Part Four: A Jewish Solution to the West’s Jewish Problem?

“The Jews such as they are today are our work, the work of our 1,800 years of idiotic persecution.”

(Emile Zola 1897¹)

Part One described the Jewish Problem as introduced and fixed within Christian scripture. It has long been recognized by Christian and Jewish scholars alike that Matthew’s placing. “his blood also on our children” was the direct source of the Christ-killer curse libel that haunted Christian-Jewish relations; that Paul having Jesus refer to “the Jews” as children of Satan identified “the Jews” as evil, enemies of Christians: that both concepts cause millions of innocent Jewish deaths and most recently inspired the Holocaust. This representation of “the Jew” was accepted by such leaders of the French Enlightenment as Diderot and Voltaire, self-described rationalists and anti-religion promoters of the secular nation-state. Almost unnoticed the stereotypes characterizing Jews in Christian mythology were absorbed unchanged into modern secularism where they were rationalized as antisemitism. Loosed from its religious moorings the nearly two-millennium theological Jewish Problem remained a continuing unsolved “problem” for the secular West. 

A full explanation of why, in particular, Paul and the unknown authors of the four anti-Jewish gospels were adopted as canon by the early Church is beyond the scope of the present discussion. What is important is that for nearly two thousand years Christianity sought and failed to provide a solution to its Jewish Problem. With the Holocaust Hitler’s Final Solution represents a “modern,” bureaucratically rational and final solution to the problem represented by Jewish survival in the Christian world. The church centuries earlier having mandated clothing to distinguish Jews from Christians; and locked them in ghettos guarded to ensure their from Christian society: expelled when the purposes of princes and bishops were served; murdered singly and in masses by townspeople: all would serve as prototype for the 20^th century secular effort to rid the world of Jews, the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem, the Holocaust.

Most people aware of the Holocaust know that it was perpetrated by Germany, that the Final Solution was the dream of Hitler. Does it then follow that Germany alone, that its “evil genius” Hitler was solely responsible for the Final Solution? From where would such an idea as a need to eliminate Jewish existence arise? And how explain the active involvement of nearly all of Europe in the murder campaign; forced on local populations by their German occupiers?  Were those Ukrainian mobs chasing Jews through the streets to beat them to death with axe handles as their German occupiers watched in horror as described in letters they wrote to their families back in Germany? Or Poland, a country that suffered as many Christians murdered by Germany as Jews, but also raged against Jews during the occupation?

And what of the battalions of national volunteers wearing their country’s patch on SS and Wehrmacht uniforms? The truth is that nearly all European countries voluntarily participated in the Final Solution by rounding up Jews for transit to known death centers: France, for example, for example, and Norway, Greece, Hungary? The web of guilt even today comes to light, continues to spread. Friends, neighbors and even non-Jewish, pre-Holocaust family members who stood by mute observers: complicit or innocent?

In 1939 Poland provided England an “Enigma machine” used by Germany to code radio communications. From the moment in November, 1939 that the Wehrmacht attacked Poland England followed the Wehrmacht blitzkrieg as it crossed Poland. From the first day England followed the radio reports of Himmler’s Einsatsgruppe rounding up and murdering Polish Jewry as they trailed the advancing Wehrmacht across Poland. From the start of the war and the earliest days of the Holocaust Churchill shared the beginnings of the Holocaust with his American supporter, the president of the United States. That President Roosevelt represented himself as having become aware of the Holocaust only after 1941 and the opening of Auschwitz is unsupportable by the facts.

Does guilt and complicity end with only those who physically participated in the Final Solution? And what of those who knowing the facts chose to stand by as observer? Does not national passivity in face of systematic mass murder not  also constitute complicity?

Relatively little space in this volume was devoted to Germany and the Holocaust as compared to that of the United State’s role in its evolving over the years 1933 to 1945. Earlier chapters described the possibility of the Holocaust’s spread across the ocean; of the sympathy and support by many prominent Americans in and out of government for Hitler’s war aims before he “loyally” followed his ally, Japan, and declared war on the United States. declaration of war on the United States in December, 1941. American Jewry, by far the largest in the Diaspora, then as today insist the United States “exceptional” regarding its acceptance of Jews. As the Holocaust evolved from legal restriction to pogrom to transport “East” American Jewry insisted such could never happen here. And what does the word “exceptional” represent? History describes that earlier “exceptions,” such as the Golden Age of Spain, Of Poland were themselves problematic and lasted only so long as they served the interests of their hosts. For a century before Hitler; for several years following the Nazis rise to power German-Jewry insisted their fatherland exceptional!

