Hermann Levin Goldschmidt. The Legacy of German Jewry. Introduction by Willi Goetschel and David Suchoff. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. 265 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8232-2826-3.

Reviewed by David Meola (Department of History, University of British Columbia)
Published on H-German (July, 2008)

Fifty Years Later: Celebrating the Past While Looking toward a Better Future

Hermann Levin Goldschmidt's (1914-98) seminal work, Das Vermächtnis des deutschen Judentums (1957), is a treasure. Unearthed and translated by David Suchoff, this new edition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the original publication. This posthumous publication is both a breakthrough and a crowning achievement. This is the first of Goldschmidt's books to appear in English, and it acknowledges Goldschmidt's contribution to the field of German-Jewish history.

The work is structured to examine history from the standpoint that awareness of the past is not just important for understanding the past or present, but perhaps even more so for understanding the future. To interrogate that past and look to the future, Goldschmidt built upon the concept of Dialogik (dialogic). In his version, contradictions must be present in order to affirm knowledge. Dialogic is not a dialectic, but as the name implies, derived from a dialogue, in Goldschmidt's view--a dialogue between opposites that has the "liberating potential to work through a problem once a conflict is really acknowledged for what it represents: a reminder of the incompleteness of one side of a contradiction without the other."[1] In a sense, the past and future are two ends of Goldschmidt's dialogic and he uses German Jewry to show how it works. German Jews who were a product of the struggle for emancipation are the archetype for multicultural society; they were universalistic in outlook (by representing Enlightenment values) and particularistic in approach (by remaining Jews). In their history, increasing allegiance to one axis of values (Enlightenment secularism) meant enhanced experience of the other (greater particularism). In light of this status, Goldschmidt feels in order to understand where the West has come from and where it is heading, we must understand the journey of German Jewry. Goldschmidt believes that German Jews were the "pioneers of modernity."[2]

Although easy to read and straightforward in its structure, the work is quite complex. Goldschmidt uses his concept of dialogic in parts 2 and 3 to engage religion and politics simultaneously. Goldschmidt also turns to religion to explain the Shoah in part 4, looking at interpretations of Jewish suffering and sorrow and ending with a summary of his judgment on the legacy of German Jewry, especially its contributions to modernity.

Goldschmidt's well-rounded analysis also considers some of the social and religious changes that accompanied German Jewry's progression into modernity. He splits Jewish modernity into two sections: outer development and inner renewal. Outer development refers to the process of emancipation and acculturation; it describes attempts to bring German Jews closer to German society without giving up their Jewishness. The process of inner renewal, in contrast, sprang from greater society's rejection of German Jews' entrance into majority German society. Germans' rejection of German Jews' outer development and the subsequent development of antisemitism pushed German Jewry to look inward with just as much effort as it conducted its outer struggle for political emancipation. This inner renewal marked German Jewry's "central achievement ... and indeed, the message that became its legacy" (p. 54)--in the form of a "Jewish Renaissance." Goldschmidt situates both inner renewal and outer development in relation to what Leo Baeck called "the end" of German Jewry, and then tries to reframe history as a legacy from which we can draw conclusions and inspiration.

In the section on inner renewal, Goldschmidt traces how German Jews balanced the demands of modernity while retaining the "essence of Judaism"--the title of Leo Baeck's well-known book. Goldschmidt's thought represented a newer version of Baeck's, especially in the belief that Jewish particularity was sacrosanct, even within a universal framework. Goldschmidt believed that "modernity demands that we comes to terms with the greatness of different traditions without subordinating one to the other, or compelling a minority tradition to submit" (p. 126). In this section, Goldschmidt takes readers on a tour among prominent Jewish scholars and their thought, beginning with Hermann Cohen. He then tackles issues such as science, education, literature, and Jewish self-hatred, and concludes with a discussion about the necessity for Judaism's continued particularity. One of the most interesting chapters concerns the German Jewish quest for a vernacular Bible. This chapter showcases Goldschmidt's point that German Jews represented the most "modern" faction of Jews in the West. It was only when Jews translated the Tanakh into German that Jews could thrive and "strike roots, enabling its message to blossom and ripen to fruition" (p. 182).

Acknowledging the incompleteness of an account of Jewish modernity that neglects antisemitism, Goldschmidt's analysis characterizes the phenomenon itself as an actor that found a perfect victim in Judaism (p. 81). In Goldschmidt's dialogic system, antisemitism is the necessary contradiction of the Enlightenment and, therefore, the contradiction of the modernizing German Jewish community. Admittedly, Goldschmidt's discussion of this ideology does not convincingly prove that antisemitism is a unique and distinct actor, like a human being. As an ideology, antisemitism is shaped by people and it interacts with other ideologies and with other people, which shape each other reciprocally. Moreover, he does not make any distinctions between types of antisemitism, how it evolved from anti-Judaism, how it may have been influenced by the Orientalist tradition, its role as an offshoot of the Kulturkampf, or the ways that it spurred attacks on other groups. Goldschmidt also erroneously claims that the only history worth telling when writing about antisemitism is that of the victims, which goes against his concept of dialogic.

