On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred

Description

Demonstrates that the concept of Jewish self-hatred once had decidedly positive connotations. This title traces the genesis of the term to Anton Kuh, a Viennese-Jewish journalist who coined it in the aftermath of World War I, and shows how the German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing came to write a book that popularized "Jewish self-hatred.

Paul Reitter is associate professor of Germanic languages and literatures at Ohio State University. He is the author of "The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus" and "Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe".

"[T]he author does a fine job of placing Kuh and Lessing in personal and historical contexts, and he clearly contrasts their ideological notions of Jewish self-hatred with the more psychological slant of such contemporary thinkers as Peter Gay, Sander Gilman, and Shulamit Volkov."--Publishers Weekly "[S]hort and ambitious... Of particular interest is Reitter's analysis of the impact of World War I: it gave renewed focus to the so-called Jewish question in Europe and spurred Koh's and Lessing's work... [On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred] should be in every library with a serious Jewish studies collection."--Library Journal "His arguments are convincing; however, while the book is short, readable, and enlightening, it is a work of scholarship--Reitter assumes the reader is familiar with the previous work on the topic. At times I felt like I was at a dinner party where everyone was gossiping about people I had never heard of. Reitter's excellent book is an inadvertent reminder of how the Germans pulverized their own intellectual life."--Gordon Haber, Religion Dispatches "With this book ... Reitter has established himself as a leading authority on German-Jewish relations between the wars. Valuable ..."--Choice "On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred is a substantive and sophisticated work."--Glenn C. Altschuler, Jerusalem Post "[A] slim, intriguing volume."--Ben Cohen, Jewish Ideas Daily "I highly recommend Reitter's essay both for the light it shines on interwar Jewish intellectual culture in Vienna and for its intervention in the study of Jewish self-hatred. From now on, any scholar interested in using or critiquing the term must reckon with Reitter's findings."--Amos Bitzan, H-Net Reviews "Paul Reitter ... has an acutely sharp axe in his intellectual probing of the syndrome that surfaces so often in the contemporary debate on Jewish self-hate... The troika of Jewish thinkers who inhabit Reitter's formidable study, tried to navigate the dangerous shoals of modern German history and its impact of German Jews. In resuscitating the complex arguments they offered in their explanation of Jewish self-hate, Reitter has performed a valuable exercise--for which we are in his debt."--Arnold Ages, Jewish Tribune