DE GRUYTER

Mark H. Gelber, Sami Sjoberg (Eds.)

JEWISH
ASPECTS IN
AVANT-GARDE
BETWEEN REBELLION AND REVELATION

PERSPECTIVES ON JEWISH
TEXTS AND CONTEXTS
Perspectives on Jewish Texts
and Contexts

Edited by
Vivian Liska

Editorial Board
Robert Alter, Steven E. Aschheim, Richard I. Cohen, Mark H, Gelber,
Moshe Halbertal, Christine Hayes, Moshe Idel, Samuel Moyn,
Ada Rapoport-Albert, Alvin Rosenfeld, David Ruderman, Bernd Witte

Volume 5
Jewish Aspects
in Avant-Garde

Between Rebellion and Revelation

Edited by
Mark H. Gelber and Sami Sjoberg

DE GRUYTER
ISBN 978-3-11-033692-4
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-045495-6
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-045290-7
ISSN 2199-6962

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A CIP catalog record for th is book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

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Contents

Acknowledgements — vii

Sami Sjoberg and Mark H. Gelber

Introduction — 1

The Avant-Garde and Jewish Traditions

Alfred Bodenheimer
Dada Judaism: The Avant-Garde in First World War Zurich----- 23

Radu Stern
Jews and the Avant-Garde: The Case of Romania----- 35

Sami Sjoberg
Towards an Ahistorical Jewishness: The Idea of Jewish Essence
in the German-Jewish Avant-Garde----- 53

Community Building and Cultural Conflicts

Andreas Kramer
Carl Einstein, Jewishness, and the Communities
of the European Avant-Garde — 71

Laetitia Tordjman
Challenging the Literary Community: The Warsaw Yiddish Avant-Garde
and Khalyastre----- 85

Maria Silina
Modern Jewish Sculptors and the Cultural Policy of the USSR
in the 1920s-1930s----- 101
vi — Contents

Self-Representation and Anti-Semitism

Zoe Roth
Frontiere humaine: Race, Nation, and the Shape of Representation
in Claude Cahun — 119

Alana Sobelman
Arnold Schoenberg’s Jewish Veil: The Workings of Anti-Semitic Rhetoric
in Die glückliche Hand, Op. 18 (1913)---- 141

Messianism, Syncretism, and Vanguard Philosophy

Malgorzata Stolarska-Fronia
Saints and Tsadikim - The Religious Syncretism
of Jewish Expressionism---- 161

Tom Paulus
Between Ecstasy and Lament: Revelationism and Messianism
in Epstein and Godard — 193

Raphael Koenig
The Mad Book: Der Nister as Unreliable Author in From my Estate (1929)----- 207

Olivier Salazar-Ferrer
The Role of Judaism in Benjamin Fondane’s Existential Philosophy-----227

Jews in the Avant-Garde: A Historical Perspective

Steven E. Aschheim
The Avant-Garde and the Jews---- 253

Notes on Contributors-----275
Acknowledgements

The editors would like to express sincere gratitude to those whose assistance
made this book project possible. The volume began in early 2015 in the form
of lectures delivered at the international conference on “The Avant-Garde and
the Jews” that was held at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of
Antwerp. We are greatly indebted to Vivian Liska, its director, and Jan Morrens its
administrative assistant, for their support and practical expertise. They guaran­
teed that the conference would be both a professionally engaging and thoroughly
enjoyable event. The dedicated help of numerous peer reviewers has been essen­
tial for our work in preparing the manuscript. These include: Haim Finkelstein,
Peter Demetz, Howard Needier, Hanni Mittelmann, Scott Spector, Ilana Rosen,
Konstantin Dudakov-Kashuro, Jakob Hessing, Lisa Silverman, Cosana Eram, Lisa
Marie Anderson, Karolina Szymaniak, Ruth Klüger, Mikhail Krutikov, Vince Brook
and Monique Jutrin. And last, Jeremy Schreiber has been especially helpful in
putting the finishing touches on the book.

