Ethical Concepts in the Inter-War Dispute on Jewish Culture in the Press

Ethical thinking and the dispute over polish jewish culture

In 1933, on the pages of Miesięcznik Żydowski, the Polish Jewish writer Mateusz Mieses published a study titled 'Etyka żydowska a Europa' ('The Jewish Ethic and Europe'). In it he described the dramatic tension between the message of Jewish ethics and European culture. For Mieses, the wandering and suffering of the people of Israel did not seem surprising in a 'constantly tense Europe'.¹ In this Job-like affliction what was important for him was not only Israel's suffering, but also its sense of moral injustice, as when 'a tyrant-strangler, seeking to explain his actions, defames his victim, ascribing to him various moral failings, with the aim of justifying himself '.² Mieses makes an important point: in disputes with, or rather attacks on, Jewish culture, Jews were accused of ethical atrophy. Anti-Jewish newspapers and magazines continually raised the issue of the 'demoralizing' influence of Jews and the Jewish press: 'It is not only the semi-literate mob, individuals stuck in the Middle Ages, who are fond of this idea of the Jews' ethical inadequacy; often, even individuals with a high level of culture, with convictions otherwise devoid of prejudice, hold similar demeaning opinions about the Jews.'³

This discrediting of Jewish ethics is supported, in Mieses' view, by significant cultural figures who create literary 'heroes' that are made use of in public debates, such as Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Florian Znaniecki argued that when people or groups encounter each other, and one set treats the other as alien, a common sphere of activity develops in which different sets of values coexist.⁴ Today we would say that 'others' are characterized by means of attributes in the narration of identity, and that this treatment imposes corresponding value judgements.

However, in discussing 'ethical thinking' in texts by Polish Jewish writers, I follow Józef Tischner in making use of an understanding of ethical thinking which is specifically attuned to human issues. As he has written, 'There are no possibilities for a moral philosophy where there is no good and evil.'⁵ Tischner notes a very important phenomenon which I shall try to develop on the basis of texts from the Polish Jewish press: that ethical understanding as the way in which another person is experienced is vulnerable to becoming dulled, and that in the heat of controversy the basis of ethics—man—is lost.⁶ At the same time the language of ethics appears to be a valuable tool; it is able to provide a deeper view of the human condition and of the environment in which man functions.⁷

In order to describe the ethical depiction of problems of identity in Polish Jewish culture, one has to confront both the world of Zionist thought, with its various offshoots and determinants of value, and the world of Judaic thought, with its religious narrative of chosenness, and also confront the problems associated with the issue of assimilation as a focus for Jewish identity, whether this process is supported or opposed. The discussion of ethical issues also has to take into account the different forms of Polish nationalism and nationalist views of culture, which had a significant influence on the formation of the collective imagination in the inter-war years.⁸

In the sphere of press polemics, one article by an established columnist could sometimes provide the impetus for a truly dramatic ethical dispute that influenced the imagination of those engaged in the creation of Polish Jewish culture. Good examples are the well-known article on Polish Jewish poetry by Roman Brandstaetter,⁹ Ludwik Oberlaender's cultural reflections, Majer Bałaban's and Ignacy Schiper's historical studies, and Samuel Imber's polemics. Each of these writers has his own approach to others, evaluating his interlocutors in his own way, but their dissimilarities also affect their common identity and validate it.¹⁰

For instance, Brandstaetter, a poet and journalist, recognized in his poems his communal affiliation...