jpr / policy paper No. 1 1996 A new Jewish identity for
Summary Since 1989 a new Europe has emerged. The fall of the
Berlin Wall has not merely resulted in the redrawing of geographical boundaries,
but in a new intellectual freedom and democratic pluralism. This sea change
presents many challenges, but none greater than to Europe's Jews, whose
communities were decimated by the Holocaust. Conditions are now in place for a
possible Jewish renaissance. Introduction The open pan-European space, which emerged as
a consequence of the fall of the Berlin Wall and
the demise of the Soviet Union, is barely five
years old, a mere flicker in contemporary
European history and even less in the multi-
millennial history of the Jews. The consequences
and possibilities of its emergence are only now
becoming apparent. Yet, despite the fact that so
few years have elapsed since the fall of the Wall,
commentators and analysts have been quick to
pass negative and often contradictory judgements
on the transformation of the eastern half of the
European continent and on the steadfastness of
Western Europe itself. European Jews—like all
Europeans at the end of the twentieth century—
are living in an entirely different continent from
that of their pre-war forebears, their post-war
parents or even their own post-war selves.
Europe is a new entity, not in the much heralded
(and often disappointing) sense of a multinational
and technocratic European Union, but in far more
profound historical terms. One must not confuse
the Europe of economic integration and
Maastricht with the Europe in which culture and
history can finally be reconsidered, released from
the strait-jacket of nationalist or ideological
imperatives. Nor is post-1989 Europe, as most
present-day Cassandras would claim, merely a
paler version of its own often turgid pre-war past,
replete with a range of unsolved problems, from
unfettered nationalism and economic depression
to racism, xenophobia and, of course,
antisemitism. All these scourges persist but they
are cast in an entirely different historical
configuration, for the fall of the Berlin Wall
inaugurated a new historical paradigm, for all
Europeans and, above all, for Europe's Jews.
If Europeans must adjust to the reality that they
are living in a brand new continent, Jews—and
European Jews in particular—must come to grips
with an even more startling fact: never in the
history of Europe has a moment been so
propitious for its Jews as the present. In order to
understand why this is so, Jews must have the
courage to make a conceptual break with their
own haunted, immediate past. They must accept
the emotionally unacceptable: that the Holocaust
destroyed forever the pre-war Eastern European
Jewish way of life. Although considered by most
of world Jewry to be the essence of European
Jewish identity, its destruction did not mean the
end of any Jewish presence in Europe. European
Jews must have the intellectual vision to realize
that the Jewish world which developed in Eastern
Europe constituted only one part of the whole of
continental Jewish experience; that Judaism
recovered from other devastating historical
experiences: the Spanish expulsion, for example,
which, at the time, constituted a catastrophe for
world (i.e. European) Jewry as a whole. The
Marranos and their descendants came out of
Spain to resume their Jewish life—often as late as
a century after their forced conversion. This
should be sufficient evidence to disprove the
claim—a mere fifty years after the Holocaust and
only five years after the reopening of the
European continent—that the Jewish presence in
Europe is disappearing. Such historical myopia is
not in keeping with the tenacity and wisdom of
the Jewish people.
Jews must also realize that they are now living
through their own collective sea change. For
European Jews, that sea change is evident in four
major, long-term transformations which carry the
seeds of a possible European Jewish renaissance.
What Europe's Jews will make of their new
circumstances is another matter. It is the purpose
of this paper to describe some of the new roads
open to European Jewry. 1/ The post-1989 European sea change The four long-term transformations were thrown
into relief by the following events: the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989 which created an open,
democratic, pan-European space; Israel's peace
process with the Palestinians and its subsequent
recognition by virtually every Arab state; the
diplomatic recognition of the state of Israel by the
Vatican, the culmination of the efforts of Vatican II
to promote the religious and cultural openness of
the Catholic Church towards Judaism; and the
fiftieth anniversary of the Holocaust which marked
the inclusion of that catastrophe at the heart of
Europe's own history, releasing it from its
characterization as a site of exclusively Jewish
horror.
The fall of the Berlin Wall
The Arab-Israeli peace process
Increasingly comforted by growing international
recognition and legitimacy, yet profoundly
chastened by the Rabin assassination, Israel is
now in the midst of a major crisis of political
identity, a crisis exacerbated by the recent series
of bombings and the election results which
illustrate the deep divisions in Israeli society. New
generations of ultra-orthodox Sabras (and some
North American immigrants) deny any intellectual
or emotional affinity with western democratic
values and culture; indeed Rabin's assassin came
from this milieu. In the face of such
circumstances, Israelis might turn back to the
European world which moulded their founding
fathers, and rediscover some of the links which
unite them with Europe. Those who fought to
create a Jewish state, the Zionist pioneers at the
turn of the century, as well as the Holocaust
generation, shared Europe's humanist, cultural and
political values. But these values were overtaken
by the need to achieve Zionist goals. This is no
longer the case. Confronted with Jewish zealots,
Israelis must now renew their ties to their
European diasporic past and reaffirm the universal
principles on which the state was founded.
Israel's ties with Europe are anyway bound to be
strengthened for simple geopolitical reasons. The
gradual development of diplomatic, trade and
other relations with Israel's Arab neighbours will
bring home to Israelis the degree to which they
remain linked to Europe by a shared culture.
Rendered more secure by its demographic
consolidation and its new-found acceptance in the
Arab world, Israel will at last be able to come to
grips with the fact that Europe is its cultural and
historical backyard. Israel's connectedness to
Europe and to European Jewry can only increase
in the context of such changed national
circumstances, in which fear for Israel's physical
security and survival is replaced by the need to
face up to the more complex issues of Israel's
own identity and values.
