Jews and the Left

The Rise and Fall of a Political Alliance

P. Mendes

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137008305
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

The historical involvement of Jews in the political Left is well known, but far less attention has been paid to the political and ideological factors which attracted Jews to the Left. After the Holocaust and the creation of Israel many lost their faith in universalistic solutions, yet lingering links between Jews and the Left continue to exist.

1

The beginnings of the Jewish attraction to the Left

This chapter traces the origin of the Jewish–Left alliance to the beginning of the modern era: the French Revolution of 1789, which promised equality, freedom, and an end to discrimination for all, including the Jews. The subsequent political emancipation of the Jews in most of Western and Central Europe provoked an anti-modern and specifically anti-Jewish backlash from traditional conservative groupings. Not surprisingly, Jews allied themselves with modern liberal forces and played an important role in the 1848 European revolutions which sought to entrench the gains of liberalism. However, the ensuing failure of liberalism to protect Jewish rights later led many Jews to seek new allies within the growing socialist movement.

1 The influence of the European Enlightenment

Prior to 1789, most European Jews lived in segregated ghettos, had restricted access to professions, were subjected to special taxes and lacked civil and political rights. Many Jews experienced lives of social and economic degradation. Anti-Jewish discrimination reflected a range of factors including ancient religious prejudice and stereotypes concerning allegedly exploitative Jewish trade and financial practices (Maccoby, 2006; Sachar, 1977).

However, the legal and social exclusion of Jews from broader society was increasingly challenged by the European Enlightenment in the late 18th century, which demanded liberty and equality for all, irrespective of religious affiliation. To be sure, some famous philosophers, such as Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Baron d’Holbach and Diderot, derided Jews as a backward religious order enmeshed in medieval superstition and chauvinistic, immoral behaviour.

Although Voltaire opposed the Inquisition’s religious persecution of Jews, he still hated and despised Jews. In his Philosophical Dictionary, he wrote:

You will find in the Jews an ignorant, lazy, barbarous people who for a long time have combined the most undignified stinginess with the most profound hatred for all the people who tolerate them and enrich them. (1756, p. vii.)

He attacked the Jews not only for what he regarded as their obscurantist religious beliefs, but also for their contemporary behaviour, which he depicted as money-hungry, lazy, ignorant, and hostile to other cultures. His construction of Jews as an alien group that could not be successfully integrated into European society would later influence the development of a secular-based racial anti-Semitism (Cesarani, 2004; Hertzberg, 1968).

But others favoured equal rights for Jews in the belief that this would enable Jews to leave behind negative cultural characteristics such as the practice of usury that they had developed as a result of oppression. For example, the German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing contested negative stereotypes of Jews as superstitious and anti-social. Lessing famously befriended the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who demonstrated that Jews could engage in secular and rational thinking when given the opportunity to do so. Mendelssohn in turn influenced the Prussian political reformer Christian Wilhelm von Dohm who published the 1781 treatise, On the Civil Improvement of the Jews. Dohm argued in relation to the disabilities afflicting the Jews of the French province of Alsace-Lorraine that negative Jewish traits were the consequence of discrimination, and that the granting of equal rights would assist Jews to shed these traits (Cesarani, 2004).

Jean Jacques Rousseau admired the Jews, and praised their commitment to civilized communal traditions and legal codes. Montesquieu recommended an end to anti-Jewish discrimination as a means of improving the character of the Jews. So did the Metz Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences which sponsored an essay competition in 1787 on the topic: ‘Are there means for making the Jews happier and more useful in France?’ The French rationalist Count Mirabeau and the liberal cleric, Abbe Henri Gregoire, who won first prize in the Metz Academy essay competition, persistently supported Jewish equality. Both argued that Jewish faults were produced by legal and social disabilities, and that Jews should be freed to contribute to society as equal citizens. They would jointly lead the struggle for Jewish equality in the early years of the French revolution (Brenner, 2010; Hertzberg, 1968; Sachar, 1977).

