In 1914, the German Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen published an essay titled "Das Gottesreich." In English we might say, the Kinship of God. The essay appeared in a collection first released on November 9, 1913, at the meeting of the Federation of German Jews (Verband der Deutschen Juden). Other authors included Leo Baeck (1873-1956), a profound religious thinker and representative of German Jewry under the Nazis who survived internment in Theresienstadt, who wrote on "the creation of fellow man;" Simon Bernfeld (1860-1940), who perceptively wrote on modern Hebrew literature; the lawyer Bernhard Breslauer (1851-1928), a co-founder of the federation; the historian and folklorist Juda Bergmann (1874-1956); Max Eschelbacher (1880-1964), a jurist and rabbi; Moritz Güdemann (1835-1918), an older fellow-Breslau seminarian of Cohen's who served as chief rabbi of Vienna; Philipp Bloch (1841-1923), another Breslau seminary graduate, who wrote brilliant essays on medieval Jewish philosophy; and the extraordinary preacher Nehemias Nobel (1871-1922), famed for the brilliant intellectuals he attracted to his Frankfurt sermons, including Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. The collection of essays was titled "Social Ethics in Judaism" and covered the topics of "the creation of fellow man" (Baeck), i.e., the biblical command to love your neighbor found in the Book of Leviticus and underscored by Jesus in the New Testament, a trope in Christian polemics against Judaism and hence a site of Jewish apologetics; "state and society" (Bernfeld) that anticipates Cohen's concluding reflections, arguing that ancient Judaism has no concept of the state except a state of radical freedom and equality of all of its members, a state where right confers might rather than the other way around; on "law and jurisprudence" (Breslauer) that places Jews and Judaism on the side of economic justice; "philanthropy" (Bergmann) as imitatio dei; traditional and modern views on the status of women in Judaism and in a changing society (Eschelbacher); education and Mendelssohnian educational reform in the spirit of an enlightened Judaism (Güdemann); popular and adult education (Bloch), an important subject at the time, along with the question of labor and social justice; the "Sabbath" (Nobel) as a symbol of human freedom and dignity; and finally Cohen's essay that attempts to bind the disparate themes together under the idea of divine rule.
The book appeared ten years after the death of Theodor Herzl. Though Cohen is now often remembered as an anti-Zionist challenged by Martin Buber in their public exchange of 1915, the contributors were not then engaged in an open campaign against Zionism. The movement was no longer perceived as an immediate threat to the precarious status of European Jews, and the defense against anti-Semitism was once again directed at the genteel and liberal Protestant contempt for the Jews that gave rise to the Federation and similar institutions in the first place. Though Cohen could speak, earlier in the century, of a war of annihilation waged against the Jews, what he meant was spiritual degradation, the loss of identity, mass apostasy among the young trying to deal with a pervasive culture of contempt and relentless pressure on Jews to convert in order to advance. The aim of the Federation was to instill renewed pride among the Jews and renew the spirit of Judaism through what they called the Wissenschaft des Judentums, a liberal project that acknowledged historical change while celebrating Jewish contributions to social progress and to the shaping of the very concepts we now take for granted: freedom from the relentless pressures of work, social justice, love of neighbor and the messianic orientation of history toward greater justice, greater equity, and the rule of law.
The liberal Jewish elite of that age represented a besieged community. But they could not know that, only two decades later, they would be marked for expropriation, stripped of civil rights, and eventually exposed to mob violence, deportation, and, finally, extinction. Blamed for everything, they were guilty of nothing.
