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Notes
For example, see the November/December 1991 issue ofTikkun in which the question of Jewish identity received extensive coverage and the Spring 1992 issue ofReform Judaism that contained an article entitled “Are We Losing the Faith?” written by Rabbi Harold Schulweis. The content of the latter was derived from a speech given at the UAHC biennial in Baltimore and reflects an alarming decrease in the familiarity of American Jews, especially those involved in an inter-faith marriage, with their Jewish heritage.
Bruce A. Phillips. “Sociological Analysis of Jewish Identity,” in David M. Gordis and Yoav Ben-Horin (eds.),Jewish Identity in America (Los Angeles, 1991), 17. Phillips makes this point in reference to American Jewry, but it is applicable in varying degrees to the situation anywhere within the diaspora.
Emphasis mine; quoted in Michael Oppenheim, “A “Fieldguide” to the Study of Modern Jewish Identity,”Jewish Social Studies 46 (1984): 225. The quote is taken from Jacob Neusner,Stranger at Home: “The Holocaust,” Zionism and American Judaism (Chicago, 1981), 188–90. The existence of “a single Jewish identity” in pre-modern times does not imply an essentialist component to Jewishness, but it is indicative of the limited manner in which Jews both defined themselves and were defined by others prior to emancipation.
One example of the relativelyad hoc nature in which the topic of Jewish identity is handled is the amazing lack of consistency employed by libraries and indices to Jewish periodical literature when it comes to classifying the subject of Jewish identity; see Oppenheim's remarks on this problem in “A Fieldguide,” 215–16.
Erik Erikson'sChildhood and Society (New York, 1950), stresses the interplay of social and psychological factors in the formation of one's identity. Sociologist Milton Gordon'sAssimilation in American Life (New York, 1964) has served as a point of reference to many studies of the process of assimilation and the subsequent decline of one's “ethnic” identity.
Oppenheim, “A Fieldguide,” 223–224. Hayden White argues that by straddling a middleground between “pure science” and “art,” historians neither develop their theoretical paradigms to the extent that social scientists do, nor do they allow themselves the “free artistic manipulation” of the subject employed by artists; see his essay, “The Burden of History,”Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, 1978), 27–50.
Detroit, 1967.
New York, 1972.
Ann Arbor, 1975.
The one organizational history that is an exception in this regard is Stephen M. Poppel,Zionism in Germany 1897–1933: The Shaping of Jewish Identity (Philadelphia, 1977). Although written twenty-eight years ago and largely devoid of explicit methodological terminology, Poppel's study recognizes the nexus between organizational affiliation and identity formation.
Quoted in Simon N. Herman,Jewish Identity: A Social Psychological Perspective (Beverly Hills, 1977), 31. Originally found in H.C. Kelman, “The Place of Jewish Identity in the Development of Personal Identity,” A working paper prepared for the American Jewish Committee's Colloquium on Jewish Education and Jewish Identity, November, 1974.
The two largest German Jewish organizations, theCentralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens and theZionistischen Vereinigung für Deutschland, are two prime examples of the male dominated milieu of Jewish organizations. At German universities prior to the First World War, there were no official Jewish organizations for women.
Oxford, 1988.
Seattle, 1990.
More recent works on the topic of Jewish identity which add to the growing body of knowledge about modern Jewry but still exhibit similar methodological weaknesses are Marsha Rozenblitt,The Jews of Vienna: Assimilation and Identity (Albany, 1983) and Jay Berkovitz,The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century France (Detroit, 1989).
“Ethnicity: Identity and Difference,”Radical America, 23/4 (June, 1991): 15; and “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Jonathon Rutherford (ed.),Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London, 1990), 222–237.
Ibid., 222.
Joan Walloch Scott,Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), 42.
On the role of the unconscious in the process of identity construction, see Hall, “Ethnicity,” 11.
Sharon Macdonald states that “identities do not exist outside their making. Rather, they are socially created in specific historical circumstances, though they may be reified and perpetuated through all kinds of essentialist models”; cf. her “Identity Complexes in Western Europe: Social Anthropological Perspectives,” in Sharon Macdonald (ed.),Inside European Identities. Ethnography in Western Europe (Oxford, 1993), 6.
Quoted in Marion Berghahn,Continental Britons, 17; originally found in Epstein,Ethos and Identity (London, 1978), 101.
