Jews and Gentiles

A Historical Sociology of Their Relations

Werner J. Cahnman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351510783
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Jewish Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

"Studies of the Jewish experience among peoples with whom they live share some similarities with the usual histories of anti-Semitism, but also some differences. When the focus is on anti-Semitism, Jewish history appears as a record of unmitigated hostility against the Jewish people and of passivity on their part. However, as Werner J. Cahnman demonstrates in this posthumous volume, Jewish-Gentile relations are far more complex. There is a long history of mutual contacts, positive as well as antagonistic, even if conflict continues to require particular attention.Cahnman's approach, while following a historical sequence, is sociological in conception. From Roman antiquity through the Middle Ages, into the era of emancipation and the Holocaust, and finally to the present American and Israeli scene, there are basic similarities and various dissimilarities, all of which are described and analyzed. Cahnman tests the theses of classical sociology implicitly, yet unobtrusively. He traces the socio-economic basis of human relations, which Marx and others have emphasized, and considers Jews a ""marginal trading people"" in the Park-Becker sense. Simmel and Toennies, he shows, understood Jews as ""strangers"" and ""intermediaries."" While Cahnman shows that Jews were not ""pariahs,"" as Max Weber thought, he finds a remarkable affinity to Weber's Protestantism-capitalism argument in the tension of Jewish-Christian relations emerging from the bitter theological argument over usury.The primacy of Jewish-Gentile relations in all their complexity and variability is essential for the understanding of Jewish social and political history. This volume is a valuable contribution to that understanding."

1
Approach to the Subject

The relations between Jews and Gentiles are the oldest known and thoroughly documented continuing relations between ethnically and religiously different groups of people, and they remain as problematic and intensely disturbing today as they were in antiquity. In many ways they are the prototype of intercultural relations, any place, any time. But in other respects, they are unique. The religious difference is always there, but unlike the difference between Hindus and Muslims in India, it is not a difference arising from diametrically opposed value systems, but from mutually exclusive claims to one and the same tradition. Another difference arises from the peculiar–although by no means unique–position of the Jews in the social structure, which at times appears sharply accentuated, at other times largely blurred. Linguistic differences are often present, but more frequently non-existent; and it is remarkable that even where linguistic acculturation is complete, other differences between Jews and Gentiles remain unaltered and virulent. Differences in phenotype are pronounced in some countries of Jewish settlement, but in the majority of them insignificant; yet, Jewish facial features and physical characteristics have at times been emphasized, as if they were of the essence; and racial prejudice, from the earliest times to the present moment, has assumed a character indelibilis of the Jews, independent of phenotype, which even conversion could not erase. All of these are elements in a comprehensive theme, the unity of which one must be able to grasp without disregarding the variety of its manifestations. One thing, though, is certain: one can hardly understand the nature of a late manifestation, such as the position of the Jews in contemporary America, if one is not aware of the pattern of history from which such a late and complex manifestation is likely derived. The occupational distribution of American Jews or the incidence of intermarriage in America is not the same as the socio-economic structure of the Jewish community in seventeenth-century Poland or the phenomenon of conversion in fourteenth century Spain, but they are variants of permanent traits. They are unique adaptations to changing circumstances; yet, if one compares them to related phenomena in the past, they testify to the durability of human intentions and institutions. To the extent that we are able to demonstrate that durability, we can say that we have provided an explication.

Our approach, then, is not historical in the sense of a conventional historical narrative; it is in the nature of a social history and even a sociological history. The historian and the sociologist share the same subject matter, but their aims and procedures are not the same. The historian, once he has chosen his topic, sets himself the goal of telling a story that may range from the earliest to the latest manifestations of a phenomenon, without much consideration for related phenomena, the recording of which is left for another story; and this story will be told by another narrator-specialist. The sociologist, on the other hand, is interested not so much in the story itself, but in the categories that it contains. In addition, he is not concerned with phenomena, but with relations between phenomena. Where the historian records and interprets materials, the sociologist compares the recorded data with and attempts to arrive at a systematic view of their relationships. If social history differs from narrative history in that it is concerned with what is typical in the social reality prevailing at a given period rather than with single occurrences connected over time, the sociological historian adds the element of comparability, both within a specific social entity and between a variety of disparate social entities. To illustrate: the social history of Jewish-Gentile relations in the European Middle Ages describes and analyzes the economic, political, social, cultural, and religious activities of Jews and Christians in that period as they relate to each other’s spheres of existence. Social history becomes sociological history inasmuch as it compares events and activities observed in the Middle Ages with those that may be observed in antiquity and in the modern era and further, inasmuch as it compares Jewish-Christian–and Jewish-Moslem–relations with other minority-majority relations, especially if they are in the nature of relations between what Howard Becker has called “marginal trading peoples” and settled populations. In this way, conclusions can be drawn and even predictions may become possible.

