Auto-Emancipation

In his essay, The Jews and their Music, Richard Wagner described the Jewish people as rootless parasites with no culture of their own. He encouraged the German people not to be ashamed of the intuitive hatred they felt towards this minority group and in fact argued that the German revulsion of the Jew is evidence that the Aryan organism is healthy. Just as a healthy life form cannot digest something detrimental to its survival, the German nation’s inability to accept the parasitic Jew in society is a sign of national health. Wagner maintained that no matter how much he assimilates and adopts German culture as his own, the Jew would always remain an interloper. In this, Wagner challenged centuries of Christian dogma which claimed that the Jew could be corrected through conversion to Christianity. Wagner argued that it would not help to convert a Jew because the Jew would still posses a Jewish soul. The soul cannot be changed and therefore the Jew remains incorrigible. At this point, hatred of the Jew was brought beyond religious dogma and racial anti-Semitism replaced the age old Christian form. Because the soul was now the problem, no matter how well a Jew wrote the German language, composed German music or fought in the German army, he could never be accepted as a true German.

When United States President Jimmy Carter pressured Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to relinquish the Sinai Desert to Egypt, there were countless speculations as to how and why Begin broke. Many asserted that his own ministers helped pressure him. Some argued that he was drugged at Camp David. Others claimed that he was ignorant of Sinai’s inherent value as part of Eretz Yisrael and therefore did not see conceding it as morally wrong. Whatever the reason, many were stunned when this former freedom fighter turned diplomat surrendered two thirds of Israel’s country to an enemy nation. On one of the last days at Camp David, President Carter schemed to take advantage of the momentum and push Israel’s borders even further back. He told Begin that they must discuss the question of Jerusalem. Begin immediately responded that there is nothing to talk about concerning Israel’s capital. Carter then said that they would have to discuss it eventually and asked the Prime Minister if he would at least think it over.

Jimmy Carter had reached too far and struck an unexpected nerve. Begin earnestly began, “Mr. President, I want to tell you a story. Once there was a rabbi named Amnon who was being pressured by the Bishop of Mainz to convert to Christianity. Tired of argument, Rabbi Amnon finally told the Bishop that he would think it over and that he would return to see him in three days. The tactic worked, freeing the rabbi from the unpleasant discussion, but once alone Rabbi Amnon was filled with dread. He could not believe that he had even agreed to consider such a thing. How could he give hope to the Bishop that he, Rabbi Amnon, would ever consider becoming a Christian? The rabbi spent three days in prayer and decided not to return to see the Bishop. When the Bishop finally ordered him brought to his chamber, Rabbi Amnon said that ‘the tongue that said I would think it over should be cut out’. Instead, the Bishop said that it was not his tongue, but his legs that should be removed for not coming as he had promised. The Bishop had his hands and feet cut off, joint by joint, asking him after each amputation if he would convert to Christianity. Every time, Rabbi Amnon said he would not. Eventually, the Bishop had him carried home, maimed and mutilated. Three days later was Rosh Hashanah, and Rabbi Amnon asked to be brought before the Aron HaKodesh prior to one of the central portions of the service. After offering his prayer, the rabbi immediately died. Mr. President, do you understand why I cannot even consider to bring up the subject of Jerusalem?”

 Menachem Begin told Carter that to surrender Jerusalem is to sacrifice the essence of the Jewish nation. There was no way he could even discuss such a thing. Carter understood and the subject was provisionally dropped.

Rabbi Moshe Cordevaro, teacher of the holy Ari, writes that a time will come in the future when a leader of Israel will offer Jerusalem to the Arabs. Rabbi Cordevaro continues that the Arab nation, in return, will rise up against Israel and organize a global war against them. But if the Arabs claim they want Jerusalem as a capital, why would they rise up to destroy Israel when a leader proposes to relinquish it to them? When one sacrifices his essence, he magnetizes the forces of hate to war against him. By offering Jerusalem to the men of Ishmael, Israel would be denying its essence, attracting hate and inviting a catastrophe.

The whole purpose of the external circumstances that happen to the nation of Israel, whether positive or destructive, is to draw Israel back to itself. When Wagner called the Jewish people incorrigible, he corrected the Christian attitude towards the Jews. The church had given the Jews hope by claiming they could be accepted if converted to Christianity. All they had to do was sacrifice their essence. Although Begin may not have understood the ramifications of handing over the Sinai to Egypt, he knew that by sacrificing Jerusalem, the essence of the Hebrew nation, a terrible backlash would inevitably occur. A generation later, Prime Minister Ehud Barak would go back to Camp David, this time under the supervision of President Clinton, and he will offer Jerusalem to PLO chief Yasser Arafat. Arafat, of course, will reject Barak’s pusillanimous offer and launch a war of attrition with moral support from the world media and international community.