Sami Sjoberg and Mark H. Gelber

DOI 1 0 .1 5 1 5 /9 7 8 3 11 04 54 9 5 6-0 0 1
Sami Sjöberg and Mark H. Gelber
Introduction

Die Bücher der Juden vor allem das alte [sic] Testament geben mir recht glaube an einen
lebendigen Gott.1
(Jakob van Hoddis)

The year 2016 marked the centenary of dada. German expressionism, Italian futur­
ism and Russian cubo-futurism are even older than dada, and yet we are still far
from a full understanding of these movements or of the avant-garde in general.
This certainly has to do with the intrinsic complexity or versatility of the phe­
nomenon, which incorporates many facets, including political and artistic revolt,
international networks and temporal dynamics. Also, the avant-garde is open to
various reinterpretations, such as feminist or post-colonial readings. As of yet, no
serious attempt has been made to understand the Jewish dimension of the avant-
garde. Hence, this volume charts and investigates the various ways in which the
avant-garde, Jewishness and Judaism relate to each other.
Within the last ten years, a number of studies in various disciplines have ad­
dressed the relationship between Jewish topics and motifs and avant-garde move­
ments. The topic of Jewish artists belonging to the avant-garde has also been of
certain scholarly interest.2 However, the phenomenon as such still remains largely
uncharted, despite the fact that the degree of participation by Jewish avant-garde
artists in literature, the visual arts, theater and film has been strikingly high. So
far, studies have usually addressed the idea of “Jewish art,” 3 or surveyed Jew­
ish characteristics in modernism4 or focused on individual avant-garde artists of

1 Jakob van Hoddis (1987,233). “ The books o f the Jews, especially the Old Testament, give me the
right faith in a living God.” All translations are by the authors unless otherwise stated.
2 Anderson 2011, Sandqvist 2006, and an early example is Apter-Gabriel 1987. Yet, such studies
were not a new phenomenon, because important titles surveying avant-garde literature with a
particular emphasis on Jewishness were published already in the 1920s, including Menachem
Birnbaum’s Lyrische Dichtung deutscher Juden (Lyric Poetry o f German Jews, 1920), Gustav Kro-
janker’s Juden in der deutschen Literatur (Jews in German Literature, 1922), along with studies
such as Alfred Wolfenstein’s Jüdisches Wesen und neue Dichtung (Jewish Essence and New Po­
etry, 1922) and Arthur Sakheim’s Das jüdische Element in der Weltliteratur (The Jewish Element in
World Literature, 1924).
3 Classic studies on this topic are Sed-Rajna et al. 1997 and Van Voolen 2006.
4 The Jewish characteristics in modernism are surveyed in studies such as Shaked 1987, Kampf
1990, Garb and Nochlin 1995, Bilski 1999, Wisse 2000, Baigell and Heyd 2001, Kirschenblatt-
Gimblett and Karp 2008, and Washton Long, Baigell and Heyd 2010.

DOI 10.1515/9783110454956-002
2 Sami Sjöberg and Mark H. Gelber

Jewish origin,5 without developing or utilizing an overarching approach to this

specific dimension of the avant-garde. This indicates that much of the important
information is to be located at the fringes of academia, for instance in exhibition
catalogues, or neglected material in archives and in various Nachläße.
In literature, the Jewish involvement in the avant-garde covers not only exper­
imental texts produced in Jewish languages (Yiddish, Hebrew, Ladino) but also
works in other languages by artists of Jewish descent. Overall, the significance of
the avant-garde for modern Jewish culture and the impact of the Jewish tradition
on the artistic production of the avant-garde are visible through the various and
multiple reinterpretations of literary, artistic, philosophical or theological texts
and traditions, which appropriate elements from Judaism or Jewish culture.
The focus of the present volume is European, owing to the fact that Europe
was the birthplace of the artistic avant-garde. Moreover, with the advent of the
Second World War, the majority of Jews resided in Europe.6 During the interwar
period, numerous Jews pursued careers in the arts, and they were especially visi­
ble in the “ marginal” movements of the avant-garde. The aesthetic approaches of
these movements were so varied that it has become commonplace to define the
avant-garde in the plural.7 That is certainly necessary regarding Jews in order to
reflect the internal heterogenic reality of the avant-gardes they took part in.

