Judgment at Nuremberg: Where Are the Jews?

In an earlier post, I discussed Holocaust memory in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. I made the argument that, before the 1970s, popular culture cared little about the Holocaust. A useful example of this is the film Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), which can be seen as an example of the exception that proves the rule. The film deals with a fictionalized version of one of the later Nuremberg trials for judges. Spencer Tracy plays an American judge having to confront the question of the role of ordinary Germans in the crimes of the Nazis. 

 

For all of the film's excellent qualities, it is strange to watch Judgment at Nuremberg and see that it is not about the Jewish wartime experience. Jewish actors, such as a pre-Star Trek William Shatner and Werner Klemperer, are in the film. The Holocaust is discussed, including groundbreaking use of concentration camp footage. The film deserves a lot of credit for making it possible to produce Holocaust movies that centered the Jewish experience, but that is not the purpose of the film. 

Consider one of the key scenes in the film. Judy Garland plays a German woman, Irene Hoffman, who, as a teenager, went to prison for denying that she had a sexual relationship with a close family friend who was Jewish. She is brought in to testify because the judge in that case, Dr. Ernst Janning, is now on trial. Janning is an interesting character because he clearly recognizes his own guilt. This raises the question of whether is awareness makes him more sympathetic or not. He understood exactly what he was doing and the enormity of his crime, but did it anyway. That being said, Janning is not the villain of the film. Instead you have his defense attorney, Hans Rolfe, who uses the trial as a platform to defend German culture.  

I would consider this scene one of the finest courtroom dialogues in the history of film, right next to the "you can't handle the truth" scene in A Few Good Men. Garland was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Maximilian Schell, who played Rolfe, won Best Actor. That being said, in a plotline about the Nazi persecution of Jews, we do not actually have any Jews. The Jewish friend is dead so he cannot be brought in to testify. Instead, we have the decent German woman who has to testify in his place. In essence, a story about Jewish victimhood becomes a story of Germans being victimized by the Nazis. 

Judgment at Nuremberg is a fantastic film that did a lot to advance the notion that Nazi Germany was such an evil that ordinary Germans became complicit in it simply by not having actively opposed it. By contrast, we do not blame ordinary Japanese people for the crimes of Imperial Japan. Similarly, today, we do not blame the ordinary Russian or North Korean for the crimes of their governments. We recognize that such people cannot be held responsible for the leaders who took charge and we excuse them for simply trying to get on with their lives. We may even be inclined to give a pass to people who may have been active supporters of these governments because they believed that they did not have any better options. This raises the question of why we treat Germans differently. 

Part of what makes Rolfe such a fantastic villain is that on the surface he appears very reasonable. He argues that we need to distinguish between the genuine monsters of Nazi Germany and respectable people, like his client, who did the best they could under difficult circumstances. What he does, though, to Garland's character is to essentially put her back on trial, turning himself into her prosecutor. She may have hoped to find peace by being able to finally turn the tables on those who put her in prison, only to find the tables being turned right back again. Rolfe's defense of his client essentially amounts to saying that she really was guilty, as if prosecuting people who actually violated Nazi laws made someone less of a Nazi collaborator. 

The message here is that, despite the optics of Germany losing the war and being occupied by the Allies, the "real" Germany is going to survive and be back in charge in a few years. She was found guilty previously and she will be found guilty again, along with the further crime of aiding the persecutors of Germany. 

There is another scene where the defense attorney does something similar to a German victim of Nazi sterilization policy.

           

The film is certainly willing to deal with Nazi crimes in ways that would make viewers uncomfortable. That being said, this is not a movie about Jews. This is a film about Nazi Germany being so evil that ordinary Germans became tainted by association even as many Germans are recognized also as the victims of the Nazis. This served an important purpose at that time to forever taint Nazism and make its resurgence impossible. 

Keep in mind that it was hardly implausible, in the years immediately after the War, to imagine the Nazis and their enablers in Germany coming back to power once the Allied occupation ended. After the American Civil War, Union Soldiers occupied the South for more than a decade, but then went home, leaving the South in the hands of former secessionists. Since the South was never forced to truly acknowledge either the crimes of treason or of slavery, secessionists were able to take power under the banner of the Lost Cause that made themselves the victims and cast Northerners and blacks as the villains.  

In many respects, Judgment at Nuremberg is a fairly conservative film. It is a story of an American judge passing judgement on a corrupt German society who deserved to be bombed and conquered. Commemorating Jewish suffering had little to do with the film's aims. There is a certain irony here in that the film, in 1965, accidently played a role in the Civil Rights Movement when the film's showing on television was interrupted to show the Bloody Sunday attack on the Selma marchers.  

A film whose purpose was to exalt American righteousness at the expense of ordinary Germans now came to question that very American righteousness. If ordinary Germans could be held accountable for the Holocaust, why not hold ordinary Americans accountable for the crimes of segregation? Ordinary Germans at least had the excuse of Nazi crimes not being broadcast on television. Ordinary Americans had no such excuse. 

Ignoring Genocide is the Horrific Deeply Human Response to Evil

 

Part of the challenge in defending Israel in its war against Hamas is that there are two charges that Israel confronts and our opponents casually switch between the two, Motte and Bailey style. The first is that Israeli policy is problematic and that Israel has done things it should not have during the Gaza War. In truth, I agree that Israel is guilty on this front. There may be readers who take a less charitable view of Israel, but, at the end of the day, we are going to be arguing along a spectrum. The second charge, based in the previously discussed chimerical anti-Zionism, sees any wrongdoing on Israel's part as merely a manifestation of the cosmic evil that Israel embodies. From this perspective, Israel, simply by existing, is already as guilty as the Nazis.  

Defending Israel against the first kind of charge, even when Israel might factually be innocent, is likely to be ineffective. The reason for this is that, if our opponent is a chimerical anti-Zionist, they are not really arguing based on the particular bad thing they are accusing Israel of at the moment. Instead, Israel is guilty of the particular charge because the speaker has already made Israel the ultimate villain in a make-believe morality play. 

One thinks of the example of Holocaust denial. One might be tempted into getting into a technical discussion about the practicality of Zyklon B to mass murder people or whether crematoria could be used to dispose of the bodies, but, for the Holocaust denier, those were never the real issues. The Holocaust denier starts with the assumption of the grand Jewish plot and that Jews really have the power and inclination to fake something like the Holocaust for their own nefarious purposes. We see something similar with Candace Owens. She is not interested in an honest discussions of the technical issues surrounding Charlie Kirk's murder. That is simply a stage for her to present her story that Israel is the grand mastermind of global evil. In both cases, a response needs to be centered around turning the tables on the conspiracy charge to make the case that it is the people claiming a Jewish/Israeli conspiracy who are the ones plotting to commit mass murder.      

In regards to the charge of Israel committing genocide, a few things should be noted. One, convicting Israel requires a highly idiosyncratic interpretation of the term, far outside its common usage. Two, those who charge Israel with genocide would never wish to apply the same standards to Arab and Islamic history. Three, the genocide charge was popularized even before Israel invaded Gaza on October 27th, 2023. This suggests that the charge of genocide has nothing to do with anything Israel may have done. Instead, those who charge Israel with genocide see Israel as this grand evil, whose very existence is an act of genocide. As such, the mass murder of Israelis, such as on October 7th, becomes a "defense" against genocide.   

Even when we are dealing with honest critics of Israel (and there are good reasons to be critical of Israel's actions), their information is likely to be tainted by chimerical anti-Zionists. We are not going to be able to make any progress, even with such people, unless they can be convinced to accept that, yes, chimerical anti-Zionism, much like chimerical anti-Semitism, exists and, as such, there really is a "vast anti-Israel conspiracy." This means that news hostile to Israel needs to be treated with skepticism and that, furthermore, Israel needs to be granted a great deal of license to fight the manifestations of this conspiracy. 

