In Search of the People (Part II)

(Part I)

The problem for classical Marxists was that workers in the West proved not to be particularly revolutionary at all. They were easily bought off with modest progressive reforms such as shorter hours and better working conditions. They did not suffer alienation in the sense that the very idea of being under the authority of a capitalist did not bother them as long as that capitalist could provide them with ever greater prosperity.

One solution to this problem was Fascism. While we tend to think of Fascism as a right-wing movement, it is important to keep in mind that Mussolini started as a socialist. He then made the perfectly reasonable assumption that he could make socialism palatable in a country like Italy by embracing nationalism and using it to show that the Italian people, as Italians, really did have a revolutionary consciousness. This then led to the acceptance of the Catholic Church as part of the consciousness of the Italian People and even of the bourgeoise, who willingly embraced state control once it was made clear to them that, as Italians, they were not being placed as the villains and their property was not going to be expropriated. (It should be noted that the early Mussolini was not particularly anti-Semitic. Jews had been Italians since the Roman Empire so they were welcomed into the Fascist Party.) From this perspective, it should come as no surprise that Mousellini maintained a high degree of acceptability within leftist circles during his early years. He offered a plausible model for achieving socialist aims by avoiding conflict with the right.  

Marxism's only success in the early twentieth century was Russia, a country that was still transitioning out of an absolute monarchy and still trying to figure out the Industrial Revolution. On top of this, the Czar had managed to bring the entire country to ruin through his disastrous involvement in World War I. So the Bolsheviks managed to seize power by promising basic land reforms to improve the lot of citizens. In the 1920s, it was still plausible to imagine that Marxism would allow the Soviet Union to leapfrog the West and give workers more of the cars and electric appliances that Western workers were beginning to take for granted.

The problem for the Soviet Union was that it was unable to deliver on these economic promises. Furthermore, even trying to outproduce the West in consumer goods would betray the revolution. A worker with a truly revolutionary consciousness would rather labor under the worst horrors of the nineteenth-century factory system as long as it was an agent of the party who was his boss than to enjoy the blessings of Western capitalism if it meant being subjected to a capitalist boss. As such, one had to conclude that the vast majority of Soviet citizens were counterrevolutionaries. Even the seemingly loyal Soviet citizens who honestly believed that the Communist Party could deliver the full abundance of consumer goods had already betrayed the revolution in their hearts. They demonstrated that they did not believe in Communism as a matter of principle. If tomorrow they could be convinced that capitalism could offer more benefits, they would gladly betray the revolution and replace it with capitalism. (Note that this is what essentially happened to the Soviet Union in 1991.)   

This Soviet dilemma explains the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. The attempt to collectivize farms was a failure and led to the deaths of millions, mainly in Ukraine. If you are a good Communist, the explanation for this was that the Ukrainian Kulaks were greedy and sabotaged the plan so they deserved to die. Furthermore, now that we have established that the move toward actual socialism cannot happen unless the population truly develops a socialist consciousness, something most of them lack, the only solution is to declare war on the non-socialist masses in the name of the People. It should be emphasized that, under Stalin, to be guilty of treason, did not require malicious intent. Everyone, particularly those born before 1917, was, by definition, a traitor in spirit. How could it be otherwise if you were born into a capitalist world and instinctually thought in terms of personal benefit? The mark of a traitor was, upon being accused of treason, to deny guilt. Such a person demonstrated that they lacked the proper socialist mindset and still thought in terms of individual actions instead of accepting that they cannot be anything but guilty. The mark of a true socialist believer was to confess and accept any punishment in the hope that this will lead the next generation to develop the necessary socialist consciousness.

