Jewish Self-Hate

by Theodor Lessing, Peter C. Appelbaum (Translator), Sander L. Gilman (Introduction)

A seminal text in Jewish thought accessible to English readers for the first time. The diagnosis of Jewish self-hatred has become almost commonplace in contemporary cultural and political debates, but the concept’s origins are not widely appreciated. In its modern form, it received its earliest and fullest expression in Theodor Lessing’s 1930 book Der jüdische Selbsthaß . Written on the eve of Hitler’s ascent to power, Lessing’s hotly contested work has been variously read as a defense of the Weimar Republic, a platform for anti-Weimar sentiments, an attack on psychoanalysis, an inspirational personal guide, and a Zionist broadside. “The truthful translation by Peter Appelbaum, including Lessing’s own footnotes, manages to make this book more readable than the German original. Two essays by Sander Gilman and Paul Reitter provide context and the wisdom of hindsight.”―Frank Mecklenburg, Leo Baeck Institute From the forward by Sander
Theodor Lessing’s (1872–1933) Jewish Self-Hatred (1930) is the classic study of the pitfalls (rather than the complexities) of acculturation. Growing out of his own experience as a middle-class, urban, marginally religious Jew in Imperial and then Weimar Germany, he used this study to reject the social integration of the Jews into Germany society, which had been his own experience, by tracking its most radical cases…. Lessing’s case studies reflect the idea that assimilation (the radical end of acculturation) is by definition a doomed project, at least for Jews (no matter how defined) in the age of political antisemitism.

186 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Theodor Lessing (8 February 1872, Hanover – 31 August 1933, Marienbad) was a German Jewish philosopher.

He is known for opposing the rise of Hindenburg as president of the Weimar Republic and for his classic On Jewish self-hatred (Der jüdische Selbsthaß), a book which he wrote in 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler came to power, in which he tried to explain the phenomenon of Jewish intellectuals who incited antisemitism against the Jewish people and who regarded Judaism as the source of evil in the world.

Lessing's political ideals, as well as his Zionism made him a very controversial person during the rise of Nazi Germany. He fled to Czechoslovakia where he lived in Marienbad in the villa of a local social democratic politician. On the night of 30 August 1933, he was assassinated by Sudeten German Nazi sympathizers. Lessing was shot through a window of the villa where he lived. His assassins were German Nazis from Sudetenland, Rudolf Max Eckert, Rudolf Zischka and Karl Hönl. They fled to Nazi Germany after the assassination.

Lessing's philosophical views were influenced by Nietzsche and Afrikan Spir. According to Theodore Ziolkowski in Lessing's Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen (History as Giving Meaning to the Meaningless), "writing in the tradition of Nietzsche, argued that history, having no objective validity, amounts to a mythic construct imposed on an unknowable reality, in order to give its some semblance of meaning."[

Reviews

[Young Eagle 于高鹰 · Rating 4 out of 5]

西奥多·莱辛写了本小册子批判“犹太人的自我憎恨”，但这刚好反映了他自己就是个“自我憎恨的犹太人”，而且所“憎恨”的恰恰是自己的“自我憎恨”。他认为作为流散民族的犹太人长期与土地疏离，在发展中产生了过度“精神化”的倾向，于是这过剩的精神便开始自我攻击，连精神分析学都是这样被创造出来的。最后提到，工业化与全球化的背景下，犹太人的命运即将成为世上所有民族的共有命运，由此他的分析具有普遍意义。然而，作为一个达尔文化的尼采主义者，他为犹太人提供的解方是重建“血与土”的联接——也就是，犹太复国主义。

[⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚Malena · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the level of empathy and respect missing in modern political/philosophical/societal discussions.