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Jewish question
Debate in European society pertaining to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews in society

The Jewish question was a significant 19th- and 20th-century European debate about the civil, legal, and political status of Jews as a minority. Originating during the Age of Enlightenment and following the French Revolution, it involved issues like Jewish disabilities, quotas, segregation, and assimilation. From the 1880s, antisemitic movements exploited the term, culminating in the Holocaust and the Nazi “Final Solution.” The debate also influenced discussions about a Jewish homeland or state, ultimately leading to the establishment of Israel in 1948.

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History of "the Jewish question"

Further information: History of the Jews in Europe

The term "Jewish question" was first used in Great Britain around 1750 when the expression was used during the debates related to the Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753.1 According to Holocaust scholar Lucy Dawidowicz, the term "Jewish Question", as introduced in western Europe, was a neutral expression for the negative attitude toward the apparent and persistent singularity of the Jews as a people against the background of the rising political nationalism and new nation-states. Dawidowicz writes that "the histories of Jewish emancipation and of European antisemitism are replete with proffered 'solutions to the Jewish question.'"2

The question was next discussed in France (la question juive) after the French Revolution in 1789. It was discussed in Germany in 1843 via Bruno Bauer's treatise Die Judenfrage ('The Jewish Question'). He argued that Jews could achieve political emancipation only if they let go their religious consciousness, as he proposed that political emancipation required a secular state. Bauer's conclusions were disputed by Karl Marx in his essay Zur Judenfrage, in which he argued that Jewish political emancipation was possible because a secular state presupposes and sustains the private religious life of its citizens, while still maintaining the abolition of capitalism would bring about the end of Judaism: "The existence of religion is not in contradiction to the perfection of the state... [However] once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object."3

According to Otto Dov Kulka4 of Hebrew University, the term became widespread in the 19th century when it was used in discussions about Jewish emancipation in Germany (Judenfrage).5 In the 19th century hundreds of tractates, pamphlets, newspaper articles and books were written on the subject, with many offering such solutions as resettlement, deportation, or assimilation of the Jewish population. Similarly, hundreds of works were written opposing these solutions and offering instead solutions such as re-integration and education. This debate however, could not decide whether the problem of the Jewish question had more to do with the problems posed by the German Jews' opponents or vice versa: the problem posed by the existence of the German Jews to their opponents.

From around 1860, the term was used with an increasingly antisemitic tendency: Jews were described under this term as a stumbling block to the identity and cohesion of the German nation and as enemies within the Germans' own country. Antisemites such as Wilhelm Marr, Karl Eugen Dühring, Theodor Fritsch, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Paul de Lagarde and others declared it a racial problem insoluble through integration. They stressed this in order to strengthen their demands to "de-jewify" the press, education, culture, state and economy. They also proposed to condemn inter-marriage between Jews and non-Jews. They used this term to oust the Jews from their supposedly socially dominant positions.

The topic was also taken up by Jews themselves. Theodor Herzl's 1896 treatise Der Judenstaat advocates Zionism as a "modern solution for the Jewish question" by creating an independent Jewish state, preferably in Ottoman-controlled Palestine.6 The 1934 science fiction novel Zwei im andern Land [de] by the German rabbi Martin Salomonski [de] imagines a refuge for Jews on the moon.7

The most infamous use of this expression was by the Nazis in the early- and mid-twentieth century. They implemented what they called their "Final Solution to the Jewish question" through the Holocaust during World War II, when they attempted to exterminate Jews in Europe.89

Bruno Bauer – The Jewish Question

In his book The Jewish Question (1843), Bauer argued that Jews could only achieve political emancipation if they relinquished their particular religious consciousness. He believed that political emancipation required a secular state, and such a state did not leave any "space" for social identities such as religion. According to Bauer, such religious demands were incompatible with the idea of the "Rights of Man". True political emancipation, for Bauer, required the abolition of religion.10

Karl Marx – On the Jewish Question

Karl Marx replied to Bauer in his 1844 essay On the Jewish Question. Marx repudiated Bauer's view that the nature of the Jewish religion prevented assimilation by Jews. Instead, Marx attacked Bauer's very formulation of the question from "can the Jews become politically emancipated?" as fundamentally masking the nature of political emancipation itself.11

