Jewish Attitudes

The German-Jewish Kulturkampf in the Weimar Republic

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The beginning of the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) in Germany was characterized by a surge of the German Socialist Democratic Party (SPD) and revolutionary activities by the communists. The German emperor had fled the country, the empire was economically in tatters due to the Great War (1914–1918) and the political right was in disarray. It was not until the rise of National Socialism (NS) in the 1930s that the right regained the upper hand in Germany. A good example of this shift from left to right is the city of Breslau (600,000 inhabitants in 1928), where the SPD scored 51.19% of the popular vote in 1919 and the NS party received 51.7% in 1933. The question is how the balance shifted from left to right and how this can be attributed to the result of a struggle between revolutionary Jews and nationalist Germans.

Breslau Gymnasium

In the German educational system the gymnasium was (and still is) the highest level of secondary education and a stepping stone for entrance at a university. The gymnasium was the ‘nursery’ for the German cultural and political elite. Around 1900 it was dominated by the Christian and nationalistic German culture of the day, the total opposite of the cosmopolitan and pacifist ideas which are prevalent nowadays. This did not mean that this culture was unopposed, not least because the gymnasia were not a pure German Christian affair. In both the 1880s and 1900s more than 30% of the pupils in the Breslau gymnasia were Jewish (Till van Rahden, Jews and other Germans, p. 126). A further illustration of Jewish overrepresentation in higher education is the census of 1879 which showed that of every 10,000 Protestant inhabitants of Berlin, 81 had obtained secondary education; the rate among Catholics was 22 and among Jews 350. In Upper-Silesia, the region adjacent to Breslau, the rate was 81 Protestants, 19 Catholics and 423 Jews (A. Prinz, Juden im deutschen Wirtschaftsleben, p. 89). Read more

Lee Siegel: The Horror of Implicit Whiteness

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Lee Siegel

At TOO we often use the phrase “hostile elite” to describe our new, predominantly Jewish elite that has become ensconced in all the media high ground in America. Examples are legion, but it is hard to imagine a more blatant recent example of fear and loathing of White America than Lee Siegel’s “What’s race got to do with it?” (Well, maybe Rabbi Hammerman’s outburst against Tim Tebow comes close.) Published in the most mainstream of the mainstream media, the New York Times, Siegel is horrified by Romney’s Whiteness:

 The simple, impolitely stated fact is that Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory. Of course, I’m not talking about a strict count of melanin density. I’m referring to the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America’s first black president. It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America.

Mitt Romney the candidate of implicit Whiteness. Read more

Roosevelt’s Catos

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Winter in Germany, 1946-1947

Today we can hardly imagine that 65 years ago the victorious Allies were in the process of dismembering Germany, tearing down its economy and starving out its population. Older Germans remember the postwar winter of 1946/1947 as a dreadful hunger winter. In his book The German Question and the Origins of the Cold War (Milan 2008) Nicolas Lewkowicz notes that “Germany was given the most comprehensive treatment ever dispensed to a vanquished nation in the modern history of the international political system.” (p. 11) The question is how this treatment came to be and which forces played a pivotal role in these developments.

In 1942 the war was far from decided as German submarines were cruising the American Eastcoast and German tanks were relentlessly advancing in Russia and Africa. This did not stop (or maybe actually encouraged) Jewish exiles from dreaming about Germany’s demise after the war. Tens of thousands of Jewish exiles from Germany had found refuge in New York and even had their own newspaper —Aufbau (German word for ‘build-up’). They were not sitting idle awaiting the end of hostilities, but were active in canvassing the public opinion to lobby for imposing a hard peace on Germany. The most active and outspoken among them was Emil Cohn, better known under his German pen name Emil Ludwig. Read more

The Mesira Mentality: Laws are Made to Be Broken

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There’s another wrinkle in the Hasidic tax scam case (previously discussed here). The case involves wealthy Hasids giving millions of dollars in tax-deductible donations to a Jewish religious center and then getting almost all the money back after it was laundered through an international religious network. The LATimes reports that a rabbi, Moshe Zigelman, who went to jail for two years ago because he refused to testify against other Jews, is again threatened with jail if he does not testify (“U.S. threatens to send rabbi back to jail“).

This is another example of the Jewish law of  mesira which enjoins Jews not to testify against Jews: “‘No earthly sanction will ever make Rabbi Zigelman abandon his religious precepts,’ Michael Proctor, an attorney for Zigelman wrote in court papers.”