There are various pitfalls in this procedure, as compared to others, which must be clearly stated. There are caveats for the historian, the sociologist and the sociological historian or–with a slightly different accent–for the historical sociologist. A historiographer is not a mere chronicler of events; he selects his data in accordance with a general theme, such as Heinrich Graetz’s theme of Jewish history as the history of a people of “thinkers and sufferers” or Simon Dubnow’s theme of Jewish history as the history of the survival of a people and its institutions. With all that, however, the historiographer remains within the boundaries of the narrative. He remains a positivist in that he aims at assembling all the available data and “letting the facts speak for themselves.” One ruler’s attitude toward the Jewish community differs from the attitude of another ruler, one persecution from another persecution; no conceptualization, anchored in a comparison of patterns, seems possible or is even attempted by the historian, for fear that the uniqueness of the event may be blotted out. The pitfall of the sociologist, on the other hand, is that he gets imprisoned within the categories of a preconceived “system.” The data are assembled in prepared conceptual boxes, and what does not fit into a particular box, is either forced into it by hook or by crook or excluded from consideration. The color of life is likely to be lost in the generality of categories, and if specific statements are forthcoming, they are bound to be trite.

In the approach of the sociological historian, the dangers of not seeing the forest for the trees and disregarding the concreteness of phenomena in the pursuit of scientific categories, are avoided; but the danger of overextension is very real. It is plainly impossible to know all the literary sources needed for the description and analysis of a single period or specific problem, and less so the literature pertinent to several periods or problem areas or, finally, the literature informing a comparative of a variety of cultural situations. Considerations of this kind may well deter the researcher from attempting to unravel as complex a phenomenon, as Jewish-Gentile relations. Teamwork has been suggested as a remedy, but teamwork has its own pitfalls in that congenial teams of equals are hard to come by; the “Readers” that have become fashionable of late, which string together assorted fragments of approaches, are a poor substitute. Another way of coming to grips with the problem of methodology is to adopt ideal-typical procedure. Actual life situations are of a mixed and conglomerate nature; and even if we were to succeed in catching them all in a sufficiently large net, we are not likely to gain much by enumerating the bewildering multitude of the phenomena that we encounter. If we want to achieve clarity, we are constrained to select predominant traits and train our sights on them. It must be remembered, however, that type constructs are ideal images or “things of thought,” as Toennies called them, not descriptions of reality. The ideal image provides the point of departure, but modifications, transitions and exceptions may be indicated in ideal-typical analysis, but more frequently and specifically, they will have to be worked out in subsequent monographs.

Occasionally, the ideal image may assume the aspect of a symbol. Symbols are concrete or imagined signs for something that cannot be expressed directly because it defies detailed descriptions: it is either something that is feared or adored or that is too complex to be analyzed. There are positive symbols uniting people in adoration and negative symbols uniting them in fear; a complex symbol combines the aspects of both. Jewish-Gentile relations, over and over again, have been epitomized in symbols summarizing a welter of actual encounters in one single imagined encounter that contains them all. The actual encounter, which the historian or sociologist registers, approximates but never equals the imagined encounter; but the actual encounter is illuminated by the symbol under which it is subsumed. At the same time, symbolic perceptions are both summaries of past encounters or occurrences and molders of emerging attitudes. A symbol is not a stereotype. A stereotype is the generalization of traits into a Gestalt. A symbol resembles an ideal in that it is a product of thought, but it is not an object of selection, as a type construct would be; and it lacks the element of comparability. Instead, it partakes in the quality of enhancement, which is the essence of myth. A symbol is not a type, but it may be a sign that suggests a type construct.

To select the type construct involves more than mere perception. To be sure, the “objective” past is an illusion. If the illusion is indulged in by a historian, the process of interpretation is likely to be disregarded; if it is harbored by a sociologist, it may result in the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. There are as many pasts, recent or remote, as there are investigators and beholders of the past. But that does not mean that the individual researcher, who perceives the past from a particular vantage point in the present, holds a permit for letting his imagination run wild. To perceive the facts, one must know where to look for them; one must be ready to ask more than a single question of them; and some perceptions are more perceptive than others. The selection of the type construct, then, is a matter of trained imagination. Training involves hard work over a considerable period of time, chiefly acquainting oneself with a wide range of the pertinent literature; and imagination is kindled by the intimate acquaintance that training provides. Beyond that, there is no hard and fast rule. Fortunately, one type construct does not exclude another; the researcher is free to select and even to combine those that serve besting the circumstances. I can only hope that I have selected the constructs that illuminate the widest possible area of interest by the most economical means.

