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The Jewish question was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century Europe that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other "national questions", dealt with the civil, legal, national, and political status of Jews as a minority within society, particularly in Europe during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
The debate began with Jewish emancipation in western and central European societies during the Age of Enlightenment and after the French Revolution. The debate's issues included legal and economic Jewish disabilities (such as Jewish quotas and segregation), Jewish assimilation, and Jewish Enlightenment.
The expression has been used by antisemitic movements from the 1880s onwards, culminating in the Nazi phrase of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Similarly, the expression was used by proponents for and opponents of the establishment of an autonomous Jewish homeland or a sovereign Jewish state.
The term "Jewish question" was first used in Great Britain around 1750 when the expression was used during the debates related to the Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753. [1] According to Holocaust scholar Lucy Dawidowicz, the term "Jewish Question", as introduced in western Europe, was a neutral expression for the negative attitude toward the apparent and persistent singularity of the Jews as a people against the background of the rising political nationalism and new nation-states. Dawidowicz writes that "the histories of Jewish emancipation and of European antisemitism are replete with proffered 'solutions to the Jewish question.'" [2]
The question was next discussed in France (la question juive) after the French Revolution in 1789. It was discussed in Germany in 1843 via Bruno Bauer's treatise Die Judenfrage ('The Jewish Question'). He argued that Jews could achieve political emancipation only if they let go their religious consciousness, as he proposed that political emancipation required a secular state. Bauer's conclusions were disputed by Karl Marx in his essay Zur Judenfrage , in which he argued that society cannot be free from the oppression of capitalism without removing Jews from society: "As soon as society succeeds in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism—huckstering and its conditions—the Jew becomes impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object... The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism." [3]
According to Otto Dov Kulka [4] of Hebrew University, the term became widespread in the 19th century when it was used in discussions about Jewish emancipation in Germany (Judenfrage). [1] In the 19th century hundreds of tractates, pamphlets, newspaper articles and books were written on the subject, with many offering such solutions as resettlement, deportation, or assimilation of the Jewish population. Similarly, hundreds of works were written opposing these solutions and offering instead solutions such as re-integration and education. This debate however, could not decide whether the problem of the Jewish question had more to do with the problems posed by the German Jews' opponents or vice versa: the problem posed by the existence of the German Jews to their opponents.
From around 1860, the term was used with an increasingly antisemitic tendency: Jews were described under this term as a stumbling block to the identity and cohesion of the German nation and as enemies within the Germans' own country. Antisemites such as Wilhelm Marr, Karl Eugen Dühring, Theodor Fritsch, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Paul de Lagarde and others declared it a racial problem insoluble through integration. They stressed this in order to strengthen their demands to "de-jewify" the press, education, culture, state and economy. They also proposed to condemn inter-marriage between Jews and non-Jews. They used this term to oust the Jews from their supposedly socially dominant positions.
