RO l3 ERT WI STP...ICH
35
In
Kohn's collecti on, there are many references to Jews as victims o f the
N azis, sca ttered all th e way through Arendt's earli er w ritings, but no sys tem–
atic inquiry into her vi ews on th e "Jewi sh Question." Ri chard Bernstein's
new book spl endidly fill s thi s gap, demonstrating how her attempts to under–
stand spec ifi call y Jewish issues helped to shape her thinking about po liti cs in
general and the life o f the mind . Arendt's li fe-s tory, from the tumultuous las t
yea rs in Weimar through her precari ous ex istence in Pari s as a statel ess Jewess
in the 1930s and her invol vement in Zi oni st politics in Ameri ca before 1948,
strongly ori ented her thinking. The ground of experi ence rather than theo–
ries guided her at all times and as she to ld Jaspers in 1946: " I have refu sed to
abandon the Jewi sh ques ti on as the foca l po int of m y hi sto ri cal and politi cal
thinking." l3ern stein , who is Pro fessor of Philosophy at the N ew School fo r
Social R esearch, takes us w ith care and precision through the variou s stages
of Arendt's involvement as an engaged Jewish intell ectual. Her early identi–
fi cati on with the "consc ious pari ah" as rebel and independent thinker, her
attempts to understand anti semiti sm as a po liti cal ideology, her refl ections on
statel essness and the totalitari an hell ; her attraction to and subsequent break
with Z ioni sm; her abiding fasc inati on w ith the fa il ed revolutionary experi–
ments of the modern age; and above all in the closing chapters, he gives us a
probing examination of her meciit:l tion s on the fundam en ta l nature of evil.
Bern stein cl early shows that the starting-point o f Arendt's analysis was
her perception of the Jews' lack o f preparation for the vicious political anti–
semiti sm that emerged in fin - de-siecl e Europe. Thi s fa ilure, according to
Arendt, deri ved partly from th e Jews' po liti ca l in experi ence as a peopl e, fi-om
fa tal fl aws in the emancipati on contract and th e nineteenth -century
European nation-s tate system and fi-om an inabili
ty
of mos t Jews to grasp th e
supra-nati onal , po liti cal charac ter o f the new anti semiti sm. Di ssati sfi ed as she
was w ith the classica l liberal traditi on (whi ch had refu sed to recogni se Jews
as a di stin ct peopl e), Arendt insisted that " when one is attacked as a Jew, one
must defend oneself as a Jew." But as l3ernstein points out, what she meant
by being a Jew , or by Jewi shn ess as opposed to Judaism, is far from cl ear.
Indeed, it is one of hi s mo re penetratin g cri ti cisms, that Arendt avoided the
tough qu es ti ons abo ut Jewish identity and had littl e feeling fo r, or interes t in ,
the reli gious aspects of Judaism .
On e mi ght well add that thi s blind spo t also di storted much o f Arendt's
perspective on Jewish hi sto ry as a whole. She tended to see the modern hi s–
tory o f the Jews through the rath er constri cting lens o f a struggle between
Jewi sh fin ancial cli ques, philanthropi sts, pariahs, and parvenus. From th e
French Dreyfu sa rd and revoluti onary Z ioni st, l3ernard Lazare, she had
learned to adopt the stance o f the "conscious pariah" and to argue that Jews
must assume poli ti ca l responsibili
ty,
to fight for their ri ghts as Jews. Arendt's
stri ctures had a certain subj ec tive log ic in the 1930s but they were grossly
