McLuhan MACH - Blätterfolge 4

MACH\GILMAN1.WP * 2.7.90

Sander L. Gilman. Jewish Self-hatred. Anti-semitism and the hidden language of the jews. Baltimor, London 1986.

" This present study examines how a group defined as different by society as well as by itself responds to one very specific stereotype, the image of its language and discourse.(IX)

The label "self-hatred" has been used to characterize the response of writers to the charge of being unable to command the language, discourse, or both, of the world that they inhabit. I have not confused language and discourse. Rather, it is evident that the myth building that sourrounds the concept of a "hidden" language of the Jews links both language and discourse in the stereotype of the Jew. This study is therefore limited to those who use language as their means of shaping their identity, who are identified or identify themselves as Jewish, and who comment on the special nature of the language of the Jews." (XI)

Bei der Arbeit an der Historiographie des Selbsthasses wird es Gilman klar, daß die Periodisierung Antijüdischer Haltungen "inherently false"(X) war.

"Indeed, by tracing the continuity of a single attribute ascribed to the Jews, the deep structure of attitudes toward difference can be seen."(X)

Jedes Kapitel behandelt ein zentrales Bild des Diskurses und/oder der Sprache des Juden, verweist aber auch auf die Kontinuität älterer Bilder und ihre Beziehung zu den neueren Bildern von der Sprache des Juden. "the rhetoric of 'self-hatred'".(X)

Chapter One. What is self-hatred?

I The special language of the Jews.

Begriff Selbsthaß sei "a mordant oxymoron."(1) Warum sich selbst hassen, wenn so viele bereit sind, es für dich zu tun?

Jewish self-hatred" (a term interchangeable with "jewis anti-Judaism" or "Jewish anti-Semitism") is valid as a label for a specific mode of self-abnegation that has existed among Jews throughout their history.(1)

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The Drive for Conversion. (22 ff)

And yet it was the possesion of a secret or hidden language that the medieval Christian world attribautes to all Jews. For the Jews possessed Hebrew, and this set them apart from the Ciristians. Indeed, it was the language of the Jews, and the books written in this language, that mythically defined the boundary between Christians and Jew.(23)

Weitere Entwicklung des Hebräischen.

By the close of the fifteenth century Hebrew had acquired a mythic quality, and books written in Hebrew a magical one. Hebrew was one of the most evident external signs of the difference of the Jew and assumed a special role in defining Jewishness.(23)

Denn Hebräisch war für die Christenheit verloren, nicht aber für das Judentum.

The rabbinic prohibiont against teaching no-Jews the "sacred tongue" was one of the factors in creatin the myth of the hidden language; it also reenforced the association of Hebrew with the essence of what was understood als Jewish. Hebrew became the magical language par excellence.(24)

So sprechen die Juden Pilatus in einem mittelalterlichen Myterienspiel an:

"chodus, chados, adonai sebaos, sesim, sossim, chochun yochun or nor yochun or nor gun yinbraehi et ysmaehl ly ly lancze lare uczerando ate lahu dilando, sicut vir melio yesse ceuia ceuca ceu capiasse amel."(24)

Das ist "mock Hebrew". Mittelalterliche Kommentatoren sahen auch die Weigerung der Juden, die Rolle Christi bei der Erlösung der Menschheit als das Ergeabnis der Lektüre dieses seltsamen Buches [der Talmud] an. Juden sprachen nicht nur anders als Christen, sie dachten auch anders.

