Return to the Promised Land.. Jacek Surzyn
which, according to Hess, seem crucial for Jews and mankind. The first one is the popularization of a new type of anti-Semitism, based not on religious content, as in the case of Christianity, but on two other factors. The first of them was the development of race concepts, which Hess identified mostly with the national awareness and the dimension of historical mission, but also with highlighting biological and genetic differences arising from theories based on pseudoscientific concepts of racial differences between people. Another important factor that contributed to the emergence of such anti-Semitism was modern nationalism based on the idea of creating national states, derived from the genetically and historically rooted concept of nation. The middle nineteenth century with the Spring of Nations and fight for the unification of Germany and Italy was a good time to implement the idea of national states and the slogans of the French Revolution: a state was to be the community of free citizens, not the property of a ruler. In these new social conditions, together with a new type of anti-Semitism and nationalism, the situation of Jews also changed, as for the first time in history nearly all of them had an opportunity to actively participate in the new social life through emancipation, which meant that Jews began to be treated as citizens or even members of particular nations. Obviously, such emancipation and assimilation had to take place at the expense of giving up on their Jewishness, and as a result, also on the Diaspora community. This was a dramatic process and full of tensions, which largely contributed to radical behaviors both among Jews and of non-Jewish environment ←23 | 24→toward the Jewish community, which only intensified the anti-Semitism. Hess saw all these phenomena and managed to draw conclusions from them. He perceived the problem of anti-Semitism in an especially innovative way, referring to the area of Germany – familiar to him – because the Ashkenazi Diaspora played the dominant role in the Jewish community in Europe. It was among Germans that Hess noticed particularly strong expressions of the abovementioned anti-Semitic phenomena and the birth of a new national philosophy, resulting in evident pursuits of spiritual and real reunification of the Reich and the formation of a strong national state. Hess defined the phenomenon of German (or more broadly, Germanic) anti-Semitism in new categories, beginning with the attempt to understand the so-called Germanic “pure human nature” based on the awareness of racial distinctness. Therefore, he writes: “The ‘pure human nature’ of the Germans is, in reality, the character of the pure German race, which rises to the conception of humanity in theory only, but in practice it has not succeeded in overcoming the natural sympathies and antipathies of the race.”11 So the author emphasizes that the theoretically approached ideal nature of the nation, including the German nation, should embody the noble ideas of humanism, tolerance, and the dignity of each human, but in practice it refers to much less noble sympathies and antipathies to other nations, peoples or communities, which is especially evident in relation to the Jewish community. In this case, Hess may see more of the antipathetic tendency – the relationships between German communities and their Jewish neighbors is definitely hostile. Hess wants to know what “der deutsche Judenhass” involves, given that other modern nations in Western Europe do not display so much hostility or antipathy to Jews. For him, the foundation of this phenomenon is mostly German aversion to Jewish national ambitions, which could be perceived as a kind of threat within the Reich in that turbulent time of seeking political ways of unification and conscious formation of a strong single nation (ein Volk).12 Hess presents this in a dichotomous system ←24 | 25→of antagonism of tension in the human nature between different spheres: be it spiritual and natural, or theoretical (speculative, mental) and practical. In the German people, this antagonism is particularly strong, because two tendencies clash in them: on the one hand, the historically and theoretically explained concept of internationalism (fully justified by the history of the German Reich and German culture), and on the other hand, very strong national ambitions, which naturally rejected the Germanic internationalism. Hess emphasizes that this contradiction is a typical German feature.13 He writes that German aversion to Jews partially results from fear of the consequences of Jewish nationalism, threatening German independence (reunification) pursuits. He also observes that anti-Semitism in a way is embedded in racial relationships and is largely their effect. German anti-Semitism has strong racial roots and has been consolidated by the German culture. Even Hegel, who can be regarded as Hess’ mentor and teacher, strongly pointed out that Jews were an anachronic relic,14 which would be removed and annihilated as part of the march of the Spirit of history. According to Hegel, Jews counteract the course of history, and they (as a nation, not individual people) will be annihilated by the dynamism of that history – they have to dissolve in the Germanic nation, the leader and executor of the advancement of the Spirit of history.15 Hegel’s vision had an impact on Hess, who saw in it the reason for natural German hostility toward Jews. For him, the source of national development is the race, which develops both in the biological and in the cultural sense, though biological determinants in a way control the cultural ones.16 Obviously, this thinking reflects the socialist idea of superiority of the foundation over the further construction. However, it must be pointed out that although Hess was a socialist, he was far from the solutions proposed by Karl Marx, and as regards the Jewish question, he tended to support the views ←25 | 26→promoted by rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer.17 This resulted from Hess’ consistent belief in the lack of rational explanation for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism, including German aversion to Jews. In the German case, antipathy is kind of irrational, i.e. it ultimately evades the attempts to rationally (theoretically) define and explain it, and it only leads to the conclusion that German anti-Semitism is based on the “inborn racial antagonism to the Jews” and cannot be overcome in any way.18 According to Hess, this anti-Semitism is simply embedded in the Jewish-German relationships and, therefore, any attempts to reduce aversion to Jews taken by German Jews, e.g. through cultural and social emancipation or radical actions such as changing their religion and adjusting it to the requirements of the contemporary world cannot give any positive results, because: “The German hates the Jewish religion less than the race; he objects less to the Jews’ peculiar beliefs than to their peculiar noses.”19 This strong statement sounds ←26 | 27→prophetic now, since we know that one hundred years later in the Nazi Germany, it actually came true with all its atrocity.
This kind of anti-Semitism also has far-reaching consequences for German Jews in the sphere of their actions. First of all, so as to avoid the negative effects of the approach of German community, Jews try to hide their Jewish identity. Both in the religious and the racial dimension (although as I have pointed out, for Hess religion in itself is not the decisive factor in creating the anti-Jewish attitude, but the rituals, and the cultural and social consequences of Judaism, determining the form of the Diaspora, definitely are one), which means that the national approach among German Jews is limited. None of the dramatic or even desperate moves of the Jewish community is able to eliminate anti-Semitism. Hess points out that enforced or “voluntary” conversion or assimilation combined with emancipation, which Jews have done repeatedly since the Middle Ages with the result of rejecting their Jewishness and consequently, being condemned and expelled from the Diaspora, was unsuccessful as well. According to Hess, the reason for this is fundamental: no transformation connected with religious conversion, changing social behaviors and customs or the external environment will compensate for the racial difference reflected even in the anatomy and physical appearance, which cannot be changed. Hess highlights that a Jew will never change his appearance, and that appearance, as a representative of his different race (even if those different anatomical features are not largely based on real physical characteristics but are the result of imaginary stereotypes), will always make him distinct from a German (Aryan). Hess can see the futility of Jewish efforts to become physically similar to the German majority.20 The Jewish race is “primary,” and whatever it means, neither attempts to change the physical appearance or transformations leading to greater social integration can change this obvious truth. Thus, the author critically approaches the attempts to make “radical” changes within Judaism, since they can only lead to the destruction of the primary value of the Jewish race, expressed both in the religious dimension (e.g. through Messianism) and in the national or historical character of the Jewish ritual with the key idea of chosen people (nation). It is not beneficial for Jews in any way. Such attempts reveal the racial tension, because on the one hand, emancipation and assimilation are the Jewish response to the environment’s antipathy ←27 | 28→or hostility, but they only become intensify and radicalize all the negative