Take the example of schools in Gaza. It is hard for a regular person to fathom the idea that Hamas would build tunnels underneath schools with the intention that Israel will have to bomb them, allowing Hamas collaborators in the mainstream press to accuse Israel of bombing schools. What kind of psychopath would try to get their own kids killed? Furthermore, you have the idea that schools run by a perfectly "respectable" international organization like UNRWA are really Hamas training institutes. This means that high-ranking elements within the United Nations are actively part of a conspiracy to help Hamas destroy Israel, in essence to carry out another Holocaust. I admit that all of this sounds far-fetched, the kind of nonsense that regime propagandists would say to try to silence those exposing their human rights crimes. That being said, once you accept that chimerical anti-Zionism, as an extension of chimerical anti-Semitism, exists, then, all of a sudden, this becomes quite plausible.   

For those of you who are new to this concept that Israel really is the target of a vast international conspiracy founded on the fact that large parts of the world honestly operate on a Protocols of the Elders of Zion-based narrative that Jews, and by extension Israel, are the primary source of what is wrong with the world, consider the number of condemnations issued by the UN against Israel compared to the number issued against rogue regimes like North Korea. Either you must believe that Israel, which for all of its very real faults is still a functional liberal democracy, is a worse abuser of human rights than North Korea or accept that there is something fundamentally rotten about the UN and how it approaches human rights. 

Considering the challenge of defending Israel without recognizing that it is under attack by an ideological conspiracy, it becomes important to focus on the chimerical issue over responding to particular factual charges. For example, it is useless to respond to the charge of Israel committing genocide unless we have first considered why there is a mass movement accusing Israel of such. Take this tweet from John Cusack, where he claims that "to be obsessed with stopping a genocide is a deeply human, moral response to evil." 

Contrary to John Cusack, it is not deeply human to be obsessed with stopping a genocide. I wish it were, but the facts are otherwise. If Israel were guilty of genocide, it would stand as the genocide with the greatest protest opposition and that itself would require an explanation. 

Consider the example of the Holocaust. Even though the Allies were fighting Nazi Germany, there was little interest in stopping the Holocaust. Nazi atrocities received little attention even when the information was available. When they were reported, the Jewish element tended to be ignored. The fact that we were at war with the Nazis actually made it more difficult to publicize the Holocaust because people were inclined to dismiss such claims simply as wartime propaganda. Keep in mind that, during World War I, German atrocities in Belgium were widely reported and turned out to be bogus. 

Even in the immediate aftermath of the war, when Nazi crimes were exposed to the world, there was little interest, outside of Jewish circles, in the Holocaust. It took years for the Nazis to be seen in Western eyes as ultimate manifestations of evil. In essence, we did not yet have the Nazis of Godwin's Law that we take for granted today, where, if you are stuck trying to find a word to denounce someone, you simply call them a Nazi. 

This change was not because of the Holocaust, but because both the right and the left found it convenient to use the Nazis as shorthand for evil. If you were a mid-twentieth-century conservative, Nazis became the ultimate evil that America fought against. This meant that, contrary to what the left claimed, the United States and its military power were fundamentally good for the world. If you were on the left, Nazism was the extreme manifestation of right-wing evil. In essence, conservatives were all really secret Nazis trying to lead us down the path of Germany. Rather than this vilification of the Nazis being caused by the Holocaust, it was the other way around. 

Once the Nazis became society's shorthand for evil, suddenly the Holocaust became something that everyone could take an interest in and this led to the greatest rise of philo-Semitism in history. The right could embrace Israel as the Jews picking themselves up by their bootstraps after the horrors of the Holocaust and fighting for traditional liberal Western values. The left could embrace Jews as the victims of European Christianity. As such, for decades, the Holocaust "benefited" Jews and made them popular, not because of anything related to the Jews themselves but because they were useful good guys in the stories that both the right and left wished to tell. 

To be clear, the Holocaust was real and its basic facts were well known. It was simply that, before about the 1970s, non-Jews did not particularly care. Even today, there is little concern with the crimes of Imperial Japan such as the Rape of Nanking. It is not that the facts are unknown or in dispute; it is simply a matter of there being no reason for people to want to actively think about them. Japanese crimes do not easily fit into anyone's narrative. If you are on the right, you have the inconvenient fact that we kept Emperor Hirohito on his throne. If you are on the left, you have the inconvenient fact that the Japanese were not white European imperialists; on the contrary, they acted in the name of "freeing Asia" from European imperialism. 

Alternatively, consider the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, something that happened when John Cusack was already a famous actor. For some reason, he did not use his celebrity to bring attention to what was happening. The massacre of the Tutsis happened in the face of modern media and was well publicized even as the public was largely indifferent. To care about Rwanda, you needed to simultaneously care about people in the middle of Africa and about people who were victims of someone other than whites.  

Imagine a truly evil dictator of a country that most Americans would not be able to find on a map. In the spirit of being truly evil, they decide to invade their neighbor, another country that most Americans would not be able to find on a map and wipe out an ethnic group that most people have never heard of. To do this right, our dictator has hatched their plan with the help of their top experts in international law (these are lawyers, so we can already assume that they are evil) to make sure that mass murdering these people will check off every possible box to count as a genocide. The massacre begins; the worst barbaric atrocities imaginable are filmed and broadcast to the world. Could you manufacture the kind of protest movement that Israel has faced? 

It seems obvious to me that any attempt to convince tens of thousands of college students around the world to put their lives on hold and join a protest movement to shut down campuses to force politicians to take action would fail.

   

It would not be because people would be unaware or not be horrified by these atrocities. It would simply be a matter of them lacking a motive to actively care; they would lack any larger narrative to make any of this relevant. The dictator is not a useful stand-in for Western Imperialism and the minority group being slaughtered is not a manifestation of the revolutionary spirit against oppression. It would take decades and a massive informational campaign to change this. It is unlikely that the backlash against the dictator would happen in time to stop an actual genocide and the motives for trying to demonize the dictator are unlikely to even have much to do with saving the minority group. 

I encourage readers, whatever their religion or ethnicity, to honestly read about what is going on with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. You are likely going to find good reasons to be critical of Netanyahu or of any Prime Minister that might replace him. Israel is in a difficult situation, particularly as it attempts to operate as a liberal democracy committed to human rights. Those who care about the survival of liberal democracies under military threat need to study the Israeli example, both what it has done right and its mistakes. 

None of this has anything to do with the vast majority of Israel's most committed critics. Their opposition to Israel is rooted in an imaginary narrative in which Israel assumes the role of ultimate evil whose dark villainy serves to show the critic in a heroic light. John Cusack did not speak out in the same strident fashion against the Hutus as he does against Israel, because there was no organized movement encouraging him to do so. Furthermore, he would have risked being seen as a white imperialist promoting racist stereotypes. By contrast, denouncing Israel serves to place Cusack within a global leftist movement that opposes the American world order that grew out of World War II and defeated the Soviet Union. Israel was a creation of the West and its moral defense has relied on the fact that it stands on the front lines of protecting and promoting Western values. Defeat Israel morally and you have the basis for a wider attack on the legitimacy of American political hegemony. From this perspective, Israel already assumes supreme guilt. The particular facts of Israeli crimes are only incidental.        

Chimerical Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

 

Part of being a student of Jewish History is an awareness of Gavin Langmuir's distinction between a realistic and a chimerical anti-Semitism. Take the example of medieval Christendom.  In 1096, Jews in the Rhineland were murdered by roving bands of Crusaders. (It is important to keep in mind that not all Crusaders supported killing Jews and many Christians, such as the Bishop of Speyer, actively protected Jews.) Those Jews who were murdered were killed for "crimes" that they were most certainly guilty of. Imagine if those Jews were put on trial:

"Jew, do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?

"No. I believe that he was a mamzar and his mother was a zonah."

Not to approve of the mass murder of Jews, but it did not happen because Christians misunderstood something about the nature of Judaism. The Crusaders were looking to kill unbelievers and they were correct in assuming that Jews were unbelievers.  

