My Review of Liaquat Ahmed's "1873: The Rothschilds. the First Great Depression......"

A Good Deflation

Liaquat Ahmed of “The Lords of Finance” fame has written a new account of the long depression of the last quarter of the 19^th Century. To me, Ahmed mixes up depression with deflation. A depression signals a massive decline in aggregate output, which did not happen and a deflation signals a sustained decline in the price level, which did happen. I have covered some of the ground here in two prior reviews (See:  https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2016/02/my-amazon-review-of-robert-j-gordons.html and https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2017/09/my-amazon-review-of-richard-whites.html )

In the late 1860’s Europe witnessed a great railroad boom that was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. France was required to pay a huge indemnity to the newly united Germany. Instead of being a burden, it turned out to be a boon as the Rothschild banks, who are featured prominently in the book, fund the payment with two massive bond issues. Money came out of the woodwork from all over Europe to buy the bonds and that lead to a surge in economic activity leading to a boom in lending to eastern Europe and to Latin America. It all came unglued when the Vienna stock market crashed that rippled into Germany. Sixty years later a bank failure in Vienna would also deeply impact Germany, but to a far greater extent. In the U.S. the trigger was the collapse of the Jay Cooke & Co. banking operation that financed the Union during the Civil War and became undone with the failure of the Northern Pacific Railroad. 

 

According to Ahmed the crash was exacerbated by Europe moving away from a bi-metallic standard (gold and silver) towards a full gold standard. Similarly in the U.S., the Coinage Act of 1873, later known as “The Crime of 1873” limited the use of silver coinage. With the U.S. and Europe operating under the straitjacket of the gold standard, money in circulation declined and a deflation ensued. Indeed, in the U.S. both leaderships of the Republican and Democratic parties supported hard money

 

All of this was going on against the backdrop of improved global transportation which lowered shipping costs worldwide. For example, both the Suez Canal and the U.S. transcontinental railroad were completed in 1869. Later in the 1870’s and especially in the 1880’s there were huge advances in farm and industrial mechanization. Thus, if other things being equal, prices should have fallen and fall they did.

 

The wholesale price index fell from 140 in 1870 to 116 in 1878, a decline of 2.3% a year. Prices continued to fall and did not bottom until 1899 at an index level of 81. Thus, for the entire period prices declined at an annual rate of 1.9%. This price deflation obviously wreaked havoc for indebted farmers, triggering a populist revolt across the prairie. Their cause was to allow for unlimited silver coinage to expand the money supply and increase prices. Of course, the urban workers would have issues with this.

 

In Europe the political climate darkened with moves against free trade and the creation of the modern version of antisemitism partly tied to the Jewish Rothschild banking family. Indeed, the term “antisemitism” was coined in the Germany of the 1880’s. Further exacerbating the sour mood was the level of opulence of the bankers and industrialists of the gilded age.

 Although there were depressed conditions on the farm, industrial production boomed. There was only a modest decline in U.S. industrial production between 1873 and 1876, but by 1880 industrial output was one third higher than the decade before and it would double in the 1880’s. Industrial production was aided by the surge of immigrant workers flooding into the country from eastern and southern Europe. This explosive growth in industrial activity is the opposite of a depression. Further, in 1879 three major inventions would soon change the world: the incandescent light bulb, the telephone and the internal combustion engine.

 

By the end of the century gold discoveries in South Africa and Alaska eased the monetary pressure and prices started to increase. The deflation was over, but not before the hard money McKinley would defeat the soft money Bryan in the 1896 presidential election.

 

Although I come to a different conclusion than Ahmed, I do recommend his book. He brings insight into the popular feelings of the day, and you get a sense of the people and personalities of that era. 

American Politics has gone Batshit Crazy

On the eve of the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, American politics has gone completely batshit crazy. Where the Republican leadership spent millions of dollars only a few weeks ago pillorying the highly flawed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in Senate primary, they are now falling over themselves to support him. It no longer matters that he has been investigated for securities fraud, been impeached by his own party and that is wife is divorcing him over his adultery.