Jewish Traces in the Avant-Garde

The avant-garde is undoubtedly a product of the modern period and it has been
noted that this era brought about profound social, political, scientific and aes­
thetic upheavals and renewals.8 The period exhibited contradictory impulses and

5 For instance, Raileanu 2004, Hentea 2014. However, instead of a truly comparative approach,
avant-garde studies have tended to focus on national languages and literatures, hence providing
only fragmentary views of the avant-garde as a phenomenon. Granted, the various avant-gardes
differ, but the lack of a realization of progressive art with a continent-wide social and political
agenda underestimates the avant-garde as a transnational phenomenon.
6 Approximately 9,5 million Jews lived in Europe in 1933 and comprised 1,7 % of the total pop­
ulation. These Jews represented more than 60 percent of the world’s Jewish population at that
time, which is estimated at 15,3 million. The Holocaust Encyclopedia, quoted March 2, 2016.
www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005161.
7 In this introduction avant-gardes refer to the various movements, whereas the singular form
denotes the general phenomenon.
8 Some date the starting point of the modern era to 1492, but it is usually considered to have
begun in the late eighteenth century with the industrial revolution (economic) and rationalism
(as a scientific paradigm).
 Introduction 3

dynamics: there was a general interest in the new (such as advances in technol­
ogy) and due to religious skepticism also a heightened sense of the present mo­
ment, which is occasionally dubbed as “ the shock of new.” 9 However, to counter
the progressive trends of social emancipation, internationalism and urbanization
of the age, xenophobia and nationalism proliferated, which in turn fueled anti-
Semitism and the rise of totalitarianism. Thus, the works of the avant-garde were
produced in a social environment where liberal and conservative forces negoti­
ated with each other, occasionally generating societal unrest. One might mention
the Paris Commune, the Bavarian Council Republic or the May 1968 riots, and
their subsequent suppression in this context.
From a historical perspective, the Jewish participation in the avant-gardes is
noteworthy, because it can be seen as an alternative path to modernization. The
avant-garde provided an alternative Weltanschauung to those uninterested in re­
ligious orthodoxy or bourgeois assimilation. Overall, the avant-gardists were of­
ten young and well-educated people.10 For Jewish artists, the anti-nationalism of
the avant-garde was particularly inviting, since the European Jewish population
lived in a state of diaspora across the continent.11 The religious tradition with its
ties to Halakha, the Jewish law, provided extra-territorial features in the social
reality of European Jewry. Indeed, for avant-garde artists of Jewish background,
a primary dilemma was how to strike a balance between the historical continuity
provided by religion and ethnicity and the novel aesthetic innovations that mili­
tated in favor of an explicit break with tradition. The avant-gardes often promoted
anti-religious stances, as organized religion was seen by many to be outmoded,
even though in reality multiple forms of religious thought and spirituality were
cultivated in these groups.12
Latent religious influences are apparent in the manifesto “Gramaticä” (Gram­
mar, 1925) written by the Romanian Jewish avant-garde author Ilarie Voronca

9 Major thinkers who promoted this conception are Nietzsche and Benjamin. For a further dis­
cussion, cf. Hughes 2013.
10 This characteristic is evident, for instance, in Cheskel Zwi’s manifesto-like text, “Wir jungen
Juden” (We Young Jews, 1911), which indicates that many newcomers in the avant-garde circles
considered themselves fundamentally as Jews. However, it should be noted that Zwi’s outright
affirmation was not shared by all his peers.
11 For the sake of readability, the present volume utilizes a general notion of a “Jewish artist,”
which denotes those active in the arts and literature who are of Jewish origin, while acknowledg­
ing the complicated nature of such a formulation. For instance, the dada painter Marcel Janco
identified himself as “an artist who is a Jew,” rather than “a Jewish artist” (Sandqvist 2006,377).
The topic has been discussed at length elsewhere. See footnote 3.
12 Illuminating examples of this are the “dissident Judaism” of Paul Adler and the neo-Kabbalah
of the Neue Club member Oskar Goldberg.
4 Sami Sjöberg and Mark H. Gelber

