I am reposting this discussion on “Jewish identity” as seen within the Jewish family, and from without. As many of my readers over the years are aware my multi-year JPost blog describes the process of me composing a book. I am now approaching actually publishing it. As I near the end of the final editing I am considering options for publishing with Kickstarter as possible funding option. Building an identity at that site led me to this article which appeared some months ago on JPost as, What is a Jew: a Zionist Perspective and on Academia.edu as, Being Jewish: Implications for Holocaust. In light of recent and continuing events in Europe, the
"Who is a Jew?" raises the question of Jewish identity within the extended Jewish community,
Between the first and eighteenth century persecution of “the Jews” was based on their collective identification with gospel portrayals as Christ-killers responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus (a belief held by more than a third of Americans in 2011, before the upsurge in antisemitism of recent years, according to ADL’s 2011 survey of antisemitism). With the transition from religious to secular governance most evident in the eighteenth century criticism of religion, secularism called for a reevaluating of the place of Jews in the “secular” West. Christianity's "Who" became secularism's "What”: how fit a group with a common culture, history and language, all attributes of national groups identifying French and German nationals. But these other groups were also identified by geography:
Although antisemitic political parties had existed in Europe and the
The Nuremberg Laws (1935), The Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, describe five levels of blood "purity" although, to my knowledge, the core concept of "blood" as applied to "völkisch" was not itself defined. Would, according to the chart above, a “pure” Aryan Christian convert to Judaism be considered "Jewish" or "völkisch"? As regards the five categories of blood, “pure Aryan” describes offspring from four Aryan grandparents; “pure Jewish” may consist of three Jewish grandparents. Between these extremes of “purity” are two grades of Mischlinge, or “half-breed” populations: A mischling second grade has a single Jewish grandparent; a mischling first grade has two Jewish grandparents.
What are the implications of
The inclusion of "mischling" in
". . . the discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is of the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! ... We shall regain our health only be eliminating the Jew.”
The Holocaust was unprecedented and unanticipated to Zionism before the event. Who could even consider the possibility that the Jewish Problem could take on such dimensions as to result in such an act? Such a thing was beyond experience and, before it happened, beyond even imagination. What was clear was, and continues with more urgency after the fact, is that Jews are inassimilable by religion or nationality: Jews are physically unsafe in the Diaspora. With the reality of
Implications for the Future
How is this relevant for Jews today? Hitler set out to murder each and every one of us, but failed. And according to most historians including, or especially, Jewish historians the Final Solution was an aberration, a "departure" from history. The Holocaust was unique. So reassured, what have we to fear?
I suggest that while the slaughter of the Jews called the Holocaust was unique in scale, that persecution and even mass murder of entire communities of Jews is itself far from "unique," has been occurring with such a consistency that such terms as "aberration" and "unique" and "mysterious" so fail to apply as to suggest instead denial, or even more sinister, revisionism. Hitler referred to the extermination campaign as the “endlösung,” the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem. The term “final” alone indicates a pre-history to the “solution.”
The problem referred to in "the Jewish Problem" was originally theological, an inability to square the fact of continuing Jewish survival in an a proposed post-Jewish, "new" Israel-Christian era. Secularism challenged the "mysticism" of theology only to replace it with the pseudo-science of eugenics, the rage of
As a problem according to its origins in religion one possible solution to the Jewish Problem could be and was voluntary or involuntary conversion to Christianity. But in a secular world “conversion” has no meaning, provides no possibility of sanctuary.
For centuries the imagined “threat” represented by Jews resulted in millions murdered at the point of sword, clubbing and drowning; beginning in the tenth century whole communities of Jews were rounded up to be burned alive in town squares. These are the first recorded holocausts, incidents satisfying the definition, holos (completely) caustus (burned). With the arrival of the modern nation-state and the secularization of the Jewish Problem by the twentieth century, technology had developed to a level that the means were finally available to achieve that which was previously not achievable, a “final solution” to the West’s two-thousand year Jewish Problem.
By the twenty-first century technology today makes available what, compared to
A single example suffices: Beginning at the earliest stages of Hitler's ambition IBM provided