One of the most interesting things about reading the work is consideration the relevance of its translation and republication at this point. Aside from celebrating the book's fiftieth anniversary, at least two reasons justify the current printing of this book. The first is Goldschmidt's focus on the future; as Willi Goetschel and Suchoff write in the introduction, a "legacy ... is history that concerns us in the present--something from the past that remains, as a remnant--but a past whose meaning is not fully present to us, because its task has yet to be fulfilled" (p. 18). Considering Goldschmidt's notion of dialogic is an opportunity to reopen discussions about the possibility of a future that allows universal esteem for humans along with particularity for particular cultural groups--the sort of vision Goldschmidt believes society should be moving towards.

The second reason may lie in the renewed, more prominent acceptance of Goldschmidt's ideas. At the time this book was printed, Goldschmidt was one of the first scholars in the post-Shoah era to challenge the lachrymose view of German-Jewish history. He abandoned notions of German-Jewish history as a series of failed encounters resulting in ultimate destruction for a vision of a continual progression of outer successes and inner revitalization that benefited a German-Jewish community on a path toward fulfillment of the Enlightenment promise. Goldschmidt's analysis was thus at odds with the prevailing historiographical traditions of his own day, especially the views disseminated from Leo Baeck Institutes around the world.[3] Furthermore, Goldschmidt's view of the past and German Jewry challenged top-down and one-sided analyses of Jewish emancipation in the German states--the process in which only the state and the dominant society could permit and deny Gleichstellung (equalization) and that denied Jews any role in this process. Following Goldschmidt, German Jewry's inability to achieve social parity was more a reflection of the "West's betrayal of the Jews" and even more pointedly "the West's betrayal of itself," rather than anything that came from German Jews themselves (p. 97). The overall value of Goldschmidt's scholarship transcends his life and remains a potential source for further exploration. Goldschmidt's own "legacy" is perpetuated by the Stiftung Dialogik (Foundation for Dialogic), dedicated to the exploration of Goldschmidt's ideas and the study of German and Swiss Jewries.

The translation and edition of the work are stellar; however, Goetschel und Suchoff might have added a few elements to their concise, informative introduction. For example, it would have been helpful for them to have discussed how Goldschmidt's final chapter ("The Legacy of German Jewry") fits into the recent narrative surrounding the recently-built Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Given Goldschmidt's interest in the German-Jewish legacy, it also would have been interesting to read more about the re-building of the German-Jewish community in the reunified Federal Republic. Both events are especially relevant to Goldschmidt's discussion about German Jewry's legacy, since his thinking suggests that the Jews of Germany should be able to live in German and European society as integrated members, free from prejudice and able to express their desire to be both Jews and citizens of individual states. It would also be interesting to learn whether Goetschel and Suchoff think that the newly thriving Jewish community in Germany helps to fulfill or contest what Goldschmidt believes are German Jewry's three "modes of continuity": first, sharing in a common future and destiny of the German state; second, a persisting memory outside of Germany; and third, a meaning beyond the history of the original group that applies universally?

In a particularly telling passage, Goldschmidt writes: "For the right to their own particularity ... German Jewry would acquire a universal legitimacy in their wake, a right that came to be seen as part of the heritage of all groups throughout the world" (pp. 62-63). Later in the section, he continues, "in light of the breakthrough signified by the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 ... it should be unambiguously clear to all that the initial tension between equal rights and conformity is not some historical relic now behind us, but a battle still underway in the present, and a challenge to our future" (p. 63). Given their lasting pertinence today, these comments were prescient. Goldschmidt's words challenges us to remember German Jewry and its struggles as universal models in shaping our own societies.

Notes

[1]. Willi Goetschel, "Dialogik: Difference and Alterity in Hermann Levin Goldschmidt's Thought," at Stiftung Dialogik, http://www.dialogik.org/papers/goetschel05.htm (Accessed on May 30, 2008).

[2]. Michael A. Meyer, Judaism within Modernity: Essays on Jewish History and Religion (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 100-101.

[3]. Nils Roemer, "Back to the Future: History as Memory in Hermann Levin Goldschmidt's Work," Stiftung Dialogik, http://www.dialogik.org/papers/roemer01.htm (Accessed on May 30, 2008).

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Citation: David Meola. Review of Goldschmidt, Hermann Levin, The Legacy of German Jewry. H-German, H-Net Reviews. July, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14769

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