"By the early 1960s ... Jews were
even more heavily
represented in the knowledge
professions than they
had
been a decade earlier.
They clearly dominated
the political
culture of New York, where
their style and views
had been
adopted by relatively
large numbers of non-Jewish
intellectuals.
They also became increasingly
influential in other cosmopolitan
centers such as Chicago,
San Francisco, Los Angeles,
and
Berkeley. In all these
cities, they played an
important role
in educating non-Jews
to a more cosmopolitan
perspective."
Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter,
1982, p. 103
"It is ironic that many
of the literary figures
who shied
from Jewish themes embodied
in their writing more
alleged
Jewish traits than more
consciously Jewish writers.
There
remains in their innermost
self unsuspected residues
of their
inherited culture which
no amount of rejection
or denial
could wholly eradicate.
In both the self-hater
and the detached,
the affinity of supposed
Jewish characteristics
has been observed
by both critics and laymen
alike."
-- Lothar Kahn, Jewish author, 1961,
p. 31
"If the literary output
of 1999 reveals anything,
it reveals that
Jewish writers are among the privileged
citizens of the global
village ... Given the unprecedented
international reach of
their imaginations, their absorption in Jewish
history and theology,
and the staggering
diversity of emergent American
voices, it
just may be that these
young Jewish American writers
find that
they share more in common
artistically with their
Jewish contemporaries
writing in Israel,
Europe, Asia, and the rest
of
the Americas than they
share in common with their non-Jewish
contemporaries writing
in the United States."
-- Andrew Furman, one of the judges for
the National Jewish
Book award, MAY/JUNE 2000,
p. 30]
24.
LITERATURE
- "INTELLECTUALS"
-- "THE FAMILY"
In a 1974
book, The American Intellectual
Elite, Charles Kadushin
produced the results of
his studies. He had tabulated
lists of contributors to
leading American "intellectual"
publications, narrowed the
names down to 200, and in
a series of queries or interviews
asked his subjects who were
the most influential intellectuals
around. Of the top 21 most
highly rated (by others
in this publishing circle),
15 were Jewish, including
Hannah Arendt, Daniel Bell,
Saul Bellow, Noam Chomsky,
Paul Goodman, Richard Hofstadter,
Irving Howe, Irving Kristol,
Norman Mailer, Herbert Marcuse,
Norman Podhoretz, David
Riesman, Robert Silvers,
Susan Sontag, and Lionel
Trilling. [KADUSHIN, p.
30]
Half of the total
200 were also reputed to
be Jewish. As Kadushin notes,
"Jews are indeed
much more strongly represented
among leading
intellectuals
than the population at large.
They compose about half
of the American
intellectual elite. Catholics
are vastly underrepresented,
but Protestants,
who are one-third of the group,
are also relatively
underrepresented
... [KADUSHIN, p. 23] ...
Even in comparison with
elite American
professors (those who published
more than 20 articles
in academic
journals and who teach in
high-quality colleges and
universities)
of the same age and in the
same fields, there are between
two and five
times as many Jews in the
intellectual elite." [KADUSHIN,
p. 24]
In the world of academia
(professorships) at-large,
60% of the "intellectual elite"
were found to be Jewish. [KADUSHIN,
p. 24] The "intellectual elite"
also had a geographical flavor
-- half of the academic elite
held positions at four East
Coast universities -- Columbia,
New York University, Harvard,
and Yale. [KADUSHIN, p. 23]
Another (Jewish) professor
echoes this study in claiming
that by the late 1970s 50%
of the "top intellectuals"
in America were Jewish, the
percentage rising to 51% of
all "elite" academics in the
social sciences and 61% in
the humanities. [RUBENSTEIN,
p. 64]
Stephen Whitfield cites
evidence that as many as 30%
of the professors at "major
universities" by the 1980s
were also Jewish. [WHITFIELD,
American, p. 9]
Yet another Jewish
professor used such figures
to declare that 76% "of the
most influential intellectuals
had at least one Jewish parent."