 

On the Democratic side leading Democrats continue to support Graham Platner, their preferred Senate candidate in next week’s Maine primary. Those leaders choose to ignore the fact that Platner is a Jew-hating neo-Nazi who has a habit of sexting a half dozen women while still being married. Several years ago, Anthony Weiner’s New York City’s mayoralty campaign collapsed over his infamous dick-pix.

 

What is going on? It seems that the hatred of MAGA-Republicans for their Democratic counterparts overwhelms any sense of decency and the Democrats hatred of the MAGA-Republicans, if anything, is greater than the Republican hatred of them. Of course, the polarizer-in-chief, Donald Trump has set the tone for the divisions in our land. However, I would caution to note that Trump is the product of something that has been brewing in our politics for a long time.

 

My guess is that the infighting we are now witnessing is reminiscent of the religious wars of the late Middle Ages. Thus, if we are in a religious war where politics has substituted for religion, compromise is impossible. Recall that our founders wanted to separate religion from the state, but the fanatics in both parties are now making that difficult causing our founders to turn over in their graves.

My Review of Sarah Hurwitz's "As a Jew: Reclaiming our Story....."

Be Strong and Stand Tall

Former senior speech writer to President Barack Obama and head speech writer to Michelle Obama, Sarah Hurwitz has written an important book on the need for American Jews to reclaim their proud identity and go beyond being a “social justice” Jew or a “cultural” Jew. Although Hurwitz was a Bat Mitzvah her experience with Judaism was of the pediatric variety. She didn’t really rediscover her Judaism until she was 36 when she walked into an Introduction to Judaism course. Thus, much of the book is autobiographical.

 

She tells us of her discovery of the very long text-line of Judaism going from the Tanakh, to the Talmud, to later rabbinical commentaries and on to the modern era. She didn’t realize the full depth of Judaism as a way of life and a way of thinking. She also has become learned in the history of antisemitism going back to the early Catholic Church relying on the work of James Carroll’s “Constantine’s Sword.” She goes on to discuss the antisemitism that originated in the Soviet Union and how the Soviet’s anti-Zionism was picked up by the Islamic world.

 

Hurwitz picks up on Dara Horn’s theme distinguishing between Purim antisemitism and Chanukah antisemitism. Purim antisemitism calls for the destruction of Jewry while Chanukah antisemitism is all about societal pressure for Jews to give up their identity. The latter is the antisemitism of the Left in America today.

 

In order to be cool in Left circles Jews have to be social justice warriors and denounce Zionism. I have seen many a letter to the editor signed by an anti-Zionist Jew starting with "as a Jew." She characterizes Jewish anti-Zionism as a luxury belief similar to those who live in gated communities calling to defund the police. Here she goes into the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict where she effectively rebuts much of the pro-Palestinian propaganda that has become mainstreamed in America today.  That said, Hurwitz is a self-professed ‘liberal Zionist” who supports the two-state solution.

 

Her solution is for Jews to lean in to be strong and stand tall against the wave of antisemitism we are now experiencing. We have to reclaim our proud story and to that we have to reclaim our story going back to the beginning.

American Jews: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

American Jews are between a rock and a hard place politically. With the Democratic Party increasingly dominated by Hamasnicks and the DEI ideology of oppressors versus oppressed where Jews are characterized as oppressors, belonging to the party of our ancestors no longer seems to make sense. For a while, the Republicans appeared to be immune from the antisemitism of the Democrats, but that immunity is no longer there.

 

With Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts sucking up to the antisemitism of Tucker Carlson, the American Right has moved closer to whiffing the noxious fumes of antisemitism. Adding insult to injury, Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with the noted antisemite and Hitler/Stalin lover, mainstreamed Nick Fuentes, and his Groypers into the heart of the Republican Party. I would note here that Tucker Carlson’s son Buckley is now on JD Vance’s staff. History could very well record that the assassination of Charlie Kirk took from us on of the few conservatives who could take on Carlson and Fuentes.

 

To be sure there is real opposition to Fuentes and his gang coming from more establishment Republicans, notably Ted Cruz, but just like the Democrats the energy is with the extremists. Indeed, supporting antisemitism and anti-Zionism is part of a proxy war within both parties to overturn the current status quo. 