The big question at the heart of the study of medieval Christian anti-Semitism is: how do you explain what happened in the twelfth century? For some reason, and there is a vast literature with a wide variety of theories as to why this happened, Christians somehow came to believe that Jews actively served Satan. Their ancestors during the first century crucified Jesus precisely because they knew that he was the Son of God and that contemporary Jews gathered to reenact the crucifixion by torturing innocent Christian children to death. In essence, twelfth-century Christendom went insane. 

Considering that medieval Christianity was no longer thinking rationally regarding Jews, it must be understood that, regardless of whether medieval Jews were particularly saintly, medieval Christian chimerical anti-Semitism had nothing to do with Jews and everything to do with Christianity. Christians might have come to believe that Jews were greedy because of Jewish moneylenders. Christians coming to believe that Jews served the Devil required something internal to Christianity. To be clear, what precisely that internal issue was is an open question, but insanity is, by its nature, something internal to the human mind. 

In modern times, we have the example of Nazi Germany. It would have been one thing if the Nazis had simply believed that Jews were greedy capitalists or revolutionary communists. Early in the Nazi period, we have Hitler ignoring the pleas of leading German scientists not to expel Jews from the universities, as this would damage German science. Hitler believed that the Jewish threat was of such a nature that he knowingly sabotaged German scientific development. Considering the role of Jews in the Manhattan Project and Nazi dismissal of Relativity as a "Jewish physics," Nazi anti-Semitism quite literally caused them to lose the race for the atomic bomb and ultimately the War. 

The Nazis started World War II and used it as a cover to carry out the Holocaust because they believed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; in essence, that there was a vast Jewish conspiracy, stretching from Wall Street to the Kremlin, that threatened to take over the world. The Holocaust was not only one of the greatest acts of human evil; it was also profoundly foolish. What was the logic of diverting trains, in the middle of a war, to murder useful slave laborers? In essence, people like Eichmann, who carried out the Final Solution during the final two years of the War, when Germany was losing, did so knowing full well that they were likely costing Germany the War. They were "humanitarians," willing to sacrifice their own country in order to save the world from the Jews.     

Considering the irrational nature of Nazi anti-Semitism, it should be understood that, whatever its origins, it never was really about the Jews. There were many things one can fault early twentieth-century Jews for. Nothing that Jews did could ever explain why the Nazis would do something so destructive to themselves as the Holocaust. The Nazis believed that Jews were an existential threat to the world for reasons that could only have come from an internal discourse within German thought that had nothing to do with Jews.  

Chimerical anti-Semitism becomes important for understanding modern anti-Zionism. Whether or not anti-Zionism actually is anti-Semitism, it lends itself to the sort of chimerical thinking that is the hallmark of anti-Semitism. Let me be clear. There are good reasons for Arabs and Muslims to object to the State of Israel and even be willing to use armed force to eliminate it. This is different than believing that the State of Israel is at the center of some kind of grand conspiracy to rule the world.   

Consider the example of October 7th. I can understand why Hamas would attack IDF bases along the Gaza border, but why shoot people at the Nova Music festival? Hamas' leadership had to have known that their actions would lead to the bombing of Gaza. What did they do to protect and feed Gaza's citizens? One has to conclude that Hamas made the calculation to not only murder Israeli citizens but to sacrifice Gaza's civilians as well. In essence, like the Nazis, they were willing that their own country should be destroyed if it might strike a blow against the Jewish conspiracy. 

As for the anti-Israel protesters, I can understand why people would speak out and question the death and destruction in Gaza. The fact that this opposition exceeds that against only ongoing conflict, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, suggests that this is not really about whether Israel's response has been excessive, but a narrative in which Israel is not merely a small country on the other side of the world that engages in morally problematic behavior, but some sort of grand cosmic villain.

Like Hamas, opponents of Israel's war in Gaza care nothing about Gazan civilians. If you believed that Israel was actually carrying out a genocide, your first response would be to try to get as many Palestinians as possible out of Gaza. One thinks of the example of Jewish relief organizations trying to get Jews out of Nazi-controlled Europe only to run up against the fact that no country wanted to take in large numbers of Jewish refugees. Alternatively, consider the millions of Ukrainian refugees who are currently residing within the European Union. Why have the Arabs not done something similar for the people of Gaza?  

The lack of interest in getting Palestinians out of Gaza becomes particularly farcical when you consider that Israel did not launch its attack on Gaza until about three weeks after October 7th. Already at this point, Palestinian activists were accusing Israel of genocide, but not using this window to evacuate civilians. It would have been a simple thing for Egypt to allow Palestinians into the Sinai Desert, where the international community could have set up refugee camps for them. This did not happen because Palestinian activists care even less about Palestinian lives than Israel does. Israel has some incentive to limit Palestinian deaths to avoid international pressure. For "supporters" of Palestine, dead Palestinian civilians are simply a sacrifice to awaken the world to the evils of Zionism. For them, Zionism's evil lies in the metaphysical fact that it is a settler-colonialist apartheid entity that causes Palestinian alienation; it has nothing to do with how Israel physically treats Palestinians. 

This is not a defense of Israeli government policy, against which there can be numerous legitimate objections. That being said, it should be recognized that the opposition to Israel has nothing to do with anything Israel might have done, however morally dubious. This fixation on Israel, as opposed to numerous other countries with lousy human rights records, must be the result of something other than Israel. 

Recognizing this distinction between regular prejudice and chimerical hate allows us to better understand anti-Semitism and to navigate the Israeli-Arab conflict. There is a common misunderstanding of prejudice where prejudice itself leads to genocidal violence. You can believe that Jews are greedy and manipulative and still be a perfectly friendly neighbor. This is distinct from having a narrative where a group becomes the conveyor of cosmic evil that must be resisted at all costs. If you are willing to sacrifice your own people to save the world from the Jews, of course you are also going to be willing to wipe out the Jews for trying to destroy the world.   

While chimerical anti-Semites may wish to kill Jews, they have almost as little regard for the lives of their own people. For all the talk of the Nazis or Hamas about Jews oppressing Germans or Palestinians, they both were willing to destroy their own people as well. The reason for this is that it was never about what Jews might have actually physically done to Germans or Palestinians. Instead, the real Jewish crime is something existential against the moral order. As such, the Jews need to be defeated no matter how many non-Jews die in the process. On the contrary, the death of non-Jews will make for an even more glorious reborn world, as this sacrifice will show a greater rejection of the Jewish metaphysical evil.  

As for confronting chimerical anti-Zionism, there is nothing you can do to mitigate it. Whatever concessions Israel should or should not make to the Palestinians, I will leave to the Israeli government and ultimately its voting public. That being said, let us be clear that nothing Israel does can ever affect those opponents who are chimerical anti-Zionists, as their turn toward chimerical anti-Zionism never had anything to do with Israel. Instead, it is the product of issues within the Arab-Islamic or leftist/rightest psyche and will only be resolved there. 

As terrifying as chimerical anti-Zionists may be, it also offers us a kind of moral clarity. Unlike conventional prejudice, chimerical opponents honestly want to kill us at all costs to themselves and can never be negotiated with. As such, we should have no qualms with trying to get them first. As to the fear that we might kill innocent people and create more chimerical anti-Zionists, we can be confident that this will not be the case. Bombing people might create anti-Zionists who dislike us and even wish to fight back. It will never create chimerical anti-Zionists who believe that Israel is the ultimate evil to be wiped out no matter the cost.  

Returning to Voyaging Into Jewish History

 

Nearly two years ago, I wrote a post titled Voyaging Into Jewish History. I contrasted the traditional view of Jewish History with that of Zionism. In the traditional view, Jews were powerless in the face of the historical forces opposing them. As such, the most that Jews could hope to accomplish was to survive whatever disasters befell them, presumably through divine aid brought about through the scrupulous observance of Jewish Law. Zionism rejected this view as it forced Jews to play a passive role in politics. Instead, Zionism strove to protect Jews by making them an active political force with a state and an army that could stand against those who wished to harm them. 

I wrote that post about a month before October 7th, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdering over a thousand Israelis, and taking some 250 hostages. It is important to understand that, just as the Holocaust changed the nature of this debate about Jewish survival, October 7th has once again changed the nature of that conversation. As such, I wished to revisit my earlier post to explore this shift, recognizing that, even nearly two years into this conflict, the implications of October 7th are still in the process of being worked out. 