Diplomatic recognition of Israel by the
Vatican
Fifty years after the Holocaust
The occurrence of so many positive turning-points
in the life of European Jewry has proven to be just
as daunting and even traumatic for Jews as the
fall of the Wall was for Europeans in general. The
opening up of new horizons has been greeted
less with celebrations than with the political
equivalent of agoraphobia. Rather than
recognizing and pursuing the dazzling possibilities
each of these turning-points offers, Jews caught
in the post-1989 acceleration of history have
found it easier to concentrate on all that was
going wrong in Europe. The unresolved political,
ethnic and nationalist conflicts which emerged
after the fall of the Wall were, paradoxically, more
than welcome: they 'reassured' those Jews
wedded to a pessimistic plus ca change view of
European history. And it relieved them (and other
Europeans) of the need to confront and respond
to the transformation of Europe.
With such a pessimistic perspective, it was easy
for many Jews to misunderstand the four
historical watersheds mentioned above, and to
perceive them as deeply troubling events:
Anything that could possibly rock the post-war
Jewish boat was perceived by many as a hostile
force which could only sink it. At the end of the
twentieth century the Jewish boat is indeed being
rocked by new waves, particularly in European
waters, but they can carry it—safely—in new
directions. 2/ Jews in a new Europe: a change of paradigms The newly united Europe has very little in
common with the historical Europe which, until
this century, constituted the centre of the western
world—politically, economically and culturally.
Today's Europe makes up only one part of the
West; it has lost its historical hegemony. It has
shrunk with respect to its previous self but, since
1989, it is slowly acquiring a new character: a
continent united by a common, tormented, past
and, more importantly, a common future.
Europeans may have been the last to realize it,
but what they perceived as a loose ensemble of
distinct national parts has now become, for the
rest of the world, a clearly demarcated European
whole, no longer divided into warring camps.
Since 1989, from Portugal to Russia, the whole of
Europe has shared a common, uncertain but
nevertheless open, political environment the
countries of Europe, freed from the burden of the
Cold War ideological divide, can now pursue their
own cultural and political reckoning. Their citizens
can rethink the foundations of Europe—its
proclaimed values and assumptions—while
assessing its horrors and challenges in light of
their own respective national pasts. They are the
children of a continent with a most complex
human archaeology, and the heirs of an almost
infinite array of ethnic identities, provincial
aggregates and nation-states, each anchored by
its own hallowed piece of history. Today's Europe,
separated from the Second World War by the
fifty-year caesura, is free to confront its own
horrors and construct a new relationship to its
motley pasts, as well as to build a more complex
but less ideologically determined future.
Europe as a new reference point
True, neo-Communists have returned to power in
most of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union. True, some nations are emphasizing their
own national identities at the expense of that of
their minorities, and the western technocratic idea
of Europe is in crisis. But these developments are
far less important than the fact that, all across
Europe, dissenting voices can not only be heard
but are forcefully insisting on their rights. Such a
qualitative change should encourage Jews across
the continent to affirm their European identity all
the more enthusiastically as the best guarantor of
their collective rights inside the new democratic
and pluralist space. Only at a European level can
Jews and all other groups combat the forces of
intolerance. They should be defending a Europe
that is variegated and multi-coloured: Europe as a
kaleidoscope.
The need for a European identity
Jews can and should take advantage of this new
paradigm and create a European identity for
themselves. This can be done without reverting to
anachronistic choices: to an unquestioning
patriotism and total assimilation, or to an equally
dangerous indifference to the surrounding culture.
Europe can provide Jews with a framework in
which they can identify common problems and
challenges, distinctive ones that do not
necessarily exist either in the United States or in
Israel. For Jews, Europe is newly emerging. It is
not a finished product. And it is precisely in this
unfinished sense that its Jews can be 'European'.
Where Jews once claimed their 'rights' and even
official identity from the state, in the new Europe
they must identify themselves as full-scale
members of their countries' respective civil
societies. Of course, this paradigmatic change
affects all groups in society, not just Jews.
However, the creation of a broader European civil
society provides Jews with the possibility of
identifying themselves with the emerging pluralist
forces across the continent, and of transcending
their own necessarily complex ties to individual
states. Jews unquestionably belong in European
civil society; they have formed an integral part of it
for centuries. And it is as part of this liberated
post-1989 civil society that European Jews can
make their most positive contribution to world
Jewry, and where they can build a network of
positive, tolerant and pluralist identities. This is
the challenge for Jews (and non-Jews) in the new
Europe. 3/ New Jews in Europe: a change of paradigms Parallel with the change of European attitudes and
values is—or should be—a change in the attitudes
and values of Jews, in how they live and, above
all, in how they perceive themselves. Since Jews
in today's Europe are first and foremost voluntary
Jews, their continued presence in European
societies demonstrates a conscious personal
commitment, especially in Eastern Europe and in
the former Soviet Union. Jews who choose to
remain there and openly embrace their
Jewishness are, by virtue of doing so, deeply
involved in the political renewal of those
countries. Accordingly they have a two-fold
commitment which should make their
identification with Europe all the more relevant. It
would be wrong to assume in this context that
Jewishness for Eastern European Jews is a
'secondary' phenomenon. On the contrary, to
affirm such an identity in the wake of the
Communist steamroller requires a strong will and
a positive outlook. Rather than bemoaning the
unfillable post-Holocaust Jewish void and
adopting a pessimistic attitude towards a Jewish
future in Europe, these 'rediscovered' Jews have
committed themselves to their Jewish identities.
Jews who choose to affirm their Jewish identities
in our highly individualistic, materialistic and
religiously indifferent democracies are making an
existential statement. They could just as easily
disappear into anonymity, stop being Jews, and
they are of course free to do so: it is one of their
'rights' in a pluralist democracy. Only in a highly
authoritarian society is one a 'Jew' in official
terms and on a permanent basis. The fact that a
significant portion of Jews has chosen not to
disappear in a free society implies a strong
motivation and, above all, a desire to define their
Jewishness afresh in positive terms. It follows
that such Jews can define for themselves what
being Jewish means, for there are many ways of
belonging to the 'tribe'. In a pluralist and
democratic society, one can be Jewish in a
religious, cultural, intellectual, ethnic, even a
political sense. This has always been true in the
state of Israel and, largely, in the United States.