[DAVIS, D., p. 29]
To begin to
understand the implications
of all this, (other than the
popular Jewish explanations
that
Jews are "just smart,"
or socially positioned as
marginalized "others" to recognize
greater philosophical insights)
one must examine how someone
gets on such a list of prominent
people. Kadushin's study sample
was selected from those published
in "twenty or so leading intellectual
journals." These included
the New York Review of
Books, the New
York Times Book Review,
the New Republic, Commentary,
Partisan Review, Daedalus,
Ramparts, Dissent,
the Village Voice and
other such periodicals. All
of these were founded, controlled,
or edited by Jews, as were
many of the others on the
list. "As might be expected,"
noted Kadushin, "the persons
most often named as having
the power to make or break
reputations were the editors
of the key journals -- Robert
Silvers, Jason Epstein [and
his wife Barbara], and Norman
Podhoretz. [All are Jewish]
A few persons [of the intellectuals
surveyed in Kadushin's study]
commented on the alliance
between journals and book
publishers represented by
Silvers and Jason Epstein."
[KADUSHIN, p. 53]
Kadushin's definition
of a "leading intellectual"
underscores its incestuous
current; a "leading intellectual"
is "simply any person who
writes regularly for leading
intellectual journals and/or
has his books reviewed in
them." [KADUSHIN, p. 8]
Kadushin himself confronts
the inbred dimensions of the
"intellectual elite": "I have
the impression from reading
autobiographical accounts
of intellectual life that
young intellectuals tend to
be sponsored by older intellectuals
and into intellectual prominence
through a combination of journals,
circles, and political parties
controlled by the older intellectuals."
[KADUSHIN, p. 25]
In order to fully
understand this scenario,
one must begin with the 1930s
and a group of mostly Jewish
individuals that have sequentially
risen en masse in New York
City as part of an
interconnected literary,
publishing, and "intellectual"
network, often self-referred
to as "The New York Intellectuals"
or "The Family." The Family, wrote Philip Nobile, is
"an elite array of critics,
editors, novelists, and poets
that manage the country's
high culture." [NOBILE, p.
13] "The New York literary
world," says Family member
Norman Podhoretz, "began to
acquire a recognizable identity
.... [one could] think of
it as a Jewish family." [PODHORETZ,
Making, p. 109] To
those outside the Family circle
in the literary world, they
-- and their heirs today --
are the Jewish (literary)
Mafia. Homogeneous only in
that they are almost all Jews
(not uncommonly warring among
themselves), they inevitably
linked with the many webs
of the expanding Jewish-predominated
mass media; a few "intellectuals"
even became household names.
As a group, they are credited
with profound influence in
the shaping of the twentieth
century American cultural,
social, and even the political
scene.
"During the last few
years," wrote Family member
Irving Howe in 1969, "the
talk about the New York Establishment
has taken an unpleasant turn.
Whoever does a bit of lecturing
about the country is likely
to encounter, after a few
drinks, literary academics
who inquire enviously, sometimes
spitefully, about 'what's
new in New York.' ... As polite
needling questions are asked
about the cultural life of
New York, a rise of sweat
comes to one's brow, for everyone
knows what no one says: New
York means Jews." [HOWE, p.
267]
"[I]n the frothy turbulent
'mix' of America in the 60's,
with its glut, its power drives,
its confusion of values,"
Alfred Kazin decided
in 1966, "the Jewish
writer found himself so much
read, consulted, imitated,
that he knew it would not
be long before the reaction
set in -- and in fact the
decorous plaint of the 'Protestant
minority' has been succeeded
by crudely suggestive phrases
about the 'Jewish Establishment,'
the 'O.K. writers and the
Poor Goy,' 'The Jewish-American
Push.' Yet it is plainly a
certain success that has been
resented, not the Jew." [KAZIN,
A., 1966, p. xxiv]
Of course the New
York Intellectuals
were -- and their descendants
are -- not a formal organization,
but rather an informal clique,
a communally self-promotive
camaraderie of writers, critics,
editors, and publishers. Alexander
Bloom suggests that the following
individuals may be considered
to be part of the Family's
inner ring:
Philip Rahv, William
Phillips, Lionel Trilling,
Diana Trilling, Meyer
Schapiro, Clement
Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg,
Dwight MacDonald,
Elliot Cohen and Sidney
Hooks. A later generation
included Irving Howe,
Irving Kristol, Daniel
Bell, Delmore Schwartz, Leslie
Fiedler, Seymour
Martin Lipset, Nathan
Glazer, Alfred Kazin, Robert
Warshow, Melvin
Lasky, Isaac Rosenfeld,
and Saul Bellow. Still later
came Norman Mailer,
Philip Roth, Michael
Harrington, Theodore Solotanoff,
Jason Epstein,
Midge Decter, Norman
Podhortetz, and Susan Sontag.
