"To the hate that surrounds us we respond with new love for Judentum." The Jüdische Rundschau and the Struggle for Jewish Identity in Nazi Germany, 1933-1935

Introduction: The Jüdische Rundschau and the Question of (German-) Jewish Identity

Eleven months after Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor, the editors of the Zionist newspaper Jüdische Rundschau redefined the role of their biweekly publication. In under a year, they transformed the mouthpiece of German Zionism into a spiritual haven for Germany's Jews, now stranded on the edge of society. During its first year, Hitler's regime inaugurated anti-Jewish measures, a series of systematic policies aimed at the segregation and persecution of German Jewry. By the end of 1933, the Jews of Germany were in a "completely new situation," and were in need of "spiritual orientation," as the Jüdische Rundschau noted in December:

The Jüdische Rundschau wants to help the German Jew...to endure his worries and to find his spiritual orientation in the midst of the daily turmoil. The Jüdische Rundschau fights for the establishment of a dignified legal position for the Jews in Germany, for the freedom of their economic occupations, for a change in their occupations [Berufsumschichtung, in reaction to Nazi laws limiting the professional freedom of German Jews] and for the cultural reconstruction of German Jewry. It reports thoroughly about all the possibilities and preconditions of emigration and in particular about all questions concerning Palestine and the Jewish national home. ¹

The Zionist community responded to the threats posed by the Nazi regime with "anxiety...but not with panic or a widespread sense of urgency," a response that was typical for most German Jews. ² This muted anxiety was the result of a "loss of balance" felt by Germany's Jews after January, 1933. ³ Moreover, the Jüdische Rundschau, as the voice of leading Zionist intellectuals in Germany, exemplified the largely unselfconscious reaction of the Jewish leadership in general, namely to attempt to "hide...distress behind a façade of confidence." ⁴ Though the core principles of the Zionists' response are not surprising—given their long history of adherence to the ideal of a Jewish state and nation—it was nonetheless remarkable, considering that they sought to transform this self-protective confidence among Jews, many of whom still believed in peaceful German-Jewish relations, into a genuine belief and pride in Jewish nationhood.

This article provides an analysis of the major anti-Jewish policy measures of the Nazi state and the response articulated by the Jüdische Rundschau in the name of the affected German Jews in order to refute anti-Semitic propaganda and policy and to provide a spiritual framework for the continuation of Jewish life in Germany, a framework that sometimes included astoundingly opportunistic portrayals of Hitler's government. The article seeks to contribute to the attempt made most convincingly by Saul Friedländer to integrate the history of the "perpetrators" and the history of the "victims" (and German society as a whole), and thereby to transcend these dualistic and in fact reductionist categories. Only then, Friedländer argues, might it become possible to reconstruct the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany and to understand their story not just as the stories of victims but as the stories of individual human beings (re)acting as agents of and in history. ⁵ This view from below will be sharpened by a focus on the way German Jews sought to reformulate their personal and collective identities in the wake of the Nazi takeover of power. This focus avoids the retrospectively applied victims-perspective and instead seeks to restore the present and future of the historical subjects, their contemporary concerns, self-perceptions, and aspirations. Thus, in addition to the analysis of the Jüdische Rundschau's political response to anti-Jewish policies, I will also be concerned with the cultural, literary, scholarly, and religious themes the paper featured in its attempts to (re)create a Jewish self-image. It is this blend of political and cultural themes that the newspaper's editors believed would provide the basis for a new Jewish identity and pride among "assimilated...