’ bylaws included clauses providing assistance to dues-paying members who might potentially fall upon hard times, financially, personally, or physically. Thus, whether motivated by concern for fellow residents or lingering fears regarding their own fate in the bewildering and unstable urban environment, thousands of Jews joined new civil society organizations in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. However, membership, security, and community also extracted an individual and social price. Ultimately, membership and belonging were dialectical processes in which the individual member not only supported the organization and its cause but was also, in the process, influenced if not constrained by the group’s mandate, regulations, and structure. As Hall and Trentmann note in regards to Rousseau’s critique of modern society: ‘‘The vision of freedom in civil society . . . was far from free but embedded in power and involving the loss of independent consciousness.’’63 Thus, the very civic frameworks and voluntary associations that were designed to guarantee the autonomy of the modern individual demanded that thousands of individuals ‘‘voluntarily’’ undertake a series of intellectual, social, political, and personal compromises.

Civil Society

167

In this and other ways, many of the contradictions embedded within the very conceptualization and construction of civil society organizations as bastions of a liberal, Western model of modernity illustrate what I have referred to elsewhere as ‘‘the dialectics of Jewish modernity.’’64 Time and again, modern means of social organization and political action were implemented to resolve many of the problems associated with modern, urban society. However, in doing so many of these new civil society organizations were repeatedly, and suddenly, forced to confront key aspects of modern society like the city and the individual. Ultimately, urban Jewish society and the modern Jewish self had to be hemmed in, corrected, and tamed before they could be rehabilitated and redeemed. And thus, Jewish advocates of the path and project of modernity repeatedly ended up turning against the very forces of modernity that they embraced as the drive for the creation of an orderly, civilized urban Jewish society and citizen demanded that new institutions and means be implemented to correct some of modernity’s key symbols and most glaring problems. The question of whether or not the newly constructed Jewish civil society would prove capable of securing and preserving the treasured codes and values of modernity in Eastern Europe across the great expanse of the twentieth century awaits another study.

chapter 8

Secular French Nationhood and Its Discontents: Jews as Muslims and Religion as Race in Occupied France ethan b. katz

The Second World War reconfigured the meanings of nation, race, religion, and the secular in metropolitan France. The German occupation in June 1940 and the immediate establishment of the authoritarian, antisemitic, procollaboration Vichy regime laid the groundwork for the horrors of the Shoah on French soil. This essay traces the manner in which these events shaped the respective positions of Jews and Muslims and explores a little-studied consequence of such developments: many Jews’ choice to disguise themselves as Muslim. As we shall see, this decision entailed both de-secularizing and secularizing components.1 Such effects can only be understood properly by analyzing two neglected aspects of the period: the impact of the Vichy government’s avowedly anti-secular policies specifically on Jews and Muslims, and the paradoxical nature of these policies. The latter point entails an engagement with the impact of race-thinking on the meaning and place of religion in society, an issue long ignored in the literature on secularism.2 From its early days, the Vichy government headed by Marshal Philippe Pe´tain undertook to ‘‘disenchant’’ republican symbols and values, including public secularism, of the quasi-sacrality they had attained under the Third Republic, and to religiously ‘‘reenchant’’ the previously laicized French public sphere.3 At the same time, the new regime also secularized religion in important ways—by racializing it. Race, of course, had long been ubiquitous

Secular French Nationhood

169

in Western discussions of religion, and in many French political and intellectual discourses about religious groups like Jews and Muslims. But Vichy transformed religion’s legal meaning, making it into an official marker of one’s inclusion or exclusion with respect to the French nation and imagined future. Legally, religion became no longer principally about private worship, customs, or a relationship to the divine, but instead about belonging, allegedly dictated by biology. In these respects, the regime decoupled religion, particularly for Jews and Muslims, from those components that had conventionally defined it: ethical obligations, rituals, and, above all, a belief in the transcendent. Jewish and Muslim assertions of affiliation and identity were deeply shaped by these paradoxical developments. Members of both groups found openings and challenges in the simultaneous reenchantment of the public sphere as purportedly religious, and the newfound equation of religion with race. The French state, collaborationist (pro-collaboration) political parties, and several leading Muslim figures undertook actions that together both desecularized Muslim politics and public expression and secularized certain forms of previously religious Muslim belonging.4 Jews, meanwhile, often found themselves with little choice but to accept a newly racialized religious status. With Vichy approval, some reemphasized religious life and found a refuge in it; others employed an ethno-religious politics of defiance; still others sought to pass as Christian or Muslim, making religion their disguise. In this manner, echoing in major part Vichy’s reconfiguration of race, religion, and the secular within French nationhood and legal status, Jews made choices with both de-secularizing and secularizing implications. This essay analyzes these issues from two specific perspectives. First, from the standpoint of the state, we see briefly how the same regime that enacted increasingly brutal antisemitic measures took a far more sympathetic view of Muslims. During the Occupation, Muslim religious life achieved newfound acceptance in the French public sphere, on the part of both Vichy and certain leading collaborationist political parties.5 This occurred largely at the level of symbolism but also through concrete state support for Muslim religious events and proposals for greater religious autonomy. The central perspective explored here is that of Jews, with a focus on North African and Levantine Jews living in metropolitan France. Many of these Jews had familiarity with Islamic culture, which enabled them, by disguising themselves as Muslims, to manipulate the period’s sharply racialized religious boundaries in an effort to survive the Shoah.

170

Katz

Through its new reading of the Occupation period, this article seeks to contribute to broader reassessments of the place of secularism and its opponents within and beyond French history. To date, scholarship on the secular under Vichy has focused almost entirely on the government’s significant outreach to the Catholic Church, particularly at the outset of the Occupation, which lowered substantially the longstanding republican barriers between state and religion. Such scholarship has concentrated on Vichy’s symbolic support for the church, through language and ceremony, and its limited but important policy changes: the repeal of the legalization of divorce; the recognition of religious orders; and, in the realm of education, measures that, to a degree, brought Catholicism back into French public schools and public money back into Catholic schools.6 Yet Vichy’s intertwined religious and racial policies had more paradoxical effects for Jews and Muslims.7 Considering the intersections of race, religion, and the secular for these two groups forces us to reassess key aspects of French nationhood and group identities during the Occupation.

Racing French Secularism In its reassessment of religion and secularism in World War II France, this essay treats three levels of developments: first, the presence and expression, or lack thereof, of religion in state spaces, ceremonies, discourse, and budgets; second, the public use, or lack thereof, of religious language, ritual, or frameworks by individuals and groups (in this case, Jews and Muslims); and third, the understanding of religion as either a set of beliefs, practices, and obligations linked to the divine, or, conversely, as a category of belonging ‘‘rationalized’’ by race science and decoupled from notions of the transcendent. The first two levels here follow closely the influential arguments of Jose´ Casanova, in that they correspond, respectively, to the ‘‘differentiation’’ and ‘‘privatization’’ rubrics of secularization.8 For Casanova, differentiation denotes the removal of religious control or presence from areas of society understood in modern times as ‘‘secular,’’ in particular the state, the economy, and science. Not altogether separable from this first component, privatization describes the relegation of religion to private, even marginal spheres.9 The third component, that of the deracination of religion from its longstanding foundational content—if not necessarily its forms—via racialization, is not

Secular French Nationhood

171

accounted for by Casanova’s work or most studies of secularism. Yet such a development might be understood as part of another broader secularization pattern highlighted by scholars as different as Carl Schmitt and Jonathan Sheehan: the transformation of originally religious phenomena, ranging from the concept of sovereignty to the text of the Bible, into entities divorced from transcendence but still inflected by their religious heritage.10 While the changes of the Occupation years thus echo broad concepts outlined by Casanova’s and others’ analysis of the secular, they also reflect peculiarities of French history. My own use here of the terms secular and anti-secular refers to the particular meaning of these concepts in modern France, and the way that the French state and non-state actors alike have employed such notions at various historical moments. In order to appreciate how these elements shifted under the Occupation, we must place such questions in the larger historical context of French secularism. In 1905, the French state made laı¨cite´, a concept denoting privatized religious worship and secular public space, into a legal doctrine of official separation of church and state. Culminating a decades-long struggle, the 1905 separation law achieved a middle ground, what historian Jean Baube´rot terms a ‘‘pact’’ of sorts, between fierce anti-clericalists and defenders of the Catholic Church. The law stipulated that, with the exception of certain existing institutions and religious monuments, state funds could not support any religious group or leader, and that no religious community or clergy could make a claim on public space.11 The law at the same time placed much of traditional religious life beyond state control and amply protected freedom of conscience, as well as, within private or religiously designated spaces, religious expression. Earlier, beginning in the 1880s, the republican school had already become the crucible of laı¨cite´. Mandatory public education for all children sought to forge individuals of all backgrounds into French citizens on secular terms. In this connection, many supporters of laı¨cite´ linked it to efforts to spread a secular morality and a non-sectarian societal solidarity. Thus, as they ‘‘disenchanted’’ French politics through the removal of religion, governments of the Third Republic simultaneously sacralized a set of non-religious values, institutions, and societal boundaries bound up within the concept of laı¨cite´. Most French Jews, attached to the French revolutionary tradition, embraced laı¨cite´. They defined their religious identity through communal organizations that insisted on the primacy of French patriotism and confined faith-based expressions to specifically religious spaces (cultural and ethnic Jewishness, by contrast, retained important roles in the public sphere).12 Yet

172

Katz

for France’s mostly Algerian Muslim population, laı¨cite´ seemed unattainable. Many French politicians argued that Algeria’s Muslims could someday integrate into secular French nationhood but that they first had to modernize their faith. The French state often depicted Islam as a threat and sought to control its leadership and institutions.13 Under a law instituted in 1865, in order even to apply for French citizenship, all Algerian Muslims had to renounce their attachment to Qur’anic law, a step most viewed as a betrayal of Islam. Despite Algeria’s administrative attachment to mainland France, the government never fully applied the 1905 separation law to the territory. Rather, the French state asked Muslims to follow laı¨cite´’s spirit of privatized religion, but did not grant them the accompanying new freedom from government control given to Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish institutions; instead, the state maintained effective control and tight surveillance over Islamic religious sites and practices.14 In the metropole, the Grande Mosque´e de Paris became the emblem of France’s paradoxical efforts to create a new state-controlled, secularized ‘‘French Islam.’’15 Even as laı¨cite´ gained wide acceptance in broader French society by the interwar years, it came under renewed attack from the anti-republican right during the bitter political and cultural struggles of the 1930s. In this period, secular republicanism, race, and religion offered competing definitions of French national belonging and exclusion. A growing number of leading conservative politicians and intellectuals valorized a ‘‘true France,’’ linked often to native French descent and to an increasingly ethnicized Catholicism.16 Farright parties such as the Croix-de-Feu (later the Parti Social Franc¸ais) and the Parti Populaire Franc¸ais (PPF) at times recruited Jews or Muslims and, sometimes simultaneously, treated members of one or both groups as the exclusionary Other defining the boundaries of Frenchness. Such a climate exacerbated the significant tensions that emerged during the 1930s within the French Jewish community. Fissures were particularly apparent between the more acculturated, established, bourgeois native French Jews and the growing numbers of largely working-class and artisan Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, many of whom were far more outwardly engaged in religious or political Jewish life than most French-born Jews.17 In the face of mounting attacks from the right, numerous groups coalesced around the Popular Front (PF) on the left. Many groups within the PF, from the socialists and communists to the Ligue Internationale Contre l’Antise´mitisme (LICA) to the integrationist Muslim ‘‘e´lus’’ movement, employed expansive notions of French universalism against fascism and discrimination, and in

Secular French Nationhood

173

favor of increased workers’ rights and reforms for Muslims in colonial Algeria.18 The PF gained the support of many Jews (particularly in the organizations, substantially working class and immigrant, that formed a ‘‘Jewish Popular Front’’) and Muslims (a number of whom saw great hope in the left’s promises of greater civil rights and a more viable path to equal citizenship). Even amidst their frequently divergent priorities and numerous disagreements, such groups all supported the PF’s defense of ‘‘sacred’’ republican ideals of freedom, equality, social solidarity, and secular tolerance.19 Le´on Blum, an active presence in Jewish communal life and the leader of the Socialist Party, became premier in 1936 as head of the Popular Front coalition.20 Despite the period’s considerable rise in antisemitism, Blum’s position at the head of a government contemplating the bestowal of greater rights on Algerian Muslims reflected certain basic power imbalances between Jews and Muslims in interwar France. Since the mid-nineteenth century and especially during the Popular Front period, Jews’ full legal equality and significant upward mobility—both of which remained out of reach for most Muslims—enabled certain Jewish individuals to attain positions of relative power wherein, through the language of republican universalism, they could advance not only their own rights and interests but also those of Muslims. Blum soon lent his name to an ill-fated reform bill (the ‘‘Blum-Viollette Plan’’) that would have provided citizenship for 20,000–25,000 Muslim Algerians and introduced a series of other social and economic changes. By the eve of World War II, however, in light of the Popular Front’s dissolution, its largely frustrated reform efforts, and intensifying xenophobia in France, increasing numbers of Jews and Muslims questioned the capacity of liberal values to ensure their future. For many Jews, ethnic politics of Zionism, the Jewish socialist Bund, or the Jewish section of the Communist Party began to seem more attractive as the promise of republican integration appeared in doubt; for many Muslims, greater equality under French sovereignty seemed insufficient or impossible, and calls for anti-colonial opposition or revolt grew. The interwar struggles over the place of religion, race, and the secular in French nationhood and public life found tragic resolution under the collaborationist Vichy regime. From the moment it assumed power in June 1940, Pe´tain’s government and its traditionalist allies explicitly sought to correct what they depicted as the secular decadence and moral decay of the Third Republic.21 Yet they did so in part by encoding a ‘‘rationalized,’’ racial understanding of religion into French law.

174

Katz

Jewish and Muslim Positions Under Vichy Shortly after the fall of France in 1940, the country became divided primarily into two zones: a northern Occupied Zone, under direct German military administration, and a southern ‘‘Free Zone,’’ run by the new authoritarian government housed in the spa town of Vichy in the Massif Central. Vichy also retained full sovereignty over all of the French colonial empire.22 Under the new racial binaries of the Nazis and the Vichy regime, France’s 330,000 Jews soon became ‘‘non-Aryans,’’ and faced increasing restrictions on their status and freedom.23 Meanwhile, even as nearly all of the approximately 100,000 (mostly Algerian) Muslims in France remained French subjects rather than citizens, their relative status was elevated.24 In the 1930s, due to diplomatic pressures in their relations with the Arab world, Nazi racial experts and diplomats had set up categories that reassured Muslims that they were not classified, like Jews, as racially inferior Semites, even as Nazi racethinking did not generally categorize them as ‘‘Aryans’’ per se.25 Administratively, Muslims in Occupied France ultimately became defined as legally akin to ‘‘Aryans.’’ Vichy, meanwhile, in part reflecting a larger fixation on empire, took its own solicitous interest in France’s Muslims from the start.26 In September 1940, Marshal Pe´tain declared: ‘‘I do not differentiate among the French; Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims are all my children.’’27 Such gestures continued throughout the war. In February 1942, in a statement to the inhabitants of Algeria, Pe´tain exclaimed: ‘‘To you all, French of Algeria, Christians who pursue here our civilizing work, Muslims who carry to us the magnificent example of a faith [kept] intact, I speak to you all of my affectionate concern.’’28 Statements like this, along with significant Muslim-targeted propaganda around the figure of the marshal, appear to have garnered Pe´tain a certain esteem among many North African Muslims in France.29 Multiple state-produced newsreels that highlighted French suffering at the hands of Allied bombardments featured the Paris Mosque or its rector Si Kaddour Benghabrit alongside Catholic churches and priests.30 In such accounts, Jewish suffering, of course, went unmentioned. This represented a dramatic reversal from twenty-five years prior. During World War I, France’s oftdiscussed ‘‘union sacre´e’’ (sacred union) included Jews alongside Catholics and Protestants; Muslims, despite their enormous sacrifice for France, were often ignored.31 Now, state symbolism implied that Muslims, rather than

Secular French Nationhood

175

Jews, merited a place, however secondary, in the religious tapestry of wartime France. In a further contrast, Vichy’s sacred union focused less on religious kinship and more on logics of essentialized belonging and exclusion. Vichy’s outreach to Muslims took more material forms as well. Despite wartime rationing and deficits, the regime allotted considerable resources to support Islamic practices. In 1943 in Marseille, for instance, on Aid-el Fitr, the feast at the end of Ramadan, government officials provided more than 1,300 pounds of couscous, 880 pounds of lamb, 440 pounds of sugar, and 44 pounds of green tea.32 In the same year, in the town of Saint-E´tienne, the regime promised to build a Muslim prayer hall, calling it ‘‘a new manifestation of the Government’s solicitude for the metropole’s North African’’ population. Over the next two years, the Ministry of the Interior allotted more than 1.4 million francs for the project.33 Explicitly linking such largesse with the regime’s emphasis on empire, one ministerial memo from March 1943 listed its aid efforts for Muslim and other colonial prisoners of war and added: ‘‘It is indeed important from a higher point of view that the Indigenous have a very clear feeling that even in their present misery the French government keeps all of its benevolence toward them.’’34 Such a wording reflects how Muslim wartime status could entail its own pejorative racialization, often linked to longstanding colonial histories. Pe´tain’s government did not treat Muslims in France as anything like full equals and expressed significant ambiguity about their precise racial status. The new regime declined to offer Muslims an easier path to full French citizenship; at times, policies grouped Muslims, other colonial subjects, and Jews together, such as prohibitions against ‘‘people of color’’ crossing the demarcation line from the northern Occupied to the southern Free Zone.35 Other signs of anti-Muslim or anti-North African racism included postings that banned ‘‘indige`nes’’ and ‘‘Europeans’’ from traveling together, ‘‘in order to maintain the prestige of the whites.’’36 Similarly, one ministerial memo of February 1942 expressed fears about how, through mixing with French workers, the many North African laborers in France could ‘‘contaminate’’ the French. ‘‘Without wanting to give evidence of racist tendencies,’’ said the writer, French policy should take note of the dangers. He pointed to numerous other countries with policies better designed for ‘‘the protection of their race.’’37 At the same time, among the politicians who designed and supported Vichy’s ‘‘National Revolution,’’ a significant number saw themselves continuing a strand of the antisemitic French far right that had, since the late

176

Katz

nineteenth century, seen Arabs as the ‘‘good Semites,’’ a kind of positive foil for ‘‘the Jew.’’38 On the whole, the very ambiguities of Vichy racial attitudes toward North African Muslims placed the latter somewhere in between full Aryans and racial ‘‘undesirables,’’ but with no doubt as to their superiority— racially and in many respects legally—to Jews. As is well known, both the Germans and the Vichy state moved rapidly to restrict Jewish life and to define who was a Jew in a manner that treated religious affiliation as an irreversible, genetic, ultimately racial characteristic. In late September 1940, in the Occupied Zone, the Germans passed a law that defined a Jew as anyone currently or previously having religiously practiced Judaism, or with three Jewish grandparents (themselves defined by some history of Jewish religious practice or communal affiliation). The same ordinance called for a Jewish census in the Occupied Zone and required the marking of Jews’ identity cards and businesses with a ‘‘Jewish’’ stamp or sign. Within a month the Nazis began to expropriate and ‘‘Aryanize’’ Jewish property. In May and August 1941, with French police cooperation, the Germans carried out the first large-scale arrests of Jews.39 By June 1942, Jews of the Occupied Zone had to wear the yellow star. In the Free Zone, in early October 1940, without Nazi coercion, Vichy issued its own Statut des juifs, which eventually applied to both zones. This law defined Jews more broadly than the German law. Like that of the Nazis, Vichy’s Jewish statute stipulated that anyone with three Jewish grandparents was Jewish; yet in addition, it declared that if their spouse was Jewish, they needed only two Jewish grandparents to be Jewish. In autumn 1940, the new regime also stripped all Algerian Jews and many naturalized Jewish immigrants of French citizenship. Over the next year, Vichy progressively barred or severely restricted the Jewish presence in most sectors of the French economy and created the Commissariat ge´ne´rale aux questions juives (CGQJ), a major government apparatus overseeing all matters pertaining to Jews, and operating in both zones. In June 1941, Vichy passed a new Statut des juifs that superseded the one of October 1940. It broadened the previous definition of a Jew to include all those with two Jewish grandparents, even without a Jewish spouse, unless the person could show a baptismal certificate from before June 25, 1940. This meant that—in both zones—many children of mixed marriages previously exempted from Jewish status (and considered Mischling, of ‘‘mixed’’ racial status under Nazi law), were now categorically subject to persecution as Jews. Beginning in earnest with the infamous Vel d’Hiv roundup of July 16–17, 1942, in Paris, in which 9,000 French police

Secular French Nationhood

177

participated, 76,000 Jews would be deported from France before the war’s end.40 For our purposes, it is crucial to recall the precise terms of the Vichy and Nazi racial laws; their particulars illustrate how both regimes at once de-secularized and secularized Jewish life. In terms of de-secularization, for Jews, the racial laws destroyed the public-private divide and religiously neutral French public sphere established by laı¨cite´. These elements had long enabled Jews to act politically as French citizens first, and to treat their Jewishness largely as a private and spiritual matter. Vichy and Nazi policy made Jewishness the defining public, newly racialized characteristic of all Jews in France. Such a change occurred as part of the new emphasis on religion, but often qua race, connected both to older ideas of ‘‘Catholic’’ France and to more recent ones of ‘‘race science.’’ Under this new, nonreligious (in this sense secularized) regime of identity and status, Jews who had converted to Catholicism became ‘‘Jews’’ once more in the eyes of the law. Complicating matters further, however, during its first two years especially, Vichy took certain more ambiguous steps that de-secularized Jewish life. The new regime did offer avenues for the participation of Jews who were French citizens, particularly French Jewish youth, in its program of national regeneration.41 Vichy defended the right of Jews to religious practice, permitting the opening of new synagogues and mikvaot (ritual baths) in communities that lacked them, and even condemning certain attacks on synagogues. At the same time, the regime monitored previously private Jewish religious practices with growing vigilance.42 These actions reflected both the regime’s larger support for public religion as a part of national renewal, and, paradoxically, its essentializing logic that saw religious practice as a sign of racial determinism.43 At a practical level, such policies enabled closer state surveillance and control of Jewish life. Such simultaneous developments highlight the importance of Casanova’s attempt to disaggregate three strands of secularization, while pointing up the neglected impact of racialization. Historically, in a given society, various levels of religious or secular developments have, as often as not, refused to move in sync. In this instance, the tensions within the French concept of laı¨cite´, between the protection of both public secularism and private religious worship, found new expression. Vichy’s avowedly anti-secular policies permitted —for a time—continuities and even revivals in Jewish religious life, while the same policies increasingly essentialized and controlled Jewish lives in a manner that eventually accelerated their decimation.

178

Katz

Jewish Choices In significant part responding to such conditions, Jews’ limited agency under the Occupation took both secular and anti-secular directions. On the one hand, certain Jews sought to uphold republican traditions of being ‘‘French first’’ in public and Jewish in private. Many Jews who took part in the Resistance, like Rene´ Cassin, acted not in the name of their Jewishness but of their devotion to an idea of France. Numerous Jews, from rabbis to laypersons, made tragically misplaced appeals for aid to Marshal Pe´tain. These Jews pointed insistently to the service they had rendered to France as soldiers or servants of the state, hoping that patriotic acts might outweigh ethnoreligious origins in deciding their fate or that of their communities or loved ones. Others, particularly during the war’s first two years, took advantage of the religious freedom maintained by Vichy, or sought to accommodate the new regime by joining certain endeavors of national regeneration. Indeed, in many regions, synagogue attendance, Jewish education, and Jewish youth activism increased dramatically; synagogues became protected centers of Jewish activity.44 Meanwhile, however, many Jews sounded more ironic echoes to Vichy’s disenchantment of republican laı¨cite´ and racialization of religion. They entered the public sphere decisively as Jews. Under the aegis of the French Communist Party, several specifically Jewish resistance and aid groups emerged. In early 1943 in Lyon, they came together to form the Union des Juifs pour la Re´sistance et l’Entraide. In the Southern Zone, French Zionists formed a ‘‘Jewish Army’’ in 1941, drawing its forces largely from the Jewish scouting movement, and focusing initially on immigration to Palestine. By 1944, the group became the Organisation Juive de Combat and integrated into the larger Resistance. Many of these Jews attached their Jewishness to ethnicity or culture rather than religion. Thus for many, the active public face of Jewishness in France moved from a religious confession to an ethnically oriented politics. Yet as a sub-group identity linked to faith-based traditions, ethnic Jewishness was also considered secondary, semi-private, and apolitical under the framework of republican laı¨cite´. Now, the very same identity became politicized, reclaimed as an active source of pride in the face of Vichy and Nazi policy.45 A third type of action by Jews proved the most complex in terms of religion and secularism: Jewish disguise as Christian or Muslim. As is widely documented, many Ashkenazic Jews attempted to pass or were hidden as

Secular French Nationhood

179

Catholics or Protestants during the war.46 In a parallel yet little-known story, a significant number of Jews from the Levant or North Africa tried to camouflage themselves as Muslims. Both disguises followed the logic by which Vichy had legally subsumed much of religion within race. These Jews, desperate to escape the prospect of deportation, instrumentalized religion as a survival strategy; in a sense, they thereby unwittingly further separated religion from its traditional basis in faith and the sacred. One incident illustrates the feelings such actions could evoke: French Jewish woman Suzanne Hamon, in rejecting her husband Leo’s idea that they have their children baptized, argued that this would be disrespectful toward ‘‘our Catholic friends,’’ exclaiming, ‘‘It would be improper to transform what to them is a sacrament into a purely opportunistic administrative expedient.’’47 Yet by claiming Islam as their own without religious conviction, numerous Jews from North Africa and the Middle East in France were in a sense forced to do exactly that. At the same time, they often relied upon knowledge of traditional aspects of Islamic belief and practice. Such familiarity reflected a history of cohabitation that remained defined in significant part via religion. With their French citizenship revoked on October 7, 1940, Algerian Jews became ‘‘undesirables’’ and legally of the same status as native Muslims. Four days later, Vichy relegated them to a lower category beneath Muslims, barring Jews from the path of naturalization established for Algerian Muslims with the Jonnart Law of 1919. Most Jews from Algeria living in the metropole also lost their French citizenship. Jews of Morocco and Tunisia, who had never received French citizenship en masse, had to submit to new levels of intensive surveillance and identification, severe quotas in many professions, and frequent imprisonment in labor camps.48 Thus, for the first time since under the dhimmi of the pre-colonial era, North African Jews were of a status inferior to that of Muslims.49 Prior to French colonial rule, as dhimmis, Jews had been forbidden from feigning equality with the ruling Muslim majority; yet under the rather different conditions of Vichy and the Occupation, many Jews utilized overlapping Judaic and Islamic linguistic, cultural, and religious traditions to make a public claim to Islam.50 Jewish disguises took many forms. In 1942, in Marseille, on Aid el-Fitr, many Jews tried to partake of public distributions of couscous to Muslims. Showing their food ration card that read ‘‘North African indige`ne,’’ these Jews, often with typically Muslim last names like Bou Khoubza, Tayeb, and Kalifa, hoped they could fool the distributors and obtain couscous for themselves. Several Muslims in Marseille reported to the authorities

180

Katz

that, more generally, sizable numbers of Algerian Jews worked to obtain fake identity cards that identified them as North African Muslims.51 In Paris, in the Jewish quarter of the Marais, one evening, Yossef Fhal, an Algerian Jew well known in the neighborhood and beyond as a great practitioner of shared Judeo-Arabic musical traditions, found himself and his wife arrested as he left a musical soire´e. He quickly began to speak Arabic with his wife, and the Vichy authorities, believing him a Muslim, soon released him.52 Certain Jews sought official recognition from the authorities that they were Muslim, and thereby of ‘‘Aryan’’-like status.53 In Paris in autumn 1940, a number of Jews from Algeria who had just lost their citizenship attempted to register as Muslims with the office of the Service des affaires indige`nes nord-africains (SAINA). Among SAINA personnel—which included a number of Muslims—some worked to assist Jews, while others directed suspected Jews toward the more informed and often brutal Service des affaires juives.54 As anti-Jewish measures became increasingly harsh, certain Jews presented elaborate stories of Muslim affiliation. In Marseille, Emile Chaouat claimed that, coming from Muslim Berber descent on his father’s side and Catholic descent on his mother’s side, he had mistakenly registered as a Jew because he misunderstood ‘‘Semite’’ to include all indige`nes.55 Another Algerian-born Jew, Rene´ Baccouche, living in the town of Saint-Clair le Levendau in the Var, claimed that his paternal grandparents were Turkish Muslims. He alleged that at the time of the Cre´mieux Decree, the 1870 act that made Algerian Jews French citizens, his grandparents simply registered as Jews in order to gain French citizenship.56 Through his self-presentation as Muslim, Baccouche underscored his liminal position as an Algerian Jew, and this position’s complex impact on Jewish-Muslim relations. That is, in alleging that his grandparents had registered as Jews instead of Muslims in the wake of the Cre´mieux Decree, he acknowledged the deep inequalities created by the decree. At the same time, only if Mediterranean Jews and Muslims had shared similar customs for centuries—and most crucially, if the French colonial authorities of 1870 had perceived them as highly similar—could his grandparents’ guise, and therefore his story, be remotely plausible. In order to explain himself, Chaouat too pointed toward cultural commonalities, both real and perceived. His allusion to the ‘‘tribal’’ heritage shared by Jewish and Muslim Berbers could have been plausible for many French officials who believed in the myth of the superficiality of the Berber attachment to Islam (in contrast to that of Arabs).57 Yet by referring to Algerian Jews and Muslims

Secular French Nationhood

181

both as ‘‘indige`nes,’’ he treated a pejorative colonial term and legal category specifically designed for Muslims as applying also to Jews.58 Whereas Baccouche anchored his claim in a tale about confusion at the moment of Algerian Jewish emancipation, Chaouat in a sense had to forget that this historic moment—and its decisive act of legal differentiation—had even occurred at all. Many Jews from Islamic countries used other elements of shared heritage and knowledge to try to pass as Muslims. For many Jewish men, the common rite of circumcision made claiming to be Muslim a logical strategy.59 Jules Ouzana, taken prisoner of war, was transferred with his unit to Germany. There, when Nazi officials asked him to strip below the waist for inspection, Ouzana pretended to be a Muslim, convincing the Germans with his speaking and writing knowledge of Arabic.60 Michel Mamon and his brothers, of Iranian Afghan origin and looking ‘‘Oriental,’’ decided on their arrival at Drancy that they would claim to be Muslim. When Michel went for his examination by Vichy’s ‘‘race expert,’’ Professor Georges Montandon, he greeted the professor in Arabic and offered to read from the Qur’an in Arabic, but to no avail. After Montandon examined Mamon’s genitals, he began to wash his hands carefully. The prisoner then exclaimed, ‘‘It is not necessary to clean yourself for I have two ablutions a day, as does every good Muslim.’’ This convinced Montandon to declare Mamon a ‘‘pure Muslim.’’ He also certified Michel’s youngest brother as Muslim, but concluded the third brother bore ‘‘marks of doubtful origin.’’ Under the circumstances, the commander of Drancy did not allow the Mamon family to leave.61 For these and many more of France’s approximately 35,000 Jews from North Africa or the Levant, wartime efforts at disguise reflected both longstanding and contemporary historical realities.62 More than their Ashkenazic counterparts, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews had very old histories of religiously fluid identities and camouflage, reflecting specificities of Jewish life in Iberia and the Maghrib and Mashriq. A number of aspects of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish experience were distinctive in this regard.63 Like their Ashkenazic brethren, these Sephardim were partly inspired in their responses to religious persecution by the practices of the surrounding dominant religion. Thus, whereas Ashkenazim often followed the model of Christian martyrdom, Sephardim took their cues from the Islamic practice of taqiyya, or the concealment of one’s true religion in order to survive. This aspect of the formative environment of Sephardic Judaism also helped lay the groundwork for the advent of Marranism in Iberia in the face of the Inquisition that

182

Katz

began in the late fifteenth century.64 Other religious, social, and economic factors shaped Sephardic attitudes toward Islam as well. When faced with the question of whether or not a Jew could, under duress, abandon his Judaism for the majority religion, no less of a leading medieval rabbinic authority than Maimonides drew a distinction between Islam and Christianity. Maimonides ruled that the former was legal because Islam was undeniably strictly monotheistic and the required declaration for conversion, or shahadah (the affirmation that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet) was far less objectionable to Jewish belief than accepting Jesus as the son of God (a claim seen as akin to forbidden ‘‘idol worship’’).65 Following the expulsions and the Inquisition, meanwhile, Jewish and converso exiles from the Iberian Peninsula often came to be seen as valuable commodities. As large numbers of Sephardim settled in the southern and eastern Mediterranean in the early modern period, their own distinctive culture and practices had a profound impact on those of the broader Jewish cultures of the region. In many places, the Sephardic newcomers encountered a native Jewish culture that, like the one of al-Andalus, remained indelibly shaped in its philosophy, language, ritual, clothing, food, and daily rhythms by the wider environment of Islam, and by the mutually fruitful Judeo-Muslim encounter. In time, moreover, many Jewish traders and merchants of Sephardic and Mizrahi origins would play leading roles as emissaries and collaborators for the commercial and political elites and even the rulers of various Mediterranean kingdoms and city-states from Italy to Morocco. Such figures drew upon valuable linguistic abilities and specific business knowledge and acumen, as well as close family and communal connections throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. All these characteristics meant that large numbers of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews and many of their descendants had a unique ability—and often a need—to move between worlds, regularly adapting new survival strategies.66 In the above long-term historical context, the stories told to the Vichy authorities by Jews like Baccouche and Chaouat about attempts to maneuver confusing ethnic and legal categories echo older patterns of Sephardim navigating their changing circumstances. Likewise, the comfort evinced by those like Mamon with specific Islamic teachings or rituals emerged in part from Islam and Judaism’s long history of perceived theological proximity. Spontaneous decisions—like those of Mamon and his family at Drancy, or Fhal and his wife in the streets of Marseille—to adopt Islam as a shield from persecution were hardly random; rather, these almost instinctive responses had deep cultural and indeed religious roots. It appears that there may have even been

Secular French Nationhood

183

efforts to undertake formal conversion. Si Kaddour Benghabrit, rector of the Grande Mosque´e de Paris, reported to a French official in Constantine in April 1942 that ‘‘many Jews in Paris had asked him to convert [them] to Islam.’’67 All these efforts, in their determined, earnest insistence on a new religious identity under desperate circumstances, were quite reminiscent of Marranism and its antecedent taqiyya. At the same time, those Mediterranean Jews who claimed Islamic identity and status under the Occupation were part of a larger contemporary world where Jews from throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, reaching well across Europe and Asia, sought regularly to navigate the vicissitudes of modern empires. Since the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of Jews living in places from Rabat to Baghdad to New Dehli had acquired status as citizens and/or protected persons under the French and British Empires. The catalysts for these changes varied from determined Jewish self-promotion to perceived state interests. Porous geographical and legal boundaries often played a key role. Thus, as Baccouche’s story about his allegedly Turkish Muslim grandparents may have reminded French bureaucrats, many Sephardic Jews had seen their legal status shift at least once in their lifetime; they knew it might change again under new political circumstances.68 While anything like the mass revocation of Algerian Jewish citizenship was unprecedented, numerous individual Jews under colonialism discovered that citizenship and nationality could be fragile and mutable. Linked as well to the colonial project was the growing European fascination with ‘‘the Orient.’’ These factors had influenced numerous Jews of the interwar years like the novelist Elissa Rais (formerly Rosine Boumendil) in Algeria and France, and the writer-adventurer Kurban Said (born Lev Nussinbaum, using the penname Mohammed Essad Bey) in Central Asia and Germany. Such figures imagined for themselves and presented to the world a wholly new ‘‘Oriental’’ heritage and self that were deeply Eastern, Arabo-Turkish, and, in a more ethnic than religious sense, Muslim. Hence North African and Levantine Jews in Occupied France connected across space and time to countless other Sephardim who needed and decided to adapt, even to the point of utter and repeated reinvention.69 Jewish disguises as Muslim in France, then, at once paralleled and diverged from Ashkenazic Jews’ attempts to pass as Christian. Mediterranean Jews’ choice of camouflage displayed a measure of ongoing Jewish agency under extreme circumstances and relied on comfort with religiously significant elements of Islam such as its holy language (in many cases these Jews’ own native tongue) and certain of its bodily rituals. Such familiarity came

184

Katz

from centuries of coexistence often defined in religious terms, and from overlapping elements of North African Jewish and Muslim traditions. As French citizens who retained vital links to the culture of the Islamic world, most of these Jews had long operated in both the colonial and the native spheres. Now, in France with their status reduced, they sought a tenable place between two worlds—one of their Mediterranean origins that in many cases tied them to Muslim culture; the other of the French nation they had come to love that had now betrayed them. In a further layer of complexity, however, they had to appeal not to Islam as a religion but to popular and official French views of what defined Muslim identity and practice. Their choice of disguise acknowledged that, perhaps most crucially, Muslims and Jews stood on opposite sides of the new racial and religious barriers erected in Occupied France.

Conclusion This essay has examined the meeting points of race, religion, and the secular in changing understandings of French nationhood during the Occupation. It has done so by analyzing dramatic shifts in identity and inter-group relations for Jews and Muslims. We have seen that the anti-secular aspects of the period cannot be understood through a singular focus on Vichy and the Catholic Church. Yet the case of Jews and Muslims also shows how paradoxical the period’s developments truly became. Vichy did encourage the greater presence of Muslim and, for a time, Jewish religious life in the public sphere. But in redefining these group’s ostensibly religious identities under the rubric of race, Vichy in a sense secularized Judaism and Islam by decoupling their legal meanings from the traditional religious foundations of practice, obligation, and faith. Jewish choices of public identity often mimicked the logic of these contradictory policies. Thus we must understand the period as one of simultaneously anti-secular and secular directions, tied up within a tangled web of race, religion, and nation. In their struggle to survive, many North African and Levantine Jews revealed their comfort with Islam. They could draw upon centuries of coexistence and traditions of Sephardic adaptability, each often defined in religious terms, and on overlapping elements of North African Muslim and Jewish tradition. Despite its reliance upon significant religious connections, this choice also mirrored Vichy’s treatment of religion as synonymous with race;

Secular French Nationhood

185

these Jews thereby appropriated another faith tradition for their own purposes as a cloak of protection. The de-secularizing and secularizing aspects of Jewish and Muslim life under Vichy have several implications that reach far beyond the years of the Occupation and the boundaries of France. First, much of the growing attention to Muslims and the Holocaust tells us little about how North African or Middle Eastern Jewry responded.70 Yet this article suggests that if we examine carefully specific local contexts, we often arrive at a more multifaceted interpretation of Muslim positions and Jewish agency during the war. Second, the sharply contrasting experiences of France’s Jews and Muslims during the Second World War produced important legacies in correspondingly divergent perceptions of the war’s meaning. Jews experienced the war as a time of unparalleled oppression, brought to an end by the Allied liberation. Many Muslims, by contrast, saw neither the suffering nor the victory of the war years as their own. Instead, they perceived the period as one that shattered the illusion of French imperial invincibility, but then resulted in missed opportunities and broken promises, under first the Nazis and Vichy, and later the Resistance. Furthermore, the anti-secularism of the Occupation found curious sequels during France’s next great violent struggle, the French-Algerian War (1954–62). In 1956, France gave binding legal definition to a radically new category of citizens: ‘‘French Muslim citizens from Algeria’’ (FMAs). In a striking echo of Vichy’s racialization of religion, this category was terminologically linked to religion, but legally based on ancestry. Further ‘‘integration’’ measures, temporary and exceptional, created concrete goals for the proportion of officials in various public posts that should be FMAs. The 1958 constitution, though declaring France a ‘‘re´publique laı¨que,’’ made all Muslims in and from Algeria fully equal French citizens while permitting them to retain their special ‘‘Muslim status.’’71 The following year, the Debre´ Law enabled France’s private (primarily Catholic) schools to receive significant amounts of public funding. During the final stages of the war, French policy debates and many Jews’ political choices highlighted further the challenge of Muslim as well as Jewish particularity to the secularism of the republic. In 1961–62, as Algerian independence became imminent, the French state took steps to ensure continued French citizenship for Algeria’s Jews, and to inhibit it for Muslims. Such divergent approaches to the two groups implied that certain kinds of religious difference were assimilable, and others, despite the recent ‘‘integrationist’’

186

Katz

policies indicating the contrary, were not.72 Many Jews in both Algeria and the mainland, meanwhile, articulated their position on the war in increasingly multifaceted, often explicitly Jewish terms that challenged the conventional republican separation of religion and politics. Even as the French government, then, struggled fiercely to defend and redefine the mission of republican assimilation in Algeria, it faced the disenchantment of previously ‘‘sacred’’ dimensions of secular republican nationalism. Ever since, the ethnic dimensions of French citizenship law, the compatibility between ‘‘Muslim’’ or ‘‘Jewish’’ and ‘‘French’’ public identity, and the place of religion in French education have faced repeated contestations and reversals. Thus, rather than a ‘‘parenthesis’’ in the history of secular and anti-secular movements in France, Vichy may be seen as paradigmatic: of the two currents’ constant competition and coexistence, and of their complex and repeatedly contested relationship to race and ethnicity.73

PA R T I I I

Adaptations

chapter 9

Galician Haskalah and the Discourse of Schwa¨rmerei rachel manekin

The conflict between Maskilim and Hasidim in nineteenth-century Galicia has generally been viewed as an intracommunal Jewish affair, with occasional interventions by the non-Jewish authorities.1 More recently, it has been portrayed as an example of the culture wars waged between advocates of modernity and their critics, or between a liberal and tolerant worldview where religion occupies at best a limited place, and a religiosity that embraces all spheres of life. According to this interpretation, Maskilim perceived Hasidim as an obstacle to the renewal of Jewish society and Jewish culture. Moreover, while in Western and Central Europe Maskilim adopted a moderate approach because of the competition with other modernizing forces (acculturation, assimilation, religious reforms), in Galicia, where such options hardly existed, Maskilim embraced a militant rhetoric and conducted an open and fierce struggle against their opponents. In short, in contrast with the late eighteenth-century struggle between Hasidim and mitnagdim, commonly described as a struggle within a religious context, the struggle of Galician Maskilim has been viewed as part of a modernization project leading to secularization.2 In fact, however, Galician Maskilim did not view themselves as modernizers but rather as devoted to the struggle against superstition and religious enthusiasm. Therefore, I would like to suggest that a different framework can help us understand these foundational conflicts: I will explore the Galician Haskalah within the context of the history of the struggle against religious

190

Manekin

enthusiasm, or Schwa¨rmerei, a term that crops up time and again in the texts and documents of the period. Consequently, I will argue that the struggle of Maskilim against Hasidim was part of a project to refashion and invigorate religion, rather than to limit the place of religion in society. In this sense the Galician Haskalah should be viewed as one of the manifestations of what has been recently described as the ‘‘Religious Enlightenment,’’ a project in which different individuals strove to achieve a similar goal, namely, reconciling Enlightenment ideas with religious traditions.3 Among the major Enlightenment values that religious enlighteners adopted were the struggle against superstition and religious enthusiasm.4 It is the use of traditional tools of interpreting religious texts and finding precedents and justifications from within the religious tradition to support their views that marks the ideology of these individuals as religious. Thus, the all-encompassing framework of the ‘‘Hebrew Haskalah,’’ especially when defined as a modernizing and secularizing project in the spirit of its Berlin ancestor, is simply not relevant to the Galician case.5 Moreover, I argue that like the Catholic employment of the discourse of Schwa¨rmerei in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury Habsburg monarchy, the Galician Maskilic use of the term shows an alternate trajectory to Weber’s famous notion of the ‘‘disenchantment of the world,’’ which he links to the Protestant Reformation. Galician Maskilim, as I show, adopted the Catholic discourse of Schwa¨rmerei, which, unlike the Protestant one, found expression in the political and not just the theological sphere.

Schwa¨rmerei: The Term and Its History When and how did Galician Maskilim come to use the German term Schwa¨rmerei? The older term ‘‘enthusiasm,’’ enthusiasmos, referred to ‘‘God possessing man or Man caught up into God.’’6 ‘‘Enthusiasm’’ in its early usage was connected to a religious experience.7 The negative connotation of the term originated in the Reformation era and the religious wars of the seventeenth century. Only in this period, as J. G. A. Pocock suggests, did religious enthusiasm acquire negative connotations of religious inspiration and mass ecstasy.8 Although it started within a religious discourse, it moved from the late seventeenth century onward into medical, scientific, philosophical, cultural, and political ones.

Galician Haskalah

191

Schwa¨rmerei, the German equivalent of enthusiasm, derives from the verb schwa¨rmen, to swarm, which is an activity of ants or bees.9 While the English term’s meaning included certain positive connotations, the use of the German word was almost exclusively negative, at least in the late eighteenthcentury German Enlightenment. As one scholar observes: ‘‘It was Luther, after all, who created the discourse of Schwa¨rmerei in the 1520s. . . . Their [the German enlighteners’] attachment to the discourse of Schwa¨rmerei is in itself a measure of the fact that the German Enlightenment was a profoundly Protestant phenomenon, resting on a bedrock of Lutheran values and drawing on a rich fund of Lutheran images and metaphors, even as it dissented from confessional orthodoxy.’’10 Schwa¨rmerei became one of the central terms of the German Enlightenment, ‘‘an all-purpose smear word.’’11 Yet the definition of the term was somewhat contested, becoming the subject of a debate in which central figures of the German Enlightenment participated, including Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn. For the author Christoph Wieland, Schwa¨rmerei was a disease of the souls of individuals that could turn into an epidemic that would infect the masses.12 Different authors attributed different meanings to the term, such as religious hallucinations, superstitions, enthusiasm, fanaticism, delusions of direct divine inspiration, and manipulation of the masses by charlatans. Kant, for example, asserted, ‘‘The accepted maxim—that the supreme legislation of reason is invalid—we ordinary people call Schwa¨rmerei.’’13 Generally speaking, Schwa¨rmerei served as a pejorative for everything that was contrary to the values of the Enlightenment. Religious groups considered to be infected by Schwa¨rmerei included the German Pietists, the French Catholic Mystics, Theosophists, Chilliasts, Roseicrucians, Martinists, alchemists, and more.14 The list included also individuals such as the exorcist priest Johann Gassner, the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who believed that one could communicate with ghosts, and the forger and charlatan Cagliostro, as well as Franz Anton Mesmer and Johann Kaspar Lavater.15 Indeed, as became clear to contemporaries, the eighteenth century was not just the age of reason and enlightenment, but also an age of popular religious sects, cults, miracle workers, visionaries, and mystics. The latter attracted not just the simple masses but educated people as well. As Nicolai, a central figure of the Enlightenment in Berlin, wrote in 1786: Just a few years ago Gassner was still able to draw thousands of people with the most senseless trickery. . . . The urine-prophet

192

Manekin

Schuppach gathered together credulous people from all corners of Europe. Mesmer performed the most enormous charlatanry with his magnet cure in Vienna, and then went to Paris where he performed even greater charlatanry with his magnetism that wasn’t even magnetic. . . . St. Germain was held up as a god, and aroused the attention of many princes and others who were not at all stupid. Through public spectacles Cagliostro knew how to present himself throughout Europe, and also Lavater, as the most extraordinary man, and he agitated some of the most important men. . . . The followers of Swedenborg’s insane Schwa¨rmereyen are multiplying daily. Exorcists and spirit-seers are greatly esteemed in many places.16 Interestingly, Kant attributed the popularity of Cagliostro to what he termed ‘‘the universally disseminated mania for reading.’’17

Religious Enthusiasm and the Disenchantment of the World Analysis of the debates on religious enthusiasm is not altogether new. In his book on the reaction to religious enthusiasm in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Michael Heyd treats the topic extensively.18 Heyd’s work, which focuses mainly on the Protestant and English context, shows how clerics began to employ natural and scientific explanations in reaction to religious enthusiasm, thereby displacing an older theological terminology. Religious enthusiasm began to be viewed as a result of a medical disorder connected with the bodily fluids described in the tradition of Galen, rather than an alternative religious behavior based on theological principles. This shift in rhetoric, according to Heyd, contributed to the secularization process in the early modern period. Heyd is aware of what he calls ‘‘the basic ambiguities in the concept of secularization itself on the eve of the Enlightenment,’’19 and thus offers alternative explanations of the role of the critique of religious enthusiasm in the process of secularization. If secularization means a decline of the Church and the established religious institutions, then the enthusiastic movements contributed to such developments by offering alternative groups, modes, and sites of religious practice. If secularization means the disenchantment of the world, then it is the new rhetoric employed by religious leaders (especially Protestants) against enthusiasm that constituted the key catalyst. In order to

Galician Haskalah

193

reconcile those two meanings of secularization, Heyd offers a third understanding of secularization in this period: what he deems ‘‘a crisis in the [traditional] symbolic and institutional means which links the public sphere here on earth with a transcendental source of meaning and legitimacy.’’20 Those symbols and institutions were damaged both by the enthusiastic movements and the religious establishment, as each emphasized means other than Scripture for attaining truth and proffered explanations framed in non-theological language. In this period these characteristics were, in Heyd’s words, ‘‘the hallmark of secularization.’’21 The reliance on reason and natural explanations of the religious establishment was, according to Heyd, ‘‘another manifestation of the secularization of the symbolic bridge linking man to God.’’22 Later responses to religious enthusiasm, especially ridicule (Shaftesbury), continued this process of secularization, ‘‘doing away altogether with the traditional links of Scripture, faith and divine grace.’’23 The concept of the disenchantment of the world (Entzauberung der Welt) was developed to great effect by Weber and subsequent scholars.24 In recent years many doubts have been cast on the concept, especially on the idea of the contribution of the Christian Reformation to it.25 Those who subscribed to the concept saw the Reformation as starting a process of disenchantment, departing from a medieval worldview of magic and superstition—an assessment described by one scholar as suffering ‘‘from a degree of simplification and caricature.’’26 The Reformation, according to recent scholarship, ‘‘did not effect a dramatic or complete a break with the Catholic past . . . , it modified and curtailed rather than wholly rejected the traditional ‘economy of the sacred.’ ’’27 The difference between the Reformation and medieval Catholicism in regard to beliefs in magic was one of degree rather than of substance. The old beliefs in magic and the supernatural remained strong well into the Enlightenment period and beyond, and not necessarily only among the masses. It is clear that Catholics also fought different manifestations of religious enthusiasm and submitted them to the test of reason. Both Protestants and Catholics, in the words of one scholar, ‘‘were seeking to redraw the boundaries between ‘religion’ and ‘magic,’ ‘superstition’ and official religion. That they drew boundaries in different places does not detract from the observation that early modern Catholicism and Protestantism had some key objectives in common.’’28 The theology of both was a ‘‘dynamic process . . . constantly modulating and altering.’’29 And so, instead of the linear path offered by the concept of the disenchantment of the world, recent scholarship

194

Manekin

suggests describing the processes that took place as ‘‘cycles of desacralization and resacralization, disenchantment and re-enchantment,’’ and thus dismissing the notion of secularization as a defining character of modernity.30 Still, the Catholic context has received relatively little attention in the scholarship on religious enthusiasm, and, as I will show, this context is crucial to the understanding of the Galician struggle of Maskilim against Hasidim. According to historian Andrew Keitt, who examined the struggle against religious enthusiasm in early modern Spanish Catholicism, the Catholic establishment needed to be very careful in ‘‘distinguishing between the natural and supernatural realms’’ because Catholicism contains beliefs in spirits and magic.31 Catholics developed a special apparatus, vocabulary, and legal discourse for achieving this end,32 making the concept of disenchantment or the rejection of the supernatural ‘‘a common trope in Catholic anti-superstition literature.’’33 What is unique to the Catholic context is the legal discourse: ‘‘The Spanish reaction to religious enthusiasm, in addition to its theological and natural philosophical aspects, also comprised a legal component. In the late sixteenth century the Spanish Inquisition began to prosecute cases of simulated sanctity, and this new crime of ‘feigning revelations’ (fingir revelaciones) went on to become a fixture on the dockets of inquisition tribunals not only in Spain but throughout the Catholic world.’’34 As we shall see, treating religious enthusiasm, or Schwa¨rmerei, as a crime, was characteristic also for the early nineteenth-century Habsburg monarchy. The ability of religion to adapt and remake itself in response to changing circumstances, as the Catholic case demonstrates, raises doubts about the conclusion that the shift to a scientific or a psychological rhetoric was either a cause or manifestation of secularization.35

Jews and Schwa¨rmerei The above elements of crucial context bring us to our central question: What about the Jews? Did a discourse similar to that of Schwa¨rmerei, one that went beyond theological positions, take place also in Judaism? Did Jews and nonJews use the same terminology in their critique of religious enthusiasm? Indeed, Matt Goldish has highlighted a discourse of religious enthusiasm in the case of Sabbateanism,36 but scholarship on the employment of this discourse in a Jewish context remains quite limited. In examining this question, I will restrict myself here to the Habsburg realm during the first quarter of

Galician Haskalah

195

the nineteenth century, while highlighting as well some precedents from late eighteenth-century Germany. In general, it seems that until the last decade of the eighteenth century, the discourse of Schwa¨rmerei was limited to a non-Jewish context, even when Jews employed it. Mendelssohn, one of the participants in the debate over Schwa¨rmerei within the German Enlightenment, wrote an article with the title ‘‘Should One Oppose the Spread of Schwa¨rmerei with Satire or through Engagement?’’37 Mendelssohn aimed his barbs at Shaftesbury, who, in his Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, had proposed fighting against the phenomenon with the weapon of ridicule. According to Shaftesbury: ‘‘Truth, ’tis supposed, may bear all lights; and one of those principal lights, or natural mediums, by which things are to be viewed . . . is ridicule itself, or that manner of proof by which we discern whatever is liable to jaust raillery in any subject.’’38 Mendelssohn rejected this approach and proposed education as the most effective tool to restrain Schwa¨rmerei. Mendelssohn’s article was, however, written in the context of the German Enlightenment, and did not mention Jewish Schwa¨rmerei. The same can be said for Solomon Maimon’s 1793 article on Schwa¨rmerei, in which he defined Schwa¨rmerei as an impulse stemming from the imagination.39 Judaism did enter the German Schwa¨rmerei discourse in the 1770s during the controversy over the exorcism activities conducted by Catholic priest Johann Gassner in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire.40 It was the German Bible scholar Johann Salomo Semler who asserted that the belief in spirits is not essential to Christianity, since it entered Christianity via Jewish society where such beliefs were very common.41

Schwa¨rmerei and Hasidism As best I can tell, the first time that the term Schwa¨rmerei was used in a Jewish context was in Maimon’s autobiography, published in 1792, in the chapter on Hasidism. In an attempt to explain the rise of the Hasidic movement, Maimon writes that following the catastrophe of Sabbatai Tzvi, an ethical system that was based purely on reason could not be absorbed by Jews. So Schwa¨rmerei and superstition rose in opposition to the superstitions and Schwa¨rmerei of the failed messiah. Later, when Maimon enumerates the

196

Manekin

reasons for the spread of Hasidism, he lists the inclination toward Schwa¨rmerei and the miraculous (die Neigung zur Schwa¨rmerei und zum Wunderbaren) among the masses. Such an outlook, he claims, was cultivated by those who propagated Hasidism.42 The view of Hasidism as a Jewish version of Religionsschwa¨rmerei was developed more fully twenty-five years later by the Galician Maskil Joseph Perl, in his German treatise Uiber [sic] das Wesen der Sekte Chassidim (On the nature of the sect of the Hasidim), which failed to receive the permission of the Austrian censor when he presented it to him in 1816.43 Already at the outset of the work Perl writes that the founders of Hasidism, who created the model for subsequent leaders, were ‘‘a mixture of Swedenborg and Casgliostro, that is to say, seers and wonder workers at the same time.’’44 Swedenborg and Cagliostro were two of the symbols of the discourse of Schwa¨rmerei, the first a mystic, the second a charlatan and forger. According to Perl, Schwa¨rmerei is what distinguishes Hasidism from Judaism, both historical and contemporary. True, he contends, the thirdcentury law code, the Mishnah, contains some ‘‘exaggerations’’ but almost no Schwa¨rmerei.45 Even Polish rabbis of recent times, though lacking in scientific education and knowledge of languages, had been and remained completely free of the harmful Schwa¨rmerei; that is, they were not fortune-tellers; they did not see spirits; they did not hold large gatherings; they cultivated not only Jewish law but also morality; they did not isolate themselves from civil life or from obedience to the laws of the land.46 Perl’s effort to differentiate between Judaism and Hasidism was not intended just as part of an internal polemic, since his unpublished work was addressed mainly to the Austrian authorities. His attempt to show that Hasidism was alien to Judaism was designed to prepare the ground for his claim that Hasidism did not deserve to benefit from the government’s policy of religious toleration toward the Jewish religion; on the contrary, it should be suppressed as Schwa¨rmerei. Perl viewed Hasidism as a heresy and a deviation from traditional Judaism; hence he framed his struggle against Hasidism not as part of a modernization project but rather as a struggle to keep the Jewish religion true to what he perceived as its real essence. Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840), the Galician Maskil, was more systematic in his analysis of Schwa¨rmerei. He begins his book Moreh nevukhei hazman (The guide for the perplexed of our time) with a chapter entitled ‘‘The Potions,’’ in which he defines three types of people who are harmful to faith and religion.47 The first, which is of greatest interest to us here, is one who

Galician Haskalah

197

has a tendency to hazayah, meaning hallucination or delirium, which Krochmal glosses as Schwa¨rmerei (ayyr[mr[wwç). The term hazayah is taken from the Samuel Ibn Tibbon translation of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed and, according to Krochmal, is characterized by three stages: The first stage is when an individual forsakes the mundane matters of the senses, minimizes the importance of reason, and spends the whole day dreaming about new means of perception. The second stage is when that individual imagines visions of angels, connects to them, and learns from them the secrets of the future, searching for proofs in Scripture by analyzing not just the words but also letters and marks. Finally, in the third stage, the individual becomes insane, considering himself to be a partner of God, able to influence the laws of nature, and imagining himself as being above the laws of Torah. In the end, his insanity leads him to talk about himself as a superior being and to delude himself that he is almost a God of trickery. Krochmal adds that although the majority of people know little about the phenomenon of Schwa¨rmerei, experts know more.48 This might be an allusion to the many discussions and debates over Schwa¨rmerei in Enlightenment writings. Like his eighteenth-century predecessors, Krochmal also employs medical explanations, claiming that the inclination toward hazayah is particularly dangerous in people who possess too much red bile. After explaining the three types in Chapter 1, Krochmal claims in Chapter 2 that those types are common among all religions and, as experience proves, also among Jews.49 Krochmal does not mention Hasidism as a Jewish form of Religionsschwa¨rmerei, although it is clear from his personal correspondence that his attitude toward Hasidism was hostile. For example, he writes in a private correspondence in 1816 that the ‘‘hasty hearts among the sect of the Hasidim . . . render verdicts on mortal offenses according to new laws, and according to a Shulhan Arukh of their fancy when fanaticism and enthusiasm, and usually, the vapors of strong drink, confuse their brains and darken their intellect.’’50 The importation of the term Schwa¨rmerei into a Jewish philosophical context, after previous Maskilim such as Perl and Maimon had already related the expression to Hasidism, coupled with Krochmal’s deep antipathy toward Hasidism, raises the strong possibility that Krochmal viewed Hasidism as a local, particular, and contemporary type of Jewish Schwa¨rmerei. In his characterization of the stages of the Schwa¨rmer, Krochmal, who evinces in his work a strong familiarity with the writings of the German Enlightenment, continues the German Enlightenment’s discourse from the previous century, specifically the efforts of Enlightenment philosophers to

198

Manekin

define the phenomenon, albeit this time in a Jewish context. Paraphrasing Mendelssohn, whom he calls ‘‘a great wise man,’’ Krochmal finishes the chapter with the answer to the question of what is worse for an individual or the public, atheism or false beliefs. The difference between them, he claims, is like the difference between the disease of cancer and a disease of high fever; one who desires life will flee from both.51 Another fierce critic of Hasidism who drew inspiration from Mendelssohn was the Galician Maskil Isaac Erter (1792–1851), the author famous for his anti-Hasidic satires.52 Telling about his discovery of books that changed his life, Erter writes: ‘‘I befriended the man who showed me all his hidden treasures. There I saw the books of the two Moseses, that appeared as miracles after our prophet Moses, and whose memory will never be forgotten in the seed of Israel,’’53 a reference to Maimonides and Mendelssohn. Erter does not use the term Schwa¨rmerei, but he depicts the authors of Hasidic books as sinners and idolaters. God endowed people with intelligence, he says, and they should use it to think and understand the true essence of things.54 He continuously evokes God’s name, emphasizing the fear of God as the most important treasure.55 He too presents Hasidism as foreign to Judaism, calling his readers not to trust such things as angels: ‘‘It is God whom you should fear, him you should worship, and him you should trust: he is the one who relieved you of all your troubles, he redeemed you of slavery in Egypt, and his arm is still outstretched to throw off the yolk of your rebbes and to redeem you of your stupidity.’’56 He also attacks Kabbalah, describing it as borrowed teachings from foreign nations. If in the old days followers of such ideas were deemed heretics, now, he laments, it is their opponents—the Maskilim who oppose Hasidism, which is based on mystical teachings—who are considered heretics.57 A Galician Maskil who devoted an entire work to attacking beliefs in demons and magic, including Kabbalah, was Judah Leib Mieses (1798– 1831).58 His work Kinat ha-emet (Zeal for the truth) is written in the form of a heavenly conversation between Maimonides and R. Shelomo of Chelm, a commentator on Maimonides who included in the introduction to his work (1751) a criticism of what Mieses interpreted as the new Hasidism.59 Like Erter, Mieses does not use the term Schwa¨rmerei, but he describes Hasidism as propagating beliefs in demons and magic that were imported to Judaism from other nations and are foreign to it.60 In addition to the imagined discussion, Mieses marshals an impressive array of Jewish medieval sources to support his contention.61 Contrary to his description in some Haskalah

Galician Haskalah

199

historiography as a Deist and a radical,62 Mieses was rather an uncompromising rationalist, but he did not reject revelation or the binding nature of the commandments.63 His struggle against Hasidism was based on religious arguments and a rational view of Judaism in the spirit of the religious Enlightenment. To sum up the discussion so far: The discourse of Schwa¨rmerei, which had begun with Luther, reached a climax in Protestant German circles at the end of the eighteenth century as part of the war of the Enlightenment against fanaticism, superstition, belief in magic and demons, and religious ecstasy. The term—and what it represented—became one of the more popular negative epithets used by Galician Maskilim in their struggle with Hasidism during the first half of the nineteenth century.64 This later development was enabled by the fact that by this time Schwa¨rmerei was no longer an epithet for specific religious phenomena, but rather for a certain behavior that could affect any member of any religion. Hasidism was, according to some Galician Maskilim, the embodiment of Jewish Schwa¨rmerei.

The Habsburg Catholic Background of the Galician Haskalah The Galician Maskilim’s use of Schwa¨rmerei was not only based on German Protestant debates but also emerged from the local context, namely the Habsburg Catholic one. In the Habsburg monarchy, starting with emperor Joseph II, religious enthusiasm associated with sects became suppressed; by 1781, books promoting superstitions were already prohibited.65 In 1817, the Viennese court chancellery requested local officials of the Austrian administration to nip in the bud any spirit of fanaticism and Schwa¨rmerei, and to stop the spread of printed material in the form of popular books or devotional prayer books that promote Schwa¨rmerei.66 A special directive from 1785 forbade the publication in Jewish languages of books on exorcism and the like (Teufelsbannereien), which had gained popularity at the time.67 When previous scholars have dealt with the anti-Hasidic satirical works of Galician Maskilim, particularly Joseph Perl’s Megalleh Temirin, they have emphasized German and French influences; yet they have ignored the Habsburg context.68 Unlike the philosophical enlightenment of Germany, France, and Great Britain, the Austrian Enlightenment has been described in recent historiography as ‘‘Reform Catholicism.’’69 The Austrian Enlightenment was more literary in its nature and one of its characteristics was the use of satire

200

Manekin

and parody.70 When Joseph II relaxed the censorship regulations at the beginning of his reign, a wave of publications appeared in Vienna (Broschu¨renflut), including satires and parodies on sects, monks, and the clergy, in the spirit of Shaftesbury.71 Some of those parodies were owned by Joseph Perl, as is apparent from a list of forbidden books in his library that was composed by the Austrian censor after his death. The existence of such books in his library suggests that Perl was well aware of the Austrian literary Enlightenment context. But, just as in early modern Spain, Catholic Austria dealt with Schwa¨rmerei by legal means. This is best demonstrated by the chapter on disturbance of religion in the 1815 imperial Penal Code. Clause 107 of that chapter, which specifies the activities constituting such disturbances, includes the attempt to establish sects.72 In the Austrian legal system of that period, establishing sects was equivalent to spreading Schwa¨rmerei. By defining Hasidism as Schwa¨rmerei, Joseph Perl and other Galician Maskilim wished to apply this prohibition also to Hasidism. Understanding Galician Maskilim of the first half of the nineteenth century73 in a Habsburg Catholic context—rather than that of German Protestantism or the Berlin Haskalah—better explains why the two means preferred by Galician Maskilim in their struggle against Hasidism were ridicule and legal accusations. As a confessional Catholic state, the motivation behind the Austrian policy toward Schwa¨rmerei was religious and aimed at eliminating heresy. This was also the motivation of Maskilim in their struggle against Hasidism. But unlike the mitnagdim, many Galician Maskilim were products of the Galician Josephinian schools or parallel private home schooling. Their knowledge of the German language together with their identity as Austrian subjects and their traditional religious upbringing created the combination that produced a religious, enlightened outlook based on a Josephinian model.74 The discourse of Schwa¨rmerei in their struggle against Hasidism was indeed formulated in a specific Habsburg literary as well as legal context.

The Law and the Struggle Against Hasidim Galician Maskilim encountered the first real opportunity to apply the prohibition against Schwa¨rmerei to Hasidism in 1823, when Austria issued a new law for Galicia regulating private minyanim (prayer quorums).75 The key section of the new law was its fourth clause, which stated that an authorization for maintaining a Miniam [sic] will be granted under the same conditions that would also allow Christian householders to operate private chapels

Galician Haskalah

201

(Privat–Kapellen).76 Those conditions were that (a) the petitioner for a minyan and the participants are known to be law-abiding people and are not suspected of Religionsschwa¨rmerei; and (b) that their age, illness, or distance from the synagogue renders their visiting it impossible. In his study of Hasidism, Raphael Mahler cites this law, but he does not place it in its proper context. The reader of Mahler’s work is given the impression that the law was promulgated only for Jews, namely the Hasidim, in order to stop the spread of Hasidism. This is because Mahler ignores the fact that the private minyan law was in fact created as a counterpart to a previous law, one that regulated the establishment of Christian private chapels.77 As is well known, the private minyanim were essential institutions of Hasidism at this stage of its development. Without them, the movement was, as one scholar puts it, ‘‘a dead letter.’’78 Mahler assumes, and perhaps because of its use by Maskilim, that the word Religionsschwa¨rmerei was just another way of saying ‘‘Hasidism.’’ But was that the intention of the Austrian legislator? We recall that the meaning of Schwa¨rmerei was much debated. In such a context, were the private minyanim laws directed specifically against the Hasidim, we would expect them to be explicitly mentioned therein. Because the legal restrictions concerning Religionsschwa¨rmerei were common to Christian and Jewish private prayer, examining the use of the term in a Christian context might help us better understand its specific legal meaning. Such an example can be found in a court case in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg, part of which borders southern Germany, home to many popular mystical religious sects. In 1824, a Catholic priest in one of the local congregations provided information to the district authorities about Religionschwa¨rmerei in his community. It turned out that a Catholic woman, Suzanna Schmidt, and her brother-in-law had disseminated beliefs that were labeled Schwa¨rmerei by the priest. The two were leaders of a group that congregated in private homes in which they studied the Bible in German translation and criticized some Catholic doctrines. As a result of this information, Schmidt was tried in the local court and imprisoned in accordance with the aforementioned clause 107 of the general penal code. She later died in prison. Schmidt was not alone. In subsequent years, accusations of Religionsschwa¨rmerei were reported in various Catholic communities in Vorarlberg. Suspicious activities ranged from reading Scripture in the vernacular to performing exorcisms. Clause 107 of the criminal code was invoked in each of these cases.79 Clause 107 is one of three clauses in the section on Religionssto¨rung, or disturbance of religion, an act that was considered criminal. The clause

202

Manekin

enumerates several types of disturbances, some specific to the Christian religion: blaspheming God in words, writings, or action; showing disdain toward religion in public or disturbing existing public religious rituals; seducing a Christian to leave his religion; spreading unbelief or wrong Christian beliefs; and attempting to establish sects (sectarianism).80 As we shall see also from the Jewish context, sectarianism was the legal translation of Religionsschwa¨rmerei.81 The next clause states that the punishment for one who creates a public disruption or danger through disturbance of religion is severe imprisonment for one to five years and in serious cases up to ten years. If a public disruption does not occur, then the punishment is imprisonment of six months to one year. This was not a procedure carried out by a religious institution like the Inquisition but a civil procedure, in a state where religion was perceived as an important agent for promoting discipline and morality. This concept goes back to the specific outlook of Joseph II, who shut down contemplative monasteries, reduced the number of religious holidays, processions and pilgrimages, and defined marriage as a civil contract, while making the clergy responsible for performing the marriages in a religious ceremony according to the civil law.82 This Josephinian legacy in the sphere of church-state relations remained in effect until the mid-nineteenth century. Thus what had begun as a mainly Protestant discourse of Schwa¨rmerei in late eighteenth-century German intellectual context became incorporated by a neighboring Catholic state into the legal system. It was not employed here by philosophers or theologians but by the state. Once detected by religious authorities, it was treated as a criminal offence. The discourse of Schwa¨rmerei was shifted from the religious, cultural, and social spheres to the political sphere, from the church and the philosophers to the civil authorities, showing a much more complicated reality than Weber’s notion of the disenchantment of the world would allow. It was a process imposed from above rather than being shaped from below. It is interesting to note that the debate in the 1770s among the German enlighteners around the activities of the exorcist Johann Gassner (born in Vorarlberg) was put to an end by Joseph II. As the head of the Holy Roman Empire, Joseph II ordered the Bishop of Regensburg, where Gassner resided at the time, to banish him from there and to stop ‘‘all of his exorcistic treatments that have excited such a sensation.’’83 The emperor was not in a position to condemn Gassner theologically, but he could stop what he considered to be a disturbance of public peace in his monarchy.

