Assimilation, Normalcy and Jewish Self-Hatred
Shlomo Sharan
Introduction
During the late 18th and early 19th century, “enlightened” Jews in Western and Central Europe
accepted the fundamental premise of anti-Semitism that something was basically wrong with
the Jews, and, only if they would change their own behavior, would the world accept them.
As the 19th century wore on, large numbers of Jews became immersed in assimilation. Many
adopted the notion that other Jews and/or the Jewish People were not normal. Some displayed
what is known as Jewish self-hatred or as Jewish anti-Semitism. In our time, these two
phenomena are no longer peripheral issues. They have penetrated deeply into the Jewish
People and must be understood and reckoned with as a major theme in Jewish life (Gilman,
1986; Kaufman, 1936; Lessing, 1930/2004). Both the sense of Jewish abnormality as well as
Jewish self-hatred must be viewed against the background of Jewish assimilation.
Three Types of Assimilation
This discussion distinguishes three types or manifestations of assimilation:
I) Assimilation as acculturation, without a sense of abnormality.
II) Assimilation with a sense of abnormality and a search for normality.
III) Assimilation with a sense of abnormality and with rejection of, or antagonism toward,
Jewry, Judaism or Israel. This latter type is called self-hatred or Jewish anti-Semitism,
the latter two terms being inter-changeable (Demakovsky, 1978; Gilman, 1986).
Type I is the foundation for Types II and III. It has not yet been determined if the three types
form a scale, if they indicate degrees of assimilation or if they describe a process of
development. One can be assimilated almost totally without any sense of abnormality or signs
of self-hatred. Type II, the sense of abnormality, is probably most often included in Type III,
but the reverse is not true. A sense of abnormality might tend to generate an attitude of selfhatred, but in many instances that is not the case, and a sense of Jewish abnormality is clearly
not always accompanied by self-hatred. The basic assumption here is that Types II and III of
assimilation can appear without one invariably preceding the other.
Type III assimilation, self-hatred, can stem from many different sources. An individual may
have a vast range of experiences, memories, concepts or motives that “explain” the
emergence of Jewish anti-Semitism, from family or peer relationships all the way to highly
rationalized political or theological theories. We cannot point to a specific configuration of
circumstances that necessarily generates Type II or Type III assimilation. Nor can the three
types of assimilation be measured simply by the extent of someone’s religious observance or
lack of it. Its many dimensions and levels appear among observant as well as among nonreligious Jews. Types II and III of assimilation may emerge from different historical, social or
psychological backgrounds, but the outcome is the same.
Assimilation: Type I
Type I assimilation forms the basis and background for the other two types of assimilation
presented above. As used here, Type I assimilation refers to the virtually universal
phenomenon of adopting some or many elements of the culture of a dominant group or nation
by members of another group or nation. Assimilation is a natural and expected phenomenon
and does not entail any pejorative meaning. Jewish assimilation is a process of acculturation
into a non-Jewish society. Jews adopted many features of each and every culture in which
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they lived throughout the centuries including our own. That process assumed a variety of
forms and degrees, and has not been uniform among Jewish groups in all countries.
Assimilation: Conscious and Unconscious
Assimilation per se is not necessarily pursued consciously as a goal. Perhaps a majority of
Jews proceed along the path of assimilation with minimum consciousness about what is
happening to them as Jews and what the future holds for their descendents. Anyone who gives
the matter a thought probably assumes that nothing unusual will happen to one’s descendents
as far as their Jewishness is concerned, and they will continue to be Jewish just as he or she is
now.