 

As a result, it is not comfortable to be a Jew in either party today. However, we have no choice because we have to take the world as it is rather than as we want it to be.

 

So, what is a Jew to do? To me Jews in both parties should fight and fight hard. They should not cower to the bullies in either party and instead take them on aggressively in party councils, the media and in every social interaction. We should remember the lessons pf the 1930’s where cowering in the face of evil does not end well. Further, pressure should be put on all of the Jews who make common cause with the antisemites. Those Jews should either mend their ways or be regarded as fifth columnists.

 

In the meantime, it would not hurt to take self defense classes and weapons training in the event things turn really ugly. As the saying goes, prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.

Havana on the Hudson

 Zorhan Mamdani, the TikTok Jacobin, upset former governor Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic Primary making him the odds-on favorite to be the next mayor. Running as a Democratic Socialist, Mamdani’s slick TikTok campaign came across as young and energetic sharply contrasting himself to a Cuomo who appeared ancient. On substance, under the banner of making New York City affordable, he called for the tired old socialist nostrums of rent freezes, increasing business and personal income taxes in the already highest tax city in the country, city-owned grocery stores, free bus service, a $30/hour minimum wage, and for effectively increasing property taxes for white homeowners. His program represents a sure-fire path for New York City to join the failed cities of Chicago and Los Angeles.

 

Contrary from socialist dogma, Mamdani’s base was not lodged in the working class and the African American communities, but rather it came from the young children of privilege who are over-credentialed, underemployed, and housing stressed. Most of them resided in what is called New York’s “commie belt” which runs from western Queens to western Brooklyn. For the most part these hipsters believe that society owes them a good life in New York City. Unfortunately for them, they can’t really afford it, and many live off the largess of their parents. Indeed, with two-bedroom apartments renting for more than $5,000/month, New York City is objectively unaffordable. This is not true of Mamdani whose college professor Dad and movie making Mom are more than comfortable.

 

The underbelly of the Mamdani campaign is its extreme anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, defund the police, and above all its anti-Zionism themes. As late as this morning Mamdani refused to condemn the term “globalize the intifada,” which means kill the Jews in the diaspora. If that isn't antisemitism, I don't know what is! It is not a surprise that Jeremy Corbyn, the notorious British antisemite, congratulated Mamdani on his election win. Indeed, many of the people who marched in New York’s anti-Zionist parades worked as Mamdani’s shock troops during his campaign.

 

How did this happen? The answer is that both the Democratic and Jewish establishments in New York City are sclerotic. They are pale shadows of their former selves, and it will be difficult for them to rally to oppose Mamdani in the general election, where his most likely opponent would be Eric Adams, the current scandal plagued mayor. However, because the turnout in the primary was low, it is possible that Mamdani’s youth turnout hit a ceiling and that older voters will go to the polls in November in substantial numbers to swamp the TikTok generation. If not, New York City will soon become Havana on the Hudson as its tax base abandons the city.  

Kamala Harris Fails Her First Test with VP Pick

Kamala Harris picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her VP cemented her identity as a San Francisco Bay liberal. She also demonstrated that she will have no backbone when it comes to standing up to the noisy and sometimes antisemitic Left of her party. By not picking Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania she lost all credibility in her election year conversion in support of fracking and by not picking Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona she lost her credibility on securing our southern border.

In picking Walz she got a big spending liberal who dawdled while Minneapolis was burning during the George Floyd riots of 2020 and his signing of an executive order in support of gender affirming care for minors she got a candidate who is to the left of Europe's social democrats on this issue. Oh, and one more thing, Walz only received 52% of the vote in his reelection in heavily Democratic Minnesota in 2022.

Harris had a real opportunity to move to the center with her VP pick. She failed miserably in this task and gave Donald Trump and the Republicans the best news they have had since Joe Biden left the race. If the Democrats had hopes of attracting Nikki Haley voters to there cause, those hope were dashed today.  

My Review* of Greg Lukianoff's and Rikki Schlott's "The Cancelling of the American Mind:..."

The New Totalitarians

 

Greg Lukianoff’s and Rikki Schlott’s new book on the totalitarian nature of America’s cancel culture couldn’t be timelier. I would like to state at the outset that freedom of speech is very important to me because in my misspent youth I put myself at great risk for my beliefs.

 

As I write this, we are witnessing a rampage of totalitarian racial Marxists assaulting Jews on our most elite college campuses. It is not an accident that both Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, schools that witnessed among the worst antisemitic rampages in recent days, scored the lowest on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) scores on campus freedom of speech.  Just to note, Lukianoff is the president of FIRE and Schlott is a research fellow there.

 

This book can be considered a continuation of Jonathan Haidt’s and Greg Lukianoff’s 2018 “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Here Lukianoff and Schlott go into example after example of how people are canceled because of their heterodox beliefs. Most of the examples take place on college campuses, but there are telling examples in the publishing and the corporate world. Most of the examples involve the Left on attack with their rhetorical fortress built around the racial Marxist belief that oppressors can do no right and the oppressed can do no wrong. Thus, under their canon Israel defending itself from a wanton terrorist attack is guilty, while the Hamas terrorist dictatorship is innocent. Although Lukianoff considers himself a man of the Left, it fits neatly into Christopher Rufo’s right wing world view as expressed in his “America’s Cultural Revolution.” ( Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Christopher Rufo's "America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything")

 

This book is not only a screed attacking the Left. The Right doesn’t get off easy as well. The authors recount how anti-Trump conservatives were cancelled, books were banned and “anti-woke” laws were put in place in several states forcing professors to walk on eggshells in what they can say on and off campus.

 

Lukianoff’s and Schlott’s solution calls for the creation of a free speech culture on college campuses, easier said than done, eliminating DEI loyalty oaths in the hiring and promotion of faculty, opening up more jobs to non-college graduates, and calling for employers to widen their horizons with respect to schools they recruit at. (i.e., more state schools over the Ivy’s) Indeed Lukianoff himself had to do away with the college degree requirement to hire Schlott.

 

I would go much further. In my view donors that feel the way I do should cut off their contributions to their alma maters, the entire DEI bureaucracy which enforces the cancel culture should be torn up root and branch and government should withhold funding for those institutions who fail to do that.

 

P.S. I received this book as a gift.

*-Amazon has yet to post the review. 11/16.   Amazon rejected this review because of  a "violation of community standards." I slightly edited the review and it appeared on 12/4 at the following URL:  The New Totalitarians (amazon.com)

Reliving the 1930's - Part 5

We started this series in March 2014 ( Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930s)  with Putin taking Crimea and using his proxies in eastern Ukraine and the last one was in April 2017 with  Trump’s and Obama’s vacillation in Syria in 2013 and 2017. ( Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930s - Part 4) With this blog I go further in that I now believe that we are no longer in the Post-Cold War Era, but rather we are now in what future historians will call a pre-war era.

 

Instead of facing the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis we now face the Russia-China-Iran North Korea Axis We see this new axis playing out in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Taiwan Straits. All the signs were there in the 1930’s with Japan invading Manchuria in 1931 and the heart of China in 1937; Italy invading Abyssinia in 1935, and Germany reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. However, it was not until 1938 that they were taken seriously.

 

In terms of economic policy protectionism was the order of the day in the 1930’s and we now witness the Biden Administration continuing and amplifying Trump’s protectionist trade policies. Although Biden’s trade policies conflict, he remains a committed internationalist. However, the Republican Party is reverting to its 1930’s form with its America First withdrawal from the world.

 

At home America’s college campuses look like prewar Germany where in many cases it is no longer safe for Jews to walk freely to class. Although anti-Zionism has always been a cover for antisemitism, recent events have ripped off all of its pretentions of being anti-Israel while still liking Jews. Nevertheless, unlike the 1930’s, Jews in America have more to fear from the Left than from the Right when the Father Coughlin’s of the world ruled the airwaves.

 

Further unlike the 1930’s when America had real leadership under Franklin Roosevelt, today’s divided government is challenged by a Putinista faction in the Republican Party that is implicitly allied with the new axis of evil. Be warned the clock is ticking.

  

My Amazon Review of Tara Zahra's "Against the World: Anti-Globalism........."

The Revolt of the Masses

 

University of Chicago history professor Tara Zahra describes a world of growing trade protectionism, rising anti-immigrant sentiments, growing antisemitism, the rise of right-wing populist demagogues, and the fear of a global pandemic. This sounds all to familiar, but she is not discussing the world of today, but rather the inter-war period of 1919-1939. The primary difference is that the wheels have yet to fall off the global economy.

 

In the halcyon era for the global elite before World War I, all was right with the world bringing ever-growing prosperity for those plugged into the global economy. However, just as today many were left behind and there resentments were smoldering beneath the surface and when World War I upset the global apple cart, those resentments exploded which in its extremis brought fascists to power, especially in Germany and Italy. In central Europe, the dependence on imported food brought with it massive starvation as the allied blockade starved out the population. Hence, after the war the goal was to become initially self-sufficient in agricultural commodities and later, as was the case for Germany, to go as far into autarky as possible. Along the way, according to Zahra, democracy fell by the wayside.

 

What Zahra has ignored in this important book is that it was not only the elite who benefited from globalism but is was also the rising middle-class in all of the countries that the global economy touched. And when the global economy started to circle the drain in 1929, it was the middle class that went down with it planting the seeds of the authoritarianism that was to come. She also ignored the role of left-wing populism in reinforcing the power of the right. The fear of Bolshevism pushed many otherwise sensible conservatives into the hands of the far right.

 

The way out of the deglobalization trap, was, according to Zahra, was a form of global Keynesianism, where each country would prop domestic demand, making it easier to accept imports from the outside. Throughout her book, Zahra humanizes what happened with vignettes about leading industrialists and liberal-minded internationalists. In many ways this is a scary book, because it seems that history is rhyming in its own way today.

For the full Amazon URL see: Revolt of the Masses (amazon.com)

My Review* of Benny Morris' "Sidney Reilly: Master Spy"

 Ace of Spies**

 

Israeli historian Benny Morris searched the official files of Britain’s MI-6 and Russia’s KGB (now FSB) and numerous other sources to produce a credible biography of Sidney Reilly, perhaps the foremost spy of the early 20^th Century. Born Sigmund Rosenblum in the early 1870’s either in Ukraine or Poland and by 1899 Rosenblum, under the auspices of Scotland Yard, becomes Sidney Reilly. From there he becomes the stuff of legends admired by James Bond’s Ian Flemming and the subject of a 1983 Thames TV (and shown on PBS) series starring Sam Neill.

 

Reilly turns up in Port Arthur at the time of the Japanese attack on the Russian navy in 1905 and in 1911 he is in Persia to facilitate the British takeover of their oil fields giving Britain control of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later British Petroleum.

 

His most famous escapade was being the key instigator of the Lockhart plot, where he and the British representative Robert Lockhart in the pay of MI-6 attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik government of Lenin and Trotsky. Their plot is foiled by the Cheka and both of them escape by the skin of their teeth. Thereafter we see Reilly at the Paris Peace Conference. Reilly returns to Russia to provide intelligence on the southern front where he accurately predicts the fall of the White armies. Unable to stay away from Russia Reilly is lured back to Russia in 1925 by the Cheka and it is there where he meets his ultimate demise.

 

Along the way we see Reilly as a successful businessman, arms dealer and bon vivant around town. He spends money as fast as he makes it and has numerous and sometimes simultaneous affairs. If a anything he makes the fictional James Bond look celibate.

 

Reilly is in the middle of world-shaking events, and he was for many years under the control of MI-6’s Mansfield Cumming, known as “C” and the model for Flemming’s “M”. He meets Churchill and works with the infamous arms dealer Basil Zaharoff.

 

Because this book is part of Yale’s Jewish Lives series Morris notes Reilly’s near complete withdrawal from the Judaism of his family and also how he suffers from the antisemitism of upper-class Britain. Despite his new name, most understood him to be Jewish. My one real criticism of the book is that it bogs down at times, and it becomes too academic. Nevertheless, it encouraged me to rewatch the “Ace of Spies” series on demand.

* Amazon has yet to post this review. It finally posted on Amazon.

Ace of Spies* (amazon.com)

**With apologies to Robin Bruce Lockhart

My Amazon Review of Joshua Cohen's "The Netanyahus:....................."

