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Marx assimilated and that may have been his own personal solution to the "Jewish Question", but it was not the solution to the Jewish problem. Marx is particularly significant because he was considerably influenced by Moses Hess (considered the father of Zionist Socialism.), who was a proponent of Jews in "Palestine" as a response to antisemitism and to build a socialist society, and it was Hess who also first introduced the ideas of socialism to Marx and Engels and it is significant because Karl Marx has exercised a greater influence on mankind than any other social philosopher in the last couple of hundred years.
Marx's paternal grandfather and uncles were all rabbis and his maternal grandfather was a rabbi and his father before him and his father before him. They were all outstanding rabbis. And, they all lived through periods of intense Jewish hatred and Jewish persecutions. There was violent antisemitism in the Rhineland. The intense antisemitism in Europe led Herzl to conclude that one could not be assimilated into a Christian society. Others felt it was their only option. (1)
"Karl Heinrich Marx was born into a comfortable middle-class home in Trier on the river Moselle in Germany on May 5, 1818. He came a long line of rabbis on both sides of his family and his father, a man who knew Voltaire and Lessing by heart, had agreed to baptism as a Protestant so that he would not lose his job as one of the most respected lawyers in Trier. At the age of seventeen, Marx enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn. At Bonn he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen , a prominent member of Trier society, and man responsible for interesting Marx in Romantic literature and Saint-Simonian politics. The following year Marx's father sent him to the more serious University of Berlin where he remained four years, at which time he abandoned his romanticism for the Hegelianism which ruled in Berlin at the time." - (Source: The History Guide - www.historyguide.org)
Karl's father was a lawyer and Karl Marx also studied law, history and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. Karl was baptized along with his sibling. At that time baptism was a ticket to European culture and the only method of acceptance into Prussian-Christian society for Jews. It was an act of social emancipation. (2) (Expulsion, forced conversion, baptism and earlier choices by Jews)
Heinrich Heine, the famous poet/writer was also emancipated by being baptized.
"His name was originally Harry Heine. He had been born into a Jewish family of rather modest means. The name Heinrich was a baptismal name, taken when he was baptized a Christian in 1825. He perceived that as a Jew in those times he had little chance to enjoy the full potential of European life. He designated the baptism as the "Entréebillet zur europäischen Kultur" (the admission ticket to European culture). Heine studied law at the University of Bonn for two semesters. He then transferred to the University of Göttingen. He was forced to leave Göttigen in 1821 after being involved in an altercation leading to a duel. He then studied at the University of Berlin from 1821-1823. In 1824 he was readmitted to the University of Göttingen where he completed his doctorate in law in 1825. It was in 1825 that he converted to Christianity in order to be able to practice law or to achieve a position in the civil service. But he never did actually practice law. His interests throughout his university years were in poetry, history and literature." (Source: German Cultural History: http://webcampus3.stthomas.edu)
There have been some Jews, or those with Jewish ancestry, who rejected their Jewish heritage to gain acceptance in a hostile world. A very few may even become outspoken antisemites - but it is more likely, as I have discovered, that many of those claims are simply wrong. They're bogus, urban legends - promulgated over the internet, most often by antisemites - and the interNUT is a rumor mill and perfectly suited for spreading myths and conspiracies. For example, it has often been written (and repeated) that the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Gerhart Hauptmann, was a Jew who "described a brief handshake with Hitler as the `greatest moment of my life.'" The problem with that claim however is Gerhard Hauptmann was not Jewish.
"Without dismissing the effects of Judeophobia in German society, the acquiescence of ordinary Germans in persecution, and the complicity of the military and the bureaucracy in extermination, she concludes that genocide was possible principally because Hitler controlled a ruthlessly totalitarian system and acted under cover of war. Detracting only momentarily from this extremely compelling argument is the dubious contention that Gerhart Hauptmann's vote for Hitler illustrates at least some Jewish support for Nazism (Hauptmann was, in any case, not Jewish) and the equally misleading assertion that some moderate political parties and the Communists "occasionally campaigned on anti-Semitic platforms" (p. 45)." (This comes from The Simon Weisenthal Center, a review: "German Reactions to Nazi Persecution of the Jews", by Donald L. Niewryk which reviews Sarah Gordon, "Hitler, Germans, and the `Jewish Question' (Princeton U Press, 1984, 412 pages) -
But we do have Jews like Lenni Brenner, a long time vanguardist Trotskyite writer/Guru with a cultist following by some on the far left, who has made it his personal mission to bescmirch the Zionist project. He is too often quoted for his disparagment of an agreement for what he considers Zionism's "sell-out" to the Nazis. This claim is a sham. It references the "Transfer Agreement" which is best researched and written about by Edwin Black in a book by that name. Did Brenner even read the book? Edwin Black is pro-Zionist and says that this agreement saved 60,000 Jews. That was the reason for the agreement, to save Jews. It did not make any difference if the pact was made with the Devil (and maybe it was); the point was, it saved Jews when the British and the Americans locked them out by maintaining restrictive immigration quotas, when emigration from the Nazis was the only hope for Jews to get out of Nazi dominated Europe.