Galician Haskalah

203

With this context in mind we can now return to the 1823 minyan law and the condition that the petitioner should not be suspected of Religionsschwa¨rmerei. As a result of the new law, the Maskilim, who previously had drawn the connection between Hasidism and Religionsschwa¨rmerei, now adapted to the new political discourse of Religionsschwa¨rmerei. Two months after the publication of the law, in October 1823, Judah Leib Mieses petitioned the authorities to declare that Hasidism belonged to the category of Religionsschwa¨rmerei and hence that its followers should be prohibited from holding private minyanim according to the new law. Mieses requested that the authorities clarify to the Jewish community councils and to the district rabbis that the supporters of this sect were Religionsschwa¨rmer, and that none of them should receive a permit from the district administration to hold a minyan. He also requested that those who received a permit before the publication of the law be instructed that they were not allowed to pray according to the Hasidic rite in their assemblies. Other Maskilim made similar appeals.84 Mieses’s request was subsequently denied. The central Austrian administration in Galicia cited a comment of the police bureau in Lemberg that the Hasidim did not constitute a separate religious sect but simply placed greater effort in repeating harmless liturgical formulas, observed the commandments more strictly, and performed benevolent actions more scrupulously than other Jews. It also referred to another report of the Lemberg police chief claiming that the Hasidim were not a sect of Schwa¨rmerei, and indeed were less harmful to civil society than the general Jewish populace, since they were more pious in their religion.85 The government response also emphasized that the district administrations should continue to consider and approve requests to hold private minyanim in the future, provided that the conditions enumerated in the law were fulfilled. The central authorities stated flatly that the government had no interest in investigating whether a Jew belonged to that or another sect and would not permit such an investigation, which would likely prove unsuccessful in any event. The crucial determinant would be the petitioner’s personal qualities.86 This position was repeated in 1824 in a specific law on the treatment of Hasidim.87 In short, the Austrian authorities in Galicia refused to consider Hasidism as a separate sect and in general had no interest in the question of sects in Judaism, and thus the mere fact that someone was a Hasid did not prevent

204

Manekin

him from receiving a permit to conduct a private minyan. The test of the Schwa¨rmerei would not include, in the Jewish case, sectarianism. Since the authorities already accepted that the religious views of Hasidim were not contrary to Judaism, the use of clause 107 in their case was doomed to fail. The attempt of Maskilim, therefore, to define Hasidism legally as Religionsschwa¨rmerei, and by that method to stop its spread, was rejected from the start by the Austrian authorities. To satisfy the condition of the 1823 Minyan Law, a Hasid, like every other Jew, had simply to provide a document from the district rabbi or the community council stating that he was not suspected of Religionsschwa¨rmerei. Consistent with the state’s policy of religious toleration, the authorities considered the question of sectarianism in Judaism a matter for the Jewish community alone to decide. Since the rabbis, in response to the Austrian government, declared that Hasidism was not a sect, the authorities accepted that. Almost fifteen years later, in 1838, Leopold Johann Nepomuk von Sacher, the police chief in Lemberg, wondered whether it was wise to extend the policy of toleration toward Hasidism, which meant that the government did not interfere in their religious customs. ‘‘Every fanatische Schwa¨rmer,’’ wrote Sacher, ‘‘excuses himself by claiming that he relies on religious customs. If the government will not exert any influence on those customs then Schwa¨rmerei, left unhindered, will get the upper-hand.’’88 For Sacher, Hasidism was Schwa¨rmerei and the Hasidic leaders were sectarians, and that is why he called upon the authorities to revoke the policy of toleration toward Hasidism and treat the group just like other Schwa¨rmer. Sacher was not successful in his request, and the Austrian authorities in Galicia responded that although they were not unfamiliar with the religious customs of Hasidim, the government did not interfere with the question of sects within Judaism and was interested only in making sure that Jews did not commit civil crimes when practicing their religion. Almost from the outset, then, the Austrian policy of religious tolerance enabled the Hasidic movement to grow within Galicia, much to the chagrin of the Galician Maskilim. But such a policy did little to dispel the confusion on the local level created by the use of the term Schwa¨rmerei in the law, as the following example demonstrates. In May 1824 the district administration in Jaslo reported that as a result of the law, inspectors from the local authorities and the police had watched closely ‘‘the Schwa¨rmer Hasidim,’’ and had even attempted to understand for themselves the meaning of this sect. The district administrator noted that from reading works about Jews and Judaism,

Galician Haskalah

205

and from secret conversations with Maskilim and with Jews unconnected with the sect, he had gathered data that proved its danger conclusively. For example, the sect considered all Christians and Jews, aside from its own supporters, to be idolaters who must be destroyed. They asked of God and of their saints, whom they called maggidim (preachers), to carry this out. The adherents blindly obeyed the maggidim and gave them monetary gifts. When a maggid would come to town, writes the district administrator, all would run to him, great and small, the elderly with canes and mothers with their babies in their arms. Pregnant women surrounded him, kissed his garb, and prayed for the success of everything that the ‘‘Schwa¨rmer emits from his mouth in a prophetic manner.’’ When the maggid, clothed in white garb, entered the town, and when he exited, there was a resounding cry from the audience, which was immediately silenced with a blink of his eye. The district administrator added that the Hasidim lived in the dark middle ages; the entire sect was enlisted to carry out the sentences of secret courts, such as lashes, poisonings, and judgments of blood. He explained that this information was provided to him in exchange for the guarantee of secrecy by Jews . from Dukla and Zmigro´d who were not members of the sect.89 As a result of all this, the Jaslo district administrator concluded that (a) Hasidism was a sect; (b) its supporters collected large sums of money; and (c) it acted against the aims of the state’s authorities. Hence, as soon as he . heard rumors that in the synagogues in Dukla and Zmigro´d the activities of the Hasidim were being conducted, he felt that he had to confirm these rumors with the help of the district police officers. One of them visited both places on Shabbat, recorded the names of the Hasidim who were present in the place, and brought their books to Jaslo. The police officer was careful not to display his bayonet or rifle, and did his utmost not to expose the Hasidim to the ridicule of the crowd. The Torah scrolls and the books were wrapped carefully in the presence of the Hasidim who were not detained except while the police were in the synagogues. The entrance of police and the confiscation of books were done, according to the district administration, in accordance with the law and without harm to religion. At the end of the deliberations in the local administration, the books were returned, after they had been inspected by the government censor, and it was determined that there was nothing objectionable therein. The district administrator also reported that the unofficial spokesman for the Hasidim, Naphtali Horowitz, the rabbi from Rophshitz in the district of Tarno´w, protested against this official police action. However, since the

206

Manekin

. Hasidim in Dukla and Zmigro´d did not make any complaint, this was reason enough to reject Horowitz’s ‘‘schwa¨rmerische petition.’’ Horowitz had no authority to present himself as the spokesman of the Hasidim. Moreover, since he generally called all members of the sect ‘‘Hasidim’’ and others ‘‘Jews,’’ and since the term ‘‘Hasid’’ was not mentioned in the Josephinian Edict of Toleration for Galician Jewry (1789), Horowitz was not eligible for its protection. According to clause 107 in the first part of the Austrian criminal code, any sort of sectarianism is a crime, which justifies the action that was taken. The district administrator concluded his report by presenting the protocol of the police magistrate, and, even as no objectionable materials had been found in the inspected synagogue, he expressed his assurance that the authorities would recognize that the Hasidim were known as Religionsschwa¨rmer. Can such Schwa¨rmer, he asked, who drink brandy and other liquor during prayers, oppose every enlightenment because of their superstitions, persecute other Jews with no cause, corrupt the youth, and empty people’s pockets, be worthy of the law’s protection?90 Yet Naphtali of Rophshitz’s complaint about the conduct of the police and request for assistance and protection from such insulting actions, as well as protection from future similar acts, found a far more sympathetic ear with the Austrian authorities in Galicia. The sole question that interested the authorities was this: Were the Hasidim violating the civil law? Satisfied that they apparently were not, the Austrian authorities criticized the local Jaslo district administration’s action and clarified that it was contrary to the letter and the spirit of the law. For soldiers to have entered synagogues, taken books, and sequestered the worshipers, without first having investigated whether there was a criminal offence, was a rash and unwise act, for which criticism was the only response. For those who saw the Hasidim as Schwa¨rmer and sought legal action, then, clause 107 repeatedly proved useless.

Conclusion The Habsburg context provided a political framework, and hence a political discourse, for the reaction to Hasidism, which was perceived and articulated by Maskilim as the Jewish version of Schwa¨rmerei. But what the Galician Maskilim did not consider was that the political discourse enabled Hasidim to participate in a discussion from which they were formerly excluded. They could protest and claim their rights when they felt that they were treated

Galician Haskalah

207

unfairly. In the Galician case, both Maskilim and Hasidim participated in the new civil sphere created by the Austrian legal system, but this had nothing to do with secularization. The struggle of the Galician Maskilim was about reshaping religion, and thus similar to the conflicts that motivated those who adhered to the Catholic Enlightenment. The Maskilic reaction to religious enthusiasm not only did not lead to secularization, but the Jewish world surrounding the Maskilim seemed to them, to their dismay, more and more ‘‘enchanted.’’ I have tried to show that the latest shift in the discourse of Schwa¨rmerei, from the cultural and intellectual to the political, was the context in which this process took place. Religion, once again, adapted and remodeled itself in order to compete and survive, and not be left behind. Maskilim were well aware of that and blamed the rabbis for being derelict in their duty. But being religiously observant, Galician Maskilim believed their struggle to be a religious one. As late as 1842, they continued to cling to the old Schwa¨rmerei discourse, finding it difficult to accept that the Austrian authorities refused to consider Hasidim as Schwa¨rmer in the legal sense, as . the following quote from Michael Goldberg, a Maskil from Zolkiew, in a letter to the Austrian authorities, shows: Regarding the sect of the notorious Schwa¨rmer: their kloizlach, with their cynicism and bachannalias, should be strictly forbidden, and no Hasidic minyan should be permitted. It should not be permitted to change from the Ashkenazic rite to the mystical rites of the Schwa¨rmer in the synagogues, or to disturb the accepted rite. After they finish praying in their conventicles, these Schwa¨rmer dance in the synagogues and seek to disturb established custom with their gesticulations.91 But the term Schwa¨rmerei in this case had already lost its threatening ring, and his recommendation, once again, fell on deaf ears.

chapter 10

Secularism and Neo-Orthodoxy: Conflicting Strategies in Modern Orthodox Fiction eva lezzi

During the second half of the nineteenth century a new literary genre emerged in Germany, a paradoxical genre that could be called neo-Orthodox or modern Orthodox fiction. Published in a serialized form in Orthodox weekly journals, such as Jeschurun and Der Israelit, these novels and novellas were meant to communicate religiously traditional and observant life to their readers. Their authors and publishers strove to attract a younger audience, both male and female. Despite their common purpose to foster Orthodoxy, these works differed greatly in a number of ways from traditional religious genres offering moral and halakhic guidance, such as rabbinic responsa, the siddur, and musar literature.1 Among the most prominent differences were the use of the German language as a means of instruction, a narrative format that included many intertextual references to canonical ‘‘secular’’ European literature by Jewish and non-Jewish authors alike (e.g., Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Heinrich Heine, and George Eliot), and the works’ publication in periodicals geared toward the entire family.2 Tensions between religious content and secular form are typical for neo-Orthodox literature of the nineteenth century. Written in the era of emancipation during which nonobservance was increasing, such literature sought to preserve, or promote a return to, observant Judaism. In neoOrthodox literature, especially in novels and novellas set in the present, the

Neo-Orthodoxy

209

use of thrill-producing possibilities of serialized fiction such as cliff-hangers and sentimental melodrama evoke the conflict with the demands of modernity and an increasingly secular world.3 Yet these tensions seem to be only constructed in view of the final resolution when the novels’ protagonists get their well-deserved punishment or return to law-abiding Judaism and live happily after. Such resolutions allow the novels’ authors to highlight the benefits of an Orthodox way of life. In the following, I discuss the ambivalent strategies used by neoOrthodox authors in their struggles with both an increasingly secular environment and their Reform Jewish competitors. I aim to answer the following question: Which secular aspects did neo-Orthodox authors use and thus confirm, despite their decided rejection of secularism and excessive religious reform? To rephrase the question: To what extent is neo-Orthodoxy not just a return to untainted origins, but partly a rewriting or—in the sense of Homi K. Bhabha and others—an ‘‘invention of tradition,’’ through which a minority seeks to secure its identity?4 The example of neo-Orthodoxy is, indeed, complex to the extent that its conflicts with other groups do not map on to the simple dichotomy of (Jewish) minority and (non-Jewish) majority. Nineteenth-century neo-Orthodoxy rather points to differing forms of boundary making and assertions of identity, both outward vis-a`-vis the Christian majority and inward vis-a`-vis Reform Judaism, on the one hand, and ‘‘old-Orthodox’’ Judaism, on the other. In addition, the multilayered and ultimately irresolvable relationship between (invented) tradition and (asserted) modernity is reflected in the terms ‘‘neo-Orthodoxy’’ and ‘‘modern Orthodoxy.’’ These terms suggest that the new forms of Orthodoxy arising in the nineteenth century should be viewed as ideologically separate from the old form of Orthodoxy and its perceived association with the preemancipatory situation in the ghetto. The scholarly literature employs both terms to refer to the religious movement of the nineteenth century to be discussed here.5 However, according to its self-conception and despite its affirmation of emancipation and secular education, neo-Orthodoxy saw itself as Orthodox, as unaltered in its abidance to the Torah and to Jewish law.6 More traditionalist brands of Orthodoxy, often referred to as ‘‘oldOrthodoxy,’’ with their rejection of secular education, continually lost much of their influence in German Judaism during the second half of the nineteenth century. Their marginalization occurred among other things because of the state’s demands to employ only university-educated rabbis, which was difficult to accept for advocates of ‘‘old-Orthodoxy.’’7

210

Lezzi

Marcus Lehmann’s (1831–90) fictional literature is central to my analysis. As a university-educated rabbi and author, Lehmann both embodied in personam the aforementioned antagonisms, and explicitly addressed them on a wide range of textual levels. His 1870 novella, Sa¨en und Ernten (To sow and to reap), is especially important in this regard. Before I turn to a detailed reading of this Zeitroman, however, I first address the context of neoOrthodox fictional literature in terms of social and cultural history, the various interpretations of it in contemporary academic discourse, and its relation to secularization theories.8

Modern Orthodox Literature and Secularism: Possible Approaches Apart from sporadic publications such as a chapter on art and literature in Mordechai Breuer’s book Modernity Within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany (1992),9 or marginal concerns with Orthodox trends in the so-called ghetto literature,10 German-language neoOrthodox fictional literature has received little attention in academia.11 Until today in histories of German-Jewish literature, the canon continues to be almost completely focused on Reform-oriented and secular authors.12 Only recently has German-language neo-Orthodox fictional literature been rediscovered, most prominently by Jonathan M. Hess in his poetological and historical analysis of numerous works by authors including Marcus Lehmann and Sara Hirsch Guggenheim (1834–1909).13 A focus on neo-Orthodox fictional literature as I propose it here, and along Hess’s lines, allows for a long overdue expansion and pluralization of the European Jewish literary canon.14 The concern with neo-Orthodox literature also adds a poetological perspective to the growing field of ‘‘Orthodoxy studies.’’ This field has been shaped especially since the late twentieth century by publications addressing transnational issues, such as David Ellenson’s Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah, and the Boundaries of Modern Jewish Identity (1989) or Jack Wertheimer’s anthology The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (1992).15 Adam Ferziger’s Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (2005), which analyzes in its second part the specific emergence of an Orthodox self-consciousness in German Jewry of the late nineteenth century, offers a sociological approach to these larger transnational questions. Ferziger, like other scholars, sees ‘‘the emergence of Orthodoxy as a modern phenomenon,’’ not as an unmodified

Neo-Orthodoxy

211

continuation and fulfillment of tradition, but rather as the result of negotiations, compromise, and adjustments to new circumstances.16 The situation in nineteenth-century Germany was indeed new. For the first time, halakhically observant Jews represented a minority within the Jewish communities. Because of this, according to Ferziger, new means and ways had to be found to protect and support halakhic orthopraxy. These included the redrawing of external and internal boundaries and the formulation of positive identity models. Another challenge was the fact that the Christian majority society was increasingly open to Jews but that such openness also encouraged, and sometimes enforced, a loosening of halakhic observance. To what extent was the emphatic return to religion and religious praxis not merely a reaction to modernity in general, but rather an explicit and dialectical conflict with secularization in society? To answer this, it is important to address the terms ‘‘secularization’’ and ‘‘secular,’’ especially because neo-Orthodox authors did not use them, thus making any historical discourse analysis of the terms in this particular literary context impossible. That these terms were not used in neo-Orthodox fiction and non-fiction is partly due to the fact that the term secularization began to experience a diversification of meaning only around the mid-nineteenth century, developing from a legal term into a broadly used ‘‘key concept of our epoch.’’17 A rabbi like Samson Raphael Hirsch, who in his influential religious-philosophical and cultural-pedagogical concept Torah im Derech Eretz seeks out a ‘‘harmonious unity’’ for the Torah and the mores of the majority society,18 also consciously avoided polar comparisons between the religious and the secular. Instead, Hirsch repeatedly stressed that the Torah itself is filled with, and inspired from, knowledge pertaining to the natural sciences and that it raises moral and juridical questions not merely in the religious realm. In this sense, the backward projection of such terms into neo-Orthodox literature of the nineteenth century can be problematic.19 More importantly, discourses on secularization are ideologically charged, unavoidably invoking binaries that, according to Talal Asad, Janet R. Jakobsen, and Ann Pellegrini, ground Western claims to modernity, legitimacy, and hegemony.20 In awareness of the ambivalence of the term, my use of the concept of secularization with regard to Orthodox fictional literature serves three concrete purposes. First, it provides the opportunity to reflect more deeply upon the historical and sociological context out of which this literature emerged. Second, it suggests that neo-Orthodox fictional literature navigates the tension between the religious and the secular both structurally through its use of particular genres

212

Lezzi

and thematically. The texts never project a simple religious-secular binary; instead, they evoke a number of differing groups and protagonists reflecting a spectrum of positions within the religious-secular dichotomy: Orthodox Jews, non-observant Jews, followers of the Reform movement, Christians, representatives of secular institutions, and so on. Third, interrogating secularization within Orthodox literature exposes the changing significance of public and private space for Jews in nineteenth-century Germany, and the way that Orthodox communities sought to negotiate gender roles in particular, both within and across the public-private spatial divide. In neo-Orthodox fiction, the boundaries between these groups and spaces appear to be fluid and marked by gradations, mixtures, and reciprocities, which allows new possibilities for Orthodox self-constitution to arise again and again. It is precisely the category of the secular that illustrates best the inconsistency and fascinating complexity of neo-Orthodox self-understanding, despite the fact that it is not explicitly named in these works of fiction. In order to understand these historical processes in Prussia during the latter half of the nineteenth century, it is useful to return to one of the classic descriptions of secularization, Peter L. Berger’s Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967). Berger defines the historical-empirical understanding of the term secularization as follows: ‘‘By secularization we mean the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.’’21 This process of disestablishment encouraged the pluralization of choices in regard to religion and religiosity, in part because the state was no longer charged with acting solely on behalf of one dominant religious group. Berger describes the new position of the state as taking on ‘‘a role vis-a`-vis the competing religious groups . . . [as an] impartial guardian of order between independent and uncoerced competitors.’’22 Precisely this simultaneous process of disestablishment and pluralization affected nineteenth-century German Jewry, creating among other things new Orthodoxies. In their collection of essays entitled Secularisms, Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue that the category of secularization should be framed in terms of local variations. Such a focus can help break down simple binaries between the secular and the religious in favor of historical, regional, and cultural particularities. Nineteenth-century German Orthodoxy is a case in point for the importance of the local. In its situational particularity, neo-Orthodoxy provides an interesting scenario of return to religious thinking and practice. In

Neo-Orthodoxy

213

nineteenth-century Prussia and subsequently in the German Empire (1871– 1918), the separation of (Christian) churches and state occurred as the result of debates and reforms that lasted decades, coinciding with the process of (belated) nation building. The situation of the Jewish minority was ambivalent throughout. On the one hand, the separation of church and state was accompanied by increasing levels of emancipation and a commitment on the part of the state to protect the Jews from antisemitic excesses and religious conflicts. On the other hand, separation meant that internal community matters came under tighter state control, regimentation, and bureaucratization. My main concern in this context is the formation of what I would term local pluralism,23 the local struggle for resources amongst the various secular, national, and religious ambitions. In the case of neo-Orthodoxy, which constituted itself under this mixed set of circumstances, the legal conflicts pertaining to the so-called Austrittsgemeinden (separatist communities) are of particular importance.24 They served as a vehicle for the intense struggle with the followers of the Reform movement about forms of religious practice, membership in the community, and—not in the least—financial resources. The fiercely disputed Austrittsgesetz (law of secession), endorsed by Bismarck in 1876, allowed for Jews to officially withdraw from the local Jewish community while remaining registered as a Jew. This was a novelty, at least in Prussia. The law, however, was not ideologically prepared and initiated by freethinkers or other enemies of organized religion, but rather by Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Jewish politician Eduard Lasker (1829–84). Hirsch championed the law because it created the legal prerequisites for the establishment of separate Orthodox communities.25 Even before the implementation of the Austrittsgesetz, Hirsch was able to found an Orthodox religious association, the Frankfurt Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft, in 1850. Although it remained part of the Reformoriented unified and state-authorized community, it was granted by the state the right to name its own rabbi.26 Already in this early stage, during the restoration phase after the revolution of 1848, Orthodoxy and state institutions formed an alliance that was no longer primarily perceived by Orthodoxy as an encroachment on their religious autonomy but rather as a guarantee of the independence of different strands within Judaism. On the part of Orthodoxy, this led to the rise of a newly articulated, far-reaching, but not unconditional loyalty to the state and its secular laws. This loyalty is also illustrated in its fictional literature.

214

Lezzi

Secularism as Threat and Opportunity in Marcus Lehmann’s Sa¨en und Ernten Marcus Lehmann and Sara Hirsch Guggenheim can be considered the most important representatives of nineteenth-century neo-Orthodox fiction. Guggenheim was the first to experiment with the genre in the 1860s. Under the pseudonyms ‘‘S . . .’’ and later ‘‘Friedrich Rott,’’ she published fictional narratives in Jeschurun: Ein Monatsblatt zur Fo¨rderung ju¨dischen Geistes und ju¨dischen Lebens, in Haus, Gemeinde und Schule, a monthly periodical founded and edited by her father, Samson Raphael Hirsch. She continued to publish in the paper after its fusion in 1889 with Der Israelit: Ein Centralorgan fu¨r das orthodoxe Judentum. This latter weekly was founded in 1860 by Marcus Lehmann—who served as its editor for thirty years until his death—as a counterbalance to the Reform-oriented Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums. As a rabbi ordained by the Prague yeshiva, as a philosopher and philologist who had received his doctorate from the University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1854, and as an author of fiction, Lehmann was one of the most influential cultural figures within German Orthodox Judaism of the nineteenth century.27 His publications—dozens of contemporary and historical novels, short stories, biographies, and works of religious theory—have been translated into Yiddish and Hebrew, some of them during his lifetime. Most of his works of fiction were first published in Der Israelit, later as a series entitled Aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart and posthumously in Lehmanns ju¨discher Volksbu¨cherei. They continue to be published and read today by an Orthodox readership, not only in the German original but also in English and Hebrew translations.28 Beginning in 1854, Lehmann served as the rabbi of an Orthodox congregation in Mainz. This small community of approximately 150 Jews (out of approximately 2,600 Jews in the city overall) could not be formally established until 1876, after the aforementioned Austrittsgesetz came into effect. Lehmann’s and Guggenheim’s contemporary novels and short stories are situated in the familial milieu, highlighting conflicts pertaining to love and marriage. Their descriptions of domestic life reflect the times in which they were written and are insightful from both a literary-historical and a sociological perspective.29 Guggenheim offers, for example in Aus der Gegenwart and Die Proselyten, literary adaptations of Lessing’s bourgeois tragedies; she transposes their constellations into a Jewish milieu and a Christian-Jewish set of conflicts.30 Whereas Guggenheim, apart from this intertextual localization,

Neo-Orthodoxy

215

confines her works more or less to psychological portraits of familial conflicts, Lehmann more explicitly places his comparative intergenerational struggles in the contemporary historical and political context. For example, one finds in his ‘‘Elvire’’ strong references to the effects of the revolution of 1848 and to debates regarding changes to state marriage law. In his Sa¨en und Ernten, religious and legal disputes pertaining to the establishment of separatist communities are given substantial weight. It is precisely these explicit references to the societal struggles regarding secularization that make Lehmann’s narratives so significant to today’s scholarly debates on secularism. In Modernity Within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany, Mordechai Breuer refers to Lehmann as ‘‘Orthodoxy’s propagandist.’’31 This assessment also seems appropriate with regard to his fictional works. Lehmann’s novels contain numerous theological excursuses and are mostly moral and didactic parables, in which Orthodoxy always emerges as a positive power and ultimate winner in all social conflicts. The stories’ narrative patterns can be interpreted as literarily enacted divine justice—the observant are rewarded with love, familial harmony, and commercial success, whereas bad Christians or those Jews who have turned away from the Halakhah are punished with disease, poverty, exile, prison, or death. Lehmann himself speaks of the literature of acculturation, but only pejoratively as ‘‘modern Jewish tendentious poetry,’’ which, in his eyes, fails not only for ideological but also for aesthetic reasons.32 In contrast to Breuer, however, my argument is that even highly partisan literature constitutes a polyvalent system that harbors many ambiguities and ambivalent moments; these in turn and in opposition to the tendency purposefully put in place by the literature itself allow for new readings. In the following, I present a close reading of Lehmann’s Sa¨en und Ernten, which he published in serial form in the journal Der Israelit in 1870.33 Of particular interest to me are how the tension between modernization and observance is addressed in, and by, Lehmann’s work and how modernization is linked to secularization. My analysis centers on two issues: the role of the family as a location for the religious shaping of identity and the formation of gender; and the relationships between the family, secular state institutions, and the Jewish community, in particular with regard to rabbinic authority. Sa¨en und Ernten is made up of multiple interwoven narrative strands, whose dominant theme is the conflict between Reform and Orthodox Judaism. The novella develops this theme on various levels: in the family and with regard to the politics both within the religious community and between

216

Lezzi

the religious authorities and the state. A harmonious and contented Orthodox Jewish family life emerges as the counterpoint to these conflicts, thus providing for resolution and offering the key to a happy ending. The plot can be summarized as follows: A Jewish banker named Wolfsohn is obsessed with societal ambition and acculturation. In order to increase his family’s chances of advancement, he aims to baptize his children, both of whom, however, are deeply committed to Judaism. He also strives to have his daughter marry a count and wants his son to become a soldier personally sponsored by the king. With the help of their equally observant mother, both children succeed in foiling their father’s plans. Especially Wolfsohn’s son would rather die for kiddush hashem (the sanctification of God’s name) than be baptized, and, even as a minor, he is prepared to leave his family and the country to escape this fate. Wolfsohn himself serves the state as a stockbroker, a position where success requires manipulating the press. On account of this, he is granted noble status. As ‘‘Herr von Wolfseck,’’ he divorces his wife and, after baptism, marries Aurora Hohenlinden, a young, seductive, and impoverished countess. However, she only marries him because of his wealth. Her scheming goes so far that von Wolfseck is prepared to disinherit his children and write over his entire estate to her. Not unexpectedly, his now wealthy wife takes on lovers. Herr von Wolfseck even shoots one of his rivals in self-defense. Aurora escapes to America with another lover and all of Wolfseck’s wealth, upon which he returns to his family, poor and remorseful. They welcome him back with open arms. In the end, Wolfseck decides to return not only to his family, but also to life as a law-abiding Jew. Reentry into the Jewish community no longer requires ‘‘unbearable acts of repentance,’’34 as in the days of Uriel da Costa (who was physically punished and publicly humiliated by the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam), but instead relies internally on remorse and externally on simple administrative acts. This reliance makes Wolfseck’s return all the easier.35 In a conversation with his neighbor Naphtalie Ruhdorf, a true friend of the family and previously one of Wolfsohn’s Orthodox adversaries, Ruhdorf explains to Wolfseck how the process of returning to Judaism occurs. In the dialogue, he also discusses the value of Orthodox Judaism as the only true form of the faith: ‘‘I wanted to ask you a question,’’ Wolfseck then said. ‘‘You know what I have done. Is it possible to return?’’

Neo-Orthodoxy

217

‘‘Certainly,’’ Ruhdorf countered. ‘‘You simply need to prove to the relevant officials your withdrawal from the state church and your re-entry into Judaism.’’ ‘‘That I know. But Judaism—will it take me back without any prior unbearable acts of penitence?’’ ‘‘My dear Herr von Wolfseck, remorse and the resolution to serve God from now on—that is the best penitence.’’ ‘‘Will it be necessary to observe all of the ceremonies that have been foreign to me since my early childhood?’’ ‘‘If you hope to return sincerely and entirely to God, then, yes, that will be necessary.’’ ‘‘And, for what reason?’’ ‘‘Judaism is primarily a religion of deeds—above all, it is law. The pernicious error of past decades was the belief that one could hold onto the teachings of Judaism but let go of the law.’’36 The expectation that Wolfseck would observe all of the rituals that had alienated him since his childhood suggests that his return to Judaism should not simply be a rejection of his conversion to Christianity, but rather a homecoming to a long-discarded, law-abiding Judaism. The passage as well as the whole novel thus contains a sharp critique of liberal Judaism. Wolfseck is a real ba’al teshuva, a person who returns to observant Judaism, and, as such, a typical figure of modern Orthodox literature. Both Lehmann and Guggenheim often describe protagonists who opt for teshuva (literally, ‘‘return,’’ here to a law-abiding Judaism). But this also means that they are in need of teshuva. They have already experienced alienation from Judaism, or they are experiencing it before the eyes of the reader: as erotically seduced protagonists (as portrayed in many of Guggenheim’s works), as products of a false or negligent upbringing within the context of a family devoid of religiously observant role models, as secularly educated individuals who have only experienced the schools and universities of the Christian majority society, as overly ambitious adherents to acculturation, or as Jews who have gone astray under the damaging influence of the Reformers. How does the ‘‘battle of confessions,’’ which Lehmann evokes in his stories, relate to the discussion about the relationship between secularization, modernization, and Orthodoxy? The novella cautions that relaxation of observance does not lead to a preservation of faith under modern conditions, as Reformers would suggest, but rather to the unavoidable dissolution of

218

Lezzi

Judaism. Lehmann depicts conversion to Christianity not simply as a change in religious affiliation but as a calculated device for achieving secular goals such as wealth and advancement within the social hierarchy. Thus, there is a gradual but not an essential difference between giving up observance of Jewish law and crossing over the boundary to Christianity through conversion. Despite this clear rejection of Reform and conversion in neo-Orthodox literature, as ba’alei teshuva, the protagonists still remain inevitably influenced by the modern tendency to abandon the strict observance of Jewish law. It is this secondary influence from which they must free themselves. As previously discussed, such attitudes vis-a`-vis secularism are not as simple as they appear at first glance. In Lehmann’s novella, both parties—the Reform as well as the neo-Orthodox—attempt to assert their own religiouspolitical interests by using the state’s religious regulations. Much like their opponents, the Orthodox men who seek to take or retain control of communal bodies are forced to enter into dialogue with state authorities. In the process, religious leadership in the communities becomes no longer established primarily through tradition, high levels of Jewish learnedness, and the charisma of the rabbi. Nor is it determined through democratic elections. Instead, the novella suggests that leadership is attained through the ability to effectively negotiate with secular institutions. Accordingly, Lehmann describes two different forms of secularism. In a negative sense, he depicts secularism as the severe erosion or complete disappearance of religious practice and thus moral waywardness. In a positive sense, though, he also sees secular institutions of the Christian majority society as a necessary and sometimes even welcome interlocutor and guardian. Sa¨en und Ernten personifies the secular institutions of the state in the king and his ministers. Even though, at least at the outset, Wolfsohn appears skilled at manipulating these institutions to serve his own purposes, his wife too is granted a personal audience with the king and manages to have her daughter’s marriage to the count stopped. The dual function of the king as a representative of secularism and as mediator in religious conflicts becomes especially clear in the context of processes of separation with regard to neoOrthodox and Reform Judaism. In the political conflicts within the community, Wolfsohn’s adversaries are a wise old Orthodox rabbi on his deathbed and his pious followers. One of them, the above-mentioned Naphtali Ruhdorf, seeks assurance that the community will continue to be led after the rabbi’s death as it has been until then. While the elections in the community actually favor the Orthodox side, in the end the king follows Wolfsohn’s

Neo-Orthodoxy

219

arguments, which are clearly tinged with antisemitic tropes. Instead of granting the winners the required legal recognition of the elections, the king nominates a ‘‘neolog’’ rabbi for the leadership position: ‘‘A neolog rabbi was appointed who began his tenure with the reform of services. When thereupon the Orthodox members of the community instituted separate services, they were closed by the police as the result of their denunciation on the part of the directorship.’’37 Due to the problematic development of the community under the Reform rabbi who is left to his own devices, the neo-Orthodox members intensify their efforts to establish a separate religious community. They resubmit a plea to the authorities to this effect but are rejected on all administrative levels.38 Only Ruhdorf ’s courageous petition to the king finds success. The process of neo-Orthodox consolidation occurs not only through the discursive rejection of Reform Judaism, but also thanks to the help of legislative and executive organs of the state. Although these are also portrayed in a critical manner, the organs of the state are ultimately convinced by, and won over to, the Orthodox side, and the figure of the king is thus portrayed as a well-meaning listener and wise ruler. Orthodox Jews act as thankful admirers of the king and, in accordance with the depictions of Samson Raphael Hirsch, as loyal citizens, even though they avoid explicitly patriotic language.39 By contrast, Wolfsohn’s eloquently proclaimed patriotism, including his desire for his son to become an officer in support of his ‘‘fatherland,’’40 is always accompanied with disregard for observance and Jewish tradition, indeed, even with acceptance for baptism. Moreover, Wolfsohn’s oft-declared unconditional loyalty toward the state is repeatedly exposed as calculated self-aggrandizement to the effect that he faces condemnation: ‘‘You feign patriotism because you long for honors and accolades.’’41 Despite the accusations of false patriotism, the novella harbors an implicit commitment to the German language and culture, not only because it is written in German, but also because it represents Germany and the German culture as a desirable homeland—even for characters like the Polish Rabbi Auser.42 Indeed, Wolfsohn’s son Moritz would not be disinclined to follow a career path as an officer if baptism were not a requirement for doing so. In addition to civic loyalty, therefore, Lehmann’s novella endorses a commitment to the nation, provided that it is linked to emancipation and the acceptance of religious particularity. All in all, Lehmann’s novella retains an ambivalence toward secular intervention into Jewish matters. For instance, secular civil servants, albeit

220

Lezzi

through bribery and false information on the part of Wolfsohn, do not recognize the democratically elected Orthodox rabbi. In his depiction of an Orthodox majority that experiences this denial of its democratic rights, Lehmann deviates from a historically accurate portrayal of the development of neoOrthodoxy, for in actuality it constituted a clear minority in the 1870s. A specific comparison of the events portrayed in the novella to the historical reality of the contemporary struggles between Reform Judaism and (neo-) Orthodoxy, however, cannot be drawn. Lehmann sets his novella in the fictional city ‘‘B,’’ and the timeframe in which the narrative takes place remains obscure. As such, the author can evoke unspecific memories of historical and contemporary conflicts within Jewish communities, conflicts that in actuality varied greatly from locality to locality. For instance, during the intense political conflicts within the communities during the 1840s, Reform-oriented Jews were still in the minority in many regions. The events in Lehmann’s story resemble some of the debates surrounding the rabbinate in Wu¨rzburg in 1839–40.43 At the end of an intense conflict in this Bavarian city, Orthodoxy and its candidate Seligman Baer Bamberger won the struggle and defeated the forces of reform with the support of the German authorities and through elections in the Jewish community. Not just the similarities to but also the differences from this historical precedent are instructive: whereas the conflicts surrounding Bamberger were triggered by Bamberger’s insufficient level of secular education, Lehmann’s ideal rabbi, who ultimately wins the election, had received a secular education seemingly as a matter of course. Completely in line with Hirsch’s ideology, Lehmann describes the rabbi as a man ‘‘who combines solid worldly scholarliness and a good gift of oratory with proficient talmudic knowledge and serious and genuine religiousness.’’44 A further aspect of the conflict depicted by Lehmann—the intervention of secular authorities forcing the closing of a prayer space—at once gestures toward and turns on its head a historical event that in actuality occurred under completely different circumstances. In Berlin in the 1820s, the reform-oriented Beer’sche Temple was closed by the authorities, but only after its services were denounced as ‘‘Deist’’ by strictly observant Jews. A cabinet order dated December 9, 1823, declared: ‘‘The liturgy of the Jews is henceforward to be held in the traditional mode and language, with the traditional songs. In Prussia no sects will be tolerated.’’45 In contrast to Lehmann’s novella, then, it was the Orthodox members of the Berlin community who instigated the closing of a reformoriented temple. Moreover, Friedrich III as a historical figure was influenced in

Neo-Orthodoxy

221

his decision by different motives from those that influenced the fictional king in Lehmann’s novella. Lehmann describes the king in a positive way as a man who allows himself to be convinced of the religious and ethical purity and innocuousness of Judaism. In the actual situation of the 1820s, however, Friedrich III’s minister of the interior proclaimed that reform made Jews ‘‘even more dangerous to civil society than they were before.’’46 Hence, Lehmann’s Sa¨en und Ernten cannot be read as a realistic projection of historical conflicts. Rather, the author portrays an idealized version of Orthodoxy that has found, and that asserts, its role as a full-fledged part of secular society. In doing so, Lehman draws upon actual historical events and constellations as material for a bricolage through which this idealized version can be created and history can either be narrated anew or reinvented. Its literature thus allows for insights into the Orthodox imagination, wherein halakhic Judaism and the secular state, contemporary conceptions of democracy, and hierarchic rabbinical community leadership go hand in hand. Literature becomes a sphere in which halakhic observance not only is rewarded by God but also characterizes the position of the largest faction within Judaism and has the full capacity to conform with trends in contemporary nonJewish secular society.

The Feminization of Judaism and the Reinvention of Rabbinic Authority Nineteenth-century modernity entailed a new definition of gender roles, including those in European Jewry, as argued by, among others, Paula Hyman, Marion A. Kaplan, and Benjamin Maria Baader. These scholars have contended that the integration of Judaism into bourgeois culture also caused its domestication and ‘‘feminization.’’47 This process of feminization was twofold. On the one hand, the female-connoted familial sphere gained a new meaningfulness; on the other hand, the function of the rabbi was transformed. As Baader shows, the role of the rabbi in the nineteenth century conformed increasingly to the role of the Christian minister with regard to pastoral care. At the same time, the traditional and exclusively male function of the rabbi as a Talmud scholar lost its importance. In his book Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800–1870 (2006), Baader associates this transformation in rabbinic function primarily with Reform Judaism, whereas modern Orthodox congregations remained more dependent on the

222

Lezzi

rabbi as halakhic authority. Nevertheless, Baader repeatedly refers to Samson Raphael Hirsch’s works and to tendencies within modern Orthodoxy, which also reflect a transformed understanding of both gender roles and rabbinical tasks. Both Reform and Orthodoxy praised the home ‘‘as a site of Jewish spirituality.’’48 Given the longstanding emphasis on the family as a central institution of Jewish life, this was not altogether new, of course. What was different was that this praise occurred specifically in response to the forces of secularization accompanied by the growth of a public sphere where people, including Jews, were more easily being pulled away from traditional values, institutions, and roles. The strengthening of the family that went hand in hand with the process of Jewish embourgeoisement should function as such as a counterbalance to this societal process of secularization. On the other hand, the Jewish familial sphere gained new importance within Jewish tradition itself and could even appear as a rival to the role of the synagogue, to Talmud and Torah study, and to affairs of the Jewish community. While praise of the Jewish family, with its central role for the wife and mother, was seen as a fulfillment of the tradition,49 this appreciation contained in itself the seeds to transform the tradition. The tension-filled relocation of the balance between (traditionally male) centers of religious learning and (traditionally female and familial) centers of spiritual values is clearly negotiated in neo-Orthodox literature. In addition, in non-literary debates it is flanked by statements on the importance of the mother as a mediator of religious education and the necessary religious formation of girls by modern Orthodox rabbis themselves. Lehmann’s Sa¨en und Ernten also tests new roles for Jewish women. The key character in this regard is Auguste, Wolfsohn’s wife. As I will show, Auguste almost unavoidably opens a new and extensive scope of action for herself as a woman and mother due to the moral and religious failure on the part of her husband. Auguste’s transformation overlaps with the death of the old community rabbi and a long period in which the traditional center of authority remains vacant due to conflicts over the rabbi’s succession. Auguste’s sphere of influence is no longer limited to the home and the intimate proximity to her family’s children; rather, she becomes a politically active woman, a protagonist in the public sphere who skillfully negotiates with the king as a secular entity. In other narratives, however, Lehmann does portray great tensions between the new scope of action for women and rabbinical authorities. Modern Jewish women are not only ennobled through their new spiritual function, but are also exposed to the temptations of

Neo-Orthodoxy

223

Reform Judaism and an increasingly secular world. In both Die Verlassene (1867) and Elvire (1868), Lehmann restages the image of the rabbi as a religious leader who relegates the autonomy of women to boundaries set by halakhic interpretation. As an observant Jewish woman, Auguste is given a decisive role not only within the family, as the educator of and role model for her children and as a true partner for her husband, but also with regard to the political matters of the community. During an audience with the king, she is able to prevent her daughter’s baptism and marriage to a Christian; perhaps more importantly, she is able both to convince the king of Judaism’s overarching morality and to garner his support for Ruhdorf ’s petition to allow a separate Orthodox community: Meanwhile, Frau von Wolfseck had had the aforementioned audience, and after the king was made aware of the petition by Naphtali Ruhdorf and his associates, his interest in the matter was piqued. He read the expose´ that Naphtali had written attentively and found confirmation for all that Auguste von Wolfseck had so urgently presented him. He granted permission for the constitution of an Orthodox-Israelite community in B. without hesitation.50 As a literary figure, Auguste Wolfssohn seems here to be akin to the biblical Esther, who positively influenced a king’s opinion with regard to Jewish matters by means of a courageous audience before him. That in Sa¨en und Ernten the constitution of an Orthodox community ultimately benefits all Jews in B. and is thus seen as a saving measure for all of Judaism is apparent in its narrative structure. In contrast to the biblical Esther, and to the Esther-like figure in Lehmann’s historical novella from 1867, Des Ko¨nigs Eidam (The king’s son-in-law), Auguste seeks out an audience with the king with regard to familial matters, to save her daughter from conversion and an undesirable marriage. Her audience was not meant to support the entire community. Her appearance before the king serves nonetheless as the unifying link between the private—in literary terms, melodramatic—family story and the public debate within the religious community. Thereby, Sa¨en und Ernten subverts the polarity between the private and the public. This subversion occurs not only as a result of the multiple yet intertwined narrative threads, when Auguste visits the king, or by means of the many roles played

224

Lezzi

by Wolfseck: as family father, as head of the community for a time, as dishonest businessman, and as political schemer within the community. One also finds numerous analogies in the general portrayal of the family and the religious community. For example, Auguste makes these tensions explicit when she declares, ‘‘Majesty, great struggles are also pervading Judaism, evoking divisions in the lap of the community, yes, of the family.’’51 On the plot level as well, there are corresponding analogies, such as the threatened baptism of Auguste’s children and the decline of observant Judaism in a reformed community. Finally, the happy ending reaffirms not only a harmonious community life under neo-Orthodox leadership, but also a joyous family reunion and the enlargement of the family through the marriage—based upon both traditional Orthodox practice and modern romantic love—of the Wolfsohn children to those of Ruhdorf. Altogether, at least in Sa¨en und Ernten, it would seem as if the family trumps community life, not simply because the family drama plays out more expansively than the community drama and because it is presented with more dramatic narrative passages, something that the genre in itself surely demands. Indeed, it is almost exclusively in the private space of the family, in the dialogue between the children, in which religious education and religious values are transmitted. On his deathbed, the old rabbi still directs his admonitions toward his male followers. After his death, however, during the struggles regarding his successor and the ensuing vacuum of religious authority, the family gains its significant new role. Modifying the proclamation of royal succession, one could say: ‘‘The rabbi is dead. Long live the family.’’ The family model depicted in this narrative coincides with a significant transformation of gender roles. Various figures convey a rejection of the patriarchal family model: the father by turning away from Judaism and thus becoming guilty in a religious and moral sense, as well as by making a spectacle of himself; the mother and her children by fighting at the risk of their lives for religious observance. Auguste’s emancipation within her marriage, the overcoming of her role as one of the ‘‘weak, submissive women,’’ and the development of her ‘‘courage to act’’ and of her ‘‘character’’ seem inevitable.52 On the whole, the gender roles in Sa¨en und Ernten are portrayed in an unexpectedly emancipated constellation and narrative enactment, which might go even beyond the already established literary imagination of strong pious women and seducible men in both Orthodox and liberal literature.53 Not only does Auguste emancipate herself within her marriage, but she also functions in a positive way in the public sphere.54 Furthermore, the novella

Neo-Orthodoxy

225

clearly shows familial roles to be adaptable cultural constructs. After the father’s rueful return to the family circle, his family attempts to return to him his traditional role therein—‘‘You are our husband and father . . . , and we love you more than ever’’55—and thus to restore his lost patriarchal authority: ‘‘Foremost, his family strove always to treat him as the head of the whole family and, by means of greater reverence [verdoppelte Ehrerbietung], to let him forget that he was to blame for losing his incredible wealth.’’56 It is exactly this willful act of ‘‘greater reverence’’ that exposes the enthronement of male authority as a performative farce, a farce that seems to be necessary not only to console the father but also to ensure familial stability and normativity. Lehmann’s story illustrates that in modern Orthodoxy, gender roles also had to be handled in a new way. In Sa¨en und Ernten, the strengthening of familial-female religiosity and the moral disavowal of the male family patriarch coincides with the death of the rabbinical leadership figure and the growing importance of secular institutions. Out of this, a complex and fascinating set of possible readings emerges that goes far beyond the apparent polemical thrust of the work—its effort to provide a bastion against Reform Judaism. In other narrative works, Lehmann retains more traditional gender roles in several ways. First, the familial conflicts portrayed in them concern a common generational pattern of observant parents or fathers versus daughters who are abandoning Judaism. Second, Lehman regularly has wise rabbis guide women prone to making mistakes in accordance with religious rules. The rabbis, and not the women, always seem to embody the correct viewpoints. Third, Lehmann uses the rabbi as narrator who, as such, is presented to the reader as a figure of authority. The novella Elvire, for example, carries the subtitle As Told by a Rabbi. In the story, set in the context of the revolution of 1848, the title character, the daughter of observant Jews, enters into civil marriage with a Christian man.57 It ends with a moral admonition by this rabbi, whose role is secured in numerous ways—as involved protagonist, as first-person narrator who both observes and comments on the happenings, and as fictional author figure who transmits the story in its written form. Last but not least, the intended closeness to the real author—a well-known rabbi himself—gives the narrator additional legitimacy. Because her husband shows antisemitic tendencies in the post-revolutionary restoration and even wants to force his wife to baptism, Elvire ultimately flees from him and, after further complications, is finally able to obtain a divorce and return to her

226

Lezzi

family and to observant Judaism. At the end of the novella, the rabbi lectures both Elvire and the readers, presumably its female readers especially: ‘‘And you complain about a lack of happiness? Thank God that He has enlightened you in good time and that He has granted you the courage and strength to save so much from the shipwreck of your life!’’58 Secular literature and an excessive and all-embracing concept of secular education also come in for heavy criticism. Elvire’s father, both universityeducated and religiously observant, lets his daughter ‘‘learn too much,’’ and they read together ‘‘not only Corneille and Shakespeare, but also Calderon and Dante in the original.’’59 This misguided education ultimately leads the daughter to develop exalted ideas derived from novels and to compare her love life to those of the protagonists in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.60 The secular discourse of love causes Elvire to stand her ground against her parents and to enter into marriage without their consent. It is important to note that her education not only leads to a general revolt against parental authority and to illusionary ideas about love, but also to undesirable new conceptions of gender roles. Consequently, the rabbi and first-person narrator seems to speak a justifiable warning when he declares: ‘‘ ‘[The child] is studying too much, indeed so much that she may one day not become a good housewife!’ ’’61 In Die Verlassene, the rabbinical narrative becomes clear only at the end of the story, when the couple who has been saved from the claws of Reform Judaism and meddling Christians asks the helpful rabbi to make their ordeal known to the public: ‘‘Publish our story so that it serves others in similar situations as both a lesson and a warning.’’62 With regard to divorce law, the narrative in Die Verlassene argues for strict adherence to Halakhah—despite other possibilities offered by Protestant Christian law and secularly oriented societal groups. According to the advice of an Orthodox rabbi, the Jewish wife in the story should not remarry, even after waiting for her husband’s return for fifteen years after his disappearance, because she lacks definitive knowledge of his death and he never presented her with a get (a divorce document). The narrative ends with the happy reunification of the couple and the revelation of her husband’s innocence, thus confirming the rabbi’s position and Halakhah. Lehmann does not portray contemporaneous debates regarding discrimination against women in Jewish divorce law, especially emanating from Reform Judaism;63 nonetheless, accusations of discrimination resonate throughout the work and are ultimately refuted by the narrative. In comparison to Elvire and Die Verlassene, which insist on affirming traditional gender and generational roles and which present influential

Neo-Orthodoxy

227

rabbinical authorities to this effect, the fascinating inconsistency in Sa¨en und Ernten in this regard appears even more manifest. In Sa¨en und Ernten, the woman is accorded a dual function. On the one hand, she acts in a ‘‘modern’’ and emancipated manner. On the other hand, though, she readily accepts at the end of the work the return of her ruefully changed husband as family patriarch. Throughout all phases of her marriage and motherhood, adherence to Halakhah remains Auguste’s highest guiding principle. Nonetheless, no rabbinical leadership is necessary for her to follow this principle; instead, it is she who defends Halakhah in public and before secular authorities. Sa¨en und Ernten is thus ambiguous with regard to both gender roles and secularism. In Elvire and Die Verlassene, secular institutions such as civil marriage, divorce law, and the worldly education of girls are portrayed as a danger to religious autonomy and the observant way of life. However, in Sa¨en und Ernten secular institutions and their representatives such as the king can be harnessed to advance the interests of Orthodoxy. Whereas in Elvire the exaggerated secular readings of the girl are without any alternative condemned as a threat to her future role as a good Jewish housewife, Sa¨en und Ernten renounces traditional gender dualisms in favor of an intellectual and religious education for boys and girls. The narrator informs us that the erstwhile intact Orthodox community in B. had a heder (Jewish schoolhouse) where ‘‘boys and girls learned’’ together,64 and from the conversations between pious Jews of the town we hear that today you cannot even find ‘‘a Jewish school,’’ in which ‘‘the Holy Torah’’ is taught in an honest way.65 Another scene in this novella makes clear that the secular knowledge of girls (and boys) has to be counterbalanced by a specifically Jewish education: Greek mythology might be artistically beautiful, but the stories of Jewish heroes like the Maccabees are ethically much more convincing and vital to Jewish identity formation. A close reading of the novella Sa¨en und Ernten allows us therefore to both question and reevaluate assumptions about the way Orthodox thinkers framed binaries such as religious-secular, male-female, and traditionalmodern.

Conclusion: The Familialization of Judaism Upon careful examination, the case of neo-Orthodox fiction in the nineteenth century, and particularly the centrality of the family therein, challenges both the assumed dichotomies and the very terms of conventional

228

Lezzi

secularization narratives. In recent scholarship, the historical-empirical term ‘‘secularization,’’ long linked to the legal separation of church and state, has been given at once more expansive and nuanced meaning and analysis. Thus Jose´ Casanova, among others, identifies the ‘‘marginalization of religion to a privatized sphere’’66 as an important additional step and marker for the secularization process, especially in the European context. Against this view, scholars such as Charles Taylor and Ju¨rgen Habermas insist on the fact that religion is still present in the public sphere in many ways.67 Others such as Kaplan and Baader have shown that the shifting of religion into the private sphere must not be unambiguously or even primarily associated with secularization. Rather, this shifting involved a new encoding within a religious framework, of spirituality, gender roles, the function of the family, and the obligations of the rabbi. In closing, I would like to highlight how the notion of familialization—the turn to family as a site to define changing roles, boundaries, and meanings of religious life—might offer a fruitful perspective on the contradictions between processes of secularization and the ongoing —or rediscovered—importance of religion. In a related manner, family also became crucial to the renegotiation of the public-private divide. Fiction, due to its unique malleability as a medium, illustrates such developments in particularly striking ways. Marcus Lehmann’s novellas and novels exemplify contradictions concerning gender roles that go beyond the familiar thesis of the ‘‘feminization of Judaism’’ in the nineteenth century, not least because Lehmann’s stories take into consideration the various interplays between private and public spheres. Furthermore, the neo-Orthodox belles lettres can illustrate multilayered contradictions within nineteenth-century concepts of Jewish femininity. These contradictions also show up in programmatic neo-Orthodox writings, such as the series of editorials entitled ‘‘Das Ju¨dische Weib’’ (The Jewish woman), published in 1863/64 in Jeschurun and probably written by Hirsch himself. The first article in this series declares that men and women share ‘‘die vo¨llig gleiche Dignita¨t’’ (the exact same dignity)68 but then introduces a gender dualism that covers religious as well as secular functions: ‘‘The male sex is zakhar, it is the custodian of divine revelation and the spiritual achievements of mankind. . . . The feminine is nekeva . . . , that which received determination. The man chooses a profession, creates his position in society, the woman received both by joining a man and participating in his profession and position.’’69

Neo-Orthodoxy

229

In the case of both types of texts, a closer look points less toward the domestication and feminization of religion than to its familialization, which in itself reflects on all the contradictory gender issues discussed here. The family becomes a central location of religion in both the positive and negative sense. Even in Lehmann’s novellas in which rabbinical authority ultimately prevails, this occurs within the context of familial conflicts between generations and genders. In all three works, in part through a family-centered perspective, the binary between the public and the private sphere dissipates in that both spheres are shaped by the same discourses and conflicts. In contrast to ghetto literature, for example, Lehmann’s works of fiction contain hardly any references to genre-specific imagery of the interior space of the home;70 they are dominated by dialogue instead. The verbal negotiations and positioning occur with only sparse reference to the locations where they take place. On closer examination, the dialogues are often spoken specifically in spaces located between the private and public spheres: in a business office, a guest house, a community meeting, or a garden. The closing scene of Sa¨en und Ernten is a large outdoor family celebration and thus without the intimacy typical for indoor settings. At the same time, this setting allows for a confrontation with persons who do not belong to the close family circle. In this public space, the Jewish family is affirmed as observant: ‘‘Under a shady oak tree, a group of persons is sitting around a large table; they are unmistakably Jews, pious Jews, for they let themselves be served coffee, but they brought the milk and the pastries with them.’’71 One finds locations of transit as well; protagonists meet one another on the street or in various means of transportation. Even female protagonists are portrayed as in transit; they leave their parental homes, go on trips, write letters, and seek out audiences, whether it is before the king or, as in Die Verlassene, before Christian and Jewish religious authorities. Like Sa¨en und Ernten, Elvire also ends with a family celebration, her daughter’s wedding. The location of the celebration remains undetermined; the characterization of the persons in attendance and especially the concluding lecture on the part of the rabbi seem significantly more important than the setting. Lehmann’s novellas thus demonstrate a close interweaving of the private and public spheres that do not result in polarity between the two realms. More than this, though, Lehmann positions the structural transformation of the Jewish family in the foreground.72 Seemingly, the family—

230

Lezzi

reimagined as the central bourgeois unit that grounds religious practice —must assert itself vis-a`-vis a public sphere encoded in a manifold way in the Christian, secular, and varying Jewish senses. These public spheres, in turn, influence the transformation and reconstitution of the family. Lehmann describes the familialization of religion both as a form of religious resistance and as a form of modernization that accepts the challenges of its day and overcomes them in a creative way. Of course, the term ‘‘modernization’’ can only be used with qualifications in regard to Lehmann’s narratives. In Sa¨en und Ernten, for example, Lehmann uses the adjective ‘‘modern’’ exclusively in an ironic or critical way. Titles such as ‘‘Modern Viewpoints’’73 or ‘‘Modern Bliss’’74 denote chapters in which Wolfsohn’s misguided actions, such as his financial greed, his falling away from observance, or his infidelity, are central. In contrast, the author evokes the family idyll at the Ruhdorfs in a chapter entitled ‘‘A Friday Evening,’’75 thus clearly alluding to Jewish tradition. He also exclusively uses the term progress in a critical or ironic manner. For Wolfsohn, progress means, for example, giving up on the ‘‘ludicrous dietary laws’’ or supporting marriage between Jews and Christians, so that ‘‘all dividing walls’’ can fall.76 Nevertheless, the modern traits of the novel are conspicuous: Lehmann constitutes the observant family as a counterbalancing location to the secular and Reform Judaism–dominated public sphere and, at the same time, exposes it to this public sphere. The family is positioned as a bastion against the disintegrative force of modernity, but it also carries with it the seeds of modernizing tendencies, in particular as a secularly educated family that reads novels. The self-contradictory features of the novel remind us of the fact that the family as close unity of father, mother, and children is itself a product of modernity. Indeed, due to their inherent ambiguity, literary texts can focus on the antagonistic constellations of tension between the public and the private, between secularization and re-spiritualization, and between the male- and female-dominated spheres in a particularly expressive manner. As such, Lehmann’s Sa¨en und Ernten illustrates the difficulties behind the idea of clear boundaries between public and private space in that it draws parallels between the two spheres, links them closely to each other, and interweaves them in one another. As a neo-Orthodox writer, however, Lehmann takes this a step further in that he plays with the tensions between public and private space, ideologizes them, and, in the process, reinvents them—despite a diction that suggests factual objectivity and historical exactitude.

Neo-Orthodoxy

231

The task of literary criticism in the face of such texts lies in the combination of two elements: first, to point to the ideological context of neoOrthodox literature with regard to the then-contemporary conflicts; and second, to sharpen our understanding of the inherent antagonisms that are present in the literary texts. The category of secularism is useful in both respects. On the textual level alone, the stories simultaneously reject and invoke secular institutions, education, and discourses. On the one hand, all characters appear to embrace some form of secularism; on the other hand, nefarious types of secularism should be overcome through a return to tradition, by teshuva. Complicating this tension further, this tradition itself had already been modernized and, in part, secularized. For example, it was already the norm that a rabbi must possess ‘‘worldly scholarship,’’ as Lehmann writes in Sa¨en und Ernten.77 In addition to these textual aspects, the ambivalence of the category of secularism is also embodied in the formalistic components of these stories. Modern Orthodox literature is written in German, a profane language, and it does not shy away from invoking explicitly erotic scenes. As initially mentioned, modern Orthodox literature both speaks about and speaks to the entire Jewish family. In the process, the family—as literary figures and as readers—acquires the function of a locational counterbalance to the secular or Reform-oriented surroundings. In a paradoxical manner, the family also constitutes itself as a counterbalance to rabbinical scholarly Judaism and can as such, despite literary rabbinical characters, no longer be completely controlled by male rabbinical authority. Accordingly, literature and literary criticism offer unique characteristics and tools to read secularization and modernization as multivalent cultural constructs that again and again escape classification and therefore cannot be reduced to a certain positive or negative value.

chapter 11

Secularism and Nationalism: The Modern Halakhic Discourse on the Identity and Boundaries of the Jewish Community arye edrei

This essay deals with the responses of Orthodox rabbis to secularization, and more specifically the responses of the Religious Zionist rabbis to this challenge in the first decades following the establishment of the State of Israel. Prior to the modern era, the Talmud and other classical halakhic sources had established a harsh attitude toward so-called transgressors, those who violated accepted halakhic norms and practices. This was based on the desire to distance such individuals from the Jewish community. In the eyes of the Talmud, the Jewish community is inherently a community of Torahobservant Jews. This position was significantly challenged in the nineteenth century by the spread of modern secularism. The ideological controversy over how to respond to this new reality found significant expression in this period in the European halakhic polemic regarding how to relate to ‘‘transgressors.’’ While a portion of contemporary halakhic scholars emphasized the need for distancing and separation from transgressors, others sought a more moderate approach that would establish a degree of separation without leading to an absolute schism. Subsequently, this question reemerged in a unique context: the Zionist enterprise and the establishment of the State of Israel. A new Jewish community was established in Israel by secular Jews, based on a secular-nationalist

Nationalism

233

ideology. The rabbis who wished to work cooperatively with this process were in actuality granting recognition to a secular Jewish community as an authentic Jewish community that aspired to fulfill desirable Jewish values. This raised the question of how such cooperation could be justified within the parameters of traditional halakhic concepts, and, more significantly, it raised the challenge of how to maintain and justify this cooperation while at the same time establishing a level of separation based on observance of the commandments and Halakhah. Many Religious Zionist rabbis justified their cooperation with the secular Zionists by developing a model of the Jewish collective consisting of two concentric circles—one national and one religious. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik provided a conceptual formulation for this model that distinguished between the ‘‘covenant of fate’’ and the ‘‘covenant of faith.’’ In this essay, I examine the implications of the distinction between the ‘‘fate community’’ and the ‘‘faith community,’’ and argue that in many instances, this categorical distinction was impossible—that the recognition of attachment to the nationalist community also demanded the complete acceptance of secularists within the faith community and a consequent change in the halakhic attitude toward ‘‘transgressors.’’ The models developed in the previous century effectively served the separatist interests of the Haredi community in Israel. In contrast, those who were ideologically motivated to foster mutual cooperation with the secular Zionists were forced to deviate from the halakhic solutions suggested in the models of the nineteenth century. After examining the attitude toward transgressors in the nineteenthcentury sources and in the Talmud in the first section of the essay, I discuss in the second section how the rise of Jewish nationalism impacted this debate, presenting the theoretical constructs developed by some prominent Religious Zionist leaders to validate a secular-nationalist definition of Jewish identity. Further sections explore the application of these constructs by the first four chief rabbis of Israel in dealing with the relationship to secularists. I discuss two paradigmatic issues that arose with particular strength and with unique nuances in light of the rebirth of the State of Israel: the acceptance of the testimony of non-religious Jews in Jewish courts of law in Israel and conversion to Judaism in the State of Israel. The analysis of these cases reveals how the ideological elements outlined in the second section of the essay required changes in the halakhic positions discussed in the first section.

234

Edrei

Secularism and Halakhah Throughout the nineteenth century, rabbinic literature treated the subject of how to relate to ‘‘transgressors’’ as a central concern. The quick and dramatic disintegration of the traditional community—first in Western and Central Europe, subsequently in Eastern Europe, and later still in the Jewish communities of the Islamic world—brought to center stage a variety of Jewish typologies that did not preserve the halakhic lifestyle that had been widely accepted for centuries. This phenomenon was new insofar as these typologies could not be branded as deviant, since they characterized the situation of a large percentage and in many places even the majority of the Jewish community. The Jews who abandoned a life governed by traditional halakhic observance included individualists as well as those who were members of a variety of ideological groups—Reform Jews in Western and Central Europe, as well as socialists, Bundists, Zionists, and adherents of other movements in Eastern Europe. It was essential for the contemporary rabbinic leadership to deal with the question of how to relate to these Jews, both on an ideological level and on a pragmatic, normative level. At the heart of their discussions were talmudic sources that express a very harsh stance toward so-called transgressors. Indeed, the talmudic concepts that the rabbis of the era found corresponded best to the modern phenomenon of the ‘‘secularist’’ were ‘‘transgressor’’ (over aveirah—found in rabbinic literature in general) and ‘‘apostate’’ (mumar— found in the Babylonian Talmud).1 By the nineteenth century, the question was whether the talmudic position remained correct for the contemporary reality, in which secularism and the abrogation of Halakhah had spread so widely. Secularization, for the purposes of our discussion, is defined as a process in which religion in general, and traditional observance in particular, lost much of their power and centrality and Jews acculturated into the surrounding society.2 The chief aspects of this process from the perspective of Orthodox debates were the abrogation of Halakhah and its associated social implications. Religious practice—a lifestyle of ‘‘Torah and mitzvot [commandments]’’—had been the organizing element of the traditional Jewish community for centuries. It was clear, therefore, that its decline would require a redefinition of the characteristics of Jewish identity, and, more importantly, a redefinition of the parameters of the Jewish community.

