"Arendt posits a political way of life that disperses sovereignty, nationalism, and individualism into new forms of social and political coexistence."
–Judith Butler, London Review of Books
“Arendt’s experience as a Jew was sometimes that of an eyewitness and sometimes that of an actor and sufferer of events, all of which run the risk of partiality; but it was also always that of a judge, which means that she looked at those events and, insofar as she was in them, at herself from the outside. Her Jewish writings from more than thirty years are less exemplifications of Arendt’s political ideas at work than the experiential ground from which those ideas grew and developed. It is in this sense that her experience as a Jew is literally the foundation of her thought: it supports her thinking even when she is not thinking about Jews or Jewish questions.”
–From the preface by Jerome Kohn
Preface: A Jewish Life: 1906–1975 by Jerome Kohn
A Note on the Text
Publication History
Introduction: The Jew as Pariah: The Case of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) by Ron H. Feldman
I
THE 1930s
—The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question
—Against Private Circles
—Original Assimilation: An Epilogue to the One Hundredth Anniversary of Rahel Varnhagen’s Death
—The Professional Reclassification of Youth
—A Guide for Youth: Martin Buber
—Some Young People Are Going Home
—The Gustloff Trial
—The Jewish Question
—Antisemitism
II
THE 1940s
—The Minority Question
—The Jewish War That Isn’t Happening: Articles from Aufbau, October 1941–November 1942
—Between Silence and Speechlessness: Articles from Aufbau, February 1943–March 1944
—The Political Organization of the Jewish People: Articles from Aufbau, April 1944–April 1945
—Jewish Politics
—Why the Crémieux Decree Was Abrogated
—New Leaders Arise in Europe
—A Way toward the Reconciliation of Peoples
—We Refugees
—The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition
—Creating a Cultural Atmosphere
—Jewish History, Revised
—The Moral of History
—Stefan Zweig: Jews in the World of Yesterday
—The Crisis of Zionism
—Herzl and Lazare
—Zionism Reconsidered
—The Jewish State: Fifty Years After, Where Have Herzl’s Politics Led?
—To Save the Jewish Homeland
—The Assets of Personality: A Review of Chaim Weizmann: Statesman, Scientist, Builder of the Jewish Commonwealth
—Single Track to Zion: A Review of Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann
—The Failure of Reason: The Mission of Bernadotte
—About “Collaboration”
—New Palestine Party: Visit of Menachem Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed
III
THE 1950s
—Peace or Armistice in the Near East?
—Magnes, the Conscience of the Jewish People
—The History of the Great Crime: A Review of Bréviaire de la haine: Le IIIe Reich et les juifs [Breviary of Hate: The Third Reich and the Jews] by Léon Poliakov
IV
THE 1960s
—The Eichmann Controversy: A Letter to Gershom Scholem
—Answers to Questions Submitted by Samuel Grafton
—The Eichmann Case and the Germans: A Conversation with Thilo Koch
—The Destruction of Six Million: A Jewish World Symposium
—“The Formidable Dr. Robinson”: A Reply by Hannah Arendt
Afterword: “Big Hannah”—My Aunt by Edna Brocke
Acknowledgments
Index
