Modern Jewish History - Summary

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Lecture #30 - May 27, 1971 - 31:00 min (mp3)
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Mosse talks about upcoming examination and comments on the students’ evaluation of the course before answering the students’ questions:

Q: You seemed to imply that the stress caused by anti-Semitism was in a way a good thing, because it created Freud and others like him. Do you really think so?  

-Mosse says he has personal reservations about what has been discussed as “muscle Jews,” but still, it cannot be denied that the tension, the dialectic between anti-Semitism and emancipation, has been extremely fruitful for some people. He admits that this is a typical argument of a Diaspora Jew, but he does not care about that. In the 19th century, it has been fruitful, up to 1933. Then persecution became too extreme to be fruitful.

Q: Does that mean that normalization, like in the territorial solution to the Jewish problem, implies a decline of creativity?

-Personally, Mosse thinks so. It may be least true in the religious sphere, but he finds it true in the sphere that he evaluated, especially in art, literature and perhaps in music.

Q: Should that kind of tension be preserved, then?

Maybe it should not, but until 1933, for some people it was extremely creative.

Q: Since this tension is very hard for a person and a nation, are there not any other types of creativity?
There are many types of creativity, but if you examine the life of the people mentioned, this is one of the chief creative tensions, especially if you examine the great contributions of left-wing intellectuals.

-Do you believe that the reason of the affinity between [inaudible]?

It entails an effect on your sub-conscious, on the limitations of your actions. It’s in a way a method to find your options. This seems to Mosse to be the element of affinity. You can accept it as a national mystique, or you can attribute it to genes, which comes close to racism.

What is the connection of conspiracy theories to the prominence of Jews in international finances?

After 1918, Jews were no longer prominent in international finances as they had been in the 19th century, and after 1933, not at all. This had to do with economic development, the shift from private to larger, semi-public banks.

Does the stereotype still exist?

Difficult to say, but now, the conspiracies are not found in finances, but in Jerusalem, because there are no existing, dominant powerful Jewish financial concerns anymore, as far as Mosse knows.

Can you define a common Jewish cultural heritage?

If it is to be a definition of the Jew, it has to be generic. We cannot define a Jew according to eastern European heritage, nor to the heritage of the bible and the national mystique, because too many Jews did not or only to a limited extent receive a religious education. You can’t make any definition. The existence of a continuing Jewish heritage in Israel is a national mystique; Israel is in many ways an Eastern European culture. If you are looking for a common cultural heritage, look to Reconstructionism, because that is what the Reconstructionists are trying to achieve, but it is only a partial definition. Mosse has only tried to find a generic definition. Sectarian definitions are not interesting from a historical point of view.

Is there a common heritage in Jewish values?

Mosse cannot see anything like a common Jewish culture or heritage since the emancipation. Values are too diffused, though there is something like an “ethical intent.”

Why do you teach in Jerusalem, given your views?

Mosse is not an anti-Zionist, though many of the students might think so. He is just critical. He loves teaching in Jerusalem; after all, it is a German university, and he gets a lot of work done there. On the other hand, he is deeply involved in the country, because it is a solution, by no means the only or the best, but it has the beauty of certain logic, and he likes the atmosphere. Jerusalem is for historic reasons the only place where you still have a real intellectual community. That is really the main reason why he likes it. That does not mean that he can talk to the man in the street there, he cannot talk to the man in the street here, he is an intellectual and likes to talk to intellectuals.

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