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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Campus Watch Documents
Documents by: Armin Rosen
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by Armin Rosen, November 11, 2008 - The Columbia SpectatorThe Massad Tenure Battle: Year Two [on Joseph Massad;incl. Nadia Abu El-Haj]
by Armin Rosen, September 19, 2008 - The Columbia SpectatorFreedom or Fealty? [incl. Hamid Dabashi, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Joseph Massad, et al.]
by Armin Rosen, December 7, 2007 - The Columbia Spectator (Columbia University)No Tenure for Massad [on Joseph Massad]
by Armin Rosen, October 12, 2007 - The Columbia Spectator (Columbia University)No More Tenure [incl. Nadia Abu El-Haj, MEALAC]
by Armin Rosen, September 17, 2007 - The Columbia Spectator (Columbia University)Thursday Night Orientalism [on Richard Bulliet, Paul Braken]
by Armin Rosen, April 6, 2007 - The Columbia Spectator
Sphere: Related ContentArmin Rosen's rather garbled and irrelevancy-filled discussion of Joseph Massad's presentation suggests that Massad did quite a good job if only because he appears to have challenged the Zionistically-correct intellectual framework in which Rosen wants Zionism discussed.
Whether one calls the program of the Haskolo enlightenment, reform, or modernization, obviously the standard of enlightenment, reform, or modernization was 19th century European society of some sort, and the leaders were trying to create some sort of partial assimilation at least.
In Germany the Reform movement and the Modern Orthodox reaction of Samson Rafael Hirsch both tried to create Jewish Germans with somewhat different definitions.
Even though Rosen is correct that the vast majority of Maskilim (Enlighteners) in the Czarist Empire were not trying to create a new Jewish Russian, most were trying to develop a modern Russian Judaism for modern Russianized Jews.
As a Maskil Pinsker was exceptional because he belonged to the small genuinely assimilationist group within the Russian Jewish intelligentsia. (See Online biography Leon (Yehuda Leib) Pinsker - Zionism and Israel ...) He became disillusioned after a pogrom in 1871. In response, he wrote Selbstemanzipation.
Pinsker's essay constitutes a remarkable work of self-delusion in the Eastern European context, for it attributes general disrespect of Jews to Jewish statelessness even though many Eastern European ethnic groups like the Polish Tatar Muslim community were highly respected within the szlachta (gentry) without having states of their own.
Pinsker and similar Russian Jewish intellectuals were for the most part denying the obvious when they refused to acknowledge that large segments of the Czarist population were becoming enraged at all Russian Jews because the Russian Jewish intelligentsia included a radical group that since the 1850s had engaged in assassination, terrorism, murder, sabotage and revolutionary conspiracy.
While Selbstemanzipation was proto-Zionist, by 1881 Pinsker had transitioned to true Zionism.
As for the connection of Zionism to anti-Semitism, I have to note that German Studies Professor George Mosse and Jewish Studies Professors like Michael Stanislawski or Jay Harris would hardly deny that Zionist thinking has a lot in common with anti-Semitic political ideologies. Rutgers Professor Yael Zerubavel makes an insightful connection between Zionist ideology and anti-Semitism on p. 19 of Recovered Roots, Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition:
"The highly negative perception of Exile often turned from shelilat hagalut (the repudiation of the state of living in exile) to shelilat hagolah (the condemnation of the people who live in exile), the product of its demeaning and regressive lifestyle.
The more informed Professor Massad's scholarship becomes about the Eastern European context, the more important his work becomes -- almost as a corollary of point Professor Said tried to make about Orientalism.
When evaluating the output of Orientalist scholars, we need to understand their social political context just as serious analysis of Zionism must refer to Central and Eastern European intellectual habitat in which the ideology developed.
BTW, I have read most if not all of the writings of Asher Ginzberg (Ahad haAm). His opinions changed over time, and I interpret his early criticism of Zionist behavior mostly as fear that the Zionist settlement was not strong enough in the 1890s to withstand the rage that it could engender.