In a sense, October 7th made the Zionist attempt to solve Jewish History untenable much in the same way that the Holocaust made the traditional view untenable. The traditional view was premised on the notion that anti-Semites were individuals who might temporarily gain power in a particular place, killing large numbers of Jews and forcing the survivors to flee to a safer place. It was never prepared for a major power like Nazi Germany, which did not simply dislike Jews, but made the annihilation of world Jewry central to its own identity. Against such pathological anti-Semitism on a mass societal scale, the only plausible option was for Jews to have a state which would allow Jews to fight to protect themselves and offer sanctuary to any Jew around the world threatened by anti-Semitism. Ultimately, though, Zionism did not solve the problem of Jewish History and we saw that on October 7th when, for just a few hours, thousands of Jews found themselves in the power of Hamas fighters just as, during the Holocaust, European Jews were under the power of the Nazis. Even now, nearly two years later, hostages remain in Hamas captivity and live under conditions that closely parallel that of concentration camps.     

It is useful here to consider the examples of the two Netanyahus, Benzion and Benjamin. Benzion Netanyahu was a medieval historian who specialized in fifteenth-century Spain. At the heart of his work was the failure of the traditional model, as exemplified by Isaac Abarbanel, to fend off the expulsion of 1492. Highly placed Jews like Abarbanel were supposed to be able to use their connections at court to make sure that Jews were protected, making Jewish political sovereignty irrelevant. Abarbanel, though, failed not only to stop the expulsion but even to foresee its coming, which could have saved many Jews. From Benzion Netanyahu's perspective, the belief in the influence of court Jews like Abarbanel embodied the illusion of any hope for Jewish safety outside a sovereign State of Israel. Writing about 15th century Spain was Benzion Netanyahu's way of commenting about the failure 20th century European Jewry to save itself from the Holocaust. Whether in Spain or in Germany, Jewish attempts to assimilate only created more anti-Semitism. Jewish leaders, confident in their ability to bribe and negotiate, were helpless to stop the destruction of their communities and blind even to its coming.   

Considering this, it is rather ironic that it was Benzion Netanyahu's son, Benjamin Netanyahu who was prime minister for the debacle of October 7th. Furthermore, today, much of Netanyahu's appeal relies on the assumption that he can influence President Donald Trump to help Israel. Whether this is true or not, it should be recognized that history has come around in a sort of circle and Benjamin Netanyahu now plays the role of Isaac Abarbanel, the court Jew, that his father so despised. 

That being said, even if Zionism has failed to solve Jewish History, this makes the State of Israel all the more important for Jewish survival. If traditional Jewish statelessness failed to protect Jews against Nazi Germany, I fail to see how anything but a State of Israel can protect Jews worldwide against the ideological forces arrayed against them. These involve Iran and its proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, Sunni Islamists, such as Hamas, and a wide variety of Western leftist revolutionaries, who took to the streets to protest on behalf of Hamas as the October 7th attacks were still going on. It should be understood that these groups do not simply hate Jews, but see the Jews as the primary enemy that must be destroyed (with the exception of those Jews willing to offer them moral cover) in order for their glorious new world to come to being. As such, these enemies cannot be bribed or negotiated with. Their goal is a second Holocaust and nothing can stop them but the full military and political might that only Israel can provide. 

In a sense, October 7th marked the return to Jewish History. Despite the existence of the State of Israel, Jews are once again vulnerable to being murdered in mass. Around the world, pathological anti-Semitism, as opposed to mere prejudice, is now acceptable, particularly on the Left. Once again, we Jews are left standing against opponents who are stronger than us and our goal is to somehow survive. This involves using whatever physical resources available to the best of our ability, whether that is the IDF or AIPAC. Ultimately, though, we have to accept that Jewish survival is a miracle and that being Jewish means being willing to risk one's life in order to participate in the miraculous story that is Jewish History.          

Daniel Boyarin's No-State Non-Solution

 

It is easy to dismiss most anti-Zionist Jewish activists as having little connection to Judaism. If your main involvement in Judaism comes when you say "as a Jew" before launching into a tirade against Israel, I feel perfectly comfortable in ignoring both the "as a Jew" and whatever follows about Israel. A notable exception among the anti-Zionists is Prof. Daniel Boyarin. Boyarin is a significant contemporary Jewish thinker, whose work on the Talmud and the origins of the Jewish-Christian split I take seriously. As such, there is reason not to simply dismiss his anti-Zionism, particularly as his anti-Zionism is clearly connected to his understanding of Judaism as a people that transcends politics. 

In reading Boyarin's No-State Solution, I find it fairly unobjectionable in terms of what it says. I agree with him that it is important for Judaism to transcend crude ethno-nationalism. Jews living outside the land of Israel have an important role to play within Judaism and it is deeply problematic to claim that Judaism can only function within the borders of a political state ruled by Jews. Judaism is not merely a religion in the Protestant sense of a collection of beliefs held by an individual nor is Judaism simply a national group bound by blood. A properly functioning Judaism is one that can deal with the complexity that goes into the various ways that people live out a Jewish identity. 

If I were reading Boyarin in 1924, I would have few disagreements with him. If I had lived back in the 1920s, political Zionism would not have been one of my goals. I would have been trying to strengthen Jewish life wherever Jews lived. Granted, recognizing the value of Israel as a spiritual center as well as a physical refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, I would have had a particular interest in promoting Jewish non-political life in Israel. In pursuit of this aim, I would have been attempting to cooperate with the British and the local Arab population. The deal I would have been trying to make with the Arabs would have been that they should allow mass immigration to Palestine along with some measure of local Jewish autonomy with the assurance that Palestine would eventually become part of a larger Arab federation. (I recommend Oren Kessler's Palestine 1936, which argues that this position was very much part of the mainline of Zionism during this period.) 

My main objection to Boyarin is what is left out in his book. We are not living in 1924 but in 2024. This means that the Holocaust has happened. We know that there are people who wield the power of modern states who believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and that Judaism is a menace that must be exterminated. Whether Israel should have been established in 1948, the fact is that nearly half of world Jewry currently lives in the State of Israel. This state is surrounded by hostile Arab armies and terrorist groups, who have been influenced by the Protocols and desire to murder Jews. Saying that this is the result of the actions of Zionists does not help as it only makes it easier to believe that our opponents are serious about carrying out the mass murder of Jews. Back in 1924, it was easy to dismiss European anti-Semites as being delusional; what did the Jews ever do to them? If the Nazis could carry out the Holocaust based on pure fantasy, what might Hamas be willing to do if ever given the chance. 

To be fair to Boyarin, his book was written before October 7th. That being said, I have no reason to assume that this past year has caused him to adapt his views. Far more problematic than anything he says is how he completely ignores what should be the primary question regarding the State of Israel as if it does not matter at all. Boyarin's unwillingness to even entertain the question of Jewish safety in the contemporary world, in Israel or anywhere else, collapses his entire argument. Once we begin to consider Jewish safety then one has to consider whether a Jewish willingness to break the limbs of Palestinian children throwing rocks is merely the manifestation of a macho fantasy of Jewish toughness or whether it is a pragmatic solution to save Jewish lives.  

It is almost as if the lives of regular people do not matter to Boyarin. Even Palestinian lives only matter to him in the abstract sense of being victims of Zionism. He gets to live as an academic using trite truths that one should have no need of saying to hide moral monstrosities that no one should have the gall to defend. All this while claiming to care about human lives.  

Joseph's Adventures in Communism and College

Previously, I talked about my great-grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Eliezer Shapiro, and the late Prof. Louis Feldman of blessed memory as examples of antifragile Judaism, people who created Jewish lives for themselves under unplanned circumstances. In the world of antifragility, what looks good on a day-to-day basis is not necessarily what will work in the long run because what makes such systems look good is precisely what can bring it down in a once-in-a-generation disaster. I would like to return to this issue of antifragility and its implications for Judaism.

