Introduction: When Feminism and Antisemitism Collide

Abstract

IntroductionWhen Feminism and Antisemitism Collide Sonia Gollance (bio) and Kerry Wallach (bio) Antisemitism and misogyny often go hand in hand.1 Conservative defenders of the status quo who target Jews frequently oppose feminism as well. Jewish women cannot escape from the negative stereotypes also aimed at their male counterparts, and they contend with additional gendered stereotypes. Negotiation of these issues becomes even more complex when one considers how both Jewishness and gender identity are often perceived or assigned by the beholder, perhaps particularly in the context of antisemitism and misogyny. Karl Lueger, the influential mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910 who "legitimized antisemitism in Austrian politics," famously declared, "I decide who is a Jew" (Geehr 436), underscoring the extent to which prejudices and opportunities can shift depending on political context and the whims of those in positions of power. Contemporary scholarship, literature, and popular culture address the intersection of these two forms of prejudice by interrogating the perniciousness of antisemitism and the pervasive nuances of misogyny. Many Jewish women and feminist leaders in German-speaking lands have sought to combat both, sometimes encountering opposition from right-wing groups or from other German feminists who harbored a more covert form of antisemitism. Bertha Pappenheim, founder of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women), noted in 1934, "It is exceedingly demanding to be a German, a woman, and a Jew today. However, because these three duties are also three sources of spiritual strength, they do not cancel each other out. On the contrary, they strengthen and enrich one another" (Loentz 87–88). Although Pappenheim (discussed in Elizabeth Loentz's article in this issue) wrote these words at a particularly fraught [End Page 1] moment for considering the interplay of feminism and antisemitism—indeed, at a time when hybrid German-Jewish-female identity was under direct attack—she was not alone in considering such concerns. This special issue of Feminist German Studies investigates past and present-day tensions between feminist objectives and antisemitic sentiments. Our point of inquiry encompasses theoretical approaches to forms of antisemitism that specifically target women; historical, literary, and cultural responses to antisemitism, including how it interacts with misogyny; and issues related to scholarship in this field today. Although the term antisemitism (Antisemitismus) is a late-nineteenth-century invention that was shaped by ideas of race at the time, negative or othering attitudes toward Jews from earlier periods have carried into the present and have been crucial to how minority/minoritized groups and minority women have been portrayed in German culture. The broader impact of antisemitic characterizations on women's lives and cultural production is also of interest in this issue, as in the case of women and nonbinary writers who have responded in their work to anti-Jewish and/or gender-based discrimination (for example, represented in this issue: Else Lasker-Schüler, Annette Eick, Adriana Altaras, Mirna Funk, Deborah Feldman, and Sasha Marianna Salzmann). In focusing primarily on women writers, the articles in this issue shift focus away from the male writers and so-called canonical works of intellectual history that often dominate conversations about German-Jewish literature. Since at least the Middle Ages, representations of Jews have generally focused on Jewish men. Misogyny both within and outside of Jewish communities has placed men in the foreground. In many cases, Jewish women are simply absent or effaced from the record.2 Indeed, Jewishness has usually been coded as male, with the exception of a few representations from earlier centuries, such as the supersessionist allegory of Synagoga as a blind woman (in contrast to clear-sighted Ecclesia, the Holy Church, also depicted as a woman) that appears in medieval sites such as the Strasbourg cathedral (Lipton 5). This coding is in part due to the easy recognizability of Jewish male ritual garments and the so-called marked bodies beneath them.3 In her study of medieval anti-Jewish iconography, Sara Lipton notes that Jewish women were not visually distinguishable in high medieval art, in contrast to their male counterparts (203). Later generations of (primarily male) artists and writers were more likely to represent Jewish women as exoticized beauties, following Orientalist [End Page 2] tropes, or to...