‘A Wagner for the Jews’: Moses Pergament,Richard Wagner and anti-Semitism in Swedish cultural life in the interwar period

This article deals with the Finnish-Swedish, Jewish composer and author Moses Pergament and his relationship with Wagner's theories, anti-Semitism in particular, and their influence on the development of modern Swedish classical music during the interwar period. The author emphasizes the importance of recognizing that Pergament's reaction to Wagner's cultural theories was part and parcel of his struggle for assimilation. The basis of Pergament's interpretation of Wagner was the notion that it is possible to separate life and belief: the anti-Semitism and enthusiastic lechery were part of Wagner's life, to which it was not necessary to attach much importance. The beliefs, on the other hand, were there to be analysed. Furthermore, an explicit and public critique of Wagner's anti-Semitism was inconsistent with an attempt to gain a foothold in Swedish cultural life. As Wagner's anti-Semitism was well known but was deemed either acceptable or irrelevant, paying attention to it was by definition proof of a Jewish identification. To be accepted as a Swedish music critic, Pergament had to follow the unwritten rules of the game, amongst them the requirement not to exhibit his ‘Jewishness’ openly. The actions of certain members of Föreningen Svenska Tonsättare (FST, the Association of Swedish Composers) indicate that Pergament's work was not thought to indicate a Swedish identification. On the contrary, his reviews were seen as a threat to ‘Swedish music’, and with implicit references to Wagner this was attributed to Pergament's supposed lack of feeling for the ‘spirit of the Swedish people’.     

The Significance of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue and Holocaust Studies for Catholic Ethics

Abstract

When I survey the vast field of literature on social ethics, including that from progressive Christian scholars, I find little, if any, recognition that the positive development in the understanding of the Christian-Jewish relationship these past forty years have any relevance for shaping Christian perspectives on social ethics today. In this presentation I share some reflections on various areas of study within the context of the Christian-Jewish dialogue, especially the experience of the Holocaust, which in my judgment do make an important difference in the way we present Christian thinking on social ethical questions. The positive impact of the Hebrew Scriptures is one important area as is the enhanced understanding of law in the Hebrew Scriptures and in Judaism generally. Also of significance is the growing body of literature linking Jesus positively to the Jewish tradition of his time, including in terms of his moral teaching. The same holds true for new studies on Paul's positive relationship to Judaism. Finally the Holocaust provides us with important links to contemporary moral issues such as genocide and human rights.     

Beyond the sacred language: on the liberal evolution of Hebrew in Jewish nationality

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to shed light on the evolution of the Jewish national language and to discuss the ways in which the cultural trends in Zionism constantly left room for the creative imagination of its adherents, and functioned in such a way as to erode its sacred dimension, thereby promoting a discourse focusing on the individual. My claim is that the Hebrew language case study may reflect the importance not only of national revisionist accounts for our understanding of the Zionist movement, but also the need for an approach that saves a place for truly creative aspects of civic engagement, and recognises the Israeli nation as one asserting, besides its ethnic ties also patriotic nexuses. Special attention will be given to the phenomenon of Hebrew poetry written by women in the 1920s as a platform from which to examine the unique meaning and evolution of language within the Jewish national movement.     

Beyond Mint and Rue: The Implications of Luke's Interpretive Controversies for Modern Consumerism

Abstract

Luke's Gospel features repeated confrontations between Jesus and the socio-religious elite of his day, in which Jesus disputes with his opponents regarding how the Hebrew Bible bears upon social ethics. The present essay examines the character of Jesus' controversial interpretations in the accounts of Jesus' polemics against the Pharisees and lawyers in Lk. 11:37-52 and 16:14-31. Against the paradigms of his contemporaries, Luke's Jesus stands in the stream of the Hebrew prophets, calling for fulfillment of the Law especially in terms of justice and mercy. After describing the contours of Luke's ethical interpretation of Scripture, the investigation seeks to imitate prophetic and Lukan interpretation. Luke's message challenges modern consumerist practice, particularly what sociologists have referred to as idealist consumption of symbols and status. Idealist consumption drives the western consumer to insatiable, narcissistic expenditure and neglect of the poor, and is dissonant with the prophetic summons to justice and mercy.     