But it is also becoming true in Europe, for there is
no longer either a state or a Jewish organization
which officially decrees 'Jewishness' or bestows
attendant rights and privileges. There are
competing bodies to be sure, including religious
organizations, but none of them has a greater
claim on today's Jews than any other. We have
entered the age of Jewishness as an integral
component of civil society rather than as
something rigidly defined by the state—be it a
generous and benign state or, indeed, a
malevolent and even murderous one like Nazi
Germany.
The creation of a new European Jewish identity
will require Jewish institutions to identify
themselves with their respective civil societies.
They can no longer be single-mindedly devoted to
the state, a devotion which has shaped many
post-war Jewish communities to this day. This is
so not only in Eastern Europe but also in the
West, where prominent citizens still represent
their communities. Such institutional
arrangements can have a pragmatic value, but it is
important for Jews in Europe to realize that if they
can be protected by the state they can also be
annihilated by it. Safety and freedom in the
modern world depend on the relationship
between communities and other civil
organizations, not on any special relationship with
the powers-that-be. Because Jews are fully-
fledged participants in civil society, they can freely
engage in special relationships with Jews from
other countries, such as the United States or
Israel.
The end of 'captive' Jewish communities has also
meant the end of 'autarchic' Jewish
communities—those that are supposedly self-
contained and autonomous, with no ties to other
Jews. Henceforth all communities can be linked
to one another, they can help each other and co-
operate at the most profound levels. The
renaissance of Eastern European Jewish
communities is proof of this new transnational
Jewish network, combining European, Israeli and
American forces. In the past such combined
efforts were used to bring relief and help, or to
send Jews to Israel. Now they can also ensure
that Jews can remain where they want to remain,
and continue to enrich a cultural legacy they will
pass on.
The voluntary Jew in a pluralist
democracy
In a pluralist democracy one is above all an
individual, an autonomous agent, whose particular
religious or cultural identity is the enrichment, the
fleshing out, of the abstract citizen. Such a society
may even encourage the flowering of Jewish
identities in order to increase its diversity.
However, it is crucially important that neither state
nor civil society have the right to label anyone,
whether Jewish or otherwise. We have entered
the age of plastic and flexible identities. In time,
the Jewish identity will also become more
flexible; the strict religious definition—in which
someone is Jewish if born to a Jewish mother—
will be relaxed. Moreover, being Jewish will
neither facilitate nor preclude other identities; it
might take on greater or lesser meaning at
different moments rather than acting as a
permanent and static condition.
Indeed, one of the identifying features of a new
European Jewish identity might be that these
voluntary Jews will express themselves not only
as Jews, but also as Europeans. The two halves
of their identity might be enthusiastically
combined in order to emphasize the unique
character of the European Jewish presence. (The
European half of the equation was often
minimized in the past in an effort to appear wholly
Jewish to other Jews.) European Jews will be
able to make a unique contribution to world Jewry
principally through their active commitment to
Europe.
The creation of 'Jewish space' fifty years
after the Holocaust
As memories of the war recede, and the din of
heroic battles and the pain of personal suffering
fade, the Holocaust stands out sharply, not unlike
a reef at low tide. The series of fifty-year
commemorations—starting with the fiftieth
anniversary of Hitler's coming to power and
culminating in May 1995 with that of the end of
the Second World War—has generated a number
of newly erected Jewish memorials, newly built
Jewish museums and specially held Jewish
exhibitions, as well as the restoration of
significant Jewish sites throughout Europe. The
Jewish presence—and the Jewish absence—
have become physically visible in ways that would
have been unimaginable in the immediate post-
war period and for many years hence. During that
time remembering the Holocaust was either an
internal Jewish affair or, more often, a footnote to
the more pressing national preoccupation with
anti-fascism or the Resistance. This new 'Jewish
space' in European societies is undeniably linked
to the belated recognition that a world was lost
during the Holocaust. But if the Holocaust was
the starting point for the creation of this 'Jewish
space', its parameters have now been vastly
expanded.
Each country is searching its history for the
smallest sign of a Jewish presence, as though it
would be a highly prestigious feather in its cap.
Depending on a country's geographical and
geopolitical position, this search might extend
back to Roman times, to the early Middle Ages or
only to relatively recent periods. This historical re-
evaluation, taking place from Portugal to Russia, is
significant because it coincides with Europe's
coming to grips with its more recent migrants. As
a result, Jews are increasingly being recognized
as founding members of the European
kaleidoscope.
'Jewish space' and the revival of positive
Judaism
It is important to stress that a rich 'Jewish space',
containing a multitude of 'things Jewish', is not
dependent on the size or even presence of a living
Jewish community in any particular country.
Indeed, it is possible that the larger the 'Jewish
space', the smaller the number of actual Jews. In
countries with sizeable Jewish communities, such
as Britain and France, there is a lively and active
Jewish community but perhaps less of that
'Jewish space' that is distinct from the
community itself. Conversely, Germany—where
the Jewish community is small by pre-war
standards, and is not composed of descendants
of the old German Jewish community—has
without doubt the most impressive 'Jewish
space' in Europe. That space appears to be
limitless; non-Jews can embark on university
degrees in Judaic studies confident of entering an
expanding professional field. Other countries
which are practically devoid of Jews, such as
Poland or Spain (where important communities
once thrived), have created vibrant 'Jewish
spaces' in recent years. Other countries are
following suit: for example, the discovery of the
Belmonte community of Marranos in Portugal, or
the celebration in Italy of centuries of Sicilian
Jewish glory during the Middle Ages. Another
example is the Ukraine which, since the demise
of the Soviet Union, has become once again a
land of ultra-orthodox pilgrimages to the graves of
noted Jewish sages. There are in fact few
countries in Europe today that do not choose to
exploit the phenomenon of 'Jewish space'
whether for noble or opportunistic reasons. The
international media attention generated often
paints a rosy picture of the country in question,
especially in Eastern Europe, as a land of progress
and tolerance—even when such tolerance is not
necessarily being extended towards other, more
visible, contemporary minorities.
