On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred

Paul Reitter

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780691119229
• eBook ISBN: 9781400841882
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

A new intellectual history that looks at "Jewish self-hatred"

Today, the term "Jewish self-hatred" often denotes a treasonous brand of Jewish self-loathing, and is frequently used as a smear, such as when it is applied to politically moderate Jews who are critical of Israel. In On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred, Paul Reitter demonstrates that the concept of Jewish self-hatred once had decidedly positive connotations. He traces the genesis of the term to Anton Kuh, a Viennese-Jewish journalist who coined it in the aftermath of World War I, and shows how the German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing came, in 1930, to write a book that popularized "Jewish self-hatred." Reitter contends that, as Kuh and Lessing used it, the concept of Jewish self-hatred described a complex and possibly redemptive way of being Jewish. Paradoxically, Jews could show the world how to get past the blight of self-hatred only by embracing their own, singularly advanced self-critical tendencies—their "Jewish self-hatred."

Provocative and elegantly argued, On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred challenges widely held notions about the history and meaning of this idea, and explains why its history is so badly misrepresented today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: Genealogical Imperatives
• Part Two: The Birth of “Jewish Self-Hatred” and the Spirit of Interwar Europe
• Part Three: Prominence: The Making of Theodor Lessing’s Book Jewish Self-Hatred
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments