Theodor Adorno and the Failure of “Prejudice” to Account for Anti-Semitism

The son of a Catholic mother and Jewish father who had converted to Lutheranism, the German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno emigrated to the U.S. after the Nazis came to power. Thereafter he devoted serious attention to anti-Semitism, which he had fled, and American racism, which he was encountering for the first time. Eric Oberle, in a recent book, explores the connections between the two in Adorno’s thought. In his review, James Loeffler finds a thread running from Adorno’s theories to the inability of much current thinking about racism, prejudice, and “intersectionality” to account for the hatred of Jews:

Oberle’s book is full of pathbreaking insights rendered in a dense, fast-paced but crystalline prose. . . . In the end, though, it leaves unanswered the precise question of how Adorno saw the relationship between anti-Semitism and racism. It is not clear whether Adorno ever really resolved the tension between his Marxian universalism and “the demands of particularity.” Did he go far enough in his recognition of the pluralistic nature of human experience—and the varieties of identity that the world has produced? Happily, we can look forward to Oberle’s promised second volume, continuing this crucial endeavor of intellectual history.

Meanwhile, events in our day continue to exhibit the ongoing relevance of Adorno’s insight that [what he termed] “positive” and “negative identities”—subjective self-affirmation and external societal marking—operate in tandem. Any account of anti-Semitism must [therefore] grapple with the distinctive character of Jewish identity. That is why the problem of anti-Semitism continues to resist easy incorporation into a general theory of prejudice—generalization requires congruence among all units in the category. But where do Jewish people fit in the roster of other oppressed minorities? Neither color nor class neatly applies. Nor does sexuality. Even religion cannot capture the scope of anti-Semitism, as the case of Adorno himself, [who knew nothing of Judaism], perfectly illustrates.

That may help explain why Adorno’s latter-day heirs, the social theorists of intersectionality, have struggled so much with how to slot anti-Semitism into their theories of prejudice. Like the spokespeople of Columbia University, [who after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre released a statement that mentioned neither anti-Semitism nor Jews], they remain captive to their own limited understandings of the Jewish identity under attack.

Read more at Marginalia

More about: Anti-Semitism, Frankfurt School, History & Ideas, Racism

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society