Other candidates for connective
inclusion include Henry Roth,
Michael
Blankfort, Leon Uris, Meyer
Levin, Arthur Cohen, Louis
Untermeyer,
Herman Wouk, Arthur Miller,
Muriel Rukyeser, Louis Zara,
Paul
Goodman, Barbara Epstein,
Steven Marcus, John Simon,
and many
others.
Rings radiating
outward include I. F. Stone,
Herman Kahn, Hans Morgenthau,
Sidney Hertzberg, Ronald Steel,
David T. Bazelon, Nat Hentoff,
Oscar Handlin, Daniel Boorstin,
and others.
In 1980, Daniel Bell,
a prominent Family member,
broke down his version of
the Jewish contingent of the
New York Intellectuals and
their "fields of interest"
into the following categories:
ART: Meyer Schapiro,
Clement Greenberg, Harold
Rosenberg
PHILOSOPHY:
Sidney Hooks, Hannah Arendt
(Ernest Nagel)
LITERARY CRITICISM:
Lionel Trilling, Philip Rahv,
Alfred Kazin,
Irving Howe, Leslie
Fiedler, Paul Goodman, Lionel
Abel, Steven
Marcus, Robert Warshow,
Robert Brustein, Susan Sontag,
Diana
Trilling
INTELLECTUAL
JOURNALISM: Elliot Cohen,
William Phillips,
Irving Kristol, Robert
Silvers, Norman Podhoretz,
Jason Epstein,
Theodore Solataroff,
Midge Decter
THEOLOGY: (Will
Herberg) (Emil Fackenheim)
(Jacob Taubes)
(Arthur Cohen)
SOCIOLOGY: Daniel
Bell, Nathan Glazer, S. M.
Lipset, (Philip
Selznick)
(Edward Shils) (Lewis
Coser)
HISTORY: Richard
Hofstadter, Gertrude Himmelfarb
ECONOMICS: (Robert
Heilbroner) (Robert Lekachman)
Bell further lists
eight Jews as the "Elders
of the Family" (1920-1930),
with six Gentile afforded
"cousins" status. Bell adds
ten more Jews as the Family's
"Younger Brothers" (1930-40)
and seven more Gentiles as
"cousins." In the "Second
Generation" of the Family
(his own group), Bell lists
ten new Jews and, rather noteworthy,
the Gentile "cousin" group
has dropped to two. The 1940-1950
new "Younger Brothers" category
lists ten more Jews and, alas,
we are down to one non-Jewish
cousin. [BELL, Intelligentsia,
p. 126-127] "These political
intellectuals," says Stephen
Isaacs, "include a number
of people who have known one
another well for many years
and who have been tagged the
"College of Irvings" after
Irving Kristol (a professor
at New York University and
co-editor of the Public
Interest and Irving Howe
(a professor at the City College
of New York and editor of
Dissent). [ISAACS,
p. 53]
However one
portrays the best known American
"intellectuals," New York-oriented
or not, a huge proportion
invariably came up Jewish.
In the 1970s one commentator,
Michael Novak, framed his
own Most Important American
Intellectuals List like this:
IVY LEAGUE PRAGMATISTS AND HUMANISTS:
Henry Steele
Commager,
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
LITERARY MODERNISTS: Lionel
Trilling, Louis Kampf, Irving
Howe,
Leslie
Fiedler
PLURALISTS: Nathan Glazer, Daniel
Moynihan, David Reisam, Talcott
Parsons,
Will Herberg
NEW RADICALS: Noam Chomsky,
and "the New York Review of
Book"
gang
CONSERVATIVE LIBERALS:
Sidney Hooks, Norman Podhoretz,
Irving
Kristol
EUROPE-ORIENTED HUMANITIES:
Hannah Arendt, Philip Rahv,
George
Lichtheim, Saul Bellow
Jack Porter responded
to Novak's Intellectuals List
with his own about the subject,
specifically focusing on a
compilation of Jewish intellectual
"insiders" who "despite their
political differences, agree
on two essential points: the
survival and integrity of
the Jewish people and the
survival and integrity of
the state of Israel. If any
intellectual opposes either
one of these, he or she stands
outside the Jewish people."