(Eduard Marcus, 1903-1946). In fact, it includes all the main aspects of early
twentieth-century avant-garde aesthetics. With the suggestive and subversive
rhetoric characteristic of the manifesto genre, he denounced traditional art and
conventional means of representation while promoting an alternative canon con­
sisting of prominent figures in European experimental art, such as Stephane
Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud, Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco - the latter two being
Voronca’s Jewish compatriots. Voronca echoes the works of these predecessors
when stipulating the necessity for a new approach to words, which would estab­
lish a new logic. Already here looms a paradox: how can the “radically new” draw
from literature written more than thirty years earlier? Similar specious neofilia
proved to be an overarching theme in the various avant-gardes, together with
various utopian and political aims.
In the light of such extensive neofilia, the omission of religion would seem to
be necessary. Yet, amidst Voronca’s rampant anti-traditionalist discourse a pecu­
liar statement can be found, which mirrors his ethnic and religious background:
“Orice artist trebuie sa fie aducatorul unor alte principii, scoborand in concertul
de fulgere de pe muntele Sinai cu tablele logicei noi in maini” [Each artist must be
the originator of novel principles, descending through the concert of fulgurations
atop Mount Sinai with the tablets of a new logic in his hands] (Voronca 1925,1).13
This ambiguous statement describes and envisions the revealing of the Torah by
God to Moses on Mount Sinai and attributes to the tablets of Law a novel sense:
that is, a ground for a new logic. This goal was arguably one of the avant-garde’s
ultimate aims - to promote “Andersdenken,” that is, thinking otherwise.14
While Voronca promoted his new avant-gardist logic, he concurrently sug­
gested that Judaism had created a new logic as well, which perhaps refers to
monotheism amidst polytheistic or pagan religions.15 Voronca contextualized his
tradition-recalling statement by claiming that a novel experience - which is free
from conventional modes of thought - would result in a seemingly “neological,”
alternative logic, and that this logic would in time be subsumed into “old time
logic” (Voronca 2002,548). The inner dynamics of the avant-garde are apparent in
the dialectic movement between the new and the old, in which the current “new”

13 Translated by Julian Semilian and Sanda Agalidi.

14 An early instance of such an approach is Carl Einstein’s experimental novel Bebuquin (1908,
full version 1912). It exemplifies that such modes of thought were not a question of mere dissidents
opposing given aims within a determined system of thought; rather, the aim o f these modes was
to introduce alternative, non-systematic modes of thought. In this context, Einstein differentiated
between the terms “ thinking” (Denken) and “ knowing” (Erkennen).
15 An instance of such emphasis can be found in Ladino where the Spanish singular word “D ios”
(God) is replaced with “El Dio” to highlight Jewish monotheism.
 Introduction 5

becomes commonplace and is eventually replaced. More importantly, despite

Voronca’s somewhat enigmatic formulation, he obviously referred to a historical
continuity between his avant-gardist experiments and the Jewish tradition.
The inevitable question arising from Voronca’s statement above is how or in
what ways his Jewishness should be taken into account. The text suggests a read­
ing that acknowledges his background. Still, it may be asked whether the author’s
persuasion and intentionality may be understood in this same context. According
to Carol lancu, Voronca was influenced by his Jewish identity and never converted
(lancu 2016). Yet, this general information does not seem to add anything to our
understanding of the text itself. On another level one may ask what the Jewish di­
mension reveals about the artistic production of Voronca and its potential relation
to his and other avant-garde expression:
The aim of this volume is to respond to inquiries of this nature which probe
the extent to which avant-garde artists of Jewish descent maintained productive
relationships with their Jewishness. In order to reach this goal, of course, one
must pose difficult questions concerning Jewishness. According to which criteria
should Jewishness be defined? Is it ethnic, cultural, national, religion-based or
social? So far, research attempts to deal with this problem, while declaring all­
embracing aims, have proved to be lacking, because there is no single universal
solution to the relation between the avant-garde and the Jews. However, one pos­
sible approach, adapted from social studies, is to acknowledge the avant-gardists’
common intersectional positions. In short, intersectionality maps the possible
sources and types of discrimination an individual might experience, such as race,
class, gender, religious beliefs or language. This is to say that amongst the avant-
gardists, the anomalous situation of an artist as a Jew and as an experimentalist
may have produced similar experiences of in-betweenness or alienation.
Most of the artists discussed in this volume derived from the middle-class, and
they rebelled against this background (Hirte 2009,10). In their individual societies
many encountered anti-Semitism including the outright threat of physical vio­
lence. Yet, the artists’ backgrounds are very heterogeneous: German, Habsburg,
French and East European Jews, whose cultural backgrounds and existential sit­
uations, including the extent of acculturation and ability to assimilate, were very
different. However, assimilation usually occurred according to the educational,
occupational and cultural conditions established by the middle-class, which is
why assimilation may not have been very attractive to many of the young avant-
garde artists. Moreover, it also proved to be difficult in many cases, such as Tzara’s,
whose dada production was considered to be a “ foreign import” both in his na­
tive Romania, from where he emigrated, and in Switzerland, to where he relocated
(Goga 1927, 36; Hentea 2014,150).
6 Sami Sjöberg and Mark H. Gelber