Critical to Jewish survival has been its ability to adapt to situations to which our faith, as envisioned by previous generations, was not designed to handle. The most extreme example of this was the rabbis after the destruction of the Second Temple, who reimagined Judaism without its central sacrificial cult and without the majority of the biblical commandments. This requires us to rethink who the heroes of Jewish history are from those who lived ideal religious lives under ideal circumstances to those who lived non-ideal lives precisely because their circumstances made such ideals impossible. 

The biblical Isaac is someone held up by the rabbis as a person who was able to live his life in Israel in purity without sin. As Rashi teaches, Jacob wanted to live that life but God sent him the calamity of Joseph. Joseph lived his life in Egypt as a slave, a prisoner, and finally as viceroy. Joseph had to carry on for all those years under the assumption that he had been cast out by his brothers and that there was no future for him as part of the Children of Israel. It is Joseph who not only physically saved his family but also made it possible for Israel to spiritually survive 210 years in Egypt. It is not for nothing that, every Friday night, Jews bless their sons to be like Joseph's children, Menashe and Ephraim, who grew up in the court of Egypt. Similarly, we have the later models of Daniel and Esther in the courts of Babylon and Persia, cut off from Israel and with no hope of being able to return. In Esther's case, she even intermarried.

Let us be clear as to what the challenge is here. Ignore the strawman argument that Egypt or Persia (or America) is different. This is easily countered by "we, the faithful, do not change." This strawman argument, though, covers an alternative utterly devasting attack of not that the world has changed but that you have changed. The moment a person wakes up and sees themselves as different and irreparably cut-off from their former selves with no hope of returning, then casting off one's former beliefs and practices becomes natural. One realizes that the hard act of changing has already happened and now it is only a matter of accepting the reality of the situation. In fact, the very tenacity that one held on beforehand, insisting that the new circumstances did not matter, will come to work in favor of giving in as it will make the break, once it happens, that much more obvious.  

Imagine trying to train a twentieth-century version of Joseph. It is the year 1900 and your newborn student lives in Czarist Russia. You have him until he is seventeen. In 1917 the Bolsheviks are going to take over and put an end to open Jewish observance. Your Joseph will have to live out his life without the support of a Jewish community and his observance will be compromised at best. What can you give him that will allow him to maintain a Jewish identity in his own mind and pass it along to his own Menashe and Ephraim to the extent that when he dies in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it will be as a Jew surrounded by a Jewish family?

The members of my family who came closest to living out this story were my maternal great-grandparents, Yitzchok Isaac and Feigy Schwartz. (Note that both my father’s father and my mother’s grandfather were named Yitzchok Isaac.) They survived the Holocaust only to go back home to a Soviet-controlled Hungary where they raised three daughters. As a teenager, my grandmother took advantage of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution to flee to the United States because there weren't any good Jewish men to marry. My great-grandfather passed away when I was a kid. I only knew him as an old man sitting in a dark corner of my grandmother's house, who did not speak English. Frankly, he scared me. (I confessed this as an adult to my father and he laughed telling me that I had no idea what a kind man he was.) If I could talk to him now, I would want to ask him how he found it in himself to raise a Jewish family with no Jewish community to rely upon and offer hope for a future.  

The 20th century gave us Communism, the Holocaust, and ultimately the destruction of Eastern European Jewish life. Jews in 1900 could not have prepared for this but, at the end of the day, all of their efforts to build up Judaism that were not centered around the United States and Israel were going to be little better than futile. I have no idea what this century will bring. That being said, is it not unreasonable, for those in the United States to construct an educational system on the assumption (whether or not you are Haredi and oppose college on principle) that students are going to go college for four years without meaningful Jewish support. You have kids from the age of 5 until they are 18. What can you teach that will allow a student to go to college and, regardless of the compromises that they might make there, they will have a Jewish identity that will persevere to the extent that they will seek to rejoin the Jewish community afterward and raise a Jewish family? Anything that is not clearly focused on this goal needs to be cast aside as a waste of time and a distraction.  

Whether we are dealing with the extremes of Communism and the Holocaust or the mundane challenges of college, I assume that a successful pedagogical strategy will try to build a strong Jewish identity backed by theology and a deep emotional attachment to Judaism. Jewish identity here means a knowledge of ritual practice as well as a sense of Jewish history. Theology means having open and honest discussions about God and not simply assuming that kids believe in God just because they are ritually observant. Developing an emotional attachment to Judaism means getting away from threats of hellfire and, instead, making sure that Jewish practice is both joyful and meaningful. This is not to be confused with being fun and entertaining as that will have little staying power. A Passover Seder is not very entertaining but it can be effective if conducted by adults who understand what the Seder is about and are not simply going through the motions. Discussions about identity and theology should best be conducted over a Shabbos cholent or during shabbatons/summer camp along with plenty of singing. 

Take away a Jewish community and a person with a strong Jewish identity will continue as a Jew because, at a fundamental level, they see Judaism as essential to who they are and not merely a culture they grew up in or a set of practices they used to follow. To abandon Judaism would become unthinkable as almost a form of suicide. For all intents and purposes, it would be a different person living that non-Jewish lifestyle. A strong identity can allow a person a continuous sense of self that is not broken by anything that happens on the outside. Defending a Jewish identity requires a theology in the sense that our Joseph should be able to answer the Wicked Son's question of "what is this service to you." Having a theology is useful precisely when there is no community to give meaning to your identity. One thinks of the example of Maimonides, who lived for several years as a Muslim and developed the first list of Jewish doctrines. You could have a person living their entire lives without ever being able to practice Judaism. They are still Jewish because they are able to believe certain things even if it is only in their heads. Finally, all the arguments in the world are not going to keep an intelligent person Jewish if they do not already love Judaism. If a person sees Judaism as a burden to be carried in the hope of getting into heaven, a college campus will provide plenty of intellectual justifications for discarding that burden.  

If we accept this model of Jewish education then it raises some difficult questions about Haredi education. Frankly, Talmud, at least how it is conventionally taught, becomes a kind of "spork," in theory good for a lot of things but fails to do any one thing particularly well and is better replaced by alternatives. For example, there are better ways to teach halakha. It is even more difficult to use Talmud to teach theology. Talmud, with its jumping across generations, lacks a clear narrative in contrast to the Bible. The Talmud's strongest selling point would be that it can build Jewish identity by allowing students to develop a sense that they are a continuation of the rabbis with their discussions. Note, though, that while this form of Jewish identity, is well suited for people operating within a Yeshiva system, it is likely to crack precisely when that community is no more. Our Joseph, whether in college or under Communism, is not going to be a rabbi. That option is closed. If our Joseph is to remain Jewish it will be precisely because his sense of himself as a Jew transcends his being a rabbi. 

I readily acknowledge that the Haredi system is better at producing Jewishly knowledgable and fervent kids than the Modern Orthodox schools. Clearly, if the question was keeping kids religious tomorrow, Haredim would win easily. But the lesson of antifragility is that you have to prepare for the extreme. Breaking Haredi kids should be relatively easy. There is no need to argue with them. Take away their tzitzit and yarmulkas; clip their peyos and let them see themselves in the mirror. No need to force them to eat non-kosher, just let them feed themselves from a dining room not designed for kosher eating and make their own compromises. The fact that these compromises may be quite defensible will not change the fact that they are compromises. Once you create a break with their past selves, the rest should follow easily. 

Remember that Haredi kids have not been trained to imagine themselves living outside a Haredi community. On the contrary, they have been conditioned to make that imaginative leap impossible. Thus, the moment you take them away from their community, they will likely see themselves as different people. This is not the case with Modern Orthodox kids, who have identities distinct from their Judaism. This might make them less fervent and more likely to abandon the faith on a day-to-day basis. It also might allow them a stronger sense of continuity even under difficult circumstances. As long as mental continuity exists then Jewish identity stands a fighting chance. 