2 The influence of the 1789 French Revolution

The French Revolution granted equality to the Jews of France, and these rights were later extended to Jews throughout much of Europe – Germany, Italy and the Netherlands – by the conquering Napoleonic armies. This was despite the fact that Jews played only a limited role in the revolution, though more than 100 of the approximately 1000 Jews in Paris, even including a few rabbis, joined the Republican National Guard, and others were active as district electors and associate judges (Berkovitz, 2004; Lazare, 1967; Malino, 1996).

The arguments in favour of Jewish emancipation were summarized by the radical Jacobin leader Robespierre during a December 1789 debate:

Things have been said to you about the Jews that are infinitely exaggerated and often contrary to history. How can the persecutions they have suffered at the hands of different peoples be held against them? . . . Faults are still imputed to them, prejudices, exaggerated by the sectarian spirit and by interests. But to what can we really impute them but our own injustices? After having excluded them from all honours, even the right to public esteem, we have left them with nothing but the objects of lucrative speculation. Let us deliver them to happiness, to the homeland, to virtue, by granting them the dignity of men and citizens; let us hope that it can never be policy, whatever people say, to condemn to degradation and oppression a multitude of men who live among us (2007, p. 4).

Initially, the French National Assembly in 1789–90 granted citizenship to the Sephardic Jews living in Bordeaux, but excluded the Ashkenazi Jews of Alsace-Lorraine in the face of an anti-Semitic backlash from farmers who were in debt to Jewish money-lenders. This backlash included serious riots which injured over 1000 Jews. There was also opposition from conservatives and royalists associated with the defence of the church and the monarchy. However, Jewish advocates were able to secure the support of the Parisian lawyer Jacques Godard, who was associated with the radical Paris Commune. The Commune carefully considered the claims of the Jews, and affirmed the brotherhood of all men even if their religious opinions differed. Eventually, the French General Assembly, which had come under the control of the radical Jacobins, voted in September 1791 for the admission of all Jews to the full rights of French citizenship (Malino, 1996; Podhoretz, 2009; Sachar, 1977).

However, Jewish equality was granted only on the condition that Jews integrate into broader society. According to Count Stanislaus de Clermont-Tonnerre, a deputy who supported Jewish rights during the December 1789 National Assembly debate,

To the Jews as a nation everything is to be denied; everything should be given to them as individuals; they must not constitute a political body nor an order within the state; they must be citizens individually. (Cesarani, 2004, p. 14.)

On coming to power in 1799, Napoleon, although sympathetic to grievances against Jewish money-lenders, defended equal rights for Jews in France. This was despite renewed conservative campaigns associating Jews with usury, forgery, national separatism and hostility to all Christians. Some critics even alleged that Napoleon was the leader of a Jewish plot to destroy the Catholic church, or a secret Jew himself. But equally his deal with the Jews, following the famous convening of the Sanhedrin in 1807, gave them everything as individual French citizens, but nothing as a distinct Jewish collective (Buruma and Margalit, 2004; Katz, 1980; Sachar, 1977).

3 The Conservative backlash against Jewish equality

Following the defeat of Napoleon, the conservative backlash eroded the gains of Jewish emancipation and restored many of the old disabilities. The 1815 Vienna Congress empowered individual German states to restore their old constitutions, and revoke the citizenship rights obtained by Jews whilst they had been under Napoleonic rule. Some German rulers even expelled Jews from their cities. In addition, significant limitations were placed on Jewish access to the civil service, higher military office, judicial appointments, and election to provincial parliaments.

The legal revocation of Jewish rights was accompanied by serious outbreaks of popular anti-Semitism such as the ‘Hep Hep riots’ that took place in Germany during 1819. These riots reflected a combination of older religious prejudices and modern stereotypes pertaining to the alleged economic power of Jews. Similar anti-Jewish attacks would later accompany the 1830 revolution in France, and the 1848 European-wide revolutions (Brenner, 2010; Dubnov, 1973; Winock, 1998).