A minority looks at the mendicants: Isaac Nathan the Jew and Thomas Connecte the Carmelite

This article focuses on the Thomas Connecte affair: the case of the charismatic friar who swept large areas of western European society along in pietistic and religious enthusiasm, established a reformist movement in several Carmelite convents, preached against the corruption of the priesthood, and was ultimately burned as a heretic in Rome in 1433 by the order of Pope Eugenius IV. The Hebrew testimony by the Jew Isaac Nathan concerning a pietistic movement led by an anonymous friar, which appears as an Exemplum in Nathan’s book, Me’ametz Koach, is identified here as being an account of Connecte, thus shedding new light on the Connecte affair in addition to providing a perspective on the broader question of the cultural relations between Jews and Christians in the 15th century. The analysis contained in the Hebrew Exemplum points to a complicated image of the ‘other’, that is, of Christianity, an image composed of negative aspects—Connecte and his movement—and positive aspects, as represented by the Pope’s response to Connecte. Isaac Nathan’s antagonism towards Thomas Connecte is situated here within the context of his general attitude towards the mendicants, and his simultaneous position within the Jewish community and as a member of the western European high bourgeoisie.     

The Aramaic Levi—Comparing the Qumran fragments with the Genizah text

ABSTRACT

Among the extra-biblical texts from Qumran we find the so-called Aramaic Levi, which can be described as a somewhat different variant of the “Testament of Levi,” a part of the larger Greek text “The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.”

Aramaic Levi, however, was already known from the Cairo Genizah. The following article is a linguistic comparison between the Qumran text and the version from the Cairo Genizah.

As Klaus Beyer has noticed, there are a lot of non-Hasmonean spellings and words in the Genizah text, but most of Beyer’s examples are from parts of the text that are not preserved in the Qumran fragments. Comparing the two versions, we now note that the deviations are of two kinds. As expected, the Genizah text often follows a later language than Qumran. This applies in particular to orthographic features and the use of status emphaticuswithout the definite sense. But in other places the Genizah text represents a language older than Hasmonean Aramaic, which we interpret as an adaptation to Bibli-cal Aramaic and sometimes to Hebrew.     

Becoming Cleopatra: the forgotten Zionism of Raphael Lemkin

The biography of Raphael Lemkin has emerged of late as a highly contested lieu de memoire in charged political debates in Europe, the United States and the Middle East about the meaning, past and present, of the Holocaust and genocide. At the same time, scholars have attempted to demythologize Lemkin by reinscribing his life into its pre-World War II Polish context. Yet thus far no one has identified the precise political activities and affiliations that shaped Lemkin’s concept of genocide. In this article, I show that Lemkin, far from being a Jewish Bundist, a Polish nationalist or an apolitical cosmopolitan, was an active member of the interwar Polish Zionist movement, from which he drew the ideas that inspired his idea of the crime of genocide. In the first part of this article, I use his published writings from the 1920s and 1930s in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish to recover a rich Jewish political framework in which his concepts of barbarism and genocide first began to emerge. In the second section, I ask how this crucial dimension of Lemkin’s life and thought vanished from the historical record, and why it has yet to be recovered in spite of the boom in biographical scholarship. Finally, I suggest how the recovery of Lemkin’s Zionism helps to reframe the current political impasse in the historiography of Holocaust and genocide studies.     

Some reflections on religion and nationalism

The metamorphosis undergone by Jewish women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the result of modernization, secularization, and education. Similarly, the offspring of the new Jewish woman, the “new Hebrew woman” was the embodiment of various schools of thought, in particular the liberal and the socialist, which were prevalent at that time. The new Hebrew woman offered a feminist interpretation of the malaise of the Jewish people in general, and of Jewish women in particular, challenging the roles designated to her by her male peers and offering her own alternative interpretation. She chose Eretz Yisrael and Zionism, to “auto-emancipate” herself rather than waiting passively for her emancipation by others. In this sense, the new Hebrew woman collaborated with and reflected the hegemonic Zionist ideals and priorities. This article aims to analyze the discourse of the new Hebrew woman, as manifested in Palestine-Eretz Yisrael in the first half of the twentieth century in order to shed light on the link between gender and nationalism in the Zionist context. In particular, it considers how men and women envisioned the new Hebrew woman; how class, political affiliation, and gender shaped their interpretation; and how the new Hebrew woman differed from her counterpart, the new Jewish woman.     