Zionism and the intention to create a refuge for the Jewish People was the response of mostly secular Jews in Europe and Russia at disappointment that Hewish emancipation changed nothing: pogroms continued in Russia and spread to Germany and France, the heart of the “enlightened West.” Almost immediately it became clear that the Emancipation of the Jews changed nothing substantively, that Diaspora Jewry were historically and would always remain “outsiders,” target and victim to whatever Western state they chose to live in. Pinsker and Herzl may be forgiven for not having anticipated the Holocaust; their sense of foreboding was a response to exclusion, prejudice and pogrom. Nothing in memory could have suggested that within a few decades such as exterminationist antisemitism was even conceivable. Both were aware of the Christian roots of the Jewish Problem; but its final solution?

And today, seven decades after that which was previously “inconceivable” Diaspora Jewry appear to prefer the consoling  belief that the Holocaust was unique, that our Diaspora homeland was and remains secure even as Jews are assaulted and murdered as Jews in France and Belgium; in Missouri, Florida and Washington, DC. American-Jews, as were Jews in pre-Holocaust Germany, self-reassured of the exceptionality of their respective Diaspora homelands.

Israel is the keystone for Jewish survival, in the words of Vice President Biden: “You understand in your bones that no matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States… [t]here is really only one absolute guarantee, and that’s the state of Israel.” It was created by the Diaspora for just this contingency: refuge to the Diaspora in time of need. Nearly seven decades have passed since Auschwitz and the birth of a national state of the Jews. During this time American Jewry fails or chooses not to appreciate that which our Christian vice president clearly recognizes. Throughout history neither assimilation or even conversion have resulted in security. As Richard Wagner insisted, and I paraphrase, “it takes more than Holy Water to turn a Jew into a Christian.” Nearly a century later Hitler’s second in command Hermann Göring put it less poetically: "It is I who determines who is a Jew." In the meantime the gap between Israel and the Diaspora is growing wider.  

Part Four discusses the state of the Jews increasingly identifying, according to Herzl’s expectations, as a “normal” state, its population increasingly “Israeli.” What are the implications of this evolution in identity for Israel’s Zionist role as refuge to the Diaspora? What impact does Israel evolving into a “normal state” have on today’s Diaspora and what implications for an as yet distant time when Diaspora Jewry, facing the need and decision to leave might hesitate, increasing personal risk in a moment when decision might be critical?  

Chapter: 22: Israel as solution? Israel’s role as Jewish Solution to the West’s Jewish Problem begins with a discussion of the emergence of Zionism in the writings of its most important proponents, Leon Pinsker and Theodor Herzl. Both advocated a Zionist solution, both beginning as supporters of legal Emancipation granting citizenship and inclusion to “the Jews.” It was from despair that both reluctantly abandoned assimilation and turned to the radical idea of a homeland for the Jewish people. How did this change come about? For Pinsker it was continuing pogroms in Russia, and spreading to Germany; for Herzl it was the Dreyfus Affair, rioters in Paris cursing Jews and the Jewish army captain accused of betraying France to Germany. Pinsker, a physician, concluded that Jews were unlikely, based on nearly two-thousand years of history, to find genuine acceptance in Christian society.  A diagnostician he systematically described Judeophobia “a psychic aberration… hereditary and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.”

Since antisemitism is an incurable social pathology Pinsker provided a radical cure. The Jewish People, he concluded, must emancipate themselves. Autoemancipation, his all but forgotten pamphlet describing the pathology appeared in 1882.

Herzl was a playwright and journalist. In 1894 his Austrian newspaper sent him to Paris to cover the trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus accused of betraying his country. It was on the streets of Paris  that Herzl witnessed antisemitic riots; read Jew-hatred in religious and monarchist newspapers: it was in Paris that the assimilated Herzl was radicalized, transformed into a Zionist. What Herzl brought to the movement that Pinsker lacked was charisma. A natural leader he was able to unite a divided people under a single political banner, a common Jewish cause. The result was Israel’s declaration of statehood on May 14, 1948, three years and four months following the liberation of Auschwitz.