Given the large number of individual cases, the concept of intra-European

otherness outlined by Piotr Piotrowski is potentially useful in this context, since
it is concerned with the history of the avant-garde. He distinguished the non­
European other from a “close other,” whose place is “on the margins of Euro­
pean culture, outside the center but still within the same cultural frame of ref­
erence” (Piotrowski 2009,53). Instead of remaining outside the centers and in the
shtetlekh, Jewish artists often formed alternative undercurrents in the metropoli­
tan centers of the avant-garde. One might even say that they represented otherness
in these centers. This tendency is perhaps nowhere as poignant as in the case of
the German-Jewish author Carl Einstein (1885-1940), whose Negerplastik (1915)
introduced African art into the European sphere. In this work the African imagery
and cultural heritage are projected as the exotic non-European other, while Ein­
stein himself remained in the position of the “close other,” because Jewishness
was one of his European “ lived traditions.” This otherness would eventually be­
come evident during Einstein’s forced exile beginning in 1933, which he accounts
for in his so-called BEB II project:16

ich sehe, immer mehr werde ich allein sein, jude, deutschsprechend, in frankreich, jude ohne
gott und ohne kenntnis unserer Vergangenheit, deutschsprechend [...]. in frankreich d i ohne
leser. [...] nie werde ich in französischer dichtung zuhause sein; denn ich träume und sinniere
deutsch. Also nun bin ich durch Hitler zu völliger Heimatlosigkeit und fremdheit verurteilt.17

[I see that I will be more and more alone, jew, german-speaking, in france. jew without god
and without the knowledge of our past, german-speaking, in france i.e. without readers.
I shall never feel at home in french poetry; because I dream and muse in german. So now
I am condemned by Hitler to complete homelessness and alienation.]

Einstein lamented the extent of his secular upbringing, since Judaism or the dis­
courses of Jewishness could have served him as a lingua franca in France; in fact,
it was required of him in order to become acquainted with French Jews. Einstein
seems to represent a sort of a triple outsider: he was unwelcome in Germany and
not being an observant Jew, he could not be easily accepted by the Parisian Jew­
ish community. Additionally, even though he was an esteemed avant-gardist, the
general appeal of the avant-garde has always been limited.
Beyond the illustrative case of Einstein, Piotrowski’s argument is provocative
in that he claims there are several histories and canons of the avant-garde. For
example, Jews were especially prominent in expressionism. This fact can be ex­
plained by the need of many of the German-Jewish artists to resolve their German-

16 For a further discussion on this topic, see Kramer’s essay in this volume.
17 Einstein, a fragment from BEB 11. Quoted in Klaus Kiefer: Avantgarde - Weltkrieg - Exil, 26.
 Introduction ——

Jewish and Eastern-Western dichotomous dispositions. Expressionism tended to

highlight otherness with the aim of demonstrating the need for Germans to create
an inclusive society. It sought to force Germans to see and think in new ways, to
expand their imaginations and dispense with many of their preconceptions. Ex­
pressionism’s artistic program thus resonated with the historical experiences and
modern desires of many German Jews.
Regarding Jewish artists who were often seminal in the avant-garde move­
ments, it seems that their story has been told only partially. Often the place of
these artists within a given movement is celebrated; sometimes their ethnic her­
itage is noted. But it is seldom analyzed according to any sort of group dynamics,
despite the fact that Jewish participation in certain movements was prominent
(such as in expressionism), while some major figures of the avant-garde, such as
Hugo Ball or Andre Breton, were at least to some degree anti-Semitic.18
Another aim of the present volume is to consider the broader cultural en­
vironments in which the Jewish artists active in the avant-garde produced their
works. This aspect addresses the inner dynamics of the various movements of
the avant-garde and the attempt to achieve a balance between tradition and what
is called “modern.” This volume addresses the problematics of ethnic and reli­
gious Judaism in relation to authorship or artistic activity and production- here
understood in the expanded sense that covers other arts as well. Evidently, some
authors embraced Jewish concerns while avoiding a limited or unified concept
of Jewish identity and encouraging an awareness of the non-Jewish environment
(Liska 2008). The importance of Jewish motifs differs for individual artists: some
authors fundamentally and consistently utilize them (Else Lasker-Schüler, Der
Nister); some authors articulate them in religious border zones (Cahun), whereas
some offer only few explicitly themed reference points (Einstein). This volume in­
cludes essays about a broad spectrum of ethnic Jewish artists, ranging from de­
nominational (Meidner) to the seemingly indifferent (Tzara), who applied Jewish
themes only intermittently.

