Continuity and Change in the Constitutional Experience of the German Jews

Despite the progress of Emancipation in the nineteenth century,German Jews were required to to legally recognized Jewish communities.Even after this requirement was lifted, Jewish communal liferemained strong. The community structure that the Prussian stateexpected the Jews to implement was modeled after German civiladministration. This framework, however, resembled both medievalGerman and medieval Jewish models. Thus, German Jews, whilemodernizing their own communal institutions, continued to maintainboth their own and their German neighbors' political traditions.The German Jewish communal constitutions attest to a Jewishpolitical tradition of adaptation to prevailing gentile norms,as well as retention of ancient Jewish elements.     

“Freedom of Choice”: Israeli Efforts to Prevent Soviet Jewish Émigrés to Resettle in the United States

Beginning in 1967 the Soviet Union allowed some Jewish citizens to leave for family reunification in Israel (see Appendix ). Due to the break in diplomatic relations between Israel and the U.S.S.R., most émigrés traveled to Vienna where they were then flown to Israel. After 1976 the majority of émigrés who left on visas for Israel “dropped out” in Vienna and chose to resettle in the West. Several American Jewish organizations facilitated their obtaining visas and being resettled in the United States and other countries. This article examines efforts by Israel to deny Soviet Jewish émigrés the option of resettling in the United States. Israeli officials pressured American Jewish organizations to desist from aiding Russian Jews who wanted to resettle in the United States. Initially American Jews resisted Israeli efforts. Following Gorbachev's decision in the late 1980s to allow free emigration for Soviet Jews, the American Jewish community agreed to a quota on Soviet Jewish refugees in the United States, which resulted in most Soviet Jewish émigrés to Israel. The article uses the case study to explore efforts by American Jews and Israel to influence American refugee policy in the 1970s and 1980s. It provides insights into ethnic politics as well as “sponsored politics,” whereby Israel used the American Jewish community to further its interests in the making of United States foreign policy. It also deals with the issue of human rights and migration. While no migrant has the right to go to a country of his or her choice, Israel did deny some émigrés the right to exercise freedom of movement to other countries who welcomed them as refugees.     

Jewish resistance in Poland's eastern borderlands during the second world war, 1939–41

After the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in September 1939, a network of Jewish underground organizations and active conspiratorial groups was established. Its objective was to resist the violent imposition of the Soviet system, to preserve Jewish culture and religion and, for those with a Zionist orientation, to work for the establishment of a Jewish homeland. The Zionist parties and organizations among them were particularly active, especially the youth groups. The fate of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe under the Soviet occupation of 1939–41 remains understandingly overshadowed by the tragic events of the Holocaust. As a result, the activities of this Jewish underground are not widely known and have received little attention from scholars. Only in recent years have historians researching the history of Jews in eastern Poland begun to look more closely at Jewish resistance and especially at Zionist activity under Soviet occupation. These scholars have, however, relied exclusively on the eyewitness accounts of the few survivors. At the same time, Polish and Russian historians conducting intensive research on the war-time Soviet occupation of eastern Poland have published contemporary Soviet documents that confirm the existence of this Jewish underground. The material currently available shows that the Jewish underground was more widespread than previously thought, and that the Soviet authorities viewed Jewish resistance groups, and indeed any clandestine activity, as a serious threat to their rule.     

‘The most ardent pro-Israel party’: pro-Israel attitudes and anti-antisemitism among populist radical-right parties in Europe