Mid and late twentieth-century leftist revolutionaries faced a dilemma. As knowledge of Stalinist atrocities became more widespread, it became harder to openly defend the Soviet Union as any kind of ideal. (This was distinct from taking money from the Soviet Union and working for Soviet interests during the Cold War.) At the same time, Western economic successes made it less likely that urban workers would be willing to risk their unions, pension plans, and welfare benefits on some revolution. As such, leftist revolutionary thought developed along two streams that looked to different groups of discontented individuals to serve as revolutionary classes. These were third-world peasants and members of minority groups in the West.

While classical Marxism had rejected the peasant as a revolutionary class, in the twentieth century they came to be reevaluated. Peasants had the advantage of never being seduced by a capitalist consciousness of individual striving and still maintained a group ethos. Furthermore, while peasants maintained traditional beliefs, outside of Europe and the United States, these were not Orthodox Christian beliefs. Even in Latin America, the Christianity on the ground could assumed to be far enough from Orthodox Christianity that such beliefs could be held up as manifestations of a revolutionary consciousness.

Much as religion suddenly became acceptable when taken out of its Western context, so did nationalism. For example, the nationalism of the North Vietnamese was acceptable as it manifested itself as opposition to imperial powers such as the French and later the Americans. As such, the North Vietnamese demonstrated a revolutionary consciousness and could be counted as a manifestation of the People. Obviously, nationalist movements that were not hostile to the West such as in Poland or Zionism remained illegitimate. Their existence demonstrated that Poles and Israelis lacked a revolutionary consciousness and did not count as part of the People.   

This embrace of nationalism and even religion, despite the fact that these were the things that were supposed to mark someone as a Fascist, eventually led Western leftists to embrace the Arab cause. This started by accepting Arab nationalists such as Nassar but then eventually came to include Islamic fundamentalists such as Khomeini in Iran. From this perspective, the Palestinians became the ultimate “oppressed people.” They combined Arab nationalism with Islam and struggled against Western "Imperialism" by opposing the State of Israel. The destruction and its replacement with Palestine would be the elimination of the Jewish false consciousness of itself as a people and allow for the manifestation of the true Peoplehood of the Palestinians.  

A Regional Recipe for Creating Radical Movements

Those attempting to understand what is coming out of Iran today need to appreciate the extent of which the region of Persia has served to foster militaristic messianic movements. It is actually not just Islamic movements. In terms of Jewish history, this region gave us Abu Isa in the eighth century and David Alroy in the twelfth century. In many respects Persia can be seen as the Islamic world's equivalent of medieval Provence and Italy, regions beloved by modern medievalists for their tendency to do fun things like produce heretical movements and popular revolts. In trying to wrap my head around Persian history (both in terms of my modern interests and in trying to understand the context for the Jewish messianic movements in this region) there seems to be a number of factors that parallel the Southern European situation and have helped contribute to this state of affairs. I am mainly interested in medieval Persia, but these things seem to continue to be relevant to modern Iran.

1. 
   
   The ghost of an ancient advanced culture.
   Italy and Provence were the parts of Western Europe in which the Roman Empire exercised the strongest influence. In many respects, even after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the symbols of the Roman Empire did not go away, particularly in terms of physical monuments. Besides for centralized government bureaucracy, the other thing that the Romans did better than anyone else in pre-modern history was to build. One of the things that have struck me about Ahmadinejad of Iran is the close personal connection he feels to ancient Persia. This is perfectly understandable. The papacy still claims the title of Pontifex Maximus, high priest of the ancient Roman pagan religion. Persia was certainly a culture equal to Rome. The Parthian Empire was, for the most part, more than a match for Rome militarily. Do not underestimate our Iranians; they are a very sophisticated people, just the right amount to be both intellectually and militarily dangerous.
    
2. 
   