Nevertheless, assimilation cannot be a totally unconscious process however much individual
Jews may prefer to ignore it or however much assimilation may in fact be beyond the
awareness or control of the individual. The social, political and religious conditions of the
Jews in the Galut (the Jewish Diaspora) everywhere impinge on individuals’ decisions
regarding their Jewishness: Will they accept the norms of gentile society, or will they invest
effort to resist them? People must make many critical decisions about the direction of their
lives that profoundly affect the nature of their assimilation. In many ways Jewish history is
the story of Jewry’s resistance to forces threatening to corrode and destroy Jewish life. But it
is also a story of the overwhelming power of assimilation that has engulfed Jewish life for the
past two centuries and transformed it (Kaufman, 1930-32; Vago, 1981). Intermarriage often
entails some awareness of taking a step away from the Jewish group. Intermarriage is one of
the primary social mechanisms leading to the ultimate dissolution of one’s ethnic-culturalhistorical affiliation, even though more than one generation is required to eradicate the traces
of one’s ethnic-historical origins.
Alongside the relatively unquestioned or unconscious adoption of the dominant culture, there
is also an ideology of conscious assimilation expressed by some Jews. This “school of
thought” asserts that the United States and other Western democratic countries have fulfilled
the conditions for total cultural and political integration of Jews into non-Jewish society, such
as the following statement by an American rabbi:
It is altogether possible for the American Jew to achieve that fullness of integration with the
“people of the land” that was denied to the Jews of Central Europe. Here the Jewish immigrant
may well strive to become part not only of the “political” state that is America, but of that
popular matrix of sentiments, ideals, memories and dreams, traditions and even prejudices that
constitute the American nation...the Jew can be utterly at home, thinking of himself as an
American of the Jewish faith, as “normal” in the civil sense of the term as any other citizen...
(Agus, 1954: 505).
Assimilation and Intra-Jewish Conflict
Assimilation has also spawned conflicts and antagonism among Jews. Some who consciously
pursue assimilation occasionally oppose Jewish groups who appear to be too Jewish and to
challenge the success of assimilation. The “ethnic” “nationalist” or “religious” Jews allegedly
serve to remind non-Jews that Jewry is a collective body that differs from the dominant group
or from other nations. Assimilationists outside Israel want to be recognized as local patriots
who are clearly distinguished from particularist “ethnic” Jews, while inside Israel they wish to
be viewed as liberals who have a cosmopolitan ethic. Among the numerous examples of this
phenomenon in the United States during the first half of the 20th century are Arthur Hays
Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, and Lessing Rosenwald (the Sears Roebuck
corporation), along with their colleagues from the American Council for Judaism, who fought
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strenuously against Zionism and religious groups (Leff, in press). Others have since taken
their place (Schoenfeld, 2004).
Awareness of being Jewish can be jolted suddenly by events such as outbursts of antiSemitism, war in Israel (such as the Six-Day War), a personal search for identity, and so
forth. Anti-Semitism now on the rise in Europe in part may be in response to Arab pressure,
but mainly is the continuation of Europe’s age-old hatred of the Jews (Gerstenfeld, 2003;
Sharansky, 2003; Schoenfeld, 2004). In some cases, the new wave of anti-Semitism rekindles
Jewish awareness and identification. In others it intensifies assimilation. Most typically,
assimilation entails alienation from, and ignorance of one’s history and heritage, except for
the Jews who have decided to resist assimilation one way or the other.
The 4 1/2 million Jews from many countries who immigrated to Israel during the past 54
years came from the same families and background as the Jews who remained in the Galut,
and they brought with them their way of life and attitudes. They were not suddenly reborn in
Israel with a new culture. They are also subject to the same assimilatory processes that
prevailed in the countries from which they emigrated. Many Jews who settled in Palestine
prior to 1948 shared a socialist, even Soviet-communist ideology whose impact can be
observed in political circles in Israel to this day (Dothan, 1996; Lord, 2000; Kantzler, 1979;
Shiloah, 1991). Some had deeply negative notions about the Jewish People and about Jewish
national identity, and retained strong anti-religious views (Canaani, 1976; Schoenfeld, 2004;
Sharan and Birnbaum, 1999; Stav, 2003). These attitudes persist in Israel, and may continue
to do so for generations to come.
The Alleged Abnormality of Jewry: Type II Assimilation
The Normal and Abnormal
Type II of assimilation refers to Jews who believe that their fellow Jews, or the Jewish
People, are abnormal in some way. The belief that Jews are abnormal, disturbed or deviant
seems to stem from the acceptance by Jews of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Fifteen centuries or
more of exposure to hatred and persecution in Europe and in the Middle East has left its mark
on many Jews who came to believe that other Jews were abnormal.
One such manifestation appeared in the field of psychology. Many outstanding figures of 20th
century psychology and psychoanalysis were Jews, a few of whom accepted from German
and French psychiatry the notion that Jews were inclined to mental illness. Jewish hypervulnerability to mental illness was accepted as beyond question by Charcot, Kraft-Ebbing,
Bleuler and other first magnitude authors of psychiatric works during the 19th and early 20th
century (Gilman, 2000). This is only one form of abnormality attributed to Jews by antiSemites and later by Jews who adopted those negative stereotypes.
The list of negative features of Jewish abnormality accepted by non-Jews and Jews is too long
and odious to be reproduced here (Gilman, 1984). Someone can believe that he/she is
abnormal in different ways and for a vast number of reasons. In modern times, the Jews have
sought normalcy conceived of as acceptance by European/American culture. Jews could not
accept being different from Western (Christian) society, and some groups within the Jewish
People clung to the idea that being different also meant that Jews were not normal. Racialethnic groups in the West (from Russia to South America) who are very different from the
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dominant Western culture, do not think of themselves as abnormal. Of course they do not
suffer the consequences of being the bearers of Jewry’s historical legacy.
Jewish assimilationists still preach the idea that Jews should strive to be normal so they would
not be different from Europeans or Americans (Yehoshua, 1984). With the loss of ethnicreligious-national self-esteem that often accompanies assimilation, Jews became far more
vulnerable to the terrible impact of anti-Semitism than ever before. That made it all the more
imperative for them to be accepted as normal and to shed what they believed to be their
differences from the dominant groups in Europe and the United States (Vital, 1999).
The Pathological Search for Normalcy
Non-Zionists as well as Zionists were engaged in searching for, or creating, a “normal” life
for the Jewish People. “Much of the theory of Zionism has been concerned with making the
Jews into a normal nation in Palestine like the gentiles of the lands and the families of the
earth” (Magnes, 1930, in Hertzberg, 1959, 447). The author Haim Hazaz places that same
ideology in the mouth of Yudke (The “Galut” Jew), the protagonist of his story The Sermon
(1946/1976). But, for Yudke, as well as for the entire Zionist critique of Jewish life, our
abnormality expressed itself in Jewry’s lack of control over its own history. Zionism rejected
the social-national condition in which the Jews lived in the Galut, and sought to rejuvenate
and restore Jewish life (Schweid, 1983). Despite the claims of a few notable authors, Zionism
was NOT a critique of the Jews’ culture or personality (Kaufman, 1930-32; 1936; 1952). The
non-Zionist, assimilationist version of Jewish abnormality claimed that there were flaws in
the character of the Jew as a person, and these flaws could be remedied by assimilation into
non-Jewish society and culture.
The Jews are not the only people to import cultural patterns from other groups or nations.
Nations around the world have adopted portions of American material culture, but did not
necessarily adopt the cultural-political norms of American society. Hence they did not
relinquish their unique historical civilization and identity (Huntington, 1996), nor do they
harbor a sense of abnormality about their own nation. A sense of being an abnormal People
expressed by Jews in and outside of Israel is rooted in a far-reaching loss of Jewish selfesteem and assimilation into the mentality and value system of the non-Jewish world (Sharan,
2003; Sharansky, 2003). Even Israel’s political behavior is frequently dictated by adoption of
other nations’ norms rather than by a need to assert, or even defend, Israel’s own national
interests. The more Israel adheres to other nations’ demands, the less it behaves as a normal
nation. Paradoxically, then, seeking normality in the eyes of others reinforces Jewry’s status
as an abnormal group in the eyes of others, and in its own eyes.