Conservative opponents of Jewish emancipation, such as monarchists and clerics, claimed that Jews were a separate nation who could never assimilate into mainstream European society. For example, the German theologian Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus argued that the legal underpinnings of the Jewish religion precluded Jewish allegiance to other national causes. Other leading German academics argued that the Jews were a dysfunctional people who gained power through their control of money, blamed them for various social and economic problems associated with the modern economy, and urged that they be denied civil rights and restricted in their occupations and economic activities (Dubnov, 1973; Katz, 1980; 1986; Podhoretz, 2009).

In response to this conservative backlash, many Jews came to closely identify their interests with the triumph of liberal ideas defending freedom of the individual. This synthesis between liberalism and Jewish emancipation explains the important role played by Jews in the subsequent European revolutions which sought to entrench the gains of liberalism (Sachar, 1977).

4 The influence of the Haskalah

Another key factor in guiding many Jews towards liberalism was the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Followers of the Haskalah were mostly urban, middle-class Jewish intellectuals and students called maskilim, or humanists, who promoted the reformist ideas that had originated with Moses Mendelssohn in mid-18th-century Germany. Maskilim emphasized the integration of Jews with the modern world via the adoption of rational secular European thought, the shredding of Jewish cultural customs from the ghetto, including traditional modes of dress and the use of the Yiddish language that segregated Jews from their gentile peers, and the rejection of religious obscurantism. They urged Jews to shift from petty commerce into more productive and dignified occupations.

The Haskalah promoted opportunities for secular Jewish education incorporating the use of modern Hebrew language and literature, and the introduction of contemporary Jewish scholarship based on science, rather than traditional religious orthodoxy as taught in the traditional Jewish schools or cheder. The teachings of the Haskalah produced a generation of secular Jewish intellectuals who would play a key role in the early Russian socialist movement (Frankel, 1981; Liebman, 1979; Mendelsohn, 1970; Patkin, 1947; Sachar, 1977; Vital, 1999).

5 Jewish involvement in the 1830 and 1848 European liberal revolutions and early socialism

Jews were active in the 1830 and 1848 revolutionary upheavals, contributing prominently to liberal campaigns for constitutional government and freedom of speech, press and religion in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Romania and Hungary.

A number of Jews played an active role in the 1830 French Revolution which brought Louis Philippe to power. Among the prominent Jewish participants were Michel Goudchaux, who was wounded whilst leading a large group that stormed the Tuileries on July 29, Philippe Anspach, Michel Alcan, Olinde Rodrigues, Adolphe Cremieux and Josue Leon. However, most Jews were politically inactive at this time, although about half the members of the small groups promoting the work of the early socialist Saint-Simonist movement were Jewish (Szajkowski, 1947; 1970; Talmon, 1960).

Many Jews participated in the 1848 French political uprising. The Grand Rabbi of the Consistoire Central marched jointly with Catholic and Protestant clerics under a banner stating, ‘Union des cultes. Fraternité universelle’. The new republican government included two Jewish ministers: Cremieux as Minister of Justice, and Goudchaux as Minister of Finance. Both were political moderates (Baron, 1974; Kahn, 1889; Szajkowski, 1970).

Thousands of Jews were involved in the abortive uprisings of Mazzini’s Young Italy movement in the early 1830s. A number of Mazzini’s closest political associates and financial supporters were Jewish. Mazzini and his liberal successors were consistent proponents of Jewish emancipation in Italy. Jews were also prominent in the 1848 revolution, including the leader of the Venetian revolution, Daniel Manin. Two other Jews served as ministers in the short-lived Venetian republic, eight Jews including several Rabbis were elected to the National Assembly, and large numbers of Jews participated in the various armies of liberation. The republican governments in various Italian states promptly granted equal citizenship to their Jewish populations (Baron, 1974; Dubnov, 1973; Sachar, 1977).