 

A Snarky and Humorous Look at the Netanyahus

 

Joshua Cohen has written a snarky and humorous book of speculative fiction about Benzion Netanyahu’s job interview at the fictional Corbin College in western New York during the winter of 1959-60. One of the buildings at the college is called Fredonia Hall. True there a town in New York called Fredonia, but I believe the real reference to Fredonia, the mythical country in the 1933 Marx Brothers movie “Duck Soup.” The book is patterned after his real-life visit to Cornell where he was hosted by Harold Bloom. Netanyahu brings his whole family with him including is wife and three kids, one of whom is his son Binyamin.

 

Much of the book has to do with his host, economic historian Ruben Blum, his family, and his identity as the only Jewish faculty member. Because he is Jewish, he is chosen to host Netanyahu who is an expert on inquisition Spain, a subject Blum knows little. Blum comes from the family of an East European garment cutter, while his wife Edith comes from a German-Jewish family of a small factory owner. The conflicts are obvious and their teen aged daughter pines for a nose job. Here we have all kinds of identity issues rapped up into one family.

 

The Netanyahus overwhelm the Blums wreaking havoc with their home and breaking their color TV, an anachronism here because in 1960 there were very few assistant professors who owned a color TV. Color television did not become a mass consumer product until 1964. In another anachronism he has Blum’s former employer CUNY, which was not formed until 1961. Further, Ruben condescends to call the Netanyahu family the “Yahus.”

 

The book is serious when it discusses Netanyahu’s thesis that antisemitism in inquisition Spain was racialized. It did not matter whether or not a Jew converted to Catholicism, it was their blood that kept them from being true Christians. Hitler would adopt a similar view 450 years later and to me that was reinforced when I visited an exhibition on converso Spain at the New Mexico Museum. Thus, if Judaism was racialized the only solution for Jews was to have a state of their own.

 

I sense that Cohen really does not understand the Revisionist Zionist philosophy of Benzion Netanyahu. I did learn that Netanyahu was Jabotinsky’s, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, man in the United States until he died in 1940. Several years ago, I reviewed Hillel Halkin’s biography of Jabotinsky. ( See:  Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Hillel Halkin's "Jabotinsky (Jewish Lives)   There I learned that Jabotinsky and Netanyahu by implication understood that 1) there would be an inherent conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, 2) Nazism was going to destroy European Jewry and 3) the Labor-Zionist socialist model was not going to work in Israel. Simply put Jabotinsky and Netanyahu were clear-eyed realists. I wish Cohen grasped that fact.

 

Nevertheless, when you get beyond the issues I have raised, I believe the reader will learn much from the issues concerning the role of Jews in America, especially in a very non-Jewish community and will enjoy the comedic touches throughout the book.

For the Amazon URL see: A snarky and Humorous Look at the Netanyahus (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Derek Penslar's "Theodor Herzl: A Charismatic Personality"

A Prophet with Honor

A really wanted to like Harvard history professor Derek Penslar’s biography of the great Zionist hero, Theodor Herzl. Simply put, the words don’t fly off the page, they just sit there and hence I had to put the book down too many times. That said Penslar presents a nuanced view of Herzl’s life. He shows his charismatic personality that captivates European Jewry and he shows his bouts of depression, his heart condition which kills him at age 44 and his less than successful roles as a husband and a father.

Herzl comes from an assimilated upper-middle class fin-de-siecle Vienna family. After receiving a law degree he becomes a correspondent and literary editor for the very influential Vienna newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse. From that post he witnesses the antisemitism of Vienna mayor Kurt Lueger. Then as Paris correspondent he sees the vitriolic antisemitism of republican France that the Dreyfus affair brought to the fore. He then realizes that there isn’t much hope for the Jews of Europe.

Herzl becomes the voice of a nascent Zionist movement with his publication of the now classic “Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State). He calls for a Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897 and out of that grows a formal Zionist organization. He goes on the meet the German Kaiser, the Ottoman Sultan and the Pope. His charisma is so strong that this highly assimilated Jew becomes a hero to the masses of Jewish people trapped in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. Along the way he continues to write plays. How he found the time is beyond me.