The latter statement stands in contrast with the view current among post-Zionist Jews in
Israel. A.B.Yehoshua wrote:
...clarification of the concept of Zionism for the nations of the world will, in my opinion, result
in a distinct decline in the wave of recent attacks on us. It is even possible that it will lead to a
renewal of the historic friendliness that the world displayed toward the process of Jewish
normalization (in Israel –SS)(Yehoshua, 1984: 136).
This is another variation on the theme of the conscious pursuit of normalcy by the “abnormal”
Jewish People as a means for achieving national acceptance by other nations. According to
A.B. Yehoshua and like-minded people, Israel will not be accepted in our present state of
abnormality as expressed in Zionism’s assertion of Jewry’s historical and legal ownership of
the Land of Israel. Jews in the Galut are also abnormal because Galut is ipso facto neurotic.
Attributing abnormality to the Jews in Israel and in the Galut instead of focusing attention on
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Jewry’s precarious survival in the Diaspora or in Israel is to misunderstand and misrepresent
Jewry’s predicament.
Assimilation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for thinking that the Jews are
abnormal. It is a necessary condition that is fulfilled in the lives of almost all Jews today. The
sufficient condition needed for thinking that the Jewish People is abnormal, or for harboring
animosity toward it, is the inability to tolerate being ourselves, to be different. Today Jewry
and Israel are denounced as a People that does not accept the prevailing views of European
nations (Gerstenfeld, 2003; Sharansky, 2003; Schoenfeld, 2004). Not a few Jews seek neartotal conformity to gentile culture, to the point of accepting their enemies’ claims that deny
Israel’s right to be a Jewish nation in its own territory. Some maintain that Jewry’s
sovereignty in Israel should be abandoned, while others insist that it should be shared with the
Arabs whatever the consequences. Several European nations want Israel to conform to their
national interests that conflict with those of Israel and not do what nations normally do in
their own defense. Jews afflicted with a sense of abnormality and with self-hatred accept that
demand.
The “sickness” of some groups of Jews is not the mental aberration of individuals, as some
some psychologists in Germany believed (Gilman, 2000). Rather, the abnormality exhibited
by some Jews is expressed in the conviction that our differences from the gentile world must
be eradicated in order for us to be normal. Hence, the Jews’ search for normalcy is the chief
expression of our pathology. A.B. Yehoshua wrote succinctly: “The Jewish People is a
people like all other peoples, and I am amazed at the extent to which that simple truth is not
apparent to others” (Yehoshua, 1984, 64). Given the conviction that Jewry is like all other
peoples – NOT in the sense that the individual Jew is a human being like all other human
beings - Yehoshua and his comrades in ideology cannot possibly comprehend why so many
Jews do not agree with them.
No nation willingly abandons its heritage in order to eliminate its differences from other
nations, or believes that those differences indicate anything abnormal about itself. Being
different from other nations is the universal condition of all nations, and hence, by definition,
completely normal. There is no better description of normality than the universality of
national differences. The demand by Jews and non-Jews alike for Jewish assimilation is
the abiding legacy of Galut. Jewry survived the Galut because we are different. It is not the
case that Jewry became different because it lived in the Galut.
No other nation experienced anything akin to the history of the Jewish People in terms of its
particular religion, culture, its victimization by Christianity and Islam, and of course its twomillennia saga of exile, homelessness and return. “To whom shall we compare Thee?” the
Hebrew daily prayers address to God. The same may be said with great accuracy about the
Hebrew nation itself. Jewry, like all other nations, held the conviction that we are worthy and
proud of being different, of being who we are. In religious terms, or poetic terms if you will,
God made us different. The God of Israel symbolizes Jewry’s difference from other nations
for the past 3500 years. Many Jews in modern times are less and less able to tolerate the
differences between us and the other nations. To think that we are abnormal is the
consequence of our lack of tolerance for ourselves and for our condition in respect to the
other nations.