Johannes Reuchlin, Kontakt mit Kabbala auf Italienreise über Pico della Mirandola; in On the Dignity of Man zitiert er die Kabbala. Hebräisch zu können, bedeutete für die Christen eine bedenkliche Autorität.(25)

The purity of Hebrew was to abe achieved by the removal of Hebrew from the world of the Jews.(26)

Dann enthält der Talmut eine "schlechte" Sprache, die Bibel die "gute". Reuchlin: studiert Hebräisch und lernt es evon einem Juden, dem Hofarzt Jacob ben Jehiel Loans, am Hofe Friedrich III, aber er verdammt gleichzeitig die Juden. (26/27)

II The converts and the jew's book. (28 ff)

The role of the Jewish convert in attacking the Jews in the public forum cannot be underrated.(32)

The association of false perspective of the Jews with the Talmud became universal in the following centuries.(33)

The Talmud is representative of those magic, evil books in which the blindness of the Jews is contained. Remove it, and perhaps the Jews will be able to see the truth.(33)

By the abeginning of the sixteenth century, the association of the Jews with their books was absolute.(33)

Josef Pfefferkorn, als Christ Johannes Pfefferkorn(33 ff), seine Pamphlete gegen die Juden.(35 ff). Sein erstes Pamphlet, The Mirror of the Jews (1507) zählt die Laster der Juden auf. Man muß sie zur Konversion bringen und sie dazu von der Quelle ihrer Unbeugsamkeit entfernen, ihren Büchern, vor allem dem Talmud.(35) Und wieder die Standard-Attacke: Wuchertum, gekoppelt mit dem Vorwuf, die Juden hätten nur ein begrenztes Verständnis der Heiligen Bibel,

because both ar seen as part of the Jews' fixation on the worldly. Money and the literal letter of the text are both base, since they deny the higher truth.(35)

III The Christian Reaction and the Origin of Jewish Self-hatred.(42 ff)

Reuchlin gegen Pfefferkorn, 1510. Man soll den Juden ihre Bücher lassen. Bücher sind einigen so lieb wie Kinder.(43) Reuchlin unterscheidet dabei zwei Klassen von Juden:

the educated, intelligent Jews, who remain with their religion and are knowledgeable of the Talmud; and the ignorant, crude converts. The first are devoted to their children, the books; The latter wish to destroy them.(43)

Juden aber können nie "change its spots", "the blindness of the Jews is universal".(43)

They are positive force only when they serve as a vessel enclosing and protecting their books.(43) [...] Thus he encapsulated the Jews in their role as protector of the Book. They can be no nore and noe less. But they can never be interpreters of the Book.(44)

So ist Reuchlin auch der Meinung, zu einem viel tieferen Verständnis als sein Lehrer zu gelangen. Auch findet er in der Kabbala eine perverse Unterstützung seines "view of the separation of the Jews from their language". Sohar (vol 1, fols 76a-b):

there is a detailed dicussion of the purity of language and the creation of languages. Rabbi Hiaya is quoted in interpreting the passage from Deuteronomy concerning Babel.(44)

Gott konnte den Turmbau nicht verhindern, weil seine Erbauer ein Volk waren und eine Sprache hatte. Nur indem er ihre Sprache verwirrte [confused] und sie damit in die Diaspora zerstreute, konnte er seine Herrschaft sichern.

From the standpoint of the Christian Cabalist, the secret from before the flood was the Cabal itself, stemming from before the Christian age, and the confusion of tongues was the expulsion of the Jews as a result of the Crucifixion. The jews may still harabor the holy language, Hebrew, but they are merely a vessel for it. For it is in the new language, the language of exegesis taught by the Church, that the original, unified vision incorporated in the language before the Tower of Babel is to be found. Christian interpretation is thus given, in the reading of the Sohar, a primacy over the confusion of the Jews, a confusion exemplified by their existence in the Diaspora. Thus a clear distinction beteen that corrupt nature of the Jews and the potential purity of their tongue can be found in an interpretation of the very words of the Sohar.(44)

Dagegen Angriff Pfefferkorns.(45 ff). Reuchlins Reaktion "was intense and bitter".(46) Für Pfefferkorn war Reuchlin ein christlich verkleideter Jude, für Reuchlin war Pfefferkorn ein Jude in christliche Kleidern, also dasgleiche. So wirft er Pf. vor, er mache mit allem Geld, auch mit seinen, Reuchlins Büchern. Seine Argumente gleichen dem Lügerparadox: Juden lügen, was immer sie sagen.(47)