Even prior to 1848, Jews were active in the early movements for liberal and constitutional reform in Germany, notably the leading intellectuals Gabriel Riesser, Ludwig Borne and Heinrich Heine. Many Jews, including large numbers of university students, journalists, doctors and other professionals, participated in the 1848 campaign for a democratic republic. About 20 of the 230 fighters killed on the barricades in Berlin were Jewish. A number of Jews, such as Gabriel Riesser and the physicians Johann Jacoby and Raphael Kosch, were elected to prominent posts in the state national assemblies, and Jews also participated in the various congresses, mass rallies, political clubs and demonstrations. Stephan Born led the first all-German trade union movement, and Karl Marx and Dr Andreas Gottschalk were among the leading figures in the radical democratic congress. Most of the German states influenced by the revolutionary events approved civil equality for Jews, but these rights were not sustained when the counter-revolutionaries regained power (Baron, 1974; Elon, 2004; Kober, 1948; Sachar, 1977).

Jewish students and young professionals such as doctors, lawyers and journalists were active in significant numbers in the Austrian uprising. Eight of the 29 signatories of the revolutionary ‘Manifesto of Vienna Writers’ were Jewish. Two young Jewish doctors, Adolf Fischhof and Joseph Goldmark, attained prominent positions: Fischhof was appointed head of the Committee on Security, which maintained law and order in Vienna, and was virtually the ruler of Austria; Goldmark was a leader of the student legion. Another leader was Ludwig Frankl, secretary of the Jewish community, who authored the famous poem of student revolt, ‘Die Universitat’. In addition, a couple of rabbis were elected as deputies to the Austrian National Assembly, and the funeral service for leading revolutionaries in March 1848 – two out of the five who died were Jewish – was conducted jointly by a rabbi, a Catholic priest and a Protestant pastor (Baron, 1974; Dubnov, 1973; Feuer, 1969; Rurup, 1981; Sachar, 1977).

The leader of the Hungarian revolutionary movement, Louis Kossuth, expressed strong support for Jewish emancipation. As a result, approximately 10–20,000 Jews joined the Hungarian National Army, and a number of rabbis blessed the revolutionary cause. However, their specific influence on revolutionary activities seems to have been limited, and no Jews acquired high military or political office (Rurup, 1981; Sachar, 1977). Some Jews were also active in the Romanian revolution, including most prominently Daniel Rosenthal, who was arrested for distributing revolutionary propaganda in Hungary (Dubnov, 1973).

Jewish involvement in liberalist movements reflected the support of these movements for Jewish legal and political equality. In addition, German Jewish intellectuals such as Moses Hess, Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle were influential in the promotion of early radical and socialist ideas. A number of Jews participated in the early conferences of the Socialist International founded in London in 1864, including Karl Marx, James Cohen representing Denmark, Coenen from Belgium, Fribourg and four other Jewish colleagues from France, Neumayer from Austria, Cohen from England, and Leon Frankel from Germany (Lazare, 1967).

A small number of Jews such as Armand Levy, Simon Mayer and Gaston Cremieux were active in the 1871 Paris Commune. Levy was a long-time leader of the French labour movement, and was also well known for his support for the rights of Jews in Romania. Cremieux was executed by the French Government for having supported the Commune. In addition, Karl Marx’s London address defending and lauding the Paris Communards gained significant notoriety. However, none of these early radicals developed a specifically Jewish form of socialism (Baron, 1974; Szjakowski, 1970; Wolfe, 1994).