A key question facing Jews today is how to
interact with this 'Jewish space': should they fill
it, accompany it, complement it or distance
themselves from it? It is crucial for the creation of
a new European Jewish identity that such a space
not be monopolized by Jews, that it be open and
open-ended. Without living Jews, however, such
a space could become a museum. If a new
European Jewish identity is to be created, it
should be based on cultural encounters, joint
reflections and activities in which Jewish identity
and interests overlap with those of the wider
national community. The religious and the non-
religious can cohabit in such a space which is,
after all, designed to build bridges and enhance
European consciousness.
European Jews must define themselves as active
members of the new European democratic
plurality, not simply as Jews who happen to live in
Europe. They must—in the best European
tradition—interact in an open and positive manner
with the democratic forces of their societies. This
requires above all a willingness publicly to
acknowledge Judaism in all its complexity.
European Jews must confront the fact that being
a Jew is often mystifying for non-Jews who do
not quite know whether such an identity is
religious, ethnic, intellectual, cultural or even
political. Openly allowing for the multiple aspects
of modern-day Judaism—as well as its internal
tensions—is the first step in the creation of a
dynamic and pluralist European Jewish identity. In
this way European Jews can confront the future
serenely, without forgetting the past. 4/ Towards a European Jewish identity Voluntary Jews in Europe today are free to choose
their own form of Jewish identity. To envision
which form might occupy the European Jewish
centre-stage, it is helpful to look at the two
opposite extremes of the spectrum. At one end
are what might be described as assimilated
'Israelites' whose Jewish identity is based on
tenuous Jewish roots and a certain humanistic,
'ancestral' respect for Jewish tradition. 'Israelites'
have one ambition: to become just like everybody
else in their respective nations. In order to prove
that they merit such egalitarian treatment they
have often been passionate patriots. Assimilation
had its origins in the pre-Holocaust past, but it
survived into the post-war period and has been
gradually losing meaning ever since. Today Jews
no longer have to demonstrate their patriotism in
order to prove that they merit equal treatment. As
fully-fledged citizens of a democracy, they belong.
No one forces them to hang on to their tenuous
Jewish roots. We may collectively regret or fear
their withdrawal from the Jewish fold, but that
freedom to withdraw is the other side of the
positive coin of the voluntary Judaism of post-
1989 Europe. It is also interesting to note the
virtual disappearance of another pre-Holocaust
Jewish type, the self-hating Jew. Now that Jews
are free to disappear into society at large, this sad
and perversely poignant figure need no longer be
bound to the identity of his forebears.
At the opposite extreme stand the ultra-orthodox
Jews who define themselves in terms of a self-
contained and eternal Jewish religious identity
with quasi-racial overtones. These Jews live in
their own voluntary ghettos, consciously cut off
from the rest of society by their lifestyle and
social contacts. Their only tie to the rest of the
world is through the modern market economy in
which they often play a highly functional role. As
citizens of their respective democracies, they
wield political influence through the ballot box,
casting votes for the benefit of orthodox Jewry
but without any particular sense of commitment
to public life. Their only commitment is to the
Torah. Everything else is historical contingency.
This lack of commitment to democracy has been
dramatically illustrated by the attitude of ultra-
orthodox groups to the state of Israel, evident
before the Rabin assassination. It would be
ridiculous, therefore, to attribute to them any
sense of European 'belonging'. Yet in a new
pluralist Europe these pockets of ultra-orthodox
Jews must not only be tolerated by other Jews
but even appreciated, provided-they too become
sufficiently tolerant to accept other Jewish
positions—as well as the rules of the game of the
outside world. For these ultra-orthodox Jews do
anchor Judaism to a living talmudic faith. Without
them, Judaism as a whole would be
immeasurably impoverished.
The range of possible European Jewish identities
runs between these two extremes. Jews, like all
other groups with a particular identity, pursue two
parallel goals: on the one hand, to be treated as
citizens like all others while, on the other, to be
guaranteed the right to live as they wish. In post-
1989 Europe, regardless of the degree of
democratization and pluralism, all countries, East
and West, treat their Jews as full citizens with
equal rights. Political and legal equality—as well
as social equality—are no longer issues at a pan-
European level. Jews are no longer pariahs in
Hannah Arendt's sense of the term. They would
no longer stand out as distinctive characters in a
modern-day Proustian salon, for there is no longer
only one ('Christian') route to success. The
conversions to Catholicism and Protestantism
which many prominent Jews were obliged to
undergo in the first half of the century, in order to
pursue careers in Mitteleuropa (or in Western
Europe), are unimaginable today.
How should Jews define themselves in
society?
The assimilationist definition of Jews as identical
to all other citizens except for their religious
affiliation collapsed under the weight of the
Holocaust. Jews were not deported from their
respective countries and killed by the Nazis
because they had a different religion, but because
they were perceived as a separate and distinct,
and damned, race. Nor does the definition of the
Jewish community as a religious minority prove
any more satisfactory. The Holocaust was not the
equivalent of the massacre of the Saint
Barthelemy in France when Protestants were
killed because they were Protestants but spared if
they converted. Jews were killed because they
were Jews even when they no longer identified
as Jews.
In a pluralist democracy with a strong civil society,
individuals are not just abstract citizens plus a
religion; they are infinitely complex beings with
multiple identities. For post-war Jews the
Holocaust, on the one hand, and the creation of
the state of Israel, on the other, reinforced the
sense that they belonged to a people with a
common destiny. No longer would they allow
themselves to be splintered into exclusive,
nationalist pigeon-holes or defined in purely
religious terms, for, after all, not all Jews are
religious.