The topic was also taken up by Jews themselves. Theodor Herzl's 1896 treatise Der Judenstaat advocates Zionism as a "modern solution for the Jewish question" by creating an independent Jewish state, preferably in Ottoman-controlled Palestine. [5] The 1934 science fiction novel Zwei im andern Land by the German rabbi Martin Salomonski imagines a refuge for Jews on the moon. [6]
The most infamous use of this expression was by the Nazis in the early- and mid-twentieth century. They implemented what they called their "Final Solution to the Jewish question" through the Holocaust during World War II, when they attempted to exterminate Jews in Europe. [7] [8]
In his book The Jewish Question (1843), Bauer argued that Jews could only achieve political emancipation if they relinquished their particular religious consciousness. He believed that political emancipation required a secular state, and such a state did not leave any "space" for social identities such as religion. According to Bauer, such religious demands were incompatible with the idea of the "Rights of Man". True political emancipation, for Bauer, required the abolition of religion. [9]
Karl Marx replied to Bauer in his 1844 essay On the Jewish Question . Marx repudiated Bauer's view that the nature of the Jewish religion prevented assimilation by Jews. Instead, Marx attacked Bauer's very formulation of the question from "can the Jews become politically emancipated?" as fundamentally masking the nature of political emancipation itself. [10]
Marx used Bauer's essay as an occasion for his own analysis of liberal rights. Marx argued that Bauer was mistaken in his assumption that in a "secular state", religion would no longer play a prominent role in social life. As an example, he referred to the pervasiveness of religion in the United States, which, unlike Prussia, had no state religion. In Marx's analysis, the "secular state" was not opposed to religion, but rather assumed it. The removal of religious or property qualifications for citizenship did not mean the abolition of religion or property, but rather naturalized both and introduced a way of regarding individuals in abstraction from them. [11] On this note Marx moved beyond the question of religious freedom to his real concern with Bauer's analysis of "political emancipation." Marx concluded that while individuals can be 'politically' free in a secular state, they were still bound to material constraints on freedom by economic inequality, an assumption that would later form the basis of his critiques of capitalism.
Werner Sombart praised Jews for their capitalism and presented the seventeenth–eighteenth century court Jews as integrated and a model for integration. [12] By the turn of the twentieth century, the debate was still widely discussed. The Dreyfus Affair in France, believed to be evidence of anti-semitism, increased the prominence of this issue. Theodor Herzl proposed the advancement of a separate Jewish state and the Zionist cause. [13]
Between 1880 and 1920, millions of Jews created their own solution for the pogroms of eastern Europe by emigration to other places, primarily the United States and western Europe.
In Nazi Germany, the term Jewish Question (in German: Judenfrage) referred to the belief that the existence of Jews in Germany posed a problem for the state. In 1933 two Nazi theorists, Johann von Leers and Achim Gercke, both proposed the idea that the Jewish Question could be solved by resettling Jews in Madagascar, or somewhere else in Africa or South America. They also discussed the pros and cons of supporting the German Zionists. Von Leers asserted that establishing a Jewish homeland in Mandatory Palestine would create humanitarian and political problems for the region. [14]
Upon achieving power in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state began to implement increasingly severe legislation that was aimed at segregating and ultimately removing Jews from Germany and (eventually) all of Europe. [15] The next stage was the persecution of the Jews and the stripping of their citizenship through the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. [16] [17] Starting with 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom and later, during World War II, it became state-sponsored internment in concentration camps. [18] Finally the government implemented the systematic extermination of the Jewish people (The Holocaust), [19] which took place as the so-called Final Solution to the Jewish Question. [7] [20] [lower-alpha 1]
Nazi propaganda was produced in order to manipulate the public, the most notable examples of which were based on the writings of people such as Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz and Erwin Baur in Foundations of Human Heredity Teaching and Racial Hygiene. The work Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living) by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche and the pseudo-scholarship that was promoted by Gerhard Kittel also played a role. In occupied France, the collaborationist regime established its own Institute for studying the Jewish Questions.
