The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State 1st Edition

by Benjamin Ginsberg (Author)

4 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0226296654

ISBN-10: 0226296652

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In this provocative book, Benjamin Ginsberg examines the cycle of Jewish success and anti-Semitic attack throughout the history of the Diaspora, with a concentrated focus on the "special case" of America. For Ginsberg, the essential issue is not anti-Jewish feeling, but the conditions under which such sentiment is likely to be used in the political arena. The Fatal Embrace identifies the political dynamics that, historically, have set the stage for the persecution of Jews.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ginsberg's inquiry into the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States is sensitive, unflinching and lucid. He predicts that the "unthinkable" could happen--a political alliance of radical populists and respected conservatives who make vigorous use of virulent anti-Semitic themes to attack liberal Democrats. A Johns Hopkins political science professor, Ginsberg bases this conclusion on a broad analysis of Jews' shifting relationship to state power, from the Civil War through the New Deal to the collapse of the Jewish/Republican alliance as the Bush administration downgraded the importance of the state of Israel in U.S. foreign policy. The opening chapter shows how Jews have played key roles throughout history in building liberal, absolutist, monarchist and socialist regimes, offering their services and skills in exchange for protection and opportunity--a sometimes "fatal embrace" that, in Ginsberg's analysis, often provokes organized anti-Semitism.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

According to Ginsberg (political science, Johns Hopkins), the state has been both a protector and betrayer of the Jews in modern times. Ginsberg claims that Jews have traditionally measured their progress in American society by the degree to which they have been heeded and accepted by the governing powers. The Jews have achieved their greatest success under liberal administrations. But with the questioning of liberalism, the political influence of the Jews has waned, and currents of anti-Semitism seem to be surfacing more frequently. All in all, Ginsberg's book is a troubling one. Some will find his arguments a little shaky, and even Jewish readers will disagree on the degree of danger. Libraries with strong current affairs sections will want to add this book.
- Paul Kaplan, Dakota Cty. Lib., Eagan, Minn.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 286 pages
Publisher: University of Chicago Press; 1st edition (November 1, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226296652
ISBN-13: 978-0226296654
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,197 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #636 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Religious Studies > Judaism
- #3876 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Race Relations > Discrimination & Racism
- #5256 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism

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M. Kramer

An eye opener

October 30, 2008

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I wish Benjamin Ginsburg would update this work. I learned a lot.

But, given the ferocity/ ethnic baiting of the 2008 election, the extreme leverage (PONZI scheme) of global banking, there has not been a whisper of anti-semitism (except in most veiled code) anywhere. Why is that?

Seems like a volume 2 is needed!

Anyway, I love reading this book. Who would have thought that Jewish people helped reconstruct the South after the civil war! The book is as much about power politics, as it is about any Jewish role in power. The book delivers a potent recipe for a segment of a minority who services those in power, make tons of money and gain power behind the scenes, and then is hatefully driven out of town by opposing power seekers. Have any groups other than Jews done this? If not, why not?

The latter brings up my major criticism of the book. I wish that the thesis would be broadened to other minorites. If it cannot be broadened, then we are stuck with the "singularity" of the Jewish people with regards to the dynamics of the Fatal Embraces. This begs for further elucidation.

regards,
Mark

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Lawrence Siden

profoundly insightful, despite all that has happened since it was printed.

January 18, 2015

Format: Hardcover

This book sat on my shelf in it's shrink-wrap (one of the few hardcover books I can ever remember buying in plastic shrink-wrap) for almost 25 years before my now grown son noticed it and asked me why I hadn't opened it yet. I did. At first I thought it would be a tedious retelling of the successes and downfalls of now obscure Jewish names from Europe's past, but soon realized that that these first chapters were a necessary background for an insightful analysis of the Jewish political experience in America up until 1992 when the book was published.

Much has happened since 1992 that Mr. Ginzburg couldn't have forseen: the 9/11 attacks, the return of the Jewish neo-cons during Bush II's tenure, and the election of America's first African-American president that some pundits have labelled as America's first "Jewish" president because of his close ties to Jews from his days as a pol in Chicago and later in Springfield, IL. (AIPAC's one-sided viewpoint notwithstanding, I wouldn't regard Obama's frosty relationship with Bibi as anything motivated by anti-Semitism, or anti-Israel sentiment, but simply as impatience and exasperation with what even many Israelis see as an unsustainable status-quo.) Indeed, much of the events since the publish date take on a new light for me after reading this book.

The insights from this book go hand in hand with Maristella Botticini's "The Chosen Few", a history of the Jews between 70-1492 CE, whose thesis is that universal literacy, arising in the centuries following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, is what made Jews unique in the ancient world and placed them in a position to advance dramatically in trade, medicine and administration with the rise of Islam, one of many ancient precursors to our current "globalization". Mr. Ginzburg's thesis is that this unique status also makes Jews' position in their host countries especially precarious as they become easy targets of resentment by those who perceive themselves as threatened by each new globalization.

My biggest take-away from "The Fatal Embrace" however, is that anti-Jewish outbursts are rarely spontaneous. Those who are behind them invariable have an agenda to gain or regain lost influence and control over the allocation of favor and influence. This appears to be true in all the episodes that the book analyses, but to me is illustrated most clearly in what I found to be the book's most distressing chapter about antagonism between African-Americans and Jews during the 1980 on college campuses and in New York City bureaus. An episode that once baffled me became crystal clear. People are nothing if not creatures of ambition, and some (at least the sort who tend to become politicians or vie to gain influence on university faculties) will stop at nothing to achieve their ambitions, even when it means throwing their erst-while friends and allies under the bus.

After reading this book, I can no longer take my privileged status as a Jew in America for granted.

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A good assesment, but some points missed

January 23, 2004

Format: Paperback

This valiant effort to address the question of the danger of the Jewish alliance with government fails to pick out other important points. The basic argument here is that throughout history, since 70 A.D to be exact, Jews have tried to embrace government so as to be protected by it. As the weakest and more discriminated against people in Europe Jews frequently worked in the courts of Kings. When communism and socialism wee being Born this book shows how Jews worked to establish the Soviet in Russia and fought in the Spanish civil war. In America Jews quickly embraced the more tolerant state, aiding on both sides of the civil war and occupying a seat on the supreme court for more then a century.
The question this book asks is: Has the Jewish alliance with the state proved to be a fatal tactic? Examples of the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and the Stalinist purges of Jews in Russia seem to be prime example. But the book does not address the fact that in the middle eastern countries Jews had no status and frequently existed with no alliance to the state and yet the Jews of the middle east were also suppressed, pogromed, and sometimes expelled. Jews of the middle east, despite the fact that they were not visible were still hated and they were forced to wear distinctive embarrassing clothes and were restricted from riding horses and forced to work on the Sabbath. So the conclusion should be that it really doesn't matter whether Jews embrace or shun the state, either way we will be at risk and the reality is that at least by embracing the state Jews have gotten a measure of power to help influence government so that it is harder for government sanctioned anti-Semitism to take place.

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