Since the turn of the millennium a growing number of European populist radical-right parties have taken to criticizing antisemitism and embracing Israel's cause in its conflict with the Palestinians. This development raises the question of whether, for the first time in European history, we are confronting radical-right politics that is not antisemitic. Kahmann’s article approaches this recent development on the extreme right-wing spectrum of European parties from an empirical perspective: he analyses the manner in which leading representatives of the Belgian Vlaams Belang (VB), the Sweden Democrats (SD) and the (now-defunct) German party Die Freiheit have articulated their anti-antisemitism and their solidarity with Israel, and the conclusions that are thereby suggested with regard to the underlying image of Jews and Israel. Kahmann's analysis shows that the pro-Israel and anti-antisemitic turn serves primarily as a pretext for fending off Muslim immigrants, which is claimed as a contribution to the security of the Jewish population. Furthermore, it shows that the right-wing ideal of an ethnically homogeneous nation results in the perception of Jews as members of a foreign nation and in the cultivation of stereotyped images of Jews. For these parties, the status of the Jewish population in the respective European states remains therefore precarious: Jews are merely granted the status of a tolerated minority as long as they are not considered to pose any threat to the ‘native’ culture. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians serves in this context as a convenient screen on which to project the popular right-wing narrative of a battle between the Judaeo-Christian Occident and the Muslim world.     

The Strength of Perpetrators—The Holocaust in Western Europe, 1940–1944

On average, two‐thirds of the Jews in German‐controlled territory during World War II did not survive. However, the degree of victimization varied considerably, depending on the area examined. In Poland, the Baltic States, the Protectorate of Bohemia‐Moravia, Greece, the territories of Yugoslavia and the Netherlands, more than 70 percent of Jews were killed. In Hungary and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, the number of Jews killed was close to the average. In Belgium, Norway, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and Denmark, a majority of the Jews survived. At the same time, the structure of Nazi rule over Europe before and during World War II was characterized by a wide variety of administrative regimes. So far, research has not systematically linked different degrees of Jewish victimization to different kinds of administrative regimes. Did different forms of administrative regimes result in differing degrees of Jewish victimization during the Holocaust? The present paper presents both evidence and an operationalization for a related general hypothesis.     

Anti‐Zionist politics and political antisemitism in Britain, 1920–1924

Anti‐Zionism in Britain in the early 1920s was inextricably bound up with an assault on the Jews as Jews which obscured the substantive issues of Palestine and Jewish‐Arab relations. As a result, Jews were later inclined to disregard the case anti‐Zionism made.     

Political realignment of British Jews: Testing competing explanations

This paper shows that the historical association of the British Jewish community with the Labour party is a thing of the past, and that a large majority now support the Conservatives. We test competing explanations for this realignment; (i) socio-economic progression, (ii) that perceptions of anti-Jewish discrimination no longer align British Jews with Labour given recent antisemitism scandals, and finally (iii) perceptions of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who many identify as personally responsible for failing to address and even tacitly embracing antisemitism within Labour. We find evidence that Jewish voters identify a lot more as middle class and that they do not believe that antisemitic prejudice holds them back in society. Both of these factors make Labour less appealing to Jews than is the case for other minority groups. We also find that Jeremy Corbyn is disliked by Jews more than non-Jews, irrespective of how they feel towards Labour generally.     

Jewish Religiosity and Political Attitudes in the United States and Israel

Does religious commitment have a common political impact across national frontiers? To date, that question has been explored empirically only for Roman Catholics, who might be expected to behave similarly because of centralizing resources in their tradition. This article explores the extent of transnational political attitudes among Jews in the United States and Israel, two groups with less centralized authority structures and radically different religious situations. Parallel surveys of Jews in the United States and Israel, analyzed by OLS regression with the slope dummy approach, indicate that Jewish religiosity has a common influence on most political issues but often has much sharper effects in one society than the other. Given our expectation that Jews would exhibit lower levels of transnational similarity than Roman Catholics, the findings reinforce scholars who perceive religion as a potent transnational political factor.     

The use of antisemitism in the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War saw an outburst of antisemitism in the Nationalist-controlled areas of the peninsula and in the Moroccan protectorate, an antisemitism influenced by the work of ultra-right-wing intellectuals associated with the Acción Española review. All the factions of the Nationalist camp interpreted the civil war as a crusade against the 'Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevist' conspiracy. In mainland Spain, where there were only a few Jewish families, antisemitism was largely confined to the written word. In this way, it was used mostly as a rhetorical tool to attack the Nationalists' real and imaginary enemies: the Republican forces, the French and the Soviets. Although there was no systemic persecution of the Jews, some aggressive acts took place in Seville and Barcelona. The situation of the larger Jewish community in Spanish Morocco was quite different. The Moroccan Jews were adversely affected by the Nationalists' efforts to enlist the support of the Muslim population against the Republicans and by the German presence in the protectorate. They were also victimized by the Falangists who confiscated their property and imposed heavy fines on them. The military authorities of Morocco tried to restrain these excesses as they realized that blatant antisemitism could hurt the rebels' image abroad. They also believed that Jewish wealth and connections could serve the Nationalist cause.     

Gender and cultural citizenship among non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel

About 330,000 of partial Jews and gentiles have moved to Israel after 1990 under the Law of Return. The article is based on interviews with middle-aged gentile spouses of Jewish immigrants, aiming to capture their perspective on integration and citizenship in the new homeland where they are ethnic minority. Slavic wives of Jewish men manifested greater malleability and adopted new lifestyles more readily than did Slavic husbands of Jewish women, particularly in relation to Israeli holidays and domestic customs. Most women considered formal conversion as a way to symbolically join the Jewish people, while no men pondered over this path to full Israeli citizenship. Women's perceptions of the IDF and military service of their children were idealistic and patriotic, while men's perceptions were more critical and pragmatic. We conclude that women have a higher stake at joining the mainstream due to their family commitments and matrilineal transmission of Jewishness to children. Men's hegemony in the family and in the social hierarchy of citizenship attenuates their drive for cultural adaptation and enables rather critical stance toward Israeli society. Cultural politics of belonging, therefore, reflect the gendered norms of inclusion in the nation-state.     

The Indirect Effects of Discredited Stereotypes in Judgments of Jewish Leaders

Can stereotypes of ethnic groups have an indirect impact on voters' judgments even if voters reject them? We examine the case of Jewish leaders and hypothesize that acceptable political stereotypes (Jews are liberal) are linked in voters' minds to unacceptable social stereotypes (Jews are shady); consequently, a cue to the candidate's shadiness works indirectly by increasing the perception that the candidate is liberal, even as the shady cue is rejected. Using three national survey‐experiments we randomly varied a candidate's Jewish identity, ideology, and shadiness. The cue to the rejected social stereotype indeed activates the more legitimate political stereotype. Moreover, voters give more weight to the candidate's perceived liberalism in their evaluation. Consequently, the candidate's support suffers. However, when the candidate takes a more extreme ideological position on issues, the effects disappear. The indirect influence of discredited stereotypes and the limits of those stereotypes have implications for our understanding of voting and of the legacies of discrimination.     

Continuity and change in anti-Jewish prejudice: the transmission of the anti-talmudic texts of Sixtus of Siena

ABSTRACT

One of the main elements common to both the mediaeval anti-Jewish tradition and modern antisemitism is the use of Jewish religious texts—particularly the Talmud—in order to ‘prove’ that Jews pose a threat to non-Jews. Bravo López considers how a series of anti-talmudic texts written by Sixtus of Siena in the sixteenth century were disseminated and used, up to the beginning of the twentieth century, to legitimize a threatening image of Judaism and Jews. Despite the changing historical context, that image remained virtually intact throughout the centuries, allowing these same texts to be used time and time again to ‘prove’ that it was a faithful reflection of reality. Although historical changes can account for differences in the specific motives that drove each author to use the texts of Sixtus of Siena, those authors all shared the same image of Judaism and the Jews, and they considered these texts—cited as an authoritative source, legitimizing their point of view—to be effective in support of their cause.     

