Karlheinz Schneider. Judentum und Modernisierung: Ein deutsch-amerikanischer Vergleich 1870-1920. Frankfurt: Campus, 2005. 585 pp. EUR 49.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-593-37386-7.
Reviewed by Stefan Vogt (Center for German Studies, Ben-Gurion-University of the Negev)
Published on H-German (November, 2006)
Jewish Paths into Modernity
In recent years, the theme of "Jewish paths into modernity" has been a primary field of research within Jewish history. This focus is not only due to the fact that modern Jewish history is a remarkable case of successfully adapting to modernization, but also because Jews were, at the same time, often victims of this very modernization. The relationship between Jews and modernization tells us a great deal about the dialectics of modern European and western civilization. In this context, comparative study of different western societies has proven to be of particular relevance.[1] Karlheinz Schneider's book aims at such a comparison between German-Jewish and American-Jewish paths of modernization.
Schneider claims to provide a fresh view on these Jewish paths into modernity. He criticizes previous historiography for not having been able to develop an understanding of emancipation capable of describing different modes and versions of this phenomenon. In addition, he claims that most research in this field has confined itself to the question of civil equality of the Jews. Schneider suggests a different perspective. In addition to, or even instead of, speaking about the emancipation of the Jews, he concentrates on what he calls "Jewish self-emancipation." With this term, he refers to internal Jewish debates about modernity and active efforts of Jews to integrate into modernizing societies. Drawing on Max Weber's concepts of Gesinnungsethik and Verantwortungsethik, he analyzes the German and American versions of this Selbstemanzipation in relationship to the respective societies and their developments.
In both national cases, Schneider concentrates on Jewish religious reform movements. He begins by elaborating in detail on his chosen theoretical framework, and refers, in addition to Weber, mainly to Jürgen Habermas and Wolfgang Schluchter.[2] This step is taken in order to consider the history of Jewish emancipation within the context of the development of western rationalism and to build a bridge between social history and the history of ideas. After this introduction, two long chapters discuss the histories of American-Jewish and German-Jewish emancipation from 1870 to 1920. Both chapters are preceded by a concise survey of general social histories of the two groups. The closing chapter contains the actual comparison, concentrating on selected aspects such as economic integration, political participation and defense against antisemitism. Schneider concludes that German Reform Judaism, which had to deal with a generally unfriendly or even aggressive environment, refrained from articulating its striving towards emancipation in a political way. Instead, it withdrew to the fields of philosophy and academic endeavors. In contrast, American Reform Judaism was able to build up effective institutions of representation and to push towards social reforms.
Schneider understands Jewish emancipation not only as the granting of civil rights and equality by the state, but also as Jewish self-emancipation from religious and cultural constraints. Such a critique, however, makes sense only in reaction to an older generation of scholarship. From a contemporary perspective it may be argued that Heinrich Graetz's or Simon Dubnow's discussion of the problems of modernization within Jewish history suffer from methodological and ideological shortcomings. It is also true that German historiography of the 1970s and 1980s focused on problems of legal equality, or lack thereof, and on the antisemitic rejection of Jewish efforts toward integration. Even a superficial look at the vast literature of the last twenty years shows, however, that what Schneider misses has actually been accepted generally among scholars working in Jewish Studies.[3] Schneider fails to take this recent literature, as well as the development in Jewish Studies it reflects, into consideration.
Similar things can be said about his second critique of current scholarship, for which Schneider quotes a remark by Hans Liebschütz of 1978. According to this critique, hardly any attempt has been made to integrate German-Jewish history into general German history. Surely a great deal of work remains to be done in this regard; however, in recent years many historians have contributed to a new perspective on German-Jewish history as more than just a prehistory of the Holocaust or the state of Israel. The reciprocal influences of the Jewish and non-Jewish parts of German society, as well as the role of Jews within the difficult process of modernization of this society, have received more and more attention. The same is true for the historiography of American Jewry. Some may regret that it has not yet led to a new master narrative in Jewish history, but these new developments should be seen as a major asset of the scholarship of recent decades.
Schneider's work does not offer a new perspective on German-Jewish and American-Jewish histories. It may, however, be another contribution to an integrative approach. Schneider is able to show, for example, that the different reactions to antisemitism in Germany and in the United States are strongly influenced by the different functions of antisemitism in these two societies. This is an important point, even if it is not a new one. Schneider's main argument, that American Jews as a social group were able to become a political player and to effectively oppose antisemitism while German Jews were not, is not supported by evidence. This argument is highly questionable. A more complete look at Jewish life in both countries would provide a much more complex picture than the one offered by Schneider. At the end of the nineteenth century, many German Jews agreed that an organized body of representation was necessary in order to fight growing antisemitism. Within American Jewry, political representation at the same time largely remained a concern of East Coast urban elites.
In addition to these substantial objections, the study contains several formal problems. To begin with, the reader encounters an excessive amount of abbreviations, which is inconvenient as no key to abbreviations is provided. The whole study is written in a sociologic jargon that does not allow for smooth reading. More serious, however, are frequent missing links in the argumentation. At the end of a chapter the reader is often left helpless about what point has actually been made in the previous pages. This critique is addressed to the publisher as well, for such unevenness could easily have been removed by an attentive editor. In addition to organizational problems, the text is riddled with inaccuracies and mistakes. For example, Heinrich von Treitschke's infamous article of 1879 is repeatedly quoted as "Unsere Ansichten" (instead of "Unsere Aussichten").
In summary, a book that provides a fairly strenuous reading experience rewards the reader with rather limited results. Schneider not only provides little new insight into the history of Jewish emancipation in Germany and in the United States, but also falls behind the latest developments in Jewish history, even when it comes to his own call for integrating Jewish history into German or American histories. For example, characterizing the nationalist convictions of German Jews as "ingratiation" (Anbiederung) instead of asking about common intellectual traditions shows that Schneider himself still conceives German and Jewish histories as two distinct histories. In order to analyze the various Jewish paths into modernity, however, these paths need to be understood as inseparable elements of the dialectics of this very modernity.
Notes
[1]. For instance: Michael Brenner, Vicki Caron and Uri R. Kaufmann, eds., Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered. The French and the German Models (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).
[2]. Especially Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, reprint edition (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990); Jürgen Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992); Wolfgang Schluchter, Die Entwicklung des okzidentalen Rationalismus. Eine Analyse von Max Webers Gesellschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr, 1979).
[3]. See, among other works, three important collections of the late 1980s and early 1990s: Jacob Katz, ed., Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1987); Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein, eds., Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
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Citation:
Stefan Vogt. Review of Schneider, Karlheinz, Judentum und Modernisierung: Ein deutsch-amerikanischer Vergleich 1870-1920.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12534
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