Reuchlin's litany presents the classical double bind situation, a paradox after the model of the lying Cretan, for Jews lie, no matter what they say. Their blindness is reflected in their words, their language, their discourse, their mode of speech. And this quality is immutable, inherited from their parents, grandparetns, back through all generations to the Jews who condemned Christ. The special language of the Jews is not Hebrew, for that is the language of the Scripture, a language that they know but cannot truly unterstand. The special, hidden, demonic language of the Jews is the lie, the verbal equivalent of usury and poisoning. [...] Reuchlin's suggestion that their tongues be cut from their throats may sound metaphoric, but as will be seen, it was not.(47)

1513 Streit Reuchlin - Pfefferkorn vor dem Kaiser (48 f), zwischen Alter Ordnung und neuem Humanismus. Jetzt geht es um das Recht, "freely to pursue all intellectual endeavors without overt limitation.(48) Reuchlins Verteidigung, publiziert, lieferten das Modell "for some of his younger supporters among the German Humanists, expecially Crotus Rubinanus und Ulrich von Hutten"(48) für die Dunkelmännerbriefe, 1516.

One of the strongest threads thorughout the Letters is the Humanists' image of Pfefferkorn. [...] The Humanists present Pfefferkorn, as perceived through their fictional supporters of the Dominicans, as the quintessential renegade. He is Judas incarnate, Jew and criminal at the same time.(48) "Jews remain Jews no matter what they publicly profess."(49)

But the blindness of the Jews is linked through the figure of Pfefferkorn in the Letters of Obscure Men to their sexualisization.(49)

For even as Pfefferkorn had refused to carry the charge of the Jewesses' promiscuitiy through the couckoldry [cuckold: betrogener Ehemann, to ~: betrügen, Hörner aufsetzen] of the Jews, so, too, do the Humanist complete this loop. One of the primary references in all of the discussions of Pfefferkorn throughout the text is to his wife and her promiscuity.(49) "His wife" war aber auch konvertiert.

The Humanists have created the ultimate marginal man. He is ignorant, foolish, and sexually incapable of dealing with his wife.(50)

Aber er ist nicht nur ein Verbrecher, er kommt auch aus "Moravia". Er ist sozial wie auch geographisch marginal. "He is an Eastern Jew as well as a thief."(50)

IV The Self-hatred of the Convert. (53 ff)

Um sich nun zu verteidigen, greift Pfefferkorn die Juden noch härter an:

To counter this, Pfefferkorn attacks not the supporters of the Jews, such as Reuchlin, but the Jews themselves. The angry, distraught tone of The Burning Mirror presents a new program, more radical and, on the surface, fore hostile toward the Jews. Reeducation is no longer sufficient for PFefferkorn; they must be destroyed [...]. (54)

In den Dunkelmännerbriefen war von einem Double Pfefferkorns die Rede, Pastor Rapp oder Johannes Pfefferkorn, der angeklagt war, fälschlich sich als Priester ausgegeben und behauptet zu haben, ein Doktor zu sein. Er wurde langsam geröstet und ihm die Haut dabei vom Körper gezogen. (52) Dabei bekannte er alles, was ihm vorgeworfen worden war. Gilman meint nun, daß Pfefferkorn dafür plädiert, die Juden ihres weltlichen Besitztes zu berauben und sie zu vertreiben.