Nor are Jews a minority (except of course in
purely numerical terms). This notion—always
resisted in the strongly consolidated Western
European nation-states such as Great Britain and
France—is commonplace in Eastern Europe
where it has had a long and tormented history
which has resurfaced with the collapse of
Communism. A minority, however, is defined in
relation to a majority, and here again it is not easy
to define the minority status of Jews. Is it
religious, ethnic or linguistic? None of these
categories makes sense any longer, even in
Eastern Europe where, before the Holocaust,
Jews constituted an ethnic/religious minority held
together by a common religion and a common language (Yiddish). Eastern European Jewry in
this sense has disappeared utterly. Jews are no
longer an ethnic group with its own identity,
language or status. The shtetl is gone.
To this one must add another crucial factor: the
existence of Israel. Because the Jewish people
now has its own land, European Jews can no
longer claim for themselves the status of a
minority or an ethnic group, for this would imply
that they are a piece of Israel in another land,
namely Israelis in Europe. Few Jews in Europe or
elsewhere would define themselves as such
regardless of the intensity of their ties to Israel.
The acceptance of multiple loyalties
In the aftermath of the Holocaust when European
Jewry was nearly annihilated, the Jews in
Western Europe have been able to live out their
complex identities by virtue of what can only be
described as an implicit pact between them and
their respective states. Jews have been not only
obviously free to practise their religion or culture
in whichever way they have seen fit; they have
been able, more importantly, to carry on a special
relationship with another country, Israel, as well
as simultaneously to commit themselves fully to
the political, religious and social well-being of their
fellow Jews elsewhere in the Diaspora. In other
words, post-war Jews have been allowed free
movement within a network of uncontested
multiple loyalties. They could campaign on behalf
of Israel or of Soviet Jewry (by way of example)
with an intensity which often exceeded their own
country's foreign policy, without being 'curbed' or
censored. Western European Jews have
obviously behaved as loyal citizens of their
respective states, participating fully in the
democratic life of their countries. The deep ties
which bound them to Israel and to their fellow
Jews elsewhere have been accepted by the
Western democracies of which they were citizens
largely because of the Holocaust, as though it is
understood that Jewish citizens could thereafter
no longer adhere to a simply national definition of
their identity.
This acceptance of Jews' multiple loyalties has,
however been only implicit. Nowhere was it
decreed or spelled out. In tomorrow's pan-Europe
such an acceptance must become explicit, and
not only for Jews, but for other groups as well.
The right to feel a special bond with a 'homeland
or with people in other countries who share a
common language, religion, history or culture
should become an explicit right for all Europe
increasingly diverse citizens. Multiple loyalties
should be construed as a spin-off of the
democratic right of expression, available equally to
Hungarians in Romania, Russians in Estonia, and
Turks in Germany. Multiple loyalties, however, are
only acceptable if people behave as loyal citizens,
playing by the democratic rules and respecting the
legal framework of their respective countries.
What was given implicitly to Jews out of guilt
should be given explicitly to all as an inherent
democratic right. It is in the nature of a general
pluralist democracy that Jews are able to pursue
their multiple loyalties, and in doing so forfeit any
special agreements that may have previously
protected them.
Jews should no longer feel defensive about their
multiple loyalties or about their ways of feeling
Jewish; they should instead proclaim them openly
as legitimate modi vivendi in a pluralist
democracy. Since non-Jews have equally complex
identities, it is always wrong to jump to the
conclusion that they are being antisemitic if they
say something negative about Jews collectively.
At present non-Jews are damned if they forget to
emphasize a Jewish perspective, but they are also
damned if they evoke one, for one Jew's
stereotype is another Jew's truth. One must have
the courage to admit that Jews are quick to sound
the alarm of 'antisemitism' whenever non-Jews
try often in a gauche manner, to touch on
historical, personal, religious or political topics
linked to Jews. Jews should also become less
paranoid about cultural stereotyping and recognize
that in the future, they may (and should) be
treated as one group among many others. Jews
should save their ammunition for the menace of
real antisemitism: a collective psychological
disease and a deeply embedded political mindset
which must be attacked whenever and wherever
it raises its head, but must not be confused with
the informal, often ironic and harmless
characterization of 'others' in a pluralist
democracy. What is significant is that Jewishness
is now one among the many specific
manifestations of a working pluralist democracy
rather than a special category with special rights
and privileges (and taboos) which are not available
to any other group. Only in this spirit can Jews
participate in a newly defined sense of national
and European 'belonging'. 5/ Defining a new national and European belonging A great many of the Jews who have chosen to
remain as Jews in Eastern Europe and in the
former Soviet Union took an active part in the
'revolutions' of 1989, as well as in the reform
movements in Russia following the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991. They therefore very
much resembled their Jewish western European
peers who, on the whole, have always been more
politically active and socially conscious than the
majority of the population. Because of their
relatively small number and their pluralist political
outlook, the Jews of Eastern Europe are no longer
directly tied to the ethnic Jewish masses who
were their ancestors. They have in effect become
'western' Jews, confronting the same
complexities and multiple loyalties as their far
more established British or French cousins.
East and West, Jews in Europe today adopt
positions in their daily political, cultural and social
lives which are not always tied to their
Jewishness or to what one may call the 'is it good
for the Jews' reflex. Jews in Europe (like those in
the United States) have multiple identities: they
are not single-mindedly Jewish. While this state
of affairs is often perceived as a sign of weakness
and as proof of the imminent demise of European
Jewry it might actually signal a revitalization of
Judaism on the European continent, by forcing it
into dialogue with churches or groups which are
now as never before, favourably disposed to such
a dialogue. This perhaps more nuanced reading
places Judaism in the context of a wider
democratic pluralist commitment.