The purpose of the "collaboration" was an economic accord to save Jews. Yes, it required that those Jews have money, but that is not reason to condemn the agreement. It was a secondary to being able to take as many of Hitler's "unwanted Jews" as could be arranged between the Zionists and the Nazis. The Jews wanted to save all of them and asked their countries to help and their pleas fell on deaf ears. The "transfer aggreement" was an economic agreement so Israel benefited, those Jews, who were saved, benefited, and the Germans benefited. If other western countries had agreed to take the Jews there would never have been a need to have a "transfer agreement" but they didn't so Brenner's disdain for the Zionists would make sense only if he criticized the U.S. and Britain, not the Zionists. I however suspect that Brenner and his slanders will be read by those who are always looking for a reason to discredit the Zionist project. By the way, any project that saves lives is progressive.
The website of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which is the official site for these Holocaust Deniers, there you will find Lenni Brenner's out-of-print book "Zionism in the Age of the Dictator". As you probably guessed, this book is about the alleged "collaboration" of Zionism and the Nazis. Brenner reports an incident which has been very often mentioned by the anti-Israel segment of the left and Arab anti-Zionists. One educator/historian, Axel Meier puts it this way:
"In 1942 a small fraction of the revisionist-Zionist Irgun made an attempt to get in touch with the Nazis in order to create an alliance against Great Britain. Their aim was to assist Nazi-Germany in conquering Palestine in order to build up a fascist state there. This incident is supposed to prove that Zionism is actually a fascist movement which started with the colonial conquest of Palestine, collaborated with the Nazis and finally used Nazi-methods to oppress the Palestinian people. Brenner's book is neither based on sources nor does it have any scientifically founded argument. He simply picks from secondary literature what fits best in his context." ...Axel Meier
"I visited the IHR website some three years ago. At that time it had a link to the neo-fascist German-Canadian Zundel-Organisation which is spreading Nazi-websites over the Internet. There's obviously an unholy coalition among anti-Zionists which ranges from left-wing authors to Arab "intellectuals" and to neo-fascist organisations (here in Germany news papers even reported on Arab terrorist groups (i.e. the marxist PFLP) supplying German "Neo-Nazis" with weapons), according to the proverb "my enemy's enemy is my friend"......[ibid]
There are Jews who are the darlings of some of the left because they can always be depended on to provide the kind of propaganda which gets recycled over the interNUT as quickly as it is written. It should be also noted that while they are well known on the left there are not that many of them. The handful of anti-Zionist propagandists are: Lenni Brenner, Simha Flapan, Peretz Kidron, Tom Segev, Avi Shlaim, Maxime Rodinson, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Norman Finkelstein, Leon Hader, Edward Herman, and some others. There are also those on the left who support Israel, but not the right wing Israeli government. Israel has a very active left, but it is NOT anti-Israel, it is pro-justice.
We have had our share of apostates and mistaken Jews. After all, we're a peoplehood like any other. We're also a nation and culture with pretty well established traditions. And, those traditions and unique Jewish culture influences behavior and thinking whether Jews are observant Jews or cultural Jews.
When I first attended military school, I was only one of three Jews in the entire school in Georgia and I wanted to be emancipated. I didn't wanted to be converted or baptized, but I did try to hide my Jewishness. I just wanted to fit in. Somehow it didn't work and I was discovered. As a Jews I had to fight antisemites. I was interested in gymnastics so I became very good at it; I was good enough to get on the varsity gym team (and become a letter man) where I had the entire team, many of which were also football players, who were the biggest, strongest guys in the school and we took care of each other. Jocks hung out together so they were all on my side. Needless to say, no one bothered me after that.
Jews have been trying to fit in all of their lives and some do so by becoming obsessively anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist Jews. Some whom I have met are not Jewish at all. They claim to be because to them, and those who hear them, the impression is important and it gives greater weight to their words when people think these anti-Zionists are Jewish and they're quoted more than non-Jews but often their only real claim to being Jewish is one relative who gave up Judaism or never bothered to provide any kind of Jewish influence. Another-words, they're not Jews. They're just antisemites with Jewish sounding names.
