Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews

by Albert S. Lindemann

• ISBN13: 9780521593694
• ISBN10: 0521593697
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-08-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Esau's Tears explores the remarkable and revealing variety of modern anti-Semitism, from its emergence in the 1870s in a racial-political form to the eve of the Nazi takeover, in the major countries of Europe and in the United States. Previous histories have generally been more concerned with description than analysis, and most of the interpretations in those histories have been lacking in balance. The evidence presented in this volume suggests that anti-Semitism in these years was more ambiguous than usually presented, less pervasive and central to the lives of both Jews and non-Jews, and by no means clearly pointed to a rising hatred of Jews everywhere, even less to the likelihood of mass murder. Similarly, Jew-hatred was not as mysterious or incomprehensible as often presented; its strength in some countries and weakness in others may be related to the fluctuating, and sometimes quite different, perceptions in those countries of the meaning of the rise of the Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xxiii
PART ONE: THE LONG-RANGE BACKGROUND	1	(96)
Anti-Semitism before the Modern Period: Overview and Definition	3	(37)
Esau's Tears: The Deepest Roots of Anti-Semitism	3	(17)
The Rise of the Jews	20	(3)
The Origins, Evolution, and Ambiguities of the Term Anti-Semitism	23	(3)
``Classical Anti-Semitism''	26	(3)
Christian Anti-Semitism	29	(4)
The Church Triumphant; John Chrysostom	33	(2)
The Charge of Deicide; Jewish Survival	35	(5)
Modern Times (1700 to the 1870s)	40	(57)
The Englightenment	40	(4)
The French Revolution and the Jews	44	(4)
Napoleon and the Assembly of Jewish Notables	48	(2)
Contrasts between East and West	50	(3)
Trends within Judaism	53	(2)
Secularism and Divided Fidelities	55	(1)
The Liberal Years of Midcentury	56	(1)
Backward Russia and the Ostjuden	57	(4)
The Pale of Settlement	61	(3)
Russia's ``Liberal'' Experiment	64	(3)
Revolutionary Agitation and Tsarist Reaction	67	(3)
The Concept of Race	70	(4)
Blood Imagery	74	(4)
Racism and Anti-Semitism	78	(6)
The Evolution of the Vocabulary of Race	84	(6)
Racist Ideas among Jews	90	(2)
The Ambiguities of Non-Jewish Racism	92	(5)
PART TWO: THE APPEARANCE OF MODERN ANTI-SEMITISM (1870-1890)	97	(176)
Germans and Jews (1870-1890)	103	(23)
The German Problem; the Sonderweg	104	(3)
German Liberalism and the New German State	107	(3)
Junker Hegemony and the Jews	110	(4)
The Rise of the Jews in Germany	114	(2)
The Mittlestand and Modernism in Germany	116	(2)
The ``Founding Years'' and the Crash of 1873	118	(2)
The Press Campaign against the Jews	120	(2)
The Kulturkampf and the Jews	122	(2)
Bismarck's Move to the Right	124	(2)
Anti-Semitic Ideology and Movement in Germany (1879 to the 1890s)	126	(32)
Anti-Semitic Ideology: Wilhelm Marr	127	(4)
Anti-Semitic Ideology: Heinrich von Treitschke	131	(8)
Treitschke and Graetz	139	(3)
Anti-Semitic Ideology: Adolf Stoecker	142	(5)
Anti-Semitic Movement and Countermovement	147	(5)
Anti-Semitic Movement: The Peasants and Otto Bockel	152	(3)
Precursors to Nazism?	155	(3)
Socialists, Jews, and Anti-Semites	158	(24)
Socialist Movement and Ideology	158	(2)
The Englightened Tradition of Socialism	160	(2)
Marxian Socialism and the Jews	162	(4)