Nationalism

235

Indeed, generally speaking, one could say that the traditional discourse regarding transgressors dealt primarily with the question of their connection and belonging to the Jewish community and collective. This question was raised on three levels. The first was the status of their participation in a variety of ritual commandments, such as writing a Torah scroll or kosher slaughtering. The second was the status of their belonging to the Jewish collective vis-a`-vis those obligations that fall upon the community toward its members, such as the obligation to violate the Sabbath in order to save their lives; the obligation to return their lost objects; and perhaps the most emotionally severe, the obligation of their family to formally mourn for them after their death. In traditional Halakhah, the discussions on these two levels all posit that one who transgresses places himself outside of the Jewish collective. The third and harshest level discusses the obligation to harm them physically. This discussion, although theoretical in nature, expresses more than any other the exclusion of the transgressor from the Jewish collective.3 The changing realities of Jewish life added a new dimension to the discussion, leading to a fierce debate over the very definition of the Jewish collective. The fact that the transgressors in the modern era were members of specifically Jewish ideological movements was very important from a halakhic perspective and from the perspective of the talmudic sources. It moved them from the talmudic category of mumar le-te’avon, those who transgress because they submit to their desires, to the category of mumar le-hakhis, provocative transgressors. The Talmud relates to the latter group more harshly.4 The wide range of nineteenth-century rabbinic opinions regarding transgressors has received much scholarly attention.5 At one end of the spectrum, one finds the seminal position of Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger (1798–1871), who proposed a relatively magnanimous approach by adopting the talmudic category of ‘‘an infant who was taken captive’’ that allows halakhic authorities to consider the contemporary transgressor as one who has acted without free choice (defined as anoos—literally coerced, in this case by his environment).6 At the other end of the spectrum, we find ‘‘the founding father of Orthodoxy,’’ Rabbi Moshe Sofer, the Hatam Sofer (1762–1839), who considered persistent Sabbath violaters as outsiders: ‘‘It is therefore forbidden for any Jew to eat in his house, and meat that he has slaughtered is forbidden to us, . . . and we do not accept his testimony, nor do we have him take an oath. In general, it is as if his name has been erased from Israel, until he returns to God and He has mercy on him.’’7

236

Edrei

These two approaches have practical halakhic implications, but of greater importance is the way in which each ruling authority related to the virtual community that existed in each of these rabbis’ consciousness. Rabbi Ettlinger envisioned one community, which would include those who had abrogated Halakhah, while the Hatam Sofer’s vision was of a community exclusively comprised of those faithful to Halakhah. Indeed, the unequivocal separatist approach of the Hatam Sofer influenced not only his followers but also other streams of Orthodoxy. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the founder of neo-Orthodoxy, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, was among the leading advocates of the demand that the governments of Hungary and Germany formally recognize the division of the Jewish community into two distinct religious entities.8

Nationalism and Religious Ideology Toward the beginning of the twentieth century, another polemic raged, relating to the Jewish national movements—the Hibbat Zion movement and subsequently Political Zionism. The Zionist movement was primarily a secular movement that wished to exchange the religious basis of Jewish identity with a national basis, or at least to add a national identity to the religious identity. The Orthodox response to Zionism shared with earlier debates a common concern for the deep dilemma of how to relate to transgressors. The question of whether it is permissible to collaborate with transgressors became quite complex. After all, the Zionists aspired to promote a process of Jewish separation by fostering the fulfillment of the longstanding dream of returning to the Land of Israel. This aspiration challenged the Orthodox claim that the goal of the abrogaters of Halakhah was to assimilate among the non-Jews.9 Here too, scholarly research has described a wide range of opinions—from the religious leaders of Hungary who viewed Zionism as a rebellion against the messianic vision to Rabbi A. Y. Kook, who viewed Zionism as a messianic fulfillment. Between these two extremes, a number of other more pragmatic and rationalistic positions, both for and against, were formulated.10 Rabbinic supporters of collaboration with the Zionists were required to put forth a theory that would justify their positions in the context of the halakhic attitudes described briefly above. In addition, they were forced to define the scope of the cooperation, including its boundaries and limitations. Here, too, a fascinating range of explanations and ideas developed.11 One

Nationalism

237

model idealized sincere cooperation with the national movement on the practical and existential level, while simultaneously maintaining clear distinctions on the level of faith and religious ideology. By focusing on the common denominator at the functional level, this approach enabled its followers to value not only individual Zionists, but also the group and its ideas, while emphasizing that religious differences could not be blurred. In other words, it attempted to create communal unity without concealing the gap on the level of religious goals.12 The Jewish community envisioned by this model could be represented by two concentric circles, an inner circle including the religiously observant members and an outer circle that is wider, representing all of its members. This model was subsequently developed by Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik into a clear conceptual, theological, and ideological model that distinguishes between the ‘‘covenant of fate’’ and the ‘‘covenant of faith.’’13 According to Rabbi Soloveitchik, authentic Jewish identity can be based on the ‘‘covenant of fate,’’ a sense of solidarity and communal responsibility based on a connection to the Jewish people, without direct and explicit attachment to the world of Halakhah and religious life. This bond of fate, which creates the basis for Jewish existence, ties together everyone who has a sense of responsibility for Jewish existence. Beyond this ‘‘covenant of fate’’ there exists a more exclusive, yet interconnected, ‘‘covenant of faith,’’ which represents the religious dimension characterized by devotion to a life dedicated to the Torah and its commandments.14 Rabbi Soloveitchik’s welldefined formulation was in essence the worldview of Religious Zionist thought from its inception.15 It presented for the first time in the history of Orthodox Jewish thought a model of collective Jewish identity based solely on the concept of nationality, defining religious and secular Jews as belonging to one body with common experiences and goals. The various forms of Jewish secularism that developed in the nineteenth century were generally viewed by the rabbis as manifestations of ‘‘emptiness’’ —devoid of Jewish content. A large percentage of the rabbinic world perceived Jewish nationalism, which arose on the heels of other versions of Jewish secularism in the nineteenth century, through the same lens. In contrast, the Religious Zionist rabbis viewed secular nationalism as ‘‘fullness’’—an expression of Judaism that differed significantly from the phenomenon of secularism characterized by the absence of observance. It would be accurate to say that traditionally, Jews saw Judaism as a form of religious nationalism—the religion of a people. In the eyes of the Religious Zionist rabbis, however, the fact that Zionism represented an organized, ideologically based

238

Edrei

national movement was seen as a positive element, particularly in contrast to liberal Jewish movements for religious reform, emancipation, and assimilation in nineteenth-century Europe that separated Jewish religion from nationalism and renounced any claims to Jewish nationhood. For these rabbis, the Zionists’ effort to forge an alternative form of collective Jewish identity tipped the scales in their favor. While modern Jewish nationalism sought to propose an alternative secular basis for collective Jewish identity, the Religious Zionist rabbis paradoxically viewed it through a religious lens, interpreting it by means of traditional Jewish religious categories. The two-covenant model facilitated this positive Religious Zionist response to the challenge posed by the existence of a secular Jewish nationalist movement by creating an authentic definition of Jewish identity based on a commitment to the national existence of a distinct Jewish people, rather than on dedication to halakhic observance. It thus fostered collaboration with the secular Zionist movement, while at the same time strengthening the aspiration for separatism with regard to daily religious life. This approach has great significance when contrasted with the aforementioned halakhic tradition that promoted social segregation as a means of separating the community either from evil or from evil-doers. To be sure, within the Haredi community, there were more moderate voices that applied Rabbi Ettlinger’s concept of ‘‘an infant who was taken captive’’ to the secular Zionists.16 Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize the difference between these and Religious Zionist positions. While those following Ettlinger made an effort to find categories that would allow for a more moderate relationship to Reform Jews or secular Zionists in order to prevent their complete estrangement from the Jewish people in the consciousness of the religious community, they also invested great energy in developing a hierarchy and stratification between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities in which there was no room for a non-Orthodox ideology to be valued inherently. The tactics employed emphasized the authenticity and supremacy of Orthodoxy, rather than the illegitimacy of the non-Orthodox practices and ideologies, which was the focus of the more stringent authorities. At the same time, the strategy for separation was essentially the same. This may help explain how Ettlinger’s approach became attractive in midtwentieth-century Israel, where the secular Jews constituted the dominant and controlling power in the social, political, and economic spheres. By adopting Ettlinger’s approach, the Haredi authorities freed themselves from having to deal with the talmudic views requiring one to battle the secularists,

Nationalism

239

and at the same time promoted an elitist consciousness within their own community. This consciousness allows for tolerance of secular Jews, but in no way allows for a positive attitude toward their practices or ideologies. It allows one to relate to the secular Jew as an individual, but under no circumstance to relate to secularism as a movement.17 The Religious Zionist rabbis could not abide such an approach. While they indeed wanted to foster a consciousness of differentiation between the secularists and those who observe the commandments, unlike the Haredim, they wished to see themselves and the secular Jews as part of the same sphere, advancing together the positive Jewish value of the building of the Jewish homeland.18 An interesting and unique approach was the position of Rabbi Yehudah Amital (1924–2009), one of the prominent intellectual and religious leaders of Religious Zionism in recent decades. Rabbi Amital raised a number of important arguments to support his claim that the harsh talmudic attitude toward transgressors is not relevant in our times.19 One of his arguments was that in contemporary times, there is no real issue of idolatry, and abrogation of the religion is therefore much less serious. He also suggested that there is a conceptual difference between law in theory and law in practice. The talmudic approach of harshness toward transgressors represents the ideological and theoretical ideal, but a more lenient law is applied to concrete realities. Rabbi Amital raised a number of other important arguments worthy of consideration in our context: The very fact that such a large portion of the Jewish people have left the path of God requires us, in my opinion, to adopt a different attitude that is more lenient. . . . While in the time of the Sages, those who abrogated religion left the path of God completely, and those who violated the Sabbath were also suspect for theft and robbery, today it is possible to find many people who have a high level of morality among those who have abandoned the path of the Torah. In recent generations, we have seen men who have no religious faith sacrifice themselves for ethical ideals, or to save the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. It is therefore natural that the attitude [toward them] must be different.20 Rabbi Amital’s intuition led him to argue that the Torah would not demand a harsh attitude toward a majority of the people, particularly when speaking about people who are upright and moral, and who are dedicated to

240

Edrei

the land and the people. His fundamental thesis on the meaning of secularism today includes three principles. First, it is not possible to say that according to internal Jewish concepts, a majority of Jews are wicked and heretics, and that we can judge them and degrade them. Second, in contrast to previous generations, there is no direct connection today between religious observance and ethical and moral behavior. Thus, in our contemporary reality, one can be a ‘‘sinner’’ in religious terms, but simultaneously an upright and moral person. Third, a large portion of the transgressors in Israel sacrifice themselves for the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. These three principles indicate that in the modern context, the ‘‘wicked person’’ deserving of the harsh talmudic approach is not one who does not perform the commandments, but rather an immoral person or one who betrays the Jewish people. What Rabbi Amital perceived in Israel was a community of secular Jews who were upright people and dedicated both to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. It is fascinating that Rabbi Amital opened his article on the attitude toward secular Jews with a definition of Judaism and methods of entry in the community, namely, conversion, that flow from that definition. In his opinion, Judaism is not defined by the performance of commandments, but rather by obligation to fulfill the commandments. This leads him to the following idea: The essence of the act of conversion is not only connecting oneself to the Jewish religion, but connecting oneself to the Jewish people, a people that are obligated by the Torah. . . . This is the deep meaning of the expression [said by Ruth]: ‘‘Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God’’ (Ruth 1:16). First ‘‘your people will be my people’’ and then ‘‘your God will be my God,’’ because ‘‘your God will be my God’’ can only take place when ‘‘your people are my people.’’21 Rabbi Amital considered this definition of the Jewish people—a people who are obligated to perform the commandments, even if they do not observe them—to be most appropriate for the contemporary reality. It is not reasonable to consider one who does not observe the commandments, which in fact describes a majority of the nation, as an ‘‘other’’ that is separate from the nation. Subsequently, Rabbi Amital related to the emotional aspects of this connection to the secularist and its educational implications: ‘‘We must be

Nationalism

241

able to feel connected to people who do not believe, and at the same time to make certain that the differences between the worlds do not become blurred.’’22 In the continuation of his article on the attitude toward secular Jews, Rabbi Amital raised two additional explanations of his position that derived from his intuitive reasoning and common sense rather than exegesis (‘‘I do not need proofs—in matters such as this, the Sages said: ‘Why do I need a verse, it is logic’ ’’). One relates to the distinction between the antisemitism of past generations and contemporary antisemitism, which is not connected to religion but to ethnicity. He contends that since modern antisemitism attacks Jews ‘‘without regard to their beliefs and actions,’’ accordingly ‘‘our internal love of Jews must relate to all Jews without regard to their beliefs and actions.’’23 The second point that Rabbi Amital raised relates to the essence of the State of Israel: If we believe that the State of Israel constitutes a refuge for millions of Jews, . . . and if we believe that the establishment and existence of the State of Israel constitutes a sanctification of God, . . . and if the State of Israel is dear to us and we do not succumb to the evil Haredi renunciation of God’s role in the history of the establishment and ongoing existence of the State of Israel, . . . the State of Israel cannot exist if a relationship of love and coexistence does not prevail amongst the various parts of the people.24 This is not an ‘‘instrumentalist’’ argument on the value of social unity in Israel. Rather, it is a far-reaching argument that flows from a religious sensitivity to the essence and destiny of the secular state of Israel as a ‘‘sanctification of God.’’ In Rabbi Amital’s conception, Israeli society is the contemporary Jewish collective, and since most of its Jewish citizens do not observe the commandments, religious observance cannot be the defining characteristic of the collective. Accordingly, the definition of the ‘‘other’’ who rebels against the collective changes as well and the talmudic declarations with regard to transgressors must relate to different contemporary phenomena. Essentially, Rabbi Amital adopted the ‘‘covenant of fate’’ as the definition of the contemporary Jewish community and imbued it with practical halakhic significance.25 The foregoing analysis serves as a foundation for an examination of the precise implications of these questions of communal boundaries for halakhic decisions that had to be made in the context of a secular Jewish state. I

242

Edrei

wish to examine how the philosophical and ideological orientations described above affected the halakhic rulings of the first four chief rabbis of the State of Israel, who dealt with concrete issues that arose through social cooperation with secular Zionists that their religious outlook deemed desirable. Through this examination, I ask whether the conceptual distinction between the covenant of fate and the covenant of faith is really sustainable, or whether the acceptance of the covenant of fate as the basis for halakhic decisions inherently leads to the need for halakhic modification. In other words, despite the aforementioned distinction, it stands to reason that the social cooperation facilitated by the covenant of fate could not exist in the absence of some halakhic change. In this discussion, I deal with two particular examples. The first is the debate over the status of the testimony in the rabbinic courts of Israel of those who transgress Halakhah. The second deals with the issue of ‘‘Who is a Jew?’’ and conversion in the State of Israel. In both examples, I demonstrate the innovative halakhic steps taken by the chief rabbis of Israel, and suggest that these rulings were motivated by their desire to view all the Jews in the State of Israel, both religious and secular, as one Jewish community.

From Ideology to Law I: The National Judiciary System One aspect of the stringent exclusionary approach of the Sages toward ‘‘transgressors’’ was the invalidation of their testimony in a Jewish court. The tension engendered by this issue in the Israeli context reflects the challenge inherent in the creation of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. Although this definition of the state was only formally adopted in its foundational laws in the 1990s, it was already widely accepted by the Religious Zionist rabbis prior to the establishment of the state.26 These rabbis also viewed the establishment of a single legal system in the State of Israel for all its citizens as a Jewish value, correspondent to the social collaboration that they envisioned. As a result, they gave serious consideration to halakhic problems that might arise from the implementation of such a model. The relationship of the legal system to those who violate Halakhah is thus a revealing case study of the issue that lies at the heart of this article. From its inception, the Israeli legal system granted exclusive jurisdiction in issues of personal status to the rabbinical courts, which function according to the guidelines of Halakhah.27 In the pre-state days, the rabbis and the

Nationalism

243

religious society in general hoped that Jewish law would in one way or another have a broader legal standing in the state that was to be established, whether in the context of rabbinical courts or through the incorporation of Jewish law into the state legal system.28 The longstanding stringent halakhic attitude regarding the legal testimony of transgressors—or, in our terminology, ‘‘secularists’’—posed a significant challenge to the fulfillment of that aspiration.29 The question that it raised was not only whether it was possible to implement such a law in a democratic state, but also whether Halakhah itself could maintain such an approach in a society in which a majority of the citizens were secular. Its implementation would likely create a paradoxical situation in which a majority of the population would be ineligible to give testimony in a court of law by virtue of the binding status given to Halakhah by the laws of the state. This paradox would apparently mandate one of two approaches: either to refrain from incorporating Halakhah into the state legal system, or to forego the particular law that prohibits transgressors of Halakhah from giving testimony. It is highly instructive to examine the rulings on this matter issued by Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Herzog and Rabbi Benzion Meir Hai Uziel, two of the most prominent Religious Zionist authorities at the end of the mandatory period and in the early years of the State of Israel. Their opinions were written in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In spite of differences in style, there are many similarities between their positions and their underlying reasoning. Nevertheless, Zionist considerations appear much more explicitly in the writings of Rabbi Uziel. The primary halakhic source for the invalidation of the testimony of transgressors is a controversy between Abaye and Rava in the Talmud: An apostate [i.e., transgressor] who eats unfit meat in order to fulfill his desires is invalid [to give testimony] according to everyone; [an apostate who transgresses] to provoke: Abaye says that he is invalid and Rava says that he is valid. Abaye says that he is disqualified for he is ‘‘wicked’’ and the Torah states: ‘‘Put not thy hand with the wicked to be a witness.’’ Rava says that he is qualified, for he must have been wicked for the sake of gain (hamas) [in order to be disqualified].30 As alluded to earlier, the Talmud distinguishes between two types of transgressors: one who eats unfit meat in order to fulfill his desires, and one

244

Edrei

who eats unfit meat in order to provoke. Although counterintuitive, the status of one who eats unfit meat in order to fulfill his desires is considered a more severe case than one who eats unfit meat in order to provoke. Rashi explains Rava’s position as follows: One who eats unfit meat in order to fulfill his desires is driven by monetary concerns and would follow Halakhah if the fit meat were available at the same price. He is therefore considered one who is wicked for the sake of gain, and he may not give testimony. Such a person is ready to sell his faith for monetary gain, and is therefore suspect to give false testimony for monetary gain. In contrast, one who eats unfit meat in order to provoke, as a means to demonstrate his non-acceptance of Halakhah, although completely wicked, is not necessarily suspect to give false testimony for personal gain, and we have no reason to believe that his behavior in the ethical interpersonal realm will be inappropriate. Rava contends that the primary factor for invalidating testimony is specifically the character trait of giving into desire at the expense of integrity rather than the transgressing of ritual laws in general. The final halakhic ruling is in accordance with Abaye. Nevertheless, Rabbis Herzog and Uziel saw the position of Rava as a potential solution to the challenge that they faced. Indeed, Rava’s position is very applicable to the modern secular population in which there is no necessary correlation between a person’s level of religious faith and his sense of decency and morality.31 Rabbi Herzog first dealt with this issue a few months before the establishment of the state, within the context of a judicial verdict in the Supreme Rabbinical Court. The other rabbis participating in the tribunal were Rabbi Uziel and Rabbi Meshullam Rath.32 The question under discussion was whether to nullify a marriage because the witnesses were not Sabbath observers. Rabbi Herzog suggested an innovative interpretation of Abaye’s aforementioned position, claiming that Abaye would agree to the validity of the transgressor’s testimony when the court knows for certain that he is a trustworthy person. In the continuation of his comments, Rabbi Herzog stated explicitly that in our times, there is no correlation between religious transgression and moral turpitude. Clearly, he was familiar with the socialist pioneers, and was not prepared to implicate them with moral deficiency based on their non-observance of the commandments. Believing Rava’s position to be more appropriate for the new reality, Rabbi Herzog interpreted Abaye’s position in a new and innovative way that in practice made it very similar to the position of Rava. In this way, Rabbi Herzog was able to be true to Halakhah while relating appropriately to the new reality.33 Although the Zionist

Nationalism

245

element of Rabbi Herzog’s argument and motivation are not stated explicitly, their presence is discernible. Foremost in his approach was the aspiration to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for creating a unified Jewish community in Israel with collaborative judicial institutions within a halakhic context that would allow those institutions to be viewed as Jewish. In a subsequent article, Rabbi Herzog addressed the issue in a theoretical treatise that was not written in the context of a specific concrete case but as part of an overall reflection on the establishment of Torah law in Israel. Here he arrived at the same conclusion, but in a completely different manner, more fundamental and more decisive.34 While it appears that Rabbi Herzog took a more stringent position here in that he did not rely on his previous radical interpretation of Abaye’s ruling, in fact he proposed a more revolutionary approach—to legislate an unequivocal halakhic enactment that would accept the entire community as a partner in the judicial system. He advocated an explicit deviation from accepted halakhic standards by adopting a norm that would permit the testimony of Sabbath transgressors by virtue of communal enactment. He proposed that this idea be executed through the Knesset or some other representative legislative assembly that would approve the acceptance of the testimony of those considered disqualified by Jewish law, a decision that would have halakhic validity. He justified this model as follows: There is no greater tikkun olam [legislation designed to promote the general welfare of the society]35 and migdar milta [emergency legislation that justifies deviation from accepted halakhic standards] than this, for it provides the basis for a Jewish state within our current unfortunate situation, in order to prevent the adoption of a foreign law, the laws of the nations of the world, which would be destructive of the religion, heaven forbid. Therefore, in my opinion, we have opened an opportunity to overcome this difficulty by having the public accept the legislative assembly for all things in which the community has legal power within the context of the Torah.36 The halakhic foundation upon which Rabbi Herzog based his argument is the talmudic concept of ‘‘communal agreement,’’ which grants the community legislative power, and was used during the Middle Ages to enact many laws, particularly on matters of legal procedure.37 The significant innovation in Rabbi Herzog’s use of the concept is not only that he granted the legislative authority of the Jewish community to the Knesset, but that he did

246

Edrei

so in spite of the fact that he knew that the Knesset included within it nonJews and Jews who were not halakhically observant. It is clear that his view of the State of Israel as an authentic Jewish community provided the philosophical and ideological foundation for this move. Rabbi Herzog aspired to organize Israeli society as a Jewish ‘‘fate’’ community. The implementation of Halakhah as the law of Israeli society, whether partially or fully, would define the community and grant it meaning as a Jewish community. It was clear to Rabbi Herzog that it would be impossible to apply Halakhah to the secular community without declaring its legitimacy. His vision was thus to organize the general public in a manner appropriate for a ‘‘Jewish state,’’ a society defined as a ‘‘Jewish society.’’ Rabbi Uziel’s ideas on the subject were similar, but were written from a more unequivocally Zionist halakhic perspective, to the point of being quite radical in their stark and direct language.38 Surprisingly, it was in a New York–based Haredi, anti-Zionist rabbinical journal entitled Ha-Ma’or that Rabbi Uziel chose to publish an article on this topic. Indeed, Rabbi Uziel was subjected to sharp criticism from the editor, Rabbi Amsel, which I discuss below.39 Rabbi Uziel’s article has already been analyzed by Professor Tzvi Zohar,40 but in a different context from our own. At the outset of his article, Rabbi Uziel declared that his goal was to permit the testimony of secularists in Jewish courts, in contradiction to the talmudic law that invalidates the testimony of the ‘‘wicked.’’ He stated the problem as follows: The declining position of religion in Israel has led to a situation in which a majority of witnesses appearing before the courts today are not religious. As a result, a majority of legal rulings could be disqualified [according to Halakhah], and the implementation of Torah law in Israel would end, heaven forbid. The responsibility that we bear to base the laws of the people on the fundamental principles of the Torah obligates us to find the possibilities that the law affords to make use of witnesses in their current status, in order to issue rulings that are binding from the perspective of Torah law.41 Rabbi Uziel did not ask whether it would be possible to validate the testimony of the secularists, but rather how it could be done. His formulation of the problem was of the utmost significance. Essentially, he declared that there was an internal substantive contradiction between the application of

Nationalism

247

the law to a particular population and ruling that a majority of that population was not eligible to testify in courts that judge in accordance with that law. According to this view, then, the application of Torah law for a population that is not observant of the Torah and its commandments inherently demands recognition of the testimony of that population. In his halakhic discussion of the issue, Rabbi Uziel took two directions similar to those developed by Rabbi Herzog. Since, for our purposes, the second is the more important and interesting, I discuss them in reverse order. For the second argument, he cited the Shulhan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat 1:22, which establishes that the law that disqualifies witnesses is not a mandatory law, but rather one that is open to stipulation.42 Therefore, a person’s agreement to be judged with reliance on witnesses who are generally disqualified or who are his relatives has validity and makes the judgment valid. Based on this law, Rabbi Uziel claimed that just as such conditions can be accepted by an individual vis-a`-vis his or her own trial, so too can they be accepted by a society as a general enactment.43 This conclusion led Rabbi Uziel to the next step: ‘‘If the society at large benefits from such an enactment, they are permitted to legislate for the benefit of the group, even if it causes individual loss, since the individual also benefits from those things that benefit the society.’’44 In Rabbi Uziel’s view, the public constitutes a separate ‘‘legal entity,’’ and is not just the sum of its constituent members. As such, according to Halakhah, the public has legislative power based on its will and its needs. The legal institutions express the public will and their decisions are thus valid and obligate the entire population, contravening existing halakhic rules. These conclusions led Rabbi Uziel to his final determination: ‘‘We can conclude from it that the members of the Knesset have jurisdiction by virtue of the fact that they are elected and appointed to deal with all general public matters . . . , they can enact the validation of those who [according to Halakhah] are ineligible to give testimony, and their enactment has force and is accepted.’’45 Later in his comments, he added: ‘‘We can conclude that according to the Halakhah, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel is permitted to grant halakhic validity to legislation [of the Knesset] in the State of Israel, to decree that it is acceptable to judge on the basis of testimony given by those who [according to Halakhah] are ineligible.’’46 Thus, the State of Israel should be viewed as an authentic Jewish community in which the traditional authority granted by Halakhah to the community is naturally transferred to the state institutions. The elected officials of the community who were chosen in democratic elections have the halakhic authority to enact legislation.

248

Edrei

Rabbi Uziel’s point of departure, as shown above, was that if we view the citizens of the state as the target population for the application of Torah law, then Torah law must accommodate itself to this reality. His argument for the acceptance of ‘‘witnesses in their current status’’ constitutes in my eyes the heart of his argument, and the essence of his effort. Rabbi Uziel saw an inherent conflict between viewing the State of Israel as a Jewish community and simultaneously maintaining that a majority of its citizens are unqualified to serve as witnesses because of their lack of compliance with expected halakhic norms. Indeed, the editor of the Haredi periodical where this article appeared identified the far-reaching implications in Rabbi Uziel’s approach, and thus attacked him sharply, refusing to grant Jewish authenticity to a secular community: Our author [of the Shulhan Arukh, Rabbi Yosef Karo] of blessed memory did not specify here to which public and which assembly he referred. Nevertheless, it is clear as day that he had in mind a tzibbur [public] that observes the Torah and its commandments . . . for it is clear to any intelligent person that the concept of tzibbur in the Talmud and the codes refers to individuals who have organized into a unified body for the sake of the Torah and the performance of its commandments. . . . But the organizations of Mapai, Mapam, the Shomrim, and the secularists of their kinds are a new plague that was never referred to in the Torah.47 I believe that the comments of the editor reflect a precise understanding of the critical point in Rabbi Uziel’s approach: the definition of the tzibbur as a community of religious and secular Jews that he considers a halakhically authentic community. Uziel’s ruling with regard to testimony is a requisite result of this definition. Let us now return to Rabbi Uziel’s first line of reasoning to see how it served as a foundation for his later comments. Here, Rabbi Uziel followed the path that we saw previously in the words of Rabbi Herzog, the implicit adoption of Rava’s position regarding the testimony of a transgressor. Rabbi Uziel established that people who transgress the commandments may indeed be truthful people whose testimony should not be disqualified.48 This approach, of course, set the stage for the next step: the recognition of the secular public as a tzibbur in the halakhic sense.49

Nationalism

249

From Ideology to Law II: Conversion in a Secular Era As stated above, one of the most turbulent and contentious issues that arose as a result of the social processes described at the beginning of this essay was related to the acceptance of converts. The dramatic change in the nature of the Jewish community, to a community in which a religiously observant lifestyle was not central to the society, raised the question as to the essence of joining the Jewish community. To what part of the community does the convert become connected? More fundamentally, what is the essence and the meaning of a religious process of conversion in a secular society? These important and central questions arose primarily in light of the spread of the phenomenon of civil marriage, which was initiated in Western and Central Europe toward the end of the nineteenth century. The following scenario became common: A married couple in which one of the partners was Jewish but not halakhically observant would come to the Jewish community and request that the non-Jewish spouse be converted and thus join the community. It would be clear to the authority who was approached to oversee the conversion that the lifestyle of the couple afterward was unlikely to change significantly; this would not be the time-honored conversion into a community of Torah-observant Jews. On the other hand, the very request to undergo a process of conversion reflected that the couple wished to adopt a Jewish identity, and that although the religion had lost much of its importance for them, it was still not completely irrelevant. Traditional conversion to Judaism comprises two factors—the physical and the mental. The physical elements—circumcision and ritual immersion—do not raise any particular problems. In contrast, the mental factor that requires a conscious ‘‘acceptance of the commandments’’50 lies at the heart of the matter. The talmudic requirements regarding acceptance of the commandments as part of the conversion process are unclear. It was debated throughout the Middle Ages whether the acceptance of the commandments is part of the process of conversion, or a resulting outcome. Of course, this debate was then academic and theoretical since prior to the modern period, converts became part of a Torah-observant community and thus adopted its practices. In contemporary times, however, since the Jewish community has lost its unique character as a religious community with a traditional lifestyle, and, even more so, since it is often clear that the convert has no intention of fulfilling the commandments, many rabbis have asked themselves whether it is appropriate or even possible to accept these converts.

250

Edrei

Here, too, the concrete halakhic debate at its core is over the nature and limits of the new Jewish community. In fact, the real question that the halakhic authorities face is not the acceptance of the convert himself, but the preservation or alienation of the convert’s Jewish family. A negative ruling by the authority in this case will not lead to the dissolution of the family, but will rather push away the Jewish partner and the children (either Jewish children or the children of a Jewish father), beyond the pale of the Jewish community. I would like to survey two paradigmatic responses to this issue that reflect the halakhic debate in the nineteenth century. In the first response, Rabbi Shlomo Kluger (1785–1869) of Brody considered a question that he received from ‘‘the lands of Germany and France’’ regarding a Jew who was living with a non-Jewish woman and ‘‘had returned to his father’s house and she wished to convert.’’ The rabbi was well aware of and focused on the fact that the couple had the choice to connect either to the Jewish community or to the Christian community. Rabbi Kluger viewed their very aspiration to be part of the Jewish community as sufficient proof of their genuine desire to be Jewish, fulfilling the requirement for an appropriate consciousness for conversion: For if he wanted to, he could convert from Judaism and remain in the locale of the gentile woman. Who forced him to come to his father’s house? . . . Since he only wants to be a Jew, and for her to convert, it proves that their intent is for the sake of Heaven. . . . And one should not be stringent in this situation, since there is a concern that he will go out and become part of an evil culture.51 Fascinatingly, it is the woman who is asking to convert, yet the rabbi pays attention to the intent of the Jewish husband. Rabbi Kluger was prepared to accept her because he believed that her Jewish husband was indeed interested in remaining in the community. He was concerned that if he would take a stringent approach, the husband would leave the Jewish community. Rabbi Kluger did not concern himself with whether the couple would observe the commandments after the conversion. In reality, he subjected the laws of conversion to the classic and accepted talmudic value of trying to preserve every Jew within the community.52 Other rabbis strongly opposed this view. They argued that since the couple in such a case would certainly not adopt a traditional lifestyle of

Nationalism

251

religious commitment, they should under no circumstances be admitted to the Jewish community. Jewish identity that is not based on complete acceptance of religious observance is not the type of Jewish identity required as the basic standard of conversion. This, for example, was the position expressed in 1876 by Rabbi Yitzhak Shmelkes (1827–1905), from the area of Lvov: ‘‘If he converts, but in his heart he does not intend to keep the commandments, and we know his intention . . . then he is not a convert at all. . . . And accordingly, in our generation, . . . such a person is not a convert.’’53 Rabbi Shmelkes stated explicitly in his comments that this opinion was not the law in the Talmud, but he argued that during the talmudic era, unlike today, even if a convert did not completely accept the commandments upon himself, we could be certain that he would ultimately become part of a religious community, and there was therefore no reason to push him away. Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer (1820–99) from Berlin, following Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s ideology of separatism, adopted the following decision.54 He denied any possibility of conversion for a non-Jew who wanted to marry a Jewish woman in Saarbru¨cken because ‘‘there are very few who observe the Sabbath’’ in that city, and therefore ‘‘we know for certain that the convert will continue his previous practices, and will desecrate the Sabbath and will conduct himself as all of those who cast off the yoke of the commandments.’’55 The arguments expressed by Rabbi Kluger, on the one hand, and by Rabbis Shmelkes and Hildesheimer, on the other, reveal the key issue that would drive the polemic in the following decades—that the controversy was essentially about the parameters of the Jewish community in light of the new reality of fragmentation. Subsequent rabbis who wished to broaden the communal parameters to include all factions adopted the approach of Rabbi Kluger. This included rabbis who sought to include even non-observant Jews—secularists—who wish to identify as Jews. Fully aware of the dramatic change that they were advocating, those authorities who adopted this position related to the new Jewish community with the same concepts that had been used to relate to the community of old: the classic considerations of ‘‘responsibility’’ and concern for all Jews. The conversion that they advocated was a ‘‘price’’ that they were willing to pay in order to keep the Jewish spouse and children of the convert in the community. In contrast, the authorities who took the stringent approach were trying to preserve the traditional parameters of the religious community, but the price that they had to pay

252

Edrei

was the loss of a significant portion of the people. According to this position, the community could not accept a convert if the authorities knew that he would not join the authentic traditional community. Policies regarding conversion are thus a function of the ‘‘imagined community’’ of the ruling authority: an inclusive fragmented community or an exclusive traditional Orthodox community. The significance of the broader definition is the recognition—even if not declared and perhaps not even conscious—of a communal Jewish identity that is not based on observance of normative halakhic practice. Conversely, the opposition to a more liberal policy on conversion flows from a narrow recognition of Jewish identity, based solely on the performance of the commandments. The concept of nationalism was unknown in talmudic times and the Middle Ages. Similarly, most halakhic scholars in the nineteenth century, among them the authorities mentioned above, were not familiar with the concept. The talmudic concept of conversion was understood as becoming a part of the Jewish people, which resulted in an obligation to abide by its normative system. Jewish peoplehood and Jewish religion were fused.56 The rise of nationalism in general, and Jewish nationalism in particular, at the end of the nineteenth century sharpened the question: Is conversion based on religion or nationality? Were advocates of the lenient position actually proposing a secular-ethnic conversion in the guise of a religious process? I contend that some of the Religious Zionist authorities adopted the more lenient approach to conversion because it gave conversion a national tone. The covenant of fate demands a broader approach to accepting converts than the traditional conversion that is for the purpose of religious observance. Here, too, the perception of the State of Israel as an authentic Jewish community lies at the heart of their ruling. Since the early 1970s, a bitter controversy over conversion has taken place in Israel, arousing strong public sentiment. The Israeli law of return grants the right of immigration and automatic citizenship to any Jew and his immediate family, even if the family members are not Jewish. Often, the mixed families that arrive request conversion for the non-Jewish members of the family. The religious world is divided on the question of how to relate to these conversions. In this discourse, we find the aforementioned debates from nineteenth-century Europe replaying almost verbatim. On the one hand, it is nearly certain that the convert in these situations will not fundamentally change his lifestyle, but on the other hand it is clear that pushing away the convert constitutes pushing away the entire family. In this instance, however,

Nationalism

253

there is an additional factor in the debate—the fact that it takes place in the State of Israel. Clearly, this factor has significance in the eyes of some of the religious authorities, as we see further on. In analyzing the debate, it becomes clear as well that the distinction between those advocating conversion and those opposing is more obvious than it was in nineteenth-century Europe— all the rabbis who support a lenient position on conversion under these circumstances are Religious Zionists, while a vast majority of those who oppose these conversions are non-Zionist, Haredi authorities. Let us try to understand the relationship between positions on conversion and attitudes toward Zionism and the State of Israel. In order to do so, I present the positions of two other chief rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Isser Yehudah Unterman (1886–1976) and Rabbi Shlomo Goren (1918–94), both of whom expressed clear and innovative positions on the subject, and revealed their halakhic policy considerations. Rabbi Isser Yehudah Unterman, Ashkenazic chief rabbi from 1964 to 1972, published an article in 1970 in which he unequivocally supported the conversion of immigrants from the Soviet Union, even though he also expressed his recognition of the fact that the probability that they would subsequently adopt religious lifestyles was very small.57 In a case where the Jewish partner does not observe the commandments at all, it is hard to believe that the non-Jewish spouse will do so after conversion.58 In his introductory comments, Rabbi Unterman stated that in England, where he had served as chief rabbi of Liverpool, he had adopted a stringent position on conversion and had refused to accept converts who were motivated by their desire to marry a Jew. Nevertheless, he now proposed to diverge from that policy, stating that the considerations that supported a stringent position in England were not valid in Israel. Two of the points that he mentioned in the article were the battle against intermarriage in England at the time, and the fact that the candidates for conversion generally remained in the same place vis-a`-vis their social context and lifestyle: ‘‘And a convert such as this doesn’t see himself spiritually as a newborn infant, because he does not recognize any change in his lifestyle.’’59 Rabbi Unterman raised three arguments to explain why his rulings in Israel had to be different from his previous rulings in England. The first argument was essentially a review of the arguments raised by the lenient authorities in the nineteenth century: The fact that the couple is already married and that there is no pressure for them to separate from each other in itself proves that the desire to convert is genuine and not for external reasons;

254

Edrei

the concern of losing an entire family if the authorities do not accept the convert; and the lack of observance of the commandments after the conversion does not prove that the commitment to keep the commandments at the time of the conversion was not forthright. In addition, Rabbi Unterman highlighted and intensified the argument that the most important aspect of the acceptance of the commandments is distancing oneself from idolatry. The emphasis on this last point led Rabbi Unterman to his second argument: ‘‘Those who came to Israel and cut themselves off from their previous environment, and project themselves as Jews in all of their documents, clearly do not intend to remain attached to an alien faith.’’60 In other words, the very act of immigration to Israel, the identification as a Jew within the context of the State of Israel, constitutes a clinging to the Jewish people and the abandonment of any alien faith—a distancing from idolatry. Although not stated explicitly, Rabbi Unterman in actual fact forfeited the real acceptance of the commandments as a requirement for conversion. In its place, he viewed immigration to Israel and identification with the Jewish community there as a concrete act of joining the Jewish people. He saw the non-Jewish immigrant to Israel as a newborn infant, cut off from his previous people and lifestyle.61 I would like to suggest that we have here a striking blurring of the boundaries between the religious and the national, and a description of national connectedness expressed in religious terms. Rabbi Unterman’s third argument is even more radical. The battle against intermarriage that was relevant in England is not relevant in Israel: ‘‘The concern is that all of these [non-Jews who immigrated to Israel with Jewish family members] will intermingle with the community and in a short amount of time, their origins will be unknown.’’62 In the Jewish reality throughout the generations, in which the Jews constituted a minority within a gentile majority, halakhic rulings were a means of preventing assimilation and absorption into the surrounding gentile society. In the State of Israel, in contrast, where a society with a Jewish majority exists for the first time in over two millennia, the concern is the absorption of the gentile population into the Jewish majority. It seems obvious to me that Rabbi Unterman saw this absorption as a blessing, and viewed conversion as an appropriate method for giving it halakhic license. He created a narrative that saw the non-Jews accompanying the Soviet Jewish immigrants as partners in their pain and worthy of our pity. More than that, he also expressed the hope of their return in repentance to an equal degree: ‘‘our hope for our brethren and the nonJews who accompanied them.’’63 Rabbi Unterman’s language is reminiscent

Nationalism

255

of the prophetic description of the return to Zion, which he mentions several times—as part of the comfort and hope for redemption that is inherent in the return to Zion—that the non-Jew will ‘‘accompany’’ the Jews to Israel and live there with them. Thus, for example, Isaiah prophesized about the return to Zion: ‘‘For the Lord will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and the stranger shall join himself with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob’’ (Isaiah 14:1).64 Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who succeeded Rabbi Unterman as Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Israel from 1972 until 1983, was a leading Religious Zionist thinker and halakhic authority, whose opinions and personality were quite provocative. The questions of Jewish identity and of the relationship between religion and state in Israel preoccupied Rabbi Goren in much of his thinking and writing. Despite his strong identification with Zionism and Jewish nationalism, he vocally opposed the nationalist, Israeli secular culture that sought to develop a Jewish national identity devoid of a religious context. He battled for the inclusion of religious components and Jewish values as the heart of Israel’s Jewish identity.65 In his discourse on conversion in Israel, Rabbi Goren examined the connection between Jewish peoplehood and Jewish religion in Jewish thought. His ideas about the linkage between nationalism and religion emphasized the necessity of being attached to the Jewish people as a prerequisite for attachment to the Jewish religion, a position that was the converse of the prevalent rabbinic thinking. Based on this emphasis, he argued that the essence of conversion is consciously and willfully becoming part of the Jewish people, and that the obligation to fulfill the commandments is an outcome of becoming a Jew: ‘‘In the case of Ruth, it was explicitly written: ’Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God’ [Ruth 1:16]. . . . The truth is that every conversion is fundamentally the act of the convert joining the Jewish people, and the acceptance of the yoke of the Torah and its commandments is a condition of conversion, but not the conversion itself.’’66 After accepting this idea, the path to creating a linkage between immigration to Israel and conversion is short. In such a framework, immigration to Israel and identification with its rebuilding is the deciding factor regarding connectedness to the Jewish people: ‘‘The individual and national connection to the Land of Israel is a crucial factor in the maintenance of the Jewish people and its Torah. Therefore, it can be a halakhic stumbling block to joining the Jewish people if the non-Jew does not accept upon himself the commandment to settle in the Land of Israel.’’67

256

Edrei

In a subsequent article, Rabbi Goren tried to anchor his ideas in the classical halakhic literature, claiming that the Babylonian Talmud has a negative attitude toward conversion, while the Jerusalem Talmud expresses a positive attitude.68 He explained this difference based on the following citation from Tractate Gerim: ‘‘The Land of Israel is beloved because it qualifies converts’’ (Gerim 4:3).69 The land assures that the converts will integrate and become blended in every way into the lifestyle of the Jewish people, and in the end they will act for the sake of heaven. But the Babylonian Talmud talks about conversion in the diaspora, where the converts continue to live in an alien environment that is estranged from Judaism, they and their children continue their connection with their non-Jewish family, and there is no possibility of disengagement from the entire family and the lifestyle that is foreign to the Torah and to Judaism.70 Essentially, Rabbi Goren followed in the footsteps of Rabbi Unterman, positing that immigration to Israel and identification with the rebuilding of the land should be viewed as the creation of a substantive bond to the authentic Jewish community, and considered the heart of conversion.71 Furthermore, through his comparison of the two talmudic attitudes toward the phenomenon of conversion, he advanced the argument that there is a distinction between conversion in the context of a diasporic, minority society and conversion in the context of the new reality of Jewish sovereignty. The positions of Rabbis Unterman and Goren implicitly constitute the ideological foundation of the conversion courts that function in Israel today, and of the supportive rabbis who drive them, such as Rabbi Yaacov Ariel, Rabbi Shlomo Daichovsky, and Rabbi Hayim Druckman. Perhaps the period in which they functioned, in conjunction with their unique personalities and standing, allowed Rabbis Unterman and Goren to explicitly make radical declarations that others would not make in public.

Epilogue: The Religious Connotations of Secular Nationalism Confronting modernity and the secularism that followed in its wake, rabbinic leaders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries faced a complex and challenging dilemma, to be inclusive and accept all Jews but to weaken or lose the religious character of the community; or to be exclusive and reject the non-religious Jews but preserve the nature of the old community. Those who chose to preserve the broader community were forced to acquiesce and

Nationalism

257

acknowledge a secular Jewish identity. In contrast, those who chose to protect and preserve the traditional remnant that remained true to a religious lifestyle were forced to forfeit part of the community. The rise of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel, which brought with it a secular national Jewish identity, prompted some religious thinkers to develop a theological model that, in their view, would satisfy both sides of the dilemma. This model aimed to recognize a secular and national Jewish identity but without renouncing religious identity as the heart of Jewishness. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s dual model of the fate community and the faith community provided a conceptual framework for this approach that had defined the thinking of the Religious Zionists who preceded him. Accordingly, these categories enable us to analyze and understand the halakhic rulings issued subsequently by Rabbis Unterman and Goren. The significant innovation of the approach articulated by Rabbi Soloveitchik is the recognition of secular Zionism as an authentic Jewish identity. In this essay I have sought to show that it was in fact impossible to preserve the boundary between these two identities, and that the recognition of the fate community ultimately required halakhic changes and modifications. The recognition of a secular national Jewish identity as a valid Jewish identity could not occur in isolation from Halakhah; instead, it brought new demands onto Halakhah. The two examples that we examined—the acceptance of the testimony of non-observant Jews and an inclusive definition of who is a Jew for the purposes of conversion—are both prerequisites for the definition of the society in Israel as one Jewish community. The four leading rabbis whom we examined in this article were driven by their dedication to Religious Zionist ideals to introduce new ideas and interpretations, and to make halakhic sacrifices in order to maintain their vision of one Jewish community that would include both secular and religious Jews. The opinions expressed by Rabbis Herzog, Uziel, Unterman, and Goren incorporated the concept of the community of fate into concrete halakhic decisions, and in the process inevitably reshaped their ideal vision of the faith community. Indeed, from between the lines of their writings emerged a bold, new vision based on an unfolding reality in which secular nationalism took on religious connotations.

PA R T I V

New Conceptions: A Forum

chapter 12

Between Supersessionism and Atavism: Toward a Neo-Secular View of Religion david n. myers

The three participants in this forum represent three distinct political, intellectual, and methodological perspectives within the field of Jewish history. And yet, what brought us together to propose a research group at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies was a shared interest in the relevance of recent debates over the secular to the field of Jewish studies, and vice versa. Two core assumptions animated the organizers. First, secularism is important because it is, and can only be, about religion—or, perhaps to strip away the ideological sheen of ‘‘secularism,’’ we can say, following Talal Asad, that ‘‘the concept of the secular cannot do without the idea of religion.’’1 The two are inextricably linked, even though we have been taught to think of them as antithetical to and corrosive of one other. The second proposition is that religion is undeniably important in modern society, an exceptionally potent force in our lives and imaginations, from Southeast Asia to Southern California, Islam to Hinduism, Christianity to Judaism, from fundamentalism to new religious movements. Accordingly, it would seem that we can rather easily dispatch with one of the stereotypical claims attributed to the classic ‘‘secularization thesis’’—namely, that the rise of the secular entailed the fall of religion tout court.2 But if so, then we are obligated to accept, syllogistically, that if the secular and the religious are inextricably linked, and religion is important, then so too is the secular? How so and in what ways? Before arriving at a more

262

Myers

definitive response, I propose, in the first section of this essay, to identify two distinct currents of understanding of the secular in recent debate, and then to situate them in a pair of important though contrasting genealogies central to twentieth-century intellectual culture. In the second section, I illustrate the coexistence of seemingly competing currents in a fascinating laboratory of religious change: Kiryas Joel, New York, a legally recognized village in New York comprising, almost exclusively, Satmar Hasidic Jews. In the final section, I enumerate a set of ‘‘neo-secularist’’ propositions as a prod to the debates in and beyond the field of Jewish studies to which this book seeks to contribute.

Entangled Web: The Religious and the Secular The first conceptual and discursive current calls attention to the undeniable religious roots of the secular, all the while looking on with a good deal of skepticism at claims of secularism’s creation ex nihilo and, for that matter, its benevolence. For example, Talal Asad, among others, makes the important etymological point that the very term ‘‘saeculum’’ (whence the English term ‘‘secular’’) originated in the heart of a robust medieval and early modern theological discourse.3 Indeed, in those periods the term connoted Catholic clerics who did not live a monastic existence. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin affirms this etiological and etymological point, albeit in a somewhat more specific context, by arguing that the secular Jewish national ideal—at once an object and bearer of Western Orientalism—derived from ‘‘the theological imagination’’ of Protestantism.4 These efforts at exposing the indebted and derivative nature of the secular aim to strip away from secularism its long-assumed primacy over religious expression and movements. A key prod to and partner of secularism in this regard is nationalism, which often shares the same instinct to cast religion as reactionary, antiquated, and dangerous. This is a key point in the work of both Asad and Raz-Krakotzkin, and it anchors the Indian scholar Ashis Nandy’s ‘‘anti-secularist manifesto’’ (1985), in which he argues that the modern state, particularly the Indian state, imposes a notion of secularism that treats ‘‘any one who is not secular [as] definitionally intolerant.’’5 In fact, Nandy counters, those Hindus and Muslims who do not submit to the logic of a statist secularism are more inclined to tolerance than their secularist critics. Against this skeptical view of the concept of secularism stands a more conventional belief in the originary force of the secular. In the field of Jewish

Between Supersessionism and Atavism

263

history, a pair of recent books makes clear the ongoing potency of this view from a variety of angles. The American scholar David Biale proposes in his Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought (2010) a lineage of Jewish secular thought that reaches well past modern times into the Middle Ages and even antiquity. Shmuel Feiner, for his part, bites off a narrower chunk of time and space in The Origins of Jewish Secularization in EighteenthCentury Europe (2010). Feiner seeks to demonstrate that there was a marked shift in norms, behavior, and beliefs among German Jews in the eighteenth century even before the rise of a conscious and declared Jewish Enlightenment project, the Haskalah. So deeply did this shift take hold, it is argued, that even those whom we might describe as ‘‘traditionalists’’—self-consciously anti-secular in outlook—were as much ‘‘children of modernity’’ as proud secularists. This was the position of the distinguished scholar Jacob Katz and his disciples in Jewish history.6 Secularization modified and altered religion such that it too emerged an unmistakable product of modernity—notwithstanding the fact that it was often defined by its most conservative adherents as an unbroken link with the ancient past. An especially important version of this thesis has come from the sociologist Jose´ Casanova in his well-known book Public Religions in the Modern World (1994). According to Casanova, if empirical evidence and plain observation make it impossible to maintain any longer that religion has been vanquished by the forces of secularization, one can still point to the differentiation of spheres—religious from secular, public from private—that secularism wrought. But differentiation of spheres entails neither stasis nor linear decline. Rather, Casanova argues, religion unshackled itself from the margins of the private realm and resurfaced with new vigor in the public sphere, resulting in the modern, secular phenomenon of ‘‘deprivatized religion.’’7 Up to this point, I have identified two broad modes of thought about the secular, one convinced of the power of secularism to transform, if not altogether dispose of, traditional religious forms, and the other marked by suspicion about secularism’s claims to originality, as well about its benign quality. These two outlooks have deeper roots in the intellectual firmament of twentieth-century Europe. The former current has its anchor in the thought of the greatest of modern sociologists, Max Weber. Weber is known less for his explicit use of the word ‘‘secularization’’ than for the term he famously introduced in his lecture ‘‘Wissenschaft als Beruf ’’ (‘‘Science as a Vocation’’) from 1917, Entzauberung.8

264

Myers

Weber meant to convey by this term that the modern age was marked by a degree of ‘‘disenchantment’’ or ‘‘demystification’’ from a previous world in which ‘‘mysterious incalculable forces’’ reigned supreme. While observing that moderns did not necessarily know more about the world in which they lived, Weber contended that they surely possessed the rational and intellectual tools to do so without making ‘‘recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits.’’ This resulting ‘‘intellectualization’’ was a powerful form of disenchantment and betokened a new age that challenged the primacy of traditional modes of religious knowledge, authority, and leadership.9 A second tradition that fuels debates over the secular today is rooted in the thought of a near contemporary of Weber’s, the German legal theorist Carl Schmitt, known equally well for his Nazi sympathies as for his scholarship. Schmitt’s 1922 book Political Theology offered a number of trenchant insights into the nature of the modern notions of sovereignty and state power. It contained his oft-quoted belief that ‘‘all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts’’ rooted in medieval and early modern conservative Catholic thought. Schmitt pointed to linguistic, historical, and structural affinities between the premodern political order and the modern notion of sovereignty. In this regard, he reversed the process analyzed by Weber, arguing that religious norms and rhetoric powerfully, if sometimes imperceptibly, informed the modern state.10 This recognition of the earlier theological roots of the secular seems to gesture toward what we might call an atavistic perspective that identifies the inescapably religious origins of all things modern. By contrast, the Weberian legacy points toward what we might call with more than a tinge of irony— given its religious overtones—a supersessionist perspective. Such a perspective announces the triumph of a modern secular, rational, disenchanted sensibility over mystical, enchanted, and superstitious religion. These two theoretical poles are, admittedly, exaggerated versions of more nuanced stances. Weber did not herald with unrestrained enthusiasm the advent of a new age of disenchantment. Schmitt, for his part, did not seek to reduce all of modern political thought to a primordial religious script, but, in the first instance, to note the parallel in ‘‘systematic structure’’ between early modern theological concepts and modern notions of sovereignty. Still, it is important to observe the competing directions in which the atavistic and supersessionist narrative vectors move; in one case, the secular emerges out of a medieval theological bed, and in the other, religion is continually on the

Between Supersessionism and Atavism

265

defensive in the face of secular challenges. Perhaps the greatest value of these constructs is not to crown one or the other with the mantle of victory, but rather to see that the seemingly opposing vectors are quite entangled—as the following case study reveals.

The Village of Kiryas Joel: Hasidic—and Secular? If anything, Kiryas Joel would seem to hammer a final nail into the coffin of classic secularization theory. It is, as noted, a legally recognized village in the state of New York that comprises a population that is almost entirely Satmar Hasidim—22,000 in all. Arguably, there never has been, in the long annals of the Jewish dispersion, a shtetl—to borrow the Yiddish term for an allenveloping Jewish town—as large and homogeneous as Kiryas Joel. It is particularly striking that a community of this nature took rise not in the heartland of the shtetl, nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, but in late twentiethcentury America. The exotic allure of Kiryas Joel—the extraordinary existence of a legally recognized, autonomous municipality of Hasidic Jews—has drawn the attention of the media, earning it nearly daily coverage in the newspapers of Orange County, New York, periodic stories in the New York Times, and a segment on 60 Minutes (in 1994). Scholarly attention has been more scattered.11 The 1994 Supreme Court case surrounding the constitutionality of a public school in Kiryas Joel generated the most impressive body of scholarship. It afforded an opportunity for legal theorists, both liberals and communitarians, to debate the extent to which a public school in Kiryas Joel did or did not transgress the boundary between religion and state.12 Jonathan Boyarin concisely summarized the differing scholarly positions, as well as those of the Supreme Court justices in the 1994 case, in a chapter of his coauthored Powers of Diaspora.13 There he sought to alter the terms of reference in the debate by looking beyond the stark opposition between religious and secular to which commentators frequently resort in understanding the creation of Kiryas Joel and its school district. In a parallel (and characteristic) move, Boyarin suggested that we understand the origins of the community not as the result of the drive toward ‘‘individual and territorial liberty,’’ but rather as based on ‘‘genealogical and diasporic loyalty.’’14 More recently, Leora Batnitzky addressed the community in the coda to a book devoted to the invention of Judaism as a religion in the modern age.

266

Myers

Batnitzky followed Jacob Katz and Michael Silber in noting that ‘‘ultraorthodoxy is of course just as much modernity’s child’’ as other religious expressions of the era, including Reform Judaism.15 At the same time, she noted that traditionalist groups like the Satmar Hasidim proved unwilling to fit themselves into the modern secular notion of religion that was a sine qua non of Emancipation; that is, they did not see themselves as members of a purely religious confession confined to the private sphere whose public lives and identity were defined by the surrounding gentile society. According to their worldview, the worldview of Kiryas Joel, religion, culture, and politics are inextricably entwined. Both Boyarin and Batnitzky challenge, in their respective modes, the religious/secular binarism in the case of Kiryas Joel. Building on this pair of contributions, I would like to illustrate how the community entangles the very categories of religious and secular. To do so requires tracing the roots of the community, and especially its founding leader, back to Europe. Kiryas Joel came about as the result of a distinctive religious and political vision—political theology, we might say—developed by the first grand rabbi of Satmar Hasidism, Joel Teitelbaum (1887–1979). Rabbi Teitelbaum was born into one of the most distinguished, combative, and stringently observant families in Hungary. More particularly, he and his family came from the Hungarian Unterland, in the northeast corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was one of the main birthplaces of Haredi or ultra-Orthodox Judaism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Joel Teitelbaum served both as a charismatic Hasidic rebbe and as community rabbi in a number of towns and cities in Hungary and, after the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, Romania. His last position in Europe was as rabbi of the city of Satu Mare (or Szatma`r in Hungarian), from which the Satmar Hasidic brand of Orthodoxy drew its name. Already in Europe, Rabbi Teitelbaum gained a reputation as one of the most forceful proponents of Haredi Judaism in the world. For him, the challenge was nothing less than survival in a modern world rife with pollution and corruption. In fact, Teitelbaum imagined himself and his followers to be surrounded by concentric circles of enmity: the outermost circle was the gentile world, followed next by nonobservant Reform-oriented Jews, then the putatively observant Jews (e.g., the so-called Modern Orthodox), and then fellow traditionalist Jews who appeared to be bound to Torah but actually were not. But Rabbi Teitelbaum reserved his greatest opprobrium for Zionists, who failed to heed, in his view, the rabbinic injunction against humanly inspired action to return to the Land

Between Supersessionism and Atavism

267

of Israel. Against these various circles of enmity, all products of the perilous modern world, Teitelbaum preached constant battle.16 Given this constitutive combativeness, it is perhaps surprising to note that Teitelbaum routinely interacted with local political officials in Satu Mare and other venues where he served as rabbi. Drawing on the ancient rabbinic proposition that ‘‘the law of the kingdom is the law,’’ he and his advisors— latter-day stadlanim (communal intercessors)—practiced a form of pragmatic political accommodation in order to advance the interests of the community. That is, they openly respected the authority of the mayor, governor, and king—one of the most iconic pictures of Rabbi Teitelbaum is of him bowing to greet King Carol II of Romania in 1936—and went to great lengths to manifest their loyalty to state power. One could argue that this impulse toward accommodation even played a role in Teitelbaum’s survival during the darkest days of the Nazi assault in Hungary in 1944. He was chosen for inclusion on a list of some 1,700 Jews to be saved by the Hungarian Zionist official Rudolf Kasztner. Despite Teitelbaum’s ferocious opposition to Zionism, he did agree to be included on the list that emerged out of Kasztner’s negotiations with Adolf Eichmann.17 In fact, Teitelbaum’s personality and approach to life offer an intriguing blend of pugnacious defense of tradition and skillful political accommodation, both in Europe and his new life in America. After liberation in December 1944, Teitelbaum made brief sojourns in Switzerland and Palestine before arriving in New York on Rosh Hashanah in 1946. He quickly settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, already home to a sizeable Orthodox population. As he had in his earlier rabbinic postings, he introduced a new degree of ritual stringency into Jewish Williamsburg, attracting a mix of older American residents and recently arrived survivors.18 Within a decade and a half, he had built up a community of thousands of adherents in his main synagogue, Congregation Yetev Lev. What drew adherents to Rabbi Teitelbaum was his own powerful example of personal piety that went hand in hand with a distinctive theological worldview, among whose key pillars were the following: • the belief that modernity represented a monumental rupture in the conduct and sanctity of traditional Jewish life; returning to the ‘‘way of the ancient Israel’’ (derekh Yisra’el sava) required a ceaseless battle against the forces of secularization;

268

Myers

• the belief that the resulting crisis of modernity impelled a life lived between passive acceptance of ultimate messianic redemption and steadfast and aggressive action, under the guidance of a rabbinic leader whose authority was absolute;19 • the demand to create a space of purity at a remove from the seductions and allures of modern urban life—and from Jews who were not fully Torah observant;20 • an unrelenting battle against those deemed to be the source of greatest spiritual contamination, the Zionists.21 These tenets represent articles of Rabbi Teitelbaum’s traditionalist faith, which we might juxtapose with his willingness to engage the secular political process for manifestly instrumental reasons. In America, both the separatism inhering in that faith and his accommodationist instinct gained new force. In fact, they converged at the point of creating Kiryas Joel, New York. A few short years after settling in Brooklyn, Teitelbaum began to urge his close advisors to scout out possible sites of settlement outside of the city. He did so for two primary reasons. First, and of greatest urgency, the Satmar community was growing at such a rate (with six to eight children per family) that its members were rapidly outgrowing the available housing stock in Williamsburg. And second, the very fact that Satmar Hasidim resided in the heart of a teeming, multi-ethnic urban center posed dangers to their way of life. Accordingly, the lay leadership of Satmar, as represented by Lipa Friedman and Leopold (Leibish) Lefkowitz, two Hungarian survivors who served successively as presidents of the community, heeded the rebbe’s desire and began to purchase land in the greater metropolitan area. They relied on a mix of political savvy, business acumen, and cloak-and-dagger tactics in going about their work. In 1952, Satmar representatives entered into negotiations with borough officials on Staten Island to explore the possibility of creating an enclave community there. The rebbe was drawn to the idea of creating a satellite Satmar settlement on an island—one that did not yet have a bridge connecting it to Brooklyn.22 Where better to realize the ideal of separation that he had in mind? Ideal though Staten Island may have been, the negotiations did not pan out. Satmar representatives sought new venues in Dover, New Jersey, and Mt. Kisco and Congers Lake, New York. In pursuing land in these locales, they were mindful of and intent on realizing two basic rights enshrined in

Between Supersessionism and Atavism

269

the U.S. Constitution, both of which were anchors of a modern secular mindset: the right to private property (Fifth Amendment), and the right to the free exercise of religion without interference from the state (First Amendment). The former was the essential precondition of the latter, for to create the kind of separatist community that Teitelbaum had in mind required the purchase of property. But this was not as simple as it might appear. For as they began to prospect for land in New Jersey and New York, Satmar officials encountered resistance from local landowners who were not intent on selling property to foreign-looking Hasidic Jews. By the time they turned their attention to Orange County, New York, in the early 1970s, they were wiser and more chastened. Thus, they recruited a non-Hasidic Jew by the name of Oscar Fisher as their front man in purchasing property in and around the Town of Monroe beginning in 1972.23 By the spring of 1974, after Fisher succeeded in purchasing several hundred acres of land, the secret began to be revealed. Non-Hasidic neighbors heard indirectly (such as through reports of ads in the Yiddish press and offers to purchase their homes) of plans for a major new Satmar settlement in their midst.24 By August, the first Hasidim began to move from Brooklyn to the new community. It did not take long for tensions between the new community and the residents and officials of Monroe to heat up.25 Apart from the ‘‘colossal’’ culture gap between the pious Yiddish-speaking Hasidim and the Monroe residents, as one local reporter described it, there were sharp differences in the way the two groups interpreted the zoning laws of the town.26 Monroe officials understood single-family homes to be intended for relatively small nuclear families. Meanwhile, the Satmar Hasidim imagined such homes to be domiciles for their typical families of eight or more persons; they outfitted and arranged them accordingly, which led to regular conflicts with the town inspector. In addition, the particular religious needs of the community prompted contractors to build small synagogues, schools, ritual baths, markets, and bakeries in the new Satmar apartment buildings, in apparent violation of existing Monroe zoning ordinances. The struggle over zoning continued with growing intensity over two years, punctuated by spot visits, warrants, and even arrests. The Satmar did not roll over and surrender.27 They insisted that such zoning practices were essential to preserving their way of life—and entirely consistent with their right to private property and the free exercise of religion. They also attempted to explain themselves to their neighbors, as Leopold Lefkowitz did in an editorial to the local paper: ‘‘We intend only good. Though our customs are different, the American system

270

Myers

of protection of all people with all beliefs is profoundly important to us. The law, applied evenly and equally, must protect all of us.’’28 To ensure protection under the law, the Satmars assembled a team of lawyers to defend their claims in various jurisdictions. Finally, after two years of escalating friction with Monroe, Satmar leaders, after consulting with Rabbi Teitelbaum, determined in September 1976 that the best path forward would be to create a self-standing, autonomous village as part of the Town of Monroe.29 This would allow the Satmars, among other effects, to establish their own zoning norms. A rapid flurry of additional legal maneuvers followed that almost derailed the plan, including the threat of annexation of Satmar land by Monroe residents and the counter-threat of a federal discrimination suit brought by the Satmars against Monroe residents. But this and other challenges were averted through intense negotiation, and Satmar officials quickly navigated the relatively few hurdles required to gain official recognition as a village in the state of New York.30 On March 2, 1977, Kiryas Joel was officially born. In a strikingly brief period of time, from 1974 to 1977, the Satmar community was transformed from a collection of private property owners into a Hasidic public square. It is important to recall that official recognition as a village was not Rabbi Teitelbaum’s original aim. His desire was to establish a shtetl, an enclave of like-minded Hasidim at a remove from the city, but not necessarily a legal village, with all the responsibilities of governance implied therein. But if the Satmar Hasidim learned anything from their time in America, it was how to play with and within the rules of the system to promote their interests. They knew about and insisted on their constitutional rights. They also knew how to operate in the more mundane world of American legal and political practice, with the aid of skilled lawyers who crafted effective arguments intended to demonstrate that the Satmar were simply seeking to live their collective life according to the laws of the country. And as they grew in numbers through the exceptionally high birthrate of the community, they assumed new political heft, drawing the attention of local and state politicians desirous of their affection and, more particularly, votes—and simultaneously incurring the ire of neighbors fearful of the loss of precious autonomy and resources. Kiryas Joel is not altogether unique. Strong forms of religious communitarianism are quite common in the history of the United States. Kiryas Joel was not even the first Hasidic group to establish its own village. The Skverer

Between Supersessionism and Atavism

271

Hasidim preceded the Satmars by more than a decade and a half when they created a self-standing village incorporated as New Square, New York, in 1961. In fact, America has been home to hundreds of communes—516 by one count, as of 1998—created by idealists of different stripes, most, though not all motivated by religion, who are intent on creating a model society removed from the dangers and impurities of mainstream culture. The story may be said to begin with the arrival of the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock in 1620 and reached a peak in the nineteenth century with the bold fusion of sacred and secular values by the Mormons in Utah.31 Closer to home in time and space, Orange County, New York, where Kiryas Joel is located, has been particularly receptive to such communal forms in recent decades, with the Ananda Ashram (1964) and the Bruderhof community of Bellvale (2001) as two prime examples. That said, few American religious subcommunities have achieved the notoriety or political power of Kiryas Joel, which leads a fascinating dual existence: as an officially recognized municipality that is required to adhere to the laws, norms, and standards of the state of New York, and as an autonomous Hasidic community that operates according to the regulating principles of Halakhah (Jewish law) and Satmar Hasidic customs. Concomitantly, there are two sources of power and authority in Kiryas Joel: the state-recognized political apparatus of the village (board, mayor, and administrator), and the community’s rabbinic leadership, currently headed by Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum (great-nephew of Joel Teitelbaum), whose word reigns supreme in many different aspects of village life, from ritual matters to economic behavior to modesty norms in dress. Not surprisingly, there are frequent complications and tensions between these two sources of authority to the point that even some Satmar residents of Kiryas Joel have gone to court to dissolve the village on the grounds that it violates the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.32 These efforts at dissolution point to the existence of deep schisms that developed within the community following the death of Joel Teitelbaum in 1979. Most recently, Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum has been locked in a bitter feud with his brother in Williamsburg, Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, over control of the global Satmar empire. The feud turned particularly intense following the death of their father, the second Satmar grand rabbi, Moses Teitelbaum, in 2006. One key effect has been the division of the Satmar community into Aroni and Zali factions, including in Kiryas Joel. Whereas once Rabbi Aron’s supporters were the overwhelming majority of residents there, the two sides are now more evenly divided in the village.

272

Myers

To be sure, both camps agree on core principles. They uphold the proudly insular, Torah-centered world of Kiryas Joel and regard it as an attempt to bend the arc of history away from the corrosive forces of modern, secular change toward a regime grounded in ancient religious values and practices. It does not take much imagination to identify in this vision strong elements of an atavistic perspective mentioned in the previous section: the mooring in traditional sources and ways of life; the renewed assertion of rabbinic authority; the declared commitment to the ancient political principle Dina di-malkhuta dina (the law of the kingdom is the law); and the erection of a communal structure, a kehilah, regulated by the dictates of Halakhah. And yet, it seems impossible to narrate the rise of the Satmar community, and particularly its success in bringing Kiryas Joel to life, without recognizing the ‘‘traditionalist’’ nature of the enterprise—‘‘traditionalist’’ not in the sense of unmediated access to the ways and precepts of old, as the Satmars themselves profess, but in a different sense, as we noted earlier—that is, of a tradition that takes shape by encountering the very forces of modernity against which it inveighs.33 An important part of the ‘‘traditionalist’’ creed is a fastidious attention to boundary maintenance. But the story Satmar Hasidim tell less frequently is about their engagement, interaction, and accommodation to the broader secular world around, consistent with the contours of the supersessionist claim outlined earlier. Despite the powerful communal narrative of protest against assimilation, Satmar do not now and never did maintain a completely impermeable cultural border, as they often claim. In their own mythic rendering, Hasidim and other Haredi Jews assert their steadfast adherence to upholding ‘‘ShaLeM,’’ the Hebrew acronym for ‘‘Name,’’ ‘‘Language,’’ and ‘‘Dress’’ that spells the word for ‘‘wholeness.’’ Traditionalist Jews vow to resist assimilating to foreign norms in these three domains of life.34 But they, and Satmar Hasidim among them, have regularly assumed non-Jewish names alongside their Jewish names; they also regularly acquire and make use of languages other than Jewish tongues (spoken Yiddish and ritual Hebrew)—Hungarian in Hungary, English in the United States and England, French and Flemish in Belgium, to mention a few. Moreover, Satmar Hasidim have repeatedly used modern media, from newspapers to radio to the internet, to communicate and stay engaged with the world.35 Making recourse to such media is often discouraged as a formal matter; for example, home internet use for anything but economic reasons is proscribed by leading Satmar rabbis.