South African Jews and Apartheid

Jews were overwhelmingly over-represented among Whites in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. At the same time, the Jewish community remained inwardly focused on narrowly Jewish concerns; Jewish communal institutions, until relatively late, remained distant from the struggle against racial injustice, if not wholly complicit with the apartheid regime. In this essay, Adler attempts to account for both responses, activism and compliance, by examining the dilemmas faced by South African Jewry as a relatively small group of suspect Others living at the sufferance of the dominant and traditionally antisemitic Afrikaners. Anti-apartheid activism, he argues, was deeply rooted in Jewish culture and values, regardless of how secular the forms that it took were, and how disturbing it might have seemed to a fearful Jewish community pre-occupied with its own interests.     

Tories’ victory— a “signal from England”

The British government did little to help Jews in Nazi‐ruled territory during the Holocaust. This inaction was motivated not so much by muddled bureaucracy as by anti‐Jewish feeling among government representatives. Louise London analyses evidence from government records to show the extent of fears of the threat to national security which refugee Jews were seen to present.     

When the Elders of Zion relocated to Eurabia: conspiratorial racialization in antisemitism and Islamophobia

Zia-Ebrahimi’s objective in this article is two-fold. First, to argue that antisemitism and Islamophobia display similar dynamics in representing their target population as a separate and antagonistic race (a process referred to as ‘racialization’). Second, to suggest that conspiracy theories of the ‘world Jewish domination’ type or their Islamophobic equivalent ‘Islamization of Europe’ type are powerful enablers of racialization, something that the race literature has so far neglected. In pursuing these two interrelated objectives, he offers a textual comparison of two conspiracy theories featuring Jews and Muslims. The first is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903), the notorious forgery claiming to be the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders planning to take over Europe and the world. This text is largely considered to be at the very heart of modern-day antisemitism and an essential ingredient of the ideational context of the Holocaust. The second is Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005), a pamphlet by polemicist Bat Ye’or claiming to have uncovered another ominous conspiracy, that of Muslims plotting to turn Europe into Eurabia, a dystopic land in which jihad and sharia rule, and non-Muslims live in a state of subjection. Zia-Ebrahimi argues that, despite some differences in format, the two texts display strikingly similar discursive dynamics in their attempt to racialize Jews and Muslims as the ultimate Other determined to destroy Us. This process is referred to as ‘conspiratorial racialization’.     

Rebuttal versus Unmasking: Legal Strategy in R. v. Zundel

Conventional scholarly wisdom has it that most Italian Americans in the United States were loyal supporters of the policies of Fascism in the inter-war years but eventually rejected the antisemitic measures that Benito Mussolini's regime adopted in their ancestral country in 1938. Contrary to such an interpretation, Luconi argues that many Italian Americans themselves held antisemitic attitudes and, therefore, did not distance themselves from Fascism after Mussolini launched his campaign against Italian Jews. He also contends that these attitudes resulted less from an ideological commitment to Fascism than from both the strained relations between Italian Americans and Jewish Americans, and the antisemitic climate of opinion that characterized American society in the 1930s. Italian Americans and Jews were partners in the labour movement and the Democratic Party. Yet the former resented the latter's distrust in Italian Americans' labour militancy, as well as the earlier rise of Jews in the hierarchies of the unions and the Democratic Party. Furthermore, Italian Americans and Jews competed for jobs, political patronage, cheap housing and relief benefits, especially during the Depression years. Such ethnic rivalries and the appeal of right-wing organizations to Italian Americans contributed to make the latter prone to antisemitism. As a result, few Americans of Italian descent came out against the racial policy of the Fascist regime.     

Education,identity, and community: lessons from Jewish emancipation

Why do some minority communities take up opportunities for education while others reject them? To shed light on this, we study the impact of Jewish Emancipation in nineteenth century Europe on patterns of education. In Germany, non-religious and Reform Jews dramatically increased their rates of education. In the less developed parts of Eastern Europe, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities imposed unprecedented restrictions on secular education and isolated themselves from society. Explaining this bifurcation requires a model of education that is different from the standard human capital approach. In our model, education not only confers economic benefits but also transmits values that undermine the cultural identity of minority groups. We show that it is individually rational for agents who benefit least from rising returns to education to respond by reducing their investment in education. Group-level sanctions for high levels of education piggyback upon this effect and amplify it.     

