« The Deal | Home | You Say Defense »

Democracy for the Middle East

 April 13, 2003

Failing To Learn From History

The pity of "The Pity Of It All", Amos Elon's new book on German-Jewish history, is that Mr. Elon fails to look critically at the specific philosophy for which the German Jews, en masse, surrendered their identity and eventually their lives. If anything, the author's rapturous billet-doux to the Enlightenment mirrors the mania of its victims. The result is a less-than-scholarly approach to analyzing the dialectic that emerged in 18th century Germany and still rages today in Europe and the Middle East; the veritable crack in the cosmic egg that resulted from the attempt of French secular modernism to depose an intellectually and spiritually overpowering, five-thousand year old, revelation-based nation and religion (see Adam Sutcliffe's book below.) The following passages sodden with generalization, inaccuracy, and caricature - for which Mr. Elon supplies no substantiating footnotes - demonstrate this author's all but useless approach:

Intellectually, German Judaism was at a low point, even in Berlin. Piety was often reduced to the mechanical repetition of ritual. With few exceptions, German Jews were no longer producing outstanding religious thinkers; most clerical posts were occupied by parochial rabbis from Poland and points farther east, where conditions had prevented any form of acculturation and modernization. A few sons of wealthy Berlin Jews were already attending a Gymnasium, a German high school. The poor and unprivileged, like Mendelssohn, had as little access to the riches of secular thought and culture as to the comforts of prosperous living.

Further on, Mr. Elon writes:

Throughout the nineteenth century, generations of hopeful German Jews would celebrate Mendelssohn as their patron saint; like Mendelssohn, they sought a larger community of rational men beyond the stagnant confines of religious identity.

As for the question of whether Jews who adopted Christian and/or Enlightenment practices should still be considered to be Jews - something most reasonable people would acknowledge to be comparable to trying to take a shower in a raincoat (or thereabouts) - the author has this to say:

..Mendelssohn witnessed the rise of a young generation closer in spirit to the general culture than any German Jewish community had been since the Middle Ages. And, in most cases, its members were regarded as Jewish by all but the most rigidly traditional.

As Mr. Elon's reliance on stereotype and cliche reveals, he doesn't particularly get Judaism or know much about it. One therefore wonders why he would have tackled a period of history in which Jewish practice was a central issue. In light of the waning of secular modernism today, both in Mr. Elon's native Israel and in America, his "history" of German Jewry should be understood as a reactionary philo-European polemic. In contrast, Adam Sutcliffe's "Judaism and Enlightenment" (Cambridge University Press) is a far more interesting, original and useful analysis that advances the dialog (see our earlier post.) Michael A. Meyer's Origins Of The Modern Jew is also valuable and scholarly.

For a corrective to Mr. Elon's gross misreading of European Judaism, the reader is directed to The Earth Is The Lord's by theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, and in a more abstract vein - the classic treatise Halachic Man by Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

We have but a weary smile for those for whom Mr. Elon's celebration of Jewish secularism evoke feelings of pride and self-satisfaction. It is to take nothing away from Albert Einstein et al. to observe that with Pesach approaching it may be an appropriate time to turn down the Beethoven, look up from Ha'aretz, and remember how the European party ended. The truth is that "The Pity Of It All" would have been more aptly titled "The Idiot's Guide To Self-Destruction."

Home . Posted by Editor at April 13, 2003 12:03 PM . DFME's new internet address is www.dfme.org

Comments on this post: