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their distinctiveness except in the narrow field of religion. That was a nin–
teenth-century concept of emancipation that many Jews eagerly accepted.
It has since been abandoned as unacceptable or too restrictive, not only by
the Jews but by their host societies. A hundred years ago, Bernard Lazare,
a French anarchist who was also a Jewish nationalist and a leading defend–
er of Alfred Dreyfus, called assimilation
une doctrine bdtarde,
meaning that
the price which Gentile society demanded for social acceptance was a
betrayal of freedom and individuality. If the price asked of any minority,
not just the Jews, is to abandon their distinctive culture-even when that
culture is not harmful to other members of the society-this can no longer
be true tolerance. Lazare was one of the first critics to demonstrate that an
emancipation which entails assimilation would indeed have negative con–
sequences for the integrity of free human groups in general.
Finally, with regard to Israel and normalization: True, right now the
state of Israel does not shine like a light to most Gentiles, largely because
it has had to live under extraordinarily adverse circumstances. To me it
seems enough of an achievement that a vibrant democracy has survived in
Israel under conditions of siege, in a country that has lived for fifty years in
a state of emergency. This is not to excuse the many mistakes and unfor–
tunate episodes that have happened in Israel's history. The question of
what the Jewish State represents is really a major issue, and nobody can say
exactly how it will be resolved. In Israel today there is a trend among many
secularists to say that we should aspire to nothing more than a normal exis–
tence, to be like other peoples. Obviously, Israelis would dearly wish to
have the burden of war ended, and everything that is associated
wi
th it, lift–
ed from their backs. Since its birth, security has been the overriding
concern on Israel's national agenda and this is, unfortunately, still the case
today. Whether Israel can find a new role for itself that would be more
consonant with the long and unique history of the Jewish people also
depends on its neighbors.
It
has the potential. If we look very soberly at the
real situation in the Middle East, if Israel were truly accepted and inte–
grated into the region, it undoubtedly has the capaci ty to exercise
economic, scientific-technical, intellectual, and educational leadership, just
because it is the most developed society in the region. That leaves a big
question about the willingness of its Arab neighbors to accept it and also
about its own readiness
to
integrate into the region. Were this option to
materialize, it would then raise a whole new set of issues concerning the
distinctiveness of Israeli identi ty: the price of national integration might
entail a degree of blending into the Middle Eastern environment that I'm
not sure Israelis would universally welcome.
Stephen Kalberg:
I want to ask Robert Wistrich to elaborate upon the
issue of assimilation in Weimar Germany. I knew the rate of intermarriage