   The absence of a strong government.
   Medieval Italy was a collection of city-states. There was no unified Italy until the nineteenth century, a galling reality for classical republicans like Machiavelli, with dreams of reconstituting the Roman republic. Provence was outside the authority of the French monarchy until the thirteenth century. Not unsurprisingly, Provence was brought into the orbit of the French monarchy due to the Albigensian Crusade, when French forces came south to eliminate members of the Gnostic Albigensian sect, branded heretics by the Church and the original targets of the Inquisition.
   Since the downfall of the Sassanids up until modern times, Iran has had periods of strong centralized rule, for example the Safavids in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That being said, the dominant narrative is one of a region outside of the major centers of power. While Iran converted to Islam, it successfully resisted Arabization, maintaining a Persian culture. (The number one thing I repeat over and over again to my students is that Iranians are not Arabs. They do not speak Arabic, they speak Farsi.) Furthermore Persia managed, in the long run, to resist Arab military control. The Umayyads and later the Abbasids were never able to establish a firm control over the region. Unlike almost the entire Arab world, Persia managed to resist Ottoman control. This left Persia as a haven not just for Twelver Shiism which eventually became the dominant mode of Islam, but also numerous other brands of Shiism for Zoroastrianism, which survived the Islamic conquest. In terms of Jewish history, Persia was a major center of Karaism.
   
   

In creating radical societies, such as medieval Italy and Provence and Iran down to modern times, we are looking at two contradictory forces. While we want a history of an advanced society, with a legacy of strong government, that strong government should be lacking in the present day reality. We need to be far enough from established centers of political authority to avoid notice. This creates the sort of power vacuum that allows radical movements to flourish in the first place and not get crushed. But it is precisely these contrasting forces that allow for radicalism to work. While the lack of centralized rule on the ground allows for radicalism in practice, it is precisely this history of strong centralized government that forms the ideological basis for such radicalism. Here political history serves as the perfect State, all the more convenient for it being a non-existent State, open to be claimed by anyone willing to use it.

Rabbi Binyamin Hamburger - Customs of Ashkenaz

Sunday afternoon, Lionel Spiegel and I went to hear Rabbi Binyamin Hamburger speak at the Yeshiva of Greater Washington. Rabbi Hamburger is a Haredi scholar from Israel who specializes in the culture of Ashkenazic (Germanic) Jews. This is part of a personal crusade of his to support the practice of Ashkenazic Judaism. Rabbi Hamburger has also written a book on Jewish false messiahs and their opponents. Rabbi Hamburger maintains the same sorts of biases that one usually finds in Haredi history writers. For example, his work on messianism is a rabbinic apology. The rabbis protected by their knowledge and faithfulness to Jewish tradition are capable of withstanding the siren's song of false messiahs. That being said, Rabbi Hamburger is capable of dealing with academic literature so he, while dangerous, can be interesting and worthwhile to listen to. Here are my notes from the lecture; as usual all mistakes are mine.



It is difficult to talk about Ashkenaz. German Jewry is the kernel of the vast majority of Jews in the world. Ponevezher Rav was once going to a non-religious community to speak. He wanted to talk about Shabbos, and Kosher, but was told that he could not speak about these things because many in the community were not religious. So he asked what he could speak about. He was told to speak about Judaism. We can start with the origins of Ashkenaz. We know that the two centers were Israel and Babylon. Babylonian Jews went to Spain and Israel Jews went to Italy. The two main cities were Bari and Trento. "Ki miBari tetzei Torah udevar Hashem me'Otranto" was what they said then.  From there they went to Lucca. Here is where we get R. Moshe b. Kolonymous, who was brought by Charlemagne to Mainz. There were very few Jews during the early Middle Ages maybe 10,000-20,000. We consider Germany to be the biggest anti-Semites. In truth, we never see a complete expulsion from Germany. Pockets of French Jewry had some influence on Eastern Europe and Central Europe, not the Rhineland.