While these acts are surely radical ones, they do not raise the same fears as does a roasting while having one's skin ripped off with red-hot pincers.(55)

1516 in weiterer Verteidigung Pamphlet A Defence of Johannes Pfefferkonr, Whom They Did Not Burn. : Pfefferkorn wishes to free himself from his double, the double burnt for playacting the Christian. In an apoatropaic [Unheil abwehrend] gesture aimed at warding off his double's fate, he projects onto Reuchlin all of the evils that have been associated with himself and with Rapp, that is, those evils traditionally associated with the Jew. His projection is an attempt to save his image as one fully within the Christian ~cmapl. But of course the dichotomies in what must seem to an outsider a monolithic structure, the Curch, make such a resolution impossible. Pfefferkorn will also remain the Jew to some elements in the Christian community. His only hope is to persuade himself that these elements are but an extension of his former self, that Reuchlin truly sees in the same blind manner as do the Jews. In turning Reuchlin into the "bad" Jew, Pfefferkorn is able to save the structure through which he is able to perceive himself as the "good" Christian. But Reuchlin remains the Christian, no matter how often he is accused of being unable to see the truth. Pfefferkorn can all to easily become Rapp, even if he continues to cling to his newly perceived Christian truth.(55/56)

V Luther's Judeaophobia and the Jewish Convert.(57 ff)

The basis for Luther's program is the radical difference in the Jew's manner of understanding the divine order.(60)

In seinem zweiten Pamphlet, On Shem Hamphoras [the Ineffable Name] and the Descent of Christ (1543) liefert Luther eine Polemik über die Natur und den Ursprung des "misreading of Holy Scripture" der Juden.

"I, a damned goy, cannot understand where they have their great skill in interpreting, except, perhaps, that when Judas Iscariot hung himself, his bladder [Blase] burst and his gut split. Perhaps the Jews had their servants there with golden pots and sover bowls to catch Judas's piss and other reliques (as they are called). Then they ate and drank the shit mixed with piss to become so sharp-eyed in interpreting the Scripture. They see things in Scripture that neither Isaiah nor Matthew, nor all the angels saw, and that we damned goys can never hope to see." (zit 60)

Gilman dazu: Luther uses the "insiders" language, Yiddish, to mock the special knowledge claimed by the Jew. HE SETS THE SAME CLAIM TO A KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR HIDDEN DISCOURSE AS DOES THE CONVERT. He knows the special language of the Jews, recognizes their blindness and its source, and can thus better interpret their text, the Bible, than can the Jews themselves. Luther thus denies the Jews any insiqht into the Bible, because they lack true command of the hidden language of that text, Hebrew.(60)

So wirft er den Juden im Tischgespräch November 1540 vor: "If we did not have the Greek and Latin Bible, we would not understand a single word of the Hebrew. THE JEWS LOST THE SENSE OF THE LANGUAGE, INCLUDING THE TROPES AND FIGURES. Thus none today understand anything. It is as if Greek studied for years the German proverb: He can turn his coat to the wind. He can understand wind, coat, has a case that he can learn, but he could never understand the complex meaning of the entire phrase. He would have to guess. So it goes with Hebrew." (zit 60)

The Jews are here denied their claim to any of the mythic quality that had been associated with Hebrew.. They are no longer perceived as having special, magical powers [...] For in denying the Jews any special quality, except stubbornness and blindness, Luther strips from them any special role in contemporary life.(61)

Ihre Blindheit ist das Ergebnis ihrer Weigerung, Christus zu akzeptieren. Aber bei genauerem Lesen gibt es da "a subtle shift in Luther's understanding of the roots of the Jew's MISREADING of Scripture."

Luther suggests that "our Hebraists ... have the obligation to cleanse the Holy Bible form the piss of Judas".(61)

Oder in On the Last Words of David (1543), Pamphlet gegen die Juden: "God wills that our theologians study Hebrew well so that they restore to us the Bible from the wanton [liederlich, mutwillig] thieves who stole it. And that they do everything better, as I have done it, so that they are not captured by the torturous grammars of the Rabbis and their false interpretation ..." (cit 61)

Für die Konvertierten bedeutete das, daß ihre Fähigkeit, sich selbst zu verstehen, unterminiert wurde, so wie die, "to read their own texts, which was central to proving their own conversion".(61)

