Ghetto Jews and the New Canaanites

FREEMAN CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES | June 28, 2002 | Prof. Paul Eidelberg

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Israel's political and cultural elites often mock the Ghetto Jew. Hence it may be instructive to recall Max Nordau's assessment of Ghetto Jews versus the "emancipated" Jews of the 19th century. The contrast is all the more pertinent since Dr. Nordau, a commanding figure of Zionism, had a negative (and perverse) view of "religion."

In his address to the First Zionist Congress on August 29, 1897, Nordau offers a profound analysis of the Ghetto Jew. Allow me to quote at length:

"The word 'Ghetto' is today associated with feelings of shame and humiliation. But the Ghetto ... was for the Jew of the past not a prison, but a refuge. It is only historical truth if we say that only the Ghetto gave Jews the possibility to survive the terrible persecutions of the Middle Ages.

"In the Ghetto, the Jew had his own world; it was to him the sure refuge which had for him the spiritual and moral value of a parental home. Here were associates by whom one wished to be valued, and also could be valued; here was the public opinion to be acknowledged by which was the aim of the Jew's ambition. To be held in low esteem by that public opinion was the punishment of unworthiness. Here all specific Jewish qualities were esteemed, and through their special development that admiration was to be obtained which is the sharpest spur to the human mind.

"What mattered it that outside the Ghetto was despised that which within it was praised? The opinion of the outside world had no influence, because it was the opinion of ignorant enemies. One tries to please one's coreligionists, and their applause was the worthy contentment of his life. So did the Ghetto Jews live, in a moral respect, a real full life.

"Their external situation was insecure, often seriously endangered. But internally they achieved a complete development of their specific qualities. They were human beings in harmony, who were not in want of the elements of normal social life. They also felt instinctively the whole importance of the Ghetto for their inner life, and therefore, they had the one sole care: to make its existence secure through invisible walls which were much thicker and higher than the stone walls that visibly shut them in.

"All Jewish buildings and habits unconsciously pursued only one purpose: to keep up Judaism by separation from the other people and to make the individual Jew constantly aware of the fact that he was lost and would perish if he gave up his specific character."

In the sequel Nordau speaks of the Emancipation and contrasts the psychology of emancipated Jews--those who mimicked the Germans or the French or the Americans. "The emancipated Jew is insecure in his relations with his fellow-beings [and] timid with strangers ... His best powers are exhausted in the suppression, or at least in the difficult concealment of his own real character. For he fears that this character might be recognized as Jewish, and he has never the satisfaction of showing himself as he is in all his thoughts and sentiments. He becomes an inner cripple, and externally unreal, and thereby always ridiculous and hateful to all higher feeling men, as is everything that is unreal."

Nordau calls this crippled Jew the "new Marrano, who is worse than the old." The old Marrano "had an idealistic direction--a secret desire for truth or a heartbreaking distress of conscience, and they often sought for pardon and purification." In contrast, "The new Marranos leave Judaism with rage and bitterness, but in their innermost heart, although not acknowledged by themselves, they carry with them their own humiliation, their own dishonesty, and hatred also toward Christianity which has forced them to lie.

"I think with horror of the future development of this new race of Marranos, who are normally sustained by no tradition and whose soul is poisoned by hostility toward their own and strange blood, and whose self-respect is destroyed through the ever present consciousness of a fundamental lie."

Nordau's description of the new Marranos anticipates Israel's ruling elites, such as Aaron Barak (president of the Supreme Court), Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin, and Yael Dayan, Perhaps it would be more accurate to call these Jews the new Canaanites. Their hostility toward tradition-oriented Jews is born of envious self-hatred and an ever present consciousness of a fundamental lie" in their own souls.

Having abandoned the tradition of their people, and finding it is impossible to internalize the tradition of another, these empty Canaanites can only destroy. Notice judge Barak and Yael Dayan's contempt for Jewish modesty and their permissive attitude toward homosexuality, prostitution, and pornography. Notice Peres and Beilin's desire to transform Israel into a non-descript "state of its citizens" - the hidden aim of judge Barak, who mendaciously equates Zionism with egalitarianism.

Given their lack of national pride and purpose, Israel's political and judicial elites can only be motivated by narrow egoism or a lust for power. Power being their paramount purpose, they will not hesitate to deceive their own people on the one hand, and appease Israel's enemies on the other.

While the new Canaanites disparage religious Jews as "backward" or as relics of the Middle Ages, they are themselves oblivious of the fact that their own "progressive" ideas are throwbacks to paganism. Nordau regarded these Troglodytes as "degenerates." To try and enlighten them, he said, is futile. Better to hasten their inevitable demise. But this can only be accomplished by drastically changing the institutions that perpetuate their power.

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