R. Moshe Isserles, living in sixteenth-century Poland, in general, goes with Ashkenazic customs, though at times he has more recent Polish customs. An example of the difference between Old Ashkenaz and New Ashkenaz is Shofar. Saadiah Gaon had a wavering tikiah. We have a straight tikiah, this comes from Spain. Old Ashkenaz has a circular shevarim. New Ashkenaz was influenced by other countries. There were pockets that held on to the Old Ashkenaz. Skver Hasidim still go with the Old Ashkenazic way. There was a major controversy over prayer in the eighteenth century. Hasidim brought in their own text based on Lurianic thought. Rabbi Ezekiel Landau attacked such changes. Many Hasidim, today, claim that they come from Spain. This is absurd. R. Judah the Pious claimed that people can die because they change a hymn even to change one hymn for another. There is a story among Vishnitz Hasidim that they stopped saying piyyutim for a while. A plague broke out and they sought spiritual causes and decided to bring back piyyutim, based on the teachings about dangers of stopping/altering piyyutim. This was in the time of the 'Ahavas Yisroel' of Vizhnitz (past Rebbe). Worms had a custom not to eat dried fruit. They were concerned about worms. (No pun intended.)

Why is it important? There is a strong claim of tradition defended by rabbis from one generation to another. Even Maimonides, from Sephard, sticks up for Ashkenaz. He attacked the order of calling people up to the Torah. He notes that one would expect Sephardim to be messed up, but Ashkenazim should know better. Rabbeinu Ashur (Rosh) became a rabbi in Toledo after fleeing from Germany and influenced Sephardic Jewry. He attacked the traditions of Sephard and only trusted the tradition from Germany. Rabbi Yitzchak b. Moshe Or Zaruah was a leading sage in Central Europe. He was questioned as to why one should make Kiddush in shul Friday night. He defended this custom by appealing to Ashkenazic tradition of the Rhineland and attacking his opponent for daring to question that tradition.


Q&A

The custom of cutting the hair of three-year-old boys comes from Arabs. It does not come to even the Hasidim until the twentieth century. We have evidence from the Middle Ages of cutting the hair after just a few weeks. Ashkenazim were never into beards but were very careful with peiyos. This is the exact opposite of Chabad. They were not so concerned about beards for people who were out in the world (as opposed to religious functionaries within the Jewish community). But they did have something with peiyos, see e.g. depictions of Wolf Heidenheim.

I asked Rabbi Hamburger about the debate between Dr. Avraham Grossman and Dr. Haym Soloveitchik about the origins of Ashkenaz. Dr. Soloveitchik argues that Ashkenaz from the beginning was Babylonian based. Rabbi Hamburger responded that Dr. Soloveitchik is a genius and that he has not seen his evidence. Perhaps if he saw this evidence he might be convinced. That being said everyone seems to assume that Ashkenaz comes from Israel. Dr. Soloveitchik might be a genius but the Rosh was pretty big too.

Learned Jewish Women in Sixteenth Century Italy

Renaissance Italy is usually a good place to look for precedents for liberal Jewish practices. In terms of Jewish education for women and women studying the Talmud Andree Aelion Brooks points out:

Shortly before Dona Gracia was born, a Talmud Torah for girls had opened in Rome; its women graduates emerged as poets, writers and patrons of the arts. A woman known as Pomona da Modena, living in Ferrara at the beginning of the century, was said to be as well versed in Talmud "as any man." Another member of Pomona's family, Fioretta, was constantly engaged in Hebrew and rabbinic learning. Others worked as scribes.

Then there was Bienvenida Abravanel, a niece of the famous Don Isaac Abravanel, the man who led the Jews out of Spain at the time of the Expulsion and later settled in Naples. Bienvenida was so smart and well educated that she became the tutor, and later advisor, to Leonora, daughter of the viceroy of Naples. When the Jews were expelled from Naples in 1530, it was Bienvenida who maneuvered through her court connections to have the order rescinded. After the death of Bienvenida's banker husband, Samuel, Bienvenida continued to run his banking business and use her wealth to ransom Jewish refugees captured by pirates. (Brooks, The Woman who Defied Kings pg. 27)

 It should be noted that Isaac Abarbanel believed, in some sense, that women did not have souls and that only men possessed them. Having elite learned women does not mean that women as a group were educated. People who are wealthy and clearly intelligent are going to be allowed a fair degree of eccentric behavior no matter what society they live in and are going to be able to get away with breaking certain social taboos.