Self-Hatred: Type III Assimilation
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Type III assimilation is the manifestation of self-hatred or Jewish anti-Semitism. Self-hatred
does not mean that somone hates himself/herself. The term refers to the denial of the
connection between oneself and one’s group and/or between one’s group and its historicalcultural identity. When Jews deny their own identity, or when they unjustly denounce, delegitimize, degrade or defame the Jewish People or the nation of Israel, they should be
perceived as self-haters.
Some Jews narrowly avoid falling into the category of self-hatred because they remain
committed to a positive affirmation of Jewish life. Identifying those who have descended to
the level of self-hatred cannot be free of controversy. Still, the denunciations of some Jews of
other Jews or of groups of Jews, or the steps taken to degrade or betray Jews or the Jewish
nation, in not a few instances reaches a degree of ridicule or deceit that must not be dismissed.
Assimilation does not entail self-hatred unless it is accompanied by denying, negating,
denouncing, or otherwise expressing rejection of: a. Jewry’s national character, b. its
cultural-religious heritage, c. one’s relationship to either or both of them.
Self-hatred does not refer to legitimate criticism intended to improve Jewish life. Constructive
criticism is vital for a healthy society. The defamation by Jews of other Jews, the Jewish
People, Judaism (in any of its manifestations) or Israel that negates their legitimacy or one’s
relationship to them, is self-hatred, not self-criticism. That criterion is universally recognized
as the sine qua non for self-acceptance and for mutual respect and acceptance among groups
and nations. Self-respecting persons, groups or nations do not reject their relationship to their
own history or debate the justice of their existence. “Negotiations” of that kind are contrary to
the fundamental premise of their own identity and survival. Jews who engage in that debate
are expressing self-hatred, not self-criticism. One example is that of Uri Avnery whose
articles appear in Arab newspapers devoted to the defamation of Jewry and Israel. Others, too,
are quoted at length (Schoenfeld, 2004).
Some of the nations of the EU and the Arabs, as well as anti-Semitic groups in various
countries, eagerly seize upon the example of self-hating Jews as proof of Jewry’s, or Israel’s,
condemnable character and behavior.
Assimilation in the sense of acculturation in language, dress, and so forth (Type 1
assimilation) and in varying degrees, encompasses all of the Jewish People (Kaufman, 193032). Not all Jews who rejected Jewish nationalism on the one hand, and manifestations of
Jewish religious tradition on the other hand, were, or are, necessarily self-hating Jews. But the
kind of normalcy pursued by Jews who have rejected the national version of Jewish life, not
just ignored or forgotton it, does not seek to improve Jewish life but to terminate it. The
pursuit of that kind of normalcy derives from the distressing sense of abnormality that is an
essential ingredient of Jewish self-hatred. How else can we understand the message that
Jewry should commit historical suicide by quietly disappearing from the face of the earth,
except as an expression of self-hatred?
The term “self-hatred” can mislead people into thinking that it is an emotionally charged state
in which someone deeply and vehemently despises other Jews, the nation of Israel or the
Jewish religious-cultural tradition. Beyond its relatively obvious and vulgar manifestations,
Jewish self-hatred often adopts sophisticated forms. Intellectuals or scholars often display
what sounds like “rational” ideas with no hint of emotional vehemence ordinarily associated
with the word “hatred.” But however muted the tone or intent in expressions of “self-hatred,”
the anti-Semitic message remains indisputable: The Jews, Jewish tradition and Israel are
inherently unworthy of survival. Jewish self-haters have frequently formulated that suicidal
message in sophisticated theoretical language. In the 19th century it was formulated
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unequivocally and aggressively by infamous anti-Semites including Karl Marx. In our day
Jewish intellectuals seriously suggest that the Jews or the Jewish nation should disappear in
order to fulfill the “liberal” ideas of democratic society. Some notable Jewish anti-Semites
have offered “plans” on how Israel can be eliminated without murdering all of its Jewish
citizens (Schoenfeld, 2004, chapter 5).
The Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua (1984) asserted that the Jews themselves are responsible for
having created and maintained the Galut. Jews employ the Galut to sustain their need to feel
different from other nations or groups. He adds that Jews must reform themselves as a
precondition for expecting reasonable treatment at the hands of the non-Jewish world. Selfreform includes redefining Zionism in such a way that it will cease to arouse opposition. That
will reduce our conflicts with the world (Yehoshua, 1984, 144). The same writer also
propagates the notion that the Galut is a “neurotic” condition for the Jews. Oddly enough,
precisely because the Galut promised, or actually became, “normality” for the Jews did it
engulf them so extensively, until such time as animosities latent within the gentile society
erupted (Kaufman, 1930-1932). Yehoshua’s thesis that the Galut offers Jews a place to be
different is patently absurd, even grotesque. Did Jews live in ghettoes for hundreds of years
because they chose to maintain their distinctiveness? For the past two centuries Galut Jewry
strove with all its might to be identified with the national group within which it lived, and not
to be different. Jews became good Russians, Germans, Poles or Americans to be maximally
“normal.”. Why the process of assimilation faltered in Europe and is rapidly progressing
toward more complete consumation in the United States is a complex subject to be treated
elsewhere.
Yehoshua and his comrades are actually recommending that Jews reject Zionist ideologies
that embody and express our historical identity. Such denial is construed to bring the Jews
into greater alignment with the prevailing goals and values of the non-Jewish world. The
suggestion to redefine Zionism is actually a plea for Jewish assimilation. Yehoshua’s (1984)
thesis about Jewish responsibility for anti-Semitism and the need for self-reform as the royal
road to defusing it, reverts to the classical assimilationist-self-hating mentality (Gilman,
1986). It is easier to change ourselves than it is to change all of the gentiles, so Jewry must
abandon Zionism (Yehoshua, 1984:144). Israel as a nation must conform to world opinion
and prove to the non-Jewish world that we have truly relinquished our “separatist” aspirations
and abandoned our national identity.
Self-Hatred among Zionists
Yehezkel Kaufman (1889-1963), the towering scholar of Jewish intellectual-religious history
and of the Bible, and the foremost analyst of Jewish life in the Diaspora, was staunchly
devoted to Herzl and political Zionism. Nevertheless, he wrote scathing criticisms of some
Zionist spokesmen and writers for their destructive self-hatred. Kaufman (1936) showed that,
already at the beginning of the 20th century, some Zionist publications echoed classic antiSemitic claims. Hebrew writers, such as Yosef Chaim Brenner, Micha Yosef Berdechewski
and A. D. Gordon, had become embroiled in the web of anti-Semitic accusations, although
these writers’ criticism was made with the “best intentions” of bringing about a
“reawakening” of the Jews’ moral conscience (Kaufman, 1936, 262; 1952). Some Zionist
writers also asserted that living on the gentiles’ soil is parasitic, so that Jewish life in the
Galut is inherently immoral, not “just” the historical tragedy of the Jewish People (Schneider,
1994).
After 20 years of teaching at the Reali high school in Haifa (1929-1951) Yehezkel Kaufman
(1952) wrote:
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Every educated and half-educated “Zionist” expressed the judgment about 2000 years of Exile:
A nation of pimps or middlemen! Every infant knows what was the character of the Jews
“there” ..generations (of young people) brought up in Israel accept these views literally (that) 16
million pimps were there (i.e. in Europe –SS); that’s why the gentiles hated them- and rightly
so. Parents, teachers, writers, youth leaders, and so forth keep repeating that jingle to them – in
the name of “Zionist” education... For that reason, it is our sacred duty to repeat...that this entire
conception is a false and anti-Semitic idea. It is anti-Semitic not because it is critical of Jewry,
but because it is criticism based on lies. That is the essence of anti-Semitism: falsehood...During
the first ten years of this century, the movement for Jewish national redemption became polluted
by anti-Semitic ideas....”(Kaufman, 1952, 161-162).
