Jewish question
- Jewish question
The Jewish question was an issue for discussions and debate, particularly in western and
central Europe , during theFrench Revolution and into the nineteenth century by societies, politicians and writers on issues of Jewish legal and economic disabilities, emancipation and assimilation. The term became closely associated with the rise of modern antisemitism in the 1870s.The last known use of the expression was by the
Nazi s in early twentieth century, culminating in the implementation of theFinal Solution duringWorld War II . cite web
url=http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/hitler-19390130.shtml
title=Hitler's speech to the Reichstag of January 30, 1939
accessdate=2008-03-25
author=Stig Hornshoj-Moller
date=1998-10-24
work=The Holocaust History Project] [Furet, François. " [http://books.google.com/books?id=02PpAAAACAAJ Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews] ". Schocken Books (1989), p. 182; ISBN 0805240519]Zionism was a by-product of the debate on the "Jewish question", being one of the options for the resolution of the issues raised byantisemitism .Alex Bein (author), Harry Zohn (translation) (1990) "The Jewish Question: Biography of a World Problem", ISBN 0838632521 ]According to Holocaust scholar
Lucy Dawidowicz , the term "Jewish Question" as introduced inwestern Europe was a neutral expression for the negative attitude toward the apparent and persistent singularity of the Jews as a people on the background of the rising political nationalisms and newnation-state s. Dawidowicz writes that "the histories of Jewish emancipation and of European antisemitism are replete with proffered 'solutions to the Jewish question.'" [Lucy Dawidowicz, "The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945" (New York, 1975), pp. xxi-xxiii.]Early usage
An early use of the expression "Jewish question" appeared during the
Jew Bill of 1753 debates in England.cite web
url=http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/bibkulka.html
title=Essay based on the introduction to "The ‘Jewish Question’ in German Speaking Countries, 1848–1914, A Bibliography", in "The Felix Posen Bibliographic Project on Antisemitism" (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1994); retrieved 2008 March 25.] According to Otto Dov Kulka [As of 2008 Otto Dov Kulka's works are out of print, but the following may be useful and is available on microfilm: "Reminiscences of Otto Dov Kulka" (Glen Rock, NJ: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1975), ISBN 0884555984 and 9780884555988, OCLC 5326379.] ofHebrew University , the term became widespread in the 19th century when it was used in discussions aboutJewish emancipation in Germany ("Judenfrage").Bruno Bauer - "The Jewish Question"
In his book "
The Jewish Question ", published in 1843, Bauer argued that Jews can achieve political emancipation only if they relinquish their particular religious consciousness, since political emancipation requires asecular state , which he assumes does not leave any "space" for social identities such asreligion . According to Bauer, such religious demands are incompatible with the idea of the "Rights of Man ." True political emancipation, for Bauer, requires the abolition of religion.Karl Marx - "On The Jewish Question"
Main|On The Jewish Question"
Karl Marx replied to Bauer in his 1844 essay "On The Jewish Question ". Marx responded to Bruno Bauer's two studies on the Jewish Question focusing on religious differences by seeing a corrupt capitalist nature to be essential to Judaism, and thus preventing its assimilation. [cite web
url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/index.htm
title=On The Jewish Question
accessdate=2008-03-25
author=Karl Marx
authorlink=Karl Marx
year=1844
month=February
work=Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher]Marx uses Bauer's essay as an occasion for his own analysis of liberal rights. Marx argues that Bauer is mistaken in his assumption that in a "secular state" religion will no longer play a prominent role in social life, and, as an example refers to the pervasiveness of religion in the
United States , which, unlike Prussia, had nostate religion . In Marx's analysis, the "secular state" is not opposed to religion, but rather actually presupposes it. The removal of religious or property qualifications for citizens does not mean the abolition of religion or property, but only introduces a way of regarding individuals in abstraction from them. [Marx 1844:[T] he political annulment of private property not only fails to abolish private property but even presupposes it. The state abolishes, in its own way, distinctions of birth, social rank, education, occupation, when it declares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-political distinctions, when it proclaims, without regard to these distinctions, that every member of the nation is an equal participant in national sovereignty, when it treats all elements of the real life of the nation from the standpoint of the state. Nevertheless, the state allows private property, education, occupation, to act in their way – i.e., as private property, as education, as occupation, and to exert the influence of their special nature. Far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists on the presupposition of their existence; it feels itself to be a political state and asserts its universality only in opposition to these elements of its being.
] On this note Marx moves beyond the question of religious freedom to his real concern with Bauer's analysis of "political emancipation." Marx concludes that while individuals can be 'spiritually' and 'politically' free in a secular state, they can still be bound to material constraints on freedom by economic inequality, an assumption that would later form the basis of his critiques ofcapitalism .After Marx
Werner Sombart turned Marx on his head and praised Jews for their capitalism and presented the 17–18th century court Jews as integrated and a model for integration. [cite web
url=http://mailstar.net/sombart-jews-capitalism.pdf
title=The Jews and Modern Capitalism
accessdate=2008-03-25
author=Werner Sombart
authorlink=Werner Sombart
year=1911
format=PDF
publisher=Batoche Books] By the turn of the 20th century, the debate was still at large raised to prominence by theDreyfus Affair in France. Some favored political engagement in EuropeFact|date=March 2008 while others, such asTheodore Herzl , proposed the advancement of theZionist cause. [cite web
url=http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Judenstaat
title=Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage
accessdate=2008-03-25
author=Theodor Herzl
authorlink=Theodor Herzl
year=1896
publisher=M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung
language=German]The Final Solution
In
Nazi Germany , the term "Jewish Question" (in German: "Judenfrage") referred to the antisemitic, racialistic theories and policies of the Nazi Party. Upon achieving power in 1933, Hitler and the the Nazi state immediately began the implementation of the plan to eliminate Jews from Germany and ultimately all of Europe. [David M. Crowe. [http://books.google.com/books?id=LB_HLHJ_J64C&dq=%22the+jewish+question%22+david+m+crowe&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0 The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath] . Westview Press, 2008.] The first stage was persecution of Jews and the stripping of Jews of their citizenship through theNuremberg Laws . [cite web
url=http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/documents/gerblood.htm
title=Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor
accessdate=2008-03-25
author=Adolf Hitler
authorlink=Adolf Hitler
coauthors=Wilhelm Frick ,Franz Gürtner andRudolf Hess
date=1935-09-15] [cite web
url=http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/documents/citizen.htm
title=Reich Citizenship Law
accessdate=2008-03-25
author=Adolf Hitler
coauthors=Wilhelm Frick
date=1935-09-15] Later, duringWorld War II , it became internment inconcentration camps [cite web
url=http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/background/ideology.html
title=Germany and the Camp System
accessdate=2008-03-25
author=Doris Bergen
year=2004–2005
work=Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State
publisher=Community Television of Southern California] and finally, the genocide of Jews (The Holocaust ), [Niewyk, Donald L. "The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust,"Columbia University Press , 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Also see "The Holocaust," "Encyclopaedia Britannica", 2007: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question."] which took place as the so-calledFinal Solution to the Jewish Question . [cite web
url=http://www.holocaust-history.org/hitler-final-solution/
title=When did Hitler decide on the Final Solution?
accessdate=2008-03-25
author=Gord McFee
date=1999-01-02
work=The Holocaust History Project] [For some extra depth, the interested reader might readWannsee Conference as well.]ee also
*
Useful Jew
*Armenian Question , a similar topic aboutArmenians References
Further reading
* [http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/1999/issue1/jv3n1a1.html Israeli Foreign Policy and the Jewish Question]
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