Jewish Roots and Identity in the Avant-Garde

The term avant-garde derives from a medieval usage; it denoted a military ad­
vance guard. The term was appropriated to aesthetic use in the early 1800s in
France (Wiesberger 1984,18-19). In its current aesthetic sense, the term was first
introduced in an essay entitled “ 1’Artiste, le savant et 1’industriel” (A Dialogue be­

ts For a further discussion, see the essays of Stern and Aschheim in this volume.
8 Sami Sjoberg and Mark H. Gelber

tween the Artist, the Scientist and the Industrialist) in 1825 (ibid.). The text has
been attributed to Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues (1795-1851), who was a Parisian
banker and a Saint-Simonian socialist. Saint-Simonianism was a political and so­
cial movement, which envisioned a society that would discard both God and the
idea of an afterlife and reorganize itself under the rubric of “useful work” in which
all would participate (Saint-Simon 1975,42). Thus, work would ultimately provide
universal equality and emancipation.
Far from being a mere coincidence, the Jewish dimension of the avant-garde
was present already at this early stage. Rodrigues was of Sephardi Jewish de­
scent.19 He had attended the French lycees and reportedly abandoned most forms
of Jewish ritual by the 1820s, but his ethnic background nevertheless affected his
life to a degree. Evidently, he was not able to secure a permanent teaching posi­
tion at a French university because of his Jewish background (Altmann and Ortiz
2005, 60), Institutionalized anti-Semitism was a fact of life in post-revolutionary
France. The Rodrigues family resided in a building on rue Montholon where
Leon Halevy and other prominent Saint-Simonians lived. The house has been
described by many as a center of the elite Parisian Jewish social world in the
first decades of the nineteenth century. As it happens, Jews were more promi­
nent in Saint-Simonianism than in any other contemporary organization. Pamela
Pilbeam (2013, 13) has noted that the “ Saint-Simonian movement provided a
haven, a counterculture in which Jews could develop ideas on social reform and
establish a collegial identity distinct from their faith. An eighth of the movement
was Jewish.” Saint-Simonian socialism almost certainly exerted an impact on the
social aspect of the avant-garde, which emphasized the eventual merger of art,
politics and everyday life and, hence, a better future. Yet, the relation between
the avant-garde and Judaism is far more complicated.
There are numerous ways in which Jewishness and Judaism can be present
in avant-gardist works of art. For instance, a work may include characteristics of
the Jewish tradition, but also undermine these in terms of parody or deconstruc­
tion. In such cases the avant-garde should be seen in relation to tradition, because
rereadings tend to mark a sovereign tradition, which is also established enough to
withstand various forms of criticism. Exemplifying such criticism is the German-
Jewish expressionist Alfred Lichtenstein (1889-1914) in his poem “ Der Traurige”
(The Sad Man, 1911):

19 The spelling of his name suggests Portuguese instead of Spanish origins.

 Introduction —— 9

Heute hab ich größre Dinge vor -

Ach, ich will den Sinn des Daseins suchen.

Und am Abend werd ich etwas Rollschuh laufen

Oder mal in einen Juden tempel gehn.
(Lichtenstein 1962,22)

[Today I have bigger things in mind -

Ah, I shall seek the meaning of life.

And in the evening I shall do some roller-skating

Or maybe go to a Jewish Temple.]