[PORTER, p. 38 -39] Porter's
group includes David Brudnoy,
Milton Friedman, Meir Kahane,
Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol,
Milton Himmelfarb, Nathan
Glazer, Leonard Fein, I. L.
Horowitz, Irving Howe, Arthur
Waiskow, Morris U. Schappes,
and Paul Jacobs.
The most notable factor
in these last two lists is
that Noam Chomsky, a Jewish
professor of linguistics,
is mentioned on the first,
and is "left standing outside the Jewish people"
on the second. Chomsky has
in fact long since been ostracized
and marginalized by the Jewish
"Family" for his attacks against
Jewish chauvinism and Israel.
"What sets Chomsky ... apart,"
notes David Herman, "is his
fierce attack on his fellow
intellectuals as a class ...
Instead of producing truth,
he argues, they often betray
their vocation and produce
amnesia about the past and
distortion of the present
... Intellectuals in the universities,
think tanks, and media create
a consensus of public opinion.
All criticism is then marginalized
by placing it beyond the pale
of informed debate." [HERMAN,
p. 39] Not unusually, an American-born
professor at Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, Barry Rubin,
cited Chomsky as someone who
was "intellectually unbalanced
or psychologically disturbed."
[RUBIN, p. 217]
The New
York Intellectuals, says Alexander
Bloom, "held out for their
personal independence but
maintained their connections
... They moved across the
political landscape together
... occupying the same large
area at the same time ...
There is no question that
these individuals embodied
many of the most important
political and social forces
of recent years, that they
helped shape what America
thought -- in its universities,
its leading journals, and
its political debate." [BLOOM,
p. 7]
"Once journals have
attained positions of eminence,"
notes Charles Kadushin, "they
have independent power to
make or break the prestige
of individual intellectuals.
This power is exercised through
the clique and star system,
the ability to publish some
people and not others, and
the ability to select some
ideas and not others. And
as will be evident, the power
to support one idea while
ignoring or denigrating another
gives one the key to the kingdom
of the intellectuals." [KADUSHIN,
p. 51]
By
the time [Jewish mogul] Punch
Sulzberger [inheritor of the
New York Times] occupied
his father's chair in 1963,"
says former Times Executive
Editor Max Frankel,
"American society had shed
many of its anti-Semitic prejudices
and permitted
the rapid advancement of Jews
in professional life and corporate
suites. The
general revulsion against
fascism turned into a revulsion
against bigotry itself,
as demonstrated by the election
of the first Catholic president,
John F. Kennedy. Exploiting
this atmosphere, and Gentile
guilt about the Holocaust,
American Jews
of my generation were emboldened
to make them themselves culturally
conspicuous,
to flaunt their ethnicity,
to find literary inspiration
in their roots, and to bask
in the resurrection
of Israel." [FRANKEL, M.,
1999, p. 400]
"Jews play a markedly disproportionate
role in political intellectualism
in the United States," wrote
Stephen Isaacs in 1974, "Jewish
intellectuals tend to stand
out because many of them have
been heavily advertised and,
having a touch of the tummler,
they themselves are often
experts at self-promotion.
They thrive not on mass awareness
of their concepts but on the
quality of their audience.
The Jewish intellectuals predominate
among the editors of the small
but influential intellectual
journals..." [ISAACS, p. 53]
"Careers like those of [non-Jew]
Margaret Mead, David Riesman,
and Daniel Bell," notes David
Hollinger, "indicate the extent
to which social scientists
replaced the clergy as the
most authoritative public
moralists for educated Americans."
