Between Redemption and Perdition: Modern Antisemitism and Jewish Identity (review)

88 SHOFAR Between Redemption and Perdition: Modern Antisemitism and Jewish Identity, by Robert S. Wistrich. London: Routledge, 1990. 283 pp. n.p.I. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution set in motion the struggle for Jewish emancipation. In return for, eschewing their peculiar dress, language, and customs, Jews would be permitted to become citizens of the nations in which they lived. The contract, as the French exclaimed, gave everything to the Jews as individuals, but nothing to them as a nation. Most Western European Jews were willing to abandon vestiges of the ghetto, reform their religion, and assimilate into their country without making a formal conversion. In the long run, however, this agreement failed. Western European states had granted Jews legal equality. Social acceptance would be less forthcoming. In an age of burgeoning nationalism, Jews were depicted as foreigners no matter how assimilated they were. With some distinctions and modifications, this sentiment, according to the author, has not disappeared. Robert Wistrich, Professor of History at the Hebrew University and noted author of many books on antisemitism and Central European Jews, analyzes the changing language of antisemitism and explores antisemitism's multiple and variegated social dimensions, its shifting historical and geo-political context, and its present impact on Jewish-Gentile relations. Wistrich has compiled twenty-four essays to trace the so-called Judenfrage from 19thcentury Europe to present-day anti-Zionism. He looks at how anti-Jewish attitudes have been exploited by disparate groups around the globe (Communists, Fascists, Arabs) in differing ways but always to justify Jewish persecution. The author's command of both modern Jewish History and Intellectual History is evident as Wistrich weaves his way from Karl Marx's notorious essay Zur Judenfrage to an ominous piece on the Jewish role in Islamic fundamentalism . As Wistrich makes clear at the beginning, the essays are uneven. Some of them are more scholarly than others. A drawback from this is that many of the essays contain no footnotes, and there is no bibliography. The strength of the book is that Wistrich covers such broad territory both chronologically and geographically. This can also be a weakness, as Wistrich traverses so much ground that certain essays call for greater attention and some more parallels could be drawn. Finally, in many of the passages the author freely utilizes foreign languages which are in need of a translation. These criticisms, however, should not detract from a most thought-provoking book. Several currents run through these essays. One is the problematic relationship between the Left and the Jews. Communism's insistence that all nationalism is a bourgeois manifestation, and that antisemitism comes from capitalism, led many prominent leftists to scorn Jewish separatism , and especially Zionism. In that vein, Wistrich looks at the identity Volume 9, No.2 Winter 1991 89 problems this posed for Jewish socialists like Marx, Luxemberg, Trotsky, and Walter Benjamin. All four of these found different-but not always successful -ways to synthesize Judaism and Socialism; though one wonders how typical they were in the Jewish community. The antipathy of the Left towards Jews is further illustrated as Wistrich discusses the Fassbinder controversy in Germany, Bruno Kreisky's strange political career in Austria, and the oscillation of the French Left during the Dreyfus affair and even in contemporary France. In all of these cases the Left, as a whole, treated Jews with suspicion rather than with compassion. As one of his pervasive themes, Wistrich shows how antisemitism has not disappeared since the Holocaust, particularly in Communist and Arab nations. Although glasnost has liberalized free speech, it has also rekindled past prejudices against Jews by loosening social controls, which allows a greater freedom to express openly ethnic and religious prejudices. In the Soviet Union Jews are still a convenient scapegoat. Wistrich contends that today 's anti-Zionism is really a dressed-up version of past antisemitism. Since "antisemitism" is a relic of fascism and because many countries have a negligible Jewish population, it is more common and "politically correct" to be anti-Zionist. Wistrich shows how semantics may change, but anti-Jewish attitudes do not. The perverse irony here is that the language of the Holocaust is now being turned against Israel for...