Image from amazon.com
[The Jewish Mystique by Ernest Van Den Haag. This book was donated to our Sinai 6000 library by a Filipino doctor who enjoyed going to estate sales in the USA, where ‘treasure finds’ sell for a pittance. This half-a century hardback edition (1969) was published by Stein and Day, a husband & wife printing-venture in New York, that lasted 27 years, from 1962-1989. There are only a few hard copies available at amazon.com, some used, some new. Definitely a collector’s item, we are grateful to Dr. “T” for this addition to our library.
Other posts from this book:
- “Is there a Jewish character? ” – The Jewish Mystique/Ernest Van Den Haag
- “What makes the Jews so Jewish?”
- Israel is the Promised Land . . . but not for American Jews
This is just the ‘come on’ for the book; chapters are outlined below. —Admin1]
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Publishers: STEIN AND DAY, New York – 1969
Inside Back Cover:
Ernest van den Haag, for fifteen year professor of Social Philosophy at New York University and lecturer in Sociology and Psychology at the New School, has been a visiting professor at some of America’s most distinguished universities. A Guggenheim fellow in 1967, he is a practicing psychologist, the author of three books, and many papers in learned journals. Dr. van den Haag has published as well in Commentary, Harper’s, Esquire, Encounter, Fortune, The New Leader, Partisan Review, National Review, Dissent, and many other publications.
Jacket Design by Tim Gaydos.
Inside Front Cover:
Einstein was an agnostic, Freud an atheist, Karl Marx a Protestant—were they Jewish? Was Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe? Are Jews a denominational group, a nation, or a race? What makes them Jewish? Why can’t Sammy Davis, Jr., make it? How do they (or do they?) differ from Gentiles? What makes anti-Semites anti-Semitic?
Dr. van den Haag investigates the mystique about Jews created by their friends, their enemies, and, not the least, the Jews themselves. Are they smarter than other people? Do they have the golden touch? Why do they seem to have influence disproportionate to their numbers? It is remarkable how little is really understood about a people who have had so much impact on the history and destiny of the world.
Wittily and in depth, Dr. van den Haag explores subjects as topical as Jewish hippies, campus radicals, and Negro anti-Semites, or as perennial—and misunderstood—as the sexual attraction of Jewish men and Gentile girls to each other; the popularity of Jewish physicians, Jewish intellect, morality, and sensibility; the Jewish cultural establishment, Jewish masochism, and much much more.
Preface
I propose to write about Jews without hostility or apologetics, and with affection and seriousness, although my temperament makes me unable to resist occasional irony.
I hope to be accurate. But I should deceive myself were I to believe that accuracy in detail, and veracity about matters as a whole, are enough. For too many centuries the Jews have been used as Rorshach blot by Gentiles, who attribute to them sometimes the most, and more often the least, desired traits of their own personalities. And for too many centuries the Jews have incorporated the image of themselves created by others and added it to their self-image. Under these circumstances any description will displease many who miss their favorite vices, virtues, and characteristics—or find those they prefer to ignore.
If this causerie be anywhere near as engaging as its subject I shall have exceeded my most arrogant ambitions; if it be only half as ambiguous, I shall have done better than I feared. However, I shall be satisfied if it be recognized that I wrote sine ira et studio, and with apprehension.
E. v. d. H.
CONTENTS
- Are Jews Smarter than Other People?
Jewish breeding for, Gentile breeding against intelligence; the role of ecclesiastical celibacy; and of the rabbis; intelligence tests; Askenazim, Sephardim, and the role of culture; Jewish overrepresentation among Nobel Laureates professionals, and students.
2. Who are the Jews and What Were They Chosen For?
Leopold Bloom as Ulysses; now you can see them, now you can’t; Jewish traditionalism; Jean Paul Sartre: “anti-Semites create the Jews”; Marx: capitalism does; Jewishness a feeling; Marilyn Monroe and Sammy Davis, Jr.; the purity of the Jewish genotype; Jews as innovators and conservators; Jewish survival; the Jewish mystique.
3. Is There a Jewish Character?
Jewish situations and characters; Judaism and Jewishness; messianism, intellectualism, moralistic outlook; Philip Roth and Norman Mailer; Jewish utopianism; Jewish scripture, law and conduct; the role of the rabbis; national character defined.
4. To Suffer Is to Survive–and Vice Versa
History molds the Jewish character; violence brings defeat and suffering; the internalizastion of passive suffering; survival and the Jewish self-image—advantages over Negroes; Jewish anti-Semitism; Jewish jokes; Jewish passivity and the Nazis.