Between Supersessionism and Atavism

273

Nonetheless, there is a constant and seemingly irreversible pull among the Satmar rank and file to stay in touch with each other and the broader world through new communication technologies. They exchange information and blog through websites such as ‘‘Kiryas Joel Voice,’’ ‘‘Be-hadre haredim,’’ or ‘‘Satmarnews.’’36 In that sense, the Satmar community, for all its commitment to insularity, is of this world. The doors that the community opened to political engagement during its nearly seven decades in America, through which hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal support have flowed to its coffers, have also allowed for the entry of a steady if slow current of American social, cultural, and political values.37 Kiryas Joel is a good example. Although initially built at the behest of its all-powerful eponymous rebbe, it has become, in many respects, a two-party system, whose competing sides strain against each other to balance the demands of democracy and heteronomy, state law and Halakhah. How, then, to make sense of Kiryas Joel as it navigates the shoals of religious and secular identities? It is, as a formal matter, an instrument of New York state government answerable to all its demands for accountability and transparency. Simultaneously, it is manifestly and unmistakably a religious community—not a diluted Religionsgemeinschaft as nineteenth-century German Reform Jews imagined their loose religious affiliation, but a robust form bound by the dictates of halakhic obligation and part of a long-standing American communitarian tradition.38 It might be helpful to imagine the community as hewing to neither a purely atavistic pole nor a purely supersessionist pole, but rather as an exemplar of what Jose´ Casanova has called ‘‘deprivatized religion.’’ Casanova argues that since the Enlightenment, religion has been ‘‘forced to withdraw from the modern secular state and the modern capitalist economy to find refuge in the newly found private sphere.’’39 But he hastens to point out that ‘‘religious traditions throughout the world are refusing to accept the marginal and privatized role which theories of modernity as well as theories of secularization have reserved for them.’’40 Indeed, religious institutions and individuals have pushed beyond the margins of the private sphere into the public domain, newly energized with a sense of political possibility and mission. The Satmar Hasidim of Kiryas Joel certainly seem to reflect that impulse to push beyond the private realm to the public sphere, armed with a sense of confidence and entitlement to assert their rights on the American landscape. Such a move is a bold act of religious self-assertion. And yet, the legal form

274

Myers

of the community, as well as the means it has used to take rise and flourish, attest to the inescapability of secular forces of change that alter and transform, but do not dispense altogether with, religion. This perspective echoes Andrea Schatz’s reflections in this forum on secular time in the Haskalah. There, she acknowledges the disruptive effects of ‘‘secular interpretations of historical time,’’ while also recognizing the limitations of such a secular regime of time—indeed, its inability to ‘‘control all historical time.’’41

Beyond the Divide: Neo-Secularism Following the discussion of the case of Kiryas Joel, we can proceed, at last, to our final task: the articulation of a number of ‘‘neo-secular’’ propositions that aim to balance between historical texture and commonsense observation. The ‘‘neo-secular’’ nomenclature is employed in contradistinction to an uncritical supersessionist theory of secularization, on one hand, and an overly simplistic and atavistic anti-secularist theory, on the other. This language hints at different phases and faces of the secular, and thereby seeks to challenge the image of a hegemonic monolith that asserts its power in sweeping, uniform, and irreversible fashion. My notion, in contrast to that of Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, is of a more fragmented and historically contingent version of the secular and its effects. The specific example of Kiryas Joel, with all of its idiosyncrasies, embodies this version well. And yet, in advancing this claim, I do not mean to suggest that the neosecularist principles below apply only to the limited case of Kiryas Joel. Rather, they seek to make historical sense of the passage of religious movements and individuals through the byways of modernity, as they undergo large-scale economic, cultural, and political change. Neither fully continuous nor disjunctive, neither totally supersessionist nor atavistic, the neo-secular charts its own course, following the tortuous currents that bend, reshape, and propel forward religion in its manifold modern forms.

Five Neo-Secular Propositions 1. In both etymological and historical terms, the idea of the secular is not a modern novum, but has its roots in medieval and early modern theological notions and ecclesiastical politics.

Between Supersessionism and Atavism

275

2. Following in the wake of the Weberian tradition, it is clear that the plausibility structure of normative religious authority in Europe underwent a process of erosion from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, culminating in the nineteenth in a differentiation of spheres between religious and secular.42 3. This differentiation did not spell the ultimate demise or disappearance of religion. Rather, it successively enfeebled and then empowered religious movements, initially forcing them to the private sphere, but in the process fortifying their resolve and imparting survival tools that allowed for their reemergence in the public sphere. The result was, per Casanova, deprivatized religion. 4. Deprivatized religious movements, as Asad argues, can and do disrupt the public spheres they enter—traversing, effacing, and redrawing the very boundary between private and public in the process. 5. This redrawing of the boundary between private and public, resulting from a constant series of course corrections, retrenchments, and resurgences, affirms the dynamism of a ‘‘neo-secular’’ age that highlights (and amplifies) the mutability, vitality, and vulnerability of religion. In this last regard, it remains an open question whether Kiryas Joel, New York, fast on its way to becoming the first all-Hasidic city in the world, can preserve its distinctive and insular way of life. The need to engage the outside political world on a daily basis, an essential feature of life in the public sphere, threatens to introduce new and unwelcome values into the community. More ominously, the ever-changing forms of electronic social media not only redefine the bounds of community for their consumers. They also offer new— and in the eyes of Kiryas Joel’s leaders, dangerous—sources of attraction to the village’s young people, bearing the potential to draw them definitively away from ‘‘the way of the ancient Israel.’’43

chapter 13

Secularism, the Christian Ambivalence Toward the Jews, and the Notion of Exile amnon raz-krakotzkin

This essay focuses on several key aspects of secularism and secularization from a Jewish point of view, and seeks to draw out the political implications and urgency of the question. My point of departure is an observation by Carlo Ginzburg on the role of Christian ambivalence toward the Jews in the construction of modern historical consciousness. Examining its implications in several historical and political contexts, I suggest that we expand Ginzburg’s argument and view it as central rather than parenthetical to many aspects associated with the secular, particularly the notion of progress. Based on this analysis, I show the unique significance of Christian ambivalence for the analysis of Jewish and Zionist discourses. Jewish discourse provides us with the opportunity to integrate two different perspectives from which we should approach the question of secularism. The first is the historical analysis of the Jewish existence as a ‘‘problem’’ for modern secularism. The second perspective is provided by Zionism as a project of westernization of the Jews, a process that in reality took place through an internalization of Christian perceptions of the Jews and their exile. The secular Zionist, the figure that most represents the now fashionable ‘‘JudeoChristian,’’ has been constructed through a distinction from the East, from the Arab, and from the historical-exilic Jew. Zionism is an exceptional case, but one from which we can learn about the rule. Its analysis also reveals the potential inherent in the concept of exile for advancing an alternative option of secularity, one that itself demands a process of de-colonization.

Christian Ambivalence

277

Secularism and the Christian Ambivalence Toward the Jews In an essay dedicated to the memory of Amos Funkenstein, Carlo Ginzburg demonstrates the Christian dimension in the writing of modern history. Following his reading of Augustine’s view of history, Ginzburg refers to Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s statement that ‘‘if Herodotus was the father of history, the fathers of meaning in history were the Jews,’’1 and claims: ‘‘However, neither the Greeks nor the Jews ever entertained anything comparable to the notion of historical perspective with which we are familiar. Only a Christian such as Augustine, reflecting on the destined relationships between Christians and Jews, and between the Old and New Testaments, could have formulated the idea that became, by way of the Hegelian concept of Aufhebung, a crucial element of our historical consciousness: namely, that the past must be understood both on its own terms and as a link in the chain that in the last analysis leads up to ourselves. I am proposing that we can see, in this ambivalence, a secularized projection of the Christian ambivalence toward the Jews.’’2 Following this observation, Ginzburg later concludes that ‘‘our way of knowing the past is imbued with the Christian attitude of superiority toward the Jews. In other terms: the phrase ‘verus Israel ’ (the true Israel), in as much as it is the self-definition of Christianity, is also the matrix of the conception of historical truth that remains—and here I deliberately use an all-embracing term—our own.’’3 Ginzburg thus goes beyond those who have previously observed and analyzed the Christian theological origins of modern European perceptions of history,4 and points to the concrete aspect that dominates our historical consciousness: the ambivalence toward the Jews. The Jew is the one who carries the hidden knowledge, the Hebraica Veritas that he himself cannot understand. The origins of the idea of progress, a crucial element of modern historical consciousness, of ‘‘a truth replaced by a superior truth,’’ are to be found in the complicated and ambivalent Christian attitude toward the Jews, of the idea of the New Testament that replaces the Old Testament while revealing the latter’s true meaning.5 It would be, of course, utterly wrongheaded to portray Augustine’s perception of history (and that of Christianity in general) as progressive; to the contrary, he describes the deterioration of the earthly world. Yet still, on this crucial point of the attitude toward the Jews, Ginzburg convincingly finds in Augustine the origins of our (Hegelian) idea of history, which in many regards still dominates Western, modern perceptions of history and modern historiography and periodization. Ginzburg

278

Raz-Krakotzkin

testifies that ‘‘this discovery [of the centrality of Christian ambivalence toward the Jews to Western notions of historical progress] made me very uneasy: a feeling that others, Jewish or not, may perhaps share.’’ But he immediately tries to overcome this feeling of ‘‘unease,’’ and continues: ‘‘At the end, however, the context in which ideas originate only partly determines the uses to which they are later put.’’ Ginzburg finds an example for this point in Augustine himself: ‘‘In De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine takes the action of the sons of Israel in plundering the gold and silver Jewels of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:35–36) as a model of the attitude Christians should have taken to the heathen cultural inheritance. Every cultural inheritance, we well know, is subject to continuous appropriation and redevelopment. Who will plunder and appropriate our notion of history, possibly rejecting its conceptual core, embodied in the metaphor of perspective?’’6 I am not convinced that we can so easily overcome this feeling of ‘‘unease.’’ The attempt to overcome it preserves the same logic of progress, wherein one thing (Christian ambivalence) developed into something else allegedly superior. Instead, I would suggest that we take the unease further and sharpen the argument that generated such a feeling; that is, let us take this insight as the point of departure for the reassessment of many ideas and developments associated with Western progress, a notion that may be seen as the core of Western secularism. Contrary to Ginzburg, not only do I not think that the uses of this inheritance of Christian ambivalence departed in modern times from the context in which they originated, but in fact I believe that it is in the modern context that the implications of Ginzburg’s unease became most crucial. In fact, it is this feeling of unease that should be seen as a beginning of a new understanding.7 Therefore, I would like to suggest that we widen the scope of the discussion of Ginzburg’s insight and explore the role of Christian ambivalence toward the Jews in the construction of many aspects associated with the notion of progress.8 As we shall see, this kind of ambivalence is the very core of the secular order: of its self-identification against religion, of the notion of the secular as the replacement of religion, and of its efforts toward the purification and domestication of religion.9 The Christian ambivalence toward the Jews is, at the very least, the foundation of periodizations without which the secular is meaningless.10 As I argue below, such an observation is crucial for the analysis of Orientalist discourse, in all its dimensions; for it is this foundational ambivalence that subverts the very distinction between historiography (referring to the history of Europe) and Orientalism, as well as

Christian Ambivalence

279

between secularism and Orientalism. Secularism can be seen as the expansion of the Christian ambivalence toward the Jews, to include also other nonChristians. Concentrating on the Jewish question and its permanent role in the process that brought ‘‘the formation of the secular’’ may clarify the generalized meaning of the ‘‘secularized projection.’’ At the same time we may also ask ourselves to what extent we are determined to continue adopting the perspective that preserves the Christian ambivalence toward the Jews. Like Ginzburg, I am convinced that we cannot escape this perspective—synonymous with the framework of ‘‘secular time,’’ in the sense discussed in this forum by Andrea Schatz—and that we all share this (allegedly) secularized ambivalence toward the Jews. But I also believe that from this awareness we can generate a ‘‘counter-position’’ based on the Jewish concept of exile that, at least to a certain extent, was shaped in the framework of Jewish polemics against the Christian progressive approach. Accordingly, I would propose to insert into our discourse—and I deliberately use the all-embracing term ‘‘our’’ here—the Jewish ambivalence toward the Christians. As a precondition for the toleration of the Jews and their assimilation into Europe, the validity of such an attitude was denied within the secular project. The insertion of this Jewish ambivalence may itself make us feel uneasy as well, a feeling that I believe will be shared by Jews and nonJews alike.11 Exile is certainly not exclusive to the Jews, but we should be mindful that its general meaning derives from the fact that the notion of exile developed historically specifically in opposition to Christian perceptions, namely the ambivalence toward the Jews. The re-inflection of modern history with Christian-Jewish mutual ambivalences highlights a multi-temporal reality encompassing both secular and exilic time (the latter related though not identical with the ‘‘time of the diaspora’’ discussed by Schatz). To a certain extent, such a reading follows Benjamin’s attempt to address Jewish messianic time against homogeneous progressive historical time. Yet here I try to utilize the traditional Jewish concept of exile to critique the Zionists’ proclaimed ‘‘negation of exile.’’ This approach is inspired by Schatz’s discussion on the different temporalities in which the Maskilim lived simultaneously, and the way such multiple temporalities are suggested in a more contemporary context by David Myers’s description in this forum of the Satmar Hasidic Jews of Kiryas Joel. Both instances deal with Jewish reactions to the secular time imposed by the state. Though rarely regarded in this manner, Zionism is in fact yet another, albeit altogether extreme attempt to impose onto the Jews the secular time of the nation-state.

280

Raz-Krakotzkin

Jewish History, Exile, and Secularism The difficulties arising from Ginzburg’s observations receive another dimension when referred and applied to the modern writing of the history of the Jews. Accordingly, we can say that our perception of Jewish history and the historiographical writing of the history of the Jews has occurred from a standpoint that preserves, albeit in a secularized form, the Christian ambivalence toward the Jews. Ginzburg’s observations, developed further along these lines, suggest that the history of the Jews has been narrated according to a perception of history that denies Jews’ own self-definition and replaces it with the notion of verus Israel. Jews’ acceptance of a periodization in which modernity supplants the (implicitly inferior) ‘‘Middle Ages’’ not only accommodates Judaism to an originally Christian perspective, but denies the vantage point of exile, and therein the foundation of Jewish historical consciousness itself. Indeed, to a certain extent writing the Jews into History (in its meaning as the history of the West) means to deny the fundamental principle of the Jewish perception of History, by accepting the Christian one. Not only has the writing of Jewish history taken up the secularized projection of Christian ambivalence toward the Jews, but in so doing, it has directly opposed the Jews’ longstanding alternative perception of history, embodied in the concept of exile. The rupture inherent in the writing of Jewish history—between traditional Jewish communal memory and historical consciousness on the one hand, and the writing of a secularized history of the Jews on the other—has been already observed by Yerushalmi in his seminal work Zakhor. Ginzburg directs us to a further understanding of the rupture embodied in the modern concept of ‘‘Jewish history.’’ Concentrating on the Jewish question and its permanent role in the process that brought ‘‘the formation of the secular’’ may clarify the meaning of the ‘‘secularized projection’’ or ‘‘secular time.’’ While Yerushalmi argued that the rupture is a result of the denial of the notion of ‘‘providence’’ in modern historiography, I would suggest that we concentrate on the changing role of the notion of exile. Amos Funkenstein made the distinction between Christianity and Judaism precisely on this point: in an essay dedicated to Nachmanides’ typological interpretations, Funkenstein examines some aspects shared by Nachmanides and Christian writers, and demonstrates also their differences: ‘‘Typologies, and for that matter all forms of historical speculations in Christianity, express a distinct sense of steady progress within history: progress from the old to the new dispensation, progress within the further history of the ecclesia militans and triumphans, extensive progress (mission) as well as intensive

Christian Ambivalence

281

progress (articulation of faith and dogma). Jews lacked such a sense of progress and hence the desire to show how matters repeat themselves periodically on a higher level.’’12 I would add that it is not just that Jews lacked such a sense of progress: they (explicitly or implicitly) denied it—a denial implied by the concept of exile, the concept that should be seen as the core of Jewish historical consciousness. Thus the writing of Jewish history, in the modern secular sense of the term, has meant the acceptance of the Christian historical perception and the denial of the Jewish one.13 In Jewish tradition, the concept of exile does not simply refer to the destruction of the Temple or the lack of political sovereignty, but to the very notion that history has ended through God having exiled himself from the world. That is, though originally exile referred to the territorial situation of the Jews vis-a`-vis the Land of Israel, it came to refer as well to the more distant position of God vis-a`-vis the destiny of the Jewish people and the world at large. In this way, exile carries a temporal understanding according to which History (in its biblical understanding as a sacred narrative) has come to its end. Thus the exile of the Jews and their dispersal were, in this conception, regarded as evidence of the condition of the entire world. Exile refers to a state of absence, points to the imperfection of the world, and conserves the desire for its improvement. It describes, in the view of several traditional religious authorities, the state of the deity itself—that is to say, God’s exile from ‘‘history.’’ According to this Jewish viewpoint, the exilic existence was not outside history, but rather embodied the very state of ‘‘history’’ itself.14 The concept of exile engendered a historical perception that permeated talmudic literature, in both Halakhah and Midrash, two genres that defined and expressed Jewish communal institutions and their selfimage. Accordingly, ‘‘messianism’’ was not only a desire to restore a ‘‘golden past’’ but a permanent activity within the world as such.15 The historical perception embodied in the concept of exile received its full and concrete articulation in the framework of Jewish-Christian polemics, and in response to Christian attitudes. Jewish and Christian historical perceptions emerged simultaneously after the destruction of the Second Temple in reference to that event and in the course of a polemical and dialogical discourse. The polemics were the site on which both competitive religions and identities were shaped and defined against each other. Jews and Christians shared many aspects of historical consciousness. Both saw the present as a temporary, transitional period and both had the expectation of its messianic conclusion. Many aspects of the interpretation of

282

Raz-Krakotzkin

the past (and the text) were based on similar conceptions and were frequently the result of dialogue and disputation. Nevertheless, the fundamental difference concerned precisely the question of history: the status of the present and its relation to the past, a parallel to the question of the relation between the New and Old Testaments. The exile of the Jews and its historical-theological significance was the key question in the polemic, and a matter of crucial importance in the process of self-definition of Jews and Christians alike. Christianity saw the period after the crucifixion as the Age of Grace (subgratia, as defined by St. Augustine), and regarded the destruction of the Second Temple as evidence of this. Jews rejected this view, claiming that the world was in exile, and that their existential situation was evidence of this. It is in the framework of polemics that the concept of exile gained its relevance to the present discussion. While Christian authors developed a notion of historical progress, from the Old to the New Testament, Jewish consciousness was established on the rejection of this notion. In this connection, the concept of exile involved a definite rejection of ‘‘history’’ as the context of salvation, embedded within the idea of a second revelation. Thus in the early Christian view, Jewish exile was indeed a retreat from ‘‘history’’ in the midst of the unfolding of grace. According to this approach, history was historia sacra, the history of the church, which only embraced the believers—those who accepted the Gospel and therefore entered the domain of grace. Christianity saw the exile of the Jews as evidence of and punishment for their rejection of the Gospel, which consequently led to their departure from history. The Jews, in their stubbornness, had taken themselves out of progress when they refused to accept the Gospel. Christian authors also claimed that history would reach its fulfillment only when the Jews returned to it: that is, when they accepted Christianity and the truth of the Gospel. Jewish thought, by contrast, elaborated the ambivalence of continuity and rupture embodied in the state of exile: on the one hand, the uninterrupted continuity from the Sinaitic revelation, and the persistence of the Torah; on the other hand, the rupture manifested in the absence of the Temple and the exile from Zion. This notion of history, and its related concept of redemption, found themselves recast by the Enlightenment, but in a manner that retained crucial underlying assumptions. The Enlightenment allegedly offered a different context, in which the sphere of grace was replaced by ‘‘reason’’ and new notions of ‘‘universalism’’ and ‘‘humanity’’ emerged, which could, at least theoretically, also embrace the Jews. But what should be emphasized is that

Christian Ambivalence

283

from the Jewish point of view the adoption of the Enlightenment conception of history expressed a renunciation and even a negation of the Jewish position in the Jewish-Christian polemic—the belief that the world is in exile—and an acceptance, albeit in a secularized form, of the Christian view of progression, according to which the world was in an era of grace. To conclude this point we can say, elaborating on the observations of Ginzburg and Funkenstein, that in modern times Jewish history has not only been written based on the secularized projection of Christian ambivalence toward the Jews. Jewish history therefore also took up precisely the approach that Jews had denied through the construction of an alternative progression toward a messianic age. Accepting modern periodization, with its distinction between antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modernity, has meant accepting the present as superior to the past, as a completion of a historical progressive movement. The continuous theological implications of the writing of history and of its definition as a subject of study embody and express the entire process associated with the assimilation or acculturation of the Jews. Secularization, from the Jewish point of view, means self-denial and integration into the Christian perception of history. Hence, the Jews had to be emancipated from themselves in order to become citizens.16 In Hannah Arendt’s words, this was the ‘‘condition which had characterized emancipation everywhere in Europe—namely, that the Jew might only become a man when he ceased to be a Jew.’’17 The various divisions imposed on the Jews through the construction of the secular order follow the Christian logic (that in fact received its most obvious manifestations in the works of modern thinkers like Hegel). Secularism in Jewish historical discourse is associated not only with the belief in progress but with the rejection of the binding nature of Jewish Law and rabbinic authority.

Orientalism and Secularism At this point we may expand Ginzburg’s approach to include other aspects of modern historical consciousness, particularly Orientalist discourse. Orientalist discourse is an obvious manifestation of a secularized projection of the Christian ambivalence toward the Jews. In its canonical description, as analyzed by Edward Said and others who followed him (even if critically), it carries precisely and evidently the Christian ambivalence toward the Jews.

284

Raz-Krakotzkin

The Orient is perceived as the seat of ancient and authentic knowledge that the so-called Orientals themselves cannot genuinely understand. The fundamental ambivalence of Orientalist discourse, as observed by Said, can be seen as an expansion of the originally Christian ambivalence, to include also Oriental non-Jews. The Orient has been studied ‘‘for itself ’’ but also as an entity that leads toward ‘‘ourselves,’’ the inhabitants of the modern West. The Orient was the carrier of truth that has been realized and fulfilled in the West, while the Orient itself allegedly deteriorated into superstitions. Through the non-European, ‘‘we’’ discover ‘‘our’’ past, the background from where we were ‘‘liberated,’’ or the one ‘‘we’’ and we alone can genuinely comprehend. Gil Anidjar has suggested that we view Said’s Orientalism as a book about Christianity, and accordingly identified secularism and Orientalism as one and the same discourse. It may be wrong to reduce secularism to Orientalism and colonialism, but as Anidjar convincingly argues, the very distinction between them is one of the ways in which secularism disguises its concrete attributes and represents itself as a universal doctrine.18 Applying Ginzburg’s observation to Orientalist discourses gives this argument another dimension, while at the same time demanding a revision of Said’s argument. Such a perspective clarifies why modern historical consciousness, Orientalism, and secularization should not be distinguished from one another.19 The link between secularism and Orientalism is most significant when we turn to examine it from the perspective of both the shifts in the Christian discourse about the Jews and the internal modern Jewish discourse about Jews themselves. As has been demonstrated recently by various scholars, the Orientalist paradigm is essential for the analysis of modern discourse by and about Jews.20 The secularization of European Jewish discourse, that is, the attempt to distinguish it from Christian-Jewish polemics, was tantamount to its reformulation in obvious Orientalist terms. This was the case both with regard to the debate over the civility of the Jews and their rights, and with regard to the various Jewish responses that emerged in this framework. The leading question was no longer why the Jews did not accept the Gospels and followed false and even demonic texts, but rather whether their alien culture could be integrated into the European, allegedly secular, culture.21 To be sure, Orientalism should not be viewed as an all-inclusive explanatory category, as it does not encompass all the complex aspects of modern Jewish discourse. It is, however, a perspective that brings together essential aspects of modern discourse on the status of the Jews and their civility, and

Christian Ambivalence

285

consequently of secularism, nationalism, and citizenship in general. The Jewish perspective clarifies that it is impossible to distinguish secularism from Orientalism, and consequently secularism from ‘‘antisemitism.’’ When applied toward the Jews, the ‘‘Western ambivalence toward the East’’ receives therefore another dimension, and demonstrates the Christian context of both Orientalism and secularism and the links between them. The Jews and ‘‘the Jewish question’’ have become the medium through which the theological was transformed into something secularist, that is to say, Orientalist in its essence, with all the complexities embodied in Orientalist discourse itself. The Jewish point of view demonstrates that it is impossible to discuss ‘‘secularism’’ and ‘‘secularization’’ as autonomous spheres, and that they should be discussed instead as part of the rise of concepts like ethnicity, culture, and race. The origins of this reformulation of Jewish discourse should be traced back to the early modern period, following the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from Spain and the rise of the Conversos (and Moriscos) as a leading category. It was then that the Jewish-Muslim link, which had first been made earlier in the Middle Ages, was cast in terms of an ethnic and a religious difference.22 The discourse generated by the question of the crypto-Jews, the ‘‘Marranos’’ who maintained or were suspected of maintaining Jewish qualities despite conversion to Christianity, marked the transition from theological discourse and Christian-Jewish disputation to a discourse based on the concepts of ethnicity, race, and culture—the terms of modern discourse. The identification of Jews with the Orient was part of the process of identifying Europe against the imagined East. Another medium in which the transition and interrelations between secularization and Orientalism was demonstrated was Hebraist discourse. Hebraism, the study of Hebrew and Jewish literature by Christian scholars, was established at the same time as, and as part of, the rise of Orientalist studies, ethnography, and later ‘‘religious studies’’ in Europe.23 There are important differences between Hebraism and Orientalism, a result of the different theological role of each corpus. However, it is wrong in this context to insist on distinguishing their developments, institutionalization, and role in the shaping of modern culture. Hebraism was a prominent discourse whose role in the shaping of modern secularism was significant. While it was commonly presented as a shift of Christian attitudes toward Judaism and the Jews, in practical terms Hebraist discourse reestablished the ambivalence toward the Jews by associating them with the Orient: Hebraism was founded

286

Raz-Krakotzkin

on the assumption that Hebrew literature contains an original and authentic knowledge, which the Jews themselves cannot really understand. Hebraist scholars created the perspective, the terminology, and the basic literature of later modern Jewish discourse and modern Jewish studies.24 The interrelations between the theological and Orientalist were reformulated again within the context of the rise of the Enlightenment and nationalism. In this context, the expected conversion of the Jews was allegedly replaced (but in fact reformulated) by the desire to bring about their civil regeneration. From the Enlightenment onward, the discussion of the civil status of the Jews has been formulated in clearly Orientalist terms, while Orientalist images have played an important role in the reshaping of Jewish identity. As expounded by Jonathan Hess, Orientalism was the main discourse informing the Dohm-Michaelis debate in Germany in the early 1780s on the civil status of the Jews. Hess points out that the debate over Jewish emancipation functioned ‘‘as a symbolic substitute for a foreign colony.’’25 The main issue of the debate can be presented as the question of whether the Orientalism of the Jews was essential and intrinsic, and thus in opposition to ‘‘secular’’ civility, or rather a result of their legal condition and of the oppression against them. Following Hess we can schematically conclude that while Dohm argued that the annulment of certain limitations on the Jews would promote their ‘‘regeneration,’’ Michaelis rejected that supposition, emphasizing their inherent ‘‘Oriental essence’’ instead, in order to support the claim that they were incapable of integrating into Christian-European society. Both sides of the debate agreed that the Jews were in need of regeneration. The debate about the ‘‘Oriental essence’’ of the Jews was almost parallel to the question of whether the Jews formed a ‘‘confession,’’ and were thus capable of being integrated as citizens, or instead constituted a nation, with values alien to those of the European nations. The question of whether the Jews form a ‘‘religion’’ or a ‘‘nation’’ had a critical role in the construction of the Western secular order. The discussion of the Jews was one of the sites in which the definition of these two terms, and the distinction between the privatized religion and the public, became established. This was obviously manifested during the discussion about the rights of the Jews after the French Revolution, and Clermont Tonnerre’s famous statement: ‘‘Il faut tout refuser aux Juifs comme nation et tout accorder aux Juifs comme individus‘‘ (We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to them as individuals). This statement was paradigmatic of the entire discussion of the Jews within the process of the rise of nation-states.26 The question of

Christian Ambivalence

287

whether they form a ‘‘nation’’ or a ‘‘religion’’ was imposed upon the Jews, who could not know how to answer it. In principle, Jews could become a privatized religious group, on the condition that their autonomous communal elements would be eliminated, and they would pass through a process of ‘‘regeneration.’’ With these observations in mind, one can define the modern Jew as being located between ‘‘Europe’’ and the ‘‘Orient,’’ between assimilation and resistance, in a hybrid place that produced continuous tension and led to varying responses, be they ‘‘assimilationist’’ or ‘‘subversive.’’ The dialectics of assimilation were the dialectics of Christian-Jew, and also the dialectics between West and East. Following Schatz’s insights, we may say that Jews assimilated into ‘‘secular time’’ while preserving in different ways the ‘‘time of the diaspora,’’ the notion of exile, the ‘‘Oriental’’ tone that interrupts and disturbs the secular self-image. Secularism indeed provided integration through self-denial, and also generated the discourse that brought the total exclusion of the Jews. In this framework one can view the rise of certain ‘‘national’’ Jewish tendencies in the nineteenth century as manifestations of resistance to the mechanism of assimilation and the privatization of ‘‘religion,’’ a resistance against the very division of private (Jewish) and public (Christian secularist). This is true, for instance, with respect to autonomist movements, which demanded recognition of the Jews as a cultural nation that had the right to preserve its autonomy within the broader nation-state. The declaration of Jews as a ‘‘nation’’ in Europe was a mode of resistance, similar to national identities that arose in the Third World, as a reaction to colonialism.27 This is true as well of the first stages of Zionism that emerged also out of a disappointment with the process of emancipation and resistance to assimilation. But when nationalism is used to describe the Zionist project of the nationalization of the Jews through their settlement in Palestine, it reveals the tensions and contradictions embodied in the European notion of nationalism.

Zionism, Negation of Exile, and Secularism Secular Zionism, in one sense, should be seen as an extreme manifestation of the theological-Orientalist dimension of secularism, and as a conscious internalization of Christian ambivalence toward the Jews. The very intention of defining Jews and Judaism as a nation was to accommodate Judaism to

288

Raz-Krakotzkin

the Christian model of secularism, and Christian perceptions of Judaism. While even certain assimilationist trends preserved a notion of resistance, many Zionists instead sought to completely integrate ‘‘Jewish time’’ into ‘‘secular time,’’ thereby negating the various expressions of exilic-diasporic time. The condemnation of assimilation was, in fact, the rejection of the ambiguity and ‘‘in-betweenness’’ characterizing the modern Jewish condition. The ‘‘return’’ of the Jews to Palestine, to the East, was based on complete identification with the West—and more precisely, with the Christian imagination of the land of the ancient Hebrews—and through it, the denial of both the Arab East and of historical Judaism. Thus, despite the Zionist rhetorical rejection of ‘‘assimilationist trends,’’ the movement can in fact be read as an extreme expression of the desire to assimilate the Jews into the Western narrative of enlightenment and redemption. This is manifested in the various meanings of the term ‘‘negation of exile,’’ the concept that embodies the fundamental aspects of Zionism as an ideology and as a political-cultural phenomenon. On the one hand, ‘‘negation of exile’’ (and its complementary ‘‘return to history’’) demonstrates the theological-Messianic dimension of Zionist national (secular) consciousness; on the other hand, it also demonstrates the Orientalism inherent in so-called ‘‘secularization.’’ Essentially, ‘‘negation of exile’’ refers to the consciousness that regards the present Jewish settlement in, and sovereignty over, Palestine as the return of the Jews to the land believed to be their home, and imagined, prior to its ‘‘redemption,’’ as empty and ‘‘out of History.’’ Thus the negation of exile appeared to many Jews to be the ‘‘fulfillment’’ of Jewish history and the realization of Jewish prayers and messianic expectations. ‘‘Secular’’ Zionism in its earlier expressions was thus not separate from Jewish-Christian theology, but rather an interpretation of it based on the biblical promise and the Jewish prayer book. And yet, not only was a theological dimension attached to the idea of the nation, but national secular consciousness itself was a reinterpretation of the theological myth and the messianic principle. Secularization meant the nationalization of religious-messianic conceptions, not their replacement.28 God was excluded from the discourse, yet the divine promise continued to direct political activity and to serve as a source of legitimacy. It was based on a political-national interpretation of messianism, viewing the secular present as the conclusion of history and the realization of redemption. One can summarize secular Zionism with this phrase: God does not exist but he promised the Land to us.

Christian Ambivalence

289

The link between the theological and the Orientalist begets a mythical perception of Palestine, the Holy Land, and the Land of Israel: the land has no history outside its place in the Jewish-Christian theological imagination, and is imagined as the land of the Bible in accordance with conventional Orientalist imagery. Zionists like Ben-Gurion considered the land itself to be in exile, with no culture of its own, no people living in its domain—until the Jewish people came to ‘‘redeem’’ it. In this context, the concrete Arab existence on the land was deemed inconsequential and subsequently rejected to the point of utter obliteration. Episodes of Jewish post-biblical history in Palestine—such as the history of the kabbalistic center of Safed in the sixteenth century—were suppressed because they were associated with religious, exilic-Oriental culture. With the advent of modern Zionism, the principle of the ‘‘negation of exile’’ took on various forms and articulations and remained at the core of a continuous debate that went in various directions. While certain radical Zionist thinkers demanded a total separation from exilic Jews and exilic Jewish culture, others objected to this position. They argued for the integration of several aspects of Jewish post-biblical or diasporic culture. But the dominant marker of Zionism’s ‘‘secularity’’ remained the opposition between the present and exile in all its meaning, including in particular the exilic perception of time. In the Yishuv and later the State of Israel, in spite of important oppositional voices, the so-called negation of exile remained the leading concept of the mainstream educational system and cultural activities.

Protestant Theology and Zionist Secularism Zionist thought was obviously inspired by Jewish traditional sources. Images of return, of the ingathering of the diaspora, and the construction of the Temple had always preoccupied the Jewish imagination. Nevertheless, the formulation of these elements in modern romantic terminology and their adaptation into the modern Western discourse of progress gave them new meaning and marked a shift in the Jewish concept of history. Such a development reflected a tendency to integrate Jewish history into the history of the West, and to interpret messianism as a modern-national myth. Accepting the terminology of originality, authenticity, and return meant its accommodation into the Christian perception of history, and particularly to the Protestant

290

Raz-Krakotzkin

theological imagination. The return was to be to the Holy Land of the Second Temple period, the age of Jesus Christ, the origin of the ‘‘common culture.’’ Therefore, given its role as the origin of what became known as secularization, the Reformation is the historical moment that should be seen as the location of the shift from ‘‘traditional’’ to ‘‘national’’ Jewish consciousness. In Protestant thought, the concepts of ‘‘Chosen People,’’ ‘‘Promised Land,’’ and the very notions of history and redemption were reinterpreted in a way that prepared their role in the shaping of colonial discourse and the entire Western self-perception of superiority. Like Protestantism, Zionism was built on the simultaneous rejection of the authority of the traditional canon, and return to the Bible, in the sense of sola scriptura (indeed, only of the so-called Old Testament). Zionism’s return to the Bible, which, as I discuss below, should be seen as the core of secularism, is the return to this frame of interpretation.29 We should remember that the first to describe the idea of the restoration of the Jews in modern political terms and as a Western vision were early modern Christian millenarians who regarded the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and the restoration of the Jewish polity (and the Temple) as the precondition for the Second Coming. A huge amount of literature, from the seventeenth century until the present, has made the idea of the restoration of the Jews and the establishment of a Jewish political entity a prominent issue in the messianic scenario. This activity produced a variety of images of the commonwealth. The idea of a Jewish State as a marker of the messianic age preoccupied many in the seventeenth century, and had a continuous presence in English culture later on. Zionist authors from Nahum Sokolov to Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly turned to these millenarian ideas, treating them as a source of legitimacy, using them in order to present Zionism as a Western ideal, that is, as the realization of a vision through which the Jews were integrating into Western Christianity.30 And indeed, this was the context in which the idea of a Jewish state first appeared as a European endeavor. Millenarianism was the context in which the Messianic visions (of what had become ‘‘the Judeo-Christian tradition’’) were first presented as a political program and formulated in modern political concepts of state and sovereignty.31 The secularization, that is to say nationalization, of Jewish consciousness meant its articulation according to the millenarian Christian vocabulary. The national representation of the Jews, their exile and their redemption in Zionist discourse, followed the

Christian Ambivalence

291

Christian perception of the Jews and their exile, and the denial of Jewish concepts, as embodied in the traditional Jewish notion of remaining in a state of ‘‘exile.’’ In other words, the nationalization of the Jews can be seen as the secularization (namely realization) of the Christian millenarian perception. What has been known as ‘‘Christian Zionism’’ preceded secular Jewish Zionism. The articulation of the Jews as a nation therefore follows—temporally but also conceptually—their vision in Christian modern theology, built in fact on the denial of the traditional Jewish one. The idea of the State of Israel emerged during the same period and in the same context—early modern Europe—in which the broader idea of the modern state was first introduced and became the center of philosophy and political thinking. This was particularly the case in seventeenth-century England, where the discussion of the ancient Hebrew state dominated the political and philosophical discourse.32 The state of Israel, in abstract terms, was framed already as an exceptional state, in fact the state of exception, the marker of the apocalypse. This is the perception that continues to dominate Zionist secularism and secular Zionism. I do not mean to argue that Christian Zionism was the direct source of inspiration for Jewish secular Zionism. I do contend, however, that the definition of the Jewish collectivity as a territorial nation, using the terminology of modern nationalism and the concept of the modern state, was meant to follow and internalize the same understanding that had guided the Christian Zionists. Thus they came to imagine the Jewish community according to the Christian imagination. This aspect may be clarified by drawing upon recent studies that have emphasized the role of the Bible in the shaping of modern European culture.33 The paradox is that what we have long recognized as the process of ‘‘secularization’’ in the West coincided with the growing role of the Bible in the shaping of political thought, national identities, and colonial justifications. As Jonathan Sheehan has convincingly argued, the refutation of divine authority was part of the transformation of the Bible (and particularly the socalled Old Testament), and its reconceptualization as a fundamental ‘‘cultural’’ text. In this manner, Sheehan persuasively complicates the notion of secularization and demonstrates its theological background.34 The centrality of the Bible to modernity also demonstrates the link between theological-Christian and Orientalist perspectives, as two complementary descriptions of the same phenomena. This link is obvious in the various images of the Holy Land, the Land of Israel, and Palestine that

292

Raz-Krakotzkin

became disseminated in the modern West. Eitan Bar-Yosef described and analyzed the role of the image of Jerusalem both in the construction of English nationalism and the shaping of the image of the territory itself, and dubbed it ‘‘vernacular Orientalism.’’35 From different perspectives Hans Kohn, Anthony Smith, Adrian Hastings, and Benedict Anderson observed the role of biblical models in the construction of national cultures and selfperceptions.36 The publication of vernacular translations of the Bible was fundamental to the construction of nineteenth-century European national identities, and to various aspects of both popular and elite cultures throughout much of Europe.37 Furthermore, the idea of ‘‘the chosen people’’ played a crucial role in the construction of national self-perceptions.38 Hastings, who has emphasized the role of the Bible in the construction of national identity, wielded this argument, convincing by itself, against representatives of ‘‘modernist’’ approaches to nationalism, like Ernst Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm, who have identified nationalism with the industrial revolution and as a later invention. One can agree with Hastings that such approaches understate the theological elements of modern nationalisms and the ways that they are ‘‘characteristically Christian things.’’39 But demonstrating the crucial role of the Bible in the construction of national consciousness does not negate the ‘‘modernity’’ of this phenomenon. Instead, it elucidates the meaning of modernity and the theological elements of secularization. Recognition of the impact of the Bible in this sphere obliges us to examine the early modern roots of nationalism, and thus to accentuate the role of Christian consciousness in the formation of this purportedly universal model for collective political-cultural identity. If we recognize the important role of biblical images in the shaping of nationalism in general, one might expect this model naturally to fit the articulation of the Jews as a nation as well. This approach indeed reflects the selfimage of Zionism, as the Bible merited a central role in the shaping of Israeli culture. The Zionist enterprise is, in its poetic-historical imaginary, above all, a return to the Bible, especially to Judges and Prophets. As Uriel Simon puts it, Zionism has transformed the Bible into a ‘‘national midrash’’ (exegesis).40 The new Zionist culture saw in various biblical images a model for emulation. However, that is what makes Zionism an exception, although it also clarifies the ‘‘rule’’ (secular European model) that generates this exceptionality. The Zionist theological perspective is unique in its direct relation to the Jewish-Christian messianic images and to the Holy Land. If we accept the

Christian Ambivalence

293

role of biblical models in the formation of European nations, then we can grasp how the linking of national history and biblical events generates a permanent messianic myth. In this context, the Bible is not only a source of inspiration for imagining the nation, but a reality that nationalism is to fulfill, the redemptive completion of the biblical narrative. In Zionist culture, the Bible could never be a source merely of inspiration for the image of the nation. Instead, based on the internal logic of the Zionist ‘‘negation of exile’’ and the ‘‘return’’ of the Jews to their ancient land, the Bible had to be read as a reality whose final chapter would be ushered in by dint of nationalism. The image of the Jewish nation followed the Christian imagination, the image of ‘‘the People of Israel’’ in Christian thought. The alleged ‘‘normalization’’ of the Jews means, first, to accommodate it to an originally Christian model, and second, to emphasize its exceptionality. Put differently, the return to the Hebrew Bible is essentially a return to the Christian Bible, to the socalled Old Testament. For this reason, Hastings’s claim that the Jews are ‘‘the true proto-nation’’ and that this is the basis for understanding Jewish history and Zionism is untenable. For Hastings’s claim simply replicates the discourse based on the modern Christian imagination that equates the Jews of modern times with ancient Israel. In fact, Hastings himself exposes the manner in which Jewish nationalism is derivative of Christian models, and not vice-versa: he stresses that the biblical blueprint of a nation is a decidedly Christian conception, in which the only non-Christian aberration is the Jews.41 But the meaning of this statement is that Zionism is realizing the originally Christian perception of the Jews, including ancient Israel. Viewed that way, Zionism can thus be understood as an exception to the general rule that exposes the rule’s consequences. In many Christian versions of the idea of restoration, the future conversion of the Jews was an essential part of the vision. In this respect, Zionism differed, of course, from millenarian images. Nevertheless we should remember that Zionists also desired the transformation of the Jew and the construction of ‘‘the New Jew,’’ redeemed, powerful, rational, and productive who stands against the ‘‘exilic Jew’’—the representative of irrationality and decadence. This is evidently an Orientalist opposition that preserves the basic Christian distinction between the new Jew and the old Jew. Moreover, we should notice that the common understanding of secularism as the denial of post-biblical tradition and the rejection of the Law is the original Christian principle, the basic Paulinian act on which Christian self-perception as verus Israel has been established. Indeed, the rejection of rabbinic authority in

294

Raz-Krakotzkin

modern Jewish and Zionist discourse was done in the name of a different ‘‘revelation,’’ the one associated with the Enlightenment, but that once again entailed the total denial of Jewish principles. Indeed, the radical (and dominant) modern Zionist understanding of ‘‘negation of exile’’ led to the explicit denial of historical Judaism: it was founded on the complete rejection of the post-biblical literary, especially talmudic corpus, viewed as representing degenerated exilic Judaism and as a manifestation of irrationality. In other words, it was based on the denial of the corpus that was traditionally the target of Christian anti-Jewish campaigns. Zionism explicitly distinguished itself from the ‘‘Old Yishuv,’’ the existing Jewish communities in Palestine at the time, and this distinction was also crucial for the construction of the new secular Jew. The ‘‘new community’’ obviously associated itself with the sites of shared biblical memory, and dissociated itself from traditional Jewish sites of memory, which were based on identification with post-biblical, post-destruction periods, with the period of the Mishnah and Talmud. At the same time, the attempt to release Zionism from the theological framework underscores the essential Orientalist dimension of secular Zionism, which defines itself through a distinction and opposition to anything identified with the ‘‘East’’—Jews and Arabs alike. Paradoxically, the exodus of the Jews from Europe enabled their assimilation into Europe, without the need for conversion. Nationalism, that is to say the formulation of the Jewish myth in modern romantic terms, integrates the two dimensions—the theological and the colonial. It does not mean that this secular consciousness is not ‘‘Jewish,’’ but the importance of our account here is that it may assist us in bringing back the traditional Jewish perspective, on whose denial this secular approach has been established, into the discourse.

Exile and the Distinction of Secularity from Progress Secular Zionism is a specific framework in which the persistence of the Christian ambivalence toward the Jews in the modern secular consciousness is particularly obvious. Zionist discourse is an exception, but an exception that reflects the ‘‘rule,’’ the theoretical model of secularism, and reveals the link between Christian theology and Orientalist discourse. Therefore, declaring the uniqueness of Zionism is not satisfactory, unless we realize that the analysis of Zionist

Christian Ambivalence

295

discourse only becomes meaningful as a wider critique of the concrete aspects of the Western notion of the secular. The Zionist case also reveals the broader possibilities embodied in the concept of exile for the promotion of an alternative secularity. I contend that the reintroduction of the theological is crucial in order to search for a different secularity. Jewish existence and sovereignty in Palestine, or the Land of Israel, remains a theological question, and secularization can be achieved only through serious awareness of its theological dimensions. The recognition of the theological-Christian aspect of secularization, and particularly the internalization of Ginzburg’s observations, enable us to return to the position that served as Zionism’s constitutive opposite: the concept of exile. The role of the notion of exile, the approach that permanently subverted and contested the Christian perception of the Jews, should be employed against the ‘‘secularized projection’’ of Christian ambivalence, namely our modern notion of progress. In the Zionist context, the concept of exile can be utilized against its negation, as a critical tool that may point toward the de-colonization of the Jewish consciousness, to include those whose existence was suppressed under the secular narrative of progress. But the implications can be wider than Israel and the Zionist context as such. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, most of the thinkers who have suggested new ways of secularizing the Zionist discourse have been religious thinkers, including some who were identified as Zionists. Religious thinkers could not ignore or suppress the theological questions, and accordingly provided a variety of responses to the challenge of Zionism’s inherent messianism—from the affirmation of a radical political messianism to a total denial of the Zionist entity.42 Well aware of the implications of the theological dimension of Zionism (and of the early attacks against Zionism by most Orthodox religious authorities), they were obliged to clarify their understanding of the historical meaning of the Jewish national aspirations and then the existence of a Jewish nation-state in Eretz Yisrael. They gave different, sometimes opposing answers to the question. While certain Orthodox Jewish commentators associated political sovereignty with messianism, following the secular approach, others tried to distinguish Zionism from its messianic aspirations and to define it strictly as a secular endeavor. They accepted Zionism as a movement of shelter, and believed that settlement in the Land of Israel was of exceptional religious value; yet they did not share the ‘‘secular’’ view of the present as a manifestation of redemption, and distinguished Jewish communal existence from political messianism and consequently the land

296

Raz-Krakotzkin

from the direct political interpretation of the myth. Thus anti-Zionist Orthodox groups in Palestine described their own existence as antithetical to Zionism, as ‘‘exile in the Holy Land,’’ marking the distinction between communal existence and political sovereignty. Accordingly, they developed their approaches toward the state, which ranged from the perception of Israel as a state like all states to the complete rejection of the idea. After the establishment of the State of Israel, they maintained what could be seen as a neutral attitude toward the state and rejected the sacred status attributed to the state in secular thought.43 In other words, the resistance to Zionism from the Jewish (Haredi) point of view marked the main aspects of what can be seen as a secular approach—the distinction between collective religious identity and the state, the denial of the state’s self-perception as an all-encompassing manifestation of redemption. It should be emphasized that unlike the Zionist ‘‘new’’ settlement, the ‘‘Old Yishuv’’ was not founded on a return to the Bible or on ‘‘negation of exile.’’ On the contrary: as a response to Zionist ideas, leaders of the Old Yishuv’s communities insisted on defining the present existence as ‘‘exile in the Holy Land.’’44 Their messianic desire was not directed primarily toward political emancipation, but rather toward a spiritual process of tikkun (repair) through the practice of the mitzvot (commandments). They emphasized the centrality of the Land of Israel, but in a different way. One can find similar approaches in the attitude of observant intellectuals like Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Baruch Kurzweil, who contributed in different ways to the thinking about secularism and secularization from a Jewish perspective. Kurzweil objected to the messianic dimension and enthusiasm reflected by scholars like Gershom Scholem, as well as to the Zionist negation of exile, searching for alternative definitions of Jewish collectivity.45 Leibowitz was one of the prominent supporters of the separation of religion and state in Israel.46 The secularism to which Leibowitz and Kurzweil alluded was different from that of conventional political Zionism. That is, their secularism did not define itself as against religion but rather self-consciously understood itself as a result of religion. I do not claim that these thinkers or groups proposed a satisfactory alternative or comprehensive worldview to challenge the present one. Nor should their attitudes be accepted unreflectively. Yet their thought can expose the concrete nature of the ‘‘secular’’: namely, its now-evident Orientalism and identification with the West against the East, and the political messianism it so often generates. Through their refusal to accept the state’s self-perception

Christian Ambivalence

297

as the realization of redemption, these groups and thinkers marked the political-religious differentiation—secularity—denied by ‘‘the secular,’’ and marked out a distinction between ‘‘national’’ identity and the state. Moreover, even if we do not accept the entire frame of thought from which these religious anti-Zionists emerged, they propose the notion of exile as a critical way of thinking. This positioning not only clarifies competing concrete understandings of the secular, but may also direct us to think of a different approach to secularism, one that takes into consideration the notion of exile and its implications. Exile’s role as a crucial category for an alternative definition of Jewish existence cannot be separated from its fundamental importance for dealing with the question of Palestine. The Zionist ‘‘negation of exile’’ determined the exile of the Palestinians and made it the fundamental component of historical experience and memory. It was also the source of illuminating reflections by great thinkers like Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, and others, who often referred to the exilic writings of Jewish intellectuals. To use the term ‘‘exile’’ for an alternative approach to Jewish existence means to direct us toward the de-colonization of Jewish identity, toward a process that integrates Jews and Palestinians. Otherwise, the term ‘‘secularism’’ will remain meaningless for the contemporary Jewish world. However, the relevance of the notion of exile as understood in Jewish traditions can be still more inclusive. The turn to a notion of exile demands employing it also against the dominant secular order that long denied Jewish exile. It reminds us of the way that the traditional Jewish historical consciousness problematized both the Christian ambivalence toward the Jews and the notion of progress that we all have come to share. Bringing back the exilic voices of the Jewish diasporas means including such forgotten exilic voices as central parts of the discussion of Zionism and secularism. Let me conclude by reflecting on the relevance of the perspectives of my colleagues Andrea Schatz and David Myers for my discussion here. The three of us address three different contexts and understandings of secularism; among other things, this means that we treat three different examples of Jewish engagements with secular time. In this regard, a brief comparison may clarify further the meaning of secularism in Zionist discourse. The cases of the early Maskilim and of the more recent Satmar Hasidim of Kiryas Joel both witnessed Jews establishing the terms of their existence through engagement with the secular time of the state, and therein with the state’s demands for unification and integration. In both cases, Jews have expressed their

298

Raz-Krakotzkin

sovereignty in this framework by maintaining the ‘‘time of the Diaspora’’ and (particularly in the Satmar Hasidic approach) a strong notion of exile that relies on a framework beyond the concrete terms of the present political situation. The exilic now that is not the now of secular time has been a manifestation of a kind of persistent traditional Jewish sovereignty. The accommodation to the state and law (and in the case of the early Maskilim the ambivalent embrace of the notion of progress) has been accompanied by the clear Jewish distinctiveness and resistance to ‘‘diaspora time.’’ Secularization in Zionist discourse, by contrast, has meant the complete opposite. In the context of modern Zionism, secularization has meant the denial of any distinction between the secular time of the state and Jewish time, in other words, the denial of traditional Jewish sovereignty itself. The very definition of the state as Jewish has expressed the demand for the secular state’s monopoly on ‘‘Jewish’’ time. In this manner, the critical analysis of Zionism as an ideology and discursive framework can contribute to a broader critique of secularism in general. This broader critique may occur through the demand to find the space for a ‘‘time of the diaspora,’’ an exilic temporality that preserves the messianic desire, but that is distinguished from the political process and political sovereignty.

chapter 14

‘‘Eleven Calendars’’: Beyond Secular Time andrea schatz

Turning to this world and the present time has often been seen as a central aspect of modern secular cultures. In secular contexts, the moment when ‘‘newness enters the world’’1 and progress can take place is always here and now. The present moment is imagined as opening up possibilites for worldly agency rather than heavenly interventions. Its transformative power, while sometimes linked symbolically to divine promises of the past or messianic visions of the future, is not entirely bound or defined by them. Secularism, which is often discussed in terms of space and spatial distinctions, whether taken literally or metaphorically, can also be examined in terms of time and temporalities. A spatial framework is important to the analysis of both of my colleagues in this concluding forum. David Myers examines an intriguing instance in the interaction between the secular state and the religious community of Kiryas Yoel. While the territorialization of ‘‘the secular’’ and ‘‘the religious’’ is a fac¸on de parler, which tends to reinforce the perception that the two are fundamentally opposed to each other, here it is enacted in a very literal sense as a boundary dispute and reveals, dialectically, the political and conceptual untenability of such boundaries. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin takes us to Israel and points to a thought-provoking parallel: one aspect of the negation of exile, as expressed in secular Zionism, is the political and cultural territorialization of ‘‘the secular’’ and ‘‘the religious.’’ Boundaries are drawn in a literal sense between the lands of religious exile and the territory of the secular nation state, and also internally, between neighborhoods defined as religious and others perceived as secular, resulting in dramatic complexities. This essay

300

Schatz

adds to the conversation a few reflections about the impact of secularism on perceptions of time, and I return at the end to the potential implications of this contrast in approach. Jose´ Casanova has characterized the medieval temporal order as a complex tripartite framework, in which secular time unfolded in conjunction with divine and ecclesiastical time: ‘‘Temporally, we find the . . . tripartite division between the eternal age of God and the temporal-historical age, which is itself divided into the sacred-spiritual time of salvation, represented by the church’s calendar, and the secular age proper (saeculum).’’2 These three distinct aspects of time did not simply unfold alongside each other. According to Talal Asad, they were imagined as interconnected and occasionally disrupting each other before secularism introduced a new dualistic temporal order: ‘‘The complex medieval Christian universe, with its interlinked times (eternity and its moving image, and the irruptions of the former into the latter: Creation, Fall, Christ’s life and death, Judgment Day) . . . is broken down by the modern doctrine of secularism into a duality: a world of selfauthenticating things in which we really live as social beings and a religious world that exists only in our imagination.’’3 In their remarks on complex medieval temporalities, neither Casanova nor Asad refer to religious communities living in places where their time was governed by calendars other than their own. Time-keeping in medieval and early modern Ashkenaz was often even more complex than indicated in the quotes above.4 Jewish calendars did not only seek to provide correct dates for Jewish months, seasons, and holidays. They also had to find space for the ‘‘time of the church’’ and for ‘‘market time,’’5 and they had to correlate these to the dates of the Jewish calendar. This may suggest that Jewish calendars turned ecclesiastical time into secular time: at first glance it may seem as if Jews recorded the days of Christian holidays or the days of saints merely as important reference points for trade and the interaction with Christian authorities. Elisheva Carlebach has shown, however, that Jews were acutely aware of the religious nature of the Christian calendar and that their recordings retained an element of religious polemics. Ashkenazic Jews tried to deflect Christian claims by introducing small linguistic changes, referring, for instance, to Mary as ishah (woman) instead of betulah (virgin)—usages that Christian censors, in turn, tried to detect and eliminate. ‘‘The calendar itself,’’ Carlebach writes, ‘‘was both a locus and expression of the intertwined religious cultures whose development was shaped by each other. The Christian calendar was created in light of the Jewish calendar, Jewish scribes and

‘‘Eleven Calendars’’

301

printers developed strategies to resist its power, and the Christians subsequently attempted to penetrate those strategies and eliminate them.’’6 Jewish calendars in the Diaspora complicate the descriptions of interwoven aspects of time that we find in Casanova and Asad’s work. In addition, they raise questions about Asad’s assertion that the emergence of secularism led to radically new conceptualizations of time, which set the compelling immanence of the here and now against an imagined transcendence. Carlebach draws our attention to the fact that, in the transition to modernity, neither the Maskilim nor the Reform movement sought to revise the Jewish calendar altogether and to rewrite it in secular terms.7 This may not be surprising given the remarkable absence of secular calendars that might have served as a model. What surprises is indeed the failure of the emerging secular states to come up with alternatives to Christian calendars. The French republican calendar, established in 1793 and abandoned in 1805, was a bold attempt to articulate the experience not just of historical change but of changing historical time. Radical newness was translated into a secular calendar based on reason (a week of ten days), nature (the months reflecting the seasons and agricultural cycles), and history (Year I marking the birth of the French Republic).8 It is the last of these three aspects which reveals how secular time was intertwined with the time of the nation: it did not yield a universal calendar, because, ultimately, national history could not sustain claims to transnational and transhistorical significance. As a result, all other civic calendars would inscribe secular festivals into existing calendars instead of abandoning them altogether. Secular conceptions of time based on nature, reason, and historical progress never replaced Christian frameworks of ‘‘timekeeping.’’9 The ‘‘duality’’ of secular notions of time asserted itself in interrelation with existing calendars, complicating time-keeping rather than simplifying it. Modern notions of historical time were not governed by secularism: they reveal its limited, fragmentary character.10 In the first part of this essay, I further illustrate this by returning to the work of historians whose contrasting reconstructions of secular time point to ambiguities and contradictions that challenge the assumption that secularism translates into a singular, unified, linear, and dualistic concept of time. In the second part, I revisit a few examples of resistance to secular notions of historical time, which occurred precisely at the moment and in the places that tend to be cited as crucial instances of a ‘‘secular turn’’ in Jewish contexts—in the early Jewish Enlightenment. Finally, I argue that Jewish ‘‘modern times’’ remained intricately linked to the complexities of history in the diaspora.

302

Schatz

These reflections ultimately lead to a somewhat paradoxical conclusion. On the one hand, early Enlightenment texts point to an area that needs to be studied more extensively and intensely: the implications of secularism for Jewish ways of thinking, imagining, and enacting time; on the other hand, I would like to suggest that we direct more attention and critical energies to the limits of secularism and to what lies beyond its times and its claims.

After the Turn: Secular Time A brief article in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclope´die locates the origins of ‘‘secularization’’ in the wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics: church property that had been confiscated by Protestant and Catholic princes was to remain the property of the state. The article firmly endorses secularization as part of an ongoing struggle against ignorance, superstition, and clerical domination, and it advocates a clear distinction between public and religious matters.11 The state establishes and controls the boundaries between the two spheres. Here, secularization is praised as a form of progress, but progress is also linked to war, violent rupture, and imperial power. In our own times, the violent scenes that form the historical backdrop of the article have been interpreted in two radically divergent ways: either as harbingers of an age of disenchantment, loss, and exile, or as scenes heralding an age of reason, emancipation, and the ‘‘universal pursuit of happiness.’’ Both interpretations propose to define secular time as a time in which ‘‘newness’’ depends on discontinuity: the present moment can be a source of critique and creativity only to the extent that it distances and differentiates itself from previous moments, thus indicating movement and progress. Regarding the meanings of secular time, however, the two interpretations of secularization differ vastly from each other. The ‘‘ambivalent’’ relationship between history and secular time in Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is the subject of Jonathan Sheehan’s examination of secular time as the time of disenchantment.12 Secular time needs the time of religion to conceive of itself as a time of ‘‘exile’’; the age of disenchantment needs an age of enchantment to constitute itself. Therefore, the evocation of a sequence of ‘‘before and after’’ is crucial: this sequence matters more than attention to the complexities and contingencies involved in complex processes of transformation and transition. Sheehan notes: ‘‘[The] constitution of [the secular age] is a contrastive one. It is what comes after. As such,

‘‘Eleven Calendars’’

303

modern humans resemble Hesiod’s ‘Fifth generation,’ the Iron Age men whose golden ancestors serve as exhortation and as reminder of what was lost. . . . The mark of before and after is internal to this secular age and disconnected to the external flow of time, events, and peoples.’’13 This temporal structure is remarkably similar to modernity’s narrative about itself. As modernity is construed as an age of constant change, movement, and innovation, its character can only be captured in contrast to an immutable and inflexible past. ‘‘Tradition’’ and its various embodiments (Catholicism, Judaism, Islam) are evoked as modernity’s constitutive other.14 Interpretations of secular time as a time of disenchantment, however, are not interested in a simple rejection of the ‘‘other’’: they appear to inscribe a nostalgic desire for an imagined other into their narrative of loss and progress. The alternative narrative, which turns to secular time as a time of enlightenment and liberation, is in many respects far more interested in historical detail than the narrative of disenchantment. In his trilogy Radical Enlightenment, Contested Enlightenment, and Democratic Enlightenment, Jonathan Israel traces numerous and varied scenes of transformation in early modern Europe and their many intriguing and very specific facets. In his introduction to Radical Enlightenment, he also offers a few programmatic statements about the general framework of his analysis: After 1650, a general process of rationalization and secularization set in which rapidly overthrew theology’s age-old hegemony in the world of study, slowly but surely eradicated magic and belief in the supernatural from Europe’s intellectual culture, and led a few openly to challenge everything inherited from the past—not just commonly received assumptions about mankind, society, politics, and the cosmos but also the veracity of the Bible and the Christian faith or indeed any faith. Of course, most people at all levels of society were profoundly disquieted by such sweeping intellectual and cultural change and frightened by the upsurge of radical thinking.15 Two rather contradictory claims allow the author to portray the radical thinkers of the Early Enlightenment as heroes: they brought about ‘‘sweeping intellectual and cultural change,’’ and at the same time they had to confront, as a tiny minority, a vast majority of people ‘‘at all levels of society’’ who were disquieted and frightened by their innovations. The hero appears as an early modern David confronting Goliath (‘‘theology’s age-old hegemony’’), but we

304

Schatz

seem to observe David simultaneously before and after the battle: Goliath is slain, and yet he is not—he is forever opposing and fighting the young hero who is about to bring newness into the world. Here, we encounter once again a conceptually clear distinction between two contrasting conditions, one characterized by the hegemony of religious formations and the other by secular emancipation from their dominance. And yet, the differences between Taylor and Israel are obvious. In contrast to Taylor’s tale of nostalgia, Jonathan Israel’s narrative resembles the Enlightenment’s own affirmative account of the cultural and political meanings of rupture and transformation. And contrary to Taylor’s assumption of complete and irreversible rupture, Israel’s reflections imply that the transformations of the modern age remained incomplete: we seem to continue to live simultaneously before and after the triumph of secularism. These contrasting narratives capture some of the interpretations of historical time that we find in the eighteenth century, and they point to variations and splits in secular conceptions of time, which render them fragmentary and finite—even before the implications of contemporary narratives, which resist or ignore secular time, have been considered. I now turn to a few examples of such alternative interpretations, which focus on recurring times of renewal rather than a revolutionary moment of unprecedented newness.

In Exile: Times of Renewal In his philosophical treatise Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism (1783), Moses Mendelssohn writes about religion and society: ‘‘On the dark path . . . man has to walk here, he is granted just as much light as he needs for the next steps he has to take. More would only blind him, and any lateral light would only confuse him.’’16 At first glance, this statement seems to confirm Talal Asad’s claim that the secular commitment to the here and now relegates religion to a largely irrelevant, even irritating ‘‘lateral’’ sphere. However, the quote takes on different meanings if read in its proper context. Mendelssohn is taking issue with Locke’s attempt to distinguish clearly between temporal matters governed by the state and eternal matters regulated by the church. Mendelssohn points out that the juxtaposition of eternal and temporal affairs, far from removing religion from the ‘‘world of selfauthenticating things,’’ concedes enormous power to it, as citizens can now

‘‘Eleven Calendars’’

305

rightly claim that their eternal felicity must be of greater concern to them than their temporal well-being. Instead of insisting on the clear separation between temporal and eternal matters, it is, according to Mendelssohn, necessary to think about them as intertwined: As soon as man recognizes that outside of society he can fulfill his duties toward himself and toward the author of his existence as poorly as he can fulfill his duties toward his neighbor . . . he is obliged . . . to enter into society with those in a like situation in order to satisfy their needs through mutual aid and to promote their common good by common measures. Their common good, however, includes the present as well as the future, the spiritual as well as the earthly. One is inseparable from the other. Unless we fulfill our obligations, we can expect felicity neither here nor there, neither on earth nor in heaven.17 Mendelssohn seeks to show that secularism understood as the separation between temporal and eternal spheres will result not in the demise of ‘‘imagined’’ religion, but in the very real political power of its institutions. As an answer to this problem, he outlines an alternative form of secularism, where differentiation does not preclude interconnection. In a surprising further step, he then declares that this alternative secularism is not ‘‘new’’—it is in fact as ancient as rabbinic thought: ‘‘The life, say the rabbis, is a vestibule in which one must comport oneself in the manner in which one wishes to appear in the inner chamber.’’18 Mendelssohn’s argument against Locke echoes his famous resistance to histories of ‘‘progress’’ with their reiteration of Christian supersessionist claims in a secular key.19 But apart from that he also signals a more modest evaluation of his own times. In the world that Mendelssohn inhabits, change has not been so remarkable as to inspire celebrations of newness, and contemporary political and cultural issues do not require radically new approaches. The answers to them are available—they only need to be spelled out again, based on reason and the teachings of tradition. Mendelssohn’s ‘‘traditional’’ interpretation of his own time has often been noted, and it has been characterized as somewhat unique among the proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment. I would like to suggest here, however, that he may just articulate in clearer and more complex terms what other Maskilim expressed more obliquely: historical change was taking place, but it was not unprecedented

306

Schatz

and unique in its character. Newness was relative: it could be recognized in some places and in relation to some historical periods, while in relation to others the present moment represented a return of opportunities encountered before—a time of renewal rather than radical innovation.20 This attitude is particularly striking when it occurs in one of the most radical and controversial texts of the Jewish Enlightenment, Naphtali Herz Wessely’s Divrei shalom ve-emet (Words of peace and truth), a treatise on educational reform, published in 1782. Wessely was recognised among rabbinic scholars and Maskilim as a learned and pious author of Hebrew commentaries and linguistic works and as a Hebrew poet. In Divrei shalom ve-emet, however, he could be seen as advocating clear secular boundaries. He distinguishes neatly between torat ha-adam (human knowledge) and torat ha-elohim (divine knowledge), explains that the former is historically anterior to the latter, and derives from this the justification for an educational system that would focus on secular subjects. It would include an introduction to the Bible and the Hebrew language, but Talmud studies would become optional: only specifically talented students should choose to devote themselves to them. Clearly, Wessely aimed to transform the study of rabbinical literature into an area of professional specialisation, similar to Christian theology. He was harshly attacked by leading rabbinical scholars, in particular by the respected and erudite rabbi of Lissa, David Tevele, and by Ezekiel Landau, widely considered the leading Ashkenazic rabbinical scholar of his time. Since both had supported Wessely a few years earlier when they had written approbations for his commentary Yen levanon on Pirkei Avot (Berlin, 1775), they may now have found it necessary to distance themselves publicly from the author of the bold treatise. Tevele and Landau rejected Wessely’s attempt to separate ‘‘human knowledge’’ from ‘‘divine knowledge’’ and his assertion that the former preceded the latter in the course of human history. The normative and prescriptive implications of Wessely’s notion of the anteriority of human knowledge were indeed obvious: anteriority could easily be translated into superiority, although Wessely himself tried to avoid this conclusion. The controversy was fierce because much was at stake. All those involved responded not only to each other, but also to the demands of their Christian governments, and specifically to the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, who had just issued his Edicts of Toleration with major proposals and instructions for educational reforms. Wessely, Landau, and Tevele sought to persuade the Christian authorities to support their respective views and presented their own approaches as the perfect method for complying with the Emperor’s decrees.

