Self-hating Jew
The terms "self-hating Jew", "self-loathing Jew", and "auto-antisemite" are pejorative terms used to describe Jews that oppose certain characteristics that the claimant considers core to Jewish identity.
Early claims of self-hate were used to describe Jews who had internalized anti-Semitic tropes. Recognition of the concept gained widespread currency after German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing published his 1930 book Der jüdische Selbsthass, which sought to explain a perceived inclination among secular Jewish intellectuals towards inciting antisemitism by denouncing Judaism. The term was also used to describe Jewish people whose viewpoints, especially favoring Jewish assimilation, Jewish secularism, limousine liberalism, or anti-Judaism were perceived to reflect self-hatred.
In modern times the term has been used for political purposes as a form of weaponization of antisemitism to delegitimize anti-Zionist Jews or shield against criticism of the Israeli government. It is said to have become "something of a key term of opprobrium in and beyond Cold War-era debates about Zionism" with proponents claiming that some Jews may despise their entire identity due to their perception of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
History
In German
The origins of terms such as "Jewish self-hatred" lie in the mid-19th century feuding between German Orthodox Jews of the Breslau seminary and Reform Jews. Each side accused the other of betraying Jewish identity, the Orthodox Jews accusing the Reform Jews of identifying more closely with German Protestantism and German nationalism than with Judaism.According to Amos Elon, during 19th-century German-Jewish assimilation, conflicting pressures on sensitive and privileged or gifted young Jews produced "a reaction later known as 'Jewish self-hatred.' Its roots were not simply professional or political but emotional." Elon uses the term "Jewish self-hatred" synonymously with Jewish antisemitism when he points out, "One of the most prominent Austrian anti-Semites was Otto Weininger, a brilliant young Jew who published 'Sex and Character', attacking Jews and women." Elon attributes Jewish antisemitism as a cause in the overall growth of antisemitism when he says, " book inspired the typical Viennese adage that anti-Semitism did not really get serious until it was taken up by Jews."
According to John P. Jackson Jr., the concept developed in the late 19th century in German Jewish discourse as "a response of German Jews to popular anti-Semitism that primarily was directed at Eastern European Jews." For German Jews, the Eastern European Jew became the "bad Jew". According to Sander Gilman, the concept of the "self-hating Jew" developed from a merger of the image of the "mad Jew" and the "self-critical Jew", and was developed to counter suggestions that an alleged Jewish stereotype of mental illness was due to inbreeding. "Within the logic of the concept, those who accuse others of being self-hating Jews may themselves be self-hating Jews." Gilman says "the ubiquitousness of self-hatred cannot be denied. And it has shaped the self-awareness of those treated as different perhaps more than they themselves have been aware."
The specific terms "self-hating Jew" and "Jewish self-hatred" only came into use later, developing from Theodor Herzl's polemical use of the term "anti-Semite of Jewish origin", in the context of his project of political Zionism. The underlying concept gained common currency in this context, "since Zionism was an important part of the vigorous debates that were occurring amongst Jews at the time about anti-Semitism, assimilation and Jewish identity." Herzl appears to have introduced the phrase "anti-Semite of Jewish origin" in his 1896 book, Der Judenstaat, which launched political Zionism.
He was referring to "philanthropic Zionists", assimilated Jews who might wish to remain in their home countries while at the same time encouraging the Jewish proletariat to emigrate; yet did not support Herzl's political project for a Jewish state. Ironically, Herzl was soon complaining that his "polemical term" was often being applied to him, for example by Karl Kraus. "Assimilationists and anti-Zionists accused Zionists of being self-haters, for promoting the idea of the strong Jew using rhetoric close to that of the Anti-Semites; Zionists accused their opponents of being self-haters, for promoting the image of the Jew that would perpetuate his inferior position in the modern world." One example of this was the claims made against Herzl's article Mauschel.
The Austrian-Jewish journalist Anton Kuh argued in a 1921 book Juden und Deutsche that the concept of "Jewish antisemitism" was unhelpful, and should be replaced with the term "Jewish self-hatred", but it was not until the 1930 publication of the German-Jewish anti-Nazi philosopher Theodor Lessing's book Der Jüdische Selbsthass that the term gained widespread currency. Lessing's book "supposedly charts Lessing's journey from Jewish self-hater to Zionist." In it he analyses the writings of Jews such as Otto Weininger and Arthur Trebitsch who expressed hatred for their own Judaism. Lessing was assassinated by Nazi agents shortly after Hitler came to power.
