An Attempt to Identify the Root Cause of Antisemitism

By A. B. Yehoshua

A prominent Israeli author gets to the bottom of the world`s oldest hatred.

The root of antisemitism stems primarily from the correlative activity of two imaginations: the Jewish one and the non-Jewish one attached to it. The specific content that the antisemite introduces to clothe his imaginings is a different matter, changing from generation to generation. This, incidentally, is why antisemitism also can manifest itself in places where there are no Jews: The imaginative element in Jewish identity can stimulate a counterimagination, even without the physical presence of Jews.

This structure creates many other layers of antisemitic feelings and attitudes that have been the subject of research. Each society has scores, if not hundreds, of open or hidden codes that constitute its identity and come into contact with the numerous components that make up the particular identity of the Jewish community living in its midst. It is here, for example, that historical research can elucidate why Christian Bulgarian society is far less infected with antisemitism than is Christian Hungarian society; or why French antisemitism (because of the stability and confidence of French identity) can never reach the degree of frenzy and murderous hatred exhibited by German society, which has suffered from the historical flimsiness of its amalgamated identity.

I wish to re-assert a clear moral principle. By comprehending the transference of imagination between Jew and antisemite, we do not free the antisemite from moral responsibility for his deeds. Understanding pathological interaction does not rectify, justify, or legitimize any abhorrent criminal act—whoever the perpetrator may be.

The metahistorical attempt to understand the antisemitic structure as a persistent phenomenon across time and space will almost certainly encounter many reservations and attempts to undermine it with all manner of historical counterexamples. However, I feel that every attempt to explain such an enduring problem deserves serious discussion and encouragement. The aim of the present effort is to demystify the Jew for the antisemite (and maybe for the over-enthusiastic philosemite) as well as for the Jew himself.

If the antisemite understood what it is in the mechanism of the Jewish identity structure that really stimulates him to activate his imagination and project such strange and violent fantasies onto it, perhaps he would relax his obsessive preoccupation with the Jews and, in the end, turn to a frank examination of the demons that plague his soul and his thoughts. The same applies to the Jew: If he were to understand the virtual mechanism at work within him, and see how it affects his interaction with his surroundings, he might avoid weird and contradictory accusations directed at himself, and the kind of guilt felt by some victims who identify with the aggressor and destroy themselves with self-hatred. He might possibly liberate himself from his tragic sense of historical pre-destination and try to acquire more precise control over his interaction with non-Jews.

I emphasize again that the theory posited in this essay does not negate other historical causes, nor does it repudiate what we know about political antisemitism, which cynically exploits Jew-hatred to achieve political ends. However, the very fact that the unique element in the Jew’s identity can be used to stimulate the human imagination to the point that antisemitism becomes a significant part of the mentality of some individuals and societies—
producing ecstatic, disturbed or even suicidal states of mind—obliges us to look for explanations that go beyond expedient political considerations. After all, what political gains did the Nazis derive from the destruction of the Jews in World War II, a goal in which they invested so much, at times even at the expense of their war effort?

Is it possible to repair something in the unique structure of Jewish identity in order to clarify it and restrict its unlimited virtual activity, or are we destined to remain locked in this cycle forever, exposed to murderous aggression of the kind we knew in the Holocaust? After all, the means of mass murder have become more and more available, simple, and deadly in modern times.

I have not the slightest doubt that the re-grouping of part of the Jewish people in Israel has considerably and blessedly restricted the degree of virtuality and imagination that constitute the classic Jewish identity. The basic elements of nationalism—territory, language, and a real and actual framework of communal life—despite their youth from a historical perspective, are already present and actual in the Jewish state, and there is no need to activate the imagination in order to create them. However, Israel is still deeply bound to the Jews of the exile. And even if its real existence allows the Jews to moderate the imaginative aspects of their identity, the cultural dynamics of the post-modern world have the opposite effect and allow them to broaden the space of their indeterminateness. This is also the case with Israel itself, which since the Six Day War has blurred its borders and dragged itself into a deeply symbiotic and ill-defined relationship with the Palestinian people and, through this, with the greater Arab and Muslim world—a complete regression from the first important achievements of delineating the borders of Jewish national identity at the founding of the state. Thus, we have returned to the old and dangerous Jewish patterns, fostering the virtuality and indeterminateness to which deranged enemies are so dangerously attracted.

Indeed, accompanying the reasonable political criticism (justified or not) leveled against the policies of the Israeli government, the sort of criticism based more or less on accepted political and moral criteria, we find the residue of venom, fantasy, and imagination that is reminiscent of classic antisemitism. This new mix, with its sediment of traditional Jew-hatred, is creating a wave of antagonism capable of legitimizing ruin and destruction.

Let us imagine a gathering of the leaders and sages of Israel, all those who have shaped Jewish identity throughout the ages, convened in a single great hall: Abraham, Moses, the judges and the prophets, Ezra and Nehemiah, the writers of the Tora, the sages of the Mishna and the Talmud, the sages of Babylon, Rabbi Saadia Gaon, Maimonides and Nahmanides, the sages of Ashkenaz, the giants of Hasidism and their opponents, up to the men of the Haskala and the artisans of Jewish national identity before the establishment of the state and after. They have all been gathered in one hall.

Darkness falls, and a detailed documentary film about the Holocaust and the death camps is projected before them. When the lights come back up, all present are asked a simple question: “You return now to your time and your era. Would you, in retrospect, do something different in order to prevent this horrendous catastrophe?”