Some comments of a personal nature may be inserted at this point. My first acquaintance with the literature on Jewish-Gentile relations dates back to my early youth, and I have added ever since to that initial knowledge in a variety of ways. Yet, though my present knowledge extends over a considerable segment of the literature in various languages, I am handicapped by my lack of acquaintance with works written in Hebrew and Yiddish, except where translations or, at least, partial quotations are available. I have worked from primary sources only, regarding some German, Austrian, and Hungarian materials of the nineteenth century; but I have acquired considerable knowledge concerning the contemporary Jewish scene in general and Jewish-Gentile relations in particular, as a practitioner and consultant in civic defense and social work agencies, both in Europe and America. The social scientist learns much that goes beyond the single case from participant observation. As far as history in a larger sense is concerned, in attempting to make the present state of Jewish-Gentile relations understandable from its antecedents, I am making two assumptions that arise from the nature of the data themselves. For one thing, I contend that the structural patterns that govern Jewish-Gentile relations have been consolidated in the high Middle Ages. Further, I am relying in the main on materials from the German-, French-, and English-speaking areas of central Europe. The justification for this selectivity rests with the fact that the pattern of Jewish-Gentile relations and its most powerful symbolic expressions have arisen paradigmatically in this area from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, so that what has evolved provides something akin to an ideal type construct for a wide range of subject matter.

Spain, Poland, and the modern world in Europe and America may be considered as providing modifications that are derived from the central type and are in one way or another comparable to it. What is observed in peripheral areas may then be understood as being related to the core area, and what is happening now as a variation of patterns of long standing and as a phase in an ongoing process. The combination of pattern and process means that a pattern is never erased, but perpetually modified. From century to century and from area to area, the picture becomes increasingly more complex until the modifications, as it were, threaten to outgrow the initial image; it is at this point that recalling the pattern is essential to comprehension. If these prerequisites for ordering the data are not lost sight of, some scientific quality, at least to an extent, can be imparted to the account.

Jewish-Gentile relations are not co-extensive with anti-Semitism because they involve friendly as well as antagonistic contact situations. But just as illness rather than health is the problem in medicine, so do conflict and its causes provide the focus of interest in human relations. Individual health and social equilibrium are individual constructs, but illness and conflict are actual occurrences. What is in question is the concept of conflict as well as the nature of causation. Each of these must be seen in context. If conflict were considered in isolation, the nature of the social context would be falsified because conflict is only one element of the total picture; conflict without accommodation would be destructive of social relations. Jewish-Gentile relations, like other group relations, must therefore be comprehended under the aspect of symbiosis as well as under the aspect of conflict, with both aspects conditioning each other in a variety of ways. In speaking about causation in history, we must recognize that we do not have before us isolated and unambiguously ascertainable causes which, in turn, lead to equally ascertainable consequences. The history of mankind does not resemble a laboratory in which one undertakes test-tube experiments. Rather, historical situations are distinguished by the fact that mutually dependent chains of causation, which may either reinforce or counteract each other, lead to likewise interdependent reinforcing or counteracting chains of effects, and these again grow into new causes, leading to new effects, and so forth. The bewildering multitude of cause-and-effect relations can hardly be reduced to a single general principle, but the continually changing objects of observation can be described, compared and evaluated. This means that we may have before us unity in variation: situations change over time, but if essential elements remain identifiable, the result may be that one situation, while not the exact equivalent of another, nevertheless contains an element of comparison that can serve as a guide in explanation. Within limits, comparison allows a causal interpretation to be corroborated or denied.

Among the causes of the rejection as well as the acceptance of Jews in a larger society, those of a socio-economic nature appear to be prominent. But if we search for an explication of the causes of anti-Semitism and related phenomena, we must try to ascertain in what sense we can consider causes of a socio-economic nature as a coherent chain of causation, different from other chains of causation. Economic causes of human behavior, that is, those that are connected with the need for making a living, are only partial phenomena in the totality of the societal nexus. Consequently, they can hardly be separated, except in a mental experiment, from political, legal, religious and moral causes of the behavior of members of one human group in relation to another. All these possible causations must be kept in mind, even if we pay particular attention to the socioeconomic factor. We will even come to realize that the socio-economic factor is as much dependent on antecedent ideologies as it is, in turn, the causation of ideologies that arise on its foundation. In the case of the initial antagonism between the Church and the Synagogue, the ideological factor is clearly predominant; from the twelfth century onward, the socio-economic factor overshadows everything else. A multivariate analysis of sorts is called for.

However, we do not mean to scatter our considerations far and wide so as to try to uncover all the motivations of human action that may have a bearing on Jewish-Gentile relations. We will have to disregard motivations that refer to the weakness of human nature as expressed in the attitudes and behavior patterns of individual human beings. Our investigation belongs in the field of structural sociology, not because of individual psychology. This must be emphasized regarding the widely quoted modern literature about the psychological, even psychiatric, causes of group-antagonism, such as racism or anti-Semitism, for instance, the literature surrounding the concept of the “authoritarian personality.” This literature deals with an entirely different chain of causation than the one we intend to scrutinize, namely one that can be considered only if and when the socio-economic chain of causation has been clarified. Leading psychologists admit that a structural element, such as economic insecurity, is required to bring to the fore one or another manifestation of group antagonism, even if the emotional predisposition for it has been present previously in certain types of individuals. In other words, the predisposition remains ineffective, if the structural conditions are not favorable for its release.

