Was the French Enlightenment Anti-Semitic? Revisiting the Great Debate

In 1968, the New York Review of Books—now well established as a clearinghouse of anti-Israel vituperation—published a review by the eminent Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper of Arthur Hertzberg’s seminal The French Enlightenment and the Jews. In that review, Trevor-Roper takes issue with the book’s argument that anti-Semitism is embedded in the framework of the French Enlightenment, and is given particular voice in the writings of Voltaire. Hertzberg contends that Voltaire’s various attacks on the Jews—about whom the great philosophe was generous enough to caveat that “it is not necessary to burn them”—were not incidental or anomalous, but part and parcel of his worldview. Revisiting this debate, Bernard Harrison writes:

A “charge that Voltaire repeated obsessively,” [writes Hertzberg], “was that the Jews hate all other men.” . . . Voltaire locates the reason for this hatred, as did Cicero, Apion, and other ancient writers, in the possession by the Jews not merely of a special body of law and custom, but of one intrinsically opposed to the general increase of reason and progress in Western civilization that Voltaire believed to have been set in motion by the classical world [of Greece and Rome], and which he saw it as the role of Enlightenment to reanimate and bring to fruition. The Jews, in his view, had contributed nothing to the march of reason.

There were indeed aspects of culture Voltaire considered specific to the Jews, but they consisted, in his opinion, mainly in a fanatical attachment to a benighted religion and an equally passionate attachment to money—[what he describes in his Philosophical Dictionary as] “their stubbornness, their new superstitions, and their hallowed usury.” Of these, perhaps the most salient for Voltaire is the stubbornness of the Jews: their rooted resistance to principles and rules of conduct deemed compelling by all rational men.

Harrison goes on to note what Voltaire’s thoughts on this subject have in common with those of other writers who found the Jews to present an especially stubborn obstacle to their particular political visions:

Europe has known a number of vast cultural-cum-political projects each aimed at some form of redemption of society or mankind. The Enlightenment, in the minds of its supporters, was one such. Such projects require their more radically inclined supporters to believe that a total reformation of society, or mankind at large, along the lines proposed by the project is within its grasp. That belief is invariably threatened by the many fissures—social, moral, and religious—that actually divide any nation, let alone the larger human world.

Thus, Harrison argues, “political enthusiasts” like Voltaire are “predisposed” toward anti-Semitism due to “the failure of the Jews, over many centuries of Diaspora, to assimilate totally and without remainder to any of the many matrix cultures that have hosted Jewish communities. This, of course is the ‘continuing Jewish way of life’ which Trevor-Roper regards as constituting ‘an objective basis for anti-Semitism.’”

Read more at Fathom

More about: Anti-Semitism, Enlightenment, Voltaire

To Stop Attacks from Yemen, Cut It Off from Iran

On March 6, Yemen’s Houthi rebels managed to kill three sailors and force the remainder to abandon ship when they attacked another vessel. Not long thereafter, top Houthi and Hamas figures met to coordinate their efforts. Then, on Friday, the Houthis fired a missile at a commercial vessel, which was damaged but able to continue its journey. American forces also shot down one of the group’s drones yesterday.

Seth Cropsey argues that Washington needs a new approach, focused directly on the Houthis’ sponsors in Tehran:

Houthi disruption to maritime traffic in the region has continued nearly unabated for months, despite multiple rounds of U.S. and allied strikes to degrade Houthi capacity. The result should be a shift in policy from the Biden administration to one of blockade that cuts off the Houthis from their Iranian masters, and thereby erodes the threat. This would impose costs on both Iran and its proxy, neither of which will stand down once the war in Gaza ends.

Yet this would demand a coherent alliance-management policy vis-a-vis the Middle East, the first step of which would be a shift from focus on the Gaza War to the totality of the threat from Iran.

Read more at RealClear Defense

More about: Gaza War 2023, Iran, U.S. Foreign policy, Yemen