Jews and the Military: A History, by Derek J. Penslar
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Jews and the Military: A History, by Derek J. Penslar
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Jews and the Military is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jews' involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Derek Penslar shows that although Jews have often been described as people who shun the army, in fact they have frequently been willing, even eager, to do military service, and only a minuscule minority have been pacifists. Penslar demonstrates that Israel's military ethos did not emerge from a vacuum and that long before the state's establishment, Jews had a vested interest in military affairs.
Spanning Europe, North America, and the Middle East, Penslar discusses the myths and realities of Jewish draft dodging, how Jews reacted to facing their coreligionists in battle, the careers of Jewish officers and their reception in the Jewish community, the effects of World War I on Jewish veterans, and Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Penslar culminates with a study of Israel's War of Independence as a Jewish world war, which drew on the military expertise and financial support of a mobilized, global Jewish community. He considers how military service was a central issue in debates about Jewish emancipation and a primary indicator of the position of Jews in any given society.
Deconstructing old stereotypes, Jews and the Military radically transforms our understanding of Jews' historic relationship to war and military power.
Jews and the Military: A History, by Derek J. Penslar- Amazon Sales Rank: #3084020 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x .84" w x 6.14" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 376 pages
Review Shortlisted for the 2014 Sophie Brody Medal, Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of the American Library Association"Penslar offers a deep perspective . . . he enlivens his study with literary references and a wide-ranging history that offers revelations on nationalism, empire, and identity."--Anna Altman, New York Times Book Review"This work of meticulous scholarship, based on sources in seven languages, sets out to correct deeply ingrained myths concerning Jews and military service. Drawing on evidence from the 17th century onward, Penslar puts to rest the common notions that Jews were wholly unsuited to be soldiers--too physically feeble, inherently cowardly, and disinterested to fight for the countries where they happened to be living. . . . This important book is balanced in its judgments and full of useful information."--Choice"Penslar shows very effectively that there was a lot of middle ground between Jews of the Mosaic persuasion who disavowed any special connection with their foreign coreligionists and ardent Zionists who denied that the Jews could ever really belong to a nation other than their own. . . . Many [Jewish Historians] will no doubt be tantalized into pursuing the innumerable fascinating leads that Penslar provides."--Allan Arkush, Jewish Review of Books"Remarkable. . . . [A] fascinating, meticulous survey."--Lawrence Freedman, Jewish Chronicle"It is wide-ranging, in history and in the coverage of countries. . . . This is a very well-researched book, and the author has used publications in a number of languages."--Harold Pollins, Bulletin of the Military Historical Society"Jews and the Military is a thoughtful and very readable study. . . . Penslar's work clearly demonstrates that the story of Jews in the military is not a case of all or nothing; the truth is somewhere in between."--Catherine D. Chatterley, American Historical Review"Professor Penslar's book treats Jews and the military, perhaps for the first time, as a coherent subject of study rather than a series of individual conflicts. . . . To write a book on a single subject is challenge enough. To range across such a vast canvas of history and geography, through the prism of a coherent unity, is a remarkable achievement."--Jonathan Lewis, Jewish Historical Studies"This book offers remarkably new ways of thinking about the relationship between Jews and the military beyond the context of modern Israel. It also weaves Jewish history, which is so often disconnected from scholarship on the predominantly Gentile countries in which the vast majority of the world's Jews lived for centuries, into larger historiographies in a way that makes the text stimulating reading for specialists in a variety of fields."--Christopher Tozzi, The Journal of Modern History"Penslar's pioneering volume is certain to become a core work in the field."--David Rodman, Israel Affairs
From the Back Cover
"This book shatters the conventional image of diaspora Jews as a people who shun warfare. With exemplary scholarship and a gimlet eye for telling historical evidence, Derek Penslar analyzes Jewish participation in armies from the seventeenth century to the present. Wide-ranging in its scope, original in its argument, and elegant in its presentation, this is the work of a master historian at the peak of his powers."--Bernard Wasserstein, author of On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War
"Derek Penslar's Jews and the Military reminds us of the importance of great historians. It has been a common belief, especially in Israel, that diaspora Jews before the advent of political Zionism lacked the will to fight. Penslar shows us, in his astute and meticulous way, that Jews not only fought, but also had the courage to do so while struggling with hybrid, sometimes clashing identities. An illuminating book."--Bernard Avishai, author of Promiscuous: "Portnoy's Complaint" and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness
"By changing Jewish historical accounts of engagement in war from the passive to the active voice, Derek Penslar transforms our understanding of continuities between the history of the diaspora and the military culture of the Yishuv and the state of Israel. A strikingly original study, Penslar's book rearranges the scholarship of major facets of modern Jewish history."--Jay Winter, Yale University
"This book recovers the history of the Jewish soldier in the diaspora--from the seventeenth century to the middle of the twentieth century--and connects it to the early military history of the state of Israel. Combining a consummate command of the extant scholarship with sophisticated analysis, and encompassing a broad array of questions and sources, this is social and cultural history at its best. There is absolutely nothing else like it in any language."--David Sorkin, City University of New York, Graduate Center
"This book offers a new comparative history of state policy toward Jewish army service and rethinks modern Jewish political culture through the lens of military service. Demolishing the myth of diaspora Jewish pacifism, Penslar shows that attitudes toward soldiering and citizenship in Israeli political culture were anticipated in diaspora Jewish assimilationist and integrationist visions. Jewish historians, historians of modern Europe, and many others will want to read this book."--Kenneth B. Moss, Johns Hopkins University
About the Author Derek J. Penslar is the Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History at the University of Toronto and the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His many books include Shylock's Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe, Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective, and The Origins of Israel, 1882-1948: A Documentary History.
