A history of the theological-political problem.

books:


	• The Pity of It All : A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933 Amos Elon Picador, 2003 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the best histories I've read

I had wanted to read something about Jewish assimilation in Europe after snippets and references from Goethe's biography by Nicholas Boyle, a musical essay on Mendelssohn that touched briefly on his grandfather, Moses, and the liner notes on several classical music CDs of composers who lived in the 19th century. When I saw this book at my neighborhood bookstore, I grabbed it and stayed up all night reading it. Since I want information when I read a history, I don't require great writing, and prose that's merely adequate can be forgiven if the research is thorough (and the author doesn't have an axe to grind). Elon is a good enough writer that I will seek out his other works. This book shed light on the ambivalence that must have been unbearable for so many. And as another reviewer mentioned, its nice to have a chapter of German/Jewish history that doesn't begin with Weimar. As one of the best histories I've read, I can't recommend it highly enough. Hopefully high-school and college courses on Europe in the World War years will use this book as a prelude.

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A history of the theological-political problem.

There are many strengths to this book- one of the main strengths is the variety of uses that it has. It's obvious purpose is to relate the history of German Jews from the rise of the Enlightenment to the rise to power of the Nazi party. But it serves other purposes as well. I came to it for an understanding of the intellectual background of both Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt. It could serve as background reading for anyone interested in Einstein, Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, Freud, Adler, Fromm, Marcuse, Mannheim, Popper, Bernstein, Cassirer, Schoenberg, Husserl, Weill, among other German-Jewish intellectuals to numerous to mention. Which brings me to my third purpose. I have never read anything that made me realize just how badly Germany damaged itself intellectually during the rise of the Nazis. It serves as the primary example of politically ripping your heart out because your brain commands it. Who knows what the country could have become if it had embraced it Jewish citizens? Finally, for me, this book makes me understand why Zionism became such a political force. At some point, when you are treated like the Jewish citizens of Germany were, what else can you do? Elon makes it clear that their suffering began long before the twentieth century.
I want to talk about Elon's methodology. His book is basically a series of well chosen capsule biographies of prominent German Jews whose lives and struggles for emancipation and assimilation serve as to tell the stories of all German Jews. His focuses on people like Moses Mendelssohn, Rahel Varnhagen, Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Borne, Ludwig Bamberger, Gershon Bleichroder and Walter Rathenau. Along with this main biographies are several dozens of shorter ones. Elon then surrounds these stories with a certain amount of sociological history (two of his favorite statistics are to look at the rate of conversions from Judaism to Christianity and the rate of intermarriage). He tries to relate those stats to larger historical events. Finally, he also uses a bit of cultural history,e.g., he sees Goethe's idea of Bildung as having an even larger impact on German Jews than on the rest of the German population.
This methodological approach to his story has some drawbacks. Non-intellectual and/or lower class German Jews remain in the background in Elon's book. I am not sure how this could be avoided. There may be some sort of historical record that would tell us more about this part of the population but it is hard to imagine what that record would be. It is also easy to imagine that life for the poorer and less literate parts of the German Jewish population would have been even worse. Most careers were closed to them, all civil and political rights were denied to them and many times, entire cities or districts were closed to them. In most cities they lived in ghettos and were not allowed to go out into the rest of the city on Sundays or Christian holidays.
Elon also makes it clear that in many ways, Germany was one of the most liberal countries toward its Jewish citizens. I found myself sometimes reading this book wondering when the revolution was going to start. As I said earlier, reading this book makes the appeal of Zionism easy to understand.
I have a few other minor laments about Elon's book. I would have appreciated much more of a history of both Zionism and reform Judaism within the context of his history. I would also have learned from a history of how the understanding of the galut changed over time. But this is a minor quibble. Elon's books fulfills its own purpose and many other purposes magnificantly. There are other books that can tell the story of the missing pieces.
I came to this book from my reading of Strauss. It makes me appreciate Strauss's ideas about the theological-political problem so much more. Strauss basically used the place of the Jewish citizen within a liberal polity as his basic metaphor for the challenge of the other to a community/state. He also saw it as a metaphor for the role of the philosopher in the community/state. In both cases, it stands for an outsider who can never be other than an outsider. Strauss felt that this issue tears at the core of the liberal state. It is one that we can never run from and must always face with all our wisdom and humanity. Reading Elon argues strongly that Strauss may have been right. But mostly, reading Elon leave you with a sense of how much all of us have lost from what happened to the Jewish population of Europe during the thirties and forties. The Pity of It All is right.

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Simply Marvelous

The author describes the history of German Jewry in such an eloquent, informed and story-telling way that is just fascinating. Easy to read too. Excellent buy.

Studying the past as prologue to horror

"The Pity of It All" is a masterful accomplishment of scholarship, insight and tone. It describes the world and history of German Jews before the Holocaust in ways that illuminate the catastrophe that follwed, but with a wise restraint that holds back from glib or pat theories. For instance, Elon is careful to insist that the outcome for Germany's Jews was not inevitable, and that although virulent, persistent anti-semitism was widespread in German culture, Hitler's and Nazism's rise also benefitted from the blunders and complacency of competing politics, and from other random hazards. In focusing on and describing the preceding two centuries of rapid development of a German Jewish community of prosperity and accomplishment, Elon gives these people back their identity and dignity as something other than doomed or pathetic foreshadows of predestination. While the book provides valuable food for thought about the Holocaust, it also, and predominantly, honors and rewardingly brings to our awareness the rich and fascinating parade of Jewish life and individuals in Germany from the mid-18th century forward.

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Oustanding in every way!

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It combines history with interesting narrative. It tells of the heartbreaking saga of the relationship between Jews and Germans for the 200 years preceding WW II. It spoke of histories of people and how devoted they were to the Fatherland....especially sad were the thousands of conversions, forced and voluntary, which in the end did the Jews no good. It is an enlightening read and not very flattering about the Germans and their anti semetic history of thought.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

In this important work of historical restoration, Amos Elon shows how a persecuted clan of cattle dealers and wandering peddlers was transformed into a stunningly successful community of writers, philosophers, scientists, tycoons, and activists. In engaging, brilliantly etched portraits of Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and many others, Elon traces how a small minority came to be perceived as a deadly threat
to German national integrity.

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