Kahler's 'Jews Among the Nations' Reviews
Historic Role, Zionism, Status in Germany
Prof. Eric Kahler, a former
faculty member of Princeton and
Ohio State universities, now a fel-
low of the Leo Baeck Institute,
incorporated three of his lectures
into a book and has entitled it
"Jews Among the Nations." He
has appended to these lectures the
interesting debate be had with
Prof. Philip K. Hitti in a discussion
on Arab-Israel relations in which
Prof. Albert Einstein participated.
At the outset the Kahler ap-
proach assumes a very positive
aspect with this statement with
which he opens his first essay,
"What Are the Jews?" which he
delivered in 1950:
"One day when I was discus-
sing the problem of anti-Semi-
tism with the eminent Austro-
Jewish poet, Richard Beer-Hof-
mann, he said to me: 'I am not
at all astonished at the fact that
they hate us and persecute us.
But what I cannot understand is,
why they do not marvel at us
more than they do.'
"Well, marveling at the
strange phenomenon of the Jew-
ish people would imply some
knowledge of their history, some
general perception of the Jewish
destiny. And if there were such
knowledge and such perception,
there could not be so much
hatred and persecution. But what
seems to me more astonishing,
and what I sometimes really
worry about, is that the Jews
themselves usually lack a sound
knowledge of their history, that
the Jews themselves do not mar-
vel at the record of their his-
tory, at the sheer fact of their
presence as Jews in our day,
that they seem to have no true
consciousness of the unique
phenomenon they represent. I
hold it to be a most urgent re-
quirement in our critical times
that the Jews be thoroughly
aware of what they are and
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what they have stood for during,
thousands of years.
"It must here be stated that
what I mean by self-awareness
is not to be identified with a ,
certain parochial Jewish self-
familiarity and self-indulgence,
of which there is more than
enough evidence. On the con- 1
trary, the self-awareness that I
have in mind is to be sought as
a necessary pre-requisite for the
understanding of a special res-
ponsibility which we bear before
and for the world, and before
and for the idea of our own
historical existence."
At the very outset, therefore,
Dr. Kahler asks for knowledge,
for an understanding of Jewish
values, for the links through cul-
tural values that makes for gen-
uine Jewish loyalties.
In the main, his lectures attain
that goal. Perhaps the timing—the
fact that his presentation today is
of themes he discussed so long
ago—lectures he delivered in 1950,
1945 and only the final one in
1963—causes his work to be a bit
pedantic. Nevertheless, what he
states is, in the main, construc-
tive.
There are some matters with
which the Jewish reader may differ
with great seriousness. For in-
stance, when he speaks, in his
first essay about Jesus as "the
last of the great prophets," he
assumes a theological pose that
can not be accepted. The Jewish
world is not ready—if it ever will
be—to include Jesus among the
prophets. In the era of the
prophets Jesus was unknown and
it was not until long after his
death that his disciples, all Jews,
created the religious movement in
his name.
His philosophical approach to
the position of the Jews of
Europe is thought-provoking. He
comments on the occasional
trend toward baptism, on immi-
gration, the effects of technolo-
gical developments and other
factors. He indicates how Jew-
b ait ing was used to gather
"g roups sympathetic toward
Fascism." Guilt charged against
Jews stemmed from accusations
r elating to internationalism,
democracy and finance, and the
Kahler analyses point to the ac-
cumulation of hatred. Yet, the
author comments, there is some-
thing which distinguishes the
Jews, "that is the magnitude of
the demands which their God,
or their destiny, or their aspira-
tion, whatever we may call it,
has made upon them; demands
which they have never relin-
quished, yet have never been
able to fulfill. This has caused
them to suffer more than all
other peoples, and the more
they are made to suffer, the
greater the distinction conferred
upon them. Such an excess of
suffering through thousands of
years must carry a special his-
toric significance. But here we
face the bounds where under
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standing ends and faith begins."
While saying that Jews are "no
model human beings" and like
Christians have "ugly spots" on
their histor y, he nevertheless
points to Jewish trends that per-
vade all of Jewish history and
states: "I do not know of any
other people who possess in their
revered writings a declaration like
this, set down in a Midrash: 'Any
distress concerning Israel and the
people of the world is a distress.
Any distress concerning Israel
alone is no distress.' "
In his discussion of the Jewish
experiences in Germany Dr. Kah
ler makes the interesting comment
that "the Jews pressing, or being
pressed so deeply into German
existence," provoked "violent re-
pulsion." He adds: "German Jew-
ry perished," Bernhard Guttmann
said, "because it did not stay alien
enough. Its hubris consisted in the
desire to assimilate completely."
Dr. Kahler's view is that a
special and a unique relationship
existed between Jews and Ger-
mans, that: "Germany, never
complete as a nation, remained
a kind of open society, open to
influences from everywhere, and
so to the boundless eagerness of
the Jews to find a homeland and
to join in the universalistic ten-
dency that had been alive for
centuries in this special home-
land. But the unfilled power as-
pirations, which persist in the
physical and emotional depths of
the Germans, reacted with the
brutal force that has always
been the last resort of the men-
tally helpless. So the physical
Germans, getting the upper hand,
wanted to rid the country, once
and for all, of a relationship that
had reached too deep. Just as the
Christian Church wanted to cut
itself off from an irksome but
indissoluble parentage by a last-
ing enslavement of the Jews, so
the Nazis tried to extricate a
Nordicized Germany from its all-
too-close Jewish and Judaeo-
Christian ties. And, body-minded
as they were, they thought it
could be done by killing off six
million human beings."
Here we have another view of
Jewish-German relations which
may or may not be accepted gen-
erally but which is nevertheless
worth considering in studying the
great tragedy that afflicted Jewry
and mankind.
An appendix to Dr. Kahler's
book is not related to the text as
such but nevertheless of historic
significance. He includes at the
end of the volume the texts of the
disputations between himself and
the anti-Zionist, anti-Israel Prof.
Philip K. Hitti and the comments
on the disputation by Prof. Albert
Einstein, as well as the reply to
Hitti by himself and Dr. Einstein.
The disputation was on the Zion-
ist position and the Jewish Nation-
al Home in Palestine. The debates
were published in April 1944 in the
Princeton Herald. The usual anti-
Zionist arguments were offered by
Dr. Hitti, Dr. Kahler defended the
Jewish position, and together with
Prof. Einstein the latter set forth
views that served to clarify the
Zionist position.
While there are deviations with
which the reader must differ, Dr.
Kahler's historical analyses pre-
sent, in the main, inspired writ-
ings. His "The Jews Among the
Nations," published by Frederick
Ungar Publishing Co. (250 Park
S., NY3), is worth studying.
Education won't make everyone
a leader, but it will teach us which
leader to follow.
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