[HOLLINGER, p. 23]
"In a time of intoxicating
prosperity," wrote Alfred
Kazin in 1966 about this profoundly
influential Jewish secular
pulpit, "it has
been natural for the Jewish
writer to see how superficial
society can be, how pretentious,
atrocious, unstable -- and
comic. Thus, in a secular
age when so many people believe
in nothing but society's values,
is the significance of literature
of the Jewish writer's being
a Jew." [KAZIN, A., 1966, p. xxv]
"These people
are the Diores and Shiaperillis
of intellectual fashion,"
the novelist George P. Eliot
observed about the Family,
"What they think today, you're
apt to find yourself, in a
Sears-Roebuck-ish sort of
way, thinking tomorrow." [BLOOM,
p. 313]
"The literary
field in which Jews are without
qualification in the highest
rank is that of the essay,"
wrote Jewish author Marie
Syrkin in 1964,
"be it column or book-length
exposition. As social analyst,
political commentator
or literary critic, the Amerian
Jewish writer occupies a major
role. In journalism
every shade of political opinion
has Jews among its ablest
exponents. The gamut
runs from the conservative
Arthur Krock through the less
predictable Walter
Lippman to the liberal Max
Lerner on to extreme radical
pundits. In literary criticism
the same variety and excellence
are present." [SYRKIN, M.,
1964, p. 231]
The Family took shape
around the journal Partisan
Review in the 1930s; they
initially expressed a radical,
confrontational and communist
posture towards mainstream
non-Jewish American society.
The central theme of their
communal identity -- not yet
overtly expressed as being
Jewish -- was that they were
all outsiders, "alienated,"
struggling in the margins
of mass culture. Eventually,
distinctly as Jews, notes
Alexander Bloom, "they claimed
... an expertise in marginality
based on hundreds of years
of experience." [BLOOM, p.
169] "[The Family]," notes Norman Podhoretz,
"did not feel that they belonged
to America or that America
belonged to them.' [PODHORETZ,
p. 117] "There was something
decidedly Jewish about the
intellectuals who began to
cohere as a group around the
Partisan Review in
the later 30s," notes Family
member Irving Howe, "and one
of the things that was 'decidedly
Jewish' was that most were
of Jewish birth!" [HOWE, p.
240] (What was/is a common
situation for a non-Jew who
sought/seeks to crack the
Jewish-dominated publishing
world? Take the case of British
novelist George Orwell, of
Animal Farm and 1984 fame.
"His first publisher, Victor
Gollanz," says Milton Goldin,
"was a Communist who described
himself as a Christian socialist
and had been born into an
Orthodox Jewish family. Orwell's
second publisher, Frederic
Warburg [also Jewish, was]
a descendant of the Swedish
branch of the Warburg banking
family ... Jewish editors
of the Partisan Review
(then located in New York)
acquainted a readership across
the Atlantic with Orwell's
views. And when Jewish editors
at the Book-of-the-Month
Club chose Animal Farm
as a club selection, the breakthrough
at last provided him with
a decent living.") [GOLDIN,
M., 11-29-2000]
"The chic word among
the best Jewish writers today
is 'alienation,'" wrote Arthur
Hertzberg in 1964, "which
is a way of recognizing the
truth that a Jew is irretrievably
different. Writers like Norman
Mailer and Leslie Fiedler,
and a host of others, have
the merit of seeing this fact
continues to exist even where
Jewish learning or active
commitment have evaporated.
They may not know why, and
they may deny those reasons
that they do know, yet these
writers proclaim that the
Jew in his very existence
is alien to the world ...
the Jew is not becoming like
everyone else they say; it
is that everyone worth mentioning
is really becoming just like
the Jew. There is some superficial
truth to this assertion at
a moment in American life
when so much of its literature
is being written by Jews."
[HERTZBERG, p. 294] Jewish
poet Delmore Schwartz once
noted this "alienation which
only a Jew can suffer, and
use, as a cripple uses his
weakness in order to beg."
[ATLAS, J., 1977, p. 166]
Among the literature
promoted and disseminated
by many Family members was
the secular Jewish "religion"
of Freudianism. One Partisan
Review staffer noted that,
"We were all more or less
saturated with psychoanalytic
jargon. Psychoanalysis was
at that time very much in
the air, and everybody seemed
to be in it or contemplating
it." [TORREY] Partisan
Review editor William
Phillips edited two books
on psychoanalysis as a basis
for socio-cultural perception,
Art and Psychoanalysis
(1957) and Literature and
Psychoanalysis (1983).
Lionel Trilling's influential
volume, The Liberal Imagination,
had chapters on "Art and Neurosis"
and "Freud and Literature."