Soon after Kaufman’s denunciation of the anti-Jewish opinions spread by Israel’s
schools, virulent anti-Jewish views and attitudes of writers born in Palestine appeared in print,
such as in the novel “The Days of Ziklag” by S. Yizhar. Many works of Hebrew literature
expressed radical anti-Semitic and self-hating ideas reminiscent of Brenner’s denunciation of
traditional Jewish life a generation earlier (Kariv, 1956; Kurzweil, 1965; Kaufman, 1936,
1952; Lord, 2000; Oren, 2003; Schneider, 1994).
Virulent Jewish anti-Semitism was not abandoned even after the horrors of WWII: In
recent decades it has taken on new life and is painfully obvious in the activities and
publications of Jewish scholars and writers in the U.S., England, and Israel (Alexander, 2003;
Lord, 2000; Oren, 2003; Stav, 2003; Weiss, 2003). Self-hatred is now being passed on to the
younger generations of academics and writers. The earlier claim that living on gentile land in
the Golah is immoral has been replaced with the “new” self-hatred. It preaches that living in
Israel is immoral because Jewry “stole” the land from the Arabs. Accusing Jews of
committing diametrically opposed “crimes” simultaneously – such as being capitalists and
communists, parasites on the economy and financiers of the world, lovers of the Galut and
dwellers on stolen soil in the Land of Israel – is typical of modern anti-Semitism and of
Jewish self-hatred (Schoenfeld, 2004).
Jewish Self-Hatred and Transnationalism: Dissolving National Identity
Some intellectuals in the United States advocate a transnational global government to replace
all existing national governments (Fonte, 2003). The list of authors – among them political
scientists and professors of law - who represent that view in the United States, includes a
notable percentage of Jews. Transnationalism is not a “Jewish idea,” but it has attracted Jews.
Beneath the veneer of a radical anti-nationalist liberalism lies contempt for Jewish history and
nationhood.
Global governance would avoid recognition of any particular religion or ethnic group, and it
would eliminate the existing nation states. That would seem to create a “neutral” socialreligious environment in the world (Greenberg, 1950) where Jews can be free to be whoever
they think they want to be, without being who they are! The non-Zionist cosmopolitan Jew
wants a world without nations so we could not possibly be identified as a separate nation.
Yitzchak Lamdan prophetically depicted this view of the anti-Zionist cosmopolitan Jew in his
monumental poem Masada (1927). A refugee from Europe meets up with a series of Jews
who attempt to dissuade him from going to Palestine. They invoke various ideologies that
promise universal redemption to all men if they participate in the Revolution. All of the
dissuaders discarded their Jewishness for some promise of redemption by means of total
identification with the cause of some other, non-Jewish nation, and with “the world”.
Fifty years after the Revolution, after WWII and after Stalin, a Jewish author and scholar still
faithful to the Marxist cause clearly articulated the relationship between Marxism, Jewish
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national identity, global governance in a non-national world, and, predictably, the antiSemitic doctrine that negates the legitimacy of Jewish survival, all formulated in terms of
liberal humanitarianism.
This is the crux of the Jewish tragedy. Decaying capitalism has overstayed its day and has
morally dragged down mankind; and we, the Jews, have paid for it and may yet have to pay for
it... All this has driven the Jews to see their own State as the way out. Most of the great
revolutionaries...have seen the ultimate solution to the problems of their and our times, not in
nation-states but in international society. As Jews they were the natural pioneers of this idea, for
who was as well qualified to preach the international society of equals as were the Jews free
from all Jewish and non-Jewish orthodoxy and nationalism? It is paradoxical, because we live in
an age when the nation-state is fast becoming an anachronism, and an archaism – not only the
nation-state of Israel but the nation-states of Russia, the United States, Great Britain, France,
Germany and others... The world has compelled the Jew to embrace the nation-state and to
make of it his pride and hope just at a time when there is little or no hope left in it...their intense
enthusiasm for “national sovereignty” is historically belated... I hope that...the Jews will
ultimately become aware...of the inadequacy of the nation-state and that they will find their way
back to the moral and political heritage that the genius of the Jews who have gone beyond Jewry
has left us –the message of universal human emancipation. (Deutscher, 1968, 39-41).
