The Politics of Jewish Primitivism

Abstract

Chapter 4 explores the politics of Jewish primitivism, which ranged from the bohemian Left to the radical Right. This political breadth is evident in the poetic relationship between the German poet Else Lasker-Schüler and the Yiddish and Hebrew poet Uri Zvi Grinberg, the former ambivalent about Zionism, the latter a proponent of Zionism’s most radical wing. The idea of an originary Jewish identity rooted in an ancient but unspecified East was central to Lasker-Schüler’s poetry and visual art. Emerging from this landscape was her “Society of Savage Jews,” a utopian community of writers and artists that existed only in her writings and artwork; Grinberg borrowed this trope and used it for very different ends—his savage Jews were Zionist pioneers, creating a nation-state.