I originally had an extremely funny beginning for this article: At the beginning of the first sentence “for the sake of sincerity” I declare that I am not Jewish, but shortly afterwards it comes out that I am very much Jewish and only therefore claimed the opposite, because Maxim Biller told a dozen Jewish writers (including myself) at a literature festival that he and Robert Menasse were the only Jewish writers in German-speaking countries. And later in the enormously funny beginning I hold Maxim Biller and Max Czollek to my knee-deep dangling Babushka breasts and whisper: “Bubele, nobody writes as Jewish as you.” As I said, extremely strange – but this beginning has been on my hard drive for a few weeks in a folder called “Don’t do it”. It has been there since a Jewish friend said with unusual, unexpected seriousness: “We are in Germany” and “The Germans don’t understand anything and get excited when Jews argue” and “Be aware of your responsibility”.
So I am writing another article without an enormously funny beginning and with lengthy explanations, in the inconvenient knowledge that you have a responsibility first as a German and second as a Jew.
So here is the lengthy, humorless explanation.
On July 20 of this year, the writer Max Czollek wrote on Twitter: “Incidentally, I am not a Jew for Maxim Biller. Perhaps we should also talk about intra-Jewish discrimination. #patrilinearA short time later, Maxim Biller wrote an article in which he referred to this tweet and repeated the statement that Czollek was not a Jew, with reference to the Halacha, the Jewish religious law, according to which a Jew is only someone who has a Jewish mother which does not apply to Czollek. The dispute escalated across the feature pages. Meron Mendel, director of the Anne Frank educational institution, jumped to Czollek’s side and described the idea of Judaism being passed on from the mother as out of date to the USA, where so-called patrilineal Jews are also considered full Jews. The President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, wrote in the Jewish generalWhen Czollek speaks in public as a Jewish intellectual on Jewish issues, he is sailing under a false flag. In the third stage of escalation, the patrilineal Jewish writer Mirna Funk wrote that five years ago Czollek had told her in a private conversation that both of his parents were Jewish.
Czollek were later accused of two things, especially in conservative newspapers: 1) That he was not a Jew, but that he claimed to be. 2) That he, under the pretense of false facts, is assuming a position and an authority connected with it that he is not entitled to, and that in a country in which the question of who is allowed to occupy a Jewish speaker position has a certain relevance. In response to these allegations, an open letter was recently published in which 278 “Jewish and non-Jewish colleagues” expressed their solidarity with Czollek. The accompanying press release states that Czollek “is denied his Jewish identity on the basis of an unfounded allegation”.
How Maxim Biller, with touching persistence, denies Judaism to other people: Not a good look
Non-Jewish Germans feel compelled to interfere in the debate as to whether a person is Jewish or not, and thus to dismiss the attitude of the Central Council of Jews and countless rabbis that Czollek has no “Jewish identity” at all could deny him. At least now in America people are talking about one cluster fuck: a chaotic situation in which everything goes wrong, caused by incompetence and failure of communication.
To make this very clear: I personally, as a Halachic Jew, am and have been in the inner-Jewish patrilinearity debate on the side of the father Jews, because I don’t think it’s fair if people get anti-Semitism and probably multigenerational trauma and are not at least allowed to be Jews for that. And I think it’s like the americans say not a good lookwhen Maxim Biller, with touching persistence, denies Judaism to other people. It speaks for a great need if one always defines Judaism in such a way that only he himself (and possibly the patrilineal Robert Menasse) remains. And I find it wrong for an article to publicly reproduce a private conversation five years ago to claim that Czollek had forged an unambiguous Jewish identity. Statutory private conversations are not verifiable – and that must be allegations published in newspapers. In general, private conversations can simply remain private.
Would Max Czollek have mentioned a less famous Jew?
In addition, it should be possible to have an intra-Jewish conversation about patrilinearity without personal attacks on individuals. Here I am with Czollek, who wrote on Twitter that the dispute was important, but he expects “everyone involved.” [hätte]that the focus is on the topic and not on my person. “Incidentally, this position would be even more convincing if Max Czollek had opened the discussion with” we should talk again about pluralism in Judaism “and not with” Maxim Biller said “. To paraphrase a Jewish joke quoted by Czollek: Chutzpah is getting upset about a private conversation with Biller in front of 35,000 mostly non-Jewish Twitter followers and then complaining when it gets personal.