British Intelligence and the ‘Fifth’ Occupying Power: The Secret Struggle to Prevent Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine

At the end of the Second World War, British intelligence struggled to enforce strict limits imposed on Jewish immigration to Palestine. Holocaust survivors and Jews wishing to escape communism in Eastern Europe flooded the western Zones of occupation in Germany and Austria, while the Zionist movement worked to bring them to Palestine. Illegal immigration to Palestine was the key policy dispute between Britain and the Zionist movement, and a focus for British intelligence. Britain sought both overt and covert means to prevent the boarding of ships at European ports which were destined for Palestine, and even to prevent the entry of Jewish refugees into the American zones. This article highlights Britain's secret intelligence-gathering efforts as well as its covert action aimed to prevent this movement. It highlights a peculiar episode in the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States, during which cooperation and partnership was lacking. British intelligence promoted a rumour that Soviet agents were using Jewish escape lines to penetrate Western Europe and the Middle East in order to persuade American authorities to prevent the movement of Jewish refugees. Instead, this article argues, American intelligence secretly cooperated with the Zionist organizers of the escape routes so to expose Soviet agents. Britain's attempt at deception backfired, and provided effective cover for the movement of hundreds of thousands of Jews during a critical period. Meanwhile its intelligence had dramatically improved, but policymakers failed to reassess Britain's ability to sustain immigration restrictions and the indefinite detention of tens of thousands of illegal migrants.     

Jews in the Christian Gaze: Munich's Churches before and after Hitler

Abstract

Kauders sets out to examine three interrelated topics: the nature of antisemitism after the Second World War; the continuity in thinking about the Jews in the twentieth century; and the problem of responsibility inherent in any analysis of the events surrounding the Holocaust. In what follows, emphasis is placed on the Catholic and Protestant churches in the Bavarian capital of Munich, whose reactions to Jew-hatred before 1933 and after 1945 are studied in some detail. Several conclusions emerge from this investigation. Both churches embraced völkisch thinking before 1933, without approving of violent manifestations of racialist thought. Both Catholics and Protestants, whenever they defended the Jews before the rise of Hitler, did so in order to safeguard Christian dogma, and in particular the value of the Old Testament as well as the Jewish origins of Jesus and Paul. After 1945 clerics employed language that ignored events between 1933 and 1945, describing the ‘Jewish question’ as if the issue was still embedded in Weimar politics; they did so because they assumed that a majority of Germans had been innocent of any wrongdoing, so that a pre-1933 image of ‘the Jew’ (which did not allow for extremism and violence) could be re-adopted with impunity after 1945. Christian views began to change in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Jews were increasingly seen as Others who were to be respected as such. Although German-Jewish irreconcilability was thereby cemented, this shift also entailed an acceptance as opposed to a denial of the Jew as different from Christians and ‘Germans’.     

No room at the inn: American responses to Australian immigration policies, 1946–54

ABSTRACT

After the Second World War, Australia introduced a new immigration policy based on the concept of ‘populate or perish’. Through the International Refugee Organization (IRO), 170,000 DPs migrated to Australia between 1947 and 1950, funded by the United Nations and the Australian government. Jews were largely excluded from this programme and the Minister for Immigration even prohibited the IRO from continuing to support the migration to Australia, based on family reunion, of individual Jewish survivors. In addition, the Australian government introduced other discriminatory policies that ensured that Jews remained only 0.5 per cent of the overall population. Based on archival research in the files of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society and the American Joint Distribution Committee, Rutland and Encel analyse the entrenched racism in Australian society that contributed to these policies, and the reactions of the American Jewish leadership to them.