According to historians Ronald J. Jensen and Stuart Knee, by the 1870s Russian-American relations were strained by the mistreatment of American Jewish visitors in Russia. President Ulysses S. Grant responded to American Jewish requests for action to protect visitors. [21] By the 1880s, the outbreak of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia and consequent mass emigration of Jews to New York made relations worse. After 1880, escalating pogroms alienated both elite opinion and public opinion in the U.S. [22] In 1903, the Kishinev pogrom killed 47 Jews, injured 400, and left 10,000 homeless and dependent on relief. American Jews began large-scale organized financial help and assisted in emigration from Russia. [23] More violence in Russia led in 1911 to the United States repealing an 1832 commercial treaty. [24]
In the 1920s, according to historian Leo Ribuffo, auto magnate Henry Ford sponsored a major outburst of attacks on Jews in his magazine, the Dearborn Independent, bundles of which he sent to all Ford dealerships every week. It especially promoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , and also published new articles that blamed Jews for America's problems. In 1927, following a lawsuit by Aaron Sapiro, Ford publicly apologized for his anti-Semitism, retracted his earlier views, and closed his magazine. [25]
A "Jewish problem" was euphemistically discussed in majority-European countries outside Europe, even as the Holocaust was in progress. American aviator and celebrity Charles A. Lindbergh used the phrase repeatedly in public speeches and writing. For example in his diary entry of September 18, 1941, published in 1970 as part of The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh , he wrote [26]
[John T.] Flynn says he does not question the truth of what I said at Des Moines, [27] but feels it was inadvisable to mention the Jewish problem. It is difficult for me to understand Flynn's attitude. He feels as strongly as I do that the Jews are among the major influences pushing this country toward war. He has said so frequently and he says so now. He is perfectly willing to talk about it among a small group of people in private.
A dominant anti-Semitic conspiracy theory is the belief that Jewish people have undue influence over the media, banking, and politics. Based on this conspiracy theory, certain groups and activists discuss the "Jewish Question" and offer different proposals to address it. In the early 21st century, white nationalists, alt-righters, and neo-Nazis have used the initialism JQ in order to refer to the Jewish question. [28] [29]
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against, Jews. This sentiment is a form of racism, and a person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Primarily, antisemitic tendencies may be motivated by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or by negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually presented as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by the concept of anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.
Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside Europe. With the rejection of alternative proposals for a Jewish state, it eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, and of central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became Israel's national or state ideology.
A homeland for the Jewish people is an idea rooted in Jewish history, religion, and culture. The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author, and former associate professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two books about the Holocaust: Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996), and A Moral Reckoning (2002). He is also the author of Worse Than War (2009), which examines the phenomenon of genocide, and The Devil That Never Dies (2013), in which he traces a worldwide rise in virulent antisemitism.
Eugen Karl Dühring was an antisemitic German philosopher, positivist, economist, and socialist who was a strong critic of Marxism.
Der Judenstaat is a pamphlet written by Theodor Herzl and published in February 1896 in Leipzig and Vienna by M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung. It is subtitled with "Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage" and was originally called "Address to the Rothschilds", referring to the Rothschild family banking dynasty, as Herzl planned to deliver it as a speech to the Rothschild family. Baron Edmond de Rothschild rejected Herzl's plan, feeling that it threatened Jews in the Diaspora. He also thought it would put his own settlements in Palestine at risk.
Yehuda Bauer is a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Jewish political movements refer to the organized efforts of Jews to build their own political parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside the Jewish community. From the time of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans to the foundation of Israel the Jewish people had no territory, and, until the 19th century they by-and-large were also denied equal rights in the countries in which they lived. Thus, until the 19th century effort for the emancipation of the Jews, almost all Jewish political struggles were internal, and dealt primarily with either religious issues or issues of a particular Jewish community.
"On the Jewish Question" is a response by Karl Marx to then-current debates over the Jewish question. Marx wrote the piece in 1843, and it was first published in Paris in 1844 under the German title "Zur Judenfrage" in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher.
The history of the Jews during World War II is almost synonymous with the persecution and murder of Jews which was committed on an unprecedented scale in Europe and European North Africa. The massive scale of the Holocaust which happened during World War II greatly affected the Jewish people and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Final Solution after the war. The genocide, known as HaShoah in Hebrew, aimed at the elimination of the Jewish people on the European continent. It was a broadly organized operation led by Nazi Germany, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty. Although the Holocaust was organized by the highest levels of the Nazi German government, the vast majority of Jews murdered were not German, but were instead residents of countries invaded by the Nazis after 1938. Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, approximately 160,000 to 180,000 were German Jews. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp alone. The murder of the Jews of Europe affected Jewish communities in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Channel Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
The history of the Jews in Europe spans a period of over two thousand years. Jews, a Semitic people descending from the Judeans of Judea in the Southern Levant, began migrating to Europe just before the rise of the Roman Empire. Although Alexandrian Jews had already migrated to Rome, and with few Gentiles undergone Judaization in few occasions. A notable early event in the history of the Jews in the Roman Empire was the 63 BCE siege of Jerusalem, where Pompey had interfered in the Hasmonean civil war.