The prominence of some Jews in the 1848 revolutions and later the 1871 Commune – including particularly the leading international role of Karl Marx – did not go unnoticed. Both sympathetic commentators such as Disraeli (1905) and anti-Semites were quick to identify most or all Jews with political radicalism and violent revolution (Baron, 1974; Carroll, 2001; Gailus, 2002; Kober, 1948). For example, Kaiser Frederick William IV alleged that the 1848 German revolution was masterminded by ‘budding Robespierres and Jews’ (Von Ranke, 1873, p. 169). Similarly, the leading German historian Heinrich Treitschke accused Jews of being the revolution’s ‘Oriental cheerleaders’ (Elon, 2004, p. 160).

This guilt by association was highly simplistic given that a number of the leading Jewish radicals were either converts and/or alienated from organized Jewish life, and Marx himself was openly hostile to Jews, as we discuss in Chapter 2. And equally, most of the Jewish activists were liberal centrists and not particularly radical. Overall, the Jews active in European liberal reform movements (and the much smaller number involved in early socialist groups) were arguably not representative of most Jews. Many Jews, including particularly those who were wealthy or ultra-orthodox, rejected Jewish involvement in radical activities either on philosophical grounds or because their economic interests were threatened by political reform or because they feared these activities would provoke an anti-Semitic backlash (Elon, 2004; Pulzer, 1994; Rurup, 1981; Szjajkowski, 1970). In fact, this development was reflective of later patterns whereby the disproportionate radicalism of the minority of Jews who were politically active would often be misinterpreted by outside society as representative of all Jews, even though most Jews were not socialists, and many Jewish radicals were estranged from their Jewish background.

After 1848, political conservatives succeeded in thwarting implementation of many of the intended liberal reforms, producing a temporary setback to the cause of Jewish emancipation. Earlier laws restricting the rights of Italian Jews were reinstated, and Pope Pius IX returned Jews to the ghettos. Restored German monarchs rescinded legislation for Jewish emancipation as did Prince Schwarzenberg of Austria in 1851 (Baron, 1974; Dubnov, 1973; Sachar, 1977).

However, in the following two decades most Western and Central European countries granted full legal and political rights to their Jewish populations. For example, individual German states such as Baden in 1862 and Wurttemberg in 1864 passed laws granting equal citizenship for all. Similar laws were passed by Austria-Hungary in 1867, and the North German Confederation in 1869. In 1871 the constitution of the newly united Germany approved equal rights for all religious groups. These advances matched the 1858 Act of the English parliament giving non-Christians the right to run for public office. The American Constitution of 1790 had also granted equal rights to Jews (Brenner, 2010; Katz, 1986; Pulzer, 1988).

Nonetheless, too often the political emancipation of Jews was not matched by an end to social discrimination. Even wealthy Jews tended to be excluded from dominant political and economic structures and institutions (Michels, 1962). Moreover, the granting of Jewish rights was frequently accompanied by a severe anti-Semitic backlash. In Germany, Austria, France and other European countries, new nationalist movements emerged which sought to blame Jews – whether as bankers and financiers or alternatively as revolutionaries – for all the social and economic changes and inequities associated with modern industrial society. This racial hatred of Jews was to reach its initial climax in the infamous Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century (Diner and Frankel, 2004; Lerner, 2012b).

The backlash against Jewish equality was largely driven by right-wing conservative movements seeking to protect traditional national and religious hierarchies and privileges (often agrarian) against what they perceived as Jewish/urban inspired processes of modernity. Such groups sought to exclude Jews from national political participation and representation. In contrast, liberals and, later, Left groups defended Jewish equality (including the right of Jews to be politically active) as an integral s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The beginnings of the Jewish attraction to the Left
• 2. Anti-Semitism and support for Jewish rights: an analysis of socialist attitudes to the Jews
• 3. Socialism, Zionism and the State of Israel
• 4. From the universalist to the particular: Jewish involvement in the Left
• 5. A critical analysis of the myth of Judeo-Communism
• 6. The postwar decline of the Jewish–Left alliance: From the international to the national solution
• 7. Exceptions to the rule: The continuing prominence of left-wing Jews in the postwar period
• 8. Left-wing Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel
• 9. Conclusion
• References
• Index