THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Si Friday, May 2, 1975 Theorist and Essayist Moses Hess Remembered By SHALOM BEN CHORIN April 6, 1975 marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Moses Hess in Paris at the age of 63. Inter- ment took place in Cologne, but some 10 years ago his remains were transferred to Israel whose revival by the restoration of Jewish state- hood Moses Hess had envi- sioned. Hess was born in 1812, the son of a Jewish industri- alist. His first major work The Sacred History of Mankind", published in 1837, was permeated with a Utopian, messianic social- ism in which no special role is as yet allotted to the Jew- ish people. From 1841 Hess came under the spell of Karl Marx. With some friends he founded the "Rheinische Zeitung" and became its edi- tor, and later its Paris cor- respondent. It was in this paper that his long theoreti- cal articles which were later to be collected and edited under the name "Socialist Essays", appeared. How- ever, it did not take long be- fore tension developed be- tween Hess on the one hand and Marx and Engels on the other, since Hess who was a religious socialist could not subscribe to the purely ma- terialistic concept of ,com- munism and this attitude gained him the nickname of "Communist Rabbi". Boris Smolar's In 1862 Hess brought out in Leipzig his book "Rome and Jerusalem," which established his eminent place in Zionist history. The book lacks systematic order and is somewhat confused, taking the form of a collection of letters and notes, but the lack of system is more than out- weighed by his intensity of feeling and fervor of con- viction. 'Between You . . and Me' Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, JTA (Copyright 1975, JTA, Inc.) ON THE ALERT: The deteriorated American-Israel _ relations, the Arab economic warfare against Israel and the American Jewish community will be high on the agenda of the four-day annual meeting of the American Jewish Com- mittee which takes place in New York this week. With the collapse of the negotiations by U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to bring about an understand- ing between Egypt and Israel, leaders of the American Jew ish Committee have been deeply involved in meeting with high government officials in Washington - including Kis- singer - and with members of Congress. They seek to coun- teract the angry and impulsive way in which Kissinger pre- sented the breakdown of his "shuttle mission" to Cairo and Jerusalem by blaming Israel, but not Egypt. . Kissinger takes this breakdown as a personal insult and does not hide his displeasure with Israel. He makes his feelings known in various ways, although not in public statements. However, his utterances in private reach the public and undermine the feelings of sympathy toward Is- rael among many non-Jewish friends of Israel in this coun- try. Furthermore. they help to strengthen the pro-Arab propaganda in this country. In his anger and frustration, Kissinger discouraged a suggestion that Israel's Foreign Minister Yigal Allon should come to Washington to resume talks with him. However, he received Allon last week when the latter came to the United States on a private visit for the United Jewish Appeal. * * * THE CRUCIAL ISSUE: Leaders of the American Jew- - • ish Committee, including Max Fisher and former U.S. Su- preme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, have held private talks with Kissinger. Fisher also. met privately with Presi- dent Ford. The impression now is that Kissinger has mel- lowed and is beginning to look.at Israel's position with less personal bitterness. At present, formally declared non-belligerence by Egypt still remains for Israel a critical issue.. Egypt is still adamant in refuSing to make any binding commitment de- spite Israel's variety of proposals for return of territory. In the light of this situation the feeling among Jewish leaders in the U.S. is strong that Egypt, and not Israel. is the stub- horn party which torpedoed Kissinger's efforts. They can- not understand Kissinger's wrath against Israel, since the Israelis have shown their intention to accept compromises while Egypt remained unbending. * * * JEWISH COUNTERACTION: In the intensive review on the Middle East situation which will be presented at the American Jewish Committee conclave, some of the discus- sions will also be centered on the economic warfare now being waged by the Arab oil countries against American banks and firms who deal with Israel and who employ Jews. The size and nature of Arab investment in the United States - it reached $11 billion in 1974 - the rush of Ameri- can industry to participate in commercial deals with