There is a very outspoken critic of Israel in one several Left-wing mailing lists who speaks "as if" he was a Jew but upon closer scrutiny the truth reveals itself; that his father has a Jewish name, but may not have been Jewish either and his mother was Italian.. Don't be mistaken by someone's name. I met many "Jews for Jesus" who claimed to be Jewish, but on closer scrutiny they too were far from the fold.
Some ultra-orthodox Jews are also anti-Zionist because they believe the time is not yet right. They are not that many of them, but they're always being quoted by antisemites and anti-Zionists.
The rabbi of a Messianic movement here in Central Florida is Jewish by birth and leads others to find Christ. He was ordained in the Messianic church. He is not a rabbi. He married a woman who was not Jewish and like an uncle of mine, he found a strangely, different line of march, which just happens not to be Jewish at all.
Kapos were also Jews who sold out to the Nazis and became their ghetto and concentration camp police. They were Jewish trustees who carried out the will of the SS and had a reputation for being as cruel and brutal.
The so-called liberal Jews of Austria and Germany resented the immigration of more Eastern Jews into Germany during the rise of German Nationalism (late-1800s). They resented more Eastern Jews because they were orthodox (and strange looking with their funny cloths and hair cuts) - and they would have none of it as enlightened, "reformation" Jews and German-Jews. I remember my dad telling me how much he disliked these Germany Jews who thought they were so much better than everyone else. They thought of themselves as Germans first and Jews second.
The Jewish Communists in the Soviet Union would have nothing to do with the Zionists and were Russian (Communist) Jews first. And everywhere Jews - in the end - have been betrayed for their loyalty to local nationalisms and local cultures. It is a bitter lesson and you would think that by now Jews would learn their lesson.
And all the Jews have been betrayed by the left and betrayed by the right, and betrayed by U.S. presidents, and betrayed by the Palestinians, and betrayed by other Jews.... Yes, even Jews on the left were betrayed by the left. Many Jews have had a closer attachment to liberalism because it is part of the Jewish heritage to champion the underdog and to seek justice. There is even a Hebrew phrase for it: "Dirshu Mispat" (to "seek justice") - but not at the expense of ourselves and that is too often what the organized left has expected of us. So a lot of Jews have dropped out of these organized movements. The anti-war movement is influenced by those who support the fascism of the Palestinian Movement. We need to teach them that the Jewish Liberation Movement is democratic and seeks justice - but we are not going to commit suicide to make them happy.
We generally end up forming our own organizations. I'm a member and former commander (of a local post) of the Jewish War Veterans and I was also the SE representative for disarmament for the New Jewish Agenda because we could work in our own organizations (and in theirs) to combat their antisemitism, and we often do more real work than many of them - but it may not be enough. The NJA self-destructed. Most of us could not turn our back on Klal Yisrael so we dropped out just like many in the organized socialist organizations eventually dropped out (and some turned to the right) because these organizations are anti-Zionist and even includes antisemites.
The New Jewish Agenda (NJA), an activist national Jewish community organization, set out to be a progressive voice within the Jewish community and a Jewish voice within the progressive community. Most active in the decade of the 1980's, the NJA was committed to working at the grassroots level on programs for the Jewish people in the United States, Israel, and other Jewish communities that differed from the dominant policies of the Israeli government and the United States national Jewish establishment.
After the Civil War people denied the bravery of Jewish soldiers in that war so Jews formed the very first veterans group in this country, which just happened to be Jewish. It is the oldest veterans organization in America. It was formed to prove that Jews faught in the Civil War and to fight against antisemitism. And we have still been betrayed by other veterans groups, some of whom schedule their events on the Sabbath so our members can't attend - and at veterans council meetings conduct Christian prayers, knowing it is offensive to those of us in attendance.
In the Rhineland, as Jews argued among themselves over immigration, the Germans were blaming them for Germany's defeat in World War I, the Versailles treaty, the economic collapse of Germany, insecurity, inflation, unemployment, political chaos and for being Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and in Russia, Stalin was accusing the Jews of being counterrevolutionaries.
During his stay in Landsberg prison, Hitler established a theory that Moses was the first Bolshevik and the message of the apostle Paul was that Germany was the only bulwark between Western capitalism and Jewish bolshevism.
The Jewish population as a reaction to growing antisemitism supported the very means of their demise in Germany by demonstrating their solidarity with the Nazis in a plebiscite on November 1933 when they voted for Hitler. And, Jans Joachin Schoeps (another founder of Reform Judaism) who founded the German Jewish Followers of Hitler (Deutscher Vortrupp: Gefolgschaft deutscher Juden).