Why should offering Jerusalem to Arafat ignite an Arab war against Israel? Why should sacrificing one’s essence and becoming a successful German incite racial anti-Semitism in Germany? When a person attempts to sacrifice his quintessential essence, whether it be his personal essence or national essence, it generates a backlash meant to bring him back to who he is.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzato writesin The Path of the Just that the lowest level a person can fall to is that his enemy knows him and he does not know himself. His enemy can be pursuing him while he does not recognize that he is being pursued. By and large, the Jews of Europe were unsuccessful in identifying racial anti-Semitism because they had fallen to this depth of not knowing their own selves.

When Adolph Hitler first came to power, the German rabbis wrote him a letter explaining that they fought for Germany and love the German soil. They wanted to carry on serving in the German army and could not grasp why Hitler did not understand their love for Germany. A decade earlier, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that when he sees a Jew in the street, he hates him, not because the Jew is different but because the Jew thinks he is a German. Hitler could not stomach the idea that the Jew considered himself a German. Consequently, when Hitler rose to power, one of the first laws enacted was that the Jews were forbidden from blessing Germany in their places of worship.

Germany was not the only country in which the Jews had lost their identity. Born in 5591 (1831), Yehuda Leib Gordon was a poet in Russia advocating assimilation into mainstream society. He once wrote that “night has gone, the summer is here”, meaning that the exile is over and Russia is our country. The Jew is finally free to be accepted as a Russian. In 5641 (1881), revolutionaries succeeded in killing Tsar Alexander II. During the trials and hangings that followed the assassination, it became known that a Jewish woman, Gesya Gelfman, played a minor role in the plot. Encouraged by the Russian government, a series of violent pogroms broke out all over the country. Gordon underwent a crisis of faith. For years he had strongly advocated assimilation. But recent events had proven his opinions to be false. New laws were enacted limiting freedom for the Jews. Top Russian ministers exclaimed publicly that these laws were meant to create mass Jewish emigration. Gordon was forced to reevaluate his worldview. After the pogroms, he wrote “there is no help, there is no order and no regime that will bring order. More importantly, there is no nation. There is not even a congregation. There is only a flock.” Gordon saw that there was no security for the Jews of Russia because they were nothing more than a flock of helpless prey. Yehuda Leib Gordon asked himself an honest question and now understood that the Jews could never be true Russians.

Yehuda Leib (Leon) Pinsker was born in 5581 (1821) in Poland. He was one of the first Jews to attend the Odessa University, where he studied medicine and law. Like Gordon, Pinsker believed that the Jews could find salvation by assimilating into mainstream Russian culture. He became a contributing writer to Dawn and Zion, assimilationist magazines which professed the Jews to have found their freedom in Russia. Becoming one of the leaders of Russian emancipation, Pinsker was convinced that values of universal brotherhood would defeat the archaic hatred of the Jew. When pogroms erupted in Odessa in 5631 (1871), enlightened Jews were distraught. Assimilation activities temporarily ceased and a confused Pinsker returned to practice medicine. Within a few years, however, he began a return to public life in order to again promote assimilation. But in 5641, the Tsar was killed and government sponsored pogroms broke out throughout the country. Pinsker engaged in honest soul searching and made a complete ideological about face.

After a trip to Western Europe the following year, Pinsker attempted to discover the roots of racial anti-Semitism and expose what went wrong with assimilation. He published a pamphlet entitled Auto-Emancipation, an ideological outcry advocating not being emancipated by the gentiles but Jews emancipating themselves. The essay stated that the problem with the Jew is that he has no country of his own and is a stranger everywhere he goes. While Englishmen who visit France can later invite a Frenchman to visit England, a Jew can never host foreign guests because he is a stranger everywhere. After years of advocating Jewish emersion in Russian society, Pinsker now argued that the Jews are beggars who do not even know that they are beggars. Even if the Jewish people could be emancipated legally, they can never be emancipated socially because the Jews possess a spiritual nationality. In Auto-Emancipation, Pinsker presented the Jews as a ghost walking through history. Without a land, language or culture, the Jew inspires terror among the nations of the world. Pinsker claimed that the gentiles would never be able to psychologically digest a nation that neither dies nor exists.

Today, one might argue that because Israel has a country, the Jewish people are no longer such ghosts. But the Jews of the Diaspora have made it clear that they are not part of Israel. The Jews in America, for example, are first and foremost Americans in their minds and have chosen to remain so by not returning home. Eretz Yisrael can be a nice place to visit or pray to but as long as one decides to reside in the exile, he is part of the spiritual people but not the nation of Israel.