In Lichtenstein’s poem, the temple is a locus for the contemplation of life’s mean­
ing. However, the leisurely activity of roller-skating provides an equal chance
for serious pondering. Indeed, Lichtenstein’s poem exhibits a contemplative but
ironic undercurrent paralleling the humorous details. Its blunt reference to roller­
skating and attending a religious service in the same breath, however, is defiant.
In a provocatory manner, Lichtenstein combines something particularly Jewish
(the temple and activities therein) with a literary mode not foreign to avant-garde
(irony or sarcasm).
Similar cases speak for a feeling of otherness. One may ask how did these
tendencies relate to the identities of Jews in the avant-gardes? It should be em­
phasized that this question is not limited to a certain period but rather pertains
even today. For example, Charles Bernstein, a leading American poet, claimed
that “ [the avant-gardist] Jewish identity is constituted by way of distance from a
secure sense of what it means to be Jewish” (Morris 2010, 3). The “secure sense”
can be read in a variety ways, but in essence it calls forth individual definitions of
Jewishness. Indeed, it seems that regarding Jews and the avant-garde, one senses
a variety of self-identifications on the one hand and, on the other, a resistance to
accept imposed definitions about what “Jewishness” means.
Considering some explicit testimonies by Jews involved in the avant-garde,
one notes a basic need to balance between different cultures, languages and reli­
gions. For instance, the early expressionist poet Jakob van Hoddis (Hans David-
sohn, 1887-1942) stated - after briefly leaning towards the Catholic faith - that
“my Jewishness breaks through again. Catholicism was just an adventure” (van
Hoddis 1987, 235). Yvan Goll (Isaac Lang, 1891-1950), the Alsatian poet, based
his identity on in-betweenness: he defined himself as “ by fate a Jew, by accident
born in France, on paper a German” (Pinthus 1959, 341). Defining himself as an
“ apatrid” and taking this “close otherness” one step further, the Romanian-born
Gherasim Luca (Salman Locker, 1913-1994) called himself an “ etranjuif,” a sort of
10 Sami Sjöberg and Mark H. Gelber

“stranger Jew” - a stranger amongst other people who is also a stranger to himself
(Luca 1962). After the Holocaust, Isidore Isou (Isidore Goldstein, 1925-2007), the
Romanian founder of the lettrist movement, firmly stated: “I am fully, in each de­
fect, in each light, in each impulse, in each curve, in each reluctance a Jew. I am so
Jewish that it is perhaps the only word in my life that I write with a capital, without
feeling that I add a dimension to make up for a deficiency” (Isou 1947,209).
But not all artists of Jewish origin wanted to identify as Jews. For instance,
Karl Kraus (1874-1936) and Walter Serner (Walter Seligmann, 1889-1942) rejected
Judaism outright.20 However, writers and artists of Jewish origin who distance
themselves from Judaism have alfeady addressed the relationship to Judaism on
a personal level. Even though they might reject religion, they cannot discard their
Jewishness so easily. Hence the process of refusal is a trace of self-definition. It
normally means that people in this category have given sufficient thought to their
background, which in turn allows for micro-historical mapping. Moreover, all of
the stances above include an implicit understanding of respective Jewish commu­
nities, albeit these are necessarily imaginary ones. Still, they illuminate a given
artist’s relation to the community. It is of certain interest to probe the individual
reasons for embracing or discarding the community, or remaining uninterested
in it.
Taking some of the cases mentioned above into account, the notion of a rather
polysemous nature of identity, which seeks to avoid reductive forms of Jewish
identity, emerges. In the early twentieth century, Jewishness was often linked to
either traditional religious orthodoxy or to acculturation that reduced or toned
down the Jewish element. Of course, a variety of stances could be identified in
between these extremes. Seen from the perspectives of both the avant-garde and
Judaism, the Jewish artist provided a marginal voice. On the one hand, against
an orthodox or even secular bourgeois assimilated Jewish backdrop, Jews active
in the avant-garde are an anomaly.21 They may have flirted with anti-bourgeois
and unorthodox ideologies, such as revolutionary anarchism. On the other hand,
Jewish artists were not to be found as a rule in the margins of the avant-gardes,

