Language:
French
Year of publication:
1995
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Israeli History
Angaben zur Quelle:
16,1 (1995) 1-17
Keywords:
Dreyfus, Alfred,
;
Nordau, Max Simon,
;
Trials (Treason)
Abstract:
Examines the evolution of Max Nordau's thought regarding Judaism, which eventually brought him to reassess Jewish emancipation and to enter the Zionist movement. In his work "Die conventionellen Lügen der Kulturmenschheit" (1883), he denounced the social and political passions which were aroused and manipulated by the antisemites, but his analysis confined itself to surface phenomena (especially in Germany) and antisemitism appeared to him as a marginal symptom of the "conventional lies of civilization". It was the Dreyfus Affair that sharpened his awareness of the existential danger that antisemitism represented and reawakened his sense of Jewish identification. In subsequent writings and speeches, Nordau gave the most authoritative Zionist view of the Dreyfus Affair, emphasizing the ineradicability of antisemitism even in the democratic societies of the West, the fragility of Jewish emancipation, and the harmful consequences of assimilation in undermining Jewish solidarity.
Note:
In Hebrew: "Nativ" 9,3 (1996). In French: "Max Nordau (1849-1923)" (1996).
URL:
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