In English
In English the first major discussion of the topic was in the 1940s by Kurt Lewin, who was Lessing's colleague at the University of Berlin in 1930. Lewin emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1933, and though focused on Jews also argued for a similar phenomenon among Polish, Italian and Greek immigrants to the United States. Lewin's was a theoretical account, declaring that the issue "is well known among Jews themselves" and supporting his argument with anecdotes. According to Lewin, a self-hating Jew "will dislike everything specifically Jewish, for he will see in it that which keeps him away from the majority for which he is longing. He will show dislike for those Jews who are outspokenly so, and will frequently indulge in self-hatred." Following Lewin's lead, the concept gained widespread currency. "The 1940s and 1950s were 'the age of self-hatred'. In effect, a bitter war broke out over questions of Jewish identity. It was a kind of 'Jewish Cold War'..." in which questions of Jewish identity were contentiously debated. The use of the concept in debates over Jewish identity – for example over resistance to the integration of African Americans into Jewish neighbourhoods – died down by the end of the 1970s, having been "steadily emptied of most of its earlier psychological, social, and theoretical content and became largely a slogan."The term was used in a derogatory way during the 1940s by "'militant' Zionists", but the 1963 publication of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem opened a new chapter. Her criticism of the trial as a "show trial" provoked heated public debate, including accusations of self-hatred, and over-shadowed her earlier work criticising German Jewish parvenu assimilationism. In the following years, after the 1967 Six-Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War, "willingness to give moral and financial 'support' to Israel constituted what one historian called 'the existential definition of American Jewishness'." "This meant that the opposite was also true: criticism of Israel came to constitute the existential definition of 'Jewish self-hatred'." This is dismissed by Rosenfeld saying it "masquerades as victimization" and "can hardly be expected to be taken seriously" since criticism of Israel "proceeds across all the media in this country and within Israel itself."
Even Commentary, the Jewish journal which had once been "considered the venue of self-hating Jews with questionable commitments to the Zionist project", came under the editorship of Norman Podhoretz to staunchly support Israel. In his 2006 essay "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism", Alvin H. Rosenfeld takes "a hard look at Jewish authors" whose statements go well beyond "legitimate criticism of Israel," and considers rhetoric that calls into question Israel's "right to continued existence" to be antisemitic. The use of the concept of self-hatred in Jewish debates about Israel has grown more frequent and more intense in the US and the UK, with the issue particularly widely debated in 2007, leading to the creation of the British Independent Jewish Voices. The Forward reported that the group was formed by "about 130 generally leftist Jews." It was the Rosenfeld essay, which did not use the term Jewish self-hatred, that led to the 2007 debate. Critics claimed the charge of antisemitism implied Jewish self-hatred to those criticizing Israel. Rosenfeld responded that such claims were "disingenuous" and for some a "dialectical scam validating themselves as intellectual martyrs." The New York Times reported that the essay spotlighted the issue of when "legitimate criticism of Israel ends and antisemitic statements begin."
Social and psychological explanations
The issue has periodically been covered in the academic social psychology literature on social identity. Such studies "frequently cite Lewin as evidence that people may attempt to distance themselves from membership in devalued groups because they accept, to some degree, the negative evaluations of their group held by the majority and because these social identities are an obstacle to the pursuit of social status." Modern social psychology literature uses terms such as "self-stigmatization", "internalized oppression", and "false consciousness" to describe this type of phenomenon. Author Phyllis Chesler, a professor of psychology and women's studies, in referring to female Jewish self-hatred, points to progressive Jewish women who "seem obsessed with the Palestinian point of view." She believes their rage against oppression, frustration and patriarchy "is being unconsciously transferred onto Israel."Kenneth Levin, a Harvard psychiatrist, says that Jewish self-hatred has two causes: Stockholm syndrome, where "population segments under chronic siege commonly embrace the indictments of their besiegers however bigoted and outrageous", as well as "the psychodynamics of abused children, who almost invariably blame themselves for their predicament, ascribe it to their being bad, and nurture fantasies that by becoming good they can mollify their abusers and end their torment." According to Howard W. Polsky, the social scientist, "feelings about Jewish marginality are often a step away from self-hatred." He then says, "Jewish self-hatred denotes that a person has adopted gentiles' definition of Jew as bad in one way or another and that being Jewish will hinder their success or identity."