On modern Jewish politics

183 Pages·1993·12.032 MB·English

by  Ezra Mendelsohn

On Modern Jewish Politics
STUDIES IN JEWISH HISTORY
Jehuda Reinharz, General Editor
THE JEWS OF PARIS AND THE RESPONSE TO MODERNITY
FINAL SOLUTION A History of the Reform Movement in
Communal Response and Internal Judaism
Conflicts, 1940-1944 Michael A. Meyer
Jacques Adlcr
THE VATICAN AND ZIONISM
JEWS IN CHRISTIAN AMERICA Conflict in the Holy Land, 1895-1925
The Pursuit of Religious Equality Sergio Minerbi
Naomi W. Cohen
ESCAPING THE HOLOCAUST
ATLAS OF MODERN JEWISH Illegal Immigration to the Land, of
HISTORY Israel, 1939-1944
Evyatar Friesel Dalia Ofer
A SIGN AND A WITNESS
CHAIM WEIZMANN
2,000 Tears of Hebrew Books and The Making of a Zionist Leader
Illuminated Manuscripts
Jehuda Reinharz
Paperback edition (co-published with
CHAIM WEIZMANN
The New York Public Library)
The Making of a, Statesman
Edited by Leonard Singer Gold
Jehuda Reinharz
A CLASH OF HEROES
Erandeis, Weizmann, and American COURAGE UNDER SIEGE
Zionism Starvation, Disease, and Death in the
Ben Halpern Warsaw Ghetto
Charles G. Roland
THE MAKING OF THE JEWISH
MIDDLE CLASS LAND AND POWER
Women, Family, and Identity in The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948
Imperial Germany Anita Shapira
Marion A. Kaplan
THE TRANSFORMATION OF
THE MAKING OF CZECH GERMAN JEWRY, 1780-1840
JEWRY David Sorkin
National Conflict and Jewish Society in
FOR WHOM DO I TOIL?
Bohemia, 1870-1918
Judah Lrib Gordon and the Crisis of
Hillel J. Kieval
Russian Jewry
THE ROAD TO MODERN Michael F. Stanislawski
JEWISH POLITICS
Political Tradition and Political UNWELCOME STRANGERS
Reconstruction in the Jewish Community East European Jews in Imperial
of Tsarist Russia Germany
Eli Lcdcrhcndler Jack Wcrtheimer
THE BERLIN JEWISH THE HOLOCAUST
COMMUNITY The Fate of European Jewry,
Enlightenment, family and Crisis, 1932-1945
1770-1830 Leiii Yahil
Steven M. Lowcnstcin WILHELM MARR
ON MODERN JEWISH POLITICS The Patriarch of Antisemitism
Ezra Mendelsohn Moshe Zimmermann
OTHER VOLUMES ARE IN PREPARATION
ON
MODERN JEWISH
POLITICS
Ezra Mendelsohn
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1993
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
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and associated companies in
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Copyright © 1993 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
The author has made every effort to obtain permission from copyright
holders to reprint or reproduce material for this book. In some cases
the copyright holders and/or their whereabouts were unknown.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mendelsohn, Ezra.
On modern Jewish politics / Ezra Mendelsohn.
p. cm. —- (Studies in Jewish history) Includes index.
ISBN 0-19-503864-9 — ISBN 0-19-508219-9 (pbk)
1. Jews—Politics and government. 2. Judaism and politics.
3. Jews—United States—Politics and government.
4. Jews—Poland—Politics and government.
5. United States—Politics and government—1919—1933.
6. United States—Politics and government—1933-1945.
7. Poland—Politics and government—1918-1945.
I. Title. II. Series. DS140.M45 1993
909' .04924082—-dc20 92-32612
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
This book is dedicated
to the memory of my parents,
Fannie Soyer Mendelsohn
and Isnnc Mendelsohn
This page intentionally left blank
PREFACE
In 1913 the Galician-born American Yiddish poet Moyshe-Leyb Halpern
published a lengthy poem entitled In derfremd [In a foreign world]. Writ-
ing in harsh, inhospitable New York, the poet presents us with a glowing
description of the good old days in Jewish Eastern Europe:*
We had corners in their cities and we lived there together,
And life was good, although taxes oppressed us.
Although the king sent evil men to govern us,
No one complained. We loved this spot of earth
God granted us in our homeless wandering.
And God's name was inscribed on every door
Through which our children stepped.
Rich men had poor men to their tables every day
And blessed peace prevailed in streets and homes.
Unfortunately, this enchanting state of affairs, this "blessed peace," did
not endure.
But these quiet times were too good for us.
The blind wheel spun around, and then
A restlessness arose and, like a bad wind,
Blew through old and young in every land throughout the world.
And on a dark night, this rcsdessness descended on our street.
A vile dispute began between the generations,
And young and old became estranged, alien, cold,
As if a message of a terrible judgement hovered over them.
*Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, In New York: A Selection, Kathryn Hellerstein, trans, and cd. (Phila-