AJS Conference Day One Session Two (Interreligious Hostility in Medieval and Early Modern Times Part II)

(Part I)

Flora Cassen (University of Vermont)
“The Jewish Badge in Renaissance Italy: The Iconic O, the Yellow Hat, and the Paradoxes of Distinctive Sign Legislation”

This is an analysis of the use of Jewish badges from the perspective of semiotics. We have many different examples of Jewish badges from the Middle Ages, a blue strip, tablet of law, red badge and the O. A Jewish badge could serve as an icon or a symbol. An icon resembles the thing it is meant to be related to while a symbol has an arbitrary relationship to its object. We have the example of a transition in various states in Northern Italy at the end of the fifteenth century from an O badge to yellow hats. The O can be seen as an icon. Either it can refer to the Jewish cry of suffering, him being counted as a zero within the community of men or it can refer to the zero productivity of his usury. The color yellow is a symbol. It was meant to show cowardice and shame, but this is something fairly arbitrary. The advantage of yellow hats was that it could easily be seen as opposed to the O badge, which was quite small and could easily escape notice. In both cases these objects were meant to create boundaries between Jew and gentile. What we have here is a tension between theory and practice. The O badge was something more theoretical while the yellow hat had little theory but was effective in practice.



Emily Rose (Johns Hopkins University)
“Distinctions without Much Difference? Ritual Murder, Blood Libel, and the Need to Classify”

This presentation was an attack on the late Gavin Langmuir for his distinctions between ritual murder and blood libel and anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. In truth, these distinctions have nothing to do with the way medieval people thought and merely serve modern needs.
Langmuir’s distinctions have become commonplace within academic literature.

According to Langmuir the early ritual murder charges, such as the case of William of Norwich, were different than the blood libel, which we first see only in Fulda in 1235. In the case of ritual murder, the charge is that the Jews murder a Christian child in order to reenact the crucifixion of Jesus. This has nothing to do with the Jews needing blood or of them using blood for the Passover matzot. The blood libel only came later and it is something different; Jews are charged with being demonic creatures that drink blood. This leads to the distinction between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Christian anti-Judaism simply pegs Jews as blasphemers, heretics and even as Christ-killers. This is different from the darker anti Semitism which places Jews as demonic beings outside the pale of the human race; thus Jews are not human beings and are, by their very nature, evil. (Langmuir talked about “chimerical” anti Semitism; Jews being accused of committing crimes that no one could have seen them commit and go beyond reason.)

Langmuir’s work came out of Cecil Roth, who in the 1930s, argued for the distinction between English anti-Semitism and German anti-Semitism. This had to do with Nazi-era apologetics and not the Middle Ages. Roth was trying to distinguish English culture, with its more “gentlemanly” anti-Semitism, from the murderous anti-Semitism of German culture. This was perfectly okay with English anti-Semites who wanted to distinguish their social anti-Semitism from Nazi anti-Semitism.

Langmuir had his own apologetic interests. As a Christian, he wished to distinguish the Church and Christianity from anti-Semitism. The most extreme acts of violence against Jews become the product simply of popular medieval culture and had nothing intrinsically to do with Christianity. In truth there one medieval culture, Christianity, that covered all of Western Europe. Anti-Semitism comes out of this culture and it leads to the persecution of Jews.

(This was a well-done presentation, but I would strongly disagree with it. At times historians have to make distinctions that may not have been readily apparent to those living during the time period. There is nothing wrong with this just as long as one willing to keep these distinctions as theoretical models and recognizes that the reality on the ground might have been more complex. It is important to talk about ritual murder as something different from a blood libel. It is also important to distinguish between hatred of Judaism as a religion and hatred of Jews as a race. It is for this reason that most historians are not comfortable using the term anti Semitism outside of the context of modern race-based anti-Semitism. For everything else, anti-Judaism is really a far more useful term.