The creation of a new post-1989 European Jewish
identity hinges on the fact that Europe's voluntary
Jews consider themselves integral to each
nation's identity, as well as to Europe as a whole
as it is now being defined. In Eastern Europe, but
in Western Europe as well, the Jewish approach
to each country's national past, to its present
circumstances, to its symbols and to its European
future has changed perceptibly.
In the nineteenth century, the Jews in Europe
sought assimilation, to become 'like everyone
else', necessitating their full espousal of the grand
historical narratives of their respective nations;
they embraced the various mythologies, national
heroes, battles and great historical turning-points
as though the Jews had been participants in the
epic national journeys from the very start. Much
has been written on the French Republican
tradition in which every child, regardless of
personal ethnic origin, referred to Nos ancêtres
les Gaulois. Similar demands were made in every
other country as well, and Jews gladly complied.
They would be moved to tears over the 'Saint
Crispin's day' speech of Henry V, just as their
equivalents in Germany were stirred by Wagner's
evocations of the great Teutonic myths, or in Italy
by Verdi's celebrations of il popolo. Such formative
moments and references are crucial to a nation's
history, and they must be perpetuated. The
essential question today, however, is how? When
Jews—in their assimilationist zeal—adopted as
their own these classical defining moments of a
national identity, it was assumed that they would
not bring to bear any Jewish perspective on the
national past. This was a non-negotiable condition
which Jews had to accept.
Today the situation is totally different. European
national identities are not frozen or carved in
stone. Since the Holocaust, Jews can only have a
dialectical, sometimes even suspicious,
relationship to their country and its past. National
myths may be preserved, but they are now to be
understood symbolically, not literally. Modern
historical scholarship which is rooted in a pluralist
democratic world-view is gradually dismantling
each of these national narratives. They are being
re-examined according to new and critical
methodologies which concentrate increasingly on
civil society and the theme of exclusion and
identity. In this context the Jewish perspective
and the notion of memory become relevant and
significant. Even more importantly, Jews in
Europe expect their own specific history not only
to be integrated into the appropriate national
chapters of Europe's development, but also, in the
process, to transform the standard readings. For
example, previously revered and glorious rulers
such as France's Saint Louis, or epic historical
events such as the Crusades, take on entirely
different meanings when seen though Jewish
eyes. Similarly, the positive influence of rulers or
societies that were well disposed to Jews are
highlighted as part of the re-examination of the
civil records of given periods. Jews and their
collective history are thus entering into a dialogue
with the various national pasts. There is now give-
and-take as opposed to a one-sided process of
historical 'conversion'. One could almost say that
Jews are among the founders of the post-1989
reconstructions of the national pasts (East and
West). They are becoming a normative influence
in the recreation of a new European historical
framework. The 'Jewish space' has penetrated
into the heart of European national identity.
The gradual integration of the Holocaust into the
consciousness of individual European countries—
a phenomenon that took decades to be
acknowledged openly by society as a whole—is of
course largely responsible for this new integration
of the Jews as Jews in national histories. But this
process should not be limited to Jews alone. It
should spread to all other ethnic groups,
minorities and communities whose life
experiences and cultural presences have been
easily 'swept under the carpet' in the triumphalist
histories of national consolidation. The open
context of post-1989 Europe is finally enabling
other hands to participate in the great rewriting of
history which is slowly and patiently being
undertaken. Jewish history is thus becoming a
filter for a pan-European rereading of the past
which can, by distinguishing national myth from
historical interpretation, determine the nation's
future.
While re-establishing the past is important,
asserting a Jewish identity in the present is
crucial. In a pluralist democracy, the Jewish
dimension should be respected in all its
complexity, and treated on an equal footing with
other religions and cultures. As fully-fledged
citizens of such a democracy, Jews are in a
position to ask for rights, not special
dispensations. This means that certain Jewish
laws and customs, such as shabbat and kashrut,
should be respected on state and public occasions
when officials meet with Jewish representatives.
There should not be compulsory classes or exams
on shabbat. Enough should be known about the
Jewish calendar to make sure that no major
activities or public meetings take place on Yom
Kippur, for instance—or, for that matter, on the
most important Muslim holidays. Obviously this
does not mean that they should be turned into
statutory holidays, like their Christian equivalents,
but they should be taken into account when
organizing the life of a country. Such a policy is
crucial for a pluralist democracy: it allows
observant Jews or Muslims to remain within the
body politic and its social structures rather than
having to banish themselves into voluntary
ghettos.
Jewish rights, however, impose Jewish
responsibilities. Nowadays in Eastern Europe, as
in the West, Jews are free to enrol their children
in Jewish schools and to live an independent
Jewish existence. By choosing voluntarily to live
in the Diaspora, however, these Jews must
accept the laws of their state and, more
importantly, they must also accept its culture and
pass it on to their children. If they wish to live a
totally Jewish life, they now have an alternative—
they can move to Israel. European national
identities, language and culture count. They are
not merely scenic backdrops, but positive factors
in the creation of a multiple Jewish identity.
How Jews choose to relate to their country
and society
Jews must therefore prepare themselves for the
day (which is fast arriving) when the Holocaust
will cease to be the sine qua non of their history,
separating them from their fellow citizens. At that
point it will be important to emphasize the other
side of the identity equation—the positive links
that connect the Jews in Europe to their non-
Jewish fellow Europeans—and use it as the
foundation for a new pluralist identity which
transcends the specifically Jewish case.
One of the most basic of these links is language.