Karl Popper on Jewish Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

This paper re-contextualizes Karl Popper's thought within the anti-nationalist cosmopolitan tradition of the Central European intelligentsia. It argues that, although Popper was brought up in an assimilated Jewish Viennese household, from the perspective of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah tradition, he can be seen to be a modern day heterodox Maskil (scholar). Popper's ever present fear of anti-Semitism and his refusal to see Judaism as compatible with cosmopolitanism raise important questions as to the realisable limits of the cosmopolitan ideal. His inability to integrate an understanding of Jewishness in his cosmopolitan political ideal resulted in his strong opposition to Zionism and the state of Israel. By comparing Popper's positions with those of Hermann Cohen, another neo-Kantian philosopher, I argue that although their solutions fall short in certain respects, their arguments have continuing purchase in recent debates on cosmopolitanism and the problem of the integration of minority groups. In addition, the arguments of the Jewish Enlightenment thinkers offer important insights for the current debates on minority integration and xenophobia.     

A European Enlightenment in the Promised Land? The Jewish Kulturkampf at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the European Kulturkampf in the nineteenth century from the points of view of the Russian Hebrew writer Judah Leib Gordon and the founding father of the Zionist movement Theodor Herzl. Gordon’s literary outlook emphasizes the tension between the traditional Jewish religious leadership and the maskilim as an instance of the sweeping all-European Kulturkampf phenomenon, in which the problem of the rabbis was the last issue that had not yet been solved. He believed that the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel, without the elimination of the rabbis’ authority, carried serious dangers. In his dystopian feuilleton published in 1885 depicting the future Jewish state, he argued that the victory of liberalism was a historical necessity in order to avoid a radical orthodox and nationalistic hegemony. Like Gordon before him, Herzl feared that losing the basic humanistic principles of the Enlightenment the Jews had acquired in Europe would be one of the outcomes of their settling in the Land of Israel. In his 1902 utopian novel Altneuland he declared: “Stand by the principles that have made us great: Liberalism, Tolerance, Love of Mankind. Only then will Zion be truly Zion.” Gordon and Herzl both expressed their concerns in their fictional works, probably wishing that these would serve only as warning signs.     

Paul’s Euripides,Greek tragedy and Hebrew antiquity in Paradise Regain’d

ABSTRACT

The exchange between Satan and Jesus in Book IV of Paradise Regained is the first substantial account of tragedy in John Milton’s 1671 volume. In his response to Satan’s Athenian temptation, Jesus offers an alternative to the more familiar defence of tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes. Here, Jesus invokes the Hebrew prehistory of Attic tragedy, expanding Milton’s tragic archive beyond the antique Athenians themselves, drawing instead upon Clement of Alexandria and Socrates of Constantinople – both of whom support Milton’s idiosyncratic belief that Paul quoted Euripides at I Corinthians 15:33. And where Clement and Socrates support this tragic provenance, they also address the vexed relationship between Christian faith and heathen learning. Far from showing contempt for Athenian art or erudition, Milton invokes these Patristic sources to enable readers to locate Jesus’ critical response in a dynamic relationship to the relevant preface to Samson Agonistes.     

Israeli Perceptions of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Zionist thinkers assumed that the establishment of a Jewish state, which entailed a fundamental change in traits that non-Jews found contemptible, would bring an end to anti-Semitism. Yet after the 1967 war, the Soviet Union, the Western left and Third World governments, previously supportive of Israel, placed Israel in the camp of Western imperialism, while the emerging New Left identified Israel as imperialistic and racist. Against the background of the change in the international climate, debates in Israel over anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were shaped by domestic politics. While the right saw anti-Semitism as the cause of hostility to Israel, the left argued that anti-Zionism, rooted in political arguments about the Middle East conflict, fanned the flames of anti-Semitism. The attitude to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism became a cultural code, highlighting the divide between left and right, and between religious and secular.     

