Jews and Judaism in World History

(Tuis.) #1

The First World War was as much a turning point in Jewish history as in
world history. The war brought a triumph of national self-determination and
popular sovereignty, epitomized by the collapse of multinational empires in
Europe and the rise of ethnically more homogeneous states out of the ashes of
the Habsburg, Ottoman, Russian, and German Empires. The interwar years
were marked by the triumph of democracy and nationalism, but also by rising
xenophobia and fear of communism, which were exacerbated by economic
depression. Jews benefited from the benign manifestations of these political
impulses – inclusive democratic political definitions of nationalism that
included Jews and other minorities, and states that allowed Jews rights and
participation – but languished under the darker sides of nationalism and pop-
ular sovereignty – right-wing nationalist impulses, and totalitarian regimes.
As Europe was redrawn geographically, politically, and ethnically, Jews who,
prior to the war, had been one of several religious and ethnic minorities – and,
in the Habsburg or Ottoman Empire, often the most favored – found them-
selves after the war the only minority in an otherwise ethnically and religiously
homogeneous successor state.
The war marked the beginning of the end of European imperialism, amid
the rise of Arab nationalism and anti-European impulses in the Muslim world.
For Jews, the diminishing western presence in the Islamic world accelerated the
decline and collapse of Jewish life there. In addition, the war brought Palestine
under British control; British imperialist interests, especially in India, under-
mined attempts to mediate the growing conflict between Jews and Muslims in
Palestine. Finally, the war brought an end to unimpeded westward immigra-
tion, particularly to America. Henceforth, growing xenophobia would result in
a series of quotas on Jewish immigration. The end of Jewish immigration facil-
itated the rapid Americanization of second-generation American Jews and
American Judaism.
The triumph of national self-determination as the dominant political con-
sideration of the age redrew the map of Europe and the Ottoman Empire
along national and ethnic lines in the name of national self-determination –
the right of every nation to govern itself and not be subject to foreign rule.


Chapter 9


From renewal to devastation,


1914–45

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