delphia: 1982), p. 55.
viii Preface
Suddenly the sons and daughters talked and sang
Of a new light, like a delirious patient babbling in his sleep.
These lines may be read as an evocation of the origins of modern Jewish
politics. The "restlessness," the "new light," above all the "vile dispute"
(beyze krijj) signified the emergence, sometime during the nineteenth cen-
tury, of new and fateful divisions within the Jewish community. These
divisions grew in intensity and complexity from generation to generation.
Among other things, they led to the establishment of modern Jewish
political movements whose aims and activities comprise the subject of this
book.
The phrase Jewish politics as employed here refers to the programs
formulated by these new movements, that is, the different ways in which
they viewed the future of the Jewish people and their proposals for solving,
once and for all, the celebrated Jewish Question—and the competition
among them for hegemony on what was sometimes called the "Jewish
street." The thorny problem of determining exactly which organizations
qualify for admission to the realm of Jewish polities will be briefly ad-
dressed in the introductory chapter. I shall not be dealing with the early,
formative period of modern Jewish politics, thereby avoiding the much-
debated question as to when, exactly, it began.* Rather, this book will
concentrate on the period between the two World Wars, when modern
Jewish politics may be said to have come of age, reaching new heights of
influence and achieving dramatic successes as well as suffering no less
dramatic failures. As regards the geographic scope of this study, what
follows is a discussion of Diaspora Jewish politics, excluding events in
Jewish Palestine. More specifically, the focus is on Jewish politics in
Europe—in particular non-Communist Eastern Europe—and the United
States.
The book is divided into seven chapters. The first suggests a typology
of modern Jewish politics. The second discusses the geography of Jewish
politics. It raises the question as to why certain environments in which
Jews lived were singularly conducive to the flourishing of particular kinds
of Jewish politics and establishes core areas for the major Jewish political
movements. It also tries to explain why different kinds of environments
produced important variations on a specific Jewish political theme—why,
for example, Zionism in Poland differed so sharply from its counterpart in
the United States. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the dynamics of Jewish
politics. They survey the fortunes of the various Jewish political forces that
were competing for the allegiance of the Jewish community during the
1920s and 1930s and the underlying sources of their appeal. Chapters 5
and 6 recount the successes and failures of modern Jewish politics and
attempt to place it in a comparative context. The concluding chapter exam-
ines the far-reaching changes in the political arena that have taken place
*On this see Eli Lederhcndlcr, The Road to Modem Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and
Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (New York: 1989).
Preface ix
since 1939, changes that have transformed interwar Jewish politics in gen-
eral into a phenomenon of the seemingly distant past.
For a number of years I have been working very closely with Jonathan
Frankel and Peter Medding, my friends and colleagues at the Institute of
Contemporary Jewry of The Hebrew University. Together we have
edited the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry, and have taught gradu-
ate seminars on modern Jewish politics. This book derives, in large mea-
sure, from our close working relationship (especially the first chapter,
whose typology is based on a scheme worked out by all three of us). Had I
not been able to benefit from their wisdom, encouragement, and friend-
ship, it would have been quite a different book. I should add that I, like
everyone else who works in this field, have been much influenced by Jon-
athan Frankel's Prophecy and Politics, the most important study to date of
modern Jewish politics.
Although my book reflects the collective wisdom of all three of us, I
hasten to absolve my colleagues of all responsibility for its shortcomings.
The reader will soon discover that this is a highly selective, perhaps even
eccentric study whose biases and peculiarities are mine alone. It is intended
to be a kind of primer. I hope that it will serve as an interesting and
informative introduction to what is beyond a doubt a formidably complex
subject.
Jerusalem E.M.
November 1992