It is patently foolhardy to subscribe to a vision about the consequences of global governance
when The United Nations, once divided between the democratic and communist nations, is
now racing toward the new fault line of the Christian/Western-Muslim/Middle Eastern rift
that has replaced or overshadowed its predecessor. Both the earlier and the present
ideological-political chasms between nations preclude any prospect of transnational
governance, now or in the foreseeable future.
Deutscher hoped (in 1968) that the nation-state would disappear. He also thought that Jewry
would simply discard its historical heritage and adopt some unknown and non-existent way of
life that he read into the life-history of a few famous assimilated Jews who he erroneously and
arbitrarily described as having “gone beyond Jewry” (Freud, Heine, Rosa Luxemburg, and
Marx). Deutscher was dominated by his blinding faith in the ultimate victory of Marxism and
communism over capitalism long after their failure and inhumanity were well known.
Contempt for Jewish history and for Jewry’s national existence is the central theme of this
point of view in which reality clearly played a minor part.
Jewish self-hatred appeared in a blood-soaked form as part of the Bolshevik revolution. Some
Jews who had embraced communism perpetrated horrible cruelties on fellow Jews who were
not communists, including the slaughter of not a few of them. Marxism continues its antiSemitic assault on the Jews through the doctrine still preached by many cosmopolitan Jewish
academics, that the Jews and Israel should disappear. In other instances as well Jews have
behaved with particular harshness toward other Jews in order to demonstrate their loyalty to
some prevailing ideology (Hazaz, 1946/1976; Katznelson, 1956, written in the Warsaw
ghetto; Vital, 2002). Jews with high-ranking positions in various countries exerted prejudicial
and harmful influence on their government’s policy toward the Jewish People. Bruno
Kreisky, who served as prime minister of Austria, is only one of many examples in modern
times.
Since early Byzantine times, Christians accused the Jews of deicide. Yet, until the
Emancipation at the end of the 18th century, that terrifying burden did not lead Jews to believe
that they were abnormal and should be ashamed of their Jewishness. Five hundred years ago
Shakespeare placed poignant words in the mouth of Shylock in defense of Jews as normal
9
human beings. The point here is that Shylock’s remarks express complete solidarity with the
Jewish group. Assimilation had not yet appeared.
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections,
passions? ...if you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (The
Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 1)
Throughout history Jews were despised and abused in the extreme. Some took refuge in
conversion to Christianity or Islam. Forced conversion was also common in both the Christian
and Muslim worlds. External coercion to abandon their religion and nation has been exerted
on Jews for the past two millenia. Yet, Jews never demonstrated any socially significant
movement to convert to some other religion by their own free will (Kaufman, 1932).
Contemporary manifestations of Jews’ sense of abnormality and expressions of self-hatred
also stem in no small measure from social-political currents acting upon the Jews
(Schoenfeld, 2004). Nevertheless, we must not avoid recognizing that Jews have adopted and
internalized anti-Semitic images of themselves and of Israel. Jewry is now plagued by selfhatred that cannot be explained exclusively as a defense against animosity from non-Jews.
Jews are NOT responsible for anti-Semitism as self-hating Jews claim. They ARE
responsible for hating their own heritage and their own nation.
Remember: Jews continue to rebuild their nation and their history in the face of profound
assimilation, devastation, internal political weakness, and relentless opposition from many
quarters, including self-hating Jews. Despite the dwindling numbers of Jews in the world,
despite the vast resources of the Arab world used to defame and kill Jews, and despite
assimilation and self hatred that has affected some Jews, Israel will soon grow to be the
largest Jewish community in the world. We still enjoy support and admiration from friends all
over the world. No one alive at the time of Herzl’s death only one hundred years ago (1904)
would have predicted that. Our task at present is to lead the Jews in Israel back to themselves
as Jews (Epstein, 2003), to dispel the shadow of self-hatred, and to build a nation with
sufficient self-respect to secure its future.
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