The Jewish Writings » (Reprint)

Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906, fled to Paris in 1933, and came to the United States after the outbreak of World War II. She was the editorial director of Schocken Books from 1946 to 1948, and taught at Berkeley, Cornell, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and The New School for Social Research. Arendt died in 1975.

Although Hannah Arendt is not primarily known as a Jewish thinker, she probably wrote more about Jewish issues than any other topic. As a young adult in Germany, she wrote about German Jewish history. After moving to France in 1933, she helped Jewish youth immigrate to Palestine. During her years in Paris, her principle concern was the transformation of antinomianism from prejudice to policy, which would culminate in the Nazi "final solution." After France fell, Arendt escaped from an internment camp and made her way to America. There she wrote articles calling for a Jewish army to fight the Nazis. After the war, she supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in a binational (Arab-Jewish) state of Israel.

Arendt's original conception of political freedom cannot be fully grasped apart from her experience as a Jew. In 1961 she attended Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. Her report, Eichmann in Jerusalem, provoked an immense controversy, which culminated in her virtual excommunication from the worldwide Jewish community. Today that controversy is the subject of serious re-evaluation, especially among younger people in the United States, Europe, and Israel.

The publication of The Jewish Writings–much of which has never appeared before–traces Arendt’s life and thought as a Jew. It will put an end to any doubts about the centrality, from beginning to end, of Arendt’s Jewish experience.

Preface: A Jewish Life: 1906-1975   Jerome Kohn     ix
A Note on the Text     xxxiii
Publication History     xxxvii
Introduction: The Jew as Pariah: The Case of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)   Ron H. Feldman     xli
The 1930s
The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question     3
Against Private Circles     19
Original Assimilation: An Epilogue to the One Hundredth
Anniversary of Rahel Varnhagen's Death     22
The Professional Reclassification of Youth     29
A Guide for Youth: Martin Buber     31
Some Young People Are Going Home     34
The Gustloff Trial     38
The Jewish Question     42
Antisemitism     46
The 1940s
The Minority Question     125
The Jewish War That Isn't Happening: Articles from Aufbau, October 1941-November 1942     134
Between Silence and Speechlessness: Articles from Aufbau, February 1943-March 1944     186
The Political Organization of the Jewish People: Articles from Aufbau, April 1944-April 1945     199
Jewish Politics     241
Why the Cremieux Decree Was Abrogated     244
New Leaders Arise in Europe     254
A Way toward the Reconciliation of Peoples     258
WeRefugees     264
The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition     275
Creating a Cultural Atmosphere     298
Jewish History, Revised     303
The Moral of History     312
Stefan Zweig: Jews in the World of Yesterday     317
The Crisis of Zionism     329
Herzl and Lazare     338
Zionism Reconsidered     343
The Jewish State: Fifty Years After, Where Have Herzl's Politics Led?     375
To Save the Jewish Homeland     388
The Assets of Personality: A Review of Chaim Weizmann: Statesman, Scientist, Builder of the Jewish Commonwealth     402
Single Track to Zion: A Review of Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann     405
The Failure of Reason: The Mission of Bernadotte     408
About "Collaboration"     414
New Palestine Party: Visit of Menachem Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed     417
The 1950s
Peace or Armistice in the Near East?     423
Magnes, the Conscience of the Jewish People     451
The History of the Great Crime: A Review of Breviaire de la haine: Le III[superscript e] Reich et les juifs [Breviary of Hate: The Third Reich and the Jews]   Leon Poliakov     453
The 1960s
The Eichmann Controversy: A Letter to Gershom Scholem      465
Answers to Questions Submitted   Samuel Grafton     472
The Eichmann Case and the Germans: A Conversation with Thilo Koch     485
The Destruction of Six Million: A Jewish World Symposium     490
"The Formidable Dr. Robinson": A Reply   Hannah Arendt     496
Afterword: "Big Hannah"-My Aunt   Edna Brocke     512
Acknowledgments     523
Index     527