The Ordre Des Medecins and the Jews in Vichy France, 1940-1944

This paper examines the way in which the Jewish question washandled by the Ordre des Médecins, a representative institutionfor the medical profession created by the Vichy government.It discusses the historiography of Vichy anti-Semitism generallyand goes on to analyze the background of anti-Semitism in theFrench medical profession in the 1930s, comparing it with anti-Semitismin other professions such as Law. The paper then discusses thereactions of the Ordre des Médecins and its governingbody, the Conseil Supérieur, to the Vichy anti-Semiticlegislation which affected the profession and compares its brandof anti-Semitism with the official Vichy policy. It focuseson the unequal battle between the Conseil Supérieur,whose members were typically traditional nationalistic and protectionistanti-Semites, and the Vichy government, where quasi-racial anti-Semitismwas official policy. It explains the inevitable defeat of theConseil Supérieur.     

Nationalism,Reform Judaism and the Hebrew Prayer Book

ABSTRACT. The Hebrew prayer book (siddur), the oldest of which dates from the ninth century, frequently expresses Jewish chosenness and hopes for the gathering of the exiles and the return to the Land of Israel. In nineteenth‐century German Reform prayer books, such references to Jewish nationalism were altered or eliminated. In an age of growing European nationalism, this attempt to ‘de‐nationalise’ Jewish identity was virtually unique. Responding to accusations that Jewish citizenship in the modern nation‐state was incompatible with Judaism, Reform rabbis, who were engaged in the struggle for Jewish emancipation, claimed that patriotic loyalty to the German fatherland must supersede Jewish national identity. This article discusses the offending nationalist content of the siddur and the historical context in which it was suppressed. It concludes that the German reformers, by drawing attention to the nationalist potential of traditional Judaism, indirectly prepared the way for the rise of Jewish nationalism in reaction to racial anti‐Semitism in the late nineteenth century.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 33, Number 6. December 2017

Cover caption, volume 33 issue 6 Front Cover Rescuing tradition from the rubbish, a Jewish man in Israel recovers discarded sacred books. This scene serves as a metaphor for the struggle to hold on to tradition in the modern nation state of Israel. The achievement of political sovereignty is thought to be a form of liberation. It is supposed to bring freedom to the subaltern nations who attain it. But can the modern state create the conditions in which a once persecuted minority can finally flourish? Ethnonational states are always exclusionary. Israel inflicts the conditions that European Jews once suffered onto Palestinians, who have been displaced, disinherited, walled off; and even when they are citizens, they are always second class. But what about those at the center of sovereign citizenship: ‘the people’ themselves? Hannah Arendt reminded us that Jews were never quite at home in Europe. They had to be exceptional to be accepted. They had to be Jews, but not be like Jews, relegating their identity to the private sphere: ‘men in the street and Jews in the synagogue’. But these forces of ‘emancipation’ did not make them citizens like all others. The story of modernity and secularism in Europe is also foundational to nationalism and claims of self‐determination elsewhere. The question is whether or not emancipation has been achieved through political self‐determination, and if so, what such emancipation looks like. Do the forces of assimilation end with political self‐determination? Can a once persecuted people finally be liberated? Who feels free to be Jewish in the modern state of Israel? Whose cultures flourish and whose Jewish traditions can be practised freely? Who finally feels at home? And who, among the sovereign citizens of the ethnonational state, still experience a sense of exile, reflected in the need to rescue traditional texts from being tossed out with the rubbish? Back Cover: MALAGASY JUDAISM Through a warren of alleys in densely packed Antananarivo, capital of the island nation of Madagascar, there is a gated compound. Beyond the gate is a metal door to the entrance of the house within the compound. Emblazoned on it are a seven‐branched menorah and the Hebrew letter ? (shin, for Shaddai, God). Down the corridor, to the left, is a door with Hebrew writing affixed to it; behind it is a prayer room. Instead of pews or chairs, there are rugs, as one might expect to see in a mosque. This is Madagascar's synagogue, in the home of Tubiyya, the self‐taught Malagasy hazzan (Hebrew: cantor). Tubiyya stands next to his wife Miriam and their children. As with the man pictured on the front cover of this issue, Tubiyya sports payos – long strands of hair, sidelocks, that ultra‐Orthodox Jewish men grow on the sides of their faces, to obey the Old Testament commandment from the book of Leviticus 19: 7: ‘Ye shall not round off the edge‐growth of your heads, neither shalt thou diminish the corner edge‐growth of thy beard’. Most observant Jewish men do not follow this particular commandment. In this sense, the Malagasy Tubiyya and the Ashkenazi Haredim in Jerusalem (see front cover) represent small but visible minorities within the greater Jewish world. But they are outliers – both globally and locally – in a deeper, theopolitical sense: both are anti‐Zionist Haredim, rejecting the legitimacy of the Jewish State on religious grounds. The Messiah has not yet come to ‘ingather the exiles’. In the meantime, Israeli society is too secular for them. And yet, would the hawker on the front cover accept Tubiyya as a fellow Jew? Race and Jewish genealogy set them apart. This issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY bookends antipodes of Jewry, where inclusion and exclusion are in constant tension.     

