Misleading presuppositions

Jeirs and the Middle Age Christian society

1.1. Misleadingpresuppositions

Until recently, there hasbeena tendency amongtheJewish historians to lookatJew­ ish history, moreor less subconsciously,as a string of events which inexorably led to the Jewish catastrophe inEurope in the 20th century. On the one hand, thealmost total annihilation ofthe European Jews during the Holocaust, conceived, planned and executed by the German Nazi state seemed to cloud the entire Jewish history.

Ontheother hand, this destruction ofthe European Jews bytheGermanstends to be takenout ofthe contextofthe general catastrophe of Eastern Europe conquered and destroyed by the two totalitarian powers, the Nazi Germany andthe Soviet Union, a veritable disaster inwhich millions of othersperished, evenif Jews were among those selectedfor atotal annihilation right away. But once such a methodology was putinto operation, it tended to obscure the fact that Jewshad been part ofthe Euro­

pean historyfor nearly two thousand years. If we conceive of Jews just as victims ofhistory leading to the Holocaust, the world outside the Jewish world becomes not only insignificant, with innumerablemutual influences and debts excluded, but morallycorrupt to such a great extent that itceases to be ofany worth on its own.

Within sucha perspectiveit maybelooked upon onlyas simply an incessant histori­ cal source of oppression.

There is no doubt that the German nearlysuccessfulannihilationof theEuropean Jewsduringthe Second World Warcast an understandable shadowover the preced­ ing Jewishhistory of Europe, especially of Eastern Europe where the overwhelm­

ing majority of Jews resided, treated as both insignificant and essentially a story ofpreparation for the final catastrophe. But this is not true. The European history should not be looked upon as a string ofevents leading to the Holocaust, judged as acontinuing line of processes which had to create Hitler. Tothe contrary, Hitler might andshouldbe consideredas constituting a sharpbreakwiththepastEuropean history, at leastwith Christianitas, even if he might not necessarily be constituting a break withthe modem history of ideological, post-1789,politics. If so, the entire

24 1. Jews and the Middle Age Christian society

Jewishhistory before Hitler, especially in its pre-modem period, should betreated on its own terms, which meansthatit should be looked uponnot as a stringof per­

secutions, discriminations and calamities on their own but as part of the general drama of Europeitself,where Jews werenot always helpless victims but creatorsof history as well.Amongthe great modem historians of the Jewish people, Salo Baron was one ofthevery first who triedtobreakthis lacrimóse conception ofJewish his­

tory, an approach which has sometimes been identified with Heinrich Graetz, the 19th-century German-Jewishhistorian forwhom the Jewish experience through the ages consisted merely of suffering and spiritual perserverence. In an interview in 1975, Baronsaid Suffering is part ofthedestiny[ofthe Jews], but sois repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption)

Baron’s approach ranessentiallycounter to the standard Zionist version of Jew­

ishhistory, which, of course, had a reason to portray it as a string of disasters. For theZionist-oriented historical narrative,the history of Jews inEurope until theHolo­ caust hadbeen a history of calamities, anti-Semitic persecutionsand incessant fear which finallyculminated with Hitler. The Zionist theory of history here is straight­ forward and its message isclear: the Jewish history, especially in Europe, had consti­ tutedan endless suffering leading to Hitler;Israel was the only remedy andZionists were right from the beginning focusing onbuilding the Jewish statehood in histori­ cal Palestine as a final andsafehaven for the Jewish people. There was also avery sinister twist to such a narrative, culminating with a cold and silentdisdaindirected towards thoseJews who survived the Holocaust and who then settled in Israel, as people who were the victims oftheir own misjudgment, the attituade which was finallyabandoned in the wake of the Eichmann trial in the 1961. It isinterestingto notice how this Zionist narrativealso fits into the modem post-Maastricht official history of Europe as promulgated by the elites ofthe 1968 revolution, for which the new European Union was to be a radical break with the European past which allegedly inexorably led toAuschwitz,whereInquisition was a young cousin ofit, the anti-Jewish riotsin the towns ofthe medievalEurope were laboratories forgas chambers in the future, and religious anti-JudaismofChristiantheology was afore­ runner ofHitler’sracism. In suchaview, looking from ahindsight, Christianity was responsible and justa part and parcel of the string ofevents leadingtothe European suicide in the 20th century, and as a consequence its influence and historical assess­ mentwas to be put in this perspective. Thus, the European Union was to constitute the new gloriousbeginning, in contradistinctionto the past.12

1 P. Steinfels, ‘Salo W. Baron, 94, Scholar of Jewish History, Dies’, New York Times, 26 November 1989; on Baron’s historiography see R. Liberies, Salo Wittmayer Baron. Architect of Jewish History, New York University Press, New York 1995.