‘‘Eleven Calendars’’

307

This is the somewhat turbulent context in which similarities between Maskilic and rabbinic texts seem unlikely. And yet, Wessely’s and Landau’s interpretations of historical time resemble each other. Wessely situates the present time of renewal within a very broad temporal and narrative arc. After depicting the sufferings of exile and the religious and cultural loss they brought with them, Wessely opens a new chapter (literally), and writes: It was not as man envisioned, for to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven. From the time the Creator, blessed be He, established heaven and earth, he ordered in His superior wisdom the appointed times of the universe [mo’adei tevel], times of good and times of evil. . . . From generation to generation, knowledge that was hidden was revealed by wise men in the arts, sciences and crafts. . . . In similar fashion, the Creator ordered every generation and its leaders from the beginning, raising kings to their thrones to be instruments of His craft and to work His decrees and designs. For behold, the prophet Isaiah . . . prophesied Israel’s conqueror and named him, as he said. ‘‘Thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus’’ [Is. 45:1]. . . . King Solomon enumerated times of good and evil that encompass all the inhabitants of the earth. Among these, he observed, there is ‘‘a time to love and a time to hate.’’ And so now, perhaps (ulai) the time has come to remove hatred from the hearts of men, an unfounded hatred based on a quarrel which is not theirs and whose source lies in differences of faith and worship.21 Wessely praises the present moment and the improvements it might bring, but there is no indication of a linear narrative of irreversible rupture and unprecedented change. Landau agrees with Wessely when he describes the present moment as markedly different from earlier times, while emphasizing that it is not singular in its newness. Joseph II’s most recent Edict of Toleration may constitute a historical ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after,’’ but it is just one among several turning points in Jewish history. In his sermon for the Sabbath immediately preceding Passover, known as ‘‘Shabbat ha-gadol’’ (the great Sabbath), in which he sharply criticizes Wessely’s recently published treatise, Landau compares Egypt with Persia: ‘‘[The] bitter Egyptian exile was unlike the experience in Persia. Although we were in exile there, we were considered important and

308

Schatz

respected. Cyrus and Darius were compassionate and merciful toward us. This is also the case in our own time, when our lord His Majesty the emperor has decided to help us and to raise us from our degradation.’’22 Landau is less interested in post-biblical history than Wessely, but, as in Wessely’s treatise, biblical history itself provides the template for decline and renewal in exile. In their interpretations of historical time, Wessely and Landau share the same language. If anything, Wessely’s assessment of the promises of the present moment is more cautious than the proclamations of his opponents.23 He expresses his hope that his own generation will indeed witness a historical turn: a period in which hatred and discrimination against Jews will vanish and ‘‘love’’ will prevail. But he is not certain and inserts the word ulai (perhaps) at the end of the quoted passage. This small addition may have gone largely unnoticed among modern readers, but Wessely’s contemporary translators saw it—and did not like it. David Friedla¨nder, whose German translation was published in the same year as Wessely’s treatise, did not translate it at all. He frequently paraphrased Wessely’s text rather than translating it, and in this instance tightened the entire passage, thus omitting Wessely’s comment on Solomon altogether.24 The Italian translator, Elia Morpurgo, followed the text more closely, and yet he transforms Wessely’s cautious remark about the present into a confident proclamation about the future.25 Berr Isaac Berr, who published the treatise in French, was not happy with Wessely’s ‘‘perhaps,’’ either. After having translated it faithfully,26 he adds a footnote: ‘‘N’en doutons pas, la Constitution Franc¸aise va sans doute eˆtre imite´e dans les quatre parties du monde’’ (Let us not doubt it, the French constitution will be, without any doubt, imitated in all four parts of the world).27 A few months after the French Revolution, the doubts in Wessely’s text had to be explicitly addressed and dispelled. Turning to an audience of Jews as well as non-Jews, Friedla¨nder, Morpurgo, and Berr Isaac Berr contributed to the emergence of shared public space, which in itself could be perceived as a sign of progress. In this context, hesitations and uncertainty regarding the prospects for Jewish emancipation remained untranslatable. The prophetic future tense in the Italian and French translations removed doubts about the imminent fulfillment of the promise of renewal, and yet their modifications and additions did not contradict Wessely’s underlying interpretation of historical time: they could easily be inscribed into his more general evocation of alternating times of good and evil, renewal and decline. In Wessely’s treatise, the promise of newness is not tied to the notion that the present moment is exceptional. On the contrary, progress is possible

‘‘Eleven Calendars’’

309

only to the degree that it is not new and has occurred before. The politicial, religious, and cultural transformation of contemporary Ashkenazic communities is conceivable, because it is possible to draw on the examples of medieval Spain, early modern Italy, and contemporary Sephardic communities. Wessely discusses medieval Sepharad as an instance of Jewish renewal in exilic times but puts even greater emphasis on early modern Italy and contempary Sephardic communities in Amsterdam and the Ottoman Empire because they demonstrate that the achievements of medieval Sepharad were not unique.28 Whenever times of oppression give way to more favorable political, economic, and cultural circumstances, Jewish communities will be able to thrive. Ultimately, Mendelssohn, Wessely, and Landau read historical time like a text. They interpreted it in light of a flexible network of interwoven traditions that support, question, or reflect on each other, with a big ‘‘perhaps’’ of indeterminacy written into them: they read historical time as a series of commentaries. If they wanted to establish the possibility of adding a new text, they needed to find an antecedent that would support it, transforming it into yet another commentary on previous events as well as the present moment.29 Along related lines, Yerushalmi argues that ‘‘the Haskalah itself did not attain a conception of history fundamentally different from those that prevailed earlier.’’30 He refers to Wessely’s Divrei shalom ve-emet and Euchel’s Davar el ha-kore (A word to the reader), an introduction to biographical essays on philosophers and communal leaders from Maimonides to Mendelssohn published in the journal Ha-me’assef, and he presents them as telling examples of the continuity between Maskilic and earlier approaches to historical studies. These authors include history in their educational programs because one can draw political and moral lessons from it.31 However, we can also observe in these texts, pace Yerushalmi, an important shift in emphasis from persecution, deliverance, and divine providence to times of renewal in exile, to the Jewish nation and to the active role of its intellectual and political leaders. This indicates also a shift in attention from the past to the present. Instead of assimilating the present, the past points to the here and now as the right moment for making a difference and embarking on (another) project of renewal. The intersection of tradition and newness in the idea of ‘‘renewal as tradition’’ accounts for the nuanced, layered character of Maskilic interpretation of historical time. Sepharad and Italy may be just two ‘‘commentaries’’ on earlier times of national and cultural renewal, but they are identical neither to each other nor to the times of Ezra. In contrast to the outlook of

310

Schatz

writers in earlier centuries, it is not ‘‘all one’’32 and, in contrast to the views of later observers, the past is not yet a sphere of distant facts and myths.33 At the same time, interpretations of historical time among early Maskilim and their opponents remain linked to an acute awareness of the condition of exile. Within its framework, all moments of renewal are bound to remain specific and limited. The Maskilim were painfully aware of the precariousness of their efforts to bring about social, cultural, and religious change, given that each and every step had to be negotiated with Christian and secular authorities. The resulting complications, contradictions, and limitations seriously undermined the impact of their projects.34 The Maskilim considered these limitations in particularly intense and poignant passages when they discussed the prospects for the renewal of the Hebrew language. Since their project of Hebrew renewal was strongly linked to the idea of the renewal of the Jewish nation, it brought them into latent conflict with the emerging secular states and the concept of individual citizenship. The significance of their insistence on the renewal of the Hebrew language is captured in Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin’s claim in his essay in this volume: ‘‘The declaration of Jews as ‘nation’ in Europe was a mode of resistance.’’ It is in this context that both Mendelssohn and Wessely added a further aspect to their interpretations of historical time: they refer to the future restoration of national sovereignty and religious integrity in meta-historical, messianic time. Mendelssohn’s reflections on the history of the Hebrew language and its condition after the Babylonian exile in the introduction to his Pentateuch edition, Or le-netiva, culminate in the following remarks: ‘‘The Eternal has granted us . . . help and support . . . through his teachings and commandments until the time of love will begin. . . . Then he will send his spirit to the fortunate language, to revive it, and to restore it to its former condition, to its previous constitution.’’35 Wessely is more optimistic regarding the renewal of the Hebrew language in exile, but he, too, envisions its complete restoration only in messianic times. Both respond to the difficult social and cultural contexts of the project of a renewal of the Hebrew language by differentiating between the historical time of the Jewish nation in exile and the time of the Hebrew language that transcends it: it is folded into historical time, but unfolds also beyond it, connecting biblical origins to visions of messianic restoration. Secular interpretations of historical time had always been complex and even contradictory. The complexities of Jewish time in the diaspora further added to these intricacies. Jewish time in the eighteenth century can be

‘‘Eleven Calendars’’

311

described as fragmentary, but also—with one of Mendelssohn’s own favorite words—as ‘‘manifold.’’ In the diaspora, secular time could not be ignored, but it was possible to hold on to Jewish frameworks of historical ‘‘timekeeping,’’ and in the face of the fragmentary time of exile, it was possible to insist on thinking of divine temporalities as folded into human temporalities.36

In the Diaspora: Eleven Calendars In proposing the research group that led to this book, the three of us participating in this concluding forum convened a wider group of scholars with an ambitious aim: ‘‘rethinking’’ secularism as ‘‘an organizing principal of modern Jewish life.’’ In our discussions, many of them reflected in these pages, we examined Jewish ways of shaping and reshaping secular attitudes, and we attempted to shed light on the many instances in which Jews ignored secularist claims or rejected them outright. Looking at contexts ranging from the Jewish-Arab cafe´s of Paris in the 1930s to Israeli masortim today, from socialist Warsaw around 1900 to contemporary Hebrew literature, we were able to trace the effects of secularism and its limits, its moments of relevance as well as irrelevance. And yet, our questions, with their reiteration of the opposition of ‘‘the religious’’ and ‘‘the secular,’’ tended to reinstate Jewish texts, ideas, and activities that might have been defined or confined by these notions only loosely or not at all, within the parameters of a secularist framework—that is, one that assumes such religious/secular oppositions and separations as a basic, overriding feature of modern life. Similarly, thinking about the beginnings of secularism tended to lead to the tacit adoption of a timeline, which would differentiate between pre-secular and post-secular history, even though similar temporal divisions in terms of the ‘‘premodern’’ or ‘‘postmodern’’ have come under withering critique of late. When seeking to ‘‘rethink’’ secularism as ‘‘an organizing principle of modern Jewish life,’’ it proved challenging to appreciate the complexities of Jewish and non-Jewish approaches to the here and now because our questions themselves had an uncanny power to elicit secularist assumptions in our attempts to answer them. In other words, it was more difficult than anticipated to sustain a critical analysis that would not be caught up in the sharp distinctions and diffuse assumptions of secular narratives. How is it possible to avoid superimposing secularism’s own narrative about itself on material that may not have been

312

Schatz

concerned with it very much in the first place? We may have started by asking: How could Jews be secular? Could they be secular at all? And we may have ended up asking more or less explicitly: How can anyone not be secular? Colin Jager succinctly formulated this dilemma: The command to historicize, provincialize, reflect, and resist is a very difficult one to carry out, since taken at their strongest the premises paint a picture of secularism lurking everywhere and doing everything. There is nothing outside it, no way to get a handle on it. There is no way to be reflexive about it, because it makes us who we are. One might want to ask, therefore, what authorizes the current critique of secularism, and where its own modes of agency lie.37 It strikes me that here lies the tension that differentiates most sharply the essays of my fellow participants in this closing conversation from one another. David Myers and Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin both address the dilemma inherent in the two questions: ‘‘How can Jews be secular?’’ and ‘‘How can anyone not be secular?’’ (implicit in Jager’s reflections). Raz-Krakotzkin foregrounds the first question, insisting that Jewish secularism is in many ways a contradiction in terms, which began as an impossible demand from Christianity and has never been satisfactorily resolved for either Christians or Jews. Myers’s reflections, meanwhile, implictly engage with the second question, as they borrow insights from the conversations within the research group at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and the wider secularism debate, and apply them to a recalibrated ‘‘neo-secularist’’ position that creates greater space for multifaceted developments while not wishing to abandon altogether the tenets of secularism. As Raz-Krakotzkin points out, the two essays intersect where they explore the possibilities for thinking and enacting ‘‘the secular’’ differently. The significance of the remaining distance between their seemingly converging conclusions comes into focus, if we take into account Laura Levitt’s insights into the historical differences between a hegemonic secularism of the state, associated with the history and politics of the nation-state in Western Europe and the United States, and an experimental secularism of ‘‘the people,’’ which played a particularly important role in anarchist and socialist contexts in Eastern Europe.38 In the West, ‘‘state secularism’’ tends to focus on ideas and practices of separation and control: the nation-state asks its

‘‘Eleven Calendars’’

313

citizens to act as individuals with an uncanny ability to divide up and compartmentalize their responsibilities as they move between spheres where religion matters and others where it cannot matter at all. In Eastern Europe, prevalent forms of secularism were based on an indivisible commitment to this time and this world, which could find expression in the critical rejection of religion, in complete indifference, or in self-confident reappropriations of fragments of religious traditions, which were reinterpreted and reenacted in contexts of national and cultural renewal.39 As Levitt reminds us, when Eastern European Jews arrived in the United States they found that ‘‘there was little place for their worldly forms of enlightened Jewishness’’ and its national and cultural articulations. They were required to enter a ‘‘kind of synagoguecentered Jewishness,’’ which allowed them to define themselves as Jewish only to the extent that they agreed to redefine their Jewishness as a private and religious affair.40 Drawing on Levitt’s insights, one might say that Myers proposes a different secularism of the state, which can acknowledge the irreversible trend toward deprivatized religion; meanwhile, Raz-Krakotzkin proposes a revival of irreverent secularisms of the people, for which he finds an example, linking his reflections directly to Levitt’s observations on Eastern European Jews: the Old Yishuv. Both proposals point to possibilities of thinking and enacting secularism differently and critically. Here I would like to add to them the insistence on inscribing into secularism—in its various forms—its fragmentary and finite character as it emerges, for instance, in the complexities of Jewish and Christian attitudes toward historical time and temporalities. In studying their approaches, we encounter, I would argue, what Dipesh Chakrabarty has called the necessity ‘‘to think the present—the ‘now’ that we inhabit as we speak—as irreducibly not-one.’’41 This notion of the ‘‘now’’ that is ‘‘not-one’’ encourages us to explore the limited character of multiplying and fragmented forms of secularism.42 It also allows us to study fragmentation as interruption: secular time exists in the time of the diaspora, but the time of the diaspora also exists in secular time, interrupts it, and confronts it with its boundaries. The ‘‘now’’ that is ‘‘not-one’’ invites us to turn our attention to a proliferation of complex, skeptical, irreverent, and indifferent attitudes and activities that point to the impossibility of inhabiting linear, unified secular time—among Jews and many others.43 Taking up a felicitous formulation by Sylvie-Anne Goldberg,44 we might say that there is never just one calendar in the city, there are at least eleven.

notes

introduction We would like to thank Julia Phillips Cohen, Natalie Dohrmann, David Myers, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Michael Silber, and Robert Yelle for their thoughtful feedback on this introduction. 1. Predictions of the end of Judaism have repeatedly been proven premature by new trends and movements in Jewish life. On this, see David Sorkin, ‘‘Between Messianism and Survival: Secularization and Sacralization in Modern Judaism,’’ Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 3, no. 1 (2004): 73–86; and Andrew Buckser, ‘‘Secularization, Religiosity, and the Anthropology of Jewry,’’ Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 10, no. 2 (2011): 205–22. For a demography-based discussion of challenges to the secular/religious classification for American Jewry, see the work of Calvin Goldscheider, esp. Studying the Jewish Future (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004). For trenchant analyses of the complexities of the Israeli case, see the work of both Charles S. Liebman and Yaacov Yadgar, for example: Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); and Yaacov Yadgar, Secularism and Religion in Jewish-Israeli Politics: Traditionists and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2011). 2. It is remarkable how Jews and Judaism have either been ignored or only mentioned in passing in the critiques and reformulations of the leading scholars of secularism and secularization discussed here, such as Talal Asad, Jose´ Casanova, and Charles Taylor, as well as by most of those who have sought to follow in their footsteps. For instance: Markus Dressler and Arvind-Paul S. Mandair, eds., Secularism and Religion-Making (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Linell Elizabeth Cady and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, eds., Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, eds., Rethinking Secularism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). The exception is a chapter in Rethinking Secularism, which offers a sustained treatment of the radical right-wing Gush Emunim movement in Israel: R. Scott Appleby, ‘‘Rethinking Fundamentalism in a Secular Age.’’ For a thoughtful critique of the absence of any sustained discussion of Jews or Judaism in Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

316

Notes to Pages 2–3

2007), see Susannah Heschel, ‘‘Religion and Its Discontents,’’ AJS Perspectives, ‘‘The Religious Issue’’ (Fall 2011): 6–7. 3. See Raz-Krakotzkin’s essay in this volume. 4. For a concise and provocative account of the trajectory from early Christianity to modern secularization theory, see Robert A. Yelle, ‘‘Moses’ Veil: Secularization as Christian Myth,’’ in After Secular Law: The Cultural Lives of Law, ed. Winnifred Sullivan, Robert Yelle, and Mateo Taussiq-Rubbo (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011); on Jews and Muslims as foils, see Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003). 5. Max Weber, ‘‘Science as a Vocation,’’ in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans., ed., and with an introduction by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 129–56. 6. Here we do not seek to make a comprehensive claim about Weber’s view or portrayal of Jews throughout his oeuvre but rather to highlight the place of Jews in this particular lecture, which became immensely influential for the study of secularization. Scholarship on Weber’s perspectives on the Jews nonetheless points in similar directions. See Gary Abraham, Max Weber and the Jewish Question: A Study of the Outlook of His Sociology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992); David Ellenson, ‘‘Max Weber on Judaism and the Jews,’’ in his After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004); Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘‘A Note on Max Weber’s Definition of Judaism as a Pariah-Religion,’’ History and Theory 19, no. 3 (1980): 313–18. A previous discussion of the aforementioned passage offers a different interpretation: Hans Liebeschu¨tz, ‘‘Max Weber’s Historical Interpretation of Judaism,’’ Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 9 (1964): 51–68. For brief but trenchant remarks that consider the implications of Weber’s work for longstanding assumptions about Jews and Judaism, see Robert Yelle, ‘‘The Hindu Moses: Christian Polemics against Jewish Ritual and the Secularization of Hindu Law under Colonialism,’’ History of Religions 49 (2009): 141–71, here 145–47; and Eliyahu Stern, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in his The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012), esp. 6–7. 7. Weber, ‘‘Science as a Vocation,’’ 156. The quoted biblical passage is from Isaiah 21:11–12, here quoted from the translation found in JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2005), 890. 8. Already in the 1960s, Jacob Katz made a closely related set of points about the ongoing impact of Christian views of Jews on secularist discourse; about how, for many Jews, secularization meant Christianization; and about how, as secularist assumptions took hold in much of Western Europe, Judaism came to be judged by a new set of secular criteria that were, nonetheless, always seen as compatible with Christianity. See Jacob Katz, ‘‘Judaism and Christianity Against the Background of Modern Secularism,’’ Judaism 17, no. 3 (1968): 299–315; Katz, ‘‘Religion as a Uniting and Dividing Force in Modern Jewish History,’’ in The Role of Religion in Modern Jewish History, ed. Katz (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), both reprinted in his Jewish Emancipation and

Notes to Pages 4–6

317

Self-Emancipation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986). Katz also offers brief remarks on this issue in his Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 90–91. 9. The authoritative study of dina de-malkhuta dina is Shmuel Shilo, Dina demalkhuta Dina [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975); for a classic articulation of the ideal of Torah and worldly knowledge that traces various approaches and objections across halakhic Judaism throughout history, see Norman Lamm, Torah Umadda: The Encounter of Religious Learning and Worldly Knowledge in the Jewish Tradition (Northvale, N.J.: Aronson, 1990); one of the most thorough examinations of traditional Jewish responses to shifting relationships with non-Jews remains Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness & Tolerance: JewishGentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961). 10. See Leora Faye Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011). 11. On the debates about these questions, see Gil Graff, Separation of Church and State: Dina de-Malkhuta Dina in Jewish Law, 1750–1848 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985). 12. Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 13. Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘‘Religion, Religions, Religious,’’ in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 179–96; Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 14. Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion; Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions. 15. For two preliminary critiques of this tendency and its significance for Jewish studies, see Buckser, ‘‘Secularization,’’ and Laura Levitt, ‘‘Impossible Assimilations, American Liberalism, and Jewish Difference: Revisiting Jewish Secularism,’’ American Quarterly 50, no. 2 (2007): 807–32, reprinted in Secularisms, ed. Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008). 16. Occasionally, the two overlap. This includes, for example, the work of the Posen Foundation, whose initiatives and publications on ‘‘secular Judaism’’ or ‘‘Jewish secularism’’ seek both to intervene into scholarly debates and to promote their area of study as a viable option for contemporary Jewish identity formation and communal life. See issues of the foundation’s occasional journal Contemplate: The International Journal of Cultural Jewish Thought; and the ongoing publications of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization. 17. See especially Jose´ Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Taylor, A Secular Age.

318

Notes to Pages 6–10

18. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 16, 23–24. 19. Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Secularisms. 20. The present book thus joins an emerging literature seeking to rethink secularism from a standpoint other than that of Christian Europe. Much of this conversation is indebted to S. N. Eisenstadt, ‘‘Multiple Modernities,’’ Daedalus 129, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 1–29. For an attempt to chart ‘‘multiple secularities,’’ see Ira Katznelson and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds., Religion and the Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Other scholarship that has informed our own questions and approaches gives newfound attention particularly to India and to Islam. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); Rajeev Bhargava, ed., Secularism and Its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Nader Hashemi, Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Olivier Roy, Secularism Confronts Islam, trans. George Holoch (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); and Nikkie R. Keddie, ‘‘Secularism and Its Discontents,’’ Daedalus 132, no. 3 (2003): 14–30. 21. See Ari Joskowicz, The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2014). 22. On Maskilim, see Shmuel Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002). 23. Particularly in the case of Dubnow, who articulated an expressly anti-religious position, this should not be confused with an overall, self-consciously anti-secular outlook. 24. On the Jerusalem School, see David N. Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 25. For a discussion of the commonalities of this generation in its turn away from longstanding German Jewish liberal, rationalist assumptions, see Steven E. Aschheim, ‘‘German Jews Beyond Bildung and Liberalism,’’ in his Culture and Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontations with National Socialism and Other Crises (New York: New York University Press, 1996). 26. Salo W. Baron, ‘‘Ghetto and Emancipation,’’ in The Menorah Treasury: Harvest of Half a Century (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1964), 61. 27. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944; New York: Continuum, 1993); Jacob L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1960); Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). 28. For brief treatments of the subject see, for example, Jacob Katz, ‘‘Judaism and Christianity Against the Background of Modern Secularism’’; Katz, ‘‘Religion as a Uniting and Dividing Force in Modern Jewish History’’; George L. Mosse, ‘‘The Secularization of Jewish Theology,’’ in his Masses and Man: Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980); and selected essays by Amos Funkenstein in his Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

Notes to Pages 10–12

319

29. On this equivalency and its problems, see Levitt, ‘‘Impossible Assimilations.’’ 30. In the former case, see the above-cited essays; in the latter, Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (New York: Schocken, 1961); Katz, Out of the Ghetto. 31. Todd Endelman, ‘‘Jewish Self-Identification and West European Categories of Belonging: From the Enlightenment to World War II,’’ in Religion or Ethnicity? Jewish Identities in Evolution, ed. Zvi Gitelman (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 104–30, also notes the lack of explicit engagement by Jewish historians with the question of secularization. He seeks to address this lacuna both by demanding and by beginning to chart a careful disaggregation of emancipation, acculturation, secularization, and integration as distinct components of Jewish modernity. 32. For analysis of the major schools of Jewish history in modern times, see Michael A. Meyer, ‘‘Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?’’ Judaism 24, no. 3 (1975): 329–38; Jonathan Frankel, ‘‘Assimilation and the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Towards a New Historiography,’’ in Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1–37. 33. See, for example, Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979); Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); David Jan Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 34. Michael Brenner, ‘‘Religion, Nation oder Stamm: Zum Wandel der Selbstdefinition unter deutschen Juden,’’ in Nation und Religion in der deutschen Geschichte, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Dieter Langewiesche (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001), 587–601; Till van Rahden, ‘‘Germans of the Jewish Stamm: Visions of Community between Nationalism and Particularism, 1850 to 1933,’’ in German History from the Margins, ed. Neil Gregor, Nils Roemer, and Mark Roseman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 27–48. 35. Brian E. Vick, Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 83–109. 36. Michael R. Marrus, The Politics of Assimilation: A Study of the French Jewish Community at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). 37. See, for example, Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006). 38. Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). On ethnic Jewishness in the French public sphere see also Phyllis Cohen Albert, ‘‘Ethnicity and Jewish Solidarity in NineteenthCentury France,’’ in Mystics, Philosophers, and Politicians: Essays in Jewish Intellectual History in Honor of Alexander Altmann, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Daniel Swetschinski (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982), 249–74; Jay Berkovitz, The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century France (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989); Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1860

320

Notes to Pages 12–13

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Lisa Moses Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006). On how Jewish literature in particular offered a means of negotiating French Jewish identities, see Maurice Samuels, Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009). Regarding Jewish devotion to the Republic, see Pierre Birnbaum, The Jews of the Republic: A Political History of State Jews in France from Gambetta to Vichy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996); Michael Graetz, The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France: From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israe´lite Universelle (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996); Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israe´lite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860–1925 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). 39. David Roskies, Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984). 40. Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 41. Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 42. Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity. 43. Joskowicz, Modernity of Others, 20. 44. For England in a related vein, see Abigail Green, ‘‘Nationalism and the ‘Jewish International’: Religious Internationalism in Europe and the Middle East, c. 1840–c. 1880,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 2 (2008): 535–58. 45. Daniel B. Schwartz, The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012). 46. On the modern nature of these innovations, which followers often presented as contiguous with an age-old, mythical past, see Jacob Katz, ‘‘Toward a Biography of the Hatam Sofer,’’ trans. David Ellenson, in From East to West: Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750–1850, ed. Frances Malino and David Sorkin (London: Blackwell, 1990), 223–66; Michael K. Silber, ‘‘The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition,’’ in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), ed. Jack Wertheimer; and in the same collection, both Menachem Friedman, ‘‘The Lost Kiddush Cup: Changes in Ashkenazic Haredi Culture—A Tradition in Crisis,’’ and Lawrence Kaplan, ‘‘The Hazon Ish: Haredi Critic of Traditional Orthodoxy.’’ For more extended treatments, see Benjamin Brown, The Hazon Ish: Halakhist, Believer and Leader of the Haredi Revolution [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2011); Marc Shapiro, Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015). We use the term ‘‘traditionalist’’ here in the same sense as Silber and others, to refer to those movements that assertively claim the necessity of adhering to timeless, ‘‘traditional’’ tenets as the underpinning of their overarching philosophy and their position on specific issues.

Notes to Pages 13–15

321

47. We use here the more commonly known names of Rabbi Moses Schreiber (also known as Rabbi Moshe Sofer, or the Hatam Sofer) (1762–1839) and Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Karelitz (the Hazon Ish) (1878–1953). 48. See esp. Adam Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Robert Liberles, Religious Conflict in Social Context: The Resurgence of Orthodox Judaism in Frankfurt am Main, 1838–1877 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985); several articles by David Ellenson, many of which are included in his Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah, and the Boundaries of Modern Jewish Identity (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989); Zvi Zohar and Avi Sagi, Realms of Identity and Deviance [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2000). 49. Aviezer Ravitzky, Freedom Inscribed: Diverse Voices of Jewish Religious Thought [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1999), esp. 222–57; Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). For more on the history and historiography of Orthodox views of secular Jews, see Chapter 11 of the present book. 50. For a critique of a strict internal/external divide in the story of Jewish secularization, see Naomi Seidman, ‘‘Secularization and Sexuality: Theorizing the Erotic Transformations of Ashkenaz’’ (unpublished paper), available at www.ajsnet.org/seidman.pdf (accessed July 2, 2013). 51. Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). Given the older, internally oriented Zionist historiography of such scholars as Shmuel Ettinger, Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson, and Ben-Zion Dinur, and the rather different assumptions of the newer works discussed here, the term neo-internalist seems appropriate. 52. See, for example, Allan Nadler, ‘‘A Down to Earth Philosophy: Is There a Secular Jewish Tradition of Centuries?,’’ Jewish Daily Forward, February 25, 2011. 53. Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008). See also his Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), and The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought: Orphans of Knowledge (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000). 54. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages; Stern, The Genius; Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion. 55. See in particular Yoseff Kaplan’s work, esp. An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), and ‘‘Secularizing the Portuguese Jews—Integration and Orthodoxy in Early Modern Judaism,’’ Jarbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 6 (2007): 99–110. See also Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: The Marranos: Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009); Miriam Bodian, ‘‘Crypto-Jewish Criticism of Tradition and Its Echoes in Jewish Communities,’’ in Gitelman, Religion or Ethnicity?, 38–58. 56. Aamir Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007).

322

Notes to Pages 15–16

57. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘‘A National Colonial Theology: Religion, Orientalism, and the Construction of the Secular in Zionist Discourse,’’ Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fu¨r deutsche Geschichte 30 (2002): 312–26; Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘‘Jewish Memory Between Exile and History,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review 97, no. 4 (2007): 530–43; Gil Anidjar, Semites: Race, Religion, Literature (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008); Gil Anidjar, ‘‘Secularism,’’ Critical Inquiry 33 (2006): 52–77; Allison Schachter, ‘‘Orientalism, Secularism, and the Crisis of Hebrew Modernism: Reading Leah Goldberg’s Avedot,’’ Comparative Literature 65, no. 3 (2013): 345–62; Yelle, ‘‘The Hindu Moses’’; for a more developed analysis of the relationship between Protestantism (and its attitude toward Jews), secularism, and British colonialism in India, see Yelle, The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 58. For a sharp critique of much of this scholarship, see Bruce Robbins, ‘‘Is the Postcolonial Also Postsecular?,’’ boundary 2 40, no. 1 (2013): 245–62. Responses that seek a middle ground between triumphalist narratives and post-colonial critiques of secularization can be found in Samuel Moyn, ‘‘Hannah Arendt on the Secular,’’ New German Critique 105 (Fall 2008): 71–96; and Seidman, ‘‘Secularization and Sexuality.’’ 59. On the Hebrew Bible in the liberal Christian imaginary, see also Uriel Tal, Jews and Christians in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870–1914, trans. Noah Jonathan Jacobs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975); Wolf¨ ber religio¨s begru¨ndete Gegensa¨tze gang Altgeld, Katholizismus, Protestantismus, Judentum: U und nationalreligio¨se Ideen in der Geschichte des deutschen Nationalismus (Mainz: M.-Gru¨newald-Verlag, 1992); Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Jonathan M. Hess, Germans, Jews, and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), esp. chap. 2; Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 60. Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005); Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010). While Sheehan and Nelson build upon the ample literature on Christian Hebraism and the Bible in early modern Europe, few previous texts have addressed as directly the connection to secularism or secularization as they do. Guy Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), offers another recent contribution that shows the importance of the Hebrew Bible and images of Judaism to one particular aspect of secularization—the emergence of the scientific study of religions. 61. Yaakov Shavit and Mordechai Eran, The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books—A History of Biblical Culture and the Battles over the Bible in Modern Judaism, trans. Chaya Naor (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007). For a synthesis

Notes to Pages 16–26

323

of the growing literature on the Bible in modern Jewish culture, see Alan T. Levenson, The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible: How Scholars in Germany, Israel, and America Transformed an Ancient Text (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011). Among the most illuminating recent studies of the Bible in Israeli literature are Yael S. Feldman, Glory and Agony: Isaac’s Sacrifice and National Narrative (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010); Ilana Pardes, Agnon’s Moonstruck Lovers: The Song of Songs in Israeli Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014). We thank the author for enabling us to view pre-publication portions of the latter book. 62. Sabba Mahmoud, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005); Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007). On the veil in France, see also John Bowen, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State and Public Space (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008). For another critical examination of a different historical context in which attacks on the veil were framed as part of secular liberation, see Douglas Northrup, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004). 63. Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representations of Women (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995); Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class. See also Benjamin Baader, Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800–1870 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). In our discussion here, we draw in part on Yolande Jansen’s incisive comments in a different context: ‘‘Secularism and Religious (In-)Security: Reinterpreting the French Headscarf Debates,’’ Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, no. 2 (2011): 2–19. 64. Susan Starr Sered, Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Tova Hartman, Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism (Lebanon, N.H.: University of New England Press and Brandeis University Press, 2007); Orit Yafeh, ‘‘The Time in the Body: Cultural Construction of Femininity in Ultraorthodox Kindergartens for Girls,’’ Ethos 35, no. 4 (2007): 516–53.

chapter 1 1. An English translation of the writ of excommunication against Spinoza can be found in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 57. 2. On the history of the rehabilitation of Spinoza in modern Jewish culture, see Daniel B. Schwartz, The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012). 3. Meir Letteris, ‘‘Toledot he-hakham ha-hoker Barukh di Shpinozah zl,’’ Bikure ha-‘itim ha-hadashim 1 (1845): 27a–33b. Among the historical personalities portrayed previously in this series (which dated back to the first major Haskalah periodical, the

324

Notes to Pages 26–27

eighteenth-century Ha-me’asef [The Gatherer]) were medieval luminaries such as Moses Maimonides and Abraham Ibn Ezra, as well as the ultimate Jewish Enlightenment icon Moses Mendelssohn—all controversial thinkers, to be sure, but not to the degree of a heretic like Spinoza. For a list of others included in the Haskalah pantheon of heroes, see Shmuel Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness, trans. Chaya Naor and Sondra Silverston (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001), 50–60. 4. S. D. Luzzatto, ‘‘Neged Shpinozah,’’ Mehkere ha-yahadut, 2:198–222. 5. See, among other works, Pinhas Lachower, ‘‘Shpinozah be-sifrut ha-haskalah haivrit,’’ ‘Al gevul ha-yashan veha-hadash (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1951), 109–22; Yosef Klausner, Historyah shel ha-sifrut ha-ivrit ha-hadashah (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Mada, 1952), 2:102–7; Eliezer Schweid, Toledot he-hagut ha-yehudit be-et ha-hadashah: He-me’ah hatesha-esreh (Jerusalem: Keter, 1977), 338–55; Menahem Dorman, Vikuhe Shpinozah beaspaklaryah Yehudit: Mi David Nieto ad David Ben-Gurion (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1990), 96–153; Feiner, Haskalah and History, 146–50. 6. Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–1570, 3rd ed. (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1998). 7. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750– 1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For an abridged view of Israel’s thesis see his A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009). 8. Israel is not the first to narrate the Enlightenment as a clash between a ‘‘radical’’ Enlightenment that was materialist, pantheist, republican, and anticlerical and a ‘‘moderate’’ Enlightenment that was Christian, Deist, and inspired by Newton. This dichotomy is central to Margaret C. Jacob’s The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981). One major difference between the two works is the far greater role Israel ascribes to Spinoza and Spinozism in the genesis of the radical Enlightenment. 9. For signal examples of this tendency, see Roy Porter and Mikula´s Teich, eds., The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Porter, The Enlightenment, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 10. Though he openly rejects Pocock’s splitting of the Enlightenment into a ‘‘family of Enlightenments,’’ Israel himself can be seen as carrying on the pluralizing trend in Enlightenment scholarship with his bipartite scheme. That is to say, Israel also speaks in terms of ‘‘Enlightenments’’ (plural), if in numbers that can easily be counted on one hand. To use the ‘‘family of Enlightenments’’ metaphor, it is as if the byzantine battles of an extended clan where it is hard to keep track of who still speaks to whom have given way

Notes to Pages 27–29

325

to a simple and straightforward sibling rivalry. See Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 1:9; Israel, ‘‘Enlightenment! Which Enlightenment?,’’ Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 3 (2006): 523–45. 11. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 11. 12. Israel, A Revolution of the Mind, vii–viii. 13. For the harshest exchange, see Samuel Moyn, ‘‘Mind the Enlightenment,’’ The Nation (May 31, 2010), and Israel’s fierce response, ‘‘What Samuel Moyn Got Wrong in His Nation Article,’’ The Nation (July 5, 2010). 14. For an especially cogent critique, see Antoine Lilti, ‘‘Comment e´crit-on l’histoire intellectuelle des Lumie`res? Spinozisme, radicalisme, et philosophie,’’ Annales HSS 64 (2009): 171–206. In 2004, an international conference was held in Lyon, France, on the subject of ‘‘radical Enlightenment’’; its proceedings can be found in Catherine Secre´tan, Tristan Dargon, and Laurent Bove, eds., Qu’est ce que les Lumie`res ‘‘radicales’’? Libertinage, athe´isme, et spinozisme dans le tournant philosophique de l’aˆge classique (Paris: E´ditions Amsterdam, 2007). Especially recommended are the articles by Pierre-Franc¸ois Moreau and Manfred Walther, which criticize Israel’s concepts of both ‘‘Spinozism’’ and ‘‘radical’’ thought as too rigid and reductionist. 15. The renowned Israeli philosopher Eliezer Schweid has done more than any contemporary thinker to shape and sustain this interpretation. Indeed, his multivolume history of modern Jewish thought reminds one at times of Radical Enlightenment; much like Israel with his eighteenth-century philosophes, Schweid seems to find allusions to Spinoza everywhere he looks, including in writings where hardly a reference to the Amsterdam philosopher can be found. Since Schweid has stated outright that ‘‘the attitude to Spinoza is the key to identifying where every thinker, philosopher, and critic sits on the map of the currents and factions of Judaism in our times,’’ this ubiquity is hardly surprising. See Schweid, Ha-yehudi ha-boded veha-yahadut (Tel Aviv: Hotsa’at Am Oved, 1974), 118. 16. This essay is a very deliberate effort to enter into a dialogue with Israel’s work. I believe such an engagement is warranted by the enormous impact his work has had on perceptions of Spinoza and the Enlightenment both within the academy and without, which I do not suspect will prove to be fleeting. That said, I am aware of other attempts in recent scholarship to revise the older narrative of the Enlightenment and secular modernity in ways that are relevant to this conversation. Perhaps most germanely, in The Religious Enlightenment: Protestant, Catholics, and Jews from London to Vienna (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), David Sorkin argues for the existence of a transnational and transconfessional ‘‘religious Enlightenment’’ that sought to use reason to revitalize faith and piety, and that functioned as something of a third pillar alongside the ‘‘mainstream moderate’’ Enlightenment and the ‘‘radical’’ Enlightenment. In the past, Sorkin has treated the Haskalah as one manifestation of religious Enlightenment, yet his focus has been largely restricted to the eighteenth-century ‘‘Berlin’’ Haskalah; he has not dealt with the nineteenth-century Haskalah of Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, while he clearly disagrees with Israel’s attempt to claim authenticity for ‘‘radical Enlightenment’’ alone in the genealogy of modernity, he does not question the category of ‘‘radical

326

Notes to Pages 30–32

Enlightenment’’ itself, nor Israel’s exclusively secular conception of it. What Sorkin concedes I challenge, using the reception of Spinoza (whom Sorkin barely discusses) in the nineteenth-century Haskalah as a test case. I develop this line of thought further in my conclusion. For a thoughtful discussion of the question of religion and the Enlightenment in historiography by another scholar who demurs from the secular master narrative of the Enlightenment, see Jonathan Sheehan, ‘‘Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,’’ American Historical Review 108, no. 4 (2003): 1061–80. 17. Israel, ‘‘Was There a Pre-1740 Sephardic Jewish Enlightenment?,’’ Arquivos de Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian 48 (2004): 3–20; Israel, ‘‘Philosophy, Deism, and the Early Sephardic Enlightenment,’’ in The Dutch Intersection: The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History, ed. Yosef Kaplan (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 173–201. 18. Israel, ‘‘Was There a Pre-1740 Sephardic Jewish Enlightenment?,’’ 11. 19. On this heretical trio, see also Yosef Kaplan, ‘‘ ‘Karaites’ in the Early Eighteenth Century,’’ in his An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 234–80. 20. On the Nieto controversy, see also Dorman, Vikuhe Shpinoza be-askpaklaryah yehudit, 9–16. For a critique of the view that Spinozism was in fact central to this controversy, see Daniel B. Schwartz, ‘‘The Spinoza Image in Jewish Culture, 1656–1956’’ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2007), 62–66. 21. On Orobio’s anti-Spinozist work, see Seymour Feldman, ‘‘Ha-bikoret hayehudit ha-rishonah neged Shpinozah,’’ Iyyun 37 (1988): 222–37. 22. See Israel, ‘‘Was There a Pre-1740 Sephardic Jewish Enlightenment?,’’ and, more recently, Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 23. Israel, ‘‘Was There a Pre-1740 Sephardic Jewish Enlightenment?,’’ 18. 24. Salo W. Baron was among the first to challenge this periodization by proposing the existence of an ‘‘Italian Haskalah’’ and ‘‘Dutch Haskalah’’ that preceded the ‘‘Berlin Haskalah’’ by a century or more. See Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), 2:207. For more recent attempts (in addition to that of Israel) to expand the geography of eighteenth-century Haskalah, see Lois Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), chap. 7; David Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Adam Shear, ‘‘ ‘The Italian and Berlin Haskalah’— Isaac Barzilay Revisited,’’ Simon-Dubnow-Institut Jahrbuch 6 (2007): 49–66. 25. On Mendelssohn’s pioneering if only partial vindication of Spinoza, see Schwartz, The First Modern Jew, chap. 2. On Maimon’s more thoroughgoing rehabilitation, see Yitzhak Melamed, ‘‘Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism,’’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (2004): 67–96. 26. The best introduction to the ‘‘pantheism controversy’’ in English remains Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 44–109.

Notes to Pages 32–34

327

27. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures in the History of Philosophy, vol. 3, trans. Elizabeth S. Hadane and Frances H. Simson (London: K. Paul, Trench, Tru¨bner & Co., 1896), 283. 28. Quoted in Willi Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 258. 29. The work of Jacob Katz has been especially influential in driving home the nexus between secularization and integration in the Jewish context; see his Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870 (New York: Schocken, 1978), and the various essays contained in his Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986). For a more recent study that emphasizes this connection, even while pushing the beginnings of Jewish secularization back to an earlier date, see Feiner, Origins of Jewish Secularization. Seidman’s attempt to formulate a Jewish ‘‘secularization thesis’’ is found in an unpublished paper entitled ‘‘Secularization and Sexuality: Theorizing the Erotic Transformations of Ashkenaz.’’ 30. Auerbach, Spinoza, ein historischer Roman (Stuttgart: Scheible, 1837); Hess, Die heilige Geschichte der Menschheit, von einem Ju¨nger Spinozas (Stuttgart: Halberger’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1837). On Auerbach’s reception of Spinoza, see my The First Modern Jew, chap. 3. 31. See David Ruderman’s critique of Jonathan Israel in Ruderman, ‘‘Michael A. Meyer’s Periodization of Modern Jewish History: Revisiting a Seminal Essay,’’ in Mediating Modernity: Challenges and Trends in the Jewish Encounter with the Modern World: Essays in Honor of Michael A. Meyer, ed. Lauren B. Strauss and Michael Brenner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 30. I agree fully with Ruderman that Sabbateanism, rather than Spinozism, was the main focus of controversy in eighteenth-century Jewish society. 32. In her book Haskalah: The Romantic Movement in Judaism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012), Olga Litvak actually argues that the nineteenthcentury Eastern European Haskalah has been wrongly identified as a Jewish version of the Enlightenment and in fact should be regarded as the Jewish Romantic movement. For my criticism of this argument, see Daniel B. Schwartz, ‘‘Romancing the Haskalah,’’ Jewish Review of Books (Summer 2013), 13–15. 33. On the migration eastward of the Haskalah in the nineteenth century, see Shmuel Feiner, ‘‘Towards a Historical Definition of Haskalah,’’ in New Perspectives on the Haskalah, ed. Shmuel Feiner and David Sorkin (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001), 184–219. 34. His works on Spinoza include Moreh nevukhim he-hadash, 2 vols. (Vienna: J. Holzwarth, 1856–1857); Teshuva nitsahat (Lvov, 1859); ‘‘Shitat Shpinozah be-filosofyah,’’ Ha-Shahar 12 (1884); Hegyone Shpinozah (Krakow: A. Faust, 1897); and Barukh Shpinozah be-regesh ahavat elohim (Podgorze, 1910). For his two translations, see Baruch Spinoza, Heker elohah im torat ha-adam, trans. S. Rubin (Vienna, 1885); and Spinoza, Dikduk sefat ever, trans. S. Rubin (Krakow: J. Plessner, 1905). Rubin also wrote a German dissertation on Spinoza, for which he received a doctorate from the University of Go¨ttingen: ‘‘Spinoza und Maimonides: Ein psychologisch-philosophisches Antitheton’’ (Vienna, 1868).

328

Notes to Pages 34–38

35. Gutzkow, Uriel Acosta, trans. S. Rubin (Vienna: Klaff and Airikh, 1856). 36. The ensuing discussion of Rubin is mostly adapted from chapter 4 of my The First Modern Jew. 37. On the image of Maimonides and its conflation with that of Mendelssohn in Ha-me’asef, the seminal journal of the Berlin Haskalah, see James H. Lehmann, ‘‘Maimonides, Mendelssohn and the Me’asfim: Philosophy and the Biographical Imagination in the Early Haskalah,’’ Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 20 (1975): 87–108. 38. See Amos Funkenstein, ‘‘Haskala, History, and the Medieval Tradition,’’ Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 234–47. 39. See chapter 7 of the Treatise in Benedictus de Spinoza, Spinoza: Complete Works, ed. Michael L. Morgan, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 456–71. 40. Rubin, Moreh nevukhim he-hadash, 1:13. 41. Ibid., 1:8. 42. Feiner, Haskalah and History, 148. 43. Rubin, Moreh nevukhim he-hadash, 1:10–11. Emphasis mine. 44. Spinoza, Heker Elohah, vii. 45. On melitzah, see Moshe Pelli, ‘‘On the Role of Melitzah in the Literature of the Hebrew Enlightenment,’’ Hebrew in Ashkenaz, ed. Lewis Glinert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 99–110; Jeremy Dauber, Antonio’s Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004). 46. Rubin, Moreh nevukhim he-hadash, 1:3. Emphasis mine. 47. The claim that the pantheism of the Ethics derived from the Kabbalah constitutes the oldest argument for a Jewish source for Spinoza’s philosophy in the history of his reception. First propagated by the German thinker Johann George Wachter in his 1699 early Enlightenment anti-Jewish (and anti-Spinoza) polemic Der Spinozismus im Ju¨denthumb, oder, die von dem heutigen Ju¨denthumb und dessen Geheimen Kabbala vergo¨tterte Welt, the thesis remained extremely popular through the early nineteenth century. Salomon Maimon famously called the Kabbalah ‘‘nothing but expanded Spinozism’’ in his Autobiography (1792), and many nineteenth-century Jewish thinkers associated with the Haskalah and Wissenschaft des Judentums suggested likewise. Beyond Rubin, the list includes Meir Letteris, Senior Sachs, Isaac Mieses, and Eliezer Zweifel among Eastern Europeans, and Adolphe Franck, Adolph Jellinek, Elia Benamozegh, and David Joe¨l among Western Europeans. The persistence and even popularity of the Spinoza/Kabbalah connection in nineteenth-century Jewish writing—especially in works, like those of Rubin, written to assert the ‘‘Jewishness’’ of Spinoza’s thought—sits rather uneasily with the still commonly held view of Maskilic attitudes toward Kabbalah as unrelievedly hostile. (Gershom Scholem, who contributed to this perception to no small degree, wrote of a ‘‘fervent assault on the Kabbalah by the Haskalah in the nineteenth century.’’) Strikingly, Rubin even adduces several statements with a pantheistic tinge from the Zohar, long thought to be the symbol par excellence of kabbalistic nonsense in the Maskilic mind, to vouch for Spinoza’s Jewishness. While this issue requires further research, I would

Notes to Pages 38–43

329

venture that by highlighting Spinoza’s kabbalistic foundations as a means of demonstrating the Jewishness of his philosophy, the Maskilim not only signaled a change in Jewish attitudes toward the notorious heretic; they also indirectly evinced a greater appreciation of the Kabbalah. The Jewish reception of Spinoza, in other words, may compel a rethinking of some of the conventional assumptions about the reception of the Kabbalah in modern Jewish culture. For the quotation by Scholem above, see Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Meridian, 1978), 86. For more nuanced views of the relationship between Haskalah and Kabbalah and between Wissenschaft des Judentums and Kabbalah, respectively, see Christoph Schulte, Die ju¨dische Aufkla¨rung (Munich: Beck, 2002), chap. 4; and David Myers, ‘‘Philosophy and Kabbalah in Wissenschaft des Judentums: Rethinking the Narrative of Neglect,’’ Studia Judaica 16 (2008): 56–71. 48. Rubin, Teshuvah nitzahat (Lvov, 1859), 22. 49. Rubin, introduction to Spinoza, Heker ’Elohah, 1. 50. A. Krochmal, Even ha-roshah, introduction by Peretz Smolenskin (Vienna: J. Holzwarth, 1871). 51. Herder, God, Some Conversations [1787], trans. Frederick H. Burkhardt (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1940). 52. On A. Krochmal, see Yosef Klausner, Historyah shel ha-sifrut ha-ivrit ha-hadashah (Jerusalem: Ahi’asaf, 1953), 4:78–104. 53. On Schorr, see Ezra Spicehandler’s introduction to Schorr, Ma’amarim (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1972), 7–38; Schweid, Toledot he-hagut ha-yehudit be-et ha-hadashah, 339–42. 54. See A. Krochmal, ‘‘Ivri anokhi,’’ He-Haluts 4 (1859): 21–28. 55. For a fascinating analysis of this fabricated genealogy and its possible motivations, along with an English translation of Krochmal’s preface, see Allan Nadler, ‘‘The Besht as Spinozist: Abraham Krochmal’s Preface to Ha-ketav ve-ha-mikhtav,’’ in Rabbinic Culture and Its Critics, ed. Daniel Frank and Matt Goldish (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 359–89. 56. Quoted in Klausner, Historyah, 4:85. 57. On Herder’s Jewish reception, see the essays collected in Christoph Schulte, ed., Hebra¨ische Poesie und ju¨discher Volksgeist: Die Wirkungsgeschichte von Johann Gottfried Herder im Judentum Mittel- und Osteuropas (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003). 58. Herder, God, Some Conversations, 95. 59. Ibid., 107. 60. Beiser, The Fate of Reason, 158–64. 61. Letteris, ‘‘Toldot,’’ 33b. 62. On Krochmal’s Guide, see Simon Rawidowicz’s introduction to his now standard edition of Krochmal’s writings: Kitve Rabbi Nahman Krochmal, ed. Rawidowicz, 2nd ed. (Waltham, Mass.: Ararat Press, 1961), 15–227; cf. Jay Harris, Nachman Krochmal: Guiding the Perplexed of the Modern Age (New York: New York University Press, 1991). 63. Neither Klausner nor Schweid questions the veracity of the sentiments attributed to the elder Krochmal; Schweid goes so far as to claim that this dialogue ‘‘testifies’’ to the

330

Notes to Pages 43–49

‘‘close relationship between R’ Nachman Krochmal (Ranak) and Spinoza.’’ See Schweid, Toldot he-hagut ha-yehudit be-‘et ha-hadashah, 428f.16; Klausner, Historiyah, 4: 85. 64. Krochmal, Kitve Rabbi Nahman Krochmal, 187. 65. A. Krochmal, Even ha-roshah, 7. 66. Commentary to Genesis 1:26, in Ibn Ezra’s Commentary to the Torah [Hebrew], ed. A. Weiser (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav, 1977), 1:19. 67. See Elliot R. Wolfson, ‘‘God, the Demiurge, and the Intellect: On the Usage of the Word ‘Kol’ in Abraham Ibn Ezra,’’ Revue des E´tudes Juives 149 (1990): 77–111. 68. See, for instance, the essays collected in Secularisms, ed. Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008). 69. An example of this shift is found in the reception of Spinoza by the Zionist philosopher Jakob Klatzkin, whose 1923 translation of Spinoza’s Ethics into Hebrew (unlike Rubin’s 1885 translation) remains even after subsequent translations the standard bearer. Klatzkin disputed the Maskilic assertion of a fundamental continuity between Jewish monotheism and Spinozist pantheism and, more generally, the Romantic idea of Spinoza as a deeply pious soul. He vouched for the Hebraic character of Spinoza’s thought on purely linguistic grounds, claiming that there were certain Latin terms in the Ethics that posed difficulties when translated into most languages yet were illuminated once rendered into their medieval Hebrew equivalent. See Jakob Klatzkin, Baruch Shpinozah: Hayav, sefarav, shitato (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1923); Spinoza, Torat ha-midot, trans. J. Klatzkin (Leipzig, 1923); and Schwartz, The First Modern Jew, 128.

chapter 2 I am grateful to the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and its director, David Ruderman, for granting me a fellowship in 2009–10. My conversations with colleagues about ‘‘secularism and its discontents’’ that began there have had a great impact on my subsequent research. I express particular thanks to Annette Aronowicz, David Myers, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Daniel Schwartz, and Yael Zerubavel for their support throughout that year, and, of course, to this volume’s editors, Ari Joskowicz and Ethan Katz, for their careful reading of this chapter and for much more. Finally, I appreciate the thoughtful comments I received from Leora Batnitzky, Eli Sacks, and Sarit Kattan Gribetz. This chapter draws on some of the same material as chapter 2 of my book Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014). 1. These biographical data are gleaned from Walı¯d al-Kha¯lidı¯, ‘‘Kita¯b as-sayu¯nı¯zm aw al-masala as.-s.ahyu¯niyya li-Muh.ammad Ru¯h.¯ı al-Kha¯lidı¯ al-mutawaffa¯ sanat 1913,’’ in Dira¯sa¯t Filast.iniyya: Majmu¯at abh.a¯th wud.iat takrı¯man li-d-Duktu¯r Qust.ant.¯ın Zurayq, ed. Hisham Nashshabah (Beirut: Muassasat ad-Dira¯sa¯t al-Filast.¯ıniyya, 1988); Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York:

Notes to Pages 49–50

331

Columbia University Press, 1997); Adil Manna¯, Ala¯m filast.¯ın fı¯ awa¯khir al-ahd al-uthma¯nı¯ (1800–1918), 2nd ed. (Beirut: Muassasat ad-Dira¯sa¯t al-Filast.¯ıniyya, 1995); H. alKhateeb, ‘‘Ruhi al-Khalidi: A Pioneer of Comparative Literature in Arabic,’’ Journal of Arabic Literature 18 (1987): 81–87. 2. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 76–77. For a concise overview of the development of various forms of education in Palestine, see Ami Ayalon, Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900–1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 19–39. See also Rashid Khalidi, ‘‘Intellectual Life in Late Ottoman Jerusalem,’’ in Ottoman Jerusalem: The Living City, 1517–1917, ed. Sylvia Auld, Robert Hillenbrand, and Yusuf Said Natsheh (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000), 225. 3. Al-Khalidi studied at the rus¸diyye schools in Jerusalem and Tripoli and at the Sultaniye schools in Beirut. See R. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 76. See also Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century: Emergence of the New City (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 269. According to Ben-Arieh, ‘‘The first to recognize the importance of the [Alliance] school were not Jews but gentiles, among them the district governor and the Khalidi and al-Husseini families.’’ Of the Alliance school’s early history, Jeff Halper notes that, with one exception (David Yellin), ‘‘all the pupils attending were nonEuropeans—Jews of Sephardi of Middle Eastern background and a number of Arabs.’’ Jeff Halper, Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv of Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), 174. 4. Hartwig Derenbourg (1844–1908) was a French Jewish Orientalist. In 1885, he was granted the chair in Arabic and Islam at the E´cole des Hautes E´tudes. 5. This last book is actually a collection of articles al-Khalidi wrote in the journal Al-Hila¯l between 1902 and 1904. As J. Brugman notes, ‘‘Despite its pretentious title, the work chiefly dealt with Victor Hugo, apart from some passages about the Arabic bala¯ghah and about the literary connections between Arabic literature and the French and English literatures.’’ J. Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1984), 331. 6. On the Ottoman parliament, see M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 118–23, 150–67. AlKhalidi successfully ran for a parliamentary position in the election of NovemberDecember 1908 and then again in the election of February-April 1912. 7. The manuscript—to which Rashid Khalidi generously granted me access—was discovered decades later by Walid al-Khalidi among his own family’s papers. He found (and I have analyzed) both Ruhi al-Khalidi’s original—a set of small notebooks containing somewhat scrawled, antiquated Arabic script—as well as the copyist’s 123 numbered pages of neatly written text in more modern handwriting. Unless otherwise noted, my citations of the manuscript below refer to the copyist’s pagination. Walid al-Khalidi has written the only academic article (in Arabic) exclusively devoted to this manuscript, offering a detailed summary of the text’s content. See W. al-Kha¯lidı¯, ‘‘Kita¯b as-sayu¯nı¯zm.’’ 8. Here, I follow Walid al-Khalidi’s chapter divisions. W. al-Kha¯lidı¯, ‘‘Kita¯b assayu¯nı¯zm,’’ 42–43.

332

Notes to Pages 51–52

9. This was the umbrella organization of local American Zionist societies and the predecessor to the Zionist Organization of America. 10. The first Jewish public library in Jerusalem (Midrash Abravanel) was founded in 1892 by the B’nai Brith organization. The Jewish National Library in Jerusalem was founded in 1894; this latter institution united the B’nai Brith library with the then-defunct library of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (Bet ha-sefarim livnei yisrael). On these Jewish libraries of Late Ottoman Jerusalem, see Yosef Salmon, ‘‘Ha-Yishuv ha-ashkenazi ha-ironi be-erez. yisrael (1880–1903),’’ in Toldot ha-yishuv ha-yehudi be-erez.-yisrael: Me-az ha-aliyah harishonah: ha-tekufah ha-otomanit, vol. 1, ed. Moshe Lissak, Gavriel Cohen, and Israel Kolatt (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1999), 590–92. 11. For a contemporary mention of Gottheil in Palestine, describing him as ‘‘the famous Orientalist . . . head of the School of Archaeology in our city,’’ see Ha-Herut 2, no. 86 (April 20, 1910). The American School of Archaeology at Jerusalem (later renamed the American School of Oriental Research) was founded in 1900 by the American semiticist Charles Cutler Torrey. 12. According to Rashid Khalidi, Gottheil is listed among the Khalidi Library’s visitors in the library’s guestbook. The guestbook that was kindly shown to me by Haifa alKhalidi appears to have been first used in the late 1920s, so there is not clear evidence that Gottheil visited the library during his 1910–11 stay in Palestine. 13. See Journal of American Oriental Society 18 (April 1897): 387. 14. As I have not yet located a list of participants at the 1897 International Congress of Orientalists in Paris, I do not know whether Gottheil attended. 15. This article was jointly written by Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926) and Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921). Kohler was born in Bavaria before immigrating to the United States, where he became a leading Reform rabbi and president (1903–21) of the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College. In 1885, Kohler convened the so-called Pittsburgh Conference, which is discussed below. This Jewish Encyclopedia article provides evidence that Kohler was familiar with al-Khalidi’s scholarship; it is not clear, however, whether the two figures knew one another personally. If they were acquaintances, we might better understand al-Khalidi’s conception of Jewish history—and particularly the revolution of modern Jewish history—as laid out below. Goldziher (a Hungarian Jewish scholar) was an expert on, inter alia, the history of Islamic hadith, and was among the initiators and contributors to the Enzyklopedie des Islam. See Lawrence I. Conrad, ‘‘Ignaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan: From Orientalist Philology to the Study of Islam,’’ in The Jewish Discovery of Islam: Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis, ed. Bernard Lewis and Martin S. Kramer (Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1999). 16. Gottheil’s article was encyclopedic but did not pretend complete objectivity. In his 1912 foreword to his book Zionism, Gottheil questioned the necessity and even the value of objectivity in historical writing: ‘‘It is sometimes held that an historian must be unbiased, and must stand vis-a`-vis to his subject much as a physician does to his patient.

Notes to Pages 52–54

333

Such detachment may be valuable for a mere chronicler, to whom dry dates and lifeless facts are all-important. But a people has a soul, just as individual human beings have. To understand that soul, something more is needed than mere dates and facts.’’ Instead, Gottheil advocates ‘‘active sympathy with the peculiar phase of the soul-life the historian has to depict.’’ See Richard J. H. Gottheil, Zionism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1914), 14. 17. Among these was a book by a Jaffa-born Sephardic Jew named Shimon Moyal. On this book (the first of an intended multi-volume Arabic translation of the Talmud), see my ‘‘The Arabic-Zionist Talmud: Shimon Moyal’s At-Talmud,’’ Jewish Social Studies 17, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 1–30. 18. Though late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Arab anti-Zionist polemics have developed a discourse of rejection of Jewish historical claims to Palestine (epitomized by Yasser Arafat’s famous, even if apocryphal, rhetorical quip, ‘‘What Temple?’’), this rejection, like all ideas, also has a history. Future research might seek to trace the historical development of the position, which has been informed by a complex array of political, religious, archeological, and, recently, genetic arguments. 19. Muh.ammad Ru¯h.¯ı al-Kha¯lidı¯, ‘‘as-Sayu¯nı¯zm ay al-masalah as.-s.ahyu¯niyya,’’ n.p., n.d., 15. This line is typical of al-Khalidi’s approach to pre-modern Jewish history, including his acceptance of what we might regard as conventional Zionist interpretation of sacred Jewish sources. 20. This latter book on Hugo was published the year before al-Khalidi’s death. 21. M. R. al-Kha¯lidı¯, ‘‘as-Sayu¯nı¯zm,’’ 28. 22. In the early twentieth century, the term qawmiyya could mean either nationalism or ‘‘nationality.’’ See ‘‘Kawmiyya,’’ Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 23. Al-Khalidi uses the term at-tashabbuh, literally ‘‘imitation,’’ though perhaps ‘‘acculturate among’’ would more accurately match the sense implied here. 24. M. R. al-Kha¯lidı¯, ‘‘as-Sayu¯nı¯zm,’’ 2. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 55. 27. On the absence from Mendelssohn’s oeuvre of a ‘‘direct explicit statement . . . that the Jews are not a nation, but only a religion,’’ see Isaac Barzilay, ‘‘Smolenskin’s Polemic against Mendelssohn in Historical Perspective,’’ Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 53 (1986): 18. 28. See Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), 13–28. 29. Nor is this to say that al-Khalidi was the first to make this claim. The early Zionist thinker Peretz Smolenskin (d. 1885) understood Mendelssohn very similarly. Barzilay has described the ways in which Smolenskin, who wrote a generation before al-Khalidi, misunderstands or misrepresents Mendelssohn’s belief in Jewish nationhood. Though Mendelssohn ‘‘can be defended as a believer in Jewish nationhood, it is not a strong defense,’’ Barzilay contends, as the claim ‘‘is only formally correct, but not substantially,

334

Notes to Pages 55–60

especially not in the framework of Judaism of Mendelssohn’s own time.’’ Barzilay, ‘‘Smolenskin’s Polemic Against Mendelssohn in Historical Perspective,’’ 18–28. 30. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or, On Religious Power and Judaism, ed. Allan Arkush (Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 132. 31. Jose´ Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 212. 32. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 2. 33. Mendelssohn advocated elements of acculturation even as he attempted to combat acculturation in other respects (e.g., by reintroducing Jews to their linguistic and religious heritage and by arguing against the rejection of Jewish law). 34. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 133. 35. Johann David Michaelis, ‘‘Arguments Against Dohm (1782),’’ in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 43. 36. That is, to attempt to bring about redemption through human effort. 37. See ‘‘Moses Mendelssohn: Remarks Concerning Michaelis’ Response to Dohm (1783),’’ in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World, 48–49. 38. Mendelssohn was presumably referring to the passage in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Ketubot 110b–111a, in which the people of Israel are said to foreswear ‘‘going up by a wall’’ and ‘‘rebelling against the nations of the world.’’ On the interpretation and political impact of the so-called ‘‘three oaths,’’ see Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), esp. 211–34. 39. Max Nordau, Zionism: Its History and Its Aims, trans. Israel Cohen (London: English Zionist Federation, 1905). 40. See M. R. al-Kha¯lidı¯, ‘‘as-Sayu¯nı¯zm,’’ page 6 in the copyist version and page 5 in the original. 41. This phrase, jumhu¯r al-h.a¯kha¯mı¯n wa-r-raba¯nı¯n, might also be understood as ‘‘most of the rabbis’’ or ‘‘all of the rabbis.’’ 42. Al-Khalidi uses the Islamic legal term sharı¯ a. 43. M. R. al-Kha¯lidı¯, ‘‘as-Sayu¯nı¯zm,’’ 55. 44. Or at least those in Western Europe. There is an ambiguity in al-Khalidi’s presentation of this consensus: at times he portrays it as the agreement of all the Jews and their rabbis, whereas at other times he limits the claim to Western European Jewry. 45. I refer to this as a corruption not only because of the loss of the initial h but also because of the use of a q in place of a k. 46. See Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World, 128–32. 47. See ibid., 135–36. 48. The first of these conferences, the 1844 Brunswick Conference, considered ratifying the Parisian Sanhedrin rulings. See Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 134–35. 49. Interestingly, the 1885 Pittsburgh Conference was convened by the German-born American Reform rabbi Kaufmann Kohler. Kohler, who strongly opposed Zionism, was

Notes to Pages 60–61

335

the coauthor of the Jewish Encyclopedia’s entry on ‘‘Islam’’ that, as noted above, referenced al-Khalidi’s article on Muslim demographics. I am not aware of any evidence that suggests that Kohler and al-Khalidi knew one another personally, but each was certainly familiar with the other’s work. 50. See Michael Meyer’s chapter on ‘‘classical’’ Reform in Meyer, Response to Modernity, 264–95. 51. A broader consideration is warranted regarding the way that certain religious groups may be led to fashion, via the terms of their own tradition, narratives of secularization about another group’s history and theology. One might compare, for instance, the influence of British colonialists’ Protestant ideas about language on their understanding of Hinduism in India, as described in Robert A. Yelle, The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 52. The term umma could also mean ‘‘nation’’ as well as ‘‘religious community.’’ On the use of this term, see Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 32. See also Ami Ayalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Arabic Political Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 21–22. 53. ‘‘Consensus’’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. John L. Esposito et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1:312. See also Wael B. Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni usul al-fiqh (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), especially 75–81, and Noel J. Coulson, A History of Islamic Law (Edinburgh: University Press, 1964), 77–80. 54. Though the particular source of al-Khalidi’s conception of this rabbinic asqa¯mah remains unclear, Jews especially of the medieval Islamic world (particularly Maimonides) were apparently influenced by the Islamic notion of ijma¯. See Gideon Libson, Jewish and Islamic Law: A Comparative Study of Custom During the Geonic Period (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 9, 24, 198n.65. Judith Romney Wegner contends that ijma¯ has a Jewish precedent as it is ‘‘conceptually equivalent to that expressed in the Talmud by the word ha-kol.’’ Judith Romney Wegner, ‘‘Islamic and Talmudic Jurisprudence: The Four Roots of Islamic Law and Their Talmudic Counterparts,’’ American Journal of Legal History 26, no. 1 (1982): 42–43. 55. In order to understand al-Khalidi’s theory, we must overlook the anachronism he employs in imagining the antiquity of this dichotomy. 56. In highlighting the close relationship between the Khalidi family and the key figures of the Salafi movement, Rashid Khalidi points to a photograph of the formal opening of the Khalidi Library, in which the prominent Salafi Shaykh Tahir al-Jaza’iri appears. Al-Jaza’iri collaborated with Hajj Raghib al-Khalidi in the creation of the Khalidi Library. ‘‘Several of al-Jaza’iri’s books, some in multiple copies,’’ adds Khalidi, ‘‘are found in the [Khalidi] Library, together with many examples of the writings of other salafis such as al-Sayyid Rashid Rida.’’ See Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 43–45. See also Khalidi, ‘‘Intellectual Life in Late Ottoman Jerusalem,’’ 224.