The benefits of assimilation have been greater financial security and an improved social status. The cost of assimilation has been constant betrayal and a loss of dignity. It is human nature to try to convince others as well as ourselves that what we have done is right and sometimes we tend to overcompensate - to go beyond proving something to the point of tearing down and denigrating and proving unworthy what we were in order to justify what we have become. That is the nature of this human family and Marx was no exception.
Marx was going to convince others that he was not only NOT Jewish but also un-Jewish and he did a pretty good job of it by repeatedly attacking the Jews in his writing. And, in spite of his anti-Jewishness, Marx was publicly reproached for his Jewishness by Duhring and Bakunin and others less prominent - but nevertheless, he was still considered Jewish (of Jewish ancestry). As intense as his hatred would become he could never rid himself of the way others saw him. No matter how much any Jew tries to please non-Jews, as with Marx, he was always just "that Jew."
Marx had no expert knowledge of any Jewish problems, for the simple fact that he studied none of them. While at the Gymnasium at Trier, he did not take the course in Hebrew, attended as a rule only by students of theology and there is no evidence that he ever studied Judaism at all. He had very little familiarity with the subject except for Bruno Bauer's writings on the subject. The Jewish religion was particularly distasteful to Marx, the atheist, and it is obvious that he was already imbued with the prejudices acquired at the university and from the Young Hegelians. [Some admirers contend of course that the "master" would never write on any topic he had not thoroughly researched]. Bruno Bauer was the leader of the "Young Hegelians."
Except for reading newspapers, periodicals and a great many works on history he would not have any other knowledge of Judaism, in spite of his Jewish ancestors which he seems to have distanced himself from however he would have been as influenced by the general anti-Jewish prejudices of that time which was extensive. And, he did write in 1844, that religion "is the opium of the people" His disgust for Judaism had nothing to do with his Communist ideology. He was actually introduced to socialist ideas by Moses Hess at the university and Moses Hess was Jewish.
Marx wrote Zur Judenfrage, which is not too often quoted, and not too often translated. Bruno Bauer affirms that political emancipation should not be granted to the Jews until they abandon their exclusive and separatist faith.
"_Zur Judenfrage_ became problematical for Marxists only after the appearance of organized political antisemitism in the 1880s. The piece was something of an embarrassment to the leaders of German Social Democracy. Friedrich Engels, who was only slightly less offensive than Marx on the subject of the Jews, nevertheless warned against trying to update Marx' terminology to the postemancipation Jewish question; in 1890 he specifically admonished the European labor movement against any flirtation with anti-capitalist antisemitism. Kautsky, Bernstein, Bebel, and Liebknecht followed this advice. Only Franz Mehring, the SPD's historian, attempted to popularize the Marx essay. (He was convinced that one of the truly great things about Marx was his total vanquishing of his Jewishness.) Whatever the personal views of socialist leaders and rank-and-file socialists regarding Jews, their record on political antisemitism, while not unblemished, is superior to that of the bourgeois and religiously based parties. Thus, the influence of Marx' sentiments has not been particularly baleful for those who followed him." ...(Professor Richard S. Levy, U. of Illinois as posted to a listserver mailing list discussion about antisemitism)
In "The Capacity of Modern Jews and Christians to 'come Free'," Bauer attempts to show how Jewish emancipation is connected with the emancipation of mankind in general. He wrote to become a free man, the Christian has only to renounce his Christianity, while the Jew as "to surrender himself completely" and sacrifice not only his religion also "the chimerical privilege of his nationality." And, Marx agrees with Bauer's characterization and also faults the secular foundation of Judaism and talks about a secular cult of the Jew of "huckstering, money, egoism" as the essence of the Jewish religion.
Marx says that "money is the jealous God of Israel before which no other god may exist.." He says the bill of exchange is the real God of the Jew. "His God is only the illusory bill of exchange." [Marx, Zur Judenfrage] And, Marx is interesting in a reorganization of society which would abolish the basis of huckstering and therefore the need for being Jewish. "His consciousness would dissolve like a dull mist..." which was as Marx saw it, the "empirical essence of Judaism..." There is nothing in Marx's writing to differentiate exploiting and exploited Jews from each other. There is simply one category of Jews. In his other book which mentions the Jews, [Die heilige Familie (1845)] he formulates the Jewish problem much as he did in Zur Judenfrage.
Twenty-two years later, he found a copy of "Heilige Familie" in the library of his friend Dr. Kugelmann, and he wrote Engels, the co-author: "I was pleasantly surprised to find that we need not be ashamed of this work.."