2 There had been a subtle tactics of criminalization by association used here, where anything connected with the past of Europe, especially traditional Christianity, was marred to such a great extent that it could not be used in polemics with the post-modem version of the European cul­

ture. That is why, e.g. Pius XII was suddenly portrayed as the “silent pope”, “collaborating” with Hitler. The aim of this was of course to provide such a historical narrative imposed on the Catholic

1. Jews and the Middle Age Christian society 25 Salo Baron showed that the Christian Europe was for theJewsnota calamity but a chance, giving themgreatpossibilities of development and, afterall, anontologi­

cal securitywithample opportunities to create autonomousinstitutionsandavibrant economic, social and cultural life. In sucha perspective, Nazism was obviously not an evolutionary outgrowthof Christianity - the suggestion exhibiting a moral tur­ pitude and intellectual perversity - but itsradicalenemy, aiming at a destruction of both Christianity and Judaism. Hitler was a child ofthe anti-Christian ideological modernity, histeacherswere the philosophers and butchers ofWandee of1794, and atthe verycenter of such an ideological modernity was an assumption that progress as realized in history had its implacable enemies never to be accomodated. As the neo-gnostic cognoscentideclared, these enemies constituted a senseless resistance to thefinal gloriousend of history. Since thisdirection of history was now obvious, and therewere still people who opposedit, they needed to beeliminated. Sobegan a sinister idea, philosophicallygrounded and defended, thattherewere disposable people,whomightandshould be eliminated,takenoutof history, as obstacles to the rational ends of these who know better.Jews weresuchpeoplein Hitler’s practical execution of racism and so, in principle, wereChristians as well as all the inferior races. In the Christian theology, Jews - although inferior - wereasindestructibleas

Church and Christianity in general, so to neutralize it as the major intellectual and metaphysical enemy of the post-modern world with its ethics of moral autocreation. This European equivalent of treating the entire history of Europe before Hitler as a kind of disaster leading to the Holocaust seems to be an official subconscious cultural and ideological stance of the European Union elites.

This is the so called “Hitler’s screen” method, which was applied to the interpretation of European history by the symbolic generation of 1968 which decided to built the united Europe as a new utopia escaping its calamitous history. As a consequence anything in the past had to be judged by the “Hitler’s screen”, found wanting and thus cut off from a valuable new heritage of the new Europe. Its faulted logic pushed the European post-1968 elites to cut off nearly everything from its historical past as “contaminated” and not conforming to the high standards of the new “European values” which were to reflect a standard monistic liberalism of minute expanding rights and a hos­

tility to any communal endeavors. An assorted string of ideologies of multiculturalism, feminism, transnationalism, tolerance as a leading value and annihilating any strong identity, last but not least anti-Christian attitude, was attached to this new approach towards history. This constitutes the European equivalent of the Jewish “lacrimosa” idea of history. But such an approach is ideo­

logical, ineffective and falsifying history. If there might be one country which might apply such an attitude to its history it is Germany, which, being a relatively late as a political unified organism on the European stage had a history of rather disastrous events since 1871 till 1945. And Ger­

many used this philosophy to rebuilt its consciousness and public philosophy brilliantly after the II World War, leading Europe in this endeavor. There is of course a significant truth in a statement that the disasters of Europe were part of the modem, ideological age which symbolically started in 1789. But definitely they were not part of the logic of historical development before 1789. On the “Hitler’s screen” approach to history within contemporary European discussions and their conscequences also for the post-colonial way of modernisation of the post-communist Eastern Eu­

rope joining the European Union see A. Bryk, ‘The United States, The European Union, Eastern Europe: Challenges and Different Responses to Modernity’, Krakowskie Studia Międzynarodowe, No. 1 (2008), pp. 109-227, esp. pp. 119-169; also Z. Krasnodębski, Demokracja peryferii (Democracy of the Periphery), Słowo/Obraz Terytoria, Gdańsk 2004, Idee i Polityka.

26 1. Jews and the Middle Age Christian society

God was indestructible, and in the Christiantheologyof history theywere anindis­ pensable part and parcel of it constituting a testimony tothe Christian victory.True, anti-Judaism waspart of the practical operationof the Christian medieval Europebut it was a theological stance, not a racist one.

Modem anti-Semitism took Jews radically outside of history and made them superfluous as people to be eliminated, eventually together with the Christians and other inferior races. Hitler was an outgrowth of modernity, not its contradiction.3 Baron understood well that the Jewish history within the history ofthe medieval Christian Europeand then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which developed itself somehow along a different road than the rest of Europe once the medieval world had ended, was a fascinating story of conflicts, tensions, persecutions and creativity but first of all the unique story of cultural distinctiveness. This was defi­

nitely the cultural distinctiveness ofthe people closed off from the outside world, with astrong sense of danger of being contaminated by it in itspurity. Thiswasalso aworldwiththe Christian theologicalimaginary which accorded the medieval Jews an inferior status. Havingsaid that, Baron realized that at the very same timethat Jewish experience withinthe confines ofthe European Christianitasreflectedafas­ cinatingrelationship in which Jews werenot just helplessvictims ofsuch a society, that in fact they wereableto prosper, notonly despite ofit but often because ofit.

3 On this attitude of modernity in its European version towards Jews and Christians see G. Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity. The British, French, and the American Enlighten­

ments, Knopf, New York 2005, pp. 39-40, 151-158, 168-169, 205-206.