Marx used Bauer's essay as an occasion for his own analysis of liberal rights. Marx argued that Bauer was mistaken in his assumption that in a "secular state", religion would no longer play a prominent role in social life. As an example, he referred to the pervasiveness of religion in the United States, which, unlike Prussia, had no state religion. In Marx's analysis, the "secular state" was not opposed to religion, but rather assumed it. The removal of religious or property qualifications for citizenship did not mean the abolition of religion or property, but rather naturalized both and introduced a way of regarding individuals in abstraction from them.12 On this note Marx moved beyond the question of religious freedom to his real concern with Bauer's analysis of "political emancipation." Marx concluded that while individuals can be 'politically' free in a secular state, they were still bound to material constraints on freedom by economic inequality, an assumption that would later form the basis of his critiques of capitalism.

After Marx

Werner Sombart praised Jews for their capitalism and presented the seventeenth–eighteenth century court Jews as integrated and a model for integration.13 By the turn of the twentieth century, the debate was still widely discussed. The Dreyfus Affair in France, believed to be evidence of anti-semitism, increased the prominence of this issue. Theodor Herzl proposed the advancement of a separate Jewish state and the Zionist cause.14

Between 1880 and 1920, millions of Jews created their own solution for the pogroms of eastern Europe by emigration to other places, primarily the United States and western Europe.

The Nazi "Final Solution"

In Nazi Germany, the term Jewish Question (in German: Judenfrage) referred to the belief that the existence of Jews in Germany posed a problem for the state. In 1933 two Nazi theorists, Johann von Leers and Achim Gercke, both proposed the idea that the Jewish Question could be solved by resettling Jews in Madagascar, or somewhere else in Africa or South America. They also discussed the pros and cons of supporting the German Zionists. Von Leers asserted that establishing a Jewish homeland in Mandatory Palestine would create humanitarian and political problems for the region.15

Upon achieving power in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state began to implement increasingly severe legislation that was aimed at segregating and ultimately removing Jews from Germany and (eventually) all of Europe.16 The next stage was the persecution of the Jews and the stripping of their citizenship through the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.1718 Starting with 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom and later, during World War II, it became state-sponsored internment in concentration camps.19 Finally the government implemented the systematic extermination of the Jewish people (The Holocaust),20 which took place as the so-called Final Solution to the Jewish Question.212223

Nazi propaganda was produced in order to manipulate the public, the most notable examples of which were based on the writings of people such as Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz and Erwin Baur in Foundations of Human Heredity Teaching and Racial Hygiene. The work Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living) by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche and the pseudo-scholarship that was promoted by Gerhard Kittel also played a role. In occupied France, the collaborationist regime established its own Institute for studying the Jewish Questions.

In the United States

Main article: History of antisemitism in the United States

According to historians Ronald J. Jensen and Stuart Knee, by the 1870s Russian-American relations were strained by the mistreatment of American Jewish visitors in Russia. President Ulysses S. Grant responded to American Jewish requests for action to protect visitors.24 By the 1880s, the outbreak of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia and consequent mass emigration of Jews to New York made relations worse. After 1880, escalating pogroms alienated both elite opinion and public opinion in the U.S.25 In 1903, the Kishinev pogrom killed 47 Jews, injured 400, and left 10,000 homeless and dependent on relief. American Jews began large-scale organized financial help and assisted in emigration from Russia.26 More violence in Russia led in 1911 to the United States repealing an 1832 commercial treaty.27

In the 1920s, according to historian Leo Ribuffo, auto magnate Henry Ford sponsored a major outburst of attacks on Jews in his magazine, the Dearborn Independent, bundles of which he sent to all Ford dealerships every week. It especially promoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and also published new articles that blamed Jews for America's problems. In 1927, following a lawsuit by Aaron Sapiro, Ford publicly apologized for his anti-Semitism, retracted his earlier views, and closed his magazine.28

A "Jewish problem" was discussed in majority-European countries outside Europe, even as the Holocaust was in progress. American aviator and celebrity Charles A. Lindbergh used the phrase repeatedly in public speeches and writing. For example in his diary entry of September 18, 1941, published in 1970 as part of The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, he wrote29

[John T.] Flynn says he does not question the truth of what I said at Des Moines,30 but feels it was inadvisable to mention the Jewish problem. It is difficult for me to understand Flynn's attitude. He feels as strongly as I do that the Jews are among the major influences pushing this country toward war. He has said so frequently and he says so now. He is perfectly willing to talk about it among a small group of people in private.

