Confronting the End of European Jewry. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, August 12, 2013.
The Death of European Jewish Culture. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, August 31, 2013.
You Only Live Twice. By Michel Gurfinkiel. Mosaic, August 2013.
Vibrant Jewish communities were reborn in Europe after the Holocaust. Is there a future for them in the 21st century?
Tobin:
Last
year the U.S. State Department noted that a “rising tide of anti-Semitism” was
sweeping through Europe. It was a significant acknowledgement of a critical
problem. But as serious as this warning was, the dilemma of European Jewry
remains a marginal issue that only gains sporadic attention when there is an egregious
crime or a move to ban Jewish religious practices in a specific country. As
much as the murder of four Jews in a shooting spree in Toulouse by an Islamist
terrorist or the attempts to ban circumcision or kosher slaughter makes
headlines, the revival of Jew hatred on the European continent is not so much
the function of egregious incidents as it is a historic process that is leading
to what seems like an inevitable conclusion. In is in this context that Michel Gurfinkiel’s essay “You Only Live Twice” on the subject in this month’s edition
of Mosaic magazine must be seen as an important contribution to Jewish
historiography. After decades of celebrating the unexpected revival of European
Jewry after the Holocaust that created new vibrant communities where desolation
had existed in 1945, we have now reached the moment when the cycle of hatred
has turned around again. In a brilliant tour de force of historical
perspective, Gurfinkiel reminds us that the virus of Jew hatred has not merely
revived but threatens to write what may be the final chapter in the long saga
of European Jewry.
Gurfunkiel
puts the steady drip of depressing stories about anti-Semitism in context. But
it is important because it dares to draw conclusions about the problem that
many sober European commentators refuse to approach. Instead of merely
lamenting a sad trend, he demands that Jews draw the proper conclusions from
events. That is something growing numbers of European Jews are doing, as many
are immigrating to Israel. But his conclusion should send a chill down the
spines of not only Jews but also all civilized persons who might otherwise be
inclined to take a less alarmist view of events:
A
mitigating view of today’s situation might have it that, at the very least,
divine providence did beneficently afford to about two million European Jews a
brief golden age, a true rebirth, which in turn brought fresh luster to
European civilization as well as encouragement and inspiration to millions of
their fellow Jews around the world, most especially in the Jewish state. True
enough; but what is no less certain is that the end of European Jewry, a
millennia-old civilization and a crowning achievement of the human spirit, will
deliver a lasting blow to the collective psyche of the Jewish people. That it
will also render a shattering judgment on the so-called European idea, exposed
as a deadly travesty for anyone with eyes to see, is cold comfort indeed.
The
desire to avoid drawing such a stark conclusion about the problem is natural
and it is based in no small measure, as Gurfinkiel notes, on the fact that
European Jewry “looks healthy and secure.” The postwar revival of Jewish life
in France and even Germany has created substantial communities and a population
that is invested in the future of these countries. They have enjoyed a golden
age that created a superficial similarity to the strength and security of
American Jewry. But the comparisons no longer make sense. With anti-Semitism
raging on the left and the right and with the unprecedented growth in the
population of Muslim immigrants in Europe (especially in France), you don’t
need to be an alarmist to understand that “catastrophe may lie ahead.”
What
Gurfinkiel sees as the “seeds of a new anti-Semitism” were sown in France by
Charles de Gaulle who repudiated his country’s alliance with Israel after the
Six-Day War and embarked on a campaign of delegitimization of the Jewish state
that did not exclude frankly anti-Semitic utterances. But while de Gaulle
deserves a large amount of the blame, the problem was bigger than the enormous
ego of that hero of the Second World War. Post-war European intellectuals were
weaned on a belief that imperialism was the original sin of European
civilization and wrongly categorized Zionism as part of the colonial endeavor
rather than as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. While
Europe enjoyed a brief period of philo-Semitism as part of the reaction to the
Holocaust, the movement seeking to brand as illegitimate the expression of
Jewish identity simmered under the surface. Just as Muslim anti-Semitism “has
been intimately connected with classic European anti-Semitism for more than a
century” and freely borrows from the Hitlerian playbook, as the historian
notes, “the two brands share a common language, and each sees in the other a
mirror image of itself.” The comeback of Jew hatred in Europe is inextricably
tied to its rise in the Muslim and Arab world.
The
problem is that the “new” anti-Semitism that focuses on Israel is merely a
variation on the old themes that once ravaged the European continent. Perhaps
the most important insight in an essay full of them is Gurfinkiel’s pointing
out that whereas in the aftermath of the Enlightenment European Jews thought
they could gain equality and acceptance by jettisoning their specific Jewish
identity and faith, so, too, do some now think they can escape the anti-Semitic
tide by distancing themselves from Israel.
For the
most part, in France and throughout Western Europe, that price was fully and
willingly paid. Generations of Jews eagerly pledged their allegiance to the
ideals of democracy, patriotism, and religious tolerance, pouring their
prodigious talents and energies into making Europe a better place. Over the
centuries, in fair weather, the bargain held; in foul, the price would be
successively raised, the conditions of acceptance revised, the bargain hedged,
until at last the offer was finally, brutally, rescinded in wholesale massacre.
Now,
busily building monuments and museums, Europe ostentatiously engages in
celebrating and mourning its lost dead Jews of yesterday, whose murder it
variously perpetrated, abetted, or (with exceptions) found it could put up
with. Meanwhile, it encourages and underwrites the withering of Jewish life
today. Once again, Jews are accepted on condition: that they separate
themselves from their brethren in Israel and join the official European
consensus in demonizing the Jewish state; that they learn to accommodate the
reality that so many ethnic Europeans hate them and wish them ill, and that
Islamists on European soil seek their extinction; and that in the interest of
justifying their continued claim to European citizenship, they accept Europe’s
proscription of some of the most basic practices of their faith.
To the
dead Jews of yesterday, everything; to the living Jews of today, little and
littler.
This
juxtaposition of affection for the dead and indifference or hostility to the
living is a common theme in much of the world after 1945, but especially so in
France and Europe. As in the past, those who think they can escape hate by
turning their back on their own people may someday discover that they have
given up much in exchange for little or nothing. Though some may hope that it
is not too late for the tide of anti-Semitism to be reversed, it is difficult
to argue with Gurfinkiel’s conclusion. Even more to the point, it is a powerful
argument for even greater support for a Jewish state that provides the only
fitting memorial to the Holocaust and the only effective answer to anti-Semitic
hate.