Penslar goes into great detail of Herzl’s failed idea of creating a Jewish State in British Uganda. That proposal is rejected by the masses of Eastern Europe and it falls of its own weight. The Jewish Homeland had to be Palestine.

There is great stuff in the book. I only wish that Penslar told the story with the verve and charisma of Herzl.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1376C9VDNFRA9/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Norman Lebrecht's "Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947"

Changing the World

Music critic and novelist Norman Lebrecht tells the story of how the marginalized Jewish community in 1847 moved to the center of Western culture within one hundred years, yet continued to live under the shadow of antisemitism. His history starts with the death of composer Felix Mendelssohn and ends with U.N. resolution establishing the State of Israel.

The book is written is a stream of consciousness style that chronologically highlight different ways in which Jews entered the cultural mainstream. Simply put, in order to be accepted Jews had to be better and more innovative than their contemporaries. Early on we see the actress and daughter of a prostitute Sarah Bernhardt establish herself as a pop star. He tells of how Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” was influenced by his Jewish wife Genevieve. After Bizet’s death Genevieve would establish a Paris salon which introduces Marcel Proust to the world. Lebrecht highlights the importance George Eliot’s (not Jewish) novel “Daniel Deronda” in influencing jump-starting the Zionist movement and how the Dreyfus Affair shattered the complacency of the rising Jewish middle class.

Because Lebrecht is a music critic he has many vignettes on Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weil and Arnold Schoenberg, among others. Although he really doesn’t get into the Jewish role in Hollywood he leaves space for director Michael Curtiz’s “Casablanca.” Thus this book covers much more ground than covering the obvious personalities of Marx, Freud, Disraeli, Trotsky and Einstein. He especially notes the tragic figure of chemist Fritz Haber who invents the chemical fertilizer industry but also plays a role in the development of poison gases first for World War I and then later for the death camps.

There are three vignettes that especially struck me. The first is how Eliza Davis, a friend of Charles Dickens, get him to edit out Jewish references to Fagin in his “Oliver Twist.” Second he sheds new light on the murder of Jewish diplomat Victor Arlozorov on a Tel Aviv beach in 1934. Jabotinsky’s revisionists were initially tried and later acquitted. Here Lebrecht fingers German intelligence agents under the direction of Goering. Lastly he tells the very improbable, but true story, of how Admiral Wilhelm Canaris chief of the Abwehr (German military intelligence) gets the Lubavitcher Rebbe Yitzchak Schneersohn out of German occupied Poland thereby enabling the sect to thrive in the United States.

I have a few minor quibbles with the book. First Lebrecht leaves out the Talmudic injunction that Jews teach their male children to read, making literacy an important attribute that gets embedded into the DNA. Along with literacy, numeracy become important to maintain the far flung trading relationships of Diaspora Jewry. And second, it was the Gaon of Vilna who in the late 1700s opened up the yeshivas to secular subjects that enabled Jews to catch the wave of the Enlightenment when emancipation finally came in the 1800s.

Quibbles aside, there is much more to Lebrecht’s marvelous book than described here. In this time of rising antisemitism is important to remember how it was overcome.

For the full amazon URL see:https://www.amazon.com/review/R1DXIIJN2321J1/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Ian Kershaw's "The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017"

From Renewal to Decline

After giving a rave review to Ian Kershaw’s “To Hell and Back” three years ago, I was looking forward this sequel on the history of Europe from 1950- 2017. Unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed. Perhaps it is difficult for historians to write about events they lived through, and like him I lived through many of the events he discusses.

In 1950 Europe was in ruins and the nuclear sword of Damocles was hanging over the continent by the American and Soviet super powers. The Marshall Plan was just beginning to take effect and it remained to be seen whether or not a real recovery would take place. Twenty years later Western Europe was largely booming and in the east a drab poverty was the rule of the day.

To Kershaw Europe’s great success during that period was the establishment of the welfare state. To me, on the other hand, the great achievement was placing the economy largely on a market-oriented footing that enabled the boom. Here much credit goes to the German economic miracle.

