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'The Jews Are in Trouble': A 1936 Warning
Seeing growing hostility toward Jews in Europe -- and ignorance of their plight in America -- an Atlantic author makes the case for zionism.
Apr 27 2012, 10:02 AM ET
Although his gentile friends were blind to the radicalizing anti-semitism in Europe, Ludwig Lewisohn saw the truth: European Jews were in grave danger. And it wasn't a matter assimilation could solve -- with each year, they were increasingly targeted and discriminated against, regardless of how they felt about their home nations.
In a January 1936 Atlantic piece, succinctly titled "Jews in Trouble," Lewisohn outlined the status of the diaspora. In short, it wasn't good. More than ever before, Jews were being rejected from the societies of Europe. "They are isolated as savages isolate things or persons accursed or sacred, so that in many cities they suffer hunger because no one will sell them food," he writes.
Lewisohn, an outspoken Zionist, had moved to the United States from Germany early in his life and initially tried to shake his Jewish roots. But as he grew and entered academia, he learned that despite assimilating, he could not escape being labeled a Jew and discriminated against as such. Embracing his identity, he divorced his Christian wife and found a new Jewish one, and he preached Zionism wholeheartedly. To him, saving the Jewish people was a matter of saving the Jewish identity, and he believed that "assimilation as a method of adjustment is totally bankrupt."
More: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/the-jews-are-in-trouble-a-1936-warning/256396/
Apr 27 2012, 10:02 AM ET
Although his gentile friends were blind to the radicalizing anti-semitism in Europe, Ludwig Lewisohn saw the truth: European Jews were in grave danger. And it wasn't a matter assimilation could solve -- with each year, they were increasingly targeted and discriminated against, regardless of how they felt about their home nations.
In a January 1936 Atlantic piece, succinctly titled "Jews in Trouble," Lewisohn outlined the status of the diaspora. In short, it wasn't good. More than ever before, Jews were being rejected from the societies of Europe. "They are isolated as savages isolate things or persons accursed or sacred, so that in many cities they suffer hunger because no one will sell them food," he writes.
Lewisohn, an outspoken Zionist, had moved to the United States from Germany early in his life and initially tried to shake his Jewish roots. But as he grew and entered academia, he learned that despite assimilating, he could not escape being labeled a Jew and discriminated against as such. Embracing his identity, he divorced his Christian wife and found a new Jewish one, and he preached Zionism wholeheartedly. To him, saving the Jewish people was a matter of saving the Jewish identity, and he believed that "assimilation as a method of adjustment is totally bankrupt."
More: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/the-jews-are-in-trouble-a-1936-warning/256396/