Language and nation‐building in Israel: Hebrew and its rivals*

Abstract. The problem of language preceded the founding of Israel. In the nineteenth century, the emergence of political Zionism was accompanied by a revival of Hebrew. In the early years of Jewish resettlement in Palestine, Hebrew slowly emerged as the popular language, a compromise between the Yiddish spoken by Eastern European immigrants and the Arabic or Ladino current among many Middle Eastern Jews. After World War I, as educational institutions proliferated, the challenge of French and German as languages of instruction was blocked by teachers' strikes. With the establishment of the state and the massive influx of Jewish displaced persons, mostly speakers of Yiddish, that language, regarded as a potential threat to the primacy of Hebrew, was systematically fought by the country's political and cultural elite. Today, the position of Hebrew as the national language of Israel is secure. English, however, has been asserting its influence in an increasingly postindustrial and globalised society.     

魏玛共和国犹太人的德国认同

魏玛共和国犹太人在政治、文化和宗教生活方式上都表现出高度的德国认同。德国犹太人的这种国家认同既有重要的历史基础,也是现实的需要和客观环境压力的结果。魏玛共和国犹太人的德国认同突出表现在两个方面:一是将犹太教、犹太文化限定于宗教和文化的而非民族的层面,从而减少其与"德国国家认同"的冲突;二是强调犹太人与德国主流民族、语言、文化和历史的紧密关系。犹太人的德国认同对其族群产生了重要影响:犹太族群中发展出了对东方犹太人的歧视;排斥犹太复国主义;低估反犹主义的危害,以致对大规模地迫害、屠杀犹太人缺乏预见性等。     

Hebrew Literature and Jewish Nationalism in the Tsarist Empire 1881–1917

Abstract. After 1881, Hebrew literature in the tsarist empire became an integral part of the rise of Jewish nationalism, and it created literary norms which were transplanted to mandatory Palestine. This literature, in contrast to most pre-1881 Hebrew literature, is aesthetically on a very high level. Led by Mendele Mocher Sefarim in prose fiction and by Chaim Nachman Bialik in poetry, it asserted Jewish national feeling even when not overtly nationalistic. In doing so, it subverted tsarist authority and indirectly declared the Jews to be independent of the empire. Yet, in many of its main concerns this literature shows the influence of Russian literature, especially of the Reform Era, but also afterwards (Chekhov, in particular), and itmight even be regarded as an ethnic branch of Russian literature. Both literatures depicted the failings of their society with the aim of achieving social change. However, while Russian literature pointed to revolution, Hebrew literature after 1881 pointed to Palestine where most of the Hebrew writers of that period eventually emigrated.