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Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. OK as far as it goes -- just does cast a wide enough net By Les Bn The book needed a subtitle that suggests its range. The overwhelming bulk of the volume concerns Jews in European armies from the mid-19th century to WWII. The emphasis is on WWI Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and France. There is an excellent chapter putting the Dreyfus case in longer-range French military perspective better than other books. It ends with a chapter on Israel. The author is Canadian who has taught in England. That is of consequence for American readers, as he short-shrifts the role of Jews in America's wars. There is brief mention of Jewish participation in medieval and early modern armies, and the Ottoman Empire.The focus is on social history of community support or opposition to participation in local armies, and the WWI issue of Jews of warring nationalities possibly killing each other --- Jewish nationalism vs. loyalty to the Kaiser or the Republic. And of course the big exception to Jews and the military in the late Czarist empire, where pre-WWI conscription was more for religious conversion than military purposes. Those areas that are covered are well-researched and informative --- I recommend purchase for that information, much of which is not available in other books.A significant argument is Western and Central European Jews joined the military as a quid pro quo for emancipation. But that does not explain why Americans who were fully emancipated in the colonial era in some states, and fully emancipated in the Federalist era, were so eager to fight for their country in all its major wars with the single exception of Viet Nam.The large issues that were missing caused me to be generous in granting 4 stars and not 3 stars. Minimal mention of biblical or classical rabbinic rulings on just war or the range of duty of military service, or modern Israeli and American thinking on those topics. Minimal discussion of significant military leaders or heroic actions by Jewish soldiers and sailors -- e.g., one brief mention of Aussie Lt. Gen. John Monash, and that not about his brilliant and important military career. No mention at all about many, many American heroes and great leaders, including our nine 4-star generals and admirals, Medal of Honor recipients, and others. American Jews volunteered in higher proportion than the general population from the Revolution to Korea -- no records by religion/ethnicity since then. However, almost 60 American Jews are known to have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, hinting at large numbers who served.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful. My Opinion of this book By Larry Mizrach Great Book. Well written. Much detail. Goes back to the early days of Judaism. Have circulated to my grandson who recently enlisted in the army. I am a veteran of the army.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. The Myth of Jewish Nonviolence. Interesting Ideas on Berek Jozelewicz. Jewish Cosmopolitanism Coexisting with Jewish Patriotism By Jan Peczkis Derek J. Penslar is a historian who teaches (or who taught) at the University of Oxford. His work is a fascinating one, but with some shortcomings. Owing to the wealth of information in this book, I focus on a few salient points.The entire subject of this book must be kept in perspective. Jews had their own armies, in the distant past, and had always served, albeit in small numbers, in gentile forces. (pp. 21-22). However, it was only at the beginning of the 19th century, following the Enlightenment, that substantial numbers of Jews began to serve in gentile armies. (p. 123).THE MYTH OF THE VIOLENCE-AVERSE JEWPenslar takes issue with the common supposition that Jews had an ingrained antipathy to violence. In fact, Jews frequently participated in the defense of their towns against bandits, and fought back during pogroms, such as those that occurred during the Crusades. (pp. 22-23).Jews actually celebrated wars--that is, their wars. Throughout history, including the Middle Ages, Jews recounted the military exploits of ancient Israel. (pp. 68-69). Leading Jewish medieval thinkers, such as Moses Maimonides and Menahem Ha-Meiri, spoke favorably of war as a policy. (pp. 20-21).As Jewish military service, in gentile armies, became relatively common in the last two hundred years or so, rabbis stressed the fact that there is no halakhic prohibition against Jews using deadly force. (p. 45). Those Jews, in recent times, who objected to serving in gentile armies were, unlike, for example, the Quakers, seldom motivated by pacifism (p. 18), although they sometimes invoked pacifism as a smokescreen for other motives. (pp. 209-210).RELIGIOUS ISSUESThe