One wonders whether Czollek would have mentioned a less famous Jew by name, or whether there is also a certain need to adorn himself with an injury by the great Jewish anti-left in front of a thoroughly left-wing followers. If you know Biller’s columns, you don’t wonder who Czollek got this trick from. And so much could be seen as an oedipal fight between two cocks circumcised cock fight dismiss. One could say mildly, “Well, you have vain fights, I cannot do without an enormously comical beginning without pointing out that it was enormously funny, nothing in need is alien to me” – if none of this would be at the expense of Jews and patrilinear ones Jews happen and if we weren’t in Germany and if it weren’t for the responsibility issue.
Responsibility demands the following: There are people for whom the patrilinearity debate is important. Children of Jewish fathers, for example, who grew up in Germany and had all the experiences of strangeness that we all have, who were raised by Shoah-traumatized people, who experienced anti-Semitism, who had to endure everything that only we know how It is difficult to carry it, only to hear from Jews of all people that they do not belong here either. Or Jewish men who want to father children with non-Jewish women and who wrestle with the fact that these children are then not real Jews for others, perhaps even for themselves.
The real fate of Jewish Germans was used to make politics
The patrilinearity debate is also important for all those Jews for whom patrilinearians are simply not Jews, because it has been that way for thousands of years, because it is Jewish law and because one has suffered too much anti-Semitism to be called anti-Semitism now who is kindly a Jew. And if you now declare patrilineal Jews and patrilineal grandfather Jews to be Jews, then anyone can dig up an ancestor somewhere and be a Jew in a country where non-Jewish Germans look at you with big eyes and would like to be Jewish because they would finally long for you Draw a line.
That, too, is a Jewish position that deserves empathy. And we will continue to argue about how we argue about a lot, and some will say “it is so in the US” and others will say “the US is not the land of the Nuremberg Laws”. Still others will cite Israel where patrilineal Jews are Jewish enough to have a right to citizenship but not Jewish enough to marry. We will argue because it is important to us and I hope we will do it empathetically and responsibly.
But of course you not only have a responsibility as a Jew, but also as a non-Jew in Germany, some would say: a greater one. As a reminder of this responsibility, I am writing this article about a debate that should have been held within the Jewish community in a non-Jewish newspaper that has so far stayed out of this dispute. And I am not writing for or against Czollek and Biller, about whom I get upset, how Jews sometimes get upset about other Jews, without this changing anything in terms of solidarity, but for a non-Jewish public that seems to forget its responsibility. From this responsibility one has to ask oneself whether one really has to let every Jewish feud be carried out for months in German feature pages. Whether one shouldn’t also be able to resist the voyeuristic interest of a non-Jewish public. Whether the media might not have a duty of care when unverifiable allegations are made against people with a Shoah background. Whether one can instrumentalize Jewish debates because they discredit a person who does not represent one’s own political opinion.
Solidarity with an individual must not be greater than solidarity with Jewish self-empowerment
This debate, the real fate of Jewish Germans, was used to make politics. First by Czollek’s followers against the left-critical Biller, then against Czollek’s left-wing voice, but then also by conservative newspapers to dispel “wokeness”, and finally by those who signed the Czollek declaration of solidarity. Yes, solidarity is important, but solidarity with a single leftist who brings a dispute to the public cannot be greater in this country than solidarity with Jewish self-empowerment. The fact that conservative media instrumentalize Jewish debates does not give non-Jewish leftists the right to instrumentalize Jewish debates or to participate in any way in a debate about Jewish identity.
Jews determine who is Jewish, with all arguments, all ambivalences, all neediness, with great injuries and hopefully great reconciliations. Non-Jews have to be silent here. It is chutzpah, as a non-Jew, to agree with this and to believe that this is solidarity. It is a strange understanding of solidarity that non-Jews assume the right to publicly determine who has a Jewish identity, 86 years after the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. For Germans, for non-Jews and especially for leftists that is not a good look.