336

Notes to Pages 61–70

57. On the Salafi movement, see David Dean Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 58. George F. Hourani, ‘‘The Basis of Authority of Consensus in Sunnite Islam,’’ Studia Islamica 21 (1964): 39. 59. Muhammad ‘Abduh, Tafsir al-Qur’an al-hakim, ed. M. Rashid Rida (Cairo, 1927–36), cited in Hourani, ‘‘The Basis of Authority,’’ 40. 60. For recent scholarship on this period in Palestine’s history, see Michelle U. Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), and Abigail Jacobson, From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British Rule (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011).

chapter 3 1. Ste´phane Mose`s, ‘‘Le fil de la tradition est-il rompu? Sur deux formes de modernite´ religieuse,’’ Laı¨cite´ et religions: Revue des deux mondes (special issue) (April 2002): 102– 14. Cited in the text as (M, page number). 2. Hannah Arendt, ‘‘Jewish History Revised,’’ in Arendt, The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 304–12. Cited in the text as (JHR, page number). 3. Mose`s quotes from Arendt’s essay on Benjamin: Hannah Arendt, ‘‘Walter Benjamin 1892–1940,’’ in Arendt, Men in Dark Times, trans. Harry Zohn (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1968), 153–206. Cited in the text as (WB, page number). 4. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1945; reprint, New York: Schocken, 1995). 5. Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, Der Briefwechsel (Frankfurt a. M.: Ju¨discher Verlag, 2010). Cited in the text as (BW, page number). The correspondence between Scholem and Arendt has not yet been translated in its entirety into English. 6. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963). 7. Seyla Benhabib, Arendt’s Reluctant Modernism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 45. ¨ bungen im politischen 8. Hannah Arendt, Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft: U Denken I (Munich: Piper, 2000), 33. This reference is to the German edition of Between Past and Future, where this sentence differs from the English version. 9. The extent to which Scholem’s own thinking is dialectical is a matter of contention. He repeatedly uses the term in his descriptions of manifestations of Jewish mysticism, but he does so in idiosyncratic ways that forego any synthesis or Aufhebung. As Robert Alter notes in his preface to the 1995 edition of Major Trends, dialectical, for Scholem, suggests ‘‘instability, unceasing change, transformation between opposite poles’’ (Major Trends, xviii). Like Arendt, albeit for different reasons, Scholem rejects the materialist and

Notes to Pages 71–75

337

Marxist understanding of the term. While Arendt considers dialectical thinking insufficiently rational, Scholem regards it, in Alter’s words, as ‘‘a dangerous business because it brackets negation with affirmation, the nihilist denial of value with sublime aspiration’’ (Major Trends, xviii). See also Scholem’s description of ‘‘Talmudic dialectic’’ in his diaries: Gershom Scholem, Tagebu¨cher 1917–1923 (Frankfurt a. M.: Ju¨discher Verlag, 2000), 526. 10. Arendt, Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft, 175. 11. For a contemporary critique of this Enlightenment view of agency as ‘‘individual self-empowerment, or of universal historicity,’’ see Talal Asad, ‘‘Agency and Pain: An Exploration,’’ Journal of Culture and Religion 1, no. 1 (2000): 29–60, 33. I want to thank Ethan Katz for pointing this out to me. 12. Gershom Scholem, ‘‘Redemption Through Sin,’’ in Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971), 78–141. 13. Arendt’s depiction of the Sabbateans as an authentic political movement has been contested. As Richard J. Bernstein has pointed out, it says more about Arendt’s political convictions and her attraction to spontaneous beginnings emerging in popular movements than about these seventeenth-century Jewish mystics. R. J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), 57–58. 14. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 97. 15. Arendt’s critique of rabbinic Judaism derives less from any ‘‘atheism’’ than from her concern for the political, which she considers to be thwarted by religion. Thus her praise of Hasidism at the end of her text must be understood as her hailing of an innovative rather than a religious movement. 16. For a summary of this basic attitude running through Arendt’s political thought see Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 160. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 161. In this respect Arendt possibly echoes Georg Simmel’s views on secrecy expressed in his essay ‘‘The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies,’’ American Journal of Sociology 11, no. 4 (1906): 441–98. I want to thank Ari Joskowicz for this suggestion. 19. Martin Heidegger, Plato‘s Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre´ Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). 20. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 44. 21. Heidegger, Plato’s Sophist, 11. 22. Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, trans. Andre´ Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 16. Moshe Halbertal explains this conflict as a ‘‘constant struggle’’ between ‘‘the project of truth as uncovering, which privileges the concealed and hidden’’ and ‘‘the ongoing tendency to disguise and mask our genuine reality.’’ Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 156. 23. Eric Jacobson discusses the underlying presence of Heidegger in Arendt’s reading of Scholem’s Major Trends in terms of Heidegger’s influence on Arendt’s ‘‘emphasis on

338

Notes to Pages 79–83

worldly concerns over interpretive ones.’’ Eric Jacobson, ‘‘Ahavat Yisrael: Nationhood, the Pariah and the Intellectual,’’ in Creation and Recreation in Jewish Thought, ed. Rachel Elior and Peter Schaefer (Tu¨bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 401–15; quotation from 412. This view of Heidegger’s impact on Arendt’s thought in this context is, however, too limited. As Arendt’s affirmation of the ‘‘hidden’’ shows, the impact of Heidegger on her thinking is not restricted to aspects of secularization that can be subsumed under a demystifying shift from religious to ‘‘worldly matters.’’ Arendt’s sympathetic approach to the hidden in the midst of otherwise primarily ‘‘enlightened’’ concerns also demonstrates that for her, secularization is more compatible with certain ideas and sensibilities associated with Romanticism.

chapter 4 Translated by William Hiscott, zl (1974–2013) 1. Weber’s talk has been dated alternately to 1917 and 1919. The later date appears confirmed by Karl Lo¨with, Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: Ein Bericht (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986), 16. For the chronology of this event, see Paul Mendes-Flohr, ‘‘ ‘The Stronger and the Better Jews’: Jewish Theological Responses to Political Messianism in the Weimar Republic,’’ in Jews and Messianism in the Modern Era: Metaphor and Meaning, ed. Jonathan Frankel, Studies in Contemporary Jewry 7 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 159–85, esp. 173–74. For a different dating, see Wolfgang Schluchter, ‘‘The Question of the Dating of ‘Science as a Vocation’ and ‘Politics as a Vocation,’ ’’ in Max Weber’s Vision of History: Ethics and Methods, ed. Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 113–16. 2. The only Christian author who wrote explicitly about ‘‘Messianism without Messiah’’ (Messianismus ohne Messias) was the Swiss socialist theologian Leonard Ragaz (1868– 1945), who claimed that occidental Christianity forgot its Jewish messianic roots; see Leonard Ragaz, Judentum und Christentum: Ein Wort zur Versta¨ndigung (Erlenbach: Rotapfel, 1922). 3. Elke Dubbels, Figuren des Messianischen in den Schriften deutsch-ju¨discher Intellektueller 1900–1933 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012). 4. Norbert Bolz, Auszug aus der entzauberten Welt (Munich: Fink, 1989). 5. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985). 6. Jan Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil (Munich: Fink, 2000), esp. 15–31. 7. A fabulous recent documentation of the messianism without personal Messiah among German Reform rabbis is George Y. Kohler ed., Der ju¨dische Messianismus im Zeitalter der Emanzipation (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014); cf. Stephen Schwarzschild, ‘‘The Personal Messiah: Toward the Restoration of a Discarded Doctrine,’’ in Arguments and Doctrines: A Reader of Jewish Thinking in the Aftermath of the Holocaust, ed. Arthur A. Cohen (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 521–37.

Notes to Pages 83–88

339

8. Eli Lederhendler, ‘‘Interpreting Messianic Rhetoric in the Russian Haskalah and Early Zionism,’’ in Frankel, Jews and Messianism, 14–33; Yaacov Shavit, ‘‘Realism and Messianism in Zionism and the Yishuv,’’ in Frankel, Jews and Messianism, 100–127. 9. Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 10. Cf. David Berger, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001). 11. Lazarus Bendavid, ‘‘Ueber den Glauben der Juden an einen ku¨nftigen Messias (Nach Maimonides und den Kabbalisten),’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r die Wissenschaft des Judentums 1, no. 2 (1822): 197–230. 12. Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988). 13. Odo Marquard, Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1973). 14. Jacob Taubes, Abendla¨ndische Eschatologie (Bern: Francke, 1947); Karl Lo¨with, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949). 15. Pierre Bouretz, Te´moins du futur: Philosophie et messianisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2003). 16. Because I am analyzing this recourse to messianism specifically as a characteristic feature and point of difference in Jewish philosophies of history in the modern age, my methodological approach differs wholly from Jacob L. Talmon’s approach in his study Political Messianism (New York: Praeger, 1960). With broad anti-communist strokes, Talmon subsumes all revolutionary national movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries under the label of ‘‘political messianism.’’ From Napoleon to Adam Mickiewicz and from Giuseppe Garibaldi to Josef Stalin, he interprets all such European political movements as secularized messianism and secularized eschatological movements. Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, atheistic: it is all the same for Talmon—political messianism, as it is for Eric Voegelin in Wissenschaft, Politik und Gnosis (Munich: Ko¨sel, 1959), for whom all of political modernity is simply ‘‘gnostic.’’ For political scientists and historians like these, when political movements make promises of revolution as salvation, they always secularize religion. Through such generalized labeling, these approaches prove themselves indifferent to whether the respective movements and persons saw themselves as messianic in the first place or not. 17. Michael Lo¨wy, Redemption and Utopia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992). 18. Cf. Kay Schweigman-Greve, Chaim Zhitlowsky: Philosoph, Sozialrevolutiona¨r und Theoretiker einer sa¨kularen nationalju¨dischen Identita¨t (Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2012). 19. Michael Lo¨wy does not notice that it is an essential element in the ‘‘elective affinity’’ of libertarian and leftist Jewish intellectuals of the early twentieth century with messianism, that it is a messianism without a personal Messiah. It is puzzling that this noteworthy and seminal book places liberals and Zionists, such as Rosenzweig, Buber, and Scholem, alongside socialists and communists, such as Luka´cs, Bloch, and Landauer, in the same libertarian camp. Cf. Lo¨wy, Redemption and Utopia.

340

Notes to Pages 88–94

20. See Christoph Schulte, ‘‘Messias und Identita¨t: Zum Messianismus im Werk einiger deutsch-ju¨discher Denker,’’ in Erfahrungen der Negativita¨t: Festschrift fu¨r Michael Theunissen, ed. Markus Hattstein et al. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1992), 373–85. 21. Moses Hess, The Holy History of Mankind and Other Writings, ed. Shlomo Avineri (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 22. See Daniel Schwartz’s essay in this volume. 23. Cf. Edmund Silberner, Moses Hess: Geschichte seines Lebens (Leiden: Brill, 1966). Silberner reports that Engels in his letters to Marx refers to Moses Hess with the derogatory name ‘‘Itzig’’ and that Ruge refers to Hess with the anti-Jewish epithet ‘‘Kommunistenrabbi.’’ 24. Moses Hess, ‘‘Rom und Jerusalem,’’ in Hess, Ausgewa¨hlte Schriften, ed. Horst Lademacher (Cologne: Melzer, 1962; reprint, Wiesbaden: Fourier, 1981), 272. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 289. 27. Moses Hess, ‘‘Mein Messiasglaube,’’ in Hess, Ju¨dische Schriften, ed. Theodor Zlocisti (Berlin: Arno Press, 1905), 5. 28. Ibid., 6. 29. Hermann Cohen, ‘‘Deutschtum und Judentum,’’ in Cohen, Ju¨dische Schriften, ed. Bruno Strauß (Berlin: Schwetschke, 1924), 2:237–302; Cohen, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Leo Strauss (New York: Ungar, 1972). 30. Cohen, ‘‘Deutschtum und Judentum,’’ 264. 31. Cohen, ‘‘Die Messiasidee,’’ in Cohen, Ju¨dische Schriften, 1:108. 32. Cohen, ‘‘Deutschtum und Judentum,’’ 269. 33. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim, chaps. 11 and 12. 34. See Lo¨wy, Redemption and Utopia. Lo¨wy orients his view of Jewish messianism according to Scholem’s one-sided definition of messianism as ‘‘an apocalyptic theory of catastrophe.’’ Scholem’s definition keeps non-apocalyptic forms of messianism in the biblical prophets, in the Talmud, and in Maimonides out of the picture; Lo¨wy consequently ignores the anti-apocalyptic modern messianism in Moses Hess or Hermann Cohen. 35. Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000). 36. Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996). ¨ ber den Begriff der Geschichte’’ (1940), Anhang B, in Ben37. Walter Benjamin, ‘‘U jamin, Gesammelte Schriften, 1.2:704. 38. Ibid., 697–98. 39. ‘‘Erst der Messias selbst vollendet alles historische Geschehen, und zwar in dem Sinne, daß es dessen Beziehung auf das Messianische selbst erst erlo¨st, vollendet, schafft. Darum kann nichts Historisches von sich aus sich auf Messianisches beziehen wollen. Darum ist das Reich Gottes nicht das Telos der historischen Dynamis; es kann nicht zum Ziel gesetzt werden. Historisch gesehen ist es nicht Ziel, sondern Ende.’’ Walter Benjamin, ‘‘Theologisch-politisches Fragment (1921),’’ in Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, 2.1:203. ¨ ber den Begriff der Geschichte,’’ esp. Aphorisms IX, XIII, XVI, 40. Benjamin, ‘‘U Anhang B.

Notes to Pages 94–105

341

41. This is even true for Ernst Bloch. His seminal three-volume Das Prinzip Hoffnung was published from 1954 to 1959 in East Germany, but written from 1938 to 1947 in exile in the United States. Bloch has been criticized, for example by Gu¨nter Anders, for the fact that his social anthropology and social ontology of hope was not altered by the event of the Shoah. Bloch made clear, however, that he wrote Prinzip Hoffnung in order to show that hope transcends historical fascism and totalitarianism. Still, the book represents his mindset of the 1920s and 1930s. 42. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1978). 43. Jacques Derrida, Marx & Sons (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2004), 78–79. 44. Cf. Gesine Palmer, ‘‘Mu¨ssen wir den Messias opfern?’’ in Religion und Politik: Die Idee des Messinianischen in Philosophien, Theologien und Religionswissenschaften des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, ed. Gesine Palmer and Thomas Brose (Tu¨bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 243–65. 45. Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe Books, 1972). 46. For Agamben, the entire modern world is a concentration camp, the state of emergency has become permanent in contemporary states and politics, and, unfortunately, no modern human society, political group, or organism can overcome this fatal development of the modern state. Agamben does not believe in the immanent healing powers, the principles and laws of the liberal democratic state, in constitutions and legislation, civil rights, or parliamentarism. For Agamben, there are no political groups or movements that are able to change the development of the modern states and the trend of their biopolitics to reduce human life to naked life. See Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer (Torino: Einaudi, 1995). Messianism in Agamben, as in Paul’s proto-Christian messianism, signifies ‘‘the end of the law’’ (Rom. 10:4) and the idea of a human society without law; see Agamben, Die Zeit, die bleibt (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2006), 112–22 and 158–62. For a critique of Agamben, who has been rightly criticized for his comparison of the modern world to a concentration camp, see Vivian Liska, Giorgio Agambens leerer Messianismus (Vienna: Schlebru¨gge, 2008).

chapter 5 1. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1991), 7.2: 809–13. 2. Walter Benjamin, ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ (second version), in Gershom Scholem, ‘‘Walter Benjamin and His Angel,’’ trans. Werner J. Dannhauser, in Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays, ed. Werner J. Dannhauser (New York: Schocken, 1976), 206. 3. Ibid.

342

Notes to Pages 105–116

4. Walter Benjamin, ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ (first version), in Scholem, ‘‘Walter Benjamin and His Angel,’’ 205. 5. Walter Benjamin, ‘‘On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,’’ in Early Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), 256. 6. Ibid., 259. 7. Ibid., 260. 8. Ibid., 261. 9. Ibid., 255. 10. Scholem, ‘‘Walter Benjamin and His Angel,’’ 213. 11. Benjamin, ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ (second version), 207. 12. B. Haggigah 14a. 13. Ibid. 14. Midrash Rabbah 78, 1 (on Genesis 32:29). 15. Benjamin, ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ (second version), 207. 16. Scholem, ‘‘Walter Benjamin and His Angel,’’ 220n.13. 17. Benjamin, ‘‘Agesilaus Santander’’ (second version), 207. 18. B. Sanhedrin 97a–99a. 19. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 2003), 150. 20. Ibid., 149. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 69–74, 155–57. 23. Scholem, ‘‘Benjamin and His Angel,’’ 236. 24. Gershom Scholem, Shabbetai Zvi and the Shabbatean Movement During His Lifetime [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1957). 25. Ibid., 100–110. 26. Ibid., 114. 27. Gershom Scholem, ‘‘Der Name Gottes und die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala,’’ Judaica 3 (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1973), 66–68.

chapter 6 1. Shmuel Yosef Agnon, ‘‘Acceptance Speech on Receiving the Nobel Prize,’’ in Selected Speeches of Nobel Laureates in Literature [Hebrew], ed. Shulamit Almog, Noam Lester, and Inbal Sagiv (Haifa: University of Haifa Press, 2007), 51–58. For the English translation see ‘‘Shmuel Agnon: Banquet Speech,’’ www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/liter ature/laureates/1966/agnon-speech.html. 2. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 2. 3. Ibid., 1–9.

Notes to Pages 116–125

343

4. Yehoshua Kenaz, Musical Moment and Other Stories, trans. Betsy Rosenberg (South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth, 1995); Yoel Hoffmann, The Christ of Fish, trans. Edward A. Levenston (New York: New Directions, 1999), and The Shunra and the Schmetterling, trans. Peter Cole (New York: New Directions, 2004); Yehudit Hendel, The Empty Place [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad and Hasifria Hahadashah, 2007). 5. Theodor Reik, Ritual: Psycho-Analytic Studies, trans. Douglas Bryan (New York: International University Press, 1976), 304–5. 6. Ibid., 255–58. 7. Ibid., 259. 8. See also Michel Poizat, The Angel’s Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera, trans. Arthur Denner (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), 183–86. 9. The yovel is the year following the completion of seven shemitah cycles, each seven years long. The shemitah, or sabbatical year, observed in various forms by many religious farmers in Israel today, occurs every seven years; throughout the year, the Land of Israel is supposed to lie fallow, offering a year of rest and renewal for the land. 10. Reik, Ritual, 277. 11. Dan Miron, H. N. Bialik and the Prophetic Mode in Modern Hebrew Poetry (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 12. 12. Ibid., 48. 13. Ibid., 49. 14. Ibid., 50. 15. Gershon Shaked, The New Tradition: Essays on Modern Hebrew Literature (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2006). 16. Ibid., 26–27. 17. Shmuel Yosef Agnon, ‘‘Shmuel Agnon: Banquet Speech.’’ 18. Ibid. 19. The New English Bible still translates it as ‘‘harp,’’ and Emilia Masson implies that it is a type of harp. The Hebrew and English Lexicon, however, firmly stipulates ‘‘lyre,’’ while Nougayroln specifies ‘‘la lyre asymme´trique a` caisse de resonance.’’ But R. P. Winnington-Ingram offers a more guarded judgment: ‘‘The Hebrew kinnor was probably a lyre.’’ See Edwin L. Brown, ‘‘The Origin of the Constellation Name ‘Cynosura,’ ’’ Orientalia 30 (1981): 387. 20. Ibid., 388. 21. Y. Berachot 7a1. 22. These explanations come from three commentaries: the Mahara Fulda, Radak, and Chadashim Gam Yeshanim, respectively. Cited in the Schottenstein edition of the Jerusalem Talmud with English translation, ed. Rabbi Nosson Scherman and Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 2005), y. Berachot 7a1, n. 2. 23. B. Berachot 3b. 24. See also Israel Levin, Violin and Jackals: Disaster, Exile, Revenge and Redemption in Hebrew National Poetry [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1988). 25. Miron, Bialik, 20.

344

Notes to Pages 125–130

26. See Shimeon Shmuel Frug, ‘‘Shimeon Frug: Poetry,’’ benyehuda.org/levinson/ index.htmlfrug. 27. Quoted in Sander L. Gilman, ‘‘Are Jews Musical? Historical Notes on the Question of Jewish Musical Modernism and Nationalism,’’ Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience 28, no. 3 (October 2008): 252. 28. Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 75–79. 29. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question, trans. Sylvie D’Avigdor (New York: Federation of American Zionists, 1917), 35. 30. Zali Gurevitch, ‘‘Eternal Loss: An Afterward,’’ in Bialik, Revealment and Concealment: Five Essays (Tel Aviv: Zemora Bitan, 2000), 105. 31. Haim Nahman Bialik, ‘‘Halachah and Aggadah,’’ trans. Leon Simon, in Bialik, Revealment and Concealment, 81. 32. Ibid., 83. 33. Ariel Hirschfeld, The Tuned Harp: The Language of Emotions in H. N. Bialik’s Poetry [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2011), 308–9. 34. It is worthwhile to rethink this romantic entanglement of music and pain in light of Talal Asad’s ‘‘Thinking About Agency and Pain,’’ in his Formations of the Secular, where he explores the ways in which the secular is approached through the concept of agency (passion) connected to pain (suffering). While acknowledging the increasing amount of research that has been published on the centrality of emotion in cultural life, and deeming this work ‘‘welcome for our understanding of agency,’’ Asad is interested in suffering as a passion in a different way, asking first whether pain is not simply a cause of action but can also itself be a kind of action (69). 35. Hirschfeld, Tuned Harp, 309. 36. See Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 6–7. 37. For an insightful discussion see Andrew Bowie, Music, Philosophy and Modernity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 196. While I only have time to analyze a few examples in detail here, many more can illustrate this tendency: In Yossi’s Violin (1950) Mordechai Tabib tells the story of a bereaved woman who lost her only child, a violinist, in the war of 1948. In Adam Resurrected (1969), Yoram Kaniuk depicts a Jewish prisoner forced to play the violin in a Nazi death camp. Ruth Almog’s Dwarves on Her Pajamas (1986) utilizes violin figurations to reveal concealed ‘‘secrets’’: abuse, familial abnormalities, and mechanisms of denial. Nathan Shaham’s The Rosendorf Quartet (1987) tells the story of four musicians who emigrated from Germany to Palestine in the 1930s. As musicians born and trained in Germany, these figures enable the author to explore how the ideal of Bildung, or self-formation, brought to Israel by German-Jewish immigrants, has come to carry echoes of oppression, displacement, and loneliness. Finally, Eran Bar-Gil’s Horseshoe and Violin (2005) depicts an experience of ‘‘exile at home.’’ Socially detached due to a childhood trauma, the novel’s protagonist, a violinist, seeks to break through the alienated urban spaces of Tel Aviv. 38. This title alludes to six piano pieces by Franz Schubert (Moments musicaux, 1823– 28), which demonstrate compositional freedom and enigmatic expression, despite the use

Notes to Pages 130–138

345

of traditional forms such as the minuet and trio (no. 1, 6). The allusion to the romantic piano pieces invites a structural activation of formal traits (or an analogy between narrative and musical forms). This analogy, however, remains implicit, in contrast to Kenaz’s intensive elaboration of musical themes and intertexts. 39. Yehoshua Kenaz, ‘‘Musical Moment,’’ Musical Moment and Other Stories, 67. 40. On Kenaz’s aesthetics see, for instance, Hanna Herzig, First Name: Essays on Jacob Shabtai, Joshua Kenaz, Yoel Hoffmann [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1994), 66–67. 41. See Richard Wagner, Judaism in Music, trans. William Ashton Ellies, Wagnerlibrary.users.belgacom.net, users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagjuda.htm, 6–7. 42. Gershom Shofman, ‘‘The Violin’’ [Hebrew], Writings, vol. 3 (Tel Aviv: Devir and Am Oved, 1960), 186. 43. Kenaz, ‘‘Musical Moment,’’ 92. 44. See also Gershon Shaked, ‘‘Awaking from a Dream’’ [Hebrew], Siman Kriah 11 (1982): 119–24; Avraham Balaban, ‘‘Between the Violin and the Palmach’’ [Hebrew], Moznayim 55 (1982): 52–56. 45. Kenaz, ‘‘Musical Moment,’’ 93. 46. Ibid. 47. Similarly to his two previous books, The Book of Yosef (1988) and Bernhard (1989), here Hoffmann’s poetics seeks the limits of language as a representative medium, by using various techniques of estrangement and by interweaving unique textures of perspectives. Herzig, First Name (115–16), considers this a possible explanation for the ambivalent reception of Hoffmann’s literature, which evoked in the readers either fascination or extreme antagonism. Compare also with Yochai Openheimer, ‘‘An Author’s Poetry’’ [Hebrew], Davar, February 26, 1988. 48. Yoel Hoffmann, The Christ of Fish, 193–94. 49. Jonathan D. Kramer, The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies (New York: Schirmer Books, 1988), 163. 50. Hoffmann, The Christ of Fish, 172–73. 51. Ibid., 42. 52. Ibid., 220. 53. Hoffmann, The Shunra and the Schmetterling. 54. Yehudit Hendel, ‘‘A Tale of the Lost Violin,’’ in The Empty Place, 93. 55. Ibid., 92, 100, 112. 56. Matthew 9: 1–8, King James Version (1769, Oxford Authorized Version). 57. Cantata text translated by Francis Brown. See also The Cantatas of J. S. Bach with Their Librettos in German-English Parallel Text, ed. Alfred Du¨rr, rev. and trans. Richard D. P. Jones (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 58. Hendel, ‘‘A Tale of the Lost Violin,’’ 109–10. 59. Hanan Hever, Toward the Longed-for Shore: The Sea in Hebrew Culture and Modern Hebrew Literature (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2001), 47. 60. Ibid., 23–26.

346

Notes to Pages 139–142

61. Wagner, Judaism in Music, 12. 62. Despite the fact that he had been baptized a Lutheran Protestant, Mendelssohn retained strong attachments to aspects of his Jewish heritage. 63. Quoted in Ruth HaCohen, ‘‘Between Noise and Harmony: The Oratorical Moment in the Musical Entanglement of Jews and Christians,’’ Critical Inquiry 32, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 250–77. Here p. 265: ‘‘und daß es ein Komo¨diant und ein Judenjunge sein mu¨ssen, die den Leuten die gro¨ßte christliche Musik wiederbringen.’’ 64. On ideas of degenerate music with regard to Mendelssohn, see Eric Levi, Music in the Third Reich (London: Macmillan, 1994), 58–75. 65. Hendel, ‘‘A Tale of the Lost Violin,’’ 114. 66. The mythological Sabra, the prototype of the newly emerging Jew in Eretz Yisrael/Palestine, was born into a vacuum, in which the ideal figure is not the father but the son. Hebrew narratives were therefore premised on the absent Diaspora parent. The heroes were celebrated as eternal children devoid of parents, as though born by spontaneous generation of nature. A prominent example is Moshe Shamir, Bemo Yadav (Pirkei Elik) [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Sifriat haPoalim, 1953), whose protagonist embodies this prototypical son-figure. 67. Brown, ‘‘The Origin,’’ 388.

chapter 7 Research for this article was made possible by a generous grant from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), Grant No. 361/12. I am indebted to the editors of this volume and other colleagues from the CAJS group on ‘‘Secularism and Its Discontents’’ for their lively discussions, cogent comments, and constructive criticism regarding the intersection of secularism and modernity. 1. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 419–34, esp. 419, 420, 428; Georg Simmel, ‘‘The Metropolis and Mental Life,’’ and ‘‘The Stranger,’’ in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt H. Wolff (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1964), 409–24 and 402–8; and Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1958), 13–31, esp. 25. For more on modernity and the rational self, see Charles Taylor, ‘‘Western Secularity,’’ in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 31–53, esp. 31–36. 2. See, for example, Ju¨rgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 11, 36, 68, and 90–91; Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987); Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), xxxiv, 11–12; and Zeev Sternhell, The

Notes to Pages 143–144

347

Anti-Enlightenment Tradition, trans. David Maisel (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010). 3. See Charles Taylor, ‘‘Western Secularity,’’ in Calhoun et al., Rethinking Secularism, 31–53, esp. 31–36. For later critiques of this literature, see Jose´ Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), and David J. Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008). 4. See, for example, Habermas, Structural Transformation, 27 and 31–42. 5. Ibid., 31–42. 6. The literature on civil society in Eastern and Central Europe is vast and by no means monolithic. See, for example, Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994), esp. 13, 54, and 97; Va´clav Havel, Toward a Civil Society: Selected Speeches and Writings, 1990–1994, trans. Paul Wilson et al. (Prague: Lidove´ Noviny, 1995); Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989–1993 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 77–86 and 100–107, esp. 83; Zbigniew Rau, ‘‘Human Nature, Social Engineering and the Reemergence of Civil Society,’’ in The Reemergence of Civil Society in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, ed. Zbigniew Rau (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), 25–50; Peter Andra´s Heltai and Zbigniew Rau, ‘‘From Nationalism to Civil Society and Tolerance,’’ in Rau, The Reemergence of Civil Society, 129–44; and Katherine Verdery, ‘‘Civil Society or Nation? ‘Europe’ in the Symbolism of Romania’s Postsocialist Politics,’’ in Intellectuals and the Articulation of the Nation, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Michael D. Kennedy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 301–39. Also see J. William Derleth, The Transition in Central and Eastern European Politics (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000), 103–4, 177–79, and 309. 7. Note the comment by Michael Walzer: ‘‘What is true is that the quality of our political and economic activity and of our national culture is intimately connected to the strength and vitality of our associations.’’ And ‘‘Only a democratic state can create a democratic civil society; only a democratic civil society can sustain a democratic state.’’ Michael Walzer, ‘‘The Concept of Civil Society,’’ in Toward a Global Civil Society, ed. Michael Walzer (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), 16, 24. See also Gellner, Conditions of Liberty, 5, 53–54, and 103. 8. See, for example, Craig Calhoun, ‘‘Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere,’’ in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 7–9 and 21–22; Geoff Eley, ‘‘Nations, Publics and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century,’’ in Habermas and the Public Sphere, 296–99; Jose´ Casanova, ‘‘Civil Society and Religion: Reflections on Catholicism and Prospective Reflections on Islam,’’ Social Research 68, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 1041–80; and Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society, 83–84. 9. Much of the writing about civil society in Eastern Europe is supportive of, if not enamored of, the very concept of civil society and its ability to transform societies. See, for example, Gellner, Conditions of Liberty; and Walzer, ‘‘The Concept of Civil Society.’’

348

Notes to Pages 144–146

For similar readings regarding the role of voluntary associations and civil society in a different geographical context, see Michelle U. Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), 168–96; and Ralph M. Kramer, The Voluntary Service Agency in Israel (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1976). 10. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (New York: New York University Press, 1993); David J. Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); and Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 11. Like many of the participants in Jewish liberal politics and civil society organizations that they examine, these studies of the liberal, secular path of modern Jewish history in Eastern Europe are very often Whiggish. See Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983); Eli Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and Jeffrey Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). For a discussion regarding the centrality of civil society among Jews in (East) Central Europe, see Till van Rahden, Jews and Other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Politics and Urban Diversity in Breslau, 1860–1925, trans. Marcus Brainard (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 64–93. 12. For studies of civil society in late imperial Russia, see Joseph Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism and Civil Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009); Wayne Dowler, Russia in 1913 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010); Anton A. Fedyashin, Liberals Under Autocracy: Modernization and Civil Society in Russia, 1866–1904 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012); and Thomas Earl Porter, The Zemstvo and the Emergence of Civil Society in Late Imperial Russia, 1864–1917 (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1991). 13. Like many other studies of Eastern European Jewry, these works very often conflate the path of modernity with the process of secularization, either intellectually by examining Maskilim, politically by focusing on Zionism, or socially by concentrating on Jewish public culture. 14. See Michael Walzer and Menachem Loberbaum et al., The Jewish Political Tradition, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000 and 2003); and Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart Cohen, The Jewish Polity: Jewish Political Organization from Biblical Times to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985). 15. These developments are outlined in John D. Klier, Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of ‘‘The Jewish Question’’ in Russia, 1772–1825 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986); and Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews. 16. For more on this process, see Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture, 15–23; Franc¸ois Guesnet, ‘‘Revolutionary Hinterland: Transformation of Jewish Associational Life in the

Notes to Pages 147–151

349

Kingdom of Poland, 1904–1906,’’ in The Revolution of 1905 in Transcultural Perspective: Identities, Peripheries, and the Flow of Ideas, ed. Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal et al. (Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica, 2013), 105–20; and Marcin Wodzinski, Hasidism and Politics: The Kingdom of Poland, 1815–1864 (Oxford: Littman, 2013), 72–73. 17. On the structure and activities of the official communal bodies at this time, see Scott Ury, Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012), 36–38 and 48–50. 18. For more on these debates, see ibid. 19. On Kotik and these organizations, see Yehezkel Kotik, Mah she-ra’iti: Zikhronotav shel Yehezkel Kotik, ed. and trans. David Assaf (Tel Aviv: Diaspora Research Institute, Tel Aviv University, 1999). 20. On the different political ideologies that engulfed and redefined the Jews of Eastern Europe at the time, see Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). For an examination of Jewish politics in Warsaw during this period, see Ury, Barricades and Banners. 21. This connection between religious tradition and values, on one hand, and civil society, on the other, contradicts much of the literature on the topic. See, for example, Gellner, Conditions of Liberty, 48, 93, and 97. 22. On the image of Jewish urban society and debates regarding its fate, see Ury, Barricades and Banners, 45–90. 23. On Ahi-‘Ezer, see Franc¸ois Guesnet, Polnische Juden im 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bo¨hlau, 1998), 42, 232, and 329. 24. For prevailing interpretations of urban society during this period, see Simmel, ‘‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’’ and ‘‘The Stranger,’’ in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 409–24 and 402–8, respectively. On the pressing fear of Jewish anomie at the time, see Scott Ury, ‘‘The Revolution of 1905 and the Politics of Despair: Alienation, Friendship, Community,’’ in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews: Studies in Honor of Jonathan Frankel, ed. Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 96–110. 25. Yehezkel Kotik, Hatza’at hukei ahi-‘ezer (Warsaw, 1896), 4. 26. On alienation and modernity, see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), 305–26 and 474–79; and George L. Mosse, Masses and Man: Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality (New York: Howard Fertig, 1980), 33, 75, and 230. 27. Kotik, Hatza’at hukei ahi-‘ezer, 4–5. 28. Ibid., 5–6. On the place and role of the synagogue in nineteenth-century European society, see Saskia Coenen Snyder, Building a Public Judaism: Synagogues and Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012). 29. Kotik, Hatza’at hukei ahi-’ezer, 8. 30. On the invention of tradition, see Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

350

Notes to Pages 152–159

31. Note the comment by Michael Walzer: ‘‘The civility that makes democratic politics possible can only be learned in the associational networks.’’ Walzer, ‘‘The Concept of Civil Society,’’ 24. For more on the civilizing aspect of civil society organizations, see John A. Hall and Frank Trentmann, ‘‘Contests over Civil Society: Introductory Perspectives,’’ in Civil Society: A Reader in History, Theory and Global Politics, ed. Hall and Trentmann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 3–4 and 18. For a discussion regarding the role that civility plays in maintaining inter-group relations in an urban setting, see Jennifer Lee, Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews and Koreans in Urban America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 5–7. 32. Kotik, Hatza’at hukei ahi-’ezer, 24–26. 33. See Kotik, Aseret ha-dibrot li-vene Tsiyon (Warsaw, 1899). 34. Ibid., 6–7. 35. Ibid., 6. 36. Ibid., 15–16. For comments regarding Polish national ideology at the time, see Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in NineteenthCentury Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 200–219. On the subordination of the individual to the collective in modern Jewish politics, see Ury, Barricades and Banners, 269–72. For a discussion of subordination as a larger social phenomenon, see Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 250–60. 37. On civil society and citizenship, see Craig Calhoun, ‘‘Secularism, Citizenship and the Public Sphere,’’ in Rethinking Secularism, 75–91. 38. Kotik, Aseret ha-dibrot li-vene Tsiyon, 37–38 and 41–42. On the civilizing aspect of civil society organizations, see Hall and Trentmann, ‘‘Contests over Civil Society,’’ 3–5 and 18. For comments regarding the need for Jews to behave similarly in eighteenthcentury Prague, see Ezekiel Landau, ‘‘Sermon for the Sabbath Preceding Passover (1782, Prague),’’ in Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800: An Anthology, ed. Marc Saperstein (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 362 and 363. ‘‘We should act respectfully toward inhabitants of this kingdom’’ because ‘‘it is their own land, while we are only guests. A sense of submissiveness is good when it comes from within.’’ I would like to thank Michael K. Silber for generously bringing this and many other sources to my attention. 39. See, for example, Sprawozdanie Zarzadu Towarzystwa Dostarczania Pracy Ubogim Zydom w Warsawie za Rok 1913, 4–5. 40. Ibid., 7. 41. Sprawozdanie Zarzadu Towarzystwa Dostarczania Pracy Ubogim Zydom w Warsawie za rok 1909, 4. 42. Ibid., 6–7; Sprawozdanie Zarzadu Towarzystwa, 1913, 7–9. 43. Sprawozdanie Zarzadu Towarzystwa, 1913, 13–15. For similar policies in Mandatory Palestine, see Tami Razi, Yalde ha-hefker: He-hatser ha-ahorit shel Tel-Aviv haMandatorit (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2009), 276–88.

Notes to Pages 159–165

351

44. Sprawozdanie Zarzadu Towarzystwa, 1909, 8–9; Sprawozdanie Zarzadu Towarzystwa, 1913, 15. 45. Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego dla Emigranto´w Zydo´w za Rok 1909, 1. See also Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego dla Emigranto´w Zydo´w za Rok 1913, 5. 46. In the report for the year 1909, close to three-quarters of the people who passed through the bureau’s offices in Warsaw mentioned economic reasons as the main basis for their decision to emigrate. Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego, 1909, 5. 47. Ibid., 1–3; Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego, 1913, 17. 48. Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego, 1909, 4; Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego, 1913, 11. Although information bureaus were established in centers across Eastern Europe as part of larger attempts by members of the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO) to wield control over the wave of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe, local associations remained, for the most part, autonomous. 49. Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego, 1913, 5. 50. Ibid., 10–13; Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego, 1909, 4–5. For a detailed study of the allure and power of numbers at the time, see Mitchell Bryan Hart, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000). 51. Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacynjego, 1913, 13. 52. Ibid., 29–41. 53. Takanot ha-agudah la-zimrah v.ela-sifrut ha-‘ivrit ha-Zamir be-Varsha (1906), 1. 54. See Ury, Barricades and Banners. 55. Note the comment by Ekiert and Kubik, that civil society organizations ‘‘agree to act within pre-established rules of ‘civil’ or legal nature.’’ Ekiert and Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society, 83. 56. Takanot ha-agudah la-zimrah, 1. 57. Ibid., 2–4. 58. Ibid., 2. 59. For more on the tension between religion, the public sphere, and civil society, see Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World. 60. This point is made rather convincingly regarding Jewish political organizations in Joshua Shanes, ‘‘Neither Germans nor Poles: Jewish Nationalism in Galicia before Herzl, 1883–1897,’’ Austrian History Yearbook 34 (2003): 191–213. For more on these developments in the political realm, see Ury, Barricades and Banners. 61. On this tension, see Gellner, Conditions of Liberty, 103–26, esp. 112 and 126; Hall and Trentmann, ‘‘Contests over Civil Society,’’ 13–14 and 17; and Katherine Verdery, ‘‘Civil Society or Nation?’’ in Intellectuals and the Articulation of the Nation, 301–39. 62. On civil society and democratic societies, see, for example, Walzer, ‘‘The Concept of Civil Society.’’

352

Notes to Pages 166–169

63. Also note Hall and Trentmann’s comments regarding Rousseau’s position that ‘‘before civil society, people could be happy with themselves; in civil society, they became slaves to the conventions of social tastes and habits and their happiness depended on the testimony of others.’’ Hall and Trentmann, ‘‘Contests over Civil Society,’’ 8. 64. See Ury, Barricades and Banners, 261–72.

chapter 8 In conceptualizing and refining this chapter, I benefited greatly from discussions with other 2009–10 fellows at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I also wish to thank Kimberly Arkin, Naomi Davidson, Jonathan Gribetz, Jessica Hammerman, Ari Joskowicz, Jessica Marglin, Todd Shepard, Mark Wagner, and the anonymous readers for their invaluable suggestions on previous drafts of the essay. 1. Throughout this essay, I use the terms ‘‘secular’’ and ‘‘anti-secular’’ to indicate explicit aims and intentions, and ‘‘secularize’’ and ‘‘de-secularize’’ to describe effects. 2. A recent collection, Vincent W. Lloyd, ed., Race and Political Theology (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012), focuses new attention on this question—albeit from the particular angle suggested by its title—and begins to suggest the complexity and variety of interrelations between race-thinking, religion, and secularism. Naomi Davidson, Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), breaks new ground in her arguments about the racialization of Islam and Muslims in France. I have been influenced both by Davidson and by Kimberly Arkin’s Rhinestones, Religion, and the Republic: Fashioning Jewishness in France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013), which posits the racialization of Judaism (and relatedly, Islam) in France in a rather different, contemporary context. While it is not explicitly focused on secularism, Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), emphasizes a racialization of religion among many Christians in Nazi Germany that has parallels to the story told here. 3. This use of the term ‘‘disenchantment,’’ widely employed in discussions of secularization, originated with Max Weber’s lecture, ‘‘Science as Vocation,’’ in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans., ed., and with an introduction by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946). In my discussion of disenchantments and new enchantments in the history of French laı¨cite´, I use the term in the sense employed by Jean Baube´rot in his Laı¨cite´ 1905–2005, Entre Passion et Raison (Paris: Seuil, 2004), esp. 50–85. 4. This was the case particularly during the period from the fall of France in June 1940 to the full German occupation in November 1942. 5. By the French public sphere, I mean those spaces—whether physical, audio, or print—where public discussions, propaganda, and debates occurred about French culture, politics, and identity.

Notes to Pages 170–172

353

6. See in particular, on the clergy and its public positions, Jacques Duquesne, Les Catholiques franc¸ais sous l’Occupation (Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle, 1986); on the broader choices of active members of the church, Etienne Fouilloux, Les Chre´tiens franc¸ais entre crise et libe´ration, 1937–1947 (Paris: Seuil, 1997); W. D. Halls, Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford: Berg, 1995). On schools, see esp. Nicholas Atkin, Church and Schools in Vichy France (London: Garland, 1991). For an explicit treatment of secularism itself under Vichy, which briefly mentions Jews, see Jean Baube´rot, Histoire de la laı¨cite´ franc¸aise, Que sais-je? (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), 102–4. 7. Davidson’s work is the first to engage extensively with the question of antisecularism and Muslims in Vichy France. Davidson, Only Muslim, esp. chap. 4. 8. Jose´ Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 9. The third part of Casanova’s triad, the ‘‘decline-of-religion thesis,’’ positing the gradual loss or even disappearance of religious belief and practice, plays a more limited role in our analysis here. 10. For the examples cited here, Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (1922, rev. 1934), trans. George Schwab, with a new foreword by Tracy B. Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). 11. On the history of laı¨cite´, see Baube´rot, Histoire de la laı¨cite´ franc¸aise. 12. For the relationship between Jewish secularism and public expressions of Jewish politics, culture, and ethnicity as they developed in nineteenth-century France, see Lisa Moses Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in NineteenthCentury France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006). For the rise of Jewish organizational and cultural life in the interwar period (with important attention to the impact of the 1905 law), see Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906–1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979). Nadia Malinovich, French and Jewish: Culture and the Politics of Identity in Early Twentieth-Century France (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), goes further than Hyman in portraying the period as one of a Jewish cultural ‘‘reawakening.’’ 13. See Anna Bozzo, ‘‘Islam et citoyennete´ en Alge´rie sous la IIIe Re´publique: Logiques d’e´mancipation et contradictions coloniales (l’exemple des lois de 1901 et 1905),’’ and Raberh Achi, ‘‘Les apories d’une projection re´publicaine en situation coloniale: La de´politisation de la se´paration du culte musulman et de l’Etat en Alge´rie,’’ in Le choc colonial et l’islam: Les politiques religieuses des puissances coloniales en terres d’Islam, ed. Pierre-Jean Luizard (Paris: La De´couverte, 2006), 197–222 and 237–52. 14. See Bozzo, ‘‘Islam et citoyennete´ en Alge´rie sous la IIIe Re´publique’’; Achi, ‘‘Les apories d’une projection re´publicaine en situation coloniale’’; James McDougall, ‘‘The Secular State’s Islamic Empire: Muslim Spaces and Subjects of Jurisdiction in Paris and Algiers, 1905–1957,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 52, no. 3 (2010): 553–80. 15. On the Grand Mosque and ‘‘Islam franc¸ais,’’ see Davidson, Only Muslim.

354

Notes to Pages 172–174

16. Hermann Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994). 17. On such divisions, see esp. Hyman, From Dreyfus. 18. The Fe´de´ration des e´lus musulmans, led by Mohamed Salah Bendjelloul and Ferhat Abbas, fought to make Algerian Muslims full French citizens who could maintain their ‘‘personal status’’ as Muslim. Composed of local Muslim elected officials, the Fe´de´ration at once sought local alliances of mutual interest with groups that included the far right and worked closely with republican forces in the metropole. 19. On the sizable Jewish support for the Popular Front but also the significant communal divisions in the 1930s over Jewish politics, see David H. Weinberg, A Community on Trial: The Jews of Paris in the 1930s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 50–51, 106, 115–26; Hyman, From Dreyfus, esp. chaps. 7–8. For the Algerian policies of the Popular Front and Muslim responses, see Charles Robert Ageron, ‘‘L’Alge´rie alge´rienne’’ de Napole´on III a` de Gaulle (Paris: Sindbad, 1980), 123–64. Regarding specifically the Congre`s Musulman—formed as a unified Muslim organization in support of the PF and its reform efforts in Algeria—see Mahfoud Kaddache, l’Alge´rie des Alge´riens, de la Pre´histoire a` 1954 (Paris: E´d. Paris-Me´diterrane´e, 2003), 733–39. For the tumultuous relationship of the nascent Algerian nationalist organization the E´toile Nord-Africaine with the PF and the French left more broadly during this period, see Benjamin Stora, Nationalistes alge´riens et re´volutionnaires franc¸ais au temps du Front Populaire, Histoire et perspectives me´diterrane´ennes (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987). 20. Though not religious, Blum believed deeply in Jewish solidarity and commitments to social justice. He had defended Jewish activism in the pages of the Yiddish press and spoken proudly of his Jewish heritage as a parliamentary deputy, and was rumored to have grown up in a traditional Jewish home. Blum’s Jewish affiliations also extended to international causes, as he was an early activist in both the Zionist organization known as Association France-Palestine, founded in 1926, and LICA, formed in 1928. See Hyman, From Dreyfus, 138, 170, 175; Weinberg, A Community, 106; Tony Judt, ‘‘The Prophet Spurned: Le´on Blum and the Price of Compromise,’’ in Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 42. 21. On Vichy’s ‘‘National Revolution’’ that followed these themes, see Christian Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy: Folklore et re´volution nationale, 1940–1944 (Lyon and Paris: Presses Universitaires de Lyon/Presses du CNRS, 1989). 22. Beyond a northern and southern zone, there were also further divisions. In the far north, Germany attached a region to Belgium; in the northeast, the Germans created two ‘‘reserved zones,’’ ostensibly for German settlement; farther east, they annexed the long-disputed Alsace-Lorraine region. In the southeast, the Italians occupied a small zone; in November 1942, their presence became larger, encompassing all of Provence up to the Rhoˆne River, before they retreated from France in September 1943. 23. Figure from Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 3.

Notes to Pages 174–175

355

24. Figure for Muslims from Neil MacMaster, Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900–1962 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 223. It is difficult to determine the exact breakdown of these Muslims in terms of national origin, but clearly the vast majority hailed from Algeria. As of a few years prior, in 1937 at the peak of the Muslim interwar migration, mainland France’s Muslims included 140,000 Algerians, 10,000 Moroccans, and a handful of Tunisians and Middle Eastern Muslims. Algerian numbers from McMaster, Colonial Migrants and Racism, 223–24; Moroccan figures from Archives de la Pre´fecture de Police (Paris), BA 2171, meeting of Haut Comite´ Me´diterrane´en (HCM), October 28, 1937. 25. See Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 17–24. 26. On the importance of empire for Vichy, see esp. Eric T. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pe´tain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940–1944 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001); Pascal Blanchard and Gilles Boe¨tsch, ‘‘La France de Pe´tain et l’Afrique: Images et propagandes coloniales,’’ Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des E´tudes Africaines 28, no. 1 (1994): 1–31; and Pascal Blanchard and Ruth Ginio, ‘‘Re´volution Impe´riale: Le Mythe Colonial de Vichy,’’ in Culture impe´riale: Les colonies au Cœur de la Re´publique, 1931–1961, ed. Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire (Paris: E´ditions Autrement, 2004). 27. Cited in Yves-Claude Aouate, ‘‘Les Alge´riens musulmans et les mesures antijuives du gouvernement de Vichy (1940–1942),’’ Pardes 16 (1992): 189–202, here 189. 28. Philippe Pe´tain, Discours au Franc¸ais, 17 juin 1940–20 aouˆt 1944, ed. Jean-Claude Barabs (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989), 231. 29. See the brief discussion of this propaganda and personal pleas by Muslim POWs to the Marshal, suggestive of his popularity, in Raffael Scheck, ‘‘Nazi Propaganda Toward French Muslim Prisoners of War,’’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26, no. 3 (2012): 447– 77, here 434–35, 439, 442. Many thanks to the author for sharing this work with me before publication. 30. I have chosen this spelling of Benghabrit’s name because it is the most commonly used among French- and English-language sources, both primary and secondary. I have followed this practice with regard to my spelling of all names from North Africa and the Middle East. 31. On the position of Muslims in France during World War I, see Gilbert Meynier, L’Alge´rie re´vele´e, la guerre de 1914–1918 et le premier quart du sie`cle (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1981); and Richard S. Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). On the war’s challenges and opportunities for Jews, see Philippe E. Landau, Les Juifs de France et la Grande Guerre: Un patriotisme re´publicain, 1914–1941 (Paris: Editions CNRS, 2000). 32. Archives De´partementales des Bouches-du-Rhoˆne (ADBdR) (Marseille), 76 W 209, Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur (MdI), memo on ‘‘Ce´le´bration par les musulmans nordafricains de la feˆte de l’Aı¨d el Seghir,’’ September 14, 1943. 33. Quotation and figure in Davidson, Only Muslim, 110.

356

Notes to Pages 175–179

34. Cited in Scheck, ‘‘Nazi Propaganda,’’ 462. 35. See Blanchard and Boe¨tsch, ‘‘La France de Pe´tain,’’ 27. 36. Ibid., 24. 37. Archives du ministe`re des affaires e´trange`res (AMAE) (La Courneuve), Se´rie Guerre 1939–1945 (SG39–45), M Vichy-Maroc (M V-M), 20, memo from the VicePre´sident du Conseil ‘‘sur les indige`nes nord-africains se´journant en France,’’ February 22, 1942. 38. Blanchard and Boe¨tsch, ‘‘La France de Pe´tain,’’ 20. 39. Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Knopf, 1972; reprint, with a new introduction by the author, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 181; Zuccotti, The Holocaust, 53–54. 40. For a concise discussion of Vichy’s first and second Jewish statutes, see Zuccotti, The Holocaust, 53–54, 56, 60–61. French police figure from Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, reprint ed. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995), 250–52; for deportation figures, Paxton, Vichy France, 183. 41. As Daniel Lee shows, Vichy was divided in these areas of policy before the summer of 1942 but in many instances created openings that enabled Jews qua Jews to claim a place in the new order. Despite objections from certain quarters, the Ministries of Youth and Agriculture encouraged Jewish males to join the regime’s obligatory civil service corps for young men, the Chantiers de la jeunesse; some chapters of the Chantiers even provided special dispensation to accommodate religious dietary practices or holidays. The government also looked favorably upon specifically Jewish scouting movements like the E´claireurs Israe´lites de France. See Daniel Lee, Pe´tain’s Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 42. Ibid., 84–86; Rene´e Poznanski, Jews in France During World War II, trans. Nathan Bracher (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001), 144–51. 43. On the latter point, see Davidson, Only Muslim, chap. 4. 44. Such activity declined once roundups and deportations began. See Poznanski, Jews in France, 144–51, 424–27. On participation in regeneration as a way to accommodate Vichy when the future remained unclear, and on Jewish youth activity specifically, see Lee, Pe´tain’s Jewish Children. 45. On Jewishness within the resistance of Jews, see Rene´e Poznanski, ‘‘Reflections on Jewish Resistance and Jewish Resistants in France,’’ Jewish Social Studies, n.s. 2, no. 1 (1995): 124–58. 46. For two important monographs on this topic—regarding hidden Jewish children in Catholic homes and Protestant protection of Jews, respectively—see Maurice Rajsfus, N’oublie pas le petit Je´sus!: L’Eglise catholique et les enfants juifs (1940–1945) (Paris: Manya, 1994); and Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper and Row, 1979). For a more comprehensive assessment of Christian efforts to save and protect Jews in France during the war, see Limore Yagil, Chre´tiens et juifs sous Vichy (1940–1944): Sauvetage et de´sobe´issance civile (Paris: Cerf, 2005).

Notes to Pages 179–180

357

47. Cited in Poznanski, Jews in France, 103. 48. On laws placing Algerian Jews in a lesser legal position than Muslims, and stripping Jews from Algeria in metropolitan France of their citizenship, see Henri Msellati, Les Juifs d’Alge´rie sous le regime de Vichy (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 67–71, 88; regarding Jewish treatment across North Africa, see Michel Abitbol, The Jews of North Africa During the Second World War (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), esp. chap. 5. 49. Beginning in the Middle Ages, as dhimmis, or a non-Muslim ‘‘people of the book,’’ Jews living under Islamic Law gained special protections and relative autonomy in their own affairs. In exchange, they had to pay certain taxes and faced restrictions in many aspects of daily life. The practical application of this framework varied considerably across geography and chronology. For a fair-minded, brief overview of the subject, see Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, The Jews of the Balkans: The Judeo-Spanish Community, 15th to 20th Centuries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 2–4. For a sound introduction to the history of the dhimmi, see Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). 50. The Moroccan case had its own particular complexities. Most Moroccan Jews remained technically dhimmis even during the colonial era. In certain respects, with the coming of colonialism, they had lost key advantages of that status, especially in terms of their ability to turn to Muslim courts for justice. Yet the French presence afforded many Jews greater educational, cultural, and economic opportunity and status than Muslims. Under Vichy, partly in the context of anti-colonial politics, Jews’ position as dhimmis helped motivate the Moroccan sultan to try to protect them from the harshest of Vichy’s anti-Jewish measures. Colonial interests, meanwhile, led the French residence in Morocco to seek to maintain the Jewish schools of the Alliance Israe´lite Universelle, even as the residence implemented anti-Jewish educational and professional quotas. Here I draw on Daniel Schroeter, ‘‘Vichy in Morocco: The Residence, Mohamed V and His Indigenous Jewish Subjects’’ (unpublished paper). 51. ADBdR, 76 W 161, Pre´fecture des Bouches-du-Rhoˆne (PBdR), Service des Affaires Alge´riennes (SAA), note of November 9, 1942. There are indications that such activity may have continued the following year. See ‘‘Ce qui furent a` la feˆte,’’ Er Rachid, October 5, 1943. 52. Jean Laloum, ‘‘Des Juifs d’Afrique du Nord au Pletzl? Une pre´sence me´connue et des e´preuves oublie´es (1920–1945),’’ Archives Juives 38, no. 2 (2005): 47–83, here 69; interview with Louise Jaı¨s (ne´e Fhal), June 20, 2006. 53. Most of those I found sought confirmation in writing, and their dossiers come from Archives nationales (AN) (Paris), AJ38. See 152, 154, and 156, dossiers of Amsellem, Salomon, Yacouta ne´e Ben Rhamin, Ben Chemouan and Ben Aroch, Messaoudah; 155, dossier of Baccouche, Rene´; 156, dossiers of Ben B’Diko, Messaoud and Benhamou, Emile; 170, dossier of Gourdji, Cle´ment Rahmi, Gourdji, Huyemine, and Aster, Yourouchelmi; 176, dossier of Kriel, Joseph; 187, dossier of Saffar, Jules; 154, dossier of Azoulay, J. The latter two dossiers are cited in Laloum, ‘‘Des Juifs,’’ 70, 74–75; n. 82, n. 102. See also Centre de documentation juive contemporaine (Paris), CXV 164a, letter regarding status of Roland ne´e Marzouk, Germaine.

358

Notes to Pages 180–182

54. Emmanuel Blanchard, La police parisienne et les alge´riens (1944–1962) (Paris: Nouveau Monde, 2011), 62–65. 55. ADBdR, 76 W 162, Affaire Chaouat, letters of November-December 1942. 56. AN, AJ38. 156, dossier of Rene´ Baccouche. While it is impossible to be certain that Baccouche was lying, his French first and last name, his residence in the Var, and his lack of documentation for his story make it unlikely he was actually of Turkish Muslim origin. 57. On the myth of Berber (and especially Kabyle) superiority, see Patricia Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial Algeria (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); a good discussion of the myth’s various permutations in the twentieth century is found in Paul A. Silverstein, Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), chap. 2. 58. For the history of the term indige`nes as a legal category, see Laure Ble´vis, ‘‘Les avatars de la citoyennete´ en Alge´rie coloniale ou les paradoxes d’une cate´gorisation,’’ Droit et Socie´te´ 48 (2001): 557–80. 59. See Jacques Darville and Simon Wichene´, Drancy la juive ou la deuxie`me inquisition (Cachan: A. Breger Fre`res, 1945), 104. 60. Gitta Amipaz-Silber, Sephardi Jews in Occupied France (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1995), 20. 61. Darville and Wichene´, Drancy la juive, 108–9; translation in part from AmipazSilber, Sephardi Jews, 284. 62. This figure constituted slightly over 10 percent of the community’s overall population on the war’s eve. Esther Benbassa, The Jews of France: A History from Antiquity to the Present, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 148–49. 63. For a good overview of the various ethnic groups comprising North African Jewry and the penetration therein of Iberian Sephardic Jews and their culture, see Michael Laskier, North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria (New York: New York University Press, 1994), introduction. Regarding the manner in which the Iberian experience profoundly shaped Ottoman Jewry, see Benbassa and Rodrigue, The Jews of the Balkans. 64. On this interpretation see Lewis, The Jews of Islam, 82–84, and Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), chap. 10, esp. 175–76, 183; see also Mark R. Cohen, ‘‘The Origins of Sephardic Jewry in the Medieval Arabic World,’’ in Sephardic & Mizrahi Jewry: From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern Times, ed. Zion Zohar (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 23–39. 65. Ibid. 66. For two in-depth examinations of these types of figures, see Mercedes Garcı´aArenal and Gerard Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe, trans. Martin Beagles, foreword by David Nirenberg and Richard L. Kagan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Daniel J. Schroeter,

Notes to Pages 183–185

359

The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002). Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), offers an insightful analysis of a larger group of Sephardic merchants in Livorno and the factors that determined their success in both international business and local politics. 67. Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer (CAOM) (Aix-en-Provence), FR ANOM 93/ 4396, Pre´fecture de Constantine, Centre d’Information et d’Etudes, note regarding declarations of Si Kaddour Benghabrit about the demands of conversion to Islam of Jews in Paris, May 19, 1942. My thanks to Jean Laloum for sharing this document. Benghabrit reported that he had told these Jews that all they had to do was say the shahadah. For more on this document in the larger context of Benghabrit’s wartime conduct, see Ethan Katz, ‘‘Did the Paris Mosque Save Jews? A Mystery and Its Memory,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review 102, no. 2 (2012): 256–87, esp. 282. I have found no other indications of widespread Jewish efforts to convert to Islam during this period; if they took place, it appears that they were unknown to the larger Jewish community. 68. Indeed, while Baccouche’s story strains credibility, many Moroccan Jews in particular and some Muslims did cross briefly into Algeria in the decades following the French conquest of 1830, and particularly after the Senatus-Consulte of 1865, in order to obtain certifications of French nationality and the privileges obtaining thereto. See Jessica M. Marglin, ‘‘The Two Lives of Mas’ud Amoyal: Pseudo-Algerians in Morocco, 1830– 1912,’’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 44 (2012): 651–70. 69. On changing, fungible imperial legal regimes and statuses for Jews at this time, see Sarah Abrevaya Stein, ‘‘Protected Persons? The Baghdadi Jewish Diaspora, the British State, and the Persistence of Empire,’’ American Historical Review 116, no. 1 (2011): 80–108; and, particularly on the issue of fluid geographical boundaries within and beyond empires, Marglin, ‘‘The Two Lives.’’ Regarding Said and Rhaı¨s, respectively, see Tom Reiss, The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life (New York: Random House, 2004), and Patricia M. E. Lorcin, ‘‘Manipulating Elissa: The Uses and Abuses of Elissa Rhaı¨s and Her Works,’’ Journal of North Africa Studies 17, no. 5 (2012): 903–22. 70. Most of the new literature focuses narrowly on the question of Muslim complicity with the Nazis, or the lack thereof. In the former case, see esp. Edwin Black, The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust (Washington, D.C.: Dialog Press, 2010); Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World; in the latter case, Gilbert Achcar, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, trans. G. M. Goshgarian (New York: Henry Holt, 2009). An important exception that deals more substantially with Jewish life itself remains Abitbol, The Jews of North Africa. On the broader relative absence of Sephardic Jewry from histories of the Holocaust, along with promising directions for future study, see Henry Abramson, ‘‘A Double Occlusion: Sephardim and the Holocaust,’’ in Zohar, Sephardic & Mizrahi Jewry, 285–99; and Aron Rodrigue, ‘‘Les Se´pharades et la ‘solution finale,’ ’’ in Les Se´pharades: Histoire et culture du Moyen Aˆge a` nos jours, ed. Esther Benbassa (Paris: Presses de l’Universite´ Paris-Sorbonne, 2011), 201–12.

360

Notes to Pages 185–190

71. The reforms of 1944 and Algeria’s new status as of 1947 had already created the category of FMAs, and given Algerian Muslims in the metropole—but not Algeria itself— the equal right to vote. The 1956 reforms gave the category of FMAs new legal definition and force; and only the 1958 Constitution applied the status to all Muslims in Algeria. On the previous reforms, see Emmanuel Blanchard, La police parisienne et les alge´riens, 25–27; on citizenship policy during the Algerian War, see Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006). My thanks to Todd Shepard for helping to clarify these issues in conversation. 72. Here I draw in part on another attempt to think through the intricate relationships between religion and ethnicity in French policy toward Jews and Muslims: Todd Shepard, ‘‘Algerian Nationalism, Zionism and French Laı¨cite´: A History of EthnoReligious Nationalisms and Decolonization,’’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 45 (2013): 445–67 (my thanks to the author for sharing a prepublication version). I find Shepard’s contentions about divergent policy approaches to Jews and Muslims at the close of the Algerian War, and the way these helped redraw the contours of French nationhood, quite convincing; I am less sure, however, that the decisions of this moment marked off Jews as ‘‘religious’’ and Muslims as ‘‘ethnic’’ in a clear-cut, enduring manner, as he suggests. Rather, as stated here, in the case of both groups’ positions in France, I see religion and ethnicity as persistently entangled and recurrently reconfigured. 73. This extends, of course, to the most recent and widely discussed controversy in this vein—that surrounding the 2004 law banning the wearing of the hijab, or headscarf by Muslim girls in French public schools. See Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007); John Bowen, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); Yolande Jansen, ‘‘Secularism and Religious (In-)Security: Reinterpreting the French Headscarf Debates,’’ Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, no. 2 (2011): 2–19.

chapter 9 1. Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, trans. E. Orenstein, A. Klein, and J. Machlowitz Klein (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), 31–148. 2. Shmuel Feiner, Milh.emet Tarbut: Tenu‘at ha-haskalah ha-yehudit ba-meah ha-19 (Culture war: The Jewish Enlightenment in the nineteenth century) (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2010), 32, 37–38, and 70–71. 3. Michael Printy, Enlightenment and the Creation of German Catholicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); Ritchie Robertson, ‘‘Religion and the Enlightenment: A Review Essay,’’

Notes to Pages 190–193

361

German History 25, no. 3 (2007): 422–32; Helena Rosenblatt, ‘‘The Christian Enlightenment,’’ The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 283–301; Jonathan Sheehan, ‘‘Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,’’ American Historical Review 108, no. 4 (2003): 1061–80. 4. Sorkin, Religious Enlightenment, 1–21. 5. On the need to consider the local context in the analysis of the Eastern European varieties of the Haskalah, see Ela Bauer, ‘‘Milhemet tarbut: Tenu’at ha-Haskalah haYehudit ba-me’ah ha-tesha-esreh,’’ Gal-Ed 23 (2012): 173–80. 6. Susie I. Tucker, Enthusiasm: A Study in Semantic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 3. 7. Ibid. 8. J. G. A. Pocock, ‘‘Enthusiasm: The Antiself of Enlightenment,’’ in Enthusiasm and Enlightenment in Europe, 1650–1850, ed. Lawrence E. Klein and Anthony J. LaVopa (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1998), 7–28. 9. Anthony J. LaVopa, ‘‘The Philosopher and the Schwa¨rmer: On the Career of a German Epithet from Luther to Kant,’’ in Klein and LaVopa, Enthusiasm and Enlightenment, 85–115, esp. 88. 10. Ibid., 87. 11. Ibid., 91. 12. Ibid., 87. 13. Ibid., 108. 14. Norbert Hinske, ‘‘Die Aufkla¨rung und die Schwa¨rmer—Sinn und Funktionen einer Kampfidee,’’ in Die Aufkla¨rung und die Schwa¨rmer, ed. Norbert Hinske (Hamburg: Meiner, 1988), 5–6, esp. 6. 15. H. C. Erik Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johan Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth-Century Germany (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005), 118–19. 16. Quoted in Hartmut Bo¨hme and Gernot Bo¨hme, ‘‘The Battle of Reason with the Imagination,’’ in What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and TwentiethCentury Questions, ed. James Schmidt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 426–52, esp. 435. 17. LaVopa, ‘‘The Philosopher and the Schwa¨rmer,’’ 102. 18. Michael Heyd, ‘‘Be Sober and Reasonable’’: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1995). 19. Ibid., 274. 20. Ibid., 275. 21. Ibid., 276. 22. Ibid., 278. 23. Ibid. 24. Max Weber, ‘‘Science as a Vocation,’’ in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 129–56, esp. 139–40.

362

Notes to Pages 193–196

25. Alexandra Walsham, ‘‘The Reformation and ‘The Disenchantment of the World’ Reassessed,’’ Historical Journal 51, no. 2 (2008): 497–528. 26. Ibid., 498. 27. Ibid., 500. 28. Ibid., 502. 29. Ibid., 527. 30. Ibid., 526–27. 31. Andrew Keitt, ‘‘Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the World,’’ Journal of the History of Ideas 65 (2004): 231–50, esp. 233. 32. Ibid., 246. 33. Ibid., 249. 34. Ibid., 235. 35. Sheehan, ‘‘Enlightenment.’’ 36. Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 149–51. 37. ‘‘Soll man der einreissenden Schwa¨rmerey durch Satyre oder durch a¨ussere Verbindung entgegenarbeiten?’’ Moses Mendelssohn Kleine Schriften I, Moses Mendelssohn Gesammelte Schriften, Jubila¨umsausgabe (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1981), 6/1:136–41. Mendelssohn also used the term in relation to Jacobi and his criticism on rational theism. See Michah Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn’s Theological Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 80–81. Gottlieb summarizes Mendelssohn’s three definitions of Schwa¨rmer: (1) ‘‘Mystics who believe that God is known intuitively through a special sense organ’’; (2) ‘‘Fanatics who think that one should subordinate all of one’s thought and actions to a single purpose’’; (3) ‘‘People whose individual, subjective representations overwhelm their sense of objective reality.’’ 38. Quoted in Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment, 118–19. For a discussion on Shaftesbury’s treatise, see Heyd, ‘‘Be Sober and Reasonable,’’ 210–40. 39. Salomon Maimon, ‘‘Ueber die Schwa¨rmerei,’’ in his Gesammelte Werke, ed. Valerio Verra (Hildesheim: Olms, 1965), 4:611–17, first published in Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde 10, no. 2 (1793): 43–48. 40. Hans Grassl, Aufbruch zur Romantik: Bayerns Beitrag zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte 1765–1785 (Munich: Beck, 1968), 131–54. 41. Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment, 89–91, 92, 107. Herman Samuel Reimarus also attributed the belief in demons to Jews in the time of Jesus, in Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment, 109–11. When Nachman Krochmal wrote of Christian scholars who criticize the Aggadah because it contains superstitions, stories about demons, strange incantations, and so on, he may have had scholars like Semler in mind. See Nachman Krochmal, Kitvei Rabi Nachman Krochmal, ed. Simon Ravidovich, 2nd ed. (Waltham, Mass.: Ararat, 1961), 246. 42. ‘‘Salomon Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte,’’ in Maimon, Gesammelte Werke 1:215, 216, 224, 230.