Diaspora Jews are not Israelis; for them
Hebrew—however much of it they may know—
will always remain a second language. Their
principal language is that of their native country. It
is important that the non-Jews who share those
languages realize that they have been enriched
and to some degree shaped by their Jewish
I fellow citizens who are an intrinsic part of the
national culture. The same applies to literature:
the works of Jewish writers should not be
relegated to a separate category nor should their
Jewish content be ignored. This is the meaning of
Jewish complexity: to be equal and different at
the same time. It is only in this sense that pluralist
democracies can have a cultural identity. The
institution of the 'national' writer—one animated
by the collective 'soul' of the nation—has
disappeared. We now live at a time when groups
can express themselves in national terms through
the unifying medium of a common language,
whose importance as a bonding agent will actually
increase over time. Jews imbued with the
language and culture of a given country are in an
ideal position to interpret its cultural subtleties for'
fellow Jews elsewhere in the world. The medieval
tradition of a Jewish transnational network thus
takes on an entirely new meaning: Jews can and
should be a new transnational network at the
heart of Europe.
Why become European Jews?
Furthermore, there is not one European Jewish
family whose ancestors were not forced into
peripatetic journeys across the continent by the
vicissitudes of Europe's complex history. If the
descendants of the 'wandering Jew' have
accounts to settle with the past, it is with the pan-
European past. In today's post-1989 Europe any
positive Jewish identity can only be European.
Such a European identity may add a layer of
complexity, but complexity is what being Jewish
is all about. (Even Israel, founded on the principle
that Jews at last could become 'normal' like every
other nation, is learning this quintessentially
Jewish lesson as it tackles its own identity
demons.) Because of their post-war experiences,.
Jews in Europe can look beyond the Holocaust
and help reshape Europe as committed
Europeans. Only they can do so, for many of their
fellow Jews elsewhere are absorbed almost
exclusively by the Holocaust and the squaring of
accounts with the past, and still regard Europe as
the source of evil.
The long process of Jewish-European
reconciliation, now beginning on the pan-
European stage, will constitute a crucial chapter
for all Jews, a missing piece in their own cultural
puzzle, for Jewish history is also European history.
This chapter need not be a closed one—if Jews
accept their European identity in positive terms.
And, furthermore, the manner in which they do so
will prove crucial for all other minorities in
European societies. 6/ Towards a new 'belonging': between assimilation and multiculturalism In his highly pessimistic book, The Vanishing
Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945,
Bernard Wasserstein concludes that in the near
future there will be virtually no Jews left in Europe
except for a few pockets of self-contained, ultra-
orthodox Jewish communities, not unlike the
Amish in the United States, and a mass of people
with a vague sense of having had Jewish
ancestors, not unlike Native Americans, happy to
wear their tribal gear once a year for folkloric
purposes. This scenario spells out the dangers
which European Jewry must avoid if it wishes not
only to survive but to develop as a new and
dynamic presence on the pan-European continent.
Self-contained, ultra-religious communities take to
an extreme the communitarian model, which has
become increasingly accepted in the Anglo-
American vision of a multicultural democracy. It
could be said that such groups enter into an
implicit pact with the state (the Germans call it
'constitutional patriotism'): they play by the rules
of the game in political and economic terms
provided they are allowed to pursue their religious
and cultural identities without state interference.
Their vision of the res publica is minimal, and
when they do participate in wider debates it is on
an 'issue-oriented' basis. Such 'glass-covered
ghettos' are spreading on the continent, well
beyond the traditional communities of Antwerp
and Strasbourg. They must be accepted and,
ideally, encouraged to interact more constructively
with the wider community of both Jews and non-
Jews which could be enriched by their religious
values and talmudic scholarship.
There are, however, limits to multiculturalism and
communitarianism in Europe, for constitutional
patriotism alone cannot hold people together
(even in the United States). In Europe, moreover,
each country is steeped in such a profound history
and cultural tradition that it cannot easily adopt a
purely abstract political notion of national
belonging. Not only Jews in Europe but other
groups as well must realize that, when they
interact with the national majority, they are
interacting with a complex identity based on
history, language, literature, pride, fear and
ancestral relationships. This complexity cannot be
ignored, but it is not an insurmountable obstacle
to pluralism or to Jewish integration. Pluralism
should be articulated around a collective identity
that is voluntary; it can be based on a common
language, history, geography or even common
conflicts. Without such a collective identity, there
can be no dialogue or meaningful interaction. It is
the pre-condition for 'the third way', the
alternative to both assimilation and ghettoization:
integration.
Creating a European Jewish identity
For Jews in post-1989 Europe exactly the
opposite is true: they are 'insiders as outsiders'.
Fully integrated in their respective countries in
political, economic, social and intellectual terms,
they choose to exceed their national identities by
voluntarily assuming a Jewish identity. It is
important to understand, however, that this
'outsider' status is complementary to, and not in
conflict with, their status as 'insider' citizens
because, in a pluralist democratic culture, the two
can be integrated.
Whereas the tensions of the Weimar Republic
were explosive, the tensions produced by the
'insider as outsider' today are much gentler for
they exist within a democratic consensus. In the
long run, however, they can prove even more
corrosive, for they undermine cultural certainties
and challenge long-held taboos. In this way the
'insider as outsider', whether Jewish, Arab or a
member of any minority group, is uniquely
equipped to redefine the foundations of a
European identity from within.
The creation of a European Jewish identity is
neither obvious nor simple. It requires effort and
the will to build a positive relationship between
Europe and its Jews. The ambition to do so is as
novel as the Jews who can carry it out, and both
are as new as the continent itself. When Raoul
Hillberg wrote his classic The Destruction of
European Jewry, he referred to the Jews of the
European continent almost as if they were a
geographical location; a resident of a shtetel in
remote Galicia had literally nothing in common
with an assimilated Jewish university professor in
the French Third Republic. They were, however,
reunited at Auschwitz. But their real or symbolic
descendants who remained in their respective
parts of Europe were only reunited seven years
ago, hence the crucial importance of 1989 as a
new point of departure for European Judaism.
Furthermore, European Jewry has become
enriched by Jews whose communities were not
touched by the Holocaust: France's North African
Jews, Italy's Libyan and Lebanese Jews,
Switzerland's and Sweden's Jews together with
Soviet Jewry constitute so many offshoots of a
non-Holocaust past. They are, however, becoming
European Jews as they absorb the implications of
the Holocaust and, simultaneously, transcend it.
