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agencies and worked especially for the Youth Aliyah. She even tried,
briefly, to learn Hebrew, "to know my people," but she did not get
very far. She spoke no Yiddish either. She did, however, get to know
a lot of Communists, thanks to both of her husbands. Traces of
Marxian class analysis remained fixtures in her work, and not sur–
prisingly, because hating the philistines and the bourgeoisie was
built into her
Bildung.
Indeed Marx was one of the few philosophers
of whom Heidegger spoke with some respect. At any rate a revolu–
tionary cannot be a parvenu and, in fact, Arendt retained an abid–
ing faith in the civic virtues of the" real" working class in contrast to
"the mob." It was one of her many ahistorical fantasies.
When she arrived in America her refugee life continued under
new circumstances. She managed to eke out a living by working for
various Jewish agencies, papers, and publishers, and she remained
involved in Zionist politics. I am not quite sure I know, after reading
Young-Bruehl, what she supported, but she was certainly at odds
with all sides of the American Zionist movement. From the first one
gets the impression that pariah status demanded that she remain
apart from all "establishment" organizations, even if they were
Jewish. Eventually she joined Judah Magnes's party, which hoped
for a federal binational state in Palestine. At all times it was a
matter of great importance to her, however, that the Jews remain a
European people, and that Israel be composed of both native-born
and DiasporaJews. She was also involved in the more typical forms
of emigre politics, particularly a quarrel with the unspeakable
Theodor Adorno over the disposition of the manuscripts that Walter
Benjamin had entrusted to her before he killed himself.
Someone ought to write a study of emigre politics some day,
beginning with the American Tory exiles in London after the Revo–
lution. These politics are so dreadful because they consist entirely of
recriminations, for nothing new happens to emigres, there is no one
to persuade, no followings to be organized, and no offices or mea–
sures to be pursued. There is no future, only a past. Exile does noth–
ing for one's character.
It
is a very desperate condition. We know
from the history of nineteenth-century immigrations to America
that the suffering of the newcomers was dreadful. Their unhappiness
was due less to material deprivation, since many had never known
comfort, than to homesickness and loneliness. The German Jews in
New York in the 1930s and 1940s were able to form little "tribes," as
Arendt called her old friends, from among their fellow exiles and so