Contemporary use

A dominant anti-Semitic conspiracy theory is the belief that Jewish people have undue influence over the media, banking, and politics. Based on this conspiracy theory, certain groups and activists discuss the "Jewish Question" and offer different proposals to address it. In the early 21st century, white nationalists, alt-righters, and neo-Nazis have used the initialism JQ in order to refer to the Jewish question.3132

See also

Notes

Further reading

References

  1. Kulka, Otto D. (1994). "Introduction". In Auerbach, Rena R. (ed.). The 'Jewish Question' in German Speaking Countries, 1848–1914, A Bibliography. New York: Garland. ISBN 978-0-8153-0812-6. Freely available at "The following essay, by Prof. Otto Dov Kulka, is based on the introduction to Rena R. Auerbach, ed.: "The 'Jewish Question'". The Felix Posen Bibliographic Project on Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Archived from the original on 25 November 2005. 978-0-8153-0812-6 ↩

  2. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1975). The war against the Jews, 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. pp. xxi–xxiii. ISBN 978-0-03-013661-0. OCLC 1103005. 978-0-03-013661-0 ↩

  3. Karl Marx (February 1844). "On the Jewish Question". Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Retrieved 25 March 2008. /wiki/Karl_Marx ↩

  4. As of 2008 Otto Dov Kulka's works are out of print, but the following may be useful and is available on microfilm: Reminiscences of Otto Dov Kulka (Glen Rock, New Jersey: Microfilming Corp. of America, 1975), ISBN 978-0-88455-598-8, OCLC 5326379. /wiki/ISBN_(identifier) ↩

  5. Kulka, Otto D. (1994). "Introduction". In Auerbach, Rena R. (ed.). The 'Jewish Question' in German Speaking Countries, 1848–1914, A Bibliography. New York: Garland. ISBN 978-0-8153-0812-6. Freely available at "The following essay, by Prof. Otto Dov Kulka, is based on the introduction to Rena R. Auerbach, ed.: "The 'Jewish Question'". The Felix Posen Bibliographic Project on Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Archived from the original on 25 November 2005. 978-0-8153-0812-6 ↩

  6. Herzl, Theodor (1988) [1896]. "Biography, by Alex Bein". Der Judenstaat [The Jewish state]. transl. Sylvie d'Avigdor (republication ed.). New York: Courier Dover. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-486-25849-2. Retrieved 28 September 2010. 978-0-486-25849-2 ↩

  7. "Jews in Space. Six questions for Lena Kugler". 11 September 2022. https://www.juedisches-museum.ch/en/jews-in-space-2/ ↩

  8. Stig Hornshoj-Moller (24 October 1998). "Hitler's speech to the Reichstag of January 30, 1939". The Holocaust History Project. Archived from the original on 14 March 2008. Retrieved 25 March 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080314131150/http://holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/hitler-19390130.shtml ↩

  9. Furet, François. Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews. Schocken Books (1989), p. 182; ISBN 978-0-8052-4051-1 /wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Furet ↩

  10. Peled, Yoav (1992). "From Theology to Sociology: Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx on the Question of Jewish Emancipation". History of Political Thought. 13 (3): 463–485. ISSN 0143-781X. JSTOR 26214177. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26214177 ↩

  11. Karl Marx (February 1844). "On the Jewish Question". Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Retrieved 25 March 2008. /wiki/Karl_Marx ↩

  12. Marx 1844:[T]he political annulment of private property not only fails to abolish private property but even presupposes it. The state abolishes, in its own way, distinctions of birth, social rank, education, occupation, when it declares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-political distinctions, when it proclaims, without regard to these distinctions, that every member of the nation is an equal participant in national sovereignty, when it treats all elements of the real life of the nation from the standpoint of the state. Nevertheless, the state allows private property, education, occupation, to act in their way – i.e., as private property, as education, as occupation, and to exert the influence of their special nature. Far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists on the presupposition of their existence; it feels itself to be a political state and asserts its universality only in opposition to these elements of its being. ↩