I am sorry about this but there is not one medieval culture. England is not France. Northern France is not Provence, which is not Germany. These places were different with different social and political realities on the ground. The fact that Jews were newcomers to England, who came with the Norman conquest, is relevant. The expansion of the French monarchy is relevant. The political collapse of the Holy Roman Empire at the end of the thirteenth century is relevant. You cannot do medieval history without recognizing these issues.)

AJS Conference Day One Session One (Patronage, Trust, and Agency: Networks of European Jewry)

(Synopses of lectures based on my notes. As always all mistakes are mine.)


Francesca Bregoli (University of Oxford)
“Livornese Hebrew Printing, Patronage, and Jewish Intellectual Networks in the Eighteenth Century”

This paper focused on the relationships between R. Chaim Yosef David Azulai (1724-1806) and R. Yehuda Ayash to their patrons, who made it possible for their books to be published, particularly by being able to provide access to books. There was no capitalist printing until the nineteenth century; before this printing was done through patronage. When we think of patronage we are used to thinking of either the Feudal model or the Renaissance model; we need to consider an alternative, one that is not hierarchal but is the result of a mutual relationship. One did not choose to engage in patronage. There is a give and take. The patron is a member of a political elite. He is not able to devote himself to study. He hires a rabbi in his stead. This explains the common theme that we see in dedications were the patron is described as a scholar, knowledgeable in all the human and divine sciences. In affect the patron is made the author and the author is put in the background. This goes against the traditional model of Sephardic merchants being irreligious. (To me this just sounds like Sephardic merchants imbibing the Catholic values of the surrounding Italian society; one can get an “indulgence” by being a patron of the faith. You do not need to be religious. The clergy can be religious for you.) Azulai and Ayash were already established figures so they would have been courted by patrons, wishing to support them in their publishing endeavors.

(The models of patronage that occurred to me as possible influences were those amongst Jews in Andalusian Spain and in the general society in Renaissance Italy. I asked Francesca about this and she responded that she was actually thinking in terms of the situation in Poland with merchants supporting Hasidic rabbis.)


Cornelia Aust (University of Pennsylvania)
“Jewish Commercial Networks in Central Europe: Trade, Trust, and Bankruptcy”

This paper dealt with the networks of Jews as military suppliers for European armies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Historians have traditionally viewed networks as static and have taken them for granted. We need to consider the position of the merchant and the ability to access commodities. Bills of exchange acted as currency. This relies on a system of trust; fake bills were quite common. In order to succeed under such circumstances one required carefully placed people in different places. Networks built around families are quite useful. An example is the situation in czarist Russia. Merchants were a privileged cast of Jews; this status could be passed down to only one child. This was something useful, but it had to be used strategically; which child gets the official status and how does one place the child to best take advantage of it?

Francois Guesnet (University College London)
“Jewish Political Networks and the Pogroms of 1881-82; Indentifying Agents, Objects, Motivations”

This paper was about the mechanisms for spreading reports on the pogroms of 1881-82 in Russia to the outside world. The czarist government tried to clamp down on reports, but such reports did reach the outside world and ignited international protest. Three major Jewish political networks passed on information, though they were operating from essentially the same sources. This makes a lot of the information problematic. The point of such political action was to send letters abroad to arouse European protest with exaggerated accounts. This also served to delegitimize those within the Jewish community who still advocated negotiating with the Czar.


Matthias B. Lehmann (Indiana University)
“Response”

The study of modern Jewish history tends to focus on the nation state narrative and the major issues of emancipation and assimilation. Talking about networks served to go beyond these issues. The networks discussed here cross international lines so we cannot deal with them state by state. These networks also are not related to religious observance or even conversion to Christianity. Networks are dynamic that happen rather then simply are.