Cosmopolitanism and the Jews

Cosmopolitanism has recently become a keyword in envisioning productive types of inclusivity and diversity in the West, where societies are increasingly shaped by migration, transnational and diasporic processes. This project contends that from early modernity onwards, Jews represented the paradigm of the cosmopolitan because they were seen as a people beyond borders. Today, they have largely vanished from the picture but remain in the palimpsest of academic discourse about the cosmopolitan.

While the issue of the cosmopolitan has returned with a vengeance to the social sciences and to the political arena (in the shape of debates about the movement of people and their urbanisation) little attention has been given to when and how this concept evolved. What I am presenting with my co-author, Prof. Sander L. Gilman (Emory University), is a case study and a history: the origin of the modern anxiety about immigration and the free flow of peoples across boundaries, and the meanings that nation states and these individuals attach to such movement pro and contra. This history has direct relevance to contemporary debates on migration in Germany and the UK, and our globalising world more broadly.

Building on our previous individual work and research collaborations, our current project examines the trajectory of German-Jewish cosmopolitanism in global perspective. My AHRC-funded monograph The Golem Returns (2011) had studied modern Jewish popular culture from 1800s Germany to the recent emergence of globalised forms of Jewish culture, arguing that these were accompanied by a new cosmopolitan Jewish awareness. Our jointly organised conference (2008) and following co-edited volume on Jewish Culture in the Age of Globalization (2011) explored these connections in interdisciplinary perspective. The proposed research programme and associated impact activities will enable me to network with key practitioners in the education, arts and politics, and develop my reputation as an intellectual leader within academia and beyond.

Our planned study explores the German-Jewish example as an exemplary case study of cosmopolitanism, which works itself out in complex ways across the Western hemisphere and beyond. We set out from the premise that German-speaking Jews both epitomized the figure of the cosmopolitan and themselves contributed a rich body of literary and theoretical writing on this concept. We question how Jews were and are made to function as the litmus test of Kant's and Fichte's cosmopolitanist dialectic of particularist universality. Having conceptualised the overall scope of the study and planned individual chapters, we are seeking funding to support for the detailed research and actual writing of the work.

We argue that the rootless Jew, the stranger or pariah, the cosmopolitan and the internationalist form part of the dichotomous imagery attached to Jewish mobility and fluidity. We seek to demonstrate how these notions consolidated during the Enlightenment and ensuing nationalist and racial thought. Our study will analyse the inherent instability of these images of the Jews, showing how they served to fuel antisemitic discourses, but also seemingly productive notions of the Jews. These perceptions, we contend, culminated in the early 20th-century perception of the Jews as cosmopolitans per se and served to ideologically underpin the Nazi and Stalinist persecutions of Jews.

Focussing on self-identified German-Jewish writers participating in modern Jewish cultural and political discourses during the 19th and 20th centuries, we want to explore how concepts of Jewish mobility and fluidity arose in particular contexts of social change. We present the historically ambivalent application of these ideas about the Jews to indicative case studies of individual authors and their work.

Benefits and beneficiaries

There are four distinct groups of potential beneficiaries outside of academia.

1. Individuals and bodies within the UK public sector, foremost policymakers within national, international and local government and government agencies: The Department for Communities and Local Government is a prime driver towards the current push for a 'Big Society' to empower individuals and communities within their neighbourhoods. Another prime example is the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which advises on the economic impact of migration to the UK. Given that our project addresses the manifold cultural, political and economic aspects of the cosmopolitan cultures resulting from two centuries of migration to the UK, this first group of beneficiaries would gain important insights from our work.

2. Organisations in the public sector are beginning to investigate the relationship between cosmopolitanism and the Jews: The Jewish Museum Berlin's architecture and permanent exhibit invoke the historical association of German Jews with urban sophistication and cosmopolitan spaces. The Jewish Museum Frankfurt is planning for 2014 a show on Jewish life in the GDR, where Jews were once again ostracised as 'cosmopolitans'. For several years now, a smaller exhibit on Jews in the GDR, prepared by the German Amadeu Antonio Foundation for 'a democratic civil society' has been touring public spaces across Germany and is currently being prepared for display in the US.

3. Organisations in the third sector, such as NGOs, charities and monitoring groups who have a direct interest in promoting cultural diversity: The aforementioned Amadeu Antonio Foundation conducts local schemes to combat the rising anti-Jewish sentiment, particularly among young Muslims from migrant families. The London-based charity and social enterprise Rich Mix aims to deliver cultural programmes to the diverse communities of East London. Also a key player is the Maimonides Foundation, which 'fosters understanding and cooperation between Jews, Christians and Muslims'.

4. The wider public: This group includes inhabitants of large urban centres such as London and Manchester, where the promotion of spaces that are both diverse and inclusive has immediate resonance.


Impact Strategy

Our impact strategy addresses all four groups.

1. We are planning for January 2014 a 'town meeting' type event on the complex stories of migration to the UK and Germany, bringing into dialogue the wider public with practitioners in migration, education and the arts. See 'Pathways to Impact' for details.

2. I have been invited to contribute a section on the ostracism of Jewish intellectuals in the GDR as 'cosmopolitans' to the 2014 planned exhibit at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt on Jews in the GDR.

3. We are part of the cities@manchester initiative at Manchester University, which promotes exchange on urbanity between scholars, policy makers, and lay audiences. The website features my recent video-interview on our research project.