Glorious, Accursed Europe

Conclusion: Between Real Europe and the European Spirit

– 192 – Between Real EuropE and the European Spirit Is it possible to write a single history of the Jews in Europe—a Jewish history ? Or is it possible to write several histories of the Jews in Europe—a history of Jewish communities interwoven with the histories of various nations?1 The answer is that both are possible. Jews had a separate history within various European nations, which formed part of those nations’ own histories; they also had a shared history as an ethnic and religious minority throughout Europe that underwent similar processes and faced similar obstacles. There is no contradiction between the internal history of a minority as an autarchic culture, in which immanent and unique changes take place, and the history of a minority that experiences changes under the influence of the majority culture. Jews were the only minority to inhabit all of the European nations; as such, they were exposed both to particular cultures and to the general European culture. It is these facts that make Jewish culture in Europe unique as a historical development and that are responsible for the uniqueness of that minority’s response patterns and perspective. Our claim has been that despite the unique character of the various national European cultures in which Jews lived, and by which they were influenced, the Jewish elite was thoroughly familiar with Europe’s overarching cultural background and absorbed a significant part of it. The Jews in Europe were therefore, to one extent or another, European Jews. This common background is clearly expressed by the fact that over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, much of what is sometimes labeled the product of Western culture evolved into a set of universal values and ways of thought whose European origins are frequently obscured; critics of European culture have often used it as a basis for attack. As for the Jews, Europe served them as a reservoir of models and cultural traits that many considered worth adopting and internalizing into modern Jewish culture. Every modern Jewish culture was born in Conclusion Conclusion 193 Europe. It was impossible not to be influenced by Europe while living in it; it was impossible not to transfer its cultural patterns to Palestine. In December 1923, David Ben Gurion wrote on his way back to Palestine after a visit in Moscow: Europe—the continent of profound contrasts and contradictions . . . The continent of blinding light and blinding darkness; the lofty aspirations for liberty and justice, and the lean, ugly reality; the continent of revolution and market speculation . . . the holy suffering and unclean corporation, the addiction and the bribery . . . the idealism and greed, the changing values and the old tyrannies of tradition, the worship of work and the false idols . . . and the lights and the shadows are intertwined, grasping and relying one on the other. And no one knows where sanctity ends and impurity begins: which is a relic of the past, and which the seed of the future? . . . And great are the obstacles before a new world and a new society; who will emerge victorious?”2 Ben Gurion, of course, was writing not about Europe but about the Soviet Union six years after the Russian Revolution. We have replaced “the Soviet Union” with “Europe” and substituted “continent” for “land.” It seems possible to apply Ben Gurion’s words—which echo the opening lines of Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities—to Europe as a whole. Our inspiration here comes from Winston Churchill’s words about the future of the European continent, particularly Western Europe and about the lights and shadows intertwined there—that is, about the tragic duality Europe embodies. Ina speech deliveredinZurich onSeptember 19, 1946,Churchill described Europe as “this noble continent,” “the fountain of Christian faith and Christian ethics,” and added: [Europe] is the origin of most of the culture, arts, philosophy, and science, both of ancient and modern times. If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to [its] happiness . . . Yet it is from Europe that have sprung that series of frightful nationalistic quarrels, originated by the Teutonic peoples, which . . . wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all mankind.3 Today we would find Churchill’s view Eurocentric, but Churchill excelled in describing Europe’s duality and offering the continent a path to redemption in the spirit of Erasmian utopianism. In contrast, it cannot 194 Conclusion easily be said...