[lbo-talk] Liberalism and preemptive evil

[joanna]

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> But if one
>questions cultural or political Zionism-and surely such questioning is
>legitmate-then it is possible to regard Jewish assimilation and all
>its attendant paradoxes as a leaven, a creative force, in political
>modernity itself-not simply as a self-denying evasion.  The dilemmas
>of Jewish assimilation, with its individual strategies of converting,
>passing, denying, or displacing are themselves part of the
>cultural-political toolbox which liberal democracies offer to ethnic,
>religious, and cultural minorities under conditions of
>modernity. Surely the kind of moral universalism to which all four
>thinkers aspired is no less an aspect of the Jewish experience in
>modernity than the assertion of Jewish particularism. Wolin does not
>address these dilemmas. In accusing Arendt, Löwith, Jonas, and Marcuse
>of failing to live up to their Jewish identities, he fails to
>illuminate their work and instead invites questions about his own
>vantage point. What are his standards for deciding whether a Jewish
>life is sufficiently "authentic"?
>
Indeed. I once again recommend Marx's "On the Jewish Question," which 
argues for Jewish authenticity as expressed in the  realization of 
universal humanity not as a retreat to a self-made or national ghetto.

The enfranchisement and assimilation of jews were most definitely a 
threat to some jews whose identity and power were threatened. Israel 
Sahak speaks of this at length and very well. See

http://www.geocities.com/alabasters_archive/jewish_fundamentalism.html

Joanna


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