I am certain that some of the shapers of Jewish identity would throw up their hands and say: “This is the fate of our special identity—there is nothing to be done.” But it is possible that others might say: “It is appropriate to change something.” Moses might say: “If this is to be the horrible end, it would be better if my burial place were known to the world, and I would insist that my coffin be taken and interred in the soil of the Land of Israel, and that a great pyramid be built over it in order to make it difficult for the Jews to leave their land so easily, so as not to forsake their leader’s grave.” R. Yohanan ben Zakai might say: “Instead of requiring a minyan of ten men for prayer, I would require a thousand or two thousand in order to prevent the easy dispersion of the Jews among the nations of the world.” Maimonides would plead before Saladin (whom he never mentions in his writings) to give the Jews permission to settle in the Land of Israel, which he had just conquered-or at least, he would make aliya himself. Everyone who persecuted, excommunicated, and banished Shabtai Zvi would perhaps, on second thought, consider the possibility that this “false messiah” felt, by some hidden sense, the great inferno awaiting the Jews of Europe and justifiably desired to escape it. Rabbi Nahman of Braslav, who came with his followers to the Land of Israel and left immediately after, might have overcome his fears after all and stayed.

One thing is clear: In this unique and problematic connection between a specific religion and a specific nationality is enfolded the riddle of Jewish identity, its ability to survive, and its troubled interaction with its foreign surroundings. Any thought of possible repair and reconstruction must begin here.

Translated from the Hebrew by Riva Rubin.

Abraham “Boolie” Yehoshua (A.B. Yehoshua) is an Israeli novelist, playwright, and essayist. He received the Israel Prize for literature in 1995.

Notes

1. Gershom Scholem, “Thoughts on the Wisdom of Israel,” Luach Haaretz, 1944/1945 [Hebrew].

2. Nahum Sokolow, Eternal Hatred of the Eternal People (Tel Aviv: Jabotinsky Institute, 2007) [Hebrew].

3. Sifre Numbers, sec. 69.

4.Sigmund Freud, “Address to the Society of B’nai Brith,” in Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey, vol. 20 (London: Hogarth and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1959),
pp. 273-274.

5. Sigmund Freud, “Totem and Taboo: Preface to the Hebrew Translation,” in Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 13 (London: Hogarth and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1955), p. xv.

6. Zvi Giora, “Toward a Psychohistory of Jewish History,” Filosofia Oggi 29 (2006), pp. 263-279.

7. Jacob L. Talmon, The Nature of Jewish History: Its Universal Significance (London: Hillel Foundation, 1957), pp. 12-13.

8. Esther 3:1-10.

9. In an important article by Professor Dina Porat, published in the Hebrew journal Gesher 149 (Summer 2004), “The Historian and Antisemitism Research,” there are two most instructive comments. One is from the introduction to volume two of Leon Poliakov’s The History of Antisemitism (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1974), and the second is from Moshe Idel’s lecture “Jewish History as Satan,” delivered at Tel Aviv University in 1999, in which he summarized Gershom Scholem’s article “Thoughts on the Wisdom of Israel.” Poliakov (according to Porat) and Scholem (according to Idel) employ obscure and problematic concepts that require clarification.

Porat summarizes Poliakov’s thinking as follows: “This denunciation [of antisemites] is an unacademic stance-and it comes after he has invested decades of his life in his research-since his self-imposed professional caution and equal approach to everything relevant to the subject, as a historian, cannot alter the fact that he is the accuser and denouncer, even if he is in the right. In continuing along this line, he cannot avoid asking if and how, when and where did Jews and Jewish nature in themselves contribute to the development and atmosphere of antisemitism and its phenomena. In the wake of these questions, he is likely to become the accuser, or at least, the critic of his own people as well.” (Emphasis mine.)

Idel goes even further in his interpretation of Scholem’s article, which was written while the smoke from the death camp incinerators still darkened the sky. Porat summarizes Idel’s lecture as follows: “Moshe Idel points out that what he highlighted in Scholem’s demand has still not received the attention it deserves;
Scholem’s demand that historians writing after the Holocaust should look the evil in the eye and cope with the real demon, the demon that is the active element in Jewish history.” (Emphasis mine.)

The words “demon” (Scholem) and “nature” (Poliakov) are strong, vague, and dangerous. It is the aim of this essay to de-demonize these concepts and to attempt to clarify them in a rational manner.

10. Leon Pinsker, Autoemancipation, trans. D.S. Blondheim (New York: Federation of American Zionists, 1916), www.wzo.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=122.

11. Adolf Hitler, “The Testament of Adolf Hitler, February 4, 1945,” in Francis
Genound, ed., The Testament of Adolf Hitler: The Hitler-Bormann Documents,
February-April 1945, (London: Cassel, 1961), pp. 30-31.

12. The Private and Political Testaments of Hitler, April 29, 1945, Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946-1948),
vol. 6, pp. 259-263, No. 3569-PS, www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1945/450429a.html.

13. Quoted in Nikos Konstandaras, “Greeks and Jews,” www.mikis-theodorakis.net/grandj-e.htm, November 15, 2003.

14. Ellis Shuman, “Storm Over Nobel Prize Laureate’s Auschwitz Comparison,” Israel Insider, http://www.israelinsider.com/channels/diplomacy/articles/
dip_0184.htm.

15. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991).

16. Appropriately, the Hebrew title of Joachim C. Fest’s biography of Hitler is Hitler: Portrait of a Non-Man (Jerusalem: Keter, 1986) [Hebrew].

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