Folgt neues Buch eines konvertierten Juden, The Entire Jewish Faith, von Antonius Margaritha, 1530, auf hohem wissenschaftlichem Niveau, ohne Polemik Pfefferkorns. Aber die Autorität Pfefferkorn war von Reuchlin und den Humanisten angeknackst worden, so "it was necessary to create a new level of scholarship upon which to base the status of the 'seeing' Jew."(62)

Zentral für Margaritha's Argumentation ist der Mangel der Juden an Originalität. Der Talmud wird aufgeteilt. Die "orignial parts" sind die modernen, Ergebnis der Offenbarung Christi, die älteren, dem Kommen Christi vorhergehend, "are unoriginal".(63)

This view, which first appeared in the debate between Nahmanides and the convert Hieronymus de Santa Fe, is vital, since it stresses the centrality of the coming of Christ to any truthful revelation outside the Holy Scripture. The seeming insight of the Jews, as documented by the Talmud, is merely a reflection of the truth of Christianity.(64)

Die Tradition der öffentlichen Attacken von Konvertierten auf die Juden wurde ein Gemeinplatz im 16.Jhdt. Ihr Hauptargument [claim] war ihre Kenntnis der "'hidden language of the Jews', Hebrew".(64) Für einen Paul von Prag, einen Rabbi, der 1582 eine Erklärung [exposition] der Kabbala publizierte: "his claim to status was his special knowledge of the text and its hidden tongue, seen through the eyes of the convert. This pattern underlies all of the special claims of these converts and provides the context for the projection of their self-hatred. For they distance themselves from their own identification as Jews, attributiong all manner of evil deeds and horrors to their former coreligionists to show their own transcendence of this category. They also claim a special position within Christianity because of their knowledge of the special language, discourse, and ritual of the Jews.(64/65)

Margaritha aber konnte gesehen werden einmal als Jude, der sehend wurde, indem er zur kathol. Kirche konvertierte, einem falschen Modell von Christenheit, dann aber wird er "truly seeing", wenn er zur wahren protestantischen Kirche übertritt. Aber diese Wendung kann auch im Lichte des von den Humanisten entwickelten Pfefferkornmodell gesehen werden: denn wenn ein Jude niemals wahrhaftig konvertieren kann, "if he remains eternally the Jew, as the dog remains the dog, and the hare the hare, then Margaritha's shift from Judaism to Catholicism to Protestantism is living proof of his blindnenss.(65)

So Margharitha's Streben nach dem, was Peter Gay bei Deutschen Juden des 20. Jhdts als "wholeness hunger" [Freud, Jews and Other Germans, 1983, p.3ff] sieht, "is silently understood as proof of the inherent, immutable nature of the Jew.(65) "The Jew is his own text, and it is a contradictory text".(65)

Zusammenfassend: "The complex selfdefinition of these converts, their need to establish themselves as better Christians than the Christians themselves, their public attitude toward their former coreligionists, and their use of their biographies and text as exempla all play a role in shaping the attitude of the Christioan world toward the Jew. Since the initial model chosen by the convert is a model of the Jew viewed through the eyes of the Christian world, it is of little wonder that the Chrstian community found their attitude towards the Jew substantiated by the convert's testimony. Yet, within the converts' texts, a sense of the ambiguous position of the "seeing" Jew - neither "blind" Jew nor true Christian - can be found. [...] it is through the model of the Jew as perceived and presented by Jewish converts that Luther finds the reification of his perception of the Jew, a reification replete with contradictions and ambiguities present in these Jew's understanding of their status and definition within the Christian world. Luther's own presetation of the hidden language of the Jews, shaped by the writings of self-hating Jews, becomes part of a German tradition that generates further negative self-images within German Jews. In an inexorable dialectic each self-hating text generates new anti-Jewish texts which draw for their proof on the older negative self-image, and this new generation of text becomes the matrix in which Jewish writers shape their new literary persona.(67) [vgl Kafka an Milena über Briefe!!!: der vorhergehende bestätigt den folgenden usw.]