Gabe Ende – The Neo-Narodniks Among U
Well over fifty years ago I met the celebrated author Chaim Potok at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. His premier novel, The Chosen, was read by virtually everyone I knew and I was delighted to learn that he was to serve as “Professor in Residence” and teach a class of staff members, myself included. Despite the gap in age and prominence, he allowed me to reach out in friendship and I once said to him “Chaim, I have an idea for your next novel, a gripping historical novel”. He listened to my description of the plot and replied “Gabe, you have a great idea, but it’s your idea and thus you’re the person that must write it up”.
—“But I’m no novelist. I address everything from a ‘dry’ historical perspective”…
—“Then you run the risk that this important idea will never see the light of day. I’m sorry but I can’t help you” …
What was the idea and what prompted me to recall it in the last few weeks?
The novel was to focus upon a Jewish Narodnik living in Russia in the early 1880’s. “Narod” means “people” and the so-called movement of idealistic students sought to foment a revolution against the Tsar by “going to The People”, the agrarian peasants—the hearth of traditional Russian values– to live and impart the revolutionary creed. Those familiar with Sholem Aleichem’s “Fiddler on the Roof” will recognize Perchik—Hodel’s ultimate life-partner—as an example .The Narodniks, however, didn’t recognize the Jewish poor as part of “the People” and would never have ventured into shtetels to realize their revolutionary calling.
Then came the first wave of pogroms. The Narodniks were initially repelled by this orgy of brutality but their leadership soon applied their unfailing “revolutionary logic” to the tragedy: The Russian peasants are innately good people. It is they who are also destined to bring about the Revolution, once sufficiently aroused. The pogroms can provide the necessary ignition if nurtured to develop and expand. We must therefore support them(!).
The Jewish Narodniks found themselves in a quandary. Some resolved their misgivings by reasoning that the incited peasants will “naturally” vent their rage only upon representatives of the “Jewish bourgeoisie”, leaving the poorer Jews unharmed. This, of course, did not happen, throwing many of the Jewish revolutionaries into a severe Crisis of Identity. Could they remain adherents of revolutionary populism after this cynical betrayal? Some ultimately became Zionists, some Marxists, others turned elsewhere… The novel Rejected by Chaim Potok was to focus upon their dilemma.
The neo-Narodniks on American campuses are the “radical progressives”, including quite a few Jews– and the obsessive craving of the latter for legitimacy in the eyes of their progressive peers has even produced fanatical Israel-hating Jewish organizations, such as the perverse misnomer Jewish Voice for Peace. Surprisingly, they appear to have been unmoved by the savage lust for Jewish blood demonstrated by the Hamas barbarians. Is this because –unlike the Jewish Narodniks of one hundred forty years ago—they are utterly bereft of sensitivity to Jewish suffering? Is their “Jewish” label nothing but a cynical sham? Perhaps it’s premature to assess the ultimate impact…
Criticism of Israeli policies is certainly legitimate. So is the insistence upon promoting a diaspora-based Judaism. But unfeeling jubilation—and the failure to voice condemnation– at the shedding of Jewish blood is untenable. To find a precedent we must turn further back to the adherents of the Polish-born messianic pretender Yaacov Frank one hundred fifty years before the first wave of pogroms. Despairing of prospects for success within their own community, they turned to the Bishop of Warsaw with an offer of collective conversion and offered “personal testimony” to the factual basis of the infamous blood libel in order to achieve acceptance as legitimate Polish Catholics.
Such extreme expressions of Jewish self-hatred have produced irreparable ruptures of groups such as the Frankists from the Jewish community. I would assume, however, that this doesn’t apply to the JVP. The community of reference of this Jewish mutation has after all never been the Jews.