Kershaw is a child of 1968, but never mentions his own role in the youthful cultural and political revolution that took place then. He was 25 at the time. Although I experienced 1968 in America it is my understanding that far from being separate, the cultural revolution was part and parcel with the political revolution. Even the most serious of politicos of the day we caught up in sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.  Nevertheless Kershaw rightly states that to the youth in the East, the western revolutionaries were clueless had had no idea how repressive a state could be. In other words they were spoiled children.

Kershaw gives great credit to Gorbachev in ending the Cold War Personality is important, just as the roles of Hitler, Stalin and Churchill were important in his earlier volume He also rightly gives credit to German prime minister Helmut Kohl However, he fails to credit the very deft handling of bringing about the end of the Cold War to the Bush-Baker team in the U.S.

He is way too critical of Margaret Thatcher’s harsh neo-liberalism. In my opinion Thatcher saved Britain by being Churchillian in reorganizing the economy for economic growth. Kershaw is way too concerned about the collateral damage, but to paraphrase the master builder Robert Moses, “you have to break eggs in order to make an omelet.  

Although the E.U. started with great promise, its survival is open to question. The first failure was its lack of intervention in the Yugoslavian Wars, a humanitarian disaster that required U.S. military force and diplomacy to bring it to an end. The E.U. failed to listen to the anti-immigrant stirrings in the late 1990s that would come to a full boil in 2015. To all too many Europeans the E.U. is being run for the elite by a group of nameless and faceless bureaucrats. That is one reason why the U.K. wants to leave. Kershaw is part of that elite. And to top it off, Europe remains unwilling to fund its own defense.

He rightfully calls out unregulated finance capitalism to for causing the 2008 financial crisis. Although the crisis had its origins in the U.S., Wall Street was aided and abetted by greedy European banks chasing yield. Further, while the U.S. required its banks to recapitalize, Europe did not. Hence the crisis lingers today where negative interest rates are becoming normal.

I don’t think Kershaw was harsh enough on the communist governments of the East. I was in East Berlin and Moscow in the spring of 1990. The contrast between East and West Berlin was striking. Simply put the West was alive and the East was dead. In Moscow such common drug store items as Bayer Aspirin and Tampax was not available even for upper middle income consumers.

I have two other quibbles he leaves out data on the collapse in birthrates across Europe, especially in the East, Italy and Spain. That is evidence of the lack of a future orientation and it will make the welfare state promises made to elderly untenable. Lastly he completely leaves out the rise of antisemitism, the scourge of Europe in his first volume.  It is not only coming from the far right, but we see it in the Moslem immigrants and in Britain’s Labour Party.

Despite my criticisms, Kershaw has given us a very usable history of how modern Europe came into being and for that he deserves credit.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1AIX5VT8R7ZF4/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Robert Harris', "An Officer and A Spy: A Novel"

Robert Harris brings life and real suspense to the over a hundred year old Dreyfus Case. Yes, the suspense is there, even if you know how it was all going to end up. Although it starts slow the book builds momentum like a great spy thriller. He does this through the eyes of Colonel Georges Picquart, the newly installed head of army intelligence who uncovers how Captain Alfred Dreyfus was framed as a German spy by the French high command with the full connivance of the intelligence unit he was commanding. Of course Dreyfus' crime was being a Jew in the wrong place. Dreyfus ends up in a really wrong place: Devil's Island.

Picquart is what we today would be called a "whistle-blower" as he gradually uncovers the incontrovertible fact that Dreyfus was innocent. For his efforts he is exiled to an out-of-the way unit in Tunisia and later jailed. It was his documentation that provided the source for Emile Zola's famous "J'Accuse" public letter to the French Army that puts in train Dreyfuss' ultimate release from jail and reappointment to the army.

Along the way we see Picquart's single and very modest daily life in the sights, sounds and smells of late 1890s Paris and his humanity with his affair with Pauline Monnier, a mother of two married to a French foreign service officer. We also smell the ugly stench of the French antisemitism of the period. After all it was the Dreyfus case that awakens the Austrian journalist, Theodore Herzl to the need of a Jewish State. All told I highly recommend "An Officer and a Spy."

For the Amazon URL, See:  http://www.amazon.com/review/R3867RKGHQ5IE