Balph Eubank and R. Eliyahu Dessler

This past Sabbath I found myself opening my copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and immediately finding myself getting pulled in. Despite the fact that I already read the book and had no immediate plans of rereading it, I ended up spending a large chunk of the day back in Rand's dystopian world. Despite Rand's very real flaws, this novel is even more important to civilization than Lord of the Rings. My wife, always concerned for the good of my soul, stopped me at one point in the afternoon and asked me to study an essay from R. Eliyahu Dessler's Strive for Truth. Maybe it was the leftover taste from my previous reading, but I could not help but feel that Dessler would have made a wonderful villain for the novel.

There is one particular scene I have in mind. It is a party attended by the leading establishment intellectuals. Rand goes back and forth between the various intellectuals as they regale their own little circle of fawning wealthy liberals with their philosophies. The novelist attacks the notion of plot and the composer attacks melody. These are meant as corollaries to the philosopher, who attacks reason. The conclusion they all take from this, which they offer their audience between mouthfuls of expensive foods and amidst all the glamor of the party, is that life is pointless, man is doomed to suffer and therefore the only thing he can do is submit to authority.

The intellectual scam they are pulling off is as follows. They start by claiming the moral high ground as spiritual men, who oppose greed and wish for everyone to work together for the common good. The fact that they can say this while enjoying the largess of a capitalist they despise fails to strike their audience as hypocritical. On the contrary, the fact that they present themselves as men of privilege, who attack their own class, demonstrates their sincerity. They then deny the existence of reason or any objective morality, denying any means by which they could be challenged. Next, they wash their hands of any responsibility to actually improve the world; their moral superiority resides solely upon the fact that they claim to desire to help people. Thus, not only have they removed any intellectual standards by which they can be judged, but they also have removed any objective empirical standard by which anyone could point out that their ideas fail. The end result is that humanity must not only physically submit to their authority, but must also spiritually do so, by acknowledging these intellectuals as the selfless morally superior heroes of mankind for agreeing to rule over them.

Dessler uses many of the same arguments. He attacks materiality and people's desire for physical goods. He makes no distinction between rich people and those struggling to make ends meet. In fact, it is critical for his argument, which denounces Jews as a nation, that this includes the vast majority of Jews not living in mansions or driving fancy cars. The next step is to declare that it is hopeless to pursue material things as it is man's lot to suffer. The only option, therefore, is to submit to the divine will and hope for the coming of the Messiah.

Forgive me for being cynical, but the same scam seems to be in play. Dessler grabs the moral high ground by denouncing material goods, all while having enjoyed modern conveniences such as a printing press to spread his writing. He then promises people nothing but disaster, removing any responsibility to actually produce a plan to improve anyone's lot in life. Finally, he has people submit to God, which for all intents and purposes means Dessler. Thus, he gets to rule over people and chastise them for failing to properly appreciate his moral superiority in doing this.

Just like Rand's liberals, Dessler attacks capitalism:        

There are some who take the maximum and give the minimum. These are the merchants and middlemen who take advantage of every opportunity for profit, without ever considering whether the effort and work they have invested really bear any relationship to the profits gained. When they bend their efforts to benefit from their neighbor's failures or take advantage of his ignorance, can this really be distinguished from plain, unvarnished deception? Not to speak of those who amass their fortune by usury, battening on other people's hard-won earnings, or who exploit their workers, paying them a pittance for hard and exacting toil, or who oppress whole nations, ruling them with a tyrant's hand (even though some incidental benefit may accrue to their people) - all these and their like are examples of "much taking and little giving." (Strive for Truth Vol. I, 121-22.)

Dessler's comments about usury really got to me. Was he not aware of the long history that the charge of excessive usury has played in anti-Semitism? Did he not know that while he lived in safety in England, the Nazis were slaughtering millions of those same "materialistic" Jews that he failed to save, using these same arguments? In truth, it is only through "greed" and "exploitation" by merchants and "middlemen" (in truth, everyone from the miner taking iron from the earth to the housewife buying that iron in the form of pins is a middleman) that we make any progress. Suffering is caused by people like Dessler who condemned capitalism.

One cannot treat him charitably as someone who took a rhetorical misstep; on the contrary, the continued suffering of millions of Jews was a necessary part of a self-serving ideology that gave him a position of honor, respect, and power over others. He may have meant well, but then again just about every great crime in human history was committed by people who claimed and likely even believed that they acted for the "public good."

Speaking at a Chabad House (About Messianism No Less)

In South Pasadena, where Miriam and I are living, there is not much in the way of Orthodox life. We have a Chabad house 3.5 miles away where we pray. It is a small, but very diverse group of people. They have been very good to Miriam in the past and are now very accepting of me. I am happy to be part of this family. While most of the people there became religious through Chabad, as with most Chabad places, beyond the two Chabad rabbis and their families it is not a Chabad community.

A few weeks ago someone put forth the idea to me that, as a Jewish historian, I should give a class on Jewish history possibly on what I am writing about. I am an academic historian, writing about messianism; how many sentences do you think it is going to take before the rabbi pulls the plug on me? Somehow this person managed to convince me to go for it and, even more surprisingly, convinced the rabbi to give me a platform. So this past Sabbath, I gave an "Introduction to Jewish Messianism." I guess the biggest shocker was that over twenty people stuck around in the afternoon to listen to me. It was the sort of lecture that I like giving. It went on for about an hour before tapering off into an informal question and answer session. I took a number of questions while I was speaking, which sent me off on lots of side tangents. The problem with this is that it sometimes makes me difficult to follow. I try to balance this with a sense of humor. If people have no idea what I am talking about they should at least think it is funny, whatever it is I am actually talking about. Well apparently everybody liked my presentation so it looks like we may do this again, perhaps make it a monthly event.

Believe it or not, I do have a plan as to how to keep myself from being too offensive. Keep everything theoretical. I am simply reporting on what is going on in my field. Phrase things in questions. I am simply explaining some of the major debates going on and offering points for consideration. Above all else, I should avoid talking about Chabad messianism. As a historian, I should have no problem keeping things in the eighteenth century or beforehand.

Ok, so I did talk about Chabad messianism. I raised the question of calamity based messianism; do messianic movements come about in response to major physical disasters? Isaac Abarbanel writing three books on messianism several years after the expulsion of 1492 and as the Jews of Portugal were being forcibly baptized sounds like calamity messianism. Jews in Poland responding to the Cossack attacks of 1648 by embracing Sabbatai Sevi in 1666 might be calamity messianism. (Of course, that would still not explain why Jews everywhere else did too.) Why did Chabad in the 1980s and 90s turn messianic? What great physical threat did Lubavitchers living in the United States at the end of the twentieth-century face? If you are going to say that this was in response to the Holocaust then why did the Lubavitcher Rebbe not come out in the 1950s with his "bring Moshiach" campaign? (The previous Rebbe, in the 1940s, started a messianic campaign, but it faded away for several decades.)

So no trouble yet. One of the attendees has asked me if, for my next lecture, I could talk about traditional Jewish claims that there will be no Messiah or that all messianic prophecies were already fulfilled with King Hezekiah and the Second Temple. What could possibly go wrong with this?         

In Support of Public Schools Teaching Intelligent Design and Other Nonsense II

Baruch Pelta has responded to my earlier post. I think it is important to note that he is unwilling to openly come out and support the legitimacy of public schools; essentially he is "agnostic" in regards to this issue. He does raise two arguments. One, allowing the teaching of creationism and intelligent design would violate the separation of Church and State. Two, it is possible to make a distinction between religion and other ideas as demonstrated by the fact that we have a separation of Church and State. Finally, Baruch asks that I define what I mean by "liberty."

If we are going to have public schools, I do not object to these schools teaching children, as a historical fact, that Jesus is their Savior as long as this directive does not come from the government itself and no public funds are specifically earmarked for this purpose. The reason for this is rooted in how, as a libertarian, I understand the role of government. Government only has a legitimate interest in protecting people from direct physical harm. A teacher, even one working in a government funded school, standing up and trying to convince students to accept Jesus causes no physical harm. Therefore it is of no interest to the government. (If the teacher were to hand out bonus points to those who accepted Jesus then that would be a different matter.) The fact that non-Christian students might be uncomfortable in such a situation and feel left out is irrelevant. This is what it means to live in a free society. You open yourself up to every manner of non-physical torment and you must learn to live with that and accept that the government cannot in any way be used to help you in this matter.