While successful assimilationists continued to dismiss Jew haters as marginal, Pinsker understood the anti-Semite on a level of truth. Like Wagner, he knew that the Jews were undigestable in the countries of others and must emancipate themselves. Displaying tremendous passion and responsibility, Pinsker owned up and admitted past mistakes. The pogroms had woken him up because he was mature enough to confront the truth. He was honest enough to realize that he could not – as many like him had – carry on after the pogroms as if they were inconsequential. Pinsker internalized the suffering, attributed it meaning and came to the conclusion that the Jews require their own country.

After fleeing Egypt, Moshe dwelled in the land of Midyan, where he married and found happiness. But when his second son was born, he strangely named him Gershom (stranger there), saying “I have been a stranger in a strange land”. It is then that G-D instructs Moshe to go and liberate the children of Israel. Only once Moshe realized that he did not belong in the land of Midyan was he psychologically prepared to confront his task of leading the Hebrews to freedom.

Parallel forces dominate history. Everything in existence has a reaction as a reflection of its inner state. Yehuda Leib Pinsker tried to understand the reflection of the Jewish inner state. Only once he realized that he was a stranger in a strange land could he discover the dream of Auto-Emancipation. Only once he realized that he could not become part of Russia could he lead the Jewish people in a movement of Redemption.

Among the Jews of Russia, Pinsker’s ideas were well received and channeled towards Jewish settlement in Palestine. In 5644 (1884), Pinsker was made head of the Hovevei Tziyon movement, which united many small and scattered Zionist groups into a single organization. Not exclusively committed to Palestine, Pinsker favored petitioning the great powers for any land on which to establish a national home. But the Russian government rebuffed his efforts and Hovevei Tziyon were only interested in their homeland, so Pinsker directed his energies to the gradual purchase of land and settlement of small groups in Palestine until his death in 5651 (1891). His remains were brought to Israel in 5694 (1934) and reburied in Nicanor’s Cave next to Mount Scopus. The settlement of Nahalat Yehuda is named after him, as well as streets in several towns throughout Israel.

Following the terrible pogroms of 5641, millions of Jews began departing Russia for two destinations of opposite significance. For the Jews wishing to find a national solution for the ancient Hebrew nation, the answer was Zionism and the challenges of settling Palestine. For those merely wishing to find a personal solution to their private suffering, the answer was the United States of America.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was one of those that came to Palestine. Born Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman in 5618 (1858), in the Lithuanian village of Luzhky, Ben-Yehuda was a gifted young student of Torah. He wished to attend a yeshiva in order to continue his studies but his impoverished family could not afford the cost. He was sent to live with a wealthy uncle in order that he should support the young man’s learning, but the sadistic relative abused Eliezer and eventually threw him out on the street.

Penniless, Eliezer wandered to a nearby town and fell asleep in a Synagogue. A wealthy Jew found him, brought him home and accepted him as part of his family. Eliezer attended yeshiva but also engaged in secular studies at the Russian gymnasium. He completed his studies in 5637 (1877), the same year Russia proclaimed war on the Ottoman Empire to aid the Bulgarians in regaining their independence. Ben-Yehuda was captivated by the idea of restoring to the Bulgarians their rights and reviving the Bulgarian nation on its soil. He immediately came to the conclusion that the European concept of national fulfillment should also be applied to the Jews. He felt that if the Bulgarians, who were not an ancient people, could demand and obtain a state of their own, then the ancient Hebrew nation certainly deserved the same. There were two major obstacles to Ben-Yehuda’s desired renaissance. The Land of Israel at the time contained few Jews and the Hebrew language was a written one but not a spoken tongue. Not seeing these obstacles as insurmountable, Ben-Yehuda immigrated to Palestine and began an uphill battle to revive the Hebrew language as a spoken vernacular for the Jewish nation in modern times.

Ben-Yehuda had harsh words for Jews moving from Russia to America. He wrote in a letter, “Why do you wish to exchange your land – the land of your forefathers – for the land of the Mississippi? Is it to dig a grave for the Jewish nation?!” Ben-Yehuda saw Jewish migration to America as an act of treason against the Hebrew nation and its destiny, motivated by selfish interests and not the collective good. American Jewry had no response to his accusations but history has lent great weight to his rebuke.

Like today’s anti-Zionist anti-Semitism, racial anti-Semitism was antagonized by the Jew himself and his threatening behavior. Racial anti-Semitism understood that if the Jews mingle socially or economically within European society, it would be a threat to the purity of that civilization. Today the State of Israel’s existence threatens world peace. Most Western nations do not want a conflict with the entire Muslim world over a few million Jews in the Middle East. It therefore becomes preferable for the international community to appease Arab states by pressuring the State of Israel to shrink its borders and expose itself to incontestable danger.