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the Osterreichisch-Israelitische Union-the first Jewish self-defense
organization anywhere in Europe. From 1884 until 1895 this outspoken
orthodox rabbi sat in the Austrian
Reichsrat
as the militant representa–
tive of a Galician electoral district. He rapidly became the boldest
spokesman in the Imperial Parliament against the intimidating phalanx
of Austrian anti-Semitism. Bloch also lashed out against Jewish assimi–
lationism and the timidity of the Jewish establishment (especially the
Israelitische Kuitisgemeinde),
and sharply criticized the impotence of
the Imperial government and most Austrian political parties in the face
of racist demagogy and open incitement to violence.
Rabbi Bloch strongly advised his co-religionists to remain neutral in
the face of the increasingly intractable Austrian nationality conflicts.
Jews could not "put on German-national or Czech-national airs," he
argued, without losing all political credibility. They must cease to be one–
sided proselytes of German liberalism and defend without fear their own
specifically Jewish interests. Jews must cease to indulge their penchant
for self-mockery, their self-hating denial of Jewish origins and ostenta–
tious indifference to their own religious tradition. Equally they should
resist the temptation to identify with the siren-call of nationalism–
whether it be Teutonic, Magyar, or Slav. Modern anti-Semitism was for
Bloch indissolubly connected with the pathology of exclusivist, intoler–
ant nationalism. However, Bloch did not believe that Zionism or a more
diaspora-oriented Jewish nationalism would necessarily be the best
answer. The preferred solution, so he argued, was to construct an Aus–
trian supra-national nationality of which the Jews would constitute the
Grundstock-the
substantive core. According to Rabbi Bloch, only the
Jews were "Austrians
sans phrase,"
that is Austrians without any quali–
fying adjective, and hence they were uniquely placed to fulfill the so–
called "Austrian mission"-to help implement for the first time in
history the idea of a
Rechtsstaat
which would truly protect the rights of
all its citizens, irrespective of language, religion, race, or nationality.
Bloch's supra-national vision of Judaism and of a more tolerant, plural–
istic "Austrianism" was of course an idealization and it reflected hopes
that were still high before 1914 that constitutional federalism, decentral–
ization, cultural-national autonomy, and political democratization might
neutralize the still raging Austrian ethnic conflicts. His advocacy of a
heightened Jewish ethnic consciousness fused with Austrian state patrio–
tism was a variant on these trends, but it was only one of several expres–
sions of Jewish national identity that emerged in late Habsburg Austria.
Already in the early 1880s, East European Jewish students at the Uni–
versity of Vienna had, for example, founded the first Jewish nationalist