As to the issue of Church and State, it is important to keep in mind that it is not a legitimate legal concept, but a letter from Thomas Jefferson wrongfully brought into play in the twentieth century. Regardless of that matter, I understand the Constitution's establishment clause to apply to all ideas. Outside of a belief in the legitimacy of the legal system itself, the government has no businesses declaring any idea to be true or false. This goes for Jesus dying for the sins of the world, evolution and the Holocaust. I am even willing to go so far as to argue against tolerance education. The government may tell white supremacists that they need to follow the law and not murder blacks and Jews, but the government has no business telling these people that they should support a multicultural society as something positive.

As to the definition of liberty and how it might apply to children; I understand liberty as the ability to pursue your own good in your own way as long as you do not cause direct physical harm to others. As J. S. Mill pointed out, this concept does not apply to children as they are deemed as lacking the mental capacity to engage in the give and take of ideas. Children are placed under the control of guardians who therefore also take up the liberty that the child would have exercised if it were an adult. The only limit on this is that the guardian cannot cause direct physical harm to the child. That would bring the attention of the government which would have the right to step in and remove the child and place it in an environment where it would be less likely to suffer direct physical harm. (Think of the libertarian government as a deadly trip-wire alarm system. As long as no one is being physically harmed, the government is silent to the extent that you should not even realize that it is there. The moment that someone steps on the wire and causes direct physical harm to someone else, all of a sudden the government springs into existence and takes out the offender, with physical violence if necessary.) Part of the social contract we sign is that we allow people to come to harm through their ideas. This includes their children, whom they have the right to raise according to these ideas. If someone thinks that sweatshops or even brothels are good places for a child to receive an education then so be it.

This might sound funny coming from an Asperger, but I see Baruch as suffering from a lack of a theory of mind. (See Neurotypical Mental and Emotional Handicaps.) This goes back to our original discussion about parents raising their children. At a physiological level, Baruch simply does not get that there are other people out there who believe differently from him and are equally convinced of their beliefs as he is. Baruch thinks that it is so obvious that he is right that if he repeats his arguments or has the government step in and support him as being right, those other people will eventually come to their senses; Christians, Haredim, and white supremacists will suddenly realize that they are superstitious intolerant bigots, apologize to Baruch for being such naughty children and go home. Of course when those people follow this same line of thinking and try to use government to support their ideas against Baruch then that is them being intolerant and trying to impose their values. In the real world there are true and false beliefs (gravity being a good example) and those beliefs have consequences. In the politics of a free society there is no true and false. There are just people's opinions and a system designed so that these differing opinions do not turn into people killing each other over them.

On a final note, let me give a shout out to Baruch Spinoza, a fellow opponent of public schools, who has joined in on the debate.

Of Aspergers and Robots (They Just Might Both be Capable of Emotions)

I ended my previous post with a word in about the importance of emotions and a sense of humor even in seemingly strictly rational endeavors and I thought that the topic deserved some further discussion. As with most Aspergers, I struggle against a public perception that we are simply rational automatons, robots without emotions. Anyone who has ever spent time with Aspergers knows that this is false. Asperger syndrome is not the lack of emotions; it is the inability to effectively display emotion in a manner understandable to others. In other words, it is the "disability" of neurotypicals, who cannot understand our emotions to the same extent that we seem to be hopeless at deciphering their emotions. By emotions, I mean in the positive sense of being able to desire, hope and even find joy and in the negative sense to be able to have one's feelings hurt, to be afraid, and even at times to fall into despair. The hallmark of all of these things is that in of themselves they are not rational, not subject to rational control (in terms of feelings, not actions), and have no direct Utilitarian value.

There are a number of reasons why Aspergers come across as lacking emotions. The first is that we relate to the world primarily in terms of information and not social connections. So Aspergers have an affinity for strings of information, in my case primarily history, but also politics and even the lyrics of Broadway musicals (I can remember lyrics, I just cannot sing them). The obvious conclusion from seeing someone spouting information is that such a person is precisely that, just information without emotion; what a robot would do. This is only enhanced by the fact that most Aspergers do not convey facial expressions in the same way and to the same extent as neurotypicals. Just as Aspergers have trouble reading neurotypical body language, neurotypicals have trouble reading Asperger body language. (I will leave it as an open question as to whether Aspergers fail to read body language due to not having developed one of their own or whether they do not develop conventional body language due to their inability to read the body language of others.)

What should strike one as odd about this seemingly common-sense view of Aspergers as information-spewing robots is that it fails to explain why an Asperger would bother going through the effort of learning the information and passing it along? Might I suggest that the reason why Aspergers do this is that it makes them happy in the same irrational way that neurotypicals find happiness in the mere presence of friends and in having a relationship with them? The very act of being a "robot" it turns out is only possible for one with emotions.

One has to understand that the Asperger experience is profoundly one not of lacking emotions, but of having emotions and not having them being understood while at the same time being held hostage to the emotional demands of others. Is it any wonder that one might wish from time to time to cut away one's heart and be just pure reason? Aspergers learn from early on to attempt to distinguish between emotions and reason. Reason is that which you have some hope of being able to convey to others so that they will listen. Recently I was sitting in a lounge when I overheard a meeting for a planned student trip to Germany. What struck me was the leader's continuous emphasis on the need to distinguish between reason and emotions. It is well and good for these students to find Germany and setting foot on German soil to be emotionally trying. No one is asking them to ever become comfortable with Germany or ever wish to live there. That being said, it would not be appropriate to take these emotions out on Germans they meet, the vast majority of them being born after World War II and in no way responsible for the Holocaust. Possibly for the first time in their lives, these students were being asked to do what I do every day, recognize that their emotions have no validity outside of their own heads and cannot be used to gain moral leverage over others.

Probably the greatest proof that Aspergers have emotions is that, unfortunately, so many of us suffer from depression. It makes sense; you would also be depressed if you had to live your life cut off from other people in a world distinctively not made with you in mind. To be depressed means that you can be bothered by these things, something only possible with deep emotions. For this reason, I strongly relate to Marvin, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's depressed robot. With the exception of Arthur Dent, Marvin is the most poignantly human character in the series. If I am going to be stuck as a robot, I would hope to transcend my depressive existence by becoming Wall-E, a trash can robot, who says almost nothing but manages to be the fictional humanist hero of the decade.

Toward a Patriotic Celebration of Israel Independence Day

I am an American citizen and a Jew. I take both of these elements of myself very seriously. Not that this relationship is always perfectly smooth, but I strive to keep both of these parts in harmony and will even go so far as to say that each is enhanced by the other. As a Jew, I bring a minority outsider element to our culture. This goes above and beyond that of other minorities in that America was founded by Christians with a strong sense of themselves as being the heirs of the biblical Children of Israel. Other minority groups may have their legitimate complaints against the United States. As a Jew, I can be nothing but eternally grateful for what America has done for us. As an American, I bring to Judaism an experience and a comfort in living in a free society, peacefully with members of other creeds.

While I may be an American, I believe that the State of Israel has an important role to play for Jews. The State of Israel itself (to be differentiated from the land) may not have any religious significance to me, but I still support it on secular terms. Even Jews who do not live in Israel can hold their heads up and feel safer in their home countries knowing that there is a Jewish State to stand up for them. Furthermore, any Jewish spiritual renewal, whether Orthodox or otherwise, is likely to come from Israel. I do not live in Israel nor do I have Israeli citizenship, but it is something that I might consider in the future. This would in no way be a rejection of America. I would be following in the footsteps of Michael Oren, who had to be supported by friends as he gave up his American citizenship in order to become the Israeli ambassador to the United States. Ambassador Oren never stopped being a loyal American. He is loyal to the Jewish people and to the State of Israel as well and has acted to serve both the interests of the United States and Israel.