Louis Fraiberg wrote in his
own Psychoanalysis and
American Literary Criticism
that "No other critic (than
Trilling) has shown a comparable
grasp of the significance
of psychoanalysis; no other
critic has so well incorporated
it into his criticism." [TORREY]
"Many Jewish intellectuals,"
suggests E. Fuller Torrey,
"sought expiation of their
guilt and remorse (about the
Holocaust) in psychoanalysis."
[TORREY] In 1990 a random
survey of New York psychiatrists,
50 to 80% of local book and
literary journal editors were
believed to be veterans of
psychoanalysis. [TORREY]
Norman Podhoretz
even described the Family's
bitter arguments among themselves
in psychoanalytic -- and Jewish
-- terms:
"To be
adopted into the Family was
a mark of great distinction
... But
once
adopted, you could expect
to be spoken of by many (not
all) of
your
relatives in the most terrifyingly
cruel terms ... Transposed
into a
different
key, it was the Jewish self-hatred
that has always been the
other
side of the coin of Jewish
self-love." [PODHORETZ, p.
152]
While most of these
Great Thinkers, in the beginning,
distanced themselves from
issues of their "Jewishness"
(although, notes Irving Howe,
"this severance from Jewish
immigrant sources would later
come to be a little suspect"
[HOWE, p. 241],
their collective path
to money, status, and power
is manifest in a most distinctly
Jewish way: they were an influential
clique, a clan, initially
homogeneous only in that they
were all part of the same
mutually promotive network.
Over the following decades
their radicalism softened
into an assertion of "anti-communist
liberalism"; ultimately individuals
spread from there across the
political map. Increasingly
however, after World War II,
their most pressing common
link was a strong reaffirmation
of their Jewish identities,
allegiance to Jewish parochialism,
and emphatic support for the
state of Israel.
Ironically, history
has proven the Jewish Mafia's
essential self-image of being
"alienated" and "marginalized"
(later understood by them
to be an ancestral reservoir
of special Jewish insights)
to become ridiculous. The
Family has proven to be exactly
the opposite of what they
proclaimed themselves at first
to be. History has revealed
them as a group of literary
hustlers and self-promoters
who were profoundly influential
and centrally located in deconstructing
the institutions of the surrounding
non-Jewish culture they so
much despised until they gained entre to prestigious
empowerment, at which time
they vigorously struggled
to affirm the status quo of which
they had become so much a
part, save overt adjustments
to their new-found "Jewishness,"
and a reconstruction of the
world in that image.
Family member
Harold Rosenberg explained
the way modern Jewry
seeks to rationalize Jewish
particularism as being beneficial
to American universalism like
this:
"Since modern life
is so complex that no man
can possess it in its
entirety, the outsider
often finds himself the perfect
insider."
[BLOOM,
p. 153]
"In addition to their
notions of group marginality,"
observes Alexander Bloom,
"which differs from individual
feelings of aloneness, [the
Family] also attempted to
carry their alienation with
them to the central position
they felt they should occupy
[in American society]." "What
began in the 30s," says Richard
Kostelanetz, "as a collection
of ambitious young writers
became, by the 60s, the most
powerful establishment ever
seen in literary America,
and they dominated the scene
as it had never been dominated
before." [KOSTELANETZ, p.
39]
"Upwardly mobile Jews,"
notes Alan Wald, "comprised
a disproportionate number
of intellectuals in all radical
movements in New York in the
1930s. The veterans of the
[Jewish-founded left-wing
magazines] New Masses
and New Leader were
not qualitatively different
in their Jewish composition
from those of the Partisan
Review." [WALD, p. 9]
In historical retrospect,
it is obvious that noble intellectual
endeavors and enlightenment
really were not the only --
and probably not the fundamental
-- driving forces behind most of the New
York Intellectuals. "A strong
desire of class was also buried
in the whole dynamic," notes
Alexander Bloom, "Only subsequently
did some of the young men
come to see how clearly their
own progress was tied to a
desire to rise." [BLOOM, p.
27] Norman Podhoretz called
the Jewish Mafia's deepest
motivation in their struggles
"a dirty little secret," and
he wrote an entire book, Making
It, about his own -- and
others -- obsessions with
self-promotive hustling and
status-seeking withi
