Jewish Identities Nationalism Racism & Utopianism in Twentieth Century Music

From Ambivalence to Betrayal is the first study to explore the transformation in attitudes on the Left toward the Jews, Zionism, and Israel since the origins of European socialism in the 1840s until the present. This pathbreaking synthesis reveals a striking continuity in negative stereotypes of Jews, contempt for Judaism, and negation of Jewish national self-determination from the days of Karl Marx to the current left-wing intellectual assault on Israel. World-renowned expert on the history of antisemitism Robert S. Wistrich provides not only a powerful analysis of how and why the Left emerged as a spearhead of anti-Israel sentiment but also new insights into the wider involvement of Jews in radical movements.

There are fascinating portraits of Marx, Moses Hess, Bernard Lazare, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, and other Jewish intellectuals, alongside analyses of the darker face of socialist and Communist antisemitism. The closing section eloquently exposes the degeneration of leftist anti-Zionist critiques into a novel form of “anti-racist” racism.

"This is a magisterial work, providing a comprehensive understanding of the origins of the most pernicious challenges currently facing the Jewish people, especially those originating from the enemy within."—Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post

"With this politically urgent and morally compelling study, Wistrich offers a thoroughly researched and demystifying exploration of leftist biases, stereotypes and delusions regarding Jews, Judaism and the state of Israel."—Vladimir Tismaneanu, International Affairs

"Professor Wistrich has now written some 30 scholarly books on Jewish history and philosophy, but his work has been dominated by the subject of anti-Semitism. This book is his finest and most comprehensive on the subject."—Stephen Daisley, Standpoint

Jewish Identities mounts a formidable challenge to prevailing essentialist assumptions about "Jewish music," which maintain that ethnic groups, nations, or religious communities possess an essence that must manifest itself in art created by members of that group. Kland#225;ra Mand#243;ricz scrutinizes concepts of Jewish identity and reorders ideas about twentieth-century "Jewish music" in three case studies: first, Russian Jewish composers of the first two decades of the twentieth century; second, the Swiss American Ernest Bloch; and third, Arnold Schoenberg. Examining these composers in the context of emerging Jewish nationalism, widespread racial theories, and utopian tendencies in modernist art and twentieth-century politics, Mand#243;ricz describes a trajectory from paradigmatic nationalist techniques, through assumptions about the unintended presence of racial essences, to an abstract notion of Judaism.

Jewish Identities mounts a formidable challenge to prevailing essentialist assumptions about "Jewish music," which maintain that ethnic groups, nations, or religious communities possess an essence that must manifest itself in art created by members of that group. Klára Móricz scrutinizes concepts of Jewish identity and reorders ideas about twentieth-century "Jewish music" in three case studies: first, Russian Jewish composers of the first two decades of the twentieth century; second, the Swiss American Ernest Bloch; and third, Arnold Schoenberg. Examining these composers in the context of emerging Jewish nationalism, widespread racial theories, and utopian tendencies in modernist art and twentieth-century politics, Móricz describes a trajectory from paradigmatic nationalist techniques, through assumptions about the unintended presence of racial essences, to an abstract notion of Judaism.

"This book makes a decisive and controversial contribution to the history of musical modernism. Moricz radically but thoroughly scrutinizes concepts of Jewish identity, and in doing so re-orders our understanding of 'Jewish music' as an outgrowth of nationalist, racist and utopian ideologies. The scholarship is superior in every respect. Jewish Identities is destined to become a seminal work in the reception history of European musical modernism. An absolutely outstanding and intellectually brilliant work."and#151;Harry White, author of The Keeper's Recital: Music and Cultural History in Ireland, 1770-1970

"This book makes a decisive and controversial contribution to the history of musical modernism. Moricz radically but thoroughly scrutinizes concepts of Jewish identity, and in doing so re-orders our understanding of 'Jewish music' as an outgrowth of nationalist, racist and utopian ideologies. The scholarship is superior in every respect. Jewish Identities is destined to become a seminal work in the reception history of European musical modernism. An absolutely outstanding and intellectually brilliant work."--Harry White, author of The Keeper's Recital: Music and Cultural History in Ireland, 1770-1970

Robert S. Wistrich is the Neuburger Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (2010) and Laboratory for World Destruction: Germans and Jews in Central Europe (Nebraska, 2007).

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Note on Transliteration

Introduction

I. JEWISH NATIONALISM and#192; LA RUSSE: THE SOCIETY FOR JEWISH FOLK MUSIC

1. "Trifles of Jewish Music"

2. Zhidand#239; and Yevrei in a Neonationalist Context

II. MAN'S MOST DANGEROUS MYTH: ERNEST BLOCH AND RACIAL THOUGHT

3. Racial Mystique: Anti-Semitism and Ernest Bloch's Theories of Art

4. Denied and Accepted Stereotypes: From Jand#233;zabel to Schelomo

5. The Confines of Judaism and the Elusiveness of Universality: The Sacred Service

III. UTOPIAS/DYSTOPIAS: ARNOLD SCHOENBERG'S SPIRITUAL JUDAISM

6. Uneasy Parallels: From German Nationalism to Jewish Utopia

7. Torsos and Abstractions: "Music in Its Promised Land"

8. On the Ashes of the Holocaust: Anxiety, Abstraction, and Schoenberg's Rhetoric of Fear

9. A Taste for "the Things of Heaven": Cleansing Music of Politics

Postscript: "Castle of Purity"

Notes

Bibliography

Index