Talmudic prohibition against Jewish participation in gentile army encampments (Avodah Zarah 18b) was sometimes understood, by Jews, as a blanket prohibition against Jewish participation in gentile armies. However, this teaching was never followed consistently by Jews. (p. 21).Engaging in combat did not itself violate the Sabbath, as one is permitted to disregard the strictures of the Sabbath in extreme circumstances. However, the performance of everyday routines, while in the armed forces, does constitute work on the Sabbath, and is therefore in violation of it. (p. 275). This consideration can be broadened. Various rabbis warned that military service, by its very nature, would tend to draw Jews away from religious observance and away from their communities. (p. 46, 275). Much the same reasoning is used by certain Orthodox Jews (the HAREDIM), in Israel today, in order to justify their usual avoidance of military service. (pp. 260-262).[The reader should be aware of the fact that the issues raised in previous paragraphs were a factor in Polish objections to the so-called Minorities Treaty (this was around 1918). The Minorities Treaty, had it been successfully forced on Poland in its fullest sense, would have effectively made Jews a separate nation on Polish soil. Emboldened by this arguably-special status, Poland’s Jews could have refused to serve in the Polish Army on putative religious grounds.]EARLY JEWISH NATIONALISMThere is no mystery to the fact that, until fairly recent times, Jews seldom served in gentile armies. For most of history, the Jews did not consider themselves to be in allegiance with the nations among whom they lived. Penslar writes of the Jews having “a sense of divinely sanctioned wariness toward the Gentile world.” (p. 268).However, the author does not fully develop the theme of Jewish separatism and its implications. "Jewish nationalism" hardly began with modern, secular, political movements such as Bundism and Zionism. Since time immemorial, Jews had thought themselves distinct from the other nations (GOYIM), and moreover were a nation of their own. Their statelessness was temporary (e. g, "Next year in Jerusalem."), and they would once again have armies of their own. Undoubtedly, the active remembrance of past Jewish military exploits implied a mindset of fighting for their own nation and not, with rare and circumstance-driven exceptions, for the gentile nations.BEREK JOZELEWICZ DECONSTRUCTED?All-in-all, Penslar exaggerates the Jewish support for Polish insurrectionary efforts for independence. (e. g, p. 37, 56). For corrective, please click on, and read my detailed review, of Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (The Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry).The actions of merchant Berek Jozelewicz (1764-1809), in the 1794 Kosciuszko Uprising, are usually celebrated as the acts of a prominent Jew expressing his love for Poland. Author Derek J. Penslar throws some cold water on this narrative. First of all, he considers the regiment of Jewish volunteer cavalry a legend, and suggests that it may have been a part of the urban militia defending Warsaw from the Russians, and not an independent regiment. (p. 56).More important, Penslar raises sensitive issues that include opportunism and ephemeral loyalties. The following is a direct quote:Berek was not so much a Polish patriot as an adventurer and activist who sought to enhance his own personal honor as well as that of the Jews under his command. Although Berek is most famous for his service for Poland, in 1796 he proposed to the Habsburg emperor the raising of a corps of six thousand to eight thousand Jews who would be divided into cavalry and infantry units to fight against the French. (pp. 56-57).[End of direct quote]On a related Jewish personage, Penslar examines the motives of Dov Ber Meisels, the chief rabbi of Krakow, a prosperous banker, and supporter of the Poles’ January 1863 Insurrection. The author notes that Meisels was, in his words, a “reactionary antinationalist”, and proposes that Meisels’ support for the Polish cause owed to his long-standing close associations with the Polish nobility. (p. 58). However, Penslar does not go far enough. Was the fact that Meisels was a banker imply that he had a financial stake in a Polish victory in the 1863 Uprising?JEWISH DRAFT DODGINGThe author’s analysis of this subject is disappointingly superficial. He asserts that both Jews and non-Jews have exaggerated the extent of Jewish evasion of military service (p. 36), but fails to provide a coherent body of data to support his argument. For instance, he briefly cites a comprehensive, late 19th-century Habsburg Austrian archival source (p. 48, referring to No. 31 on page 276) that shows a variable rate of draft evasion, in place and time, among Jews and