Even if the political State of Israel does not hold any religious significance, I still see the establishment of the State of Israel and its survival during the War of Independence to be of religious significance. After the Holocaust, the Jewish people needed something. Without Israel, I do not believe that any Jewish renewal, even in America, could have been possible and Judaism would have faded into oblivion. So Israel Independence Day should be celebrated by Jews as a secular community holiday and a religious one to thank God for being delivered.

I say all this to frame what I am about to say so I am not misunderstood. I do not wish to attack the notion of American Jews being attached to Israel and celebrating Israel Independence Day. That being said, there was something that happened yesterday at my school's Israel Independence Day celebration that bothered me. There was music and dancing in the gym. As can be expected the room was full of Israeli flags. There was, though, not a single American flag. If this would have been an informal thing with people bringing in flags, I would not have thought to make an issue of it, but the school had several representatives from the State of Israel, who came into the gym in their Israeli military uniforms and, with full ceremony, hoisted the Israeli flag, while everyone stood at attention.

According to article 7c of the American flag code:

No other flag or pennant should be placed above or, if on the same level, to the right of the flag of the United States of America, … No person shall display the flag of the United Nations or any other national or international flag equal, above, or in a position of superior prominence or honor to or in place of the flag of the United States or any Territory or possession thereof.


If it is considered a disgrace to the American flag to honor the flag of another country above it, it is certainly a disgrace to honor the flag of a foreign country, even to the extent of having foreign citizens dressed in the uniform of a foreign military standing on ceremony, without even having an American flag present.


I managed to pester a member of the administration to allow me to go over to the auditorium and bring over the American flag there so this event could be honored by the presence of an American flag as well.



For those of you who think that I am making a big deal out of nothing, I ask you: what line would you place for Israel Independence Day events? What would American Jews have to do in order for there to at least be the appearance of disloyalty to a country that they owe so much in gratitude to?

I was pleased to note the number of people who came over to me afterward to tell me that they also were not comfortable with what was going on and thanking for doing something.

C. S. Lewis On the Implications of the Nazi Holocaust

In his essay "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State," C. S. Lewis took a view that most people would associate with Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, as to the modern shift in regarding criminal punishment as no longer a debt paid to society as a matter of justice, but as a means of curing the patient of his pathological tendencies toward crime. Like Foucault, Lewis saw this shift in very negative terms as a direct assault on personal freedom, one that granted governments the power not only to enforce laws but to reshape man in whatever image best suited to the interests of the State. Lewis goes further, by arguing that the modern view of crime was a necessary component in allowing the Holocaust to happen:

I will mention the trainloads of Jews delivered at the German gas-chambers. It seems shocking to suggest a common element, but I think one exists. On the humanitarian view all crime is pathological; it demands not retributive punishment but cure. This separates the criminal's treatment from the concepts of justice and desert; a 'just cure' is meaningless.

On the old view public opinion might protest against a punishment (it protested against our old penal code) as excessive, more than the man 'deserved'; an ethical question on which anyone might have an opinion. But a remedial treatment can be judged only by the probability of its success; a technical question on which only experts can speak.

Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners. Observe how the 'humane' attitude to crime could operate. If crimes are diseases, why should diseases be treated differently from crimes? And who but the experts can define disease? One school of psychology regards my religion as a neurosis. If this neurosis ever becomes inconvenient to Government, what is to prevent my being subjected to a compulsory 'cure'? It may be painful; treatments sometimes are. But it will be no use asking, 'What have I done to deserve this?' The Straightener will reply: 'But, my dear fellow, no one's blaming you. We no longer believe in retributive justice. We're healing you.'

I take a similar attitude when teaching about the Nazis. The popular view of the Nazis as people motivated by hate, with the obvious liberal lesson of tolerance, misses the point. The Nazi leadership, by and large, particularly those directly involved in the Final Solution, was dominated by perfectly sane, reasonable, and rational people. They simply believed that the world would be a better place without any Jews in it. The Jew was suffering from a disease; since the disease, in practice, could not be cured, Jews themselves would have to go. From their perspective, those who planned the Final Solution were humanitarians, taking upon themselves the morally difficult task that other people would be too squeamish to carry out themselves. Reading up on Adolf Eichmann for example, I never got the sense that he hated Jews in any conventional sense. Can anyone conceive of Eichmann losing control and going on a Hitler-like rant about the evils of the Jews? Eichmann was a highly intelligent, rational person, committed to duty, whose reading of the modern situation, Kant, and Jewish literature led him to the conclusion that Jews needed to be removed, nothing personal.

Holocaust History Versus Holocaust Memorial

I must admit that I find Yom Ha-Shoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) to be very difficult. Obviously, this day is created for the benefit of those who have reason to find this day far more difficult and nothing that I say should be seen as a disparagement of them. God knows that they have certainly earned the right to have their day. I am the grandchild of Holocaust survivors and as a historian I have a greater appreciation than most as to the horrors of the Nazi regime. In truth, though, it is the historian in me that makes things difficult. For me, Holocaust Memorial Day, more than any other day of the year, serves to rub into my face the gap between history as I know it, study and love and the culture of memory that serves as history for most of the population. This gap is more than just an academic issue; it stands at the heart of much that is ill in the modern world. Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July would be obvious competition, but these, ironically enough, have been rendered so empty of historical content as to prove innocuous. True this has come about due to the de-historicization of our society, brought about by modern liberalism. That being said, I sometimes feel, perhaps naively, that better no history than the wrong history.

For me, history is the study of who, what, when, where, and, most intriguingly, why. If human history is irrational, the study of history is a redemptive exercise in reason, purified from any modern polemics or judgment values. History does not include should or even right or wrong. As I often tell my students, there is nothing in my class to stop them from concluding that Hitler was a great leader and that the United States should follow in his footsteps by invading Canada and seizing its natural resources. I might personally disagree with such a position (and do society the favor of shooting them on the spot), but it is for reasons completely unrelated to history. Thus I take it personally to see the Holocaust used to teach "lessons" or to inspire a sense of Jewish identity. Do not get me wrong, I do see the Holocaust as one of the great evils of the twentieth century and fully support private, communal, and religious memorials. I would willingly sign on for special prayers for the victims of the Holocaust and even for its own fast day. (Many Jewish communities in Europe maintained fast days, up until modern times for the Crusade massacres. Why should the Holocaust be any different?) Religious prayers, fasts, and even secular commemoration vigils are distinct enough from history as to be unobjectionable. It is only when there is some pretense to history, that I am offended; if history is going to be taught then it should be taught properly by professional historians.

Perhaps the thing that most encapsulates this divide is the attitude toward survivor testimony. Holocaust Memorial Days focus on survivors and holding onto their memories. More and more this is taking on a frantic quality as we recognize that there are fewer and fewer survivors left and we are soon approaching the day when there will be no survivors. The non-historian wonders how we will respond to Holocaust deniers without the eyewitness testimony of survivors. For the historian, though, the truth of the Holocaust has never rested on eyewitness testimony, but on documents. The documents have been preserved and are not going anywhere. There are no participants of the French Revolution or the Civil War left. The last known World War I veteran recently passed away. I am not worried about these events being forgotten. If there are people who deny the Holocaust, there are also flat-earthers, geocentrists, and moon-landing conspiracy theorists. These beliefs exist to the extent that we, as a society, fail to promote the systematic use of reason, underlying both the scientific and historical methods. As such, the failure to embrace the historical method at Holocaust Memorial Commemorations is itself furthering the cause of Holocaust denial.

There is no profession that makes one aware of one's own mortality as history. Historians every day are faced with the reality that not only will we be dead like those whom we study, but, like those whom we study, our culture will also die and this world will be left to those who will not even understand us and what we stood for. Worse, these people, out of their own self-righteous sanctimonious ignorance, will think to judge us for our failings to live up to their standards and label us as "primitive." So God willing, the Holocaust generation will pass on, followed, in a few decades, by my generation. It is only the historical method that will allow us to be understood as we understand ourselves and thus be truly remembered.