French Socialism and the Jews	166	(2)
Jewish Attitudes to Socialism	168	(3)
Social-Democratic Attitudes to Jews	171	(3)
Socialist Interpretations of Anti-Semitism	174	(6)
Jewish Socialists and Assimilation	180	(2)
Austria-Hungary: Radical Radicalism and Schlamperei	182	(24)
The Polyglot Empire	182	(3)
Austria-Hungary: Between Germany and Russia	185	(2)
Liberalism and the Rise of the Jews	187	(3)
German Nationalism and Ethnic Insecurity	190	(3)
The Jewish Press and the Crash of 1873	193	(1)
Anti-Semitic Ideology	194	(3)
Catholic Antimodernism and Anti-Semitism	197	(3)
Anti-Semitism and Humanitarian Idealism: von Schonerer	200	(2)
The Disintegration of Democratic Radicalism	202	(4)
France: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity	206	(32)
The Evolution of French Jewry in the Nineteenth Century	206	(5)
The Third Republic and the Jews	211	(1)
The Rise of the Jews and the Dilemmas of Modernism	212	(1)
The Political Crises and Scandals of the 1880s	213	(2)
Nascent Political Anti-Semitism: The Boulangists	215	(4)
The Assumptionists	219	(2)
Anti-Semitic Ideology and Movement: Toussenel, Barres, Drumont	221	(6)
A Gathering Storm of Anti-Semitism?	227	(3)
The Dreyfus Affair	230	(4)
A Dreyfusian Revolution?	234	(4)
A Sweet Exile?	238	(35)
Jews in Nineteenth-Century Great Britain	239	(12)
Jews in America: The Issue of Exceptionalism	251	(10)
Racism and Social Conflict in the United States	261	(2)
The Jews in Hungary	263	(10)
PART THREE: THE BELLE EPOQUE (1890-1914)	273	(114)
The Failures: Russia and Romania	279	(40)
Worsening Jewish-Gentile Relations in Russia	279	(11)
The Paradoxes of Modernization in Russia; the Kushinev Pogrom	290	(10)
Modern Anti-Semitism in Russia	300	(1)
Nicholas II and the Power of International Jewry	301	(4)
The Beilis Affair	305	(1)
Romanian Anti-Semitism: ``The Worst in Europe?''	306	(13)
The Ambiguities of ``Failure'' in the Belle Epoque: Germany and Austria	319	(36)
The Appearance of Zionism	320	(10)
Anti-Semitism and German Traditions	330	(4)
The ``Dormant Period'' of Anti-Semitism in Germany	334	(3)
Anti-Semitic Agitation in Austria: Karl Lueger	337	(10)
The ``Unpolitical'' Germans: Langbehn, Lagarde, Chamberlain	347	(8)
The Ambiguous Successes: Great Britain and the United States	355	(32)
Jews in Great Britain in the Edwardian Period	355	(16)
The United States: Still ``Exceptional''?	371	(10)
The Leo Frank Affair	381	(6)
PART FOUR: A DECADE OF WAR AND REVOLUTION (1914-1924)	387	(70)
World War I	391	(32)
The Mood of August 1914	391	(4)
The Expansion of Germany into Russia	395	(3)
The Beginning of Disillusionment in the West	398	(8)
The Peace Settlement	406	(7)
The Balfour Declaration and the Palestinian Mandate	413	(10)
Jews and Revolution (1917-1934)	423	(34)
The Jew as Revolutionary: Fantasy and Reality	424	(12)
Russian Jews in Revolution: From March to November	436	(4)
The Red Terror--A Jewish Terror?	440	(8)
Stalin and Trotsky	448	(9)
PART FIVE: THE FASCIST ERA: EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS	457	(48)
Fascism and Anti-Semitism	461	(44)
Defining Fascism	462	(2)
The Origins of Fascism: Mussolini, from Socialist Revolutionary to II Duce	464	(7)
The Jews of Italy	471	(6)
The Italian Model of Fascism	477	(4)
The Establishment of the Weimar Republic	481	(2)
Hitler's Early Career; the Genesis of His Anti-Semitism	483	(15)
Hitler and the Nazi Party	498	(7)
Epilogue and Conclusions	505	(42)
Index	547