They have accordingly joined hands with the
actual descendants of Holocaust victims, the
assimilated and ethnic Jews of old. Out of these
three separate strands a new European Jewry will
be born, one which accepts Lubavitchers in Milan
while regarding today's Polish Jews as the
equivalent of Italy's old and tiny community.
This contemporary reunification is not only being
conducted under the banner of life rather than
death, but also between equals. In today's Europe
the differences between Ashekenazim and
Sephardim will gradually disappear, leaving simply
the common defining traits of being Jews in a
pluralist Europe. In terms of numbers, wealth and
organization, the substantial communities in
France and Britain can certainly not be compared
to their fledgling counterparts in Eastern Europe
or even Russia. What counts, however, is that
there is no longer any note of condescension in
the relations between the Jews of the European
continent. This was not the case in the past when
the European Jewish hierarchy was strictly
applied: Ostjuden were looked down upon by
German Jews, who in turn were perceived as
Ostjuden by French and Italian Jews, while British
Jewry remained as aloof as the British
themselves from the continent. Jews everywhere
have become urban incarnations of modernity. In
the West the process took place incrementally, as
a steady social transformation. In the East, the
Holocaust and subsequently Communism
accelerated the tempo in a brutal manner. But
sociologically the result was the same: the vast
majority of European Jews today belong to the
urban middle classes and live in the continent's
great metropolises. The great Jewish human
community with its own Balzacian lower depths is
gone. We are dealing with a well-educated, urban
group. Those remaining Eastern European Jews
have become like western European Jews. There
are no more Ostjuden. Those who still practise
their religious orthodoxy and retain an exclusive
Jewish identity do so voluntarily and as members
of modern communities which play by the
democratic rules. The exclusion is gone.
In the post-war period, however, a new hierarchy
emerged in the three leading centres of world
Jewry: Israel, the United States and Europe. To
the Israelis it was obvious that they represented
the new Jewish future and had become the
centre of world Jewry. American Jews, while
wholeheartedly standing behind Israel, felt that
they too personified a different type of Jewish
future and that without their presence the
threatened state of Israel would cease to exist
Both Israel and the United States did agree on
one point, however: the future did not depend on
European Jewry, which was a spent historical
force. They regarded the Jews of Europe with a
paternalistic (in the case of the United States) or
pragmatic (in the case of Israel) eye. Inside
Europe, a similar desire to separate the wheat
from the chaff was at work. British and French
Jewry condescended to Jews in other parts of
Western Europe, such as the smaller
communities of Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia or
Italy. As for Eastern Europe, the Iron Curtain
prevented any serious dialogue between its Jews
and the other half of European Jewry. These
attitudes became all too visible with the fall of the
Wall in 1989.
The change of paradigm which we have examined
has one final consequence: the end of what I call
the Jewish paternalistic matryoshka. The political
matryoshkas, the traditional Russian dolls, on sale
today in Moscow have a tiny Lenin contained
inside a larger Stalin who is in turn contained by
Khrushchev; Gorbachev contains Khrushchev
before being contained by Yeltsin. World Jewry-
using numbers and the intensity of Jewish life as
the measure rather than the previous measure of
degree of cultural assimilation—sometimes
seems to think of itself in these terms as well: a
tiny European Jewish doll contained inside a
larger British doll, itself contained inside a French
doll which is in turn inside an American doll, the
whole set of dolls inside a gigantic, triumphant
Israeli matryoshka. This Israeli matryoshka is of
course the only one visible at first glance; the fact
that it contains (and hides) all the other dolls is
justified on the grounds that Israel will soon
contain the majority of the world's Jews.
Such a paternalistic matryoshka would be
catastrophic for world Jewry, for even Israel is not
in a position to look down on the other Jewish
communities despite the fact that their numbers
are declining or that in Eastern Europe their
attempts at renewal are as yet feeble. The
Holocaust has made the Jewish people prisoners
of 'numbers', lest, so it seems, they face
extinction. On this point a historical perspective is
once again in order: the Eastern European Jewish
masses are not the historic constant for Jews in
Europe, but rather the exception. Pre-eighteenth-
century European Jewry was numerically small,
scattered in many communities but nevertheless
very much present. There is no reason why small
but committed communities cannot survive in the
contemporary world, when European Jewish
networks can easily provide the necessary
'marriage pool' and cultural contacts. Jews, even
in tiny homeopathic doses, can create a strong
Jewish presence in any society. The 'electronic
fax Jew' need no longer feel isolated and lost. It is
important to have a Jewish presence in as many
places as possible as living proof of a pluralist
Jewish identity. World Jewry cannot be
completely contained in one nation-state with its
own internal and external problems.
A European Jewish identity will help to bring
about the end of this paternalistic matryoshka. It
will help Jews everywhere to realize that
European Jews have a strong and legitimate place
in the Jewish family, regardless of their absolute
numbers. What counts is the role they play as
Jews in their respective democratic pluralist
societies, both in reconstructing the past and
living the future. They should no longer be
considered the weakened remnant, the potential
defectors, the smallest and least visible of all the
matryoshkas.
Europe is not Australia. It is a place where Jewish
history, culture and creativity have been rooted for
more than two thousand years. That history
cannot be reduced to a mere episode of
colonization in an Israeli rewriting of history; nor
should it become a latter-day version of pos't-1492
Spain in which Jews exist primarily as a symbolic
memory. It is up to us, as Europeans and Jews to
turn Europe into the third pillar of a world Jewish
identity at the cross-roads of a newly interpreted
past, and a pluralist and democratic future Report author Diana Pinto is an intellectual historian
and writer living in Paris. The daughter of Italian Jewish parents, educated in
the United States and a resident of France, she is equally at home in all three
cultures. She is a graduate of Harvard University where she also obtained her
PhD in Contemporary European History. |
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