5. Why Anti-Semitism?
Anti-Semitism as a relationship; Characteristics of aggressor and victim. Pre-Christian Anti-Semitism; Monotheism as cause of pre-Christian anti-Semitism; monopolistic claims of the Jewish God among the competitive polytheistic religions of antiquity; the Jewish God is truly supernatural, universal yet tribal; the religious zeal of the Jews, and the tolerance of the Romans; the Jewish God an end not a means; moral demands of hte Jewish God; a cause of anti-Semitism. Christian Anti-Semitism: pre-Christian and Christian anti-Semitism; deicide and history; resentment of the moral demands of Christianity shifted to its originators; resentment of the father; Jews identified with the fathers; Fried on Moses; the Jewish denial of the genuineness of the messiah felt as chutzpah; The Jewish Conspiracy: an Anti-Semiti Fantasy; Jews and Christian solidarity; the secularization of the devil in conspiracy theories; Hitler, Marx, and C. Wright Mills.
6. Two Kinds of Discrimination: Jews and Negroes
Prewar discrimination against Jews, effects on the Jewish image: superiority: German reaction: if you can’t beat them–beat them; American reaction: join them; discrimination against Negroes; reverse discrimination in favor of Negroes; the Jewish role; the disastrous effects on the Nero image. Negro Anti-Semitism; Negro anti-Semitism and Jewish civil rights workers; the need of Negroes to discharge anger and the guilt feeling of the Jews; Jewish left attitudes toward Negroes.
7. Jewish Radicals and Jewish Hippies
Radicals, liberals, conservatives; the number of Jewish radicals; Jewish guilt feelings an radicalism; the children can afford it; Schopenhauer on boredom; psycho-drama and reality; types of Jewish radicals; why hippies?
8. The Jewish Cultural Establishment
Jewish sensibility; “Establishment” defined; characteristics of the Jewish cultural Establishment; Jewish liberals and the communications industry; identification with the “underdog”; “in” and “out” people; if you are left, you are right; if you are right, you are out; Hollywood; The New York Times; magazines.
9. Jews and Sex
The Greek tradition of the body; the Christian tradition of the body; the Jewish tradition of the body; sex, the rejection of romantic love; the pragmatic attitude; alienation from the body; Spinoza on love and pressure; Jewih girls, sex, and marriage; Jews and fashion; circumcision as a rite de passage; as a bond; reasons and rationalizations; symbolic significance; the actual ceremony and its genteelization.
10. Do Jews Make Better Doctors?
Christian dogma and medicine; Jewish attitude; allied with the devil?; medical knowledge as unconfiscable wealth; status, the physician as manual worker; the physician as magician; and as a father image.
11. Or More Aggressive Lawyers?
Jewish attachment to law and charity; relation to Jewish and to Christian law; ambivalence; Jews, economic inequality and rationalism; the Pereira Brothers and St. Simon; philanthropy, education and oversensitivity.
12. You Don’t Have to Be Jewish Anymore to Charge Interest
Why some Jewish economic activities become Jewish; Jewish legal and psychological relation to money; money as the only power available to Jews; and the only protection; impersonal transfer and interest, the price of money; the attitude of the church; Jews driven to become pioneers of the money economy; trading, speculating, an producing from Quesnay to Marax to economics; Jewish wealth.
13. The Pecking Order Among American Jews, Then and Now
Suburban living and its repudiation: the relaxed style; “Our Crowd” in the past; German Jews, “kikes,” and Sephardim; some careers; Jewish snobbery and anti-Semitism.
14 The Darkest Suburbia
Jewish suburbia an religion; fathers, mothers, and children; everything for the children; permissiveness; children as status symbols; Jewish suburbia and the Hippies; children driven to become Hippies?
15 The Sexual Power of the Stranger
Jews and Gentile girl; mutual fantasies; the availability of strangers; projections; forbidden fruit; an escape from family bonds; Jews as fathers; Marilyn Monroe; contradictory causes, psychologically consistent; Jews as family men; intermarriage.
16. The Vanishing Jew
The frequency of intermarriage in the older and in the younger generation; the trend in comparative terms; reasons for the trend; Hollywood’s past attitude to intermarriage; Counselor at Law; Hollywood now; children of mixed marriages; the decline of religion; reasons for intermarriage.
17. Jews and the Promised Land
American Jews and Israel; are Israeli Jews “Jewish”? Why so few? American Jews uncomfortable in Israel; back and forth; problem of identity; American Jewish parents and Israeli born children
Epilogue
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