Anthony P. Cohen, “Culture As Identity: An Anthropologist's View,”New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation, 24/1 (Winter, 1993): 195–209. Put another way, culture can also be understood as “a web of conflicting and self-conflicting forces and structures that is diversified, fractured and dispersed.” I am indebted to William Kangas for our many theoretical discussions of Jewish identity and allowing me to quote from his “Arnold Schoenberg: Music-Ethics-Identity” (forthcoming).
Although I agree that German Jewish culture was distinct, I feel that cultural boundaries are considerably more porous than Sorkin's definition allows for; cf. his “The Impact of Emancipation on German Jewry: a Reconsideration,” in Jonathon Frankel and Steven Zipperstein (eds.),Assimilation and Community. The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, 1992), 178. For a more detailed exposition of German Jewry as a subculture see hisThe Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (New York, 1987).
Sorkin, “The Impact of Emancipation,” 193.
For an evaluation of the identities fashioned by Jewish students who did not belong to a major student organization, as well as those constructed by Jewish university student associations, see my “Jewish University Students in Germany; The Construction of a Post-Emancipatory Identity, 1815–1914,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of Washington, 1993).
Todd Endelman.Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656–1945 (Bloomington, 1990), 6.
Marion Kaplan's work on German Jewish women convincingly demonstrates the need to distinguish between the “public” and “private” spheres when evaluating the identity of German Jews. For further elaboration on this point see her comments in Kaplan,The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York, 1991), x; and her essay, “Gender and Jewish history in Imperial Germany,” in Frankel and Zipperstein, 198–224.
The Making of the Jewish Middle Class, x. See also Monika Richarz's preface to the collection of memoirs she edited,Jewish Life in Germany (tr. S.P. Rosenfeld and S. Rosenfeld; Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991), x.
Endelman makes the comment that “however odd or amusing [the family histories of English Jews] might be in some of their particulars, [they] are intended to represent larger social trends within the English Jewish community.”Radical Assimilation 8. It is my belief that the same holds true for the histories of individual German Jewish university students as revealed through their memoirs.
Memoir of Eduard Silbermann, ME 601. Portions of Silbermann's memoir are contained in Richarz,Jewish Life in Germany, 80–93.
Ibid., 83.
Ibid., 85.
Ibid., 86.
Memoir of Eduard Silbermann, ME 601, p.100.
Ibid., 101. Having readily refused to participate in a fraternal organization, Silbermann admits in his memoirs that later in life he came to recognize and appreciate the potential advantages that membership had to offer.
Ibid., 102.
Ibid.
Memoir of Eduard Silbermann inJewish Life in Germany, 86.
Memoir of Ludwig Edinger, ME 718, part I, 15–16.
Ibid., 15–16.
Ibid., part II, 66–67.
Ibid., part II, 72–73. Following the culmination of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the incorporation of the territories of Alsace and Lorraine into the newly created Second Reich, the German authorities transformed the old German secondary school in Strasbourg into a new university, calling it the Kaiser Wilhelm University.
Vicki Caron argues that many Alsatian Jews were fearful that their civil rights and economic opportunities would be curtailed. For a discussion of Alsatian Jewry's initial reaction to being incorporated into the German Reich see Caron,Between France and Germany. The Jews of Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918 (Stanford, 1988), 27–44.
Memoir of Ludwig Edinger, 73–74.
Italics mine; ibid., 75–76.
Ibid., 77–78.
Caron points out that “the Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg was⋯ less tainted by antisemitism than its Old German counterparts.” For further elaboration of this point and a discussion of Jewish students at the university in Strasbourg see Caron, 142–144 and 173–175.
Memoir of Curt Rosenberg ME 524. A portion of this memoir also appears in Monika Richarz (ed.),Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland. Selbstzeugniss zur Sozialgeschichte im Kaiserreich (Stuttgart, 1979), 298–309.
Memoir of Curt Rosenberg, ME 524, p. 92–93.
Ibid., 92–93.
Ibid., 105–106.
Ibid., 105.
Ibid., 109.
Ibid., 107.
Ibid., 109. The first book that he read on account of his interest in the Jewish woman wasDie Geschichte der jungen Renate Fuchs by Jakob Wasserman, German Jewish novelist and essayist.
Memoir of Curt Rosenberg, 109.
The relegation of one's Jewishness to the private sphere was a common phenomenon for many German Jews. For an illuminating discussion of this phenomenon see Marion Kaplan, “Gender and Jewish History,” passim.
Konrad Jarausch, “Students, Sex and Politics in Imperial Germany,”Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982): 289–90.
