From a newsletter.
"Was Gombrich Jewish? The easy answer is yes, but in a 1999 radio interview, Gombrich provides a more complicated answer. He poses the question, "How does one define a Jew?" and then responds: "I have been forced to think about this question longer than I cared to. Jewishness is either a religion, and I don't belong to it, or, according to Nazi teaching, a so-called race, but I don't believe in race." To the interviewer's question of whether Jewish tradition could be seen as a cultural force, Gombrich replied: "I don't believe that there is a separate Jewish cultural tradition. I think the German jews were largely assimilated.. Many didn't even know that they had Jewish roots...But when one is asked today, one naturally says, Yes, I'm jewish. The right answer would be, I am what Hitler would call a Jew. That's what I am."
(From "E.H. Gombrich: "Once Upon A Time"" by Melanie Gustafson, u. of Vermont in the Bulletin of The Center of Holocaust Studies)
(From "E.H. Gombrich: "Once Upon A Time"" by Melanie Gustafson, u. of Vermont in the Bulletin of The Center of Holocaust Studies)
posted by History Is A Weapon at 8:58 PM
3 Comments:
He is, of course, wrong.
Jews are, according to some, a "civilization." I prefer to think of us as a tribe: though dispersed throughout the world, many of us share common ancestry; for those who don't, there are rituals of inclusion. We share many customs with other tribal groups from our native Africa: food taboos, male circumcision, ritual cleansings, worship focused on group rather than individual prayer, etc. Groups of Jews in various places (e.g. Germany, Tunisia, Persia, India, Ethiopia) have developed unique elaborations of these customs over thousands of years, creating a variegated Jewish cultural field and making it difficult to describe Judaism as a monolithic "culture". The customs themselves, however, remain identical in their basic forms.
More importantly, in relation to Gombrich's point, we share a strong group identification. Much of this results from necessity, given the isolation and ostracism of our communities throughout the Jewish diaspora. Because of this, however, it has become easy for those with an agenda to label us as a "race", the fact notwithstanding that, as there are Jews in every corner of the world, so there are Jews of every color, shape and size.
The "religion" label is equally false. Though Jews do share a set of traditional religious customs, as do Navajo, Xhosa, and Ainu, Judaism is no more a "religion" than Navajo-ism, Xhosa-ism, or Ainuism: "Religion" -- in the sense of a group defined solely by individual elective adherence to a set of dogmas -- is a Christian construct. Christians have been remarkably effective at assimilating people of many origins: one can walk into any church and, upon simply declaring oneself a Christian, become one. However, one cannot simply approach a rabbi, shaman, or other tribal spiritual leader and declare oneself a member of the group; it takes years of study, dedication, and active participation before the rituals of inclusion are taken to incorporate an outsider.
Taking the case of assimilated German Jews, it is naïve to suggest that, simply because they were comfortably integrated into the wider popular culture, they had no peculiar cultural tradition. Jews have assimilated into societies all over the world for thousands of years, but even the most secular maintained a group identity. Hence the attacks at the outset of the Nazi campaign of genocide against the Jews not against members of the "race", but against the cultural institutions -- synagogues, small businesses, community leaders -- that held them together, even amid their assimilation into the outside world.
E.H. Gombrich can self-identify any way he wants; to me, ultimately, he is a Jew the way a Muslim Yoruba is still a Yoruba, regardless of whether s/he worships Allah or Shango.
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He is, of course, wrong.
Jews are, according to some, a "civilization." I prefer to think of us as a tribe: though dispersed throughout the world, many of us share common ancestry; for those who don't, there are rituals of inclusion. We share many customs with other tribal groups from our native Africa: food taboos, male circumcision, ritual cleansings, worship focused on group rather than individual prayer, etc. Groups of Jews in various places (e.g. Germany, Tunisia, Persia, India, Ethiopia) have developed unique elaborations of these customs over thousands of years, creating a variegated Jewish cultural field and making it difficult to describe Judaism as a monolithic "culture". The customs themselves, however, remain identical in their basic forms.
More importantly, in relation to Gombrich's point, we share a strong group identification. Much of this results from necessity, given the isolation and ostracism of our communities throughout the Jewish diaspora. Because of this, however, it has become easy for those with an agenda to label us as a "race", the fact notwithstanding that, as there are Jews in every corner of the world, so there are Jews of every color, shape and size.
The "religion" label is equally false. Though Jews do share a set of traditional religious customs, as do Navajo, Xhosa, and Ainu, Judaism is no more a "religion" than Navajo-ism, Xhosa-ism, or Ainuism: "Religion" -- in the sense of a group defined solely by individual elective adherence to a set of dogmas -- is a Christian construct. Christians have been remarkably effective at assimilating people of many origins: one can walk into any church and, upon simply declaring oneself a Christian, become one. However, one cannot simply approach a rabbi, shaman, or other tribal spiritual leader and declare oneself a member of the group; it takes years of study, dedication, and active participation before the rituals of inclusion are taken to incorporate an outsider.
Taking the case of assimilated German Jews, it is naïve to suggest that, simply because they were comfortably integrated into the wider popular culture, they had no peculiar cultural tradition. Jews have assimilated into societies all over the world for thousands of years, but even the most secular maintained a group identity. Hence the attacks at the outset of the Nazi campaign of genocide against the Jews not against members of the "race", but against the cultural institutions -- synagogues, small businesses, community leaders -- that held them together, even amid their assimilation into the outside world.
E.H. Gombrich can self-identify any way he wants; to me, ultimately, he is a Jew the way a Muslim Yoruba is still a Yoruba, regardless of whether s/he worships Allah or Shango.
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