Jewish Self-Hate

<p> <strong>A seminal text in Jewish thought accessible to English readers for the first time.</strong></p><p> The diagnosis of Jewish self-hatred has become almost commonplace in contemporary cultural and political debates but the concept's origins are not widely appreciated. In its modern form it received its earliest and fullest expression in Theodor Lessing's 1930 book <em>Der jüdische Selbsthaß</em>.</p><p> Written on the eve of Hitler's ascent to power Lessing's hotly contested work has been variously read as a defense of the Weimar Republic a platform for anti-Weimar sentiments an attack on psychoanalysis an inspirational personal guide and a Zionist broadside.</p><p> The truthful translation by Peter Appelbaum including Lessing's own footnotes manages to make this book more readable than the German original. Two essays by Sander Gilman and Paul Reitter provide context and the wisdom of hindsight.-Frank Mecklenburg Leo Baeck Institute</p><p> <em>From the forward by Sander Gilman:<br /> Theodor Lessing's (1872-1933) </em>Jewish Self-Hatred <em>(1930) is the classic study of the pitfalls (rather than the complexities) of acculturation. Growing out of his own experience as a middle-class urban marginally religious Jew in Imperial and then Weimar Germany he used this study to reject the social integration of the Jews into Germany society which had been his own experience by tracking its most radical cases....</em> <em>Lessing's case studies reflect the idea that assimilation (the radical end of acculturation) is by definition a doomed project at least for Jews (no matter how defined) in the age of political antisemitism.</em></p>