the Arab oil countries, and the Arab blackmail of American firms trading with Israel, as well as the open aggression against the American Jewish community. raises serious concerns for American Jewry. Combatting- Arab economic warfare is now one of the American Jewish Committee's highest program priorities. A special advisory committee of lay leaders has been formed by the AJCommittee and highest government offi- cials have been contacted to obtain federal action to coun- teract Arab attempts to impose discrimination against Jews in this country. The AJCommittee is also. investigating all reports of discrimination against Jews resulting from Arab demands, O1' from the voluntary actions of American corporations dis- missing Jews in the belief that this will help them to obtain Arab contracts. It is also gathering information from its hranches throughout the country as to whether the Arab anti-Jewish boycott threats to American firms affected their communities and to what extent. The first letter in the book begins with the follow- ing profession of faith: "After an estrangement of 20. years I am standing again in the midst of my people sharing in its festivi- ties and mourning, in its reminiscences and hopes, in its spiritual struggles within and with the civilized peoples among whom it dwells but with whom it is unable to merge, although it has been living with them and trying to join them for 2,000 years." In "Rome and Jerusalem" Hess develops the idea of a return of the Jewish people to its historic homeland. He does not see this return only from a religious, socialist and messianic angle, but also emphasizes the fact that Palestine forms a bridge between Asia and Europe being situated at the cross-roads to India and therefore offering adequate political and economic op- portunities to the Jewish people. Simultaneously with the return of the first settlers, a spiritual regeneration will take place and in this con- nection Hess had in mind the establishment of a new Sanhedrin which would re- form the ancient laws of Judaism in the spirit of modern times. When a Jewish critic, Leopold Loew, tried to prove the impossibility of a national rebirth by refer- ring to the multiplicity of languages used by the Jews, Hess, who had a perfect command of French and German, pointed to what he called the "new blossoming forth of the Hebrew language in our epoch". The Jewish people has everything, said Hess, workers and intellectuals, capital and energy; it is lacking in but one thing - soil of its own, "La Terre", as he put it in his French writings. On May 2, 1901, Theodor Herzl noted in his diary: Tuesday I went by train to Aussee, rented a flat for the summer and returned yes- terday. I passed the 19 hours of the journey there and back in reading "Rome and Jerusalem" by Moses Hess. I had started it for the first time in Jerusalem in 1898, but in the stress and strain of these years I never managed to read it to the end. "I am filled with enthu- siasm and admiration. What a sublime, noble spirit! Everything that we are attempting can be found in this book. Only his Hege- lian terminology is awk- ward. The spirit of Spinoza, the Jewish and national component are magnificent. Since Spinoza the Jews have not produced a greater spirit than this faded and forgotten Moses Hess." It was thanks to Max Bod- enheimer, herald of Zionism and faithful collaborator of Herzl's, that "Rome and Je- rusalem" was rescued from oblivion. Hess' family had arranged, after his death, for his book which was ob- noxious to them, since it was a powerful challenge to Jewish assimilation, to be reduced to pulp. Bodenhei- mer, the first political Zion- ist in Germany, initiated the publication of a second edition from a copy which came into Herzl's posses- sion. In 1950, 75 years after Hess' death, Martin Buber wrote about him: "Hess was the first to explain comprehensively and in m'odern language the deep connection between the People and the Land of Israel and to convey the message and the challenge resulting from it for our times. He was a beginner rather than a precursor, but a beginner in thought and word who died before the beginning of the realis- ation. Today, 75 years after his death, the Zionist movement has not yet fully arrived at Moses Hess. This is still true today, 25 years after his rehabilita- tion by Buber. We have grown accustomed to seeing Hess rather schematically as the precursor of Herzl or even as one of Herzl's fore- runners. This view is tenable only if' one looks at the history of concrete events, but much less so if the figure and work of Hess are viewed from the angle of the his- tory of ideas. He was indeed a deeper thinker than Herzl; he was more