Jewish Quarterly Review

Toward the end of and under the direct impact of World War II and the unprecedented persecution of the Jews, different writers, Jewish and non-Jewish, in both the United States and in Western Europe, began to represent the Jew in negative terms. Texts that appeared in different social, geographical, and intellectual contexts represented the Jews as lacking any common essence, as individuals who are Jews by the mere fact that they are denoted as Jews by others. Such an approach denies the Jews any positive attributes and can be understood as a negative form of representation, which I prefer to call the "negative Jew." The aim of this article is to show that these representations share a fundamental organizing principle that transcends their representation of the Jews, the very concept of identity that underlies them. Hence, I argue, negative conceptions of Jewish identity are an integral part of the history of the notion of individuality. Through this inquiry I will demonstrate against whom and in what way this negative paradigm is polemically countenanced.

The texts studied in this article are from a specific time, reacting to and haunted by the same experiences, and preoccupied by a limited number of topics. Consequently, I argue, one should view them as a single paradigm. This article also argues that three characteristics mark the "negative Jew": first, "Jew" is a term that applies to an individual human being [End Page 100] who is singled out as such by others;¹ second, the source of an individual Jew's identity is his "accidental individuality"; third, Jews around the world lack any common denominator and therefore it is not possible to ascribe to "the Jews" any one positive characteristic or attribute. These three appear in different variations and combinations in the different texts.²

In another article I describe a genealogy in social thought that conceives of Jewish identity as a principally negative one.³ In that piece, I argue that this genealogy must be viewed as challenging racialist, racist, and other positive conceptions of identity in general and Jewish identity in particular. This present article deals with a wider variety of texts from theater, literature, philosophy, and social thought. By analyzing these texts in synchronic terms as a reaction to the persecution and murder of the Jews, I argue that a specific conception of identity underlies the representations of Jews, organizing otherwise independent representations into one coherent paradigm. Further, examining these representations in terms of individuality brings to the surface more clearly against whom it is set and what strategy is employed to achieve such ends.

This article employs the metaphysical notion of individuality to analyze the "negative Jew." As several terms will be used repeatedly throughout, it is beneficial to introduce and define them at this stage. What is meant by "essence" or "nature" is what is common to many and explains sameness among things. "Features" are divided into "properties" and "accidents." [End Page 101] Properties are features that always accompany a thing of a certain type or nature. Accidents are features that do not necessarily accompany the thing in question.⁴ Accidents are defined as not necessary to the substance, but on the other hand they would be claimed to be necessary for its individuality. The term most important for the following analysis is "specific difference." Specific difference consists of the common features that are part of what distinguishes the thing from a larger group and, at the same time, makes it part of a smaller group of things, the members of which can be distinguished as individuals. Applied to our case, "specific difference" is what the Jews share with each other but what they may or may not share with other members of humanity.

This article argues that the term "negative Jew" is designed to deny the validity of positive concepts of Jewishness. More specifically, it argues that it is an attempt to undermine racial conceptions of the Jews that are based on ascribing to the Jews a "specific difference." In principle, one could argue against such conceptions by proving that the characteristics ascribed to the Jews do not correspond to reality...