Jewish emancipation’ that followed. 3 They triggered the lifting of legal barriers that restricted where Jews could live, what professions they could enter and what schools they could attend. In turn, the upshot of these legal reforms included the geographical mobility of Jews from villages and small towns to the major cities of Western and Eastern Europe – Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, London, Paris – and the social mobility of Jews from small traders and middlemen to the
6 The return of the Jewish question and the double life of Israel So now the Jew is mistrusted not for what he is, but for the anti-Semitism of which he is the cause. And no Jew is more the cause of anti-Semitism than the Jew who speaks of anti-Semitism. (Howard Jacobson, When Will the Jews be Forgiven for the Holocaust? ) 1 Those who have always felt that Jews were
Universalism has acted as a stimulus for Jewish emancipation, that is, for civil, political and social inclusion. It has also been a source of anti-Jewish prejudice up to and beyond the classic antisemitism of the modern period. While the experience of Jews is by no means unique in this respect, one of the peculiarities of the 'anti-Judaic' tradition has been to represent Jews in some important regard as the 'other' of the universal: as the personification either of a particularism opposed to the universal, or of a false universalism concealing Jewish self-interest. The former contrasts the particularism of the Jews to the universality of bourgeois civil society. The latter contrasts the bad universalism of the 'rootless cosmopolitan Jew' to the good universalism of whatever universal is advanced: nation, race or class. This book explores debates over Jewish emancipation within the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, contrasting the work of two leading protagonists of Jewish emancipation: Christian von Dohm and Moses Mendelssohn. It discusses the emancipatory power of Karl Marx's critique of Bruno Bauer's opposition to Jewish emancipation and endorsement of The Jewish Question. Marxist debates over the growth of anti-Semitism; Hannah Arendt's critique of three types of Jewish responsiveness--assimilationism, Zionism and cosmopolitanism-- to anti-Semitism; and the endeavours of a leading postwar critical theorist, Jurgen Habermas are also discussed. Finally, the book focuses its critique on left antizionists who threaten to reinstate the Jewish question when they identify Israel and Zionism as the enemies of universalism.
, in this sense, deeply and mutually imbricated. Jewish experiences of universalism have been correspondingly equivocal. Universalism has acted as a stimulus for Jewish emancipation, that is, for civil, political and social inclusion; it has also been a source (though by no means the only source) of anti-Jewish prejudice up to and beyond the classic antisemitism of the modern period. While the experience of Jews is by no means unique in this respect, one of the
Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped to save some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler's gas chambers. For the remnants of European Jewry – is it only for them? – the Jewish State has become an historic necessity. (Isaac Deutscher, The Reporter 1954) 1 The Holocaust becomes a sort of university, an educational experience – a great learning experience, you might say – from
Given the significant similarities and differences between the welfare states of Northern Europe and their reactions to the perceived 'refugee crisis' of 2015, the book focuses primarily on the three main cases of Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Placed in a wider Northern European context – and illustrated by those chapters that also discuss refugee experiences in Norway and the UK – the Danish, Swedish and German cases are the largest case studies of this edited volume. Thus, the book contributes to debates on the governance of non-citizens and the meaning of displacement, mobility and seeking asylum by providing interdisciplinary analyses of a largely overlooked region of the world, with two specific aims. First, we scrutinize the construction of the 2015 crisis as a response to the large influx of refugees, paying particular attention to the disciplinary discourses and bureaucratic structures that are associated with it. Second, we investigate refugees’ encounters with these bureaucratic structures and consider how these encounters shape hopes for building a new life after displacement. This allows us to show that the mobility of specific segments of the world’s population continues to be seen as a threat and a risk that has to be governed and controlled. Focusing on the Northern European context, our volume interrogates emerging policies and discourses as well as the lived experiences of bureaucratization from the perspective of individuals who find themselves the very objects of bureaucracies.
38 2 (Re)politicising the dead in post-Holocaust Poland: the afterlives of human remains at the Bełzec extermination camp1 Zuzanna Dziuban At the official dedication of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on 10 May 2005 in Berlin, Lea Rosh, a German journalist who launched and led the long-lasting campaign for the erection of this contentious monument,2 herself became a source of extreme controversy. During her impassioned speech, held in front of a large and engaged audience including Holocaust survivors, their relatives and Jewish religious
feared (as the dead have the potential to haunt these places) and so they believe they should be left undisturbed.32 Conversely, as already noted, there is a Christian belief in the right to a proper burial with appropriate funeral rites.33 Some non- Orthodox Jews believe that the remains of victims should be found and buried in accordance with Halachic law, while hidden messages from victims (as discussed above) indicate the same desire. It may be unclear whether victims actually practised the religion by which they were identified by the Nazis. Differentiating
, fat, bloody soil, soap,21 teeth etc.), in terms of reburial and the potential to defile a Cohen (priestly caste). Four responsas discussed the issue of separation of bones before reburial (between individual Jews or gentiles and Jews). Another four responsas addressed the religious status of bones.22 Within this literature, the general tendency was towards burial of all forms of human remains. In regard to exhumations, opinions were split. Since the verdicts usually derive from basic rulings concerning reburial of a corpse, the exhumation policy of the responsas
insignia. As the company explains, this eagle with batwings behind it was chosen to symbolise strength, readiness, and superiority. 6 Another US company, which was founded by an American Jew who joined the IDF and served in a special combat unit, portrays a shooter with a handgun, above him a text in Hebrew which says ‘Counter Terror School’. 7 Beneath the shooting figure we find the English translation. A third US company also