Another caveat may seem to be in order. Some authors have tried to explain away the specific causes of anti-Semitism, saying that anti-Semitism was nothing but a special case of group antagonism. A gang of youngsters at an urban playground, an association of merchants on a business street, an ethnic group that occupies a particular region or a part of town–all of these may feel that another gang, other merchants, another ethnic or racial group competes with them unfairly and that they must therefore be kept at bay or ejected from where they have already intruded. Competition leads to conflict, but not necessarily to subsequent accommodation and assimilation. Where one or the other group, the invaders or the invaded, turns out to be the weaker party in the conflagration, the outcome may be the severance of societal bonds, by means of expulsion or stark oppression: the extreme case is marked by extermination. In order to achieve that end, one starts by providing the opponent with horns and claws and proceeds to defame him as the arch-enemy of humankind, so that one do away with him with a perfectly good conscience. If the opponent is defined as no longer being human, humanitarian considerations need not be wasted on him. All this is good sociology and may be applied to Jewish-Gentile as well as to other relations among men. But this procedure does not explain wherein Jewish-Gentile relations differ from other group relations and why it was the Jews who were depicted as the Devil Incarnate. In order to understand the particular in the general, we need to be attentive to the lessons of history.

However, before we do that, we must once again make it clear that any description and analysis of Jewish-Gentile relations are bound to remain one-sided and even to miss the point, if it restricts itself to manifestations of antagonism and disregards amity altogether. The pagan prophet Balaam who, as the Bible tells us, was sent to curse but instead was moved to bless, has found many successors until this day. The words of his blessing: “How beautiful are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling-places, Israel!” have been included in the daily prayer of the Jews. Leading minds throughout the centuries have praised Jewish achievements and cultural contributions, and Jews and Gentiles have dwelled side by side as good neighbors and maintained intimate friendships at all times. If this were not so, one would have to despair of human nature. But we have observed with horror in our time or, at any rate, not so long ago, that friendship can be defamed and ostracized and finally overcome by hostility, so that it may come to pass that millions of men, women and children are humiliated, starved, executed, burned and gassed without any serious effort being made by anybody to rescue them. This shattering experience must always be before our mind’s eye. We believe, therefore, that we are serving the cause of friendship if we lay bare the chains of causation that have nurtured malevolent attitudes and erupted in hostile outbreaks. For we can overcome only what we have clearly comprehended.

2
Theology as a Point of Departure

If one intends to understand the antagonism between Jews and Gentiles at its roots, one must understand its point of departure in theology. It is our initial thesis that theology comes first in the chain of causations that shape Jewish-Gentile relations as we know them today, and that the socio-economic reality that ensues bears the indelible stamp of its origin in theology. However, in this chapter we are only laying the groundwork for the main thesis. In antiquity and in the early Christian centuries until the advent of the high Middle Ages, a great many circumstances and developments had to come together to complete the plot of history. Once the major theme was established, which was not the case until the twelfth century, the newer centuries worked out the modifications. But whatever was reinforced or modified later the tale of the beginning is still evident.

In relating how it all started, one recognizes that the story has many aspects that reach far back in time. History is like a deep well in which every level of observation mirrors a deeper level beneath it. The actual depth of the well can hardly be fathomed. In the case of the Jews, one may say that Abraham came to Canaan as a migrant from beyond the Euphrates River and that the Children of Israel were “strangers in Egypt” before Moses led them out of the House of Bondage and into the Promised Land. In our context, these are matters of long ago. We begin with the statement that the antagonism between Jews and Gentiles, as we have come to know it, arises from a more immediate religious experience in Western civilization, namely ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Approach to the Subject
• 2. Theology as a Point of Departure
• 3. The Initial Position of the Jews in the Social Structure
• 4. The Usury Privilege
• 5. The Revolt of the Masses
• 6. The Jews and the Society of the High Middle Ages
• 7. The Judaeo-Arabic Symbiosis and the Splendor and Misery of the Jews of Spain
• 8. The Jews of Eastern Europe
• 9. The Ghetto
• 10. Court Jews and Bankers
• 11. Galut and Citizenship
• 12. From Liberalism to Racism: The Dialectics of Catastrophe
• 13. The Actual Jew and the Mythical Jew
• 14. A Comment about the Soviet Union
• 15. Is America Different?
• 16. Varieties of Pluralism in America
• 17. Jews and Blacks
• 18. The State of Israel
• Bibliography
• Selected Bibliography
• Index