Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz

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David N. Myers Between Jew&Arab the lost voice of simon rawidowicz David N. Myers Between Jew & Arab the lost voice of simon rawid owicz brandeis An exploration of the fascinating Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz and his provocative views on Arab refugees and the fate of Israel This book brings new attention to Simon Rawido­ wicz (1897–1957), the wide-ranging Jewish thinker and scholar who taught at Brandeis University in the 1950s. At the heart of Myers’ book is a chapter that Rawidowicz wrote as a coda to his Hebrew tome Babylon and Jerusalem (1957) but never published. In this coda, Rawidowicz shifted his decades-long preoccupation with the “Jewish Question” to what he called the “Arab Question.” Asserting that the “Arab Question” had become a most urgent political and moral matter for Jews after 1948, Rawidowicz called for an end to discrimination against Arabs resident in Israel— and more provocatively, for the repatriation of Arab refugees from 1948. Myers’ book is divided into two main sections. Part I introduces the life and intellectual develop­ ment of Rawidowicz. It traces the evolution of his thinking about the “Jewish Question,” name­ ly, the status of Jews as a national minority in the Diaspora. Part II concentrates on the shift occasioned by the creation of the State of Israel, when Jews assumed political sovereignty and en­ tered into a new relationship with the native Arab population. Myers analyzes the structure, content, and context of Rawidowicz’s unpublished chapter on the “Arab Question,” paying particular attention to Rawidowicz’s calls for an end to discrimination againstArabsinIsrael,ontheonehand,andforthe repatriation of those refugees who left Palestine in 1948, on the other. The volume also includes a full English trans­ lation of “Between Jew and Arab,” a timeline of signi­ fi­ cant events, and an appendix of official legal documents from Israel and the international community pertaining to the conflict. p h o t o b y c h e l s e a h a d l e y D AVID N. MY E R S is Professor of History at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies. Born and raised in Scranton, Pennsyl­ vania, David Myers commenced graduate study in Israel in 1982 and from that point forward, he began his engagement with the history of Zionism. After receiving his Ph.D. in Jewish history from Columbia University in 1991, Myers published his first book, Re-inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to His­ tory (1995). Having encountered the writings of Simon Rawidowicz in his Columbia years, Myers vowed to return to study his life and thought at a later date. Meanwhile, other research interests diverted his attention, including work on a second book, Resisting History (2003). Over the past four years, open access to Rawidowicz’s papers in the basement of his son, Benjamin Ravid, prompted Myers to write this new book. j a c k e t i l l u s t r a t i o n Reuven Rubin, Sheikh Munis, 1924, oil on canvas, courtesy Rubin Museum, Tel Aviv Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series Brandeis University Press Waltham, Massachusetts Published by University Press of New England Hanover and London | www.upne.com “ This stirring and exquisite volume restores to vitality an essential prin­ ciple and an essential man. The principle is that power must answer to morality—and that this is a central teaching of the experience of the Jews in exile, which the Jews in their state cannot evade. The man is Simon Rawidowicz, one of the most original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, whose ideas are uncannily pertinent to the Jewish situation now. In the skill with which he blends erudition and engagement, David Myers reminds me distinctly of his hero.” —Leon Wieseltier “ In Between Jew & Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz, David Myers provides the crucial service of recovering the prescient words that one of the most profoundly learned and morally sensitive Jewish thinkers of the 20th century put forward on the question of Israel and its relationship to the Palestinians. By translating and contextualizing this Hebrew essay written more than fifty years ago by the first head of the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies department at Brandeis University, Myers has done more than write a work of great intellectual interest for students of modern Jewish history and thought. He has also broadcast a thought-provoking and morally challenging book that is of the...