Mesira is thus alive and well in Orthodox communities—practiced, as in this case, by the leading figures of the community. The prosecution will argue that Jewish religious law is irrelevant to the laws of the United States—a blow for common sense. The article cites an expert in Jewish religious law who says that mesira does not apply in modern democratic societies, but “originates from a time of oppressive and brutal secular authorities.”

Whatever the disputes among religious authorities, the fact is that there are quite a few cases in the contemporary world among traditional Jews; as John Graham has noted, mesira is a likely reason why the Bernie Madoff fraud was not investigated properly given that the signs of fraud were so obvious.

It’s another indication of the effectiveness of ethnic networks with a strong ingroup/outgroup ethic. Prosecution will doubtless be difficult without Zigelman’s testimony. Read more

Rick Perry and the Jews

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More evidence, as if any were needed, that Jews form a hostile elite comes from an article in, of all places, The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Rick Perry and the Jews: An Introduction,” by Jacques Berlinerblau. First, that Jews are an elite:

They are small in number …. But it would be an error to think of Jews solely in terms of numbers. Their value lies in their organizational and intellectual assets. Jewish political groups are generous donors and formidable coalition-builders. Too, they are disproportionately represented among the nation’s opinion makers.

Right. Jews are a media-dominant group, and the usual wisdom is that Jews contribute around 75% of the money for Democrats and around 40% for Republicans. The problem that Jews have with Perry is first of all that he is a serious Christian:

[Perry’s recent Christian prayer rally left nearly all [Jews]—including Republicans—with concerns. Note to Perry handlers: Jews love ecumenical America [and multi-racial America–the rationale for Jewish support of massive non-White immigration]. Jews fear Christian (as in Evangelical Protestant) America. Jewish neo-Conservatives are not an exception to this rule. Mitt Romney can go to town here. Members of the Tribe will feel that he understands what it means to run afoul of the majority.

Jews fear (and loathe) an America that takes Christianity seriously. For Jews, serious Christianity immediately conjures up pogroms, marauding Crusaders, Inquisitions, and blood libel. The Middle Ages as past, present, and future.  Historical memory etched in stone.

Jews are also impervious to the charms of “small-town America” solicitations the likes of which Sarah Palin employed in 2008.

Of course, there is a big overlap between small-town America and evangelical Christianity. This battle against rural America has a long history among Jews. Read more

Mesirah is alive and well in Brooklyn

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Writing in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, Michael Lesher, an Orthodox Jew, argues that the  city should not be giving money ($130,000) to street patrols manned by Orthodox Jews in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods (“Orthodox Cops: Separate and Unequal“). Lesher’s article comes in the wake of a kidnapping and murder of Leiby Kletzky, a Hasidic boy, by an Orthodox Jewish man. He points out that “Leiby’s disappearance was only belatedly reported to the police, and that a privately run, Orthodox Jewish ‘patrol’ called Shomrim reportedly had video evidence that went unused during the crucial hours before the murder, while untrained Jewish laymen tried to handle the investigation themselves.”

Lesher notes such groups “all too often driven by religious proscriptions to keep their community’s crimes out of the public eye.” In other words, the groups operate by the code of mesirah in which it is a forbidden to inform on Jews. But of course Lesher is himself violating mesirah by loudly blowing the whistle on his fellow Jews. He has been very courageous in performing this public service. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.

Publication in the Post probably won’t help Rupert Murdoch in his present travails either.

The Tony Kushner Affair: Jeffrey Wiesenfeld’s Faux Pas

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It is nothing new when someone gets blacklisted or relentlessly attacked for challenging Jewish interests. When it comes to actual Jews challenging the interests of the “tribe” regarding Israel, a different tack must be taken. After all, destroying the career of a fellow Jew is not desirable to most other Jews; but some degree of punishment mixed with reward must be introduced to correct undesirable behavior and it should be done behind the scenes so as not to draw media attention.

The recent events surrounding Richard Goldstone backtracking on the Goldstone Report go a long way to illustrate how the Jewish community deals with someone how strays outside the playbook on Israel. However, another example has recently cropped up which further illustrates how members of the “tribe” are dealt with when they criticize the Jewish State. The New York Times reports that Tony Kushner, a Jewish playwright and screenwriter, who wrote Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (a mediation on gay themes that is a contribution to destruction of traditional cultural attitudes on sexuality), was recently denied an honorary degree from the City of New York University system for statements critical of Israel. However, in this case, it seems that the main antagonist aligned against Kushner, a fellow Jew, crossed the line, or at least did not go about his business in an acceptable manner. Indeed, his efforts ultimately backfired: Kushner will receive the degree, and the faculty union demanded that Weisenfeld resign from the CUNY board. Read more