Notes to Pages 196–198

363

43. Reprinted in Hebrew as Yosef Perl, Al mahut kat ha-Hasidim (On the nature of the sect of the Hasidim), ed. from the ms. Abraham Rubinshtayn (Jerusalem: HaAkademyah ha-leumit ha-Yisre’elit le-mada‘im, 1977). One scholar argues that the contemporary Polish Maskil Mendel Lefin’s ‘‘understanding of the imaginative faculty as the source of Hasidic lack of restraint parallels the European-wide critique of enthusiasm in the early modern period.’’ But Lefin did not in fact use the term Schwa¨rmerei, and his discussion in this regard was rather limited. See Nancy Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands (Providence, R.I.: Program in Judaic Studies, Brown University Press, 2004), 143–44. 44. ‘‘Ein Gemisch vom Wesen Swedenborgs und Cagliostros, das heist Visionnair und wundertha¨tiger Adepte zugleich war’’; Perl, Al mahut kat ha-Hasidim, 61. 45. ‘‘Jn diesem Werke Mischna findet sich weder in moralischer noch dogmatischer Hinsicht viel u¨berspanntes, und beynahe nichts eigentlich . . . Schwa¨rmerisches [!] oder Gemeinscha¨dliches’’; ibid., 64. 46. ‘‘Die Orthodoxen, und nicht chasidischen Rabbiner der grossen Gemeinde, selbst in Pohlen, sind daher, obschon man bekennen muss, d[a]ss ihnen alle wissenschaftliche Bildung, selbst Sprachen und Humaniora mangeln, dennoch von scha¨ dlicher Schwa¨rmerey ziemlich frey. Sie sind keine Wahrsager, oder Geisterseher, halten keine Zusammenku¨nfte, dringen nebst ihrem Zeremonialgesetz, auch auf ha¨usliche Tugenden, schliessen die Bu¨rgerlichen nicht aus, und gehorchen nicht ungern den Landesgesetzen’’; ibid., 65. 47. Kitvei Rabi Nachman Krochmal, 7–9. Published first as an independent article, Kerem Hemed 1 (1833): 14–16 (letter 6, by Shmuel Leib Goldenberg). On Krochmal, see Joseph Klausner, Historyah shel ha-sifrut ha-ivrit ha-hadashah, 3rd ed. (Jerusalem: Ahiasaf, 1960), 2:148–214; Jay W. Harris, Nachman Krochmal: Guiding the Perplexed of the Modern Age (New York: New York University Press, 1991); Shmuel Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness, trans. Chaya Naor and Sondra Silverston (Portland, Ore.: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002), 115–25. 48. Kitvei Rabi Nachman Krochmal, 7. 49. Ibid., 10. 50. Ibid., letter to Ze’ev Wolf Schiff, 413–16, esp. 415–16. 51. Ibid., 9. The reference is to Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem: Or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1983), 62–63. 52. On Erter, see Klausner, Historyah shel ha-sifrut ha-ivrit, 321–49. 53. Isaac Erter, Ha-tzofeh le-vet yisrael (Watchman for the house of Israel), ed. Yehudah Friedlander (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1996), 73. 54. Ibid., 69. 55. Ibid., 86. 56. Ibid., 97. 57. Ibid., 134–35, 170.

364

Notes to Pages 198–200

58. On Mieses, see Feiner, Haskalah and History, 96–104; Klausner, Historyah shel ha-sifrut ha-ivrit, 267–82. 59. Yehudah Friedlander, Be-mistere ha-satirah: Perakim ba-satirah ha-ivrit hahadashah ba-meah ha-yud tet (In the mysteries of satire: Chapters in the new Hebrew satire in the nineteenth century) (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1984), 25–32, esp. 26–28. 60. [Yehudah Leib Mieses], Kinat ha-emet (Lemberg: Michael Wolf, 1879), 8–10, 29–36, 124. Mieses uses the word ‘‘Beshtians’’ when he refers to Hasidim. 61. [Mieses], Kinat ha-emet. The last chapter of the book, ‘‘Likutei perahim,’’ is a collection from the writings of Maimonides, Saadiah Gaon, Judah Ha-levi, Ralbag, Shem Tov ben Joseph Ibn Shem Tov, Samuel Sarsah, Joseph of Kandia, and others, brought as proof against the belief in magic and demons; see Kinat ha-emet, 205–56. There is nothing in this work that suggests that Mieses supported Deistic ideas. 62. In his other work, Tehunat ha-rabanim, an annotated edition of the second part of David Karo’s Berit Emet, Mieses does not support Deism. He talks about the Torah, the World to Come, the commandments, and so on. See [Mieses], Kinat ha-emet, 17–29, 38–40. 63. See [Mieses], Kinat ha-emet, 106–18. 64. See for example Raphael Mahler, Ha-hasidut ve-hahaskalah (Merhavyah: Sifriyyat Po‘alim, 1961), doc. 1, 397; doc. 5, 410; doc. 6i, 429; doc. 12a, 470. 65. Ignaz de Luca, Vorlesungen u¨ber die Oestreichische [sic!] Staatsverfassung, I (Vienna, 1792), 379. A historian of the period writes: ‘‘Seit den kirchenpolitischen Maßnahmen Joseph II. hatte sich beim o¨sterreichischen Josephinertum eine starke Abneigung gegen jede religio¨se ‘Schwa¨rmerei,’ das heißt gegen jede nichtrationale Form der Religiosita¨t festgesetzt. Die Ausbru¨che bu¨rokratischen Unwillens u¨ber religio¨se Schwa¨rmerei im katholischen Lager an verschiedensten Orten und Zeiten reden eine deutliche Sprache’’ (Beginning with Joseph II’s measures in church politics, the Austrian followers of Josephinian policies have adopted a strong stand against any religious ‘Schwa¨rmerei,’ meaning any non-rationalistic form of religion. The outbreak of bureaucratic aversion to religious Schwa¨rmerei among Catholics in different locations and different periods speaks ¨ sterreichs im 18. for itself ). Fritz Valjavec, Der Josephinismus: Zur geistigen Entwicklung O und 19. Jahrhundert (Bru¨nn: Rohrer, 1944), 73. 66. Ludwig Ehrenreich von Barth-Barthenheim, Oesterreich’s geistliche Angelegenheiten in ihren politisch-administrativen Beziehungen (Vienna: Braumu¨ller and Seidel, 1841), 485. 67. Ignaz de Luca, Vorlesungen, 386–87. 68. Shmuel Werses, Megamot ve-tzurot be-sifrut ha-haskalah (Trends and forms in Haskalah literature) (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990), 223–48. 69. Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 256 and elsewhere; Derek Beales, Joseph II: Against the World 1780–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 168–213. 70. See for example Ritchie Robertson, ‘‘Heroes in Their Underclothes: Aloys Blumauer’s Travesty of Virgil’s Aeneid,’’ in The Austrian Comic Tradition: Studies in Honour

Notes to Pages 200–202

365

of W. E. Yates, ed. John R. P. McKenzie and Lesley Sharpe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 24–40. 71. Ernst Wangermann, Die Waffen der Publizita¨t: Zum Funktionswandel der politischen Literatur unter Joseph II (Vienna: Verlag fu¨r Geschichte und Politik, 2004), 43–94; Leslie Bodi, Tauwetter in Wien: Zur Prosa der o¨sterreichischen Aufkla¨rung (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1977), 138–52. 72. Gesetzbuch u¨ber Verbrechen und schwere Polizey-Uebertretungen (Wien, 1815), § 107, p. 51. 73. I regard Galician Maskilim who were born after the first decade of the nineteenth century and published their works after the 1848 revolution as representative of a different trend from the one discussed here. The main concern of the later group was the struggle for emancipation. In the words of one of the first scholars of Galician Haskalah: ‘‘Mit Beginn der zweiten Ha¨lfte des 19. Jahrhunderts ist die große Epoche der galizischen Haskala zu Ende. Es beginnt die Zeit der Epigonen.’’ M[ax] Weißberg, ‘‘Die neuhebra¨ische Aufkla¨rungsliteratur in Galizien,’’ Monatsschrift fu¨r Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 72, no. 2 (1928): 184–201. 74. The Austrian state, then, was not an agent of secularization in the development of Haskalah. This interpretation diverges from the recent argument of Feiner, Milhemet tarbut, 68. 75. This section is based on Rachel Manekin, ‘‘Praying at Home in Lemberg: The Minyan Laws of the Habsburg Empire, 1776–1848,’’ Polin 24 (2012): 49–69; Rachel Manekin, ‘‘Hasidism and the Habsburg Empire: 1788–1867,’’ Jewish History 27 (2013): 271–97. 76. ‘‘Aba¨nderung des Kreisschreibens vom Jahre 1810 hinsichtlich der unbefugten ju¨dischen Privatandacht (Miniams-)Ha¨lter, dann diesfa¨llige Strafen,’’ Provinzial Gesetzsammlung des Ko¨nigreichs Galizien und Lodomerien fu¨r das Jahr 1823 (Lemberg, n.d.), 156–57. 77. Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment, 81–82. For the law regarding private chapels, see Barth-Barthenheim, Oesterreich’s geistliche Angelegenheiten, §§1033–40, 554–56, esp. §1035, 555. 78. David Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 14. 79. Gerhard Wanner, ‘‘Aufkla¨rung, Religionsschwa¨rmerei und Aberglaube in Vorarlberg: Eine Studie u¨ber religio¨se Verha¨ltnisse in der ersten Ha¨lfte des 19. Jahrhunderts aus Akten des Generalvikariatsarchives in Feldkirch,’’ Montfort 20 (1968): 444–63. 80. Gesetzbuch u¨ber Verbrechen, §107d, 51. Sectarianism was later removed from the clause dealing with Religionssto¨rung; see de.wikisource.org/wiki/Strafgesetz_1852_(%C 3%96sterreich), §122. 81. See Vorarlberger Landesarchiv Rep. 14–065 Kreisamt I Akten 1814–1849, www .vorarlberg.at/pdf/rep_14-065kreisamtiakten1.pdf, Schachtel 316, 37/64. Pra¨sidiale: 1824, 12 Religionssto¨rung am Sulzberg, Schwa¨rmerei des Konrad Schmid, Anton Sieber und Konsorten; Stellungnahme des Generalvikar Bernhard Galura. This suggests that Schwa¨rmerei was indeed under the category of Religionssto¨rung.

366

Notes to Pages 202–209

82. Beales, Joseph II: Against the World, 307–32. 83. Cited in Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment, 46–49, esp. 47. 84. Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrayiny (henceforth TsDIAL), fond 146, opys 85, sprava 2310, no. 17158 1823 72617, pp. 46–52; microfilm copy in Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem (henceforth CAHJP), HM2/ 8343.5. 85. Ibid., pp. 51b–52a. 86. Ibid., p. 50a. 87. ‘Behandlung der ju¨dischen Fro¨mmlersekte Chasiden genannt’, Provinzial Gesetzsammlung des Ko¨nigreichs Galizien und Lodomerien fu¨r das Jahr 1824, pp. 67–68; Manekin, ‘‘Hasidism and the Habsburg Empire,’’ 294–97. 88. ‘‘Jede fanatische Schwa¨rmerei last sich damit entschuldingen, dass sie in den Religionsgebra¨uchen gegru¨ndet sei. Nimmt die Regierung auf diese keinen Einfluss, so wird auch jene ungehindert u¨berhand nehmen’’; Mahler, Ha-hasidut ve-ha-haskalah, doc. 9e, 438–49, esp. 447. 89. TsDIAL fond 146, opys 85, sprava 2310, 53487 no. 11280 1824, 83–85b, pp. 86–88; microfilm copy in CAHJP, HM2/8343.5. 90. ‘‘Ob aber solche Religionsschwa¨rmer, welche in dem Bethhause wa¨hrend der Andacht, Brandwein, Wein u.d.g., trinken, jede Aufkla¨rung aus Aberglauben unterdru¨cken, die u¨brigen Juden ohne Ursache verfolgen, die Jugend verderben, den schwa¨rmerischen Beutelschneidern anha¨ngen, u.s.w., auf gesetzlichen Schutz Anspruch machen ko¨nnen?’’ HM2/8343.5, 84b–85. 91. TsDIAL fond 146, opys 14, sprava 298, pp. 67–79; microfilm copy in CAHJP, HM2/8613.2.

chapter 10 Translated by William Hiscott, zl (1974–2013). 1. Musar literature contains not only halakhic and homiletic but also narrative elements. However, the narrative passages are oriented strongly toward biblical and talmudic material from older popular traditions. On musar literature and Jewish moral literature, see Ruth Berger, Sexualita¨t, Ehe und Familienleben in der ju¨dischen Moralliteratur (900– 1900) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003). 2. See Jonathan M. Hess, ‘‘Fiction and the Making of Modern Orthodoxy, 1857– 1890: Orthodoxy and the Quest for the German-Jewish Novel,’’ Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 52 (2007): 49–86. 3. On the stylistic elements of neo-Orthodox literature, see Jonathan M. Hess, ‘‘Beyond Subversion: German Jewry and the Poetics of Middlebrow Culture,’’ German Quarterly 82, no. 3 (2009): 316–35, esp. 325.

Notes to Pages 209–210

367

4. See Homi K. Bhabha, ‘‘Introduction: Locations of Culture,’’ in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 1–18, esp. 2. On the theoretical concept of the ‘‘invention of tradition,’’ see also the initial work by Hobsbawm and Ranger, which focuses, however, on hegemonic ‘‘traditions’’ such as those of the British Empire. According to Hobsbawm’s definition, the invention of tradition takes on three tasks: ‘‘symbolizing social cohesion,’’ ‘‘legitimizing institutions, status or relations of authority,’’ and reinforcing ‘‘socialization.’’ Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 9. 5. In contrast, Ferziger does not differentiate between the older and newer forms of Orthodoxy, but rather focuses on structural differences between religious movements of the early and late nineteenth century, movements he defines as equally ‘‘Orthodox’’ and ‘‘modern.’’ Adam S. Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 6. The self-conception as ‘‘Orthodox’’ appears, for example, in the subtitle of the periodical Der Israelit: ‘‘A Central Organ for Orthodox Judaism’’ (Ein Zentralorgan fu¨r das orthodoxe Judentum). In my essay I prefer the terms ‘‘neo-Orthodoxy’’ and ‘‘modern Orthodoxy’’ but occasionally also use ‘‘Orthodoxy’’ to indicate the opposition of this group to Reform Judaism. 7. On the regional differences and not remotely linear development of state regulations with regard to the required levels of secular education for rabbis, see Carsten Wilke, ‘‘Den Talmud und den Kant’’: Rabbinerausbildung an der Schwelle zur Moderne (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003). 8. The genre Zeitroman indicates a novel concerned with the author’s critical analysis of the age in which he or she lives. 9. See the chapter ‘‘Literature, Art, and Science’’ in Mordechai Breuer, Modernity Within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 149–214. 10. See ‘‘Das Ghetto als Projektionsort orthodoxer Schriftsteller’’ in Gabriele von Glasenapp, Aus der Judengasse: Zur Entstehung und Auspra¨gung deutschsprachiger Ghettoliteratur im 19. Jahrhundert (Tu¨bingen: Niemeyer, 1996), 71–80. For further insights into this genre, see the three volumes by Gabriele von Glasenapp and Hans Otto Horch, Ghettoliteratur: Eine Dokumentation zur deutsch-ju¨dischen Literaturgeschichte des 19. und fru¨hen 20. Jahrhunderts (Tu¨bingen: Niemeyer, 2005). 11. One exception is Shedletzky’s study on differently oriented Jewish periodicals of the nineteenth century. However, her study was not published as a monograph. See Itta Shedletzky, ‘‘Literaturdiskussion und Belletristik in den ju¨dischen Zeitschriften in Deutschland, 1837–1914’’ (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1986). 12. See, e.g., Willi Jasper, Deutsch-ju¨discher Parnass (Munich: Propyla¨en, 2004); Hans Schu¨tz, Juden in der deutschen Literatur: Eine deutsch-ju¨dische Literaturgeschichte im ¨ berblick (Munich: Piper, 1992), expanded and revised under the title ‘‘Eure Sprache ist U

368

Notes to Pages 210–211

auch meine’’: Eine deutsch-ju¨dische Literaturgeschichte (Zurich: Pendo, 2000). Orthodox authors, such as Sara Hirsch Guggenheim, Marcus Lehmann, and the aforementioned Orthodox authors of ghetto literature, are also not listed in Kilcher’s otherwise commendable encyclopedia of German Jewish literature. See Andreas B. Kilcher, ed., Metzler Lexikon der deutsch-ju¨dischen Literatur: Ju¨dische Autorinnen und Autoren deutscher Sprache von der Aufkla¨rung bis zur Gegenwart (2000; 2nd ed., Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012). 13. See, among others, Jonathan M. Hess, Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010), 157–200. I thank Jonathan M. Hess for personally sharing additional important insights into this genre. 14. Eva Lezzi, ‘‘Neoorthodoxe Belletristik: Kanonerweiterung und didaktische Herausforderung fu¨r deutsch-ju¨dische Literaturstudien,’’ in Festschrift des Moses Mendelssohn Zentrums (Potsdam: Universita¨tsverlag Potsdam, 2011), 263–81. On the opening of the French Jewish literature canon to Orthodox works, see Maurice Samuels, Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010), esp. 112–53. 15. David Ellenson, Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah, and the Boundaries of Modern Jewish Identity (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989); Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992). 16. Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy, 4 and elsewhere. For a discussion of the specific situation in Germany, see furthermore Robert Liberles, Religious Conflict in Social Context: The Resurgence of Orthodox Judaism in Frankfurt am Main, 1839–1877 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), as well as the many publications on the life and impact of the leading figure of nineteenth-century German Orthodoxy, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. See the following list of approximately ninety articles of the last fifty years: libguides.tourolib.org/loader.php?typed&id944539. 17. Hermann Zabel, ‘‘Sa¨kularisation, Sa¨kularisierung,’’ in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), 5:789–829, here 789. 18. Hirsch’s definition is as follows: ‘‘The term ‘Torah im Derech Eretz’ as used by our Jewish Sages means the realization of the Torah in harmonious unity with all the conditions under which its laws will have to be observed amidst the developments of changing times.’’ Samson Raphael Hirsch, A Classic Principle of Jewish Education, in The Collected Writings (New York: Philipp Feldheim, 1992), 7:277–95, here 294; the piece was first published in 1870. 19. In the English translation of an article by Samson Raphael Hirsch, the term ‘‘allgemeine Bildungselemente,’’ for example, was misleadingly translated as ‘‘secular studies.’’ The frequent use of the word ‘‘secular’’ in the translation does not correspond to the original text, wherein the respective German term does not appear at all. See Samson Raphael Hirsch, ‘‘Von den Beziehungen der allgemeinen Bildungselemente zu der speciell

Notes to Pages 211–214

369

ju¨dischen Bildung,’’ Jeschurun (May 1867): 253–72. Cf. ‘‘The Relevance of Secular Studies to Jewish Education,’’ in Collected Writings, 7:81–100. 20. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003); Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini, ed., Secularisms (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008). 21. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1969), 107. 22. Ibid., 131. 23. I use this term in contrast to the concept of global pluralism that Berger applies to depict Europe as a world region wherein the classic theory of secularization—the postulation of a linear turning away from religion in modernity—is confirmed. According to him, the situations are different in world regions in which Islamization or Evangelical movements are dominant. In these regions, and in accordance with the respective religions, other paths must be taken with regard to the challenges of modernity. See the chapter ‘‘Secularization and Pluralism,’’ in Peter L. Berger, A Far Glory: The Quest for Faith in an Age of Credulity (New York: Anchor Books, 1992), 25–46. 24. David Ellenson also hints at secularization theory when writing about this episode in the history of nineteenth-century German Orthodoxy. See Ellenson, ‘‘German Jewish Orthodoxy: Tradition in the Context of Culture,’’ in Wertheimer, The Uses of Tradition, 5–22, esp. 9; Ellenson, ‘‘Church-Sect Theory, Religious Authority, and Modern Jewish Orthodoxy,’’ in Approaches to the Study of Modern Judaism, ed. Marc Raphael (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), 63–83. 25. On the neo-Orthodox politics of inner-Jewish separation, see Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy, 114–32; and Matthias Morgenstern, From Frankfurt to Jerusalem: Isaac Breuer and the History of the Secession Dispute in Modern Jewish Orthodoxy (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 26. See Roland Tasch, Samson Raphael Hirsch: Ju¨dische Erfahrungswelten im historischen Kontext (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), esp. 235–36. 27. See Jeannette Strauss Almstad and Matthias Wolf, ‘‘Marcus Lehmann,’’ in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (Nordhausen: Bautz, 2002), 20, cols. 912–15. 28. Interestingly, Lehmann’s historical novels are those that have managed to make the temporal and intercultural leap into the contemporary period, primarily in the genre of youth literature. See, e.g., the catalog of the Morascha publishing house in Basel. A small amount of scholarly literature exists with regard to his historical novels, e.g., Florian Krobb, Kollektivautobiographien, Wunschautobiographien, Marranenschicksal im deutschju¨dischen historischen Roman (Wu¨rzburg: Ko¨nigshausen & Neumann, 2002), 73–86; and Jonathan Skolnik, ‘‘Writing Jewish History at the Margins of the Weimar Classic: Minority Culture and National Identity in Germany, 1837–1873,’’ in Searching for Common Ground: Diskurse zur deutschen Identita¨t 1750–1871, ed. Nicholas Vaszonyi (Cologne: Bo¨hlau, 2000), 227–38. 29. On the literary topos of interreligious love and marriage, see Eva Lezzi, ‘‘Liebe ist meine Religion!’’ Eros und Ehe zwischen Juden und Christen in der Literatur des 19.

370

Notes to Pages 214–220

Jahrhunderts (Go¨ttingen: Wallstein, 2013). For a specific focus on modern Orthodox literature, see Anja Kreienbrink, ‘‘Unglu¨cklich muss enden, was der go¨ttlichen Ordnung zuwiderla¨uft: ‘Ehekonzeptionen’ in der neo-orthodoxen Belletristik,’’ MEDAON: Magazin fu¨r ju¨disches Leben in Forschung und Bildung 12 (2013), www.medaon.de/pdf/MEDAON _12_Kreienbrink.pdf. 30. See Hess, ‘‘Beyond Subversion,’’ esp. the section ‘‘From Lessing to Guggenheim, or Bourgeois Tragedy and Jewish Triumphs,’’ 320–29. 31. Breuer, Modernity Within Tradition, 47. 32. Marcus Lehmann, ‘‘Die moderne ju¨dische Tendenzpoesie,’’ Der Israelit 4, no. 39 (October 7, 1863): 479–83. 33. Marcus Lehmann, ‘‘Sa¨en und Ernten,’’ Der Israelit 11, nos. 22–52 (June 1–December 28, 1870). 34. Lehmann, ‘‘Sa¨en und Ernten,’’ 960. 35. On the sociohistorical context regarding reconversion to Judaism, which Lehmann describes factually, see Rachel Manekin, ‘‘The Lost Generation: Education and Female Conversion in Fin-de-Sie`le Krako´w,’’ Polin 18 (2005): 189–219, here 206–7. 36. Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 960. 37. Ibid., 604. 38. Ibid., 847. 39. Hirsch repeatedly demanded societal and civic loyalty in his influential works. He asks for loyalty without speaking of a specific state or to a specifically patriotic oath. This tendency can be exemplified in the section regarding honor and peace in Chorew, his philosophy of Judaism, in which Hirsch binds the ambitions of the individual not only to the ‘‘public spirit,’’ but also to the ‘‘societies,’’ and these to ‘‘human society on the whole.’’ Samson Raphael Hirsch, Chorew: Versuch u¨ber Jisroels Pflichten (Zurich: Morascha, 1992), first published in 1837. Translated into English as Horeb: A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and Observances, trans. and annotated with an introduction by Dayan Dr. I. Grunfeld (New York: Soncino Press, 1962). Hirsch’s well-known formulation ‘‘Torah im Derech Eretz’’ calls for civic loyalty, but not for patriotism. In Spru¨che der Va¨ter, Hirsch explicitly defines ‘‘Derech Eretz’’ as ‘‘civic economic activity, civic order,’’ and ‘‘human and civic education.’’ Samson Raphael Hirsch, Spru¨che der Va¨ter (Zurich: Morascha, 1994), chap. 2.2. 40. Wolfsohn even approves of the idea that his son could be martyred for his fatherland: ‘‘Su¨ß und wohlansta¨ndig ist’s, fu¨r’s Vaterland zu sterben.’’ Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 620. 41. Ibid., 568: ‘‘Du heuchelst Patriotismus, weil es Dich nach Ehren und Auszeichnungen verlangt.’’ 42. See Hess, Fiction and the Making, 75. 43. Wilke, ‘‘Den Talmud und den Kant,’’ 506. 44. Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 583–84.

Notes to Pages 220–226

371

45. As cited in Andreas Nachama, Julius H. Schoeps, and Hermann Simon, eds., Jews in Berlin (Berlin: Henschel, 2002), 59. 46. As cited in Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 52. 47. See esp. Benjamin Maria Baader, Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800–1870 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 211–21; Marion A. Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 64–84. 48. Baader, Gender, 74. In a later article Baader emphasizes the similar attitudes visa`-vis shifting gender roles by Reform and Orthodox rabbis even more explicitly by comparing the opinions of Samson Raphael Hirsch with those of the Reform rabbis Gotthold Salomon and Adolf Jellinek. Benjamin Maria Baader, ‘‘Jewish Difference and the Feminine Spirit of Judaism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany,’’ in Jewish Masculinities: German Jews, Gender, and History, ed. Benjamin M. Baader, Sharon Gillerman, and Paul Lerner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 50–71. 49. See the seven editorials entitled ‘‘Das ju¨dische Weib’’ in Jeschurun (October 1863–December 1864). 50. Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 847. 51. Ibid., 828. 52. Ibid., 796. 53. On the interplay between gender stereotypes and religious identity in the discourses of the nineteenth century, see Lezzi,‘‘Liebe ist meine Religion!’’ In the literary imagination, one also finds inverse constellations, e.g., seducible women and religiously stable men and the idea of religious deviance as necessarily gender-specific. 54. As Ari Joskowicz shows, one finds a similar connection of feminine religious domesticity and public dedication to a larger community in literary texts and discourses by liberal French Jews of the mid-nineteenth century. See Joskowicz, ‘‘The Priest, the Woman, and the Jewish Family: Gender and Conversion Fears in 1840s France,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review 101, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 439–57. 55. Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 959. 56. Ibid., 960. 57. Civil marriage was only partly and temporarily possible around 1848 and first consistently implemented in Prussia in 1874 and throughout the German Empire in 1875. 58. Marcus Lehmann, Elvire (Mitgetheilt von einem Rabbiner), in Der Israelit 9, nos. 13–23 (March 25–June 3, 1868), here p. 436. 59. Ibid., 223. 60. Ibid., 296. 61. Ibid., 224: ‘‘ ‘Es [das Kind] lernt zu viel, um dermaleinst eine gute Hausfrau zu werden!’ ’’ 62. Marcus Lehmann, Die Verlassene, in Der Israelit 9, nos. 45–52 (November 6–December 25, 1867), here 902.

372

Notes to Pages 226–231

63. On Jewish divorce law, see Gabrielle Atlan, Les Juifs et le divorce: Droit, histoire et sociologie du divorce religieux (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002). 64. ‘‘[Damals] stand das ’Cheder’ noch in vollster Blu¨the. Knaben und Ma¨dchen lernten Hebra¨isch- und Ju¨disch-Deutsch-Lesen und Schreiben, sowie die hebra¨ischen Gebete u¨bersetzen.’’ Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 547. 65. ‘‘ ‘Und warum gibt es hier keine ju¨dische Schule,’ fragte der Fremde, ’in der unsere heilige Thora gelehrt wird?’ ’’ Ibid., 528. In its critique on misguided or neglected Jewish education, Lehmann’s novella points explicitly to Hirsch’s concept of ‘‘Torah im Derech Eretz’’ (547), which was not seriously enough installed in the Jewish community of B. 66. Jose´ Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); and Casanova, ‘‘Secularization Revisited: A Reply to Talal Asad,’’ in Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, ed. David Scott and Charles Hirschkind (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), 12–30, here 12. 67. Judith Butler, Ju¨rgen Habermas, Charles Tayler, and Cornel West, The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, ed. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 68. ‘‘Das ju¨dische Weib,’’ Jeschurun 1 (October 1863), 1–8, quote 3. For a historicalcultural contextualization of this concept of gender and family, see the chapter ‘‘Ehereform: Rechsphilosophische und religio¨se Stellungnahmen,’’ in Lezzi, ‘‘Liebe ist meine Religion!’’ 163–90. 69. ‘‘Das ju¨dische Weib,’’ 4. 70. A typical exception is found in the chapter Ein Freitag-Abend (A Friday evening), in which a ‘‘humble domesticity’’ is portrayed. For instance, the Ruhdorf family’s living room is decorated for the Sabbath. Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 527. On the negotiations concerning Jewish identity in the sphere of the home, see Eva Lezzi, ‘‘Ein ju¨discher Ort? Die bu¨rgerliche Wohnstube in der deutsch-ju¨dischen Literatur und Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts,’’ in Jewish Spaces: Die Kategorie Raum im Kontext kultureller Identita¨ten, ed. Petra Ernst and Gerald Lamprecht (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2010), 173–89. 71. Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 965. 72. The phrase ‘‘structural transformation of the family’’ refers broadly to Habermas’s well-known study on the structural transformation of the public sphere, wherein he recognizes the interweaving of the public and private spheres as essential for understanding the nineteenth century on the whole. Cf. Ju¨rgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (1962; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996). 73. Lehmann, Sa¨en und Ernten, 466. 74. Ibid., 487. 75. Ibid., 526. 76. Ibid., 584. 77. Ibid., 583–84.

Notes to Pages 234–236

373

chapter 11 This chapter was written with the generous support of the Israel Science Foundation, research no. 1446/08. 1. In halakhic literature in the Middle Ages, the term mumar was used to denote a person who had formally left Judaism and accepted another religion—i.e., converted. See Jacob Katz, Halakhah and Kabbalah: Studies in the History of Jewish Religion, Its Various Faces and Social Relevance [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984), 255–69. In order to avoid confusion with this concept of mumar as understood in the Middle Ages, I use the term ‘‘transgressors’’ (ovrei aveirah) here. 2. See the recently published and informative book by Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), and in particular the introductory chapter in which Feiner surveys the important literature on the topic. 3. In this context, the following famous statement attributed to R. Avahu is cited in the Talmud: ‘‘The heretics, informers, and apostates should be lowered [into a pit] and not raised up’’ (b. Avodah Zarah 26b). 4. See b. Gittin 47a. See the comprehensive works of Moti Arad, Sabbath Desecrator with Parresia: A Talmudic Legal Term and Its Context [Hebrew] (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2009). 5. For a typological model, see Aviezer Ravitzky, Freedom Inscribed: Diverse Voices of Jewish Religious Thought [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1999), 222–57. See also Avi Sagi and Zvi Zoher, Circles of Jewish Identity: A Study in Halakhic Literature [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2000); Adam S. Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 6. B. Shabbat 68a. On Ettlinger and his method see Adam S. Ferziger, ‘‘Orthodox Identity and the Status of Nonobservant Jews: A Reconsideration of the Approach of Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger’’ [Hebrew], in Orthodox Judaism: New Perspectives, ed. Yosef Salmon, Aviezer Ravitzky, and Adam S. Ferziger (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006), 179– 210. Ettlinger adopts the method of Maimonides, who suggested this approach toward the Karaite Jews in Egypt; see MT Mamrim 3:1–3. 7. Responsa Hatam Sofer, 5:195. On the Hatam Sofer’s method regarding this issue see Katz, Halakhah and Kabbalah, 353–86; Moshe Samet, Chapters in the History of Orthodoxy [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, 2005). Both scholars refer to the Hatam Sofer as the founding father of Orthodoxy. 8. The struggle for government recognition of separate communities in Germany and Hungary orchestrated by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch is described in a fascinating manner in Jacob Katz, A House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-Century Central European Jewry, trans. Ziporah Brody (Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1998). In contrast, the rabbinic leadership in Eastern Europe was ambivalent about separation, and several attempts to adopt the approach were unsuccessful. See Benjamin Brown,

374

Notes to Pages 236–237

‘‘As Swords Within the Body of the Nation: The Opposition of Eastern European Rabbis to the Idea of Separate Communities’’ [Hebrew], in Yosef Da’at: Studies in Modern Jewish History in Honor of Yosef Salmon, ed. Yossi Goldstein (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2010), 215–44. Principled opposition to the process was voiced by many leaders, among them Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv), the head of the Volozhin Yeshiva; see Responsa Meshiv Davar 1:44. In Germany, as well, there were voices of opposition, most notably Rabbi Y. D. Bamberger of Wu¨rzburg, who maintained a bitter correspondence with Rabbi Hirsch on the matter. See Meir Seidler, A Controversy That Endured: The Secession Controversy (1877): The Open Letters Between the Rabbis Samson Raphael Hirsch and Seligmann Bar Bamberger [Hebrew, trans. from German] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2005). 9. The nationalist approach that was led by secularists presented a fundamental challenge to key assumptions of the rabbinic world. Of course, the question of collaboration was not the only issue. Rather, the legitimacy of the entire Zionist venture—a human initiative to return to the Land of Israel—was brought into question. 10. See Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Yosef Salmon, Religion and Zionism: First Encounters (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001); Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement (1882– 1904), trans. Lenn J. Schramm (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988). 11. Rabbi Hayim Hirschenson (1857–1935) conducted a lengthy and creative discussion on the phenomenon of secularism in the United States, claiming that it is different than the secularism of Europe and the secularism of Israel. See David Zohar, A Living Judaism: Essays on the Halakhic Thought of Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2007), 133–62. 12. The position advocated by Rabbi Kook and his followers was even more radical than that advocated by Rabbi Soloveitchik. Rabbi Kook presented the possibility of viewing the secular Zionists as a complementary balance to religious Orthodoxy, and wished to view the two worlds in combination as a sacred whole. He viewed the values of the secular community in Israel as an important and positive dimension that was indispensable to the religion. In other words, he saw the nationalistic and humanistic values championed by secularists as values that would elevate the religion itself. See, for example, chapter 18 in his book Orot. On the complex positions of Rabbi Kook in this context, see Ravitzky, Freedom Inscribed, 222–57. See also the interesting discussion of David Zohar on Rabbi Hayim Hirschenson’s position on secularism in Israel: Zohar, Living Judaism, 128–33. 13. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek: Listen, My Beloved Knocks, trans. David Z. Gordon, ed. Jeffrey Woolf (New York: Ktav Publishing, 2006); Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Five Addresses (Jerusalem: Orot Tal Institute, 1983), 135–45. 14. It should be noted that according to this approach of Rabbi Soloveitchik, one who lives a life of dedication to the covenant of the fathers but who is estranged from the fate of the Jew, profanes the holiness of the fathers. Soloveitchik, Five Addresses.

Notes to Pages 237–241

375

15. See, for example, Rabbi Hirschenson’s comments: ‘‘Israeli nationalism is not dependent on religion’’ (Responsa Malki Bakodesh 4:42, p. 242). Even Rabbi Hirschenson views Jewish nationalism as being based on the idea of a covenant, and not as the organic natural development of a people in its land. See Zohar, Living Judaism, 93. 16. Surprisingly, we find Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910–95) in this group. See Amir Mashiach, ‘‘The Halakhic Thought of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach’’ [Hebrew] (Ph.D. diss., Bar Ilan University, 2008). Rabbi Shmuel Wozner, a contemporary Haredi authority, also adopted this position. See Isaac Hershkowitz, ‘‘Tinok sheNishbah and the Non-Observant Jew’s Status in Rabbi Shmuel Wozner’s Rulings’’ [Hebrew], Dine Israel: Studies in Halakhah and Jewish Law 28 (2011): 223–50. 17. The prominent and influential Haredi rabbi Yeshayahu Karelitz (the Hazon Ish) is a good example. He adopted the ‘‘infant who was taken captive’’ approach of Ettlinger, but only in relation to individuals and not to ideological movements. See Benjamin Brown, The Hazon Ish: Halakhist, Believer, and Leader of the Haredi Revolution [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2011), 708–19. 18. For insightful portraits of two fundamentally important Sephardic rabbinic figures (Rabbi Hayim David Halevy and Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef ) in regard to such issues, see Hayim Burgansky, ‘‘The Halakhic Attitude of Rabbi Hayim David Halevy to Secularists’’ [Hebrew], in A Living Judaism: Essays on the Halakhic Thought of Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi, ed. Avi Sagi and Yedidia Z. Stern (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2007); Ariel Picard, ‘‘Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in His Confrontation with the ‘Generation of Freedom and Liberty’ ’’ [Hebrew], in Shas: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives, ed. Aviezer Ravitzky (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2006), 228–83. 19. See Yehuda Amital, And the Earth He Gave to Man: Jewish Values in a Changing World [Hebrew] (Alon Shvut: Tvonot, 2005), 131; Yehuda Amital, ‘‘The Status of the Secular Jew in Our Times’’ in Shanah Be-Shanah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Hekhal Shlomo, 1999), 337–49. Rabbi Amital based himself on the famous words of Maimonides regarding infants who had been captured (see Maimonides’ commentary on m. Hullin 1:1; MT Hilkhot Mamrim, chap. 3), that one who was born and raised in a reality of abrogation and did not choose this reality with free will, should be considered coerced. Rabbi Amital’s argument is that these comments are applicable in an a fortiori argument to one who experienced the Holocaust and had to deal with its atrocities from a theological perspective. He also related to the words of the Hazon Ish (Yoreh De’ah 3:16), who based himself on the words of Rabbi Tarfon a well-known tanna, or rabbi of the mishnaic period (the first and second centuries C.E.): ‘‘Is there anyone in this generation who can give retribution?’’ (quoted in b. Arakhin 16b). He similarly based himself on the words of Rabbi Kook in Igrot Re’ayah (Letters of Rabbi Kook), 1:20. 20. Amital, ‘‘The Secular Jew,’’ 347–48. 21. Ibid., 338–39. 22. See Amital, And the Earth, 140n.21. Later on, he cites the famous letter of Rabbi Kook to the author Alexander Rabinovitch regarding a eulogy for two secular members of a kibbutz who were murdered during the Arab revolt, which expresses this dialectical

376

Notes to Pages 241–244

relationship. See A. Y. Kook, ‘‘Al Bamoteinu Halal,’’ in Ma’amarei Hara’ayah [Essays of Rabbi Kook] (Jerusalem: Mercaz HaRav Kook, 1984), 89–93. 23. Amital, ‘‘The Secular Jew,’’ 348. 24. Ibid., 348–49. 25. Despite the fact that Rabbi Amital includes no direct citation or reference to his work, it is quite clear that he was influenced by Rabbi Soloveitchik’s thinking and terminology. He was the co-head of Yeshivat Har Etzion, a very influential Religious Zionist institution, where Rabbi Soloveitchik’s writings were considered a central source. 26. See Asher Cohen, The Talit and the Flag: Religious Zionism and the Concept of a Torah State, 1947–1953 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1998), 30. 27. This was also the case in the mandatory period and in the Ottoman period that preceded it. See sections 47 and 51 of the British law for Palestine: ‘‘King’s Order-inCouncil 1922’’; and section 11 of the first enactment of the government of the State of Israel from May 19, 1948. See also Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, trans. Bernard Auerbach and Melvin J. Sykes (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 4:1596–98. 28. Assaf Likhovski, Law and Identity in Mandatory Palestine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Ron Harris, ‘‘Absent-Minded Misses and Historical Opportunities: Jewish Law, Israeli Law, and the Establishment of the State of Israel,’’ in On Both Sides of the Bridge: Religion and State in the Early Years of Israel [Hebrew], ed. Mordechai Bar-On and Zvi Zameret (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2002), 21–55; Elon, Jewish Law, 1612–17. 29. B. Sanhedrin 27a; Maimonides, MT Hilkhot Edut (Laws of Testimony) 10:1–5 and 12:1–10; Shulchan Aruch Yoreh De’ah, Hilkhot Edut 34:24. Clearly, the halakhic limitations placed on the testimony of non-Jews was a no less troubling issue within the context of the State of Israel as a democratic state. The authorities discussed in this article related therefore to this issue as well. This subject is worthy of a study in its own right. See for example Rabbi Isaac Herzog, Constitution and Law in a Jewish State According to Halakhah (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1989), 1:39–49. See also Israeli Supreme Court Justice Tzvi Tal’s analysis of Rabbi Herzog’s position, ‘‘Overcoming Statutory Incapacity of Judges and Witnesses,’’ in Masua Le’Yitzhak, Part II, A Collection of Lectures Given in the International Conference on Contemporary Issues and Halakhah Commemorating the 50th Year After the Passing Away of the Late Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Herzog zt l (Jerusalem: Yad Harav Herzog Institute, 2009), 141. 30. B. Sanhedrin 27a. 31. See Ravitzky, Freedom Inscribed, 223. 32. Rabbi Herzog wrote his comments shortly before the establishment of the state, but they were only published in the beginning of the 1980s. See Rabbi Isaac Herzog, Constitution and Law in a Jewish State According to the Halakhah [Hebrew], ed. Itamar Warhaftig (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook and Yad Harav Herzog, 1989), vols. 1–3. Rabbi Herzog’s aforementioned pamphlet was not part of a formal verdict and was apparently part of an internal discussion. However, it was distributed within the context of the

Notes to Pages 244–247

377

publication of his legal writings mentioned above (3:231–37). See Anat Navot, ‘‘Rabbi Herzog and the Testimony of a Public Sabbath Transgressor,’’ in By the Well: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Halakhic Thought Presented to Gerald J. Blidstein [Hebrew], ed. Uri Ehrlich, Howard Kreisel, and Daniel J. Lasker (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2008), 351–88. 33. This exegetical approach, which facilitates the adoption of a rejected opinion in the Talmud, is well known and is used frequently. From a fundamental standpoint, the approach constitutes the adoption of an idea that appears in m. Eduyot 1:5 regarding the reason that we preserve dissenting opinions. Nevertheless, returning to a rejected opinion is not done directly but through exegesis. 34. Herzog, Constitution and Law, 1:39–49. Navot, ‘‘Rabbi Herzog and the Testimony of a Public Sabbath Transgressor,’’ views Herzog’s position in the article as more stringent, adopting the distinction between theoretical Halakhah and practical Halakhah (halakhah le-ma’aseh). 35. See chap. 4 of m. Gittin for the application of this term. 36. Herzog, Constitution and Law in a Jewish State, 1:39–41. 37. Elon, Jewish Law, chap. 14. 38. Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, ‘‘On Defining the Disqualification of Testimony’’ [Hebrew]. The article was published as a serial in several consecutive issues of the periodical Ha-Ma’or, spanning Elul to Kislev 5713–14 (1953). Ha-Ma’or was published by Rabbi Meir Amsel, who represented a radically stringent approach regarding secular Jews. All these journals can be viewed at www.hebrewbooks.org. The last portions of the article were published after Rabbi Uziel’s death. The question as to why Rabbi Uziel chose to publish his article in this periodical is a fascinating mystery, since it must have seemed like a serious provocation against the journal’s editor. 39. Ha-Ma’or (Kislev 5714 [1953]): 12. In another interesting puzzle, at the end of this portion of the article it says ‘‘To be continued,’’ but to the best of my knowledge no continuation ever appeared. 40. See Zvi Zohar, The Luminous Face of the East [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2001), 251. 41. Ha-Ma’or (Elul 5713 [1953]): 4. 42. Ha-Ma’or (Tishrei-Heshvan-Kislev 5714 [1953]). Indeed, in this and the other instances at issue throughout this essay, we are discussing approaches to civil law, not criminal law. 43. See Ha-Ma’or (Heshvan 5714 [1953]): 1–2. In this part of the article, Rabbi Uziel makes an effort to show that this is the question disputed among the medieval early authorities, and claims that it is certainly possible to adopt the position of those who support it, mainly the Rosh, Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (1250–1327). 44. Ha-Ma’or (Kislev 5714 [1953]): 11. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 12. Rabbi Uziel refers to his earlier rulings in which he permitted the testimony of women (see Meir Ben-Zion Hai Uziel, Responsa Mishpatei Uziel, vol. 4,

378

Notes to Pages 248–251

sec. 20 (reprint, Jerusalem, 2000) and the testimony of a non-Jew (vol. 4, sec. 17). There is a certain ambiguity in the relationship between these two sections. While in the first section, Rabbi Uziel spoke about the Knesset, in the second he spoke about the chief rabbinate. This question was debated by Professors Eliav Shochetman and Tzvi Zohar. While Shochetman held that Rabbi Uziel believed that legislation of the Knesset would require rabbinic agreement in order to give it halakhic force, Zohar disagreed. See Eliav Shochetman, ‘‘The Halakhah’s Recognition of The Laws of the State of Israel,’’ in Shenaton Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri, vols. 16–17: 417, 477–79; Zvi Zohar, Luminous Face, 279–80. I tend toward Zohar’s position. In my reading, Rabbi Uziel’s intent was for the chief rabbinate to ensure the application of the legislation of the Knesset in the rabbinic courts under its jurisdiction. 47. Ha-Ma’or (Kislev 5714 [1953]): 12. 48. Rabbi Herzog took a more explicit step in this direction. He interpreted Abaye’s position to be that the court should not disqualify a transgressor if it knows that he is moral. See Herzog, Constitution and Law, 3:232. Rabbi Uziel found precedent in the words of the Pnei Arye (Rabbi Arye Bresla, 1741–1809) who ruled: ‘‘Since they are not suspect to lie for money, but are suspect of committing other transgressions, it is simple that as long as we do not have before us two witnesses who saw them committing a particular transgression but are only suspect because of general hearsay, they are qualified to testify on any matter other than the matter for which they are suspect.’’ Even though the witnesses would be disqualified according to the position of Abaye if there were indeed two witnesses who saw them transgress, in practical terms, this position adopts the approach of Rava and rules in accordance with it in a manner that is applicable for most circumstances. 49. In modern Israeli reality, rabbinical courts accept the testimony of secular Jews as a matter of course. For the justification for this in rabbinical literature, and the centrality of the articles of Rabbis Herzog and Uziel in this deliberation, see Eliav Shochetman, Civil Procedure in Rabbinical Courts [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: E. S. Sidre Mishpat, 2011), 2:843–65. 50. See b. Yebamot 47b. 51. Rabbi Shlomo Kluger, Responsa Tuv Ta’am va-Da’at, 1st ed., sec. 230 (reprint, New York: Grossman Publishing House, 1979). 52. Rabbi Shlomo Kluger was a radically conservative Orthodox authority who opposed any change in Halakhah. In Galicia of his time, however, the community was still relatively homogeneous in spite of the rise of some proponents of the Enlightenment (as mentioned above, he received this question from Germany). Rabbi Kluger’s responsum reflects the reality of a homogeneous community, although in later decades it was used by others who advocated a more lenient policy of conversion after the community had become heterogeneous. The value Kluger cited was further developed subsequently by authorities who wished to preserve within the community the maximum number of Jews and their offspring. 53. Rabbi Yitzhak Shmelkes, Responsa Beit Yitzhak, Yoreh De’ah 100:9, ‘‘Ve-Hinei Guf Ha-Davar.’’

Notes to Pages 251–255

379

54. On Samson Raphael Hircsh and the separation of the Jewish community, see Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy, 106–32; on Rabbi Hildesheimer, see David Ellenson, Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and the Creation of a Modern Jewish Orthodoxy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990). 55. Responsa Azriel Hildeshiemer, 234. We could also bring many other examples. For instance, Rabbi Menachem Elazar Schapiro (1871–1937), the Rebbe of Munkacz, who was known for his isolationist positions, did not understand how anyone could even consider converting the child of a Jewish and non-Jewish couple that had been married in a civil ceremony; Responsa Minhat Elazar, vol. 3, sec 8. With regard to circumcision for the child of this couple, Rabbi Schapiro wrote: ‘‘Anyone who accepts him for conversion causes him to sin and to transgress the Torah and the Jewish religion.’’ According to Rabbi Schapiro, we should not encourage him to convert, for it is preferable that he remain a non-Jew who is exempt from the commandments rather than become a non-observant Jew. 56. The main talmudic source for conversion is in Tractate Yevamot, which describes the process (b. Yevamot 47a). The process begins by inquiring if the potential convert is willing to join the Jewish people and their fate. Only after a positive answer does the process continue to the acceptance of the religion and the rituals of circumcision and immersion. 57. Rabbi Isser Yehudah Unterman, ‘‘The Laws of Conversion and the Method for Their Implementation’’ [Hebrew], Torah She-Ba’al Peh 13 (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1971), 13. The subject was then at the center of the public and halakhic discourses as a result of the wave of immigration from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, which brought with it a significant number of mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Rabbi Unterman was a member of the Mizrahi movement and one of the most prominent rabbis to support Zionism in Poland between the two world wars. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., 14–15. 61. Rabbi Unterman (ibid.) explained Maimonides’ concern that ‘‘the High Court suspected them . . . until such time as their subsequent behavior could be observed’’ (see Maimonides, MT Hilchot Issurei Bi’ah 13:15) as a concern that they might return to idolatry, and not as a general concern that they would not observe the commandments. He then stated: ‘‘But in a situation where there is no concern about idolatry, we do not have to be concerned that they might not observe the commandments of the Torah. This can be proven explicitly from the language of Maimonides.’’ 62. Unterman, ‘‘The Laws of Conversion,’’ 13. 63. Ibid., 18. 64. See also Isaiah 56:3–8 and Zechariah 2:15. Rabbi Unterman’s position was different than that of the Sages of the Talmud, who interpreted these verses’ significance as something other than their literal meaning: R. Helbo said: ‘‘Converts are as difficult for Israel as a scab, as it says: ‘And the stranger shall join himself with them, and they shall

380

Notes to Pages 255–261

cleave to the house of Jacob’ ’’ (b. Kiddushin 70b). It is also interesting to note that Rabbi Unterman chose those prophetic passages from Isaiah and did not mention the pact between Ezra and those who returned to Zion, which represents a contradictory idea: ‘‘Let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the [foreign] wives, and such as are born of them’’ (Ezra 10:2–3). 65. See Arye Edrei, ‘‘Divine Spirit and Physical Power: Rabbi Shlomo Goren and the Military Ethic of the Israel Defense Forces,’’ Theoretical Enquiries in the Law 7 (2005–6): 255–97; Arye Edrei, ‘‘From Kibiyah to Beirut—The Revival of the Jewish Laws of War,’’ Cardozo Law Review 28, no.1 (2006): 187–227. 66. Rabbi Shlomo Goren, ‘‘The Heresy of the Jewish People in Matters of Divorce,’’ in Shanah Be-Shanah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Hekhal Shlomo, 1983), 149–50. In his manner, he tied these ideas to the essence of the messianic vision, for implicit here is his approach that views the very establishment of the State of Israel—the national, Israeli, and contemporary—as the beginning of the fulfillment of the vision of the end of days: ‘‘Also the vision of the end of days is connected first and foremost with the establishment and strengthening of Jewish nationalism as a people’’ (154). 67. Ibid., 156. 68. Thus, for example, Rabbi Helbo’s statement that ‘‘converts are as difficult for Israel as a scab’’ appears several times in the Babylonian Talmud (e.g., b. Yevamot 47b), and in other places the Babylonian Talmud connects to this additional statements that are fundamentally opposed to conversion, such as ‘‘Evil after evil will come upon those who accept converts’’ (b. Yevamot 109b) and ‘‘Converts and those who marry young girls [lit. ‘‘play with children’’] prevent the coming of the Messiah’’ (b. Niddah 13 b). None of these are mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud, even though Rabbi Helbo was a Palestinian amora. 69. Tractate Gerim is a late text that was edited after the completion of the Talmud but incorporates more ancient texts that were apparently produced in the Land of Israel. They were largely based on the braitot—tannaitic sources that were not included in the Mishnah—and other ancient literature. 70. Rabbi Shlomo Goren, ‘‘Conversion from the Perspective of the Generations and the Halakhah’’ [Hebrew], in Shanah Be-Shanah (Jerusalem: Hekhal Shlomo, 1986), 150–76. 71. As indicated previously, Rabbis Unterman and Goren came from different social and academic backgrounds. Thus they arrived at their similar conclusions independently, due to the fact that they were both Religious Zionists.

chapter 12 1. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 200.

Notes to Pages 261–265

381

2. For a still valuable survey of key positions in the debate over secularization theory, see William H. Swatos Jr. and Kevin T. Christiano, ‘‘Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept,’’ Journal of Sociology 60 (Autumn 1999): 209–28. 3. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 192. 4. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘‘Secularism, the Christian Ambivalence Toward the Jews, and the Notion of Exile,’’ in the present volume. 5. Ashis Nandy, ‘‘An Anti-Secularist Manifesto,’’ Seminar 314 (October 1985): 24. 6. See, for example, Jacob Katz, ‘‘Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,’’ Studies in Contemporary Jewry 2 (1986): 3–17, as well as the important article by his student Michael K. Silber, ‘‘The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of Tradition,’’ in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1999), 23–84. In writing of Hungarian ultra-Orthodoxy, Silber observes that ‘‘it is in fact not an unchanged and unchanging remnant of pre-modern, traditional Jewish society, but as much a child of modernity and change as any of its ‘modern’ rivals.’’ Silber, ‘‘The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy,’’ 24. 7. Jose´ Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 5ff. 8. Weber’s lecture, published in 1919, may be found at www.wsp-kultur.uni-bre men.de/summerschool/download%20ss%202006/Max%20Weber%20-%20Wissenschaft %20als%20Beruf.pdf. An English translation, ‘‘Science as a Vocation,’’ can be found at www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/lecture/science_frame.html. 9. Weber, ‘‘Science as a Vocation,’’ www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/lec ture/science_frame.html. 10. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 36. Notwithstanding his toxic past, Schmitt’s ideas have had resonance among contemporary thinkers. For example, Talal Asad has inquired into Schmitt’s proposition that ‘‘secularized concepts contain a religious essence.’’ Asad, for his part, resists the impulse to essentialize religion. But he does follow Schmitt in noting that, in historical-terminological respects, ‘‘the ‘secular’ ’’ was hardly a modern invention; rather, it ‘‘was part of a theological discourse’’ rooted in medieval Europe. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 190. 11. The best account of the community in English remains Jerome Mintz, Hasidic People: A Place in the New World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). Meanwhile, the Satmar scholar Sh. Y. Gelbman has produced a deeply detailed, onevolume history of Kiryas Joel, Retzon tzadik (Kiryas Joel, N.Y.: Sh. Y. Gelbman, 1998). The Satmar community in Williamsburg, meanwhile, has attracted monographic attention from a group of sociologists, including two works by George Kranzler, Williamsburg: A Jewish Community in Transition (New York: P. Feldheim, 1961), and Hasidic Williamsburg: A Contemporary American Hasidic Community (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1995), as well as Solomon Poll, The Hasidic Community of Williamsburg (New York: Free Press, 1962), and Israel Rubin, Satmar: An Island in the City (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972).

382

Notes to Pages 265–267

12. See, for example, the contributions in Columbia Law Review 96 (1996), including Abner Greene, ‘‘Kiryas Joel and Two Mistakes About Equality,’’ Columbia Law Review 96 (1996): 1–86; Christopher Eisgruber, ‘‘The Constitutional Value of Assimilation,’’ Columbia Law Review 96 (1996): 87–103; and Ira Lupu, ‘‘Uncovering the Village of Kiryas Joel,’’ Columbia Law Review 96 (1996): 104–20. See also the important work of Nomi M. Stolzenberg, ‘‘A Tale of Two Villages (or Legal Realism Comes to Town),’’ NOMOS XXXIX: Ethnicity and Group Rights (1997): 290–346, and ‘‘The Puzzling Persistence of Community: The Cases of Airmont and Kiryas Joel,’’ in From Ghetto to Emancipation: Historical and Contemporary Reconsiderations of the Jewish Community, ed. David N. Myers and William V. Rowe (Scranton, Pa.: University of Scranton Press, 1997), 75–107. 13. Boyarin’s chapter there, ‘‘Circumscribing Constitutional Loyalties in Kiryas Joel,’’ is based on an article in the Yale Law Review 106, no. 5 (1997): 1537–70. See Jonathan and Daniel Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 14. Boyarin, ‘‘Circumscribing Constitutional Loyalties,’’ 127. For a broader discussion of the ‘‘genealogical’’ and ‘‘diasporic’’ grounds of Jewish identity, see Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin, ‘‘Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity,’’ Critical Inquiry 19, no. 4 (Summer 1993): 693–725. 15. Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), 183, 16. Leora Batnitzky argues that ultra-Orthodox groups such as Satmar Hasidim ‘‘do not perceive the modern world as problematic per se but rather view it as the purview of non-Jews.’’ Ibid., 185. For a contrary view, see David N. Myers, ‘‘ ‘Commanded War’: Three Chapters in the ‘Military’ History of Satmar Hasidism,’’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81 (2013): 311–56. For important discussions of the distinctive theological and ideological universe of Joel Teitelbaum, see Allan L. Nadler, ‘‘Piety and Politics: The Case of the Satmar Rebbe,’’ Judaism 31 (Spring 1982): 135–52; Zvi Jonathan Kaplan, ‘‘Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, Zionism, and Hungarian Ultra-Orthodoxy,’’ Modern Judaism 24, no. 2 (2004): 165–78; and the recent biography by Menachem Keren-Kratz, ‘‘R. Yoel Teitelbaum: Ha-rabi mi-Satmar (1887–1979)’’ (Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 2013). 17. On Kasztner, see Yechiam Weitz, Ha-ish she-nirtsah pa‘amayim (Jerusalem: Keter, 1995), and Ronald W. Zweig, The Gold Train: The Destruction of the Jews and the Looting of Hungary (New York: HarperCollins, 2002). This is not the place to enter into a more detailed discussion of the Kasztner affair nor even of Joel Teitelbaum’s rescue. But it is important to note that some have accused Rabbi Teitelbaum of choosing expediency over principle in the case of his own rescue. See the account of a one-time follower of Rabbi Teitelbaum, Itzik, in an interview for the online Israeli news service Ynet, www.ynet.co.il/ articles/0,7340,L-3538199,00.html. 18. For a vivid first-hand account of the transformations of Williamsburg’s Orthodox community, particularly its increasing stringency after the Second World War owing to the presence of Satmar Hasidim, see Philip Fishman, A Sukkah Is Burning (Minneapolis: Mill City Press, 2012).

Notes to Pages 268–270

383

19. Gershom Scholem famously described the traditional Jewish messianic belief as inducing a ‘‘life lived in deferment.’’ Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971), 35. 20. According to the village’s prolific historian, Shlomo Yankel Gelbman, ‘‘the idea of a ‘shtetl’ never left the agenda during our youth.’’ He continues by noting that it was Rabbi Teitelbaum’s desire ‘‘to build a community outside of the city that was made up of four cubits pure and clean of any intrusion or blemish.’’ See Gelbman’s history of Kiryas Joel, Retzon tzadik. This desire for a community of purity reflected a larger commitment to separation that challenges Jonathan Boyarin’s claim that ‘‘segregation is not an essential tenet of Satmar beliefs.’’ Boyarin and Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora, 122. Cf. Emanuel Sivan’s discussion of the ‘‘enclave’’ ethos of Haredim in ‘‘The Enclave Culture,’’ in Gavriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emanuel Sivan, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalism Around the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 23–89. 21. The motif of fighting the forces of evil and impurity in Zionism anchors Joel Teitelbaum’s best-known treatise, Va-yo’el Mosheh (Brooklyn: S. Deutsch, 1959). 22. Gelbman’s book on Kiryas Joel is entitled The Will of the Righteous One, indicating the strong will of Joel Teitelbaum to create a separatist enclave. On Staten Island, see Gelbman, Retzon tzadik, 28–29. Curiously, it was precisely the separatist impulse—and the concomitant quality of standing out so visibly—that led Lipa Friedman to oppose the efforts to create a shtetl initially. Ultimately, his loyalty to Rabbi Teitelbaum outweighed his opposition. 23. Fisher was recruited to the task by his brother-in-law, Leopold (Leibish) Lefkowitz. Interview with Debra Fisher, Oscar’s daughter, December 8, 2009. 24. Monroe resident Abraham Genen told the Town Board that Hasidic Jews approached him with an offer to buy his home. See Minutes of Town of Monroe Board, April 1, 1974. See also ‘‘Development Accused of Fraudulent Advertising,’’ Middletown Times Herald Record, April 2, 1974. 25. Minutes of Town of Monroe Board, May 6, 1974. 26. David Swanson, ‘‘Hasids in Monroe: A Clash of Cultures or Point of Law?,’’ Times Herald Record, October 10, 1976. 27. In early June 1976, a member of the Satmar community, Nuchem Friedman, was arrested for refusing to close a grocery store he ran in a trailer outside of his house. ‘‘Zoning Law Beats Dietary Law,’’ Times Herald Record, June 4, 1976. The following month, Monroe residents vented their anger at a town board meeting: ‘‘Angry Monroe Residents Urge Enforcement Against Hasids,’’ Times Herald Record, July 13, 1976. 28. Leibish Lefkowitz, ‘‘Letter to the Editor from the Satmar Hasidic Community in Monroe,’’ Monroe Gazette, July 29, 1976. 29. ‘‘Hasids Take Steps to Form Separate Village,’’ Times Herald Record, September 15, 1976. 30. The law to establish a village in New York reads: ‘‘A territory of 500 or more inhabitants may incorporate as a village in New York State, provided that the territory is not already part of a city or village.’’ ‘‘Incorporation of a Village in New York State,’’ Local Government Handbook (Albany: State of New York, 2009).

384

Notes to Pages 271–275

31. For a catalogue of such communities, see Foster Stockwell, Encyclopedia of American Communes, 1663–1963 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1998). 32. One particularly active ‘‘dissident’’ within the community, Joseph Waldman, has gone to court on several occasions (1994, 1999–2000) seeking the dissolution of the village. The most recent attempt was dismissed by federal district judge Jed Rakoff in November 2011. See Kiryas Joel Alliance v. Village of Kiryas Joel, 11 CIV. 3982 (JSR). 33. This is the sense of the term used by Jacob Katz. For Katz, ‘‘traditionalists’’ are those whose ‘‘loyalty to tradition was the result of a conscious decision, or was at the very least a stance assumed in defiance of a possible alternative suggested by the life style of other Jews.’’ Katz, ‘‘Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,’’ 4. 34. A cardinal tenet of ultra-Orthodox ideology in general, and Satmar thought in particular, was the imperative of resisting any modifications in the realm of ‘‘ShaLeM.’’ For a discussion, see Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion, 185, and Michael Silber, ‘‘The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy,’’ 68–72. 35. One close observer of Satmar life observed that ‘‘while in many respects antimodern, Satmar culture does not restrict the use of modern technology’s products.’’ Rubin, Satmar: An Island in the City, 162. 36. For example, Kiryas Joel’s chief rabbi has recently renewed his long-standing campaign against home internet use, arguing that ‘‘it claimed many korbanos [sacrifices] and destroyed many Jewish homes.’’ Rabbi Teitelbaum’s speech is excerpted in ‘‘Satmar Rebbe Rav Aaron Teitelbaum Gives Passionate Detailed Speech About Dangers of Technology and Internet,’’ thepartialview.blogspot.com/2012/02/satmar-rebbe-rav-aaron-teitel baum-gives.html. Meanwhile, the national Jewish newspaper the Forward has reported that ‘‘Twitter use is not uncommon among young Satmar Hasidim in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood.’’ See ‘‘Orthodox Rally for a More Kosher Internet,’’ Forward, May 14, 2012, forward.com/articles/156102/orthodox-rally-for-a-more-kosher-internet/ ?pall. The article was dedicated to a large rally of Haredim held at Citi Field in New York later that month (May 20, 2012) in which rabbis enjoined the audience to curb their use of the internet. 37. George Kranzler has discussed this engagement and its effects in Hasidic Williamsburg: A Contemporary Hasidic Community, esp. chaps. 8–9. See also forward.com/ articles/164946/yeshivas-score-huge-pell-grant-windfall/?pall. 38. On the juxtaposition between a thin Religionsgemeinschaft and a more robust Volksgemeinschaft, see Jehuda Reinharz, ‘‘Consensus and Conflict Between Zionists and Liberals in Germany Before World War I,’’ in Texts and Responses: Studies Presented to Nahum N. Glatzer on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday by His Students (Brill: Leiden, 1975), 229. 39. Casanova, Public Religions, 20, 25–26, 40. 40. Ibid., 5. 41. Andrea Schatz, ‘‘ ‘Eleven Calendars’: Beyond Secular Time,’’ in this volume. 42. Among Weber’s followers who point to this decline, see Peter Berger, Sacred Canopy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967); Thomas Luckmann, The Invisible Religion

Notes to Pages 275–277

385

(New York: Macmillan, 1968); and Bryan Wilson, Religion in Modern Society (London: Watts, 1966). For a brief synthesis, see John A. Coleman, ‘‘The Secular: A Sociological View,’’ Way 30, no. 1 (1990): 16–25. See also the comprehensive historical overview of Nikki Keddie in ‘‘Secularism and Its Discontents,’’ Daedalus (Summer 2003): 14–30. In particular, she refers to the period from 1860 to 1914 as ‘‘the heyday in Europe of expansive secularization.’’ Keddie, ‘‘Secularism and Its Discontents,’’ 18. 43. Conversations with Satmar leaders point to the internet as a chief source of concern in eroding the group’s closely guarded boundaries. Meanwhile, the increasing porousness of those boundaries has been highlighted by the case of the notable ‘‘defector,’’ Deborah Feldman, who authored a sensational memoir entitled Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012).

chapter 13 1. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 8. 2. Carlo Ginzburg, ‘‘Distance and Perspective: Two Metaphors,’’ in Ginzburg, Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 148. Also published as Carlo Ginzburg, ‘‘History and/or Memory: On the Principle of Accommodation,’’ Thinking Impossibilities: The Intellectual Legacy of Amos Funkenstein, ed. Robert S. Westman and David Biale (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 193–206. 3. Ginzburg, ‘‘Distance and Perspective,’’ 155. 4. The theological origins of modern historical consciousness were discussed by many scholars, among them Funkenstein in his Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986). See also Karl Lo¨with, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949); Thomas Albert Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Leonard S. Smith, Religion and the Rise of History: Martin Luther and the Cultural Revolution in Germany 1760–1810 (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2009); Michael Heyd, ‘‘Protestantism, Enthusiasm and Secularization in the Early Modern Period: Some Preliminary Reflections,’’ in Religion, Ideology and Nationalism in Europe and America: Essays Presented in Honor of Yehoshua Arieli, ed. Yehoshua Arieli (Jerusalem: Israel Historical Society, 1986), 15–27. 5. This observation was developed further by Kathleen Biddick in her book The Typological Imaginary: Circumcision, Technology, History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). Biddick demonstrates the implications of supersessionary thinking that accompany the ‘‘typological thinking’’ and that the construction of the Christian new time (‘‘this is now’’) superseded the ‘‘that was then’’ of Israel. I read this study too late to

386

Notes to Pages 278–281

make more use of its illuminating analysis. See also Vassilis Lambropoulos, The Rise of Eurocentrism: Anatomy of Interpretation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993). 6. Ginzburg, ‘‘Distance and Perspective,’’ 155. 7. Ginzburg himself presents two other models of historical perspective that do not follow from this model—Machiavelli’s ‘‘purely secular’’ conflictual approach (with which he tends to identify) and Leibniz’s harmonious model, based on Machiavelli through the mediation of Descartes. But he argues that both failed (in their recent expressions by Huntington and Fukayama, respectively) and in any case, our historical notion is still determined from this aspect of Christian theology. 8. Here I mean for us to widen our discussion of Biddick and Lambropoulos as well. 9. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003); Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). See Andrea Schatz’s discussion of Jonathan Sheehan’s comments on the ‘‘secular time’’ in Chapter 14 of this book. Ginzburg contributes a crucial additional dimension to this discussion. 10. Biddick, The Typological Imaginary. For the Christian role of periodization, see Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 11. Ginzburg himself gestures in this direction in the last essay of the same volume, Wooden Eyes, ‘‘Pope Wojtyla’s Slip,’’ when he discusses how the pope addressed the Jews as ‘‘our elder brothers’’—a suggestive manifestation of mutual ambivalence. 12. Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 120. 13. Funkenstein, in fact, implicitly refers to Ginzburg’s approach when he argues that the beginning of modern perceptions of history may be found in the medieval polemics against the Jew, through the distinction of the contemporary Jew from the biblical one. 14. The beginnings of this approach date back to before the destruction of the Second Temple, and it already exists in biblical literature, but only later did it become central to the definition of Judaism and instrumental in the formation of the rabbinic—that is, the historical—Judaism. Jacob Neusner traced the crystallization of this outlook to the period of the first exile, between the destruction of the First Temple and the building of the Second, and saw it as the guiding element of the later ‘‘Judaisms.’’ Jacob Neusner, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Exile and Return in the History of Judaism (Boston: Beacon, 1987). The concept of exile was molded in talmudic literature, and was later given a wide variety of interpretations in accordance with changing historical-cultural contexts. In its nature it is always defined toward and within a concrete context. The number of studies dealing with the concept of exile, which was developed in various Jewish writings, is enormous. In a sense, one might even say that every discussion dealing with Jewish consciousness touches in one way or another on the concept of exile.