The Jewish Territorial Organisation, known as the ITO, was a Jewish political movement which first arose in 1903 in response to the British Uganda Scheme, but only institutionalized in 1905. Its main goal was to find an alternative territory to that of Palestine, which was preferred by the Zionist movement, for the creation of a Jewish homeland. The organization embraced what became known as Jewish Territorialism also known as Jewish Statism. The ITO was dissolved in 1925.
Theodor Herzl was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist, lawyer, writer, playwright and political activist who was the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state. Due to his Zionist work, he is known in Hebrew as Chozeh HaMedinah, lit. 'Visionary of the State'. He is specifically mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and is officially referred to as "the spiritual father of the Jewish State".
As an organized nationalist movement, Zionism is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is intertwined with Jewish history and Judaism. The organizations of Hovevei Zion, held as the forerunners of modern Zionist ideals, were responsible for the creation of 20 Jewish towns in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.
The Jewish Question is an 1843 book by German historian and theologian Bruno Bauer, written and published in German.
Wir Juden is a 1934 book by German rabbi Joachim Prinz that concerns Hitler's rise to power as a demonstration of the defeat of liberalism and assimilation as a solution for the "Jewish Question", and advocated a Zionist alternative to save German Jews. The book urged German Jews to escape National Socialist persecution by emigrating to Palestine. Prinz himself was expelled in 1937, travelling to the US where he became a leader of the American Jewish community and the Civil Rights Movement.
William Henry Hechler was an English Restorationist Anglican clergyman; eschatological writer; crusader against antisemitism; promoter of Zionism; and aide, counselor, friend and legitimiser of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.
Rome and Jerusalem: The Last National Question is a book published by Moses Hess in 1862 in Leipzig. It gave impetus to the Labor Zionism movement. In his magnum opus, Hess argued for the Jews to return to Palestine, and proposed a socialist country in which the Jews would become agrarianised through a process of "redemption of the soil".
Otto Dov Kulka was an Israeli historian, professor emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His primary areas of specialization were the study of modern antisemitism from the early modern age until its manifestation under the National-Socialist regime as the "Final Solution"; Jewish thought in Europe – and Jews in European thought – from the 16th to the 20th century; Jewish-Christian relations in modern Europe; the history of the Jews in Germany; and the study of the Holocaust.
Zionist antisemitism or antisemitic Zionism refers to a phenomenon in which antisemites express support for Zionism and the State of Israel. In some cases, this support may be promoted for explicitly antisemitic reasons. Historically, this type of antisemitism has been most notable among Christian Zionists, who may perpetrate religious antisemitism while being outspoken in their support for Jewish sovereignty in Israel due to their interpretation of Christian eschatology. Similarly, people who identify with the political far-right, particularly in Europe and the United States, may support the Zionist movement because they seek to expel Jews from their country and see Zionism as the least complicated method of achieving this goal and satisfying their racial antisemitism.
[T]he political annulment of private property not only fails to abolish private property but even presupposes it. The state abolishes, in its own way, distinctions of birth, social rank, education, occupation, when it declares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-political distinctions, when it proclaims, without regard to these distinctions, that every member of the nation is an equal participant in national sovereignty, when it treats all elements of the real life of the nation from the standpoint of the state. Nevertheless, the state allows private property, education, occupation, to act in their way – i.e., as private property, as education, as occupation, and to exert the influence of their special nature. Far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists on the presupposition of their existence; it feels itself to be a political state and asserts its universality only in opposition to these elements of its being.