A Providential Anti-Semitism: Nationalism and Polity in Nineteenth-Century Romania (review)

128 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 be of interest to general and academic audiences and would serve well as a textbook for advanced college and university courses in antisemitism. Adele Reinhartz Department of Religious Studies McMaster University A Providential Anti-Semitism: Nationalism and Polity in NineteenthCentury Romania, by William O. Oldson. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991. 177 pp. Professor William O. Oldson's A Providential Anti-Semitism is a well researched work and a contribution to the subject. Professor Oldson is an honest Western scholar, but a Western scholar. He does not come from Romania-this fact has advantages, but also certain disadvantages. He abhors manifestations ofantisemitism. This reviewer comes from Transylvania -and is a victim of antisemitism, bearing the number A-12545 from Auschwitz on his arm. Thus we have different vantage points. In the introduction, Professor Oldson paralleled Romanian treatment of Jews with that of Hungary. But, since Romania's background more nearly resembles an underdeveloped, non-Western, third-world country, the problems ofthe Chinese middle classes in Southeast Asia, or ofIndians in East Africa, or of the lebanese in West Africa, would be more relevant to the situation of Jews in Romania than is that of Jews in neighboring Hungary. Jews in Romania faced the usual problem ofan alien middle class wedged in between the elite and the peasantry-the traditional society. Hungarian antisemitism, unlike the Romanian variety, is a twentiethcentury phenomenon. As in Germany or Austria, in Hungary a patriotic, useful, assimilated Jewish community, with many converts and intermarriages , was made into scapegoats-mainly because of the lost war-by the former Central Powers. And because of the successful assimilation, a racial justification was necessary. The genocide which followed was not the means to a polity. For the first time in history it became an end in itself. This is my answer to Hannah Arendt, who remarked that in Romania, despite what she called "the most violent anti-Semitism in Europe," 400,000 Jews survived. (professor Arendt is wrong: if one counts the 150,000 Jews of Northern Transylvania who were shipped by the Hungarians to Auschwitz and perished, then not 400,000 but most Romanian Jews survived, despite the horrors of Ia~i and Transnistria.) Professor Oldson Book Reviews 129 spoke of the Romanian antisemites' talk about "the quality" of Romanian Jews. One should also consider the "quality" ofdifferent antisemitisms too. One should consider Moldova and a real problem which existed there: half of historic Moldova was taken away by Russia and more than one-ftfth by Austria; what was left was menaced by Russian expansionism. And what was left of Moldova, especially the cities, was flooded by unassimilated (and unassimilable) Jews from the "Pale of Settlement." Demqgraphic pressures and the pogroms of Pobedonostsev constantly sent new unfortunateJews to Moldova. No wonder that under the circumstances Moldova became "the Holy Land of Romanian nationalism." Such a situation is bound to cause national insecurity. Serbia is no parallel-ftrst, because the number of Jews in Moldova leaves no room for comparison with Jewish numbers in Serbia, and second, because Romanians are no Serbians. All this insured that in Moldova there was no question of right or wrong, but a question of two rights: a Romanian (obvious) right, and a Jewish right to live and to survive. If such a situation-mutatis mutandishad arisen anywhere (even not involvingJews!) it would have been bound to cause the gravest possible conflicts. There are also some lacunae in Professor Oldson's account ofthe Moldavian list of six leading Romanian intellectual antisemites (Kogalniceanu, Eminescu, Maiorescu, Xenopol, Hasdeu, and Iorga). The most important Moldavian antisemite, Professor A. C. Cuza, is missing! Why? After all, Cuza was the most pathetic and the most vicious, also the most unscrupulous enemy of the Jews! During more than 80 years of his life he did little else besides advocating hatred and the persecution ofJews. How did Cuza miss the list? Professor Oldson's monograph calls Professor Iorga a "bridge" between nineteenth-century Romanian antisemitism and that of the twentieth-century, bringing the story up to 1940. It should have been pointed out that Iorga broke with Cuza because of Cuza's violent antisemitism; more...