Or is there a relation between the attempt of German Jews to idealize the contributions of Judaism to modern concepts of equal rights and social justice and the destruction of European Jewry at the hand of regimes that not only marked the Jews for death but opposed the ideas they had so vigorously defended, that is, the ideas that had buoyed the American and French revolutions, the idea of liberty, equality, and the brotherhood of all men, regardless of race or creed? Can you blame the hatred of the defenseless on the defenseless, on their defense of the defenseless? Zionism arose as a different kind of defense, one that recognized the need for self-defense and appealed to the right of the Jews for self-determination. It became, in that sense like other nations, departing from the religious view of those who appealed to the better angels of humanity. There was also another kind of Zionism, rooted in what Buber called "Hebrew humanism" and realized in a new kind of "concentrative" rather than expansive colonialism, one aiming at cooperation and coexistence rather than nationalism, exploitation, and exclusion. Are such views too good to be true? Could it have been otherwise?
Modern politics has been riven between hope and fear, between belief in a just society, committed to universal human rights, and rank tribalism, driven by exclusive self-preservation, reducing politics to zero-sum, us-or-them, games. As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the mood here in Massachusetts is subdued and the foundations of the American experiment are shaking. Not that everything else in American history provides cause for celebration. The revolution had its birth defects, foremost among them its complete obliviousness to the evils of the slave trade. Abolition in the wake of an apparently unforgotten and unforgiven civil war was followed by the Jim-Crow-system with its euphemism of "separate but equal" enshrined into law by Plessy v. Ferguson, which casts its long shadow even today. American imperialism and the violent overthrow of foreign regimes during the Cold War remain among the causes of global instability, and the promise of the equal pursuit of happiness for all often seems mere propaganda assured to lull the disadvantaged into dreams of better days. Yet, now more than ever, we understand that words matter; ideals matter.
As the first phase of the cease fire in Gaza expires, the Netanyahu government has suspended all humanitarian aid, funded by many nations and agencies, from reaching the besieged population. Aside of the palpable cruelty of these measures during a period of religious fasting, withholding food as a means of exerting political pressure is a crime against humanity. If our German Jewish authors were right, it is also a blatant betrayal of the Jewish values incessantly invoked by the ruling right-wing coalition.
At present, really since the late 1990's when an infamous memo circulated among Israeli and American neo-Conservatives that called for a "clean break" with the socialist past of the Jewish state and ushered in the end of the Oslo Process, the Jewish state is showing us the ugly face of Jewish tribalism, of us v. them, of exclusion, expulsion, stripping of rights, brutalization, internment, dehumanization, endless military occupation and random destruction. We have heard Israeli politicians openly calling for ethnic cleansing and a new Nakba. If not vigorously opposed by the international community, modern Israel is not immune to committing genocide. Like other regimes aiming to establish facts on the ground, Israel dresses up its brutalization of the Palestinians, piecemeal expropriation, harassment, deprivation of essential resources, including access to water, and other legal and extra-legal measures as security measures and acts of self-defense. New shipments of 2000-pound bombs and automatic rifles are on their way. We have seen how this kind of weaponry was used by the Netanyahu regime in the past. It is true that Hamas and their hateful rhetoric, their brutal repression of dissent, their bloodthirsty acts on and before October 7, 2023, have not helped. The voices of internal dissent are few and feeble. Yet, unless we unite in the interest of a different future and unless we recognize the Palestinians as political agents in their own right, more death, more brutalization, and more dehumanization is assured.
There are today, as there have been in the past, courageous people who are out on the streets, demonstrating for a different way, for an end to hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians, for a return of the captives (a Jewish duty), and a peaceful solution to the conflict. To be devoted to an ideal does not mean to be unrealistic. Idealism and realism are false opposites. Political agreements are possible. Compromise does not fall from heaven but is made. It can happen if we want.
For Cohen, the kingship of God is grounded in the realization that all human states come and go. No state lasts, no state is the last. Statehood is not an end in itself. That's what God's kingship symbolizes: that it is always coming, always there for us to pursue. What does that mean? It means reaching for justice, equality, and the rule of law. No state that is based in self-preservation at the expense of others can prevail. The only rule that is eternal is the rule of the Messiah, the one who is coming, under whose rule humanity will be one. The more we are disturbed by the present, the more we ought to return to this ancient and ever-coming future. The future is open, if we want.