Chapter 23: Israel and the “Religious” Problem: In the State of Israel a revolution in identity is taking place. Israeli Orthodoxy has never reconciled to accepting Israel as a “secular” nation-state. A powerful interest group within Israel’s coalition form of choosing its leaders, Orthodoxy often has a disproportionate ability to shape religious identity for the state. “Who is a Jew” seeks to impose Halacha, religion as the basis for Israel’s legal system. Since 90% of Diaspora Jews choose not to conform their lives and beliefs to a halachic definition of Judaism, whenever the issue of Who is a Jew legislation is raised in the Knesset loud and persistent protest arises within and outside the state. For the Diaspora, and particularly for American Jews who are by far the largest Jewish community outside Israel, the Jewish homeland appears, and in some important areas is, moving away from its universalist Zionist roots and towards a homeland for Orthodox Jewry.

Chapter 24: Israel and the “National” Problem: Israel’s Law of Return describes the state’s continuing commitment to serve the Diaspora as refuge regardless of religious affiliation or not. Having received pre-statehood concessions from Ben-Gurion regarding “personal status issues” within the state, Orthodoxy joined the First Knesset but never abandoned its intention to conform state law to “Jewish” law, Halacha. Israel’s system of democracy is based on government formation in which the party receiving the most seats in the Knesset is typically chosen by the president to form the government. At no time in its nearly seven decades existence has a single party been able to form a government by itself. When politically expedient and the price demanded dictates, the leading party turns to the haredim, today typically non- or even anti-Zionist to round out the governing coalition. 

In 1970, following a series of Orthodox challenges to Jewish identity under the provisions of the Law of Return, the Golda Meir coalition government of center-left parties responding to challenges to Israel’s Law of Return providing refuge and immigrant status according it Israel’s Zionist obligations moved to clarify the “national” foundation of the Law by adding what came to be called the Grandparent Amendment. The amendment extended aliya privileges, the right of refuge in Israel, to any person threatened as “Jew” under the Nuremberg definition of “Jew.” The “Grandparent” of the title of the Amendment was a direct response to Germany’s 1933-5 Nuremberg Laws which defined as “Jew” a person, regardless of religion, with a single Jewish grandparent.

Chapter 25: Christian “Problem,” Jewish Solution: We began this discussion at the dawn of Christianity, a religion reflecting Jewish despair at the ruins of Jerusalem and the Temple, focus of Jewish religious ritual. Had God failed his people by not providing the hoped for messiah to lead Israel to victory against Rome? And what might his plan be following defeat for Israel going forward? From surviving gospels outside Christian canon it seems a variety of responses surfaced, most inspired by Hellenism and the Pagan Mystery religions. One of these which would eventually provide the foundation of Christianity, found in the devastation and doubt hope an entirely non-traditional messiah: Christ Jesus and son of God who would redeem Israel through life after death. The “Jewish Problem,” always gnawing at the sinews of the emerging religion, would officially take shape once catholic Christianity was adopted by the Roman Empire as its sole authorized religion in the fourth century. With its new “legal” authority the Vatican undertook to purge the empire of “heretical” Christian sects; and the confusion and doubt resulting from surviving Jews and Judaism. The Holocaust clearly describes that, even with the evolution of the West from religion- to secular- government, the Jewish Problem has itself has itself moved beyond religion and theology.

The purpose of Christian “Problem,” Jewish Solution is to promote discussion and explore possible options available to the Jewish people to confront this continuing threat to our children, and theirs. The same economic and social conditions that led to the twentieth century Holocaust came close to repeating in the Great Recession beginning 2008. Jewish defense organizations in the EU and the US both observed that antisemitism resulting from the recession compares to levels not seen since pre-Holocaust years. What would constitute a Jewish Solution to Christendom’s Jewish Problem? Several possible scenarios are touched upon here, all based on self-voluntary removal from the Diaspora, source of danger. Of course all Jews will not accept that described in these pages and will, following German-Jewry in the 1930’s, choose to remain in place. All of us face the very real difficult choices involved in abandoning home, property and wealth. As in pre-war Germany many will put off a decision until it is made for us. 

Chapter 26: Summary and Guide to the Future: In relating “the greatest story ever told” the gospels describe Jesus’ final two years of life. While the four gospels do not always agree regarding details of the narrative, events leading up to the crucifixion all agree on one point: it was “the Jews” who were responsible for Jesus’ death.

Germany was arguably among the most advanced and cultured countries of the early 20th century. And it was just such a country that democratically placed in office the architect of the West’s Final Solution. Under sufficient social stress, as existed in the West and particularly for Germany during the interwar years, is it reasonable to consider any Western country, inheritor of that same two-thousand year’s history and tradition towards Diaspora Jewry, “safe” for Jews? This chapter considers this problem and seeks a way towards Jewish survival.