far-sighted, but he lacked in organiza- tional ability. His way re- mained, to use Baker's phrase again, "paths in Uto- pia". This is true of his socialist concepts no less than of his Zionist ideas. Marx and Engels turned away from him rather superciliously and expressly declared that they would not take respon- sibility for Hess' writings. Thus he was attracted more and more to Ferdinand Las- salle. He remained lonely. His truly prophetic book "Rome and Jerusalem" was a voice calling in the wilderness without echo or response. However, there is something like the per- manency of the spirit. Just as nothing gets lost in the world of matter, the spirit is indestructible and there is a renewal and re- vival of original and fertile ideas. from Hess' Zionist articles and essays on socialism were published in Hebrew by the "Zionist Library" of the Zionist Executive's Or- ganization Department in 1954 and 1956, and on the occasion of the 150th anni- versary of his birth, an an- thology of Hess' writings Not only ".Rome and Jeru- appeared in his "home salem" but also a selection town" of Cologne in 1962. Jewish Tragedy in Nazi Era Documented by Davidowi( Thoroughly documented, historically narrated as a complete record of the Nazi crime against Jewry, "The War Against the Jews, 1933-1946" by Lucy S. Davidowicz (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) is a major work exposing the Ger-‘ man crime in the Hitler era. This important volume was co- published by the Jewish Publication Society of America as a JPS membership book. The vast library dealing with the Holocaust indisputa- bly acquires impressive summation in this work. The author, who is a distinguished member of the fac- ulty of Yeshiva University, provides in this volume the re- sults of extensive research and studies of the horrors that were perpetrated during the mass murders as well as the psychological effects of the savageries upon the millions of Jewish sufferers. This volume is both historical in content and a study of Jewish reactions and the experiences of the victims in the death camps and the ghettoes in which they were installed by the Nazi criminals. Providing background material on the legislative proc- esses which preceded the decisions leading to the plotting of "The Final Solution," Dr. Davidowicz offers a history of German anti-Semitism with specific emphasis on the years 1933-1935 and the subsequent plans of the Hitler regime for the institution of the death camps and the aim for Jewry's extermination. The history of the Holocaust, the Adolf Eichmann role, the villainies that marked the planning of the total annihi- liation of the Jews who fell into the Hitler traps formulate the story of anguish that affected the victimized and re- sulted in the millions of dead in the Nazi grip of terror. The exact number of Jewish victims who were mur- dered by the Nazis, as they were outlined at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and as affirmed by "subsequent censuses and statistical analyses to have been remarkably accurate," is presented by Dr. Davidowicz in this chart: Estimated Number of Jews Killed in the Final Solution Estimated Jewish Estimated Pre-Final Population Annihilated Country Solution Population Number Percent 3,300,000 3,000,000 Poland 90 253,000 228,000 Baltic countries 90 240,000 210,000 Germany/Austria 90 80,000 90,000 Protectorate 89 75,000 90,000 Slovakia 83 70,000 54,000 Greece 77 140,000 105,000 The Netherlands 75 450,000 Hungary 650,000 70 245,000 SSR White Russia 375,000 65 1,500,000 900,000 SSR Ukraine* 60 65,000 40,000 Belgium 60 Yugoslavia 43,000 26,000 60 Romania 600,000 300,000 50 900 1,800 Norway 50 90,000 France 350,000 26 64,000 14,000 Bulgaria 22 40,000 8,000 Italy 20 Luxembourg 5,000 1,000 20 975,000 107,000 Russia (RSFSR)* 11 Denmark Finland Total 8,000 2,000 8,861,800 5,933,900 67 *The Germans did not occupy all the territory of this republic. The psychological aspects, the Jewish councils, the re- sistance, the totality of the crime resulting from a war against the Jews that became a major aspiration in the Nazi brutalities give emphasis to the horror that resulted from Hitlerism. All the experiences of that era, the subsequent defeat of the Nazi hordes, the Russian actions and the liberation, are part of the historic outlines of the depressing drama. Similarly, the aspects of the Nazi rule of terror in all other European lands are part of the record in this impressive work. Authoritatively researched, psychologically analyzed, treated with historical accuracy, Dr. Davidowicz's "The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945" will rank among the most valuable studies for historians and archivists.