Notes to Pages 281–284

387

15. Premodern Jews developed various theories and perceptions of history (like the doctrine of the Four Kingdoms or the various messianic speculations). Providence played an important role in their thinking, and concrete events were interpreted as manifestations of a divine plan. But this does not mean they saw history as a series of events. ‘‘Memory’’ was a crucial category and was the core of both praxis and exegesis, but the history of events taking place after the destruction, apart from the chain of halakhic authority, did not enjoy such acceptance. In major and canonical texts, exile means the end of prophecy (even before the destruction of the Temple) and consequently the end of ‘‘history’’ as a significant phenomenon. 16. On this issue, see Lambropoulos, The Rise of Eurocentrism, which deals with the issue within a similar discussion of the Hebraic, and the distinction between the ‘‘Hebraic’’ and the Hellenist. 17. Hannah Arendt, ‘‘The Jew as Pariah,’’ in Arendt, The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 283. See from a different perspective Jonathan Boyarin, The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians and the Identity of Christian Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 18. Gil Anidjar, Semites: Race, Religion, Literature (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007). 19. See also Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty, which links medievalism to postcolonial studies. 20. Jonathan Boyarin, Storms from Paradise: The Politics of Jewish Memory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992); Jonathan Hess and Ella Shohat, ‘‘Taboo Memories and Diasporic Visions: Columbus, Palestine and Arab-Jews,’’ in Performing Hybridity, ed. Jennifer Fink and May Joseph (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 131–56; Jonathan Hess, ‘‘Johan David Michaelis and the Colonial Imaginary: Orientalism and the Emergence of Racial Antisemitism in Eighteenth-Century Germany,’’ Jewish Social Studies n.s. 6, no. 2 (2000): 56–101; Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002); Susannah Heschel, ‘‘Revolt of the Colonized: Abraham Geiger’s Wissenschaft des Judentums as a Challenge to Christian Hegemony in the Academy,’’ New German Critique 77 (Spring-Summer 1999): 61–85; Paul Mendes-Flohr, ‘‘Fin-de-Sie`cle Orientalism, the Ostjuden, and the Aesthetics of Jewish Self-Affirmation,’’ in Mendes-Flohr, Divided Passions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience of Modernity (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991): 79–109; Gil Anidjar, ‘‘Jewish Mysticism Alterable and Unalterable: On Orienting Kabbalah Studies and the Zohar of Christian Spain,’’ Jewish Social Studies n.s. 3, no. 1 (1996): 89–157; Anidjar, The Jew, The Arab: A History of the Enemy (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003); Anidjar, ‘‘Secularism,’’ Critical Inquiry 33, no. 1 (2006): 52–77; James Pasto, ‘‘Islam’s ‘Strange Secret Sharers’: Orientalism, Judaism and the Jewish Question,’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, no. 3 (1998): 437–74; Aziza Khazzoum, ‘‘The Great Chain of Orientalism: Jewish Identity, Stigma Management, and Ethnic Exclusion in Israel,’’ American Sociological Review 68, no. 4 (2003): 481–510; Achim Rohde, ‘‘Der

388

Notes to Pages 284–290

innere Orient: Orientalismus, Antisemitismus und Geschlecht im Deutschland des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts,’’ Die Welt des Islams 45, no. 2 (2005): 370–411. 21. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘‘The Zionist Return to the West and the Mizrahi Jewish Perspective,’’ in Orientalism and the Jews, ed. Ivan D. Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 162–81. 22. On the link between the Jew and the Muslim in Christian theology, see Anidjar, The Jew, The Arab. 23. On the institutionalization of Oriental studies in Germany from the Hebraist discourse, see Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 24. See the preliminary remarks of Stephen G. Burnett, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Sixteenth Century, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 68 (Leiden: Brill, 1996). 25. Jonathan Hess, ‘‘Sugar Island Jews? Jewish Colonialism and the Rhetoric of ‘Civic Improvement’ in Eighteenth Century Germany,’’ Eighteenth Century Studies 32, no. 1 (Fall 1998): 98; Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity. See also Heschel, ‘‘Revolt of the Colonized.’’ 26. On the development of this statement itself and its various versions see David Sorkin, ‘‘The Count Stanislas de Clermont Tonnerre’s ‘To the Jews as a Nation . . .’: The Career of a Quotation,’’ Jacob Katz Memorial Lecture 2011 (Jerusalem: Leo Baeck Institute, 2012). 27. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern India and China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 28. Aspects of this process have been discussed by several scholars. See Anita Shapira, ‘‘The Religious Motifs of the Labor Movement,’’ in Zionism and Religion, ed. Shmuel Almog, Jehuda Reinharz, and Anita Shapira (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1998), 251–72; Eliezer Don Yehiya, ‘‘Secularization, Negation and Integration of Elements of Traditional Judaism and Its Concepts in Socialist Zionism’’ [Hebrew], Kivunim 7 (1980): 29–46; Shmuel Almog, ‘‘Religious Values in the Second Aliya,’’ in Almog, Reinharz, and Shapira, Zionism and Religion, 285–300. 29. It is important to note here the ambivalent attitude toward Christianity in a variety of literary artifacts produced within Zionist culture, as well as the debate about whether to include Jesus in the national canon. 30. See, for example, Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1919); Franz Kobler, The Vision Was There: A History of the British Movement for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine (London: Lincolns-Prager, 1956); Norman Bentwich and John Shaftesley, ‘‘Forerunners of Zionism in the Victorian Era,’’ in Remember the Days: Essays on Anglo-Jewish History Presented to Cecil Roth, ed. John M. Shaftesley (London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1966), 207–39. Benjamin Netanyahu also begins his book with a description of Christian Zionists. Benjamin Netanyahu, A Durable

Notes to Pages 290–292

389

Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations (New York: Warner Books, 1993). As Nabil Matar points out, Zionists even overestimated the actual significance of these trends, and neglected the continuous opposition to the idea from within Christianity. Nevertheless, Matar himself shows the origins of Zionism in that context. Nabil Matar, ‘‘Protestantism, Zionism and Partisan Scholarship,’’ Journal of Palestine Studies 18, no. 4 (1989): 52–70. 31. There is a growing literature dedicated to Christian Zionism in the past and the present. See Matar, ‘‘Protestantism, Zionism and Partisan Scholarship’’; Nabil Matar, ‘‘Milton and the Idea of the Restoration of the Jews,’’ Studies in English Literature 27, no. 1 (1987): 109–24; the studies of Eitan Bar-Yosef, who discusses the idea of the restoration within the general framework of English references to Jerusalem as a concept and as a place, particularly in The Holy Land in English Culture, 1799–1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Regina Sharif, Non-Jewish Zionism: Its Roots in Western History (London: Zed Press, 1983); Yaakov Ariel, ‘‘An Unexpected Alliance: Christian Zionism and Its Historical Significance,’’ Modern Judaism 26, no. 1 (2006): 74–100; and Donald M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 32. Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011). 33. See in particular Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). 34. Ibid. See also Sheehan, ‘‘Sacrifice Before the Secular,’’ Representations 105 (Winter 2009): 12–36, and Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 35. Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture. 36. Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1955); Anthony Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991). 37. Daniel Weidner, ‘‘Secularization, Scripture and the Theory of Reading: J. G. Herder and the Old Testament,’’ New German Critique, no. 94 (Winter 2005): 169–93. 38. Smith, Chosen Peoples; William R. Hutchison and Hartmut Lehmann, eds., Many Are Chosen: Divine Election and Western Nationalism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994); Hartmut Lehmann, ‘‘The Germans as a Chosen People: Old Testament Themes in German Nationalism,’’ in Lehman, Religion und Religiosita¨t in der Neuzeit: Historische Beitra¨ge, ed. Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen and Otto Ulbricht (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1996), 205–58. 39. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, 186. 40. Uriel Simon, The Place of the Bible in Israeli Society: From National Midrash to Existential Peshat [Hebrew], ed. Elchanan Reiner, Israel Ta-Shma, and Gideon Efrat

390

Notes to Pages 293–301

(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999). See also Anita Shapira, The Bible and Israeli Identity [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005). The scope of this essay precludes a survey of all the research on this topic, especially since this would involve expanding the discussion to the role of biblical archeology. 41. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, 186. See the introduction by Asaf Malach in the Hebrew edition, trans. Dan Daor (Jerusalem: Shalem, 2008). The latter justifiably takes issue with several scholars of nationalism for defining Judaism as a ‘‘religion.’’ Thereafter, Daor fully accepts the conception of Zionism as the fulfillment of the biblical model. 42. See the insightful survey of Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 43. Aviezer Ravitzky, ‘‘Exile in the Holy Land: The Dilemma of Haredi Jewry,’’ in Israel: State and Society 1948–1988, ed. Peter Medding, Studies in Contemporary Jewry 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Israel Bartal, Exile in the Holy Land [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 1994); Menachem Friedman, Society and Religion: The Non-Zionist Orthodoxy in Eretz-Israel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1978). 44. Bartal, Exile in the Holy Land. 45. On Kurzweil, see Stanley L. Nash, ‘‘Criticism as a Calling: The Case of Barukh Kurzweil,’’ Prooftexts 5, no. 3 (1985): 281–87; David N. Myers, ‘‘The Scholem-Kurzweil Debate and Modern Jewish Historiography,’’ Modern Judaism 6 (1986): 261–86. 46. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).

chapter 14 1. A phrase taken from Salman Rushdie, ‘‘In Good Faith,’’ in Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991 (New York: Granta, 2006), 394. 2. Jose´ Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 14. 3. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 194. 4. Sylvie-Anne Goldberg has offered incisive and intriguing interpretations of the ‘‘plurality’’ of Jewish time in the ancient and medieval world: La Clepsydre: Essai sur la pluralite´ des temps dans le judaı¨sme (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000), and La Clepsydre II: Temps de Je´rusalem, temps de Babylone (Paris: Albin Michel, 2004). 5. See Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, trans. Anthony Oldcorn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 225. 6. Elisheva Carlebach, Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 139–40. 7. Ibid., 207–11.

Notes to Pages 301–305

391

8. For an illuminating account of the interplay of these three aspects, see Sanja Perovic, The Calendar in Revolutionary France: Perceptions of Time in Literature, Culture, Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 9. The French revolutionaries may have been quite singular in their insistence that secular and Christian frameworks of timekeeping were incompatible with each other. In the nineteenth century, Christian and secular evocations of nature, reason, and progress may have seemed once again rather close to each other: secular time could be inscribed into Christian calendars and Christian time could be reinterpreted in secular terms. Amos Funkenstein captured the slippages, convergences, and fissures between secular and religious time from yet another angle in his remarks on the time of the nation-state: ‘‘The nation-state replaced the sacred liturgical memory with secular liturgical memory—days of remembrance [sic], flags, and monuments. The national historian—who in the nineteenth century enjoyed the status of a priest of culture, and whose work, even professional, was still read by a wide stratum of the educated public—made the symbols concrete.’’ Amos Funkenstein, ‘‘Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness,’’ History and Memory 1 (1989): 21. 10. One might say that time in the world is perceived, in secular thought, as physical time and historical time. Here I focus on perceptions of historical time. Still, Yerushalmi’s distinction between ‘‘perceptions of time’’ and ‘‘views of history’’ remains useful: although interpretations of history and perceptions of physical as well as historical time often intersect, they are not co-extensive. See Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, 3rd ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 120. 11. Boucher d’Argis, ‘‘Se´cularisation,’’ in Encyclope´die, ou Dictionnaire raisonne´ des sciences, des arts et des me´tiers (Paris, 1751–72), 14:883. 12. Jonathan Sheehan, ‘‘When Was Disenchantment? History and the Secular Age,’’ in Varieties of Secularism: In a Secular Age, ed. Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 217–42. 13. Ibid., 229. 14. This is discussed in more detail in Andrea Schatz, ‘‘ ‘Peoples Pure of Speech’: The Religious, the Secular, and Jewish Beginnings of Modernity,’’ Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 6 (2007): 169–87. 15. Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4. 16. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 39. 17. Ibid., 40. 18. Ibid., 39. 19. Ibid., 95–97. On the importance of Mendelssohn’s anti-historicist remarks for his philosophical defense of Judaism, see Edward Breuer, ‘‘Politics, Tradition, History: Rabbinic Judaism and the Eighteenth-Century Struggle for Civil Equality,’’ Harvard Theological Review 85 (1992): 357–83, here 376–83, and Edward Breuer, ‘‘Of Miracles and

392

Notes to Pages 306–308

Events Past: Mendelssohn on History,’’ Jewish History 9 (1995): 27–52. For a brief discussion of ‘‘diversity’’ and historical time in early modern and eighteenth-century anthropology and theology with reference to Margaret T. Hodgen’s Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), see Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 19–24. 20. Edward Breuer addresses this emphasis on revival with particular attention to Judah Leib Ben Ze’ev’s work: ‘‘(Re)Creating Traditions of Language and Texts: The Haskalah and Cultural Continuity,’’ Modern Judaism 16 (1996): 161–83, esp. 162–63; Adam Shear analyzes the complexities of cultural renewal in his chapter ‘‘The Creation of an Enlightenment Kuzari,’’ in his The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 209–45. David Sorkin has traced an anti-historicist appreciation of historical change among non-Jewish proponents of the ‘‘Religious Enlightenment’’: Warburton and Baumgarten are examples of Enlightenment thinkers who were ‘‘historical but not historicist’’—just like the Maskilim. David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 14. One can also observe, of course, numerous differences between Christian and Jewish anti-historicist uses of history. Here, it may suffice to point to the contrast between the Maskilic hope for renewal and Baumgarten’s warning against its enthusiastic and critical variants: the task of history was, in Baumgarten’s words, ‘‘to check the impulse for renewal’’ (Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment, 149). 21. Naphtali Herz Wessely, Divrei shalom ve-emet (Berlin, 1782), chap. 4, trans. S. Weinstein and S. Fischer, in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 73. 22. Ezekiel Landau, Derushei ha-Tselah (Warsaw, 1886), 53a, in Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800: An Anthology, ed. and trans. Marc Saperstein (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 359–73, here 362. 23. Cf. the introductory passage of David Tevele’s sermon against Wessely in L. Lewin, ‘‘Aus dem ju¨dischen Kulturkampfe,’’ Jahrbuch der Ju¨disch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 12 (1918): 165–97, here 182. 24. ‘‘Der weise Scho¨pfer dieser Erde erha¨lt die Ordnung des Ganzen mit unwiderstehbarer Allmacht. Er u¨bersieht den Zusammenhang aller Dinge, verha¨ngt oft Unglu¨ck und Unwissenheit in diesem Jahrhundert u¨ber das Menschengeschlecht; erweckt in einem andern den Geist des Menschen, daß er Dinge von dem ausgebreitesten [sic] Umfang und Nutzen zum Seegen der Welt erfinde, wie z. B. die Entdeckung Amerikas, die Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst, des Pulvers, des Compasses, u. a. m. . . . So sagt auch Salomo: Alles hat seine Zeit, jede Unternehmung ihre Stunde unter dem Himmel.’’ Naphtali Herz Wessely, Worte der Wahrheit und des Friedens an die gesammte ju¨dische Nation, trans. David Friedla¨nder (Berlin, 1782), 20–21.

Notes to Pages 308–310

393

25. ‘‘Cosı` sara` questa l’epoca felice destinata a sradicare l’odio irragionevole che passa tra le varie societa` del genere umano: odio ingiusto che riconosce una incompetente origine perche` ha per base la diversita` di religione e di culto.’’ Traduzione di Elia Morpurgo de’ discorsi ebraici di tolleranza e felicita` [. . .] (Gorizia, 1783), 21. 26. ‘‘Peut-eˆtre que le temps d’aimer et celui d’effacer la haine du coeur des hommes sont arrive´s.’’ Instruction salutaire adresse´e aux communaute´s juives de l’empire [. . .] (Paris, 1790), 44. 27. Ibid. 28. Wessely, Divrei shalom ve-emet, vol. 2: Rav tuv le-vet Yisra’el (Berlin, 1782), fol. 28a–b. 29. See also Breuer, ‘‘(Re)Creating Traditions,’’ and Andrea Schatz, ‘‘Returning to Sepharad: Maskilic Reflections on Hebrew in the Diaspora,’’ in Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Discourse, ed. Resianne Fontaine et al. (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007), 263–77. Such ‘‘readings’’ of historical time evoke the early modern debates on the artes historicae, which Anthony Grafton has analyzed in What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007). The Maskilim seem to take the side of Jean Bodin, who emphasized the novelty of the modern age, while they simultaneously remain close to Bodin’s opponents. The latter saw, in Grafton’s words, ‘‘the past as a text inscribed by God’s hand: The study of history and chronology existed, in their view, only to make these larger meanings plain, and the past, rightly interpreted, was a dynamic hieroglyph of the divine purpose’’ (175). 30. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 83. 31. Ibid. See also Sorkin, Religious Enlightenment, 150–51, on virtually identical arguments for historical studies in Baumgarten’s work. 32. Yerushalmi highlights a remark he found in Yom Tov Lipman Heller’s Selihot leyom ha-esrim le-Sivan (Cracow, 1650): ‘‘What has occurred now is similar to the persecutions of old, and all that happened to the forefathers has happened to their descendants. . . . It is all one.’’ Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 50. 33. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin’s reflections in this volume on Jewish interpretations of exile as resistance to Christian and secular concepts of time indicate how useful it would be to study these differences between medieval and eighteenth-century historical consciousness, i.e., between ‘‘earlier’’ and ‘‘later’’ interpretations of exile, in more detail and to trace their role in Jewish-Christian debates. See also Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘‘Jewish Memory Between Exile and History,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review 97, no. 4 (2007): 530–43. 34. See, for instance, Wessely’s suggestions for the education of Jewish boys: on the one hand, they were to be introduced to the world of the Hebrew language as the language of the Jewish nation in the diaspora; on the other hand, the primary language of instruction should be German and children should learn from German textbooks, while Hebrew should be studied as a second language, and Hebrew textbooks should be based not on

394

Notes to Pages 310–313

Hebrew sources, but on material from the non-Jewish world. Divrei shalom ve-emet, vol. 1, chaps. 6–7. 35. Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften: Jubila¨umsausgabe, ed. Alexander Altmann et al. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1929–38; Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt: Frommann– Holzboog, 1971–), 14:227. 36. In the nineteenth century, the interpretations of time in the diaspora, which we encounter in the eighteenth century, remained relevant, while new interpretations of history were explored, in particular in addressing the relationship between historical and eschatological time; see Nils Ro¨mer, ‘‘Between Hope and Despair: Conceptions of Time and the German-Jewish Experience in the Nineteenth Century,’’ Jewish History 13 (2000): 345–63, and David Sorkin, ‘‘Between Messianism and Survival: Secularization and Sacralization in Modern Judaism,’’ Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 3 (2004): 73–86. 37. Colin Jager, ‘‘Is Critique Secular? Thoughts on Enchantment and Reflexivity’’ (2007), townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/pubs/Jager.pdf (accessed October 23, 2009). 38. Laura Levitt, ‘‘Other Moderns, Other Jews: Revisiting Jewish Secularism in America,’’ in Secularisms, ed. Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), 107–38. 39. Ibid., 118. 40. Ibid. Going back a bit further in time than Levitt, one might add that in Western Europe experimental, irreverent, critical versions of secularism could quickly become complicit with the secularism of the state. Examples include not only the work of Voltaire, Dohm, and others, but also Maskilic writings, including Wessely’s texts. This aspect is absent from Shmuel Feiner’s erudite descriptions of emerging secular trends in the Jewish world in the eighteenth century, in his The Origins of Jewish Secularization in EighteenthCentury Europe, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), with implications also for his assessment of their relevance for contemporary Israeli debates. 41. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 249. 42. Cf. Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Secularisms, 13. 43. Sheehan, ‘‘When Was Disenchantment?,’’ 240–42. 44. Many thanks to Sylvie-Anne Goldberg for allowing me to quote her remark.

contributors

Michal Ben-Horin is lecturer of comparative literature at Tel Aviv University and the author of ‘‘ ‘Memory Metonymies’: Music and Photography in Ingeborg Bachmann and Monika Maron’’ (GLL: German Life and Letters, 2006) and ‘‘Nazism and Musical Biographies: Thomas Mann and Gu¨nter Grass’’ (Hebrew; Criticism and Interpretation: Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Culture, 2010). Arye Edrei is professor of law at Tel Aviv University. He is author, with Doron Mendels, of Zweierlei Diaspora: Zur Spaltung der antiken ju¨dischen Welt (I & II) (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). Recent articles include ‘‘War, Halakhah, and Redemption: The Military and Warfare in the Halakhic Thought of Rabbi Shlomo Goren’’ and ‘‘Holocaust Memorial: A Paradigm of Competing Memories in the Religious and Secular Societies in Israel.’’ Jonathan Marc Gribetz is assistant professor of Israel studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University. He is author of Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter (Princeton University Press, 2014) and his articles have appeared in Jewish Social Studies, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Israel Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. Ari Joskowicz is assistant professor of Jewish studies and European studies at Vanderbilt University. He is author of The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France (Stanford University Press, 2014). Ethan B. Katz is assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. He is author of The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North

396

Contributors

Africa to France (Harvard University Press, forthcoming). His work has appeared in journals including Jewish Quarterly Review, Journal of North African Studies, and Diasporas, Histoire et Socie´te´. Eva Lezzi is adjunct professor at New York University Berlin, instructor for German and Jewish studies at Potsdam University, and adviser for Ph.D. students and program director at the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk (ELES). She is author of ‘‘Liebe ist meine Religion! ’’ Eros und Ehe zwischen Deutschen und Juden in der Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts (Wallstein, 2013). Vivian Liska is professor of German literature and director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp and distinguished visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among her recent books are Giorgio Agambens leerer Messianismus (Schlebru¨gge Editor, 2008), When Kafka Says We: Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature (Indiana University Press, 2009), and Fremde Gemeinschaft: Deutsch-ju¨dische Literatur der Moderne (Wallstein, 2011). Rachel Manekin is associate professor of Jewish studies at the University of Maryland. She has published multiple articles on Galician Jewry and is author of Religion, Politics, and Constitution: The Struggle over the Identity of Jewish Communities in Galicia (Shazar, forthcoming). David N. Myers is professor of Jewish history at UCLA and author of ReInventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (Oxford University Press, 1995), Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton University Press, 2003), and Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz (Brandeis University Press, 2008). Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin is professor of Jewish history in the Department of Jewish History at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Andrea Schatz is reader in Jewish studies at King’s College London. She is author of Sprache in der Zerstreuung: Zur Sa¨kularisierung des Hebra¨ischen im 18. Jahrhundert (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2009).

Contributors

397

Christoph Schulte is professor of Jewish studies and philosophy at the University of Potsdam. He is author of Zimzum: Gott und Weltursprung (Ju¨discher Verlag, 2014), Die ju¨dische Aufkla¨rung: Philosophie, Religion, Geschichte (Beck, 2002), Psychopathologie des Fin de Sie`cle: Der Kulturkritiker, Arzt und Zionist Max Nordau (Fischer, 1997), and radikal bo¨se: Die Karriere des Bo¨sen von Kant bis Nietzsche (Fink, 1991). Daniel B. Schwartz is associate professor of history at George Washington University. He is author of The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (Princeton University Press, 2012). Galili Shahar is associate professor of literature at Tel Aviv University. He is author of Verkleidungen der Aufkla¨rung: Narrenspiele und Weltanschauung in der Goethezeit (Wallstein, 2006) and Theatrum judaicum: Denkspiele im deutsch-ju¨dischen Diskurs der Moderne (Aisthesis, 2006). Scott Ury is senior lecturer in Tel Aviv University’s Department of Jewish History, where he is also director of the Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism. He is author of Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry (Stanford University Press, 2012) and co-editor of Jews and Their Neighbours in Eastern Europe Since 1750 (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012) and Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe (Routledge, 2014).

index

Abaye, 243–45, 378n48 Abbas, Ferhat, 354n18 ‘Abduh, Muhammad, 61–62 Abramovitz, Shalom Yaacob, 124 absolute music, 128–29 acceptance of the commandments, 249 action, Arendt’s notion of, 71–73, 76 Adorno, Theodor, 10, 85, 86, 95 Agamben, Giorgio, 97, 341n46 Agnon, Shmuel Yosef, 120–21, 129 Ahi-‘Ezer, 149 Algeria, 172, 185–86, 360n71 Algerian Jews, 179–81, 185 Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums (journal), 214 Alliance Israe´lite Universelle, 13, 49, 331n3, 357n50 Almog, Ruth, 344n37 Amital, Yehudah, 239–41, 375n19, 376n25 Amsel, Meir, 246, 248, 377n38 Anderson, Benedict, 292 angels, in Benjamin’s work, 108–11, 113–14 Anidjar, Gil, 15, 284 annual reports, of voluntary associations, 157–61 antisemitism: as factor in halakhah regarding non-religious Jews, 241; in France (1930s and Vichy), 168–69, 173, 175–76; messianism and, 81; musical references in response to, 125; Orientalism and, 285; secret names as response to, 102; Zionism and, 83, 89 Appleby, R. Scott, 315n2 Arendt, Hannah, 18, 66–76, 95, 283; ‘‘Jewish History, Revised,’’ 66 Argens, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’, 30 Ariel, Yaacov, 256

Asad, Talal, 6–7, 15, 116, 211, 261, 262, 275, 300, 304, 315n2, 344n34, 381n10 Aseret ha-dibrot li-vene Tsiyon (Ten Commandments for the Children of Zion), 153 Ashkenazic Jews, 178–79, 181, 300, 309 asqa¯mah (agreement, transliteration of Hebrew haskamah), 58–63 Assembly of Notables (France), 59 assimilation, 9, 10, 57, 70, 102, 254, 272, 283, 287, 288 Assmann, Jan, 82 atavistic perspective on the secular, 264–65, 274 Auerbach, Berthold, Spinoza, 33 Auerbach, Shlomo Zalman, 375n16 Augustine, 85, 277–78, 282 Austrian Enlightenment, 199–200 Austrittsgemeinden (separatist communities), 213 Austrittsgesetz (law of secession), 213 Baader, Benjamin Maria, 221–22, 228 Ba’al Shem Tov, 41 Babylonian Talmud, 123–24, 256, 380n68 Baccouche, Rene´, 180–81, 358n56, 359n68 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 135–39 Bach revival, 138–39 Bamberger, Seligman Baer, 220 Bar-Gil, Eran, 344n37 Baron, Salo, 10 Bar-Yosef, Eitan, 292 Barzilay, Isaac, 333n29 Batnitzky, Leora, 54, 265–66 Baube´rot, Jean, 171 Baudelaire, Charles, 107, 111 Bauer, Bruno, 89 Bauman, Zygmunt, 10 Bavarian Revolution, 79

400

Index

Benamozegh, Elia, 328n47 Bendavid, Lazarus, 85 Bendjelloul, Mohamed Salah, 354n18 Benghabrit, Si Kaddour, 174, 183, 359n67 Ben-Gurion, David, 14, 289 Benhabib, Seyla, 70 Ben-Horin, Michal, 19 Benjamin, Walter, 19, 85; ‘‘Agesilaus Santander,’’ 98–114; Arendt and, 67–68, 70, 75; and Cohen, 91; and hiddenness, 75; messianism of, 93–95, 112–13; and modernity, 66–68; and philosophy of ¨ ber Sprache u¨berhaupt history, 86, 279; ‘‘U und die Sprache des Menschen,’’ 106 Ben-Sasson, Hayim Hillel, 321n51 Ben Yehiel, Asher, 377n43 Berger, Peter L., 212 Berlin Haskalah, 31–32 Bernstein, Eduard, 91 Berr, Berr Isaac, 308 Bhabha, Homi K., 209 Biale, David, 14, 127, 263 Bialik, Haim Nahman, 119, 126–28, 140 Bible: Hebrew Bible, 16; musical references in, 118, 122–24; role of, in secularization, 291–93; secular Bible, 15–16; Zionist return to, 290–93 Biddick, Kathleen, 385n5 Bloch, Ernst, 85, 86, 91, 93, 341n41 Blum, Le´on, 173, 354n20 Bodin, Jean, 393n29 Bolz, Norbert, 82 Bourtez, Pierre, 87 Boyarin, Daniel, 125–26 Boyarin, Jonathan, 265 Bresla, Arye, 378n48 Breuer, Mordechai, 210, 215 Bruckner, Anton, 134 Brunswick Conference (1844), 334n48 Buber, Martin, 9, 87 Cagliostro, 191, 192, 196 calendars, 300–301, 391n9 Carlebach, Elisheva, 300 Casals, Pablo, 132–33 Casanova, Jose´, 6, 49, 55, 62, 170–71, 177, 228, 263, 273, 275, 300, 315n2 Cassin, Rene´, 178 Cassirer, Ernst, 91 Catholic Church: in Galicia, 199–200; Reformation vs., 193; Schwa¨rmerei as target of,

190, 193–94, 199–202; in Vichy France, 170–72, 177 Celan, Paul, 66 Chabad Lubavitch, 2, 84 Chajes, Tzvi Hirsch, 42, 44 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 313 Chantiers de la jeunesse, 356n41 Chaouat, Emile, 180–81 Christian calendars, 300–301, 391n9 Christian historiography, 2; and ambivalence toward the Jews, 277–83; messianism in, 86; and Zionism, 289 Christianity: ambivalence toward the Jews, 276–98; millenarianism in, 290–91; and Orientalism, 283–87, 294; and Zionism, 287–89, 388n29 Christian Reformation. See Protestant Reformation Christian Zionism, 291 church-state relations, 54–56, 170, 202, 213. See also differentiation thesis civil society: behavioral norms for, 152–54; characteristics of, 143–44; Jewish self-civilization and, 156–62; Kotik’s plans for reform of, 148–55; role of the individual in, 165–66; secularization and, 142–67; tradition in relation to, 145–47, 164–65 Cohen, Hermann, 66, 73, 85, 86, 88, 91–92 Cohn, Jula, 104 colonialism, Jews and, 179–81, 183–84, 290, 291, 294 commandments, acceptance of, 249 communal agreement, 245 communes, religious, 270–71 Communist Party (France), 178 community. See Jewish community conversion: of Jews, 177, 183, 218, 359n67; to Judaism, 240, 249–56, 379n56, 380n68 Cordovero, Moses, 38 covenant of faith, 233, 237, 242, 257 covenant of fate, 233, 237, 241–42, 246, 257 Cre´mieux Decree (1870), 180 critical modernity, 65–69, 76 Croix-de-Feu, 172 crypto-Jews. See Marranism Da Costa, Uriel, 216 Daichovsky, Shlomo, 256 darkhei shalom (pursuing paths of peace), 4 Darwish, Mahmoud, 297 David (biblical figure), 123–24

Index Debre´ Law (1959), 185 Deism, 30–31 the demonic, Benjamin’s concept of, 98–100 deprivatized religion, 273, 275 Derenbourg, Hartwig, 50, 59 Derrida, Jacques, 95 Descartes, Rene´, 72 Devrient, Edward, 139 dhimmis (non-Muslim people of the book), 179, 357n49, 357n50 dialectical thinking, 70, 336n9 Diderot, Denis, and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclope´die, 302 differentiation thesis, 49, 55–56, 62–63, 170. See also church-state relations dina de-malkhuta dina (the law of the land is the law), 4 Dinur, Ben-Zion, 321n51 disenchantment of the world, 3, 79–80, 82, 190, 193–94, 264–65 divorce, 226 Dohm, Christian Wilhelm, 286 Druckman, Hayim, 256 Dubnow, Simon, 9 Eastern Europe, civil society and secularization in, 142–67; Haskalah in, 9, 18. See also Galicia E´claireurs Israe´lites de France, 356n41 Edicts of Toleration, 306–7 Edrei, Arye, 20 Eichmann, Adolf, 267 Eisner, Kurt, 79, 91 Eliot, George, 208 Ellenson, David, 210 e´lus movement. See Fe´de´ration des e´lus musulmans Endelman, Todd, 319n31 Engels, Friedrich, 81, 89–90 England, conversions in, 253–54 Enlightenment: Austrian, 199–200; concept of history in, 282–83; and Orientalism, 286; origins of, 27; radical, 26–28, 30, 45–47, 324n8, 325n16; Religious Enlightenment, 14, 190; scholarly interpretations of, 10, 14, 16, 324n8, 324n10, 325n16; Schwa¨rmerei as target of, 197–98; and secularism, 1, 10, 45; Spinoza’s role in, 25–28; Wissenschaft des Judentums and, 8 enthusiasm. See Schwa¨rmerei environmental movement, 95–96

401

Erter, Isaac, 119, 198 Ettinger, Shmuel, 321n51 Ettlinger, Jacob, 235–36, 238 Euchel, Isaac, 309 exile: Christian perceptions of, 291; Jewish history and, 280–83; music and, 124–27, 130–32, 134–35, 139–40; Palestine and, 297; secular time and, 304–11; in talmudic literature, 386n14; Zionist negation of, 288–89, 293–98 exorcism, 195, 199, 202 faith community. See covenant of faith family: in neo-Orthodox literature, 214–31; in nineteenth-century Judaism, 222 fate community. See covenant of fate Fe´de´ration des e´lus musulmans, 172, 354n18 Feiner, Shmuel, 12–13, 36, 144, 263, 394n40 Feldman, Deborah, 385n43 feminism, 95–96 Ferziger, Adam, 210–11, 367n5 Fifth Amendment (U.S. Constitution), 269 First Amendment (U.S. Constitution), 269 First World War, 92–93 Fisher, Oscar, 269, 383n23 FMAs. See French Muslim citizens from Algeria France: division of, in Second World War, 174, 354n22; Jews in (1930s), 172–73; Muslims in (1930s), 172–73, 355n24; postsecularist scholarship on, 12; republican calendar devised in, 301. See also Vichy France Franck, Adolphe, 328n47 Frankfurt Rabbinical Conference (1845), 60 French-Algerian War, 185–86 French Muslim citizens from Algeria (FMAs), 185, 360n71 French Revolution, 8, 10, 12, 286, 308 Freud, Sigmund, 117, 118 Friedla¨nder, David, 308 Friedman, Lipa, 268–69, 383n22 Friedman, Menachem, 13 Friedrich III, Emperor, 220–21 Frug, Simon, 124–25 Funkenstein, Amos, 35, 277, 280, 283, 386n13, 391n9 Galen, 192 Galicia: Catholic Church in, 199–200; Hasidim in, 189, 200–207; Haskalah in, 19, 34, 42–43, 189–90, 196–207, 365n73

402

Index

Gassner, Johann, 191, 195, 202 Gauchet, Marcel, 14 gender: and modernity, 221; in neo-Orthodox literature, 221–29; and secularism, 16–17; segregation by, 2 General German Workers’ Association, 89 Germany: neo-Orthodox literature in, 208–31; post-secularist scholarship on, 11–12. See also Nazi Germany ghetto literature, 210, 229 Ginzburg, Carlo, 2, 276–80, 283, 284, 295, 386n7, 386n12, 386n13 God: relation of, to history, 281; Spinoza’s conception of, 32, 41–42 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 32, 139 Goldberg, Michael, 207 Goldberg, Sylvie-Anne, 313 Goldish, Matt, 194 Goldziher, Ignaz, 51, 332n15 Gordon, Yehuda Leib, 125 Goren, Shlomo, 253, 255–56, 380n66, 380n71 Gottheil, Richard James Horatio, 51–52, 60, 332n16 Graetz, Heinrich, 9, 91 Greenberg, Uri Zvi, 119 Gribetz, Jonathan, 18 Guggenheim, Sara Hirsch, 210, 214–15, 217 Gush Emunim, 83, 315n2 Gutzkow, Karl, Uriel Acosta, 34 Habermas, Ju¨rgen, 142–45, 152, 228; The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 143 Habsburg monarchy, anti-Schwa¨rmerei activities in, 199–207 Hakalir, Elazar, 124 Halakhah: Arendt on, 71–72; and conversion to Judaism, 249–56; and Israeli judicial system, 242–48; in Kiryas Joel, 271–73; nineteenth-century German Jewish observance of, 211; non-Jewish law in relation to, 4; secularization and, 234–36, 271–73; and transgressors, 20, 232–36, 239–40, 242–48; Zionism and, 232–33, 236–57 Halevi, Yehuda, 124 Hall, John A., 166 Hallaq, Wael, 60–61 Ha-Ma’or (journal), 246, 377n38 Hamon, Suzanne, 179 Haredi Judaism, 13, 84, 253, 266, 296 Al-Harizi, 124

Hartman, Tova, 17 Hasidism: Arendt on, 337n15; in Galicia, 19, 189, 200–207; in Kiryas Joel, 265–74; minyanim as institutions of, 200–201; and Schwa¨rmerei, 195–207. See also Chabad Lubavitch Haskalah: attitude toward Kabbalah in, 328n47; Berlin, 31–32; conceptions of time in, 305–11, 393n29; concept of the state in, 9; early, 30–31; in Galicia, 19, 34, 42–43, 189–90, 196–207, 365n73; Hebraism in, 36–37; and modernity, 144; nineteenthcentury divisions within, 26–27, 46; radical, 45–47; radical thought of, 29, 39; and Romanticism, 327n32; Rubin and, 34–39; Schwa¨rmerei as target of, 189–207; Spinoza’s role in, 25–26, 28–39, 42–45 Hastings, Adrian, 292–93 Hatam Sofer (Moshe Sofer), 13, 235–36, 321n47 Ha-zamir (Society for Hebrew Song and Literature), 156, 161–63 Hazon Ish (Abraham Isaiah Karelitz), 13, 321n47, 375n17, 375n19 Hebraism, 36–37, 285–86 Hebrew language, 36–38, 310, 393n34 Hebrew Revival, 126 Hegel, G. W. F., 32, 86, 87, 277 He-Haluts (The pioneer) [journal], 40 Heidegger, Martin, 74–76, 337n23 Heine, Heinrich, 33, 208 Helbo, Rabbi, 379n64, 380n68 Hendel, Yehudit, 116, 130, 135–40, 141 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 32, 33, 40–42; God, Some Conversations, 40, 42–44 Herzig, Hanna, 345n47 Herzl, Theodor, 59, 125–26, 141 Herzog, Yitzhak Isaac, 243–48, 376n32, 378n48 Hess, Jonathan, 8, 210, 286 Hess, Moses, 85–87, 88–90, 340n23; Holy History of Mankind, 33 Hever, Hanan, 137 Heyd, Michael, 192–93 Hibbat Zion movement, 236 hiddenness, 73–76 Hildesheimer, Azriel, 251 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 211, 213, 214, 219, 220, 222, 228, 236, 251, 370n39 Hirschenson, Hayim, 374n11, 375n15 Hirschfeld, Ariel, 128

Index historiography. See Christianity historiography; Jewish history; universal history Hobsbawm, Eric, 292, 367n4 Hoffmann, Yoel, 116, 130, 132–35, 141, 345n47 Holocaust. See Shoah Horkheimer, Max, 10 Horowitz, Naphtali, 205–6 Hourani, George, 61–62 Hugo, Victor, 52 Hyman, Paula, 16, 221 Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 38, 44–45, 324n3 Ibn Gabirol, Solomon, 38, 124 Ibn Tibbon, Samuel, 197 Idealism, German, 32, 40, 45 ijma¯‘ (consensus), 60–62, 335n54 Inquisition, 181–82, 194 internet, Satmar Hasidim use of, 272–73, 384n36, 385n43 Islam: as disguise for Jews during World War II, 179–84; as framework for understanding Jewish secularism, 60–62; and gender and secularism, 16; reform movement in nineteenth-century, 60–61. See also Muslims Israel: conversions in, 252–56; definition of, 242; judicial system in, 242–48; Orthodox dilemmas concerning, 242–56, 296–97; and secularism, 232–33, 236–57; Western ideology underlying, 289–94. See also Israeli literature; Zionism Israel, Jonathan, 26–28, 30–31, 34, 45–46, 142, 303–4, 324n10, 325n16 Israeli literature, 129–40 Der Israelit (journal), 208, 214, 215 Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft, 213 Jabe`s, Edmond, 66 Jacob, Margaret C., 324n8 Jacobi, Friedrich H., 32 Jager, Colin, 312 Jakobsen, Janet R., 211, 212 Jellinek, Adolph, 328n47 Jerusalem School, 9 Jerusalem Talmud, 123, 256 Jeschurun (journal), 208, 214 Jewish calendars, 300–301 Jewish community: conversion in light of definitions of, 249–56; defining characteristics of, 234–36, 240–41, 245–57; in Eastern Europe (late nineteenth and early twentieth century), 144–53, 156–58, 164,

403

166; judicial system in light of definitions of, 245–48; Kiryas Joel as, 265–74; preservation of, 250 Jewish Encyclopedia, 48, 51, 57, 332n15 Jewish history: changing meaning of music in, 117–120; changing place of Spinoza in, 25, 26, 28–29, 31–34, 40, 45–47; Christian ambivalence toward the Jews and, 280–83; and exile, 280–83; messianism in, 85–87; Muslim conceptions of, 48–64; place of Kabbalah in, 67–73; place of Mendelssohn in, 53–58; premodern, 387n15; Scholem on, 70; and secularism/secularization, 8–15, 144–47, 283; Zionist conception of, 9 Jewish Reform. See Reform Judaism Jewish studies, 8–15 Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO), 351n48 Jews. See Algerian Jews; Ashkenazic Jews; Hasidism; Judaism; Mizrahi Jews; Moroccan Jews; Sephardic Jews Joe¨l, David, 328n47 Jonas, Hans, 87 Joseph II, Emperor, 199–200, 202, 306–7 Joskowicz, Ari, 13 Judaism: Christian ambivalence toward, 276–98; Christian historiographic understanding of, 2–3; conversion from, 177, 183, 218, 359n67; conversion to, 240, 249–56, 379n56, 380n68; decline of, in twentieth century, 1; disguise as Muslims or Christians, 169, 178–84; feminization of, 221–29; as national, vs. religious, entity, 8–9, 48, 53–55, 59–64, 236–42, 252–57, 286–87; relation of, to non-Jewish realms of knowledge, 4–5, 272, 306–311; and Schwa¨rmerei, 194–95; and secularism, 2–4, 11, 15–21; in Vichy France, 169, 173–86. See also Algerian Jews; Ashkenazic Jews; Haredi Judaism; Mizrahi Jews; Moroccan Jews; Orthodox Judaism; Reform Judaism; Sephardic Jews Kabbalah: Arendt on, 70–76; God and nature in, 38; Scholem on, 66–74; Spinoza and, 328n47 Kafka, Franz, 66, 67 Kaniuk, Yoram, 344n37 Kant, Immanuel, 86, 191, 192 Kaplan, Marion, 16, 221, 228 Karelitz, Abraham Isaiah. See Hazon Ish

404

Index

Kasztner, Rudolf, 267 Katz, Jacob, 11, 144, 263, 266, 316n8 Keitt, Andrew, 194 Kenaz, Yehoshua, 116, 130–32, 141 al-Khalidi, Muhammad Ruhi, 18, 48–64 kinno¯r (harp/violin), 122–23. See also violin Kiryas Joel, New York, 20, 265–74 Klatzkin, Jakob, 91, 330n69 Klee, Paul, Angelus Novus, 101, 108 Kluger, Shlomo, 250–51, 378n52 Knesset, 245–47, 378n46 Kohler, Kaufmann, 51, 332n15, 334n49 Kohn, Hans, 292 Kook, Abraham Isaac, 83, 236, 374n12, 375n19, 375n22 Koselleck, Reinhart, 85 Kotik, Yehezkel, 148–58, 160, 164–65; Hatza’at hukei agudat Ahi-‘Ezer (Proposal for the bylaws of the Organization for Brotherly Assistance), 149–52 Kramer, Jonathan, 133 Krochmal, Abraham, 29, 33, 35, 39–47; Even ha-roshah (Foundation stone), 39–40, 42–43, 46; Ha-Ketav ve-ha-mikhtav (Scripture and original), 40 Krochmal, Nachman, 39, 196–98, 362n41; The Guide for the Perplexed of the Time, 43–45, 44 Kurzweil, Baruch, 296 Lacis, Asja, 104 laı¨cite´ (French, public secularism), 171–72, 177, 178 Landau, Ezekiel, 306–8 Landauer, Gustav, 79 languages: Hebrew, 36–38, 310, 393n34; traditionalist Jews and, 272; Yiddish, 37 Lasker, Eduard, 213 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 89 Latris, Meir Halevi, 124 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 191 lectern socialists, 91 Lederhendler, Eli, 83 Leff, Lisa, 13 Lefin, Mendel, 363n43 Lefkowitz, Leopold (Leibish), 268–70, 383n23 Left Hegelians, 89 Lehmann, Marcus, 210, 214–31, 369n28; Elvire, 223, 225–27, 229; Des Ko¨nigs Eidam (The king’s son-in-law), 223; Sa¨en und Ernten, 210, 215–31; Die Verlassene, 226, 229

Leibowitz, Yeshayahu, 296 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 32, 33, 85, 86, 191, 208, 214 Letteris, Meir, 25–26, 33, 42, 328n47 Levenson, Micha Yosef, 124 Levinas, Emmanuel, 66, 87 Levine´, Eugen, 79 Levitt, Laura, 312–13, 317n15, 394n40 Lezzi, Eva, 19–20 Ligue Internationale Contre l’Antise´mitisme, 172 Lilienblum, Moses, 41 Liska, Vivian, 18 literature: German, 208–31; Hebrew, 118–19, 121, 124, 127, 129, 141, 286; Israeli, 129–40; modern Jewish, 115–16, 118, 120–41; musar, 208, 366n1; neo-Orthodox, 208–31 Litvak, Olga, 327n32 Locke, John, 304 Lo¨with, Karl, 85–86 Lo¨wy, Michael, 88, 93, 340n34 Luther, Martin, 191 Luzzatto, Samuel D., 26 lyre, 122. See also violin maggidim (preachers), 205 Mahler, Raphael, 201 Mahmoud, Sabba, 16 Maimon, Salomon, 31, 35, 195–96, 328n47 Maimonides, 4, 14, 35–36, 38, 39, 43, 73, 182, 198, 324n3, 375n19; Guide for the Perplexed, 35, 39, 92, 197 Mamon, Michel, 181, 182 Manekin, Rachel, 19 Marquard, Odo, 85 Marranism, 181, 183, 285 marriage, conversion associated with, 249–52 Marrus, Michael, 12 Marx, Karl, 14, 81, 86, 87, 89–90, 93, 142 Maskilim. See Haskalah Masoretes, 40 media, Satmar Hasidim use of, 272–73, 384n36, 385n43 Mendelssohn, Moses, 18; and Enlightenment, 191; as Haskalah hero, 35, 324n3; on historical time, 304–11; Jerusalem, 49, 54, 56; al-Khalidi’s interpretation of, 48–49, 53–64; rationalist religious philosophy of, 14; on religion-state relationship, 54–55; on return to Palestine and Jewish nationhood, 56–58; on Schwa¨rmerei, 195, 198, 362n37;

Index on secularism, 8, 53–58; and Spinoza, 28, 31–32 Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix, 138–39, 345n47 Mesmer, Franz Anton, 191 Messiah: meanings of, 82; Schneerson as, 84. See also messianism without Messiah messianism, 19; absence of, in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 84–85; Christian, 86; Jewish and Christian historical consciousness and, 279, 281–83, 288–90, 292–93; Mendelssohn on, 56–57; music and, 128; Sabbatai Tzvi and, 112–13; traditional notion of, 80. See also messianism without Messiah messianism without Messiah, 79–97; after 1945, 94–97; Benjamin and, 112–13; counter to determinism, 87; linked to determinism, 81; Reform Judaism as, 82–83; secularization and, 80; self-conscious Judaism of, 81–82, 87–88; socialist, 87–94; traditional messianism vs., 80; types of, 82; Zionism as, 83–84, 288–93, 295–96 Michaelis, Johann David, 56, 286 Midrash Rabbah, 109 Mieses, Isaac, 328n47 Mieses, Judah Lieb, 198–99, 203 millenarianism, 290–91 minyanim (prayer quorums), 200–201, 203–4 Miron, Dan, 118–19 Mishnah, 196 Mizrahi Jews, 181–82 modernity: characteristics of, 142–43; critical, 65–69, 76; Galician maskilim and, 189–90; gender and, 221; Haskalah and, 144; in Lehmann’s Sa¨en und Ernten, 230; normative, 65–67; problems associated with, 150–57, 166, 217–18; religion and, 261; secularization and, 142–44; temporality of, 303 modern Jewish literature, 115–16, 120–41. See also neo-Orthodox literature Monroe, New York, 269–70 Montandon, Georges, 181 Moroccan Jews, 357n50, 359n68 Morpurgo, Elia, 308 Mose`s, Ste´phane, 65–69, 76 Mufti, Aamir, 8, 15 Muhammad (prophet), 61 Mu¨hsam, Erich, 79 musar literature, 208, 366n1

405

music, 19, 115–41; absolute music, 128–29; and antisemitism, 125; meanings of, 115–16; messianic promise of, 128; sacred to secular, 117–19; and Torah, 123 Music in Jerusalem (documentary), 132–33 Muslims: in France (1930s), 355n24; Jews disguising themselves as, 169, 178–84; in Vichy France, 169, 172–77, 179–84. See also Islam Myers, David, 20, 279, 297, 299, 312–13 mysticism. See Kabbalah Nachmanides (Nahmanides), 38, 280 names, 101–7, 272 Nandy, Ashis, 262 Napoleon, 59 nationalism, 9, 90, 186, 252, 262, 286, 287, 291, 292–94, 333n22, 390n41; conversion and, 252–56; Jewish, 46, 53–54, 56, 56–60, 119–20, 233, 237–38, 255, 380n66; religious ideology and, 236–42; Romantic, 37; secularism and, 232–33, 236–57, 262. See also Zionism Nazi Germany: and Mendelsohn’s music, 139; racial policies in, 174; racial policies of, 176–77; secularism linked to, 10. See also Vichy France Nelson, Eric, 16 neo-internalism, 14–15, 321n51 Neo-Karaites, 30 neo-Orthodox literature, 208–31; characteristics of, 208; family in, 214–31; formcontent conflict in, 208; gender in, 221–29; Reform Judaism and, 209, 213, 215–21; secularism and the state in, 215–21; sociocultural context of, 210–13. See also modern Jewish literature neo-Orthodoxy, 236 Neoplatonism, 38 neo-secularism, 274–75 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 290 Neusner, Jacob, 386n14 New Jew, 293–94 New Square, New York, 271 Nicolai, Friedrich, 191–92 Nieto, Hakham David, 30 Nordau, Max, 58 normative modernity, 65–67 Novalis, 32 Old Yishuv, 294, 296, 313 one-substance doctrine, 32

406

Index

Organisation Juive de Combat, 178 Orientalism, 15, 183, 278–79, 283–87, 291–92, 294 Orobio de Castro, Isaac, 30–31 Orthodox Judaism: Arendt’s critique of, 71; and conversion to Judaism, 248–56, 249–56; and gender, 221–22; and Israel, 242–56, 296–97; neo-Orthodox literature and, 20, 208–31; and the nineteenthcentury Prussian state, 213; old vs. modern, 209; responses of, to secularism, 13; responses of, to Zionism, 232–33, 236–57; and testimony of non-religious Jews in Israel, 242–48; women in, 17; and Zionism, 295–97. See also Haredi Judaism, Hasidism, neo-Orthodoxy Orthodoxy studies, 210–11 Ouzana, Jules, 181 Palestine: exile as concept pertinent to, 297; Hess and, 89; Jewish longing for, 52; Mendelssohn on, 56–58; Orientalism and, 291–92; return to, 56–60, 288–89; role of, in anti-Zionist arguments, 48, 53, 64; theological aspects of, 295–96 Palestine Liberation Organization, 64 panentheism, 45–46 pantheism, 25, 29–32, 38, 41–42, 328n47 Paris Sanhedrin, 59, 63, 334n48 Parti Populaire Franc¸ais, 172 Parti Social Franc¸ais, 172 passing, 19, 169, 178–84 Pasternak, Boris, 91 Pellegrini, Ann, 211, 212 Peretz, Y. L., 124 Perl, Joseph, 196, 199–200 Pe´tain, Philippe, 168, 174, 178 Philadelphia Rabbinical Conference (1869), 60, 83 Pirkei Avot, 306 Pittsburgh Conference (1885), 60, 332n15, 334n49 Pnei Arye (Arye Bresla), 378n48 Pocock, J. G. A., 190 Poland, 12, 19. See also Warsaw political left, relation of, to the state, 96–97 Political Zionism, 236 Popular Front (France), 172–73 Posen Foundation, 317n16 post-secularism, 11–15 private property, 269

private vs. public spheres, 228–30 progress, 277–82, 289, 294–98, 305 prophecy, in modern Hebrew literature, 118–20 Protestant Reformation, 190, 193, 290 Protestant theology, 289–94 public sphere, 143–44, 228–30. See also civil society Pushkin, Alexander, 125 rabbinic Judaism, Arendt’s critique of, 71, 337n15 rabbis, nineteenth-century changes in roles of, 221 race, in Vichy France, 168, 174–77, 184–86 Ragaz, Leonard, 338n2 Rais, Elissa (formerly Rosine Boumendil), 183 Rath, Meshullam, 244 rationalism, critique of, 9–10; medieval Jewish, 35 Rava, 243–44 Ravitzky, Aviezer, 14 Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon, 2, 15, 20, 262, 274, 299, 310, 312–13 Reformation. See Protestant Reformation Reform Judaism: and gender, 221; Mendelssohn and, 58; as messianism without Messiah, 82–83; and neo-Orthodox literature, 209, 213, 215–21; and relations with Gentiles, 10; Zionism and, 58, 60 Reik, Theodor, 117–18, 129 Reimarus, Herman Samuel, 362n41 religion: modernity and, 261; privatization of, 170, 273, 275; racialization of, in Vichy France, 168–73, 184–86; right to free exercise of, 269; secularism in relation to, 261–75, 291, 293–94; state in relation to, 54–56, 170, 202, 213 (see also differentiation thesis) Religious Enlightenment, 14, 190, 325n16. See also Haskalah Religious Zionism, 2, 14, 232–33, 237–39, 242–43, 252–53, 255 Riesser, Gabriel, 85 Romanticism: Arendt and, 338n23; German, 32–34, 40, 42, 45; Haskalah and, 327n32; and music, 128–29; and nationalism, 37 Rosenzweig, Franz, 9, 66, 87, 91 Roskies, David, 12 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 166

Index Rubin, Salomon, 29, 33–39, 47; Moreh nevukhim he-hadash (The new guide for the perplexed), 34–35, 38 Ruge, Arnold, 88, 89 Russia: civil society and secularization in Warsaw, 145–67; post-secularist scholarship on, 12 Sabbateanism, 70, 71, 112–13, 194, 337n13 Sacher, Leopold Johann Nepomuk von, 204 Sachs, Senior, 328n47 Said, Edward, 283–84, 297 Said, Kurban (born Lev Nussinbaum, using the penname Mohammed Essad Bey), 183 Salafi movement, 61–62 Satmar Hasidism, 20, 265–74, 297–98 Saturn, 111–14 Schapiro, Menachem Elazar, 379n55 Schatz, Andrea, 20–21, 279, 287, 297 Schechter, Ronald, 12 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 32 Schmidt, Suzanna, 201 Schmitt, Carl, 82, 171, 264, 381n10 Schneerson, Menachem Mendel, 84 Scholem, Gershom, 9, 18, 66, 336n9; Arendt on, 66–76; and Benjamin, 95, 98, 100–104, 106, 109–10, 112–13; and Cohen, 91; on Jewish history, 70; on Kabbalah, 66–74, 328n47; Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 18, 66–67, 69; on messianism, 340n34 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 129 Schorr, Joshua Heschel, 40 Schulte, Christoph, 19 Schwa¨rmerei (religious enthusiasm), 19, 189–207; Catholic Church and, 199–202; Catholic criticisms of, 190, 193–94; and disenchantment of the world, 193–94; educational approach to, 195; Enlightenment criticisms of, 197–98; Hasidism and, 195–207; history of, 190–92; Jews and, 194–95; legal approaches to, 199–207; Maskilic criticisms of, 189–207; medical explanations for, 197; Mendelssohn on, 195, 198, 362n37; satiric attacks on, 195, 199–200; sectarianism as definition of, 202, 204; secularization in relation to, 192–93; stages of, 197; as target of Catholic Church, 190, 193–94; as target of Haskalah, 189–207 Schwartz, Daniel, 13, 18 Schweid, Eliezer, 325n15 Scott, Joan, 16

407

Sea of Galilee, 137 Second World War: Jewish vs. Muslim experiences of, 185; Vichy France in, 168–86 sectarianism, 202, 204, 206 secularism: adaptive practices in, 19–20; apparent triumph of, 1; Benjamin and, 107, 114; and Christian ambivalence toward the Jews, 277–79; civil society and, 156–62; competing conceptions of, 262–65; critiques of, 10; debates about, 1–2, 4; Enlightenment and, 1, 10, 45; etymology of, 262; as fall from religion, 107; Jewish history and, 283; Jewish studies and, 8–11; Judaism and, 2–4, 11, 15–21; Kiryas Joel as case study in, 265–74; meaning of, 5–7, 116, 145; messianism without Messiah and, 80–81; modern Jewish literature and, 115–16, 118, 120–41; music and, 115–41; nationalism and, 232–33, 236–57, 262; neo-, 274–75; neo-Orthodox literature and, 208–31; Orientalism and, 283–87; of the people, 312–13; and perceptions of time, 299–313; progress and, 294–98; religion in relation to, 64, 261–75, 291, 293–94; role of narratives in, 18; of the state, 312–13, 394n40; tradition incorporated in, 140–41; transformative practice in, 18–19; Vichy government’s reversal of, 168–73, 184–86; Zionism and, 232–33, 236–57, 287–98. See also differentiation thesis secularity, 6 secularization: assimilation linked to, 10; civil society and, 142–67; Encyclope´die article on, 302; Halakhah and, 234–36; meaning of, 5–6, 116, 145, 211–12, 228, 234; messianism without Messiah and, 85–94; modernity and, 142–44; neo-Orthodox literature and, 211–12; philosophy of history associated with, 86; public vs. private spheres, 228–30; religion-state distinction as characteristic of, 55–56, 62; religious enthusiasm in relation to, 192–93; role of religion in, 228–31; role of the Bible in, 291–93; and Spinoza, 33; of tradition, 98–99; and women, 16–17 secularization theory: basis of, 5; Jews in relation to, 5; Kiryas Joel and, 265; Mendelssohn and, 49; messianism without Messiah counter to, 80–81; on role of religion, 261 secular time, 299–313; conceptions of, in Haskalah, 305; exile and, 304–11; religion

408

Index

secular time (continued ) in relation to, 304–5, 391n9; two conceptions of, 302–4 secular Zionism, 1, 14, 131–32, 276, 287–94, 294 Seidman, Naomi, 33 self-help organizations, 148–49 Semler, Johann Salomo, 195, 362n41 Sephardic Jews, 181–83, 309 Sered, Susan, 17 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Third Earl of, 193, 195 Shaham, Nathan, 344n37 Shahar, Galili, 19 Shaked, Gershon, 119–20 ShaLeM, 272 Shamir, Moshe, 140 Shavit, Yaacov, 83 Sheehan, Jonathan, 16, 171, 291–93, 302–3 Shelomo of Chelm, Rabbi, 198 Shepard, Todd, 360n72 Shmelkes, Yitzhak, 251 Shoah: messianism after, 94–97; Vichy government and, 168, 169 Shochetman, Eliav, 378n46 shofar, 117–18 Shofman, Gershon, 131 Shternshis, Anna, 12 Shulhan Arukh, 247 Silber, Michael, 13, 266 Simmel, Georg, 142, 149 Simon, Uriel, 292 Six Day War (1967), 2, 83–84 Skverer Hasidism, 270–71 Smith, Anthony, 292 Smolenskin, Peretz, 333n29 socialist messianism without Messiah, 87–94 Society for the Attainment of Employment for Poor Jews in Warsaw, 156–59 Sofer, Moshe. See Hatam Sofer Sokolov, Nahum, 290 Soloveitchik, Joseph B., 233, 237, 257, 374n14, 376n25 Sorkin, David, 14, 325n16 Spinoza, Baruch, 14, 18, 25–47, 63; Compendium of Hebrew Grammar, 34; Enlightenment role of, 25–28; Ethics, 34, 35, 37, 38, 41, 44, 328n47, 330n69; excommunication of, 25, 28, 29; Haskalah role of,

25–26, 28–39, 42–45; Herder and, 41–42; Hess and, 89; Kabbalah in relation to, 328n47; Krochmal and, 39–45, 47; as modern thinker, 27–28, 32, 33; reception of, 13, 25–26, 28–34, 325n15; Rubin and, 34–39, 47; secularization and, 33; Theological-Political Treatise, 25, 30, 35, 36, 43; traditional Jewish elements in thought of, 36–39, 43–47, 328n47 Spinozism, 28–34, 40, 42 state: relation of political left to, 96–97; religion in relation to, 54–56, 170, 202, 213, 241–48, 264–74, 294–98, 301–5 (see also differentiation thesis); secularism of, 312–13, 394n40; social peacekeeping role of, 9 Strauss, Bruno, 91 Strauss, Leo, 87, 91 Stroumsa, Guy, 322n60 supersessionist perspective on the secular, 264–65, 274 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 191, 196 synagogues, 150–52, 178 Tabib, Mordechai, 344n37 Talmon, Jacob, 10, 339n16 Talmud: on angels, 108; Babylonian, 123–24, 256, 380n68; Bialik and, 126–27; on communal agreement, 245; on conversion, 249, 250, 256, 379n56, 380n68; and exile, 386n14; Jerusalem, 123, 256; and Jewish community, 232; on Jewish community, 250; on testimony, 243–44; on transgressors, 234–35, 239–40; Zionist rejection of, 294 Tarfon, Rabbi, 375n19 Taubes, Jacob, 85–86 Taylor, Charles, 6, 55–56, 228, 302, 304, 315n2 Tchernichovski, Saul, 126 Teitelbaum, Aron, 271 Teitelbaum, Joel, 266–68, 270, 382n17 Teitelbaum, Moses, 271 Teitelbaum, Zalman Leib, 271 testimony, in rabbinic courts, 242–48 Tevele, David, 306 time, 21; conceptions of, in Haskalah, 305–11, 393n29; of exile, 311; historical, 309–11; medieval concept of, 300; modern concept of, 303; musical concept of as challenge to secular, 132–34; secular, 297, 299–313

Index Toller, Ernst, 79 Tonnerre, Clermont, 286 Torah: and conversion, 255; and Israeli law, 245–49; Jewish community centered on, 232, 234, 237, 272; Krochmal on, 40–41; music and, 123; secularism and, 14, 211, 239–40 Tractate Gerim, 256, 380n69 tradition: in Agnon’s thought, 121; in Arendt and Scholem, 65–76; in Benjamin’s thought, 110; civil society in relation to, 145–47, 150–56, 164–65; incorporated in secularism, 140–41; neo-Orthodox literature and, 209; relationship to secular literature and music, 118–22, 126, 127, 129, 132, 134–35, 140–41; secularization of, 98–99 transgressors, 20, 232–36, 239–40, 242–48 Trentmann, Frank, 166 Tzvi, Sabbatai, 112–13, 195 Union des Juifs pour la Re´sistance et l’Entraide, 178 universal history, 85–86 Unterman, Isser Yehudah, 253–56, 379n57, 379n64, 380n71 Ury, Scott, 19 U.S. Supreme Court, 265 utopia, 79–80, 92–93, 95–96 Uziel, Benzion Meir Hai, 243–44, 246–48, 377n43, 378n48 veil (hijab), 16 Vichy France, 19, 168–86; anti-secular policies of, 168–73, 184–86; Catholic Church in, 170–72, 177; Judaism in, 169, 173–86; Muslims in, 169, 172–77, 179–84; racial policies in, 168, 174–77, 184–86; Resistance movement in, 178 violin, 122–26, 129–32, 134–41 Vishvanathan, Gauri, 7 Voegelin, Eric, 339n16 Voltaire, 85 voluntary associations, 148–67 Wachter, Johann George, 328n47 Wagner, Richard, 117, 131, 138–39, 141; Tannha¨user, 125 Walzer, Michael, 347n7

409

War of Independence (1948), 135, 137 Warsaw, 145–67 Warsaw Information Bureau for Jewish Emigrants, 156, 159–61 Weber, Max, 79–80, 142, 190, 193, 202, 263–64, 316n6; Politics as a Vocation, 79; Science as a Vocation, 3, 79–80, 338n1 Wertheimer, Jack, 210 Wessely, Naphtali Herz, 306–9, 393n34 Wieland, Christoph, 191 Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism), 8, 9, 66, 70, 76, 85, 328n47 women: in Judaism, 221–29; Orthodox, 17; and secularization, 16–17 world wars. See First World War; Second World War Wozner, Shmuel, 375n16 Wu¨rzburg, rabbinate debate in, 220 Yafeh, Orit, 17 Yelle, Robert, 15 Yerushalmi, Yosef, 26, 277, 280, 309 Yiddish language, 37 Yishuv, 83, 289, 294, 296, 313 Yuval (biblical figure), 118, 122 Zhitlowsky, Chaim, 88, 91 Zionism: and the Bible, 290–93; and Christianity, 287–89, 388n29; Christian Zionism, 291; Halakhah and, 232–33, 236–57; Hess as precursor of, 88–90; and Jewish history, 9; al-Khalidi on, 48, 50–64; as messianism without Messiah, 83–84, 288–93, 295–96; negation of exile in, 288–89, 293–98; Orthodox Judaism and, 295–97; Political Zionism, 236; Protestant theology and, 289–94; Reform Judaism and, 58, 60; regarded as illegitimate, 48, 53–54, 58–64; Religious Zionism, 2, 14, 232–33, 237–39, 242–43, 252–53, 255; and secularism, 232–33, 236–57, 287–98; secular Zionism, 1, 14, 276, 287–94, 294; tensions of, in modern Hebrew literature, 124–41; in Vichy France, 178; Wagner’s Tannha¨user and, 125. See also Israel Zohar, Tzvi, 246, 378n46 zoning laws, 269 Zunz, Leopold, 85 Zweifel, Eliezer, 328n47

acknowledgments

The editors and contributors would like to thank a number of individuals and institutions for their invaluable support of this book. The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania made possible much of the research and writing as well as the fruitful international and interdisciplinary intellectual exchanges that gave shape to this book. The Katz Center’s longtime director David Ruderman, associate director Natalie Dohrmann, and entire staff supported the project in numerous crucial ways. At the University of Pennsylvania Press, our editor Jerry Singerman provided helpful guidance at every stage, as did the other staff of the press who helped us throughout the editing and production process. The editors and contributors also benefited enormously from the comments of the book’s anonymous reviewers. For their insights into numerous issues in individual chapters, and into the book’s conception, structure, and wider implications, the editors would like to thank the following additional individuals: Annette Aronowicz, Hagit Caspi, Julia Phillips Cohen, Yael Feldman, Arna Poupko Fisher, Nachum Klafter, Ilana Pardes, Rachel Rojanski, and Yael Zerubavel. Funding for the index and cover illustration were provided by the Katz Center, the Taft Research Center of the University of Cincinnati, and the Jewish Studies Program at Vanderbilt University.