Marx was also influenced by Feuerbach and his views are also reflected in Zur Judenfrage and Die heilige Familie, the only two works in which Marx deal deliberately and at some length with the Jewish Question.
It is this antipathy to Jews that is also discernable even in writings of Marx not even remotely connected to those Jews. He uses words to describe other philosophers, like "dirty-Jewish manifestation," (speaking about Jews in Poland) "they multiplied like lice," etc. He claims they were everywhere at the forefront of the counter-revolution, whereas they were actually inordinately represented in the revolution, and ironically often as Marxists themselves. Perhaps many of them did not know the real Marx Marx neglected to study the condition of the Jewish working masses, but showed a predilection for analyzing the power of the Jewish financiers. He was equally as prejudiced as the most extreme anti-Semites of his time.
Often he simply refers to Jews as derisively as "Jew," "English Jew", "French Jew" and "derjud" (Yid), "der verfluchte Jude" and about the philosopher, Lassalle, he uses such epithets as "the dog","the beast." He says about the Jews, they are outspokenly "Judel," and "Jude". Marx's repertory is not exhausted by these epithets. It also includes expressions, such as, "smell of garlic," and he called Lasalle a "Jewish nigger" who is "descended from the Nigros on the exodus unless his mother or mother on the father's side were crossed with a nigger." He says, the fellow (Lasalle) is nigger-like."
Marx believed in the myths propagated in his time (and they are being revived once again on the Internet) which grew out of the time of the Jewish dispersion when Christianity had set out to discredit the Jews, the story told by Manetho about the expulsion from Egypt of 'the lepers' headed by an Egyptian priest named Moses. Marx mentions this myth as fact. Marx never changed his anti-Semitic attitude about the Jews. Knowing this, no self-respecting Jew can be a Marxist.
Marx was not alone in his contempt for Jews, which is everywhere found in the "Young Hegelian" movement, in the works of Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Otto Bauer, and others. It should be obvious also that the "master" (Marx) would have had a considerable impact and influence on other radicals of that time.
Karl Marx contributed powerfully to provoke and strengthen anti-Jewish prejudice amongst his Christian followers, and to estrange Jewish Marxists from other Jews. Marx was unfortunately very much a part of the anti-Semitic tradition of modern socialism. And, some, though not all Marxists feel rather uneasy about it and try to evade the issue by pushing his anti-Jewish essays to the background, wishfully hoping that it will be ultimately forgotten.
You don't have to be a Marxist to be a socialist. A Jew can also be a socialist in the tradition of Moses Hess without the antisemitic baggage of Marxism.
The new left is not the Marxist left of 20 years ago but anti-Zionism and antisemitism is just as virulent as it was and both are spoken of more frequently and openly by everyone and often there is no difference between them. For many years after the Holocaust it was not as openly spoken of as it is today. Today it is all right again to hate the Jews and to say so. Criticism of Israel is often substituted for those same feelings of disdain for the Jews. It becomes more difficult to separate honest criticism from the hate. Not all criticism of Israel is antisemitism but it is getting harder to tell the difference when there is so little difference.
"Recently there are more and more things being written and voiced publicly, slogans are being heard again, which one would not have imagined that would ever be heard again after the Holocaust, such as "Death to the Jews" in trade union protests in Paris (not only in Montpelier) in June, 1982; "Jews to the Ovens" in a trade union protest against economic policies in Rome on the 25 June 1982."
"Again blame is being laid at the feet of the Jews for what is happening to people. Again we note apologetics for terror directed against the Jews. The Jews are guilty in that they support Israel. In the Belgian news media it was written, in black and white, that after the attack on Beirut, the Jews do not have the right to complain about terror attacks, and as long as the Jews support Israel, they will be isolated and easy targets for this terror." "From Anti-Semitism to Anti-Zionism" - Dr Yochanan Manor, Jewish Agency for Israel
There has been a general rise in anti-Zionism and antisemitism and these two forms are sometimes indistinguishable. There has also been an increase in violence and intensification of terrorism. While terrorism has been directed at the U.S. and western interests generally, it is also clearly and specifically directed at the Jews and Jewish institutions.
Hank Roth
(1) After Frederick William III of Prussia took over the Rhineland in 1815 Jews were prohibited from practicing law. An ordinance was issed by von Shuckmann, Minister of the Interior in 1816 which kept them from the Bar. And in 1822 they were explicited prohibited from practicing law.
(2) Eleanor Marx has stated that her grandfather submitted to baptism because "otherwise he would not have been permitted to practice as a lawyer." [Liebknecht, Karl Marx (1906)] This was not an isolated act and during the period of 1812 through 1846, 4,000 Jews were baptized.