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Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question

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Richard A. Bernstein traces Hannah Arendt's relationship to her own Jewishness, from her earliest experiences of Anti- Semitism in childhood to and through the 'banality of evil' controversy. He shows that certain fundamental concepts of her thought were strongly influenced by her experience as a stateless Jew.He details the story of her special connection with Kurt Blumenfeld and the thought of Charles Lazare which helped form her Zionism.
Her latter- day critique of Israel is considered as her passionate admission that the one public tragedy she could not think to bear would be the destruction of Israel.
As to her controversy with the Jewish community on the 'banality of evil'. My own sense is that Bernstein is a bit too sympathetic to her position, and that Scholem was essentially right in speaking of Arendt's distance from the ordinary Jewish people. Her insensitivity, even moral cruelty to the victims of the Shoah, is a black mark on her record, a record which includes a heroic chapter in her years in France helping foster Youth Aliyah, and saving Jewish children.
The story is complicated and always interesting. This is a deep study but a political thinker who understands Arendt well.