Table of Contents for German as a Jewish Problem
Introduction
The chapter addresses key features of the Jewish history of the German language and discusses their broader significance. I present common views of the Jewish "language question" and explain why it is necessary to study German's place in Jewish language politics. This, I suggest, sheds light on the impact of Jewish multilingualism on the formation of Jewish political movements and on the history of European diaspora Jewry. The introduction reflects on the ways in which historicizing German allows us to rethink key questions in Jewish studies and in modern history, such as the common distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish languages. I make the argument that the case of the German language blurs this distinction, owing to the ways in which German permeated Jewish political, religious, and culture life in the modern period. The introduction lays out the book's chapters and summarizes them.
1.Jews and German since the Enlightenment
In order to understand German's complex role in the history of Jewish nationalism it is essential to assess the different meanings it had gained in earlier decades and centuries. This chapter offers a typology of the different meanings German acquired in Jewish and European histories, thus exceeding its sheer communicative role. The chapter covers the period from the second half of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century and unfolds five trajectories of influence that rendered German a powerful vehicle of political change for some, and a hazardous marker of communal disintegration for others. The chapter is divided into five subsections: German as a language of enlightenment; of German nationalist romanticism; of modern scholarly inquiry; of religious reform; and of political and social progress.
2.Leon Pinsker and the Emergence of German as a Language of Jewish Nationalism
The chapter asks how German became the language of Jewish nationalist agitation. Jewish nationalists' turn to German involved a process of departure from the cultural ideology that equated German with the work of the Jewish Enlightenment and with Western proclivities more broadly. I focus on Leon Pinsker's Autoemancipation!, an 1882 Jewish nationalist pamphlet published in German by a Russian Jew—the first text of its kind in terms of its language choice. I examine the text, its use of German terminologies, its place in the history of nineteenth-century Central Europe, its reception in the Jewish press, and its immediate afterlife. I show that Pinsker's language choice played a significant role in the pamphlet's reception. The question of whether Jewish nationalism ought to be communicated differently in German than in Hebrew would preoccupy early Jewish nationalists, leading to heated debates on the nature of Jewish political agitation across borders.
3.The Language of Knowledge: Early Hebraism and German
The chapter assesses the role of German as a vehicle of scholarly knowledge and as an imperial language, focusing on the three leading Hebrew editors of the late nineteenth century, Perets Smolenskin, Nahum Sokolow, and Ahad Ha-Am. As the chief proponents of Hebraist ideology, they shaped the intellectual and rhetorical contours of the movement to promote Hebrew language and culture. However, their position was deeply rooted in the tradition of Jewish and European multilingualism, seeking to retain and control German's presence in Jewish life. While openly criticizing Jewish linguistic assimilation into German, Hebraists were careful not to promote its complete undoing. The chapter shows that the question of linguistic competence in Hebrew, Yiddish, and German figured extensively in Hebraists' mobilization of the label "Eastern European Jews," turning the vices attached to them in the West (traditionalism, provincialism) into national virtues.
4.Palestine and the Monolingual Imperative
The chapter looks closely at the rising demand to advance a monolingual culture, taking hold in Jewish national debates in the decade leading to the First World War. I argue that the process of creating an autonomous Hebrew-speaking community involved a confrontation with German's centuries-long presence in Jewish societies. The chapter explores the "Hebraization" of the Jewish community in Palestine in the realms of education, lexicography, and translation. I examine the different roles German played in these endeavors, and show how German language and nationhood served as a powerful role model—but also as a potential threat to Jewish national self-reliance.
5.Martin Buber's Language Problem: German Zionists and Hebrew Literacy
The chapter tackles the transformative impact of the First World War on Jewish language politics, with emphasis on the case of Martin Buber. The collapse of the European imperial order and the concomitant process of Hebrew's vernacularization in Palestine rendered monolingual currents ever more vocal. It is against this background that German Jews faced pressure from both Jewish and German nationalists to address their national and linguistic loyalties. Through the study of debates and correspondence of Jewish intellectuals, activists, and soldiers from the war period and its aftermath, this chapter explores the political and historical sensitivities regarding Hebrew literacy. I argue that not knowing Hebrew was more than a practical challenge for German Jews of nationalist inclination; rather, it was a political factor that partially structured their responses to the national question.
6.The Germanic Question: The Lineage of Yiddish in Jewish Nationalist Quarrels
The chapter explores how the linguistic affinity between German and Yiddish figured in political debates between proponents of Yiddishism and Hebraism. This affinity was often used by Hebraists arguing that Yiddish was ultimately alien to Jewish culture and history and therefore should not be considered a Jewish national language. In response, figures such as Matthias Mieses, Haim Zhitlowsky, and Ber Borokhov turned to the histories of Yiddish and German, seeking to dismantle the conceptual apparatus of anti-Yiddishism. I show how the proximity between Yiddish and German played a unique role in the Zionist Congress, where both Yiddish and German were used, and where a certain in-between language, called Kongressdeutsch, emerged to help mediate between Eastern and Western European delegates. The question of whether Kongressdeutsch was more German or more Yiddish preoccupied the participants and chroniclers of the congress, attesting to the political sensitivity of that question.
7.The Language of Goethe and Hitler
This chapter explores a growing tendency in Palestine beginning in 1933 to denote German as "the language of Hitler." The chief target of this coinage were recent immigrants from Germany, who were often depicted as posing a lasting threat to the viability of the Jewish community. The chapter also follows discussions among Hebrew writers on whether the German language should be boycotted, and how one should approach pre-1933 German culture. Such debates began before the start of the war and continued in the postwar period. I dwell on the 1961 Eichmann Trial and the exposure of Jewish audiences to Eichmann's language. I argue that the postwar association between German and Nazi brutality was not merely an emotional response to Nazi violence, but was part of a decades-long engagement of Jewish intellectuals and political activists with ideas of the power, allure, and danger of German.
Epilogue
The epilogue reflects on the shadow that Nazi violence has cast on the place of German in Jewish historical memory. I reflect on the Jewish ambivalence toward German and suggest that the political sensitivities it reveals continue to reverberate in contemporary Jewish national politics.