non-Jews. However, his rather skimpy references to this detailed source prevent a direct comparison between the rates of draft dodging among Jews and non-Jews.The degree to which Jews participated in military service, among nations, in recent centuries, varied according to the Jews’ emancipation, as well as their perception of the military as a prestigious activity. (p. 36). Penslar candidly points out that, “Throughout modern times, Jews willingly served in the military when it furthered their individual and collective interests to do so.” (p. 15).LINGERING JEWISH COSMOPOLITANISMDespite the increasing presence of Jewish soldiers and Jewish officers in the European armies of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the manifestations of Jewish patriotism towards the nations they lived in, questions persisted about Jewish loyalties. The following, which are direct quotes from Penslar, may shed some light on why this was so:Even for assimilated French Jews, loyalty to the state was not the same as unreserved identification with the nation. [Emile] Mayer’s letter of 1916, in which he alludes to his German origins, asserts a form of transnational identity. His decrial of the Great War [WWI] as a “civil war” is reminiscent of a substantial body of writings of the time by European Jews whose support for the war, however passionate at its outbreak, quickly turned to uneasiness, even strident opposition. That opposition had little to do with pacifism…but rather fear of facing their coreligionists on the other side of the line of battle. (p. 120).Modern Jewish identities have frequently blended national attachments to a homeland with a transnationalist, pan-Jewish sensibility. (p. 121).[End of direct quotes].Obviously, by Penslar's tacit admission, there was something to the notions of Jewish internationalism and dual loyalties. The foregoing quotes also make it easier for reader to understand why the Endeks doubted if Polish Jews, even if assimilated and professing a loyalty to Poland, were either fully or permanently identified with the Polish nation.THOSE INTERNATIONAL JEWISH BANKERSPenslar condemns the anti-Semitic trope that posits that Jewish bankers finance both sides, and egg them on to go to war with each other so as to profit from the warfare. However, he is candid about the fact that, "Revulsion against hateful stereotypes should not blind us to the sizable presence of Jews in finance and business who made money from war…It is a fact, not an anti-Semitic fantasy, that Jews played vital roles in coordinating the allocation of raw materials during the First World War, not only in Germany but also in the United States.” (p. 145, 150).The author rejects the premise, of international bankers in collusion, by pointing to the disagreements, between them, as to which nation to finance (e. g, Schiff (no) vs. Morgan (yes) on Russia: p. 147). He also repudiates any notion of "racial solidarity" among Jews, by pointing out that Jewish bankers are driven primarily by business considerations (p. 146, 151), moreover even when these are not helpful to Jews as a whole. As an example, many Jewish bankers (e. g, the Rothschilds of several European nations, Mendelsohn, Bleichroeder, but not Schiff) financed tsarist Russia even though Russia was scorned by Jews in general. (pp. 146-147). Penslar also alleges that international bankers oppose wars, since they realize that wars can bring major financial losses as well as profits. (pp. 147-149).ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-POLONISM DURING WWIDisparaging remarks were often made about the conduct of Jewish soldiers, even in recent times, and it is interesting how they tried to shift the blame to the Poles. Referring to WWI and the tsarist army, Derek J. Penslar comments, "While Russians accused Jews of having secret telephones with which they communicated with the enemy, Jewish versions of the rumor identified the true perpetrators as Poles disguised as Jews". (p. 157). [The reader may be interested in the fact that Jews used a similar foil when accused of shooting at Polish troops. They said that the shooters were Russian snipers that were deliberately shooting out of Jewish homes!]THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR (1936-1939)Consider the International Brigades, which fought on the Communist (Republican) side. Penslar estimates that at least one-fifth of them were Jews. (p. 201).Jewish support for the Communist efforts in Spain went far beyond that of card-carrying Communists. In western Europe and the United States, the Bund and Poalei Tsion (Poalei Zion) Left, also supported what Penslar called “international Marxism” and “global proletarian revolution”, which, of course, meant backing the Communist side in Spain. (p. 206).
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