According to Stein, Professor Mendel was forced (“gezwungen”) to allow women in as auditors; Memoir of Nathan Stein, ME 618, p. 63.
Permission to attend a given university was granted by the individual states. In 1901, Baden was the first state to admit women, followed by Bavaria in 1904 and Prussia in 1908. Kaplan,The Making of the Jewish Middle Class, 137–138 and 277, n. 1.
I am indebted to Harriet Freidenreich for openly sharing her in depth knowledge of Jewish university women in central Europe. This general description of Jewish university students is taken from a paper entitled, “Jewish Identity and the ‘New Woman’: Central European Jewish University Women in the Early Twentieth Century,” presented by Harriet Freidenreich at the Conference onGender and Judaism, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, April 27, 1993, in Tamar Rudavsky (ed.),Gender and Judaism (New York, 1995).
Memoir of Walter Heinemann, ME 284, p. 30.
Kaplan's comments on the obstacles faced by the first generation of female Jewish university students parallel my own observations from reading the memoirs of both Jewish men and women; see herThe Making of the Jewish Middle Class, 138–143.
The details of Straus's life can be found in her unpublished memoirs, ME 636, and her published autobiography,Wir lebten in Deutschland: Erinnerungen einer deutschen Jüdin (Stuttgart, 1962). Freidenreich's depiction of Straus as an “example of a new Jewish superwoman of the early twentieth century” is certainly apropos for, as an adult, Straus raised five children in a fairly traditional, kosher Jewish household, was active in feminist and Zionist organizations, maintained a private medical practice, and gave lectures on birth control and nutrition to women. “Jewish Identity,” 12–13.
Memoir of Rahel Straus, ME 636, p. 123–24.
Ibid., 125. Financial concerns were of paramount importance to Straus, and they dictated many decisions regarding her studies.
See the comments of Margarette Sallis about the difficulties faced by women. ME 550, 34–35.
Kaplan,The Making of the Jewish Middle Class, 138.
Ibid., 143.
The cost of studying medicine was considerably higher than it was for the humanities. Upon hearing that Rahel had registered as a literature student as opposed to her long-held goal of studying medicine, Rahel's uncle, Raphael Lüwenfeld, offered to support her studies provided that she pursued her dream of becoming a doctor; Memoir of Rahel Straus, 125–127
Ibid., 127.
Memoir of Rahel Straus, p. 128. Kaplan also discusses this exchange between Straus and the professor, but does not include Straus's comment about her and the professor becoming “good friends.” Instead, Kaplan writes that “These insults only heightened Straus's resolve to attain her degree: ‘I wanted to show him, to show all men, that one could achieve one's chosen profession’; Kaplan,The Making of the Jewish Middle Class, 139. Our difference in emphasis may result from the different way in which Dr. Kaplan and I have positioned ourselves within the field of German Jewish history. While Dr. Kaplan's studies have focused on integrating the lives and activities of Jewish women into the historical narrative of German Jewry and demonstrating their contributions to the formation of German Jewish identities, my own research is concerned with how historians understand the concept of identity construction itself.
Ibid., 146–147.
Else Croner,Das Tagebuch eines Fräulein Doktors (Stuttgart, 1908), quoted in Kaplan,The Making of the Jewish Middle Class, 147.
Bertha Badt-Strauss, “Studententage in München, 1912–13,” in Hans Lamm (ed.),Von Juden in München (Munich, 1958).
See Kaplan's comments inThe Making of the Jewish Middle Class, 147–148.
Memoir of Rahel Straus, 136. Straus's observations of her own experience and that of her contemporaries does not invalidate Freidenreich's comments that most Jewish women students were “not joiners.” Not only was Straus one of the first Jewish women to matriculate at a German university and the only Jewish member of her organization but, as already indicated, her university experience is by no means representative of her coreligionists.
Ibid., 137. Among the traditional associations, compulsion was basic to their existence. Everything from the members' dress code to their behavior was regulated by the conventions of the organization, with the most extreme form of compulsion occurring during the ritualistic drinking bouts for which student fraternities were renowned. A good overview of the corporate subculture of student associations is given in Konrad Jarausch,Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany. The Rise of Academic Illiberalism (Princeton 1982), 234–62.
Emphasis mine. Memoir of Rahel Straus, 137.
Ibid., 140.
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Pickus, K.H. German Jewish identity in the Kaiserreich: Observations and methodological considerations. Jew History 9, 73–91 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01668990
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01668990