  13. Werner Sombart (1911) [translated in 2001]. The Jews and Modern Capitalism (PDF). Batoche Books. Retrieved 25 March 2008. /wiki/Werner_Sombart ↩

  14. Theodor Herzl (1896). Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage (in German). M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung. Retrieved 25 March 2008. /wiki/Theodor_Herzl ↩

  15. Dr. Achim Gercke. "Solving the Jewish Question". Archived from the original on 6 February 2007. Retrieved 15 September 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20070206083804/http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/gercke.htm ↩

  16. David M. Crowe. The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath[permanent dead link]. Westview Press, 2008. https://books.google.com/books?id=LB_HLHJ_J64C&dq=%22the+jewish+question%22+david+m+crowe&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0 ↩

  17. Adolf Hitler; Wilhelm Frick; Franz Gürtner; Rudolf Hess (15 September 1935). "Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor". Archived from the original on 19 March 2008. Retrieved 25 March 2008. /wiki/Adolf_Hitler ↩

  18. Adolf Hitler; Wilhelm Frick (15 September 1935). "Reich Citizenship Law". Archived from the original on 21 March 2008. Retrieved 25 March 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080321001525/http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/documents/citizen.htm ↩

  19. Doris Bergen (2004–2005). "Germany and the Camp System". Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State. Community Television of Southern California. Retrieved 25 March 2008. https://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/background/ideology.html ↩

  20. Niewyk, Donald L. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Also see "The Holocaust", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question." /wiki/Columbia_University_Press ↩

  21. Stig Hornshoj-Moller (24 October 1998). "Hitler's speech to the Reichstag of January 30, 1939". The Holocaust History Project. Archived from the original on 14 March 2008. Retrieved 25 March 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080314131150/http://holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/hitler-19390130.shtml ↩

  22. Gord McFee (2 January 1999). "When did Hitler decide on the Final Solution?". The Holocaust History Project. Archived from the original on 2 June 2015. Retrieved 25 March 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20150602232947/http://www.holocaust-history.org/hitler-final-solution/ ↩

  23. For some extra depth, see Wannsee Conference. /wiki/Wannsee_Conference ↩

  24. Ronald J. Jensen, "The Politics of Discrimination: America, Russia and the Jewish Question 1869–1872." American Jewish History 75.3 (1986): 280-295 online. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23883266 ↩

  25. Stuart Knee, "Tensions in nineteenth century Russo‐American diplomacy: The 'Jewish question'." East European Jewish Affairs 23#1 (1993): 79-90. ↩

  26. Philip Ernest Schoenberg, "The American Reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903." American Jewish Historical Quarterly 63.3 (1974): 262-283 online. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23877915 ↩

  27. Stuart E. Knee, "The Diplomacy of Neutrality: Theodore Roosevelt and the Russian Pogroms of 1903-1906." Presidential Studies Quarterly 19#1 (1989): 71-78 online https://www.jstor.org/stable/40574565 ↩

  28. Leo P. Ribuffo, "Henry Ford and 'The International Jew'" American Jewish History 69.4 (1980): 437-477. online https://www.jstor.org/stable/23881872 ↩

  29. Lindbergh, Charles Augustus (1970). "Thursday, September 18". The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 541. ISBN 978-0-15-194625-9. LCCN 78124830. OCLC 463699463. 978-0-15-194625-9 ↩

  30. "Des Moines Speech" Archived January 30, 2017, at the Wayback Machine. PBS. Retrieved: January 19, 2011. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lindbergh/filmmore/reference/primary/desmoinesspeech.html ↩

  31. Kestenbaum, Sam (21 December 2016). "White Nationalists Create New Shorthand for the 'Jewish Question'". The Forward. Retrieved 25 May 2017. http://forward.com/news/356773/among-white-nationalists-catchy-new-shorthand-for-the-jewish-question/ ↩

  32. "JQ stands for the 'Jewish Question,' an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people have undue influence over the media, banking and politics that must somehow be addressed" (Christopher Mathias, Jenna Amatulli, Rebecca Klein, 2018, The HuffPost, 3 March 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/florida-public-school-teacher-white-nationalist-podcast_us_5a99ae32e4b089ec353a1fba) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/florida-public-school-teacher-white-nationalist-podcast_us_5a99ae32e4b089ec353a1fba ↩