Contemporary Consciousness Research Articles

The Dilemma of Identity for the Emancipated Jew

UDAISM today is characterized by a question mark. For what finds expression most often and most authentically within contemporary consciousness is a question: What is a Jew? This question is manifest in all of contemporary life in detached philosophicalliterary speculation, practical political-juristic formulation, and the ill-articulated but existentially immediate awareness of the ordinary individual. The existence of the Jew of today is marked by pervasive perplexity, which is thus authentically expressed by this recurring, nagging question. In the immediate lived reality of his existence he finds that he is unique. But what constitutes this uniqueness he does not know. He does not know what makes him a Jew. Thus, life today can be most accurately characterized as a search for identity. Closely bound up with this search, however, is a search for the vocation that the adjective Jewish is supposed to connote. For the Jew's identity is intimately enmeshed in his distinctive calling and task in this world. Indeed, his identity can be determined and articulated only in terms of his vocation. Thus, underlying the question, 'Vhat is a Jew? is the further question, What is the vocation of the Jew? In these two questions lie the crisis of present-day Jewry.

The Paths of Israel

The Jewish problem has become one of the most ominous and terrible issues of contemporary consciousness, which is tested by new waves of terrifying anti-Semitism. It must, however, be said that this ppves the way to a deeper realisation of the problem itself. It is raised to a new level, receives new definition and new illumination. Beneath the surface of the elemental outburst something far more essential, significant and decisive than all this sounding storm around the ‘Jewish question ‘is taking place. Above all, it becomes clear that it is not enough to oppose moral or legal standards to antiSemitism ; that the answer to the whole tragedy of Israel must be sought in its mysterious bond with the destinies of world-history.There are several ways of approaching the Jewish problem. For sociologists, economists, for historians of culture and for moralists, Jewry will always be a social, economic or cultural unit, or an object of moral valuation. Racial nationalism turns the whole issue into biology. At the present time anti-Semitism is primarily concerned with racial arguments; yet often these only Conceal feelings of hatred and resentment. I will not speak of the approach to the problem which has become the chief source of the delirious ideas about the ‘Jewish conspiracy,’ the ‘Wise men of Sion,’ etc.—legendary tales, or rather blood-stained slanders, which still confuse some minds, not so much in this country as on the Continent.