2 0 However, an unpublished manuscript entitled “Gott und ‘Die Fackel’” (God and “ Die Fackel”)
on Karl Kraus’s Jewish influences by his peer Paul Hatvani suggests that Kraus’ rejection of Ju­
daism was far from a comprehensive one.
21 In their introduction to a theme issue on Jewish modernism, Amir Eshel and Todd Presner call
this stance “double de-territorialization,” which suggests that Jews active in the avant-garde were
anti-traditionalists, thus unfitting for the established historical narratives of both modernism and
Judaism. See Eshel and Presner 2006, 611.
 Introduction —— 11

such as dada, surrealism or lettrism. Rather they were key players who were able
to register a seminal impact in the major manifestations of the individual groups.22
Thus, as already stated, the Jews in the avant-garde formed distinct undercur­
rents in the artistic metropolitan centers of the time, like Paris and Berlin, where
such undercurrents could manifest themselves and flourish in various ways.23
They did not really constitute a kind of cultural periphery. For instance, the core
of the Berlin-based “Der Neue Club” was Jewish; it included the neo-kabbalist
Oskar Goldberg. This fact suggests that the group was both informed about neo­
mysticism and that it probably differed from other expressionist groups. Further­
more, it seems that “Jewishness” in some avant-garde circles was radically dif­
ferent from what was conventionally considered to be Jewish at the time. It was
open to elements that were derived from beyond the Jewish sphere, while also
drawing on Jewish elements. For example, El Lissitzky’s (Lazar Markovich Lis-
sitzky, 1890-1941) excursion to the Pale of Settlement in the mid-1910s, where
he copied old synagogue wall paintings, had a profound impact on his distinctly
avant-gardist illustrations (see Apter-Gabriel 1987).
The role of Jews as mediators and art collectors was equally important for the
avant-garde. The “little magazines” that were the primary distribution channel
of avant-gardist literary works, would have been unimaginable without Jewish
networking. Christian Weikop (2013, 696) notes that during the 1910s and 1920s
a network emerged that was “closely linked to patterns of artistic and literary pro­
duction, dissemination, and patronage, in complex processes of Jewish assimila­
tion that in many respects determined the paths of German modernism.” Indeed,
key figures like Herwarth Walden (Georg Levin, 1878-1941) introduced European
avant-gardes to German readers while publishing articles related to Jewish topics.
However, his and other little magazines were not unilaterally a sign of assimila­
tion; rather, they reflected a wide spectrum of the everyday life of the Jews involved
in the avant-garde.
All in all, for several Jews the avant-garde seemed to be a way of balancing
between aspects of the Jewish past and present. Equally, it sought an equilib­
rium between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. An instance of this character­
istic was provided by Alfred Wolfenstein (1883-1945), who regarded the avant-
garde through a messianic spectrum with the eventual aim of erasing distinc­
tions and thus the position of the Jew as the “close other.” Even though we now

22 Here, especially, Jews from Romania are significant. For instance, Tzara and the brothers
Janco were prominent dadaists. Claude Sernet, Gellu Naum and Voronca were renowned sur­
realists, and Isou was the founder of the lettrist movement. See Ion Pop (ed.) La rehabilitation du
reve. Une anthologie de l’avant-garde roumaine. Paris: Maurice Nadeau, 2006.
23 For a further discussion, see Bilski 1999.
12 Sami Sjöberg and Mark H. Gelber

know his quest was unsuccessful, it speaks volumes for the contemporary self­
understanding of the Jews in the avant-garde who were subject to intra-European
otherness during the early decades of the 20th century.

From Micro-History Towards a Non-Reductive

Comparative Approach
From the aspect of research, the main question this volume attempts to answer is
how Jewish studies and avant-garde studies may benefit reciprocally from each
other as interdisciplinary fields that complement each other’s methodological
repertoire. The investigations contained in this volume take into account new his­
torical and theoretical perspectives, which facilitate new views of Jewish artistic,
literary and cultural production on the one hand, and a better understanding of
the avant-garde on the other.
The micro-historical level, where we can map how individual artists or delim­
ited groups reconciled or accommodated Judaism and the avant-garde, is poten­
tially informative because it does not reduce Jewishness into a monolithic commu­
nity or expression. However, beyond micro-history a method to clarify how one
can approach both the avant-garde and Jewishness together on a more general
level is still lacking. In other words, in order to arrive at a more comprehensive
picture of the “close other,” one needs to venture beyond micro-history.
Thus, it is a challenge to compare and to “cross expose” two elusive and con­
tentious fields of study. Firstly, the term “Jewish,” in the manner it is used in Jew­
ish studies, accounts for, but is not limited to, the Jewish tradition with its rituals,
texts, customs, ethics, and geographical displacements. These should be regarded
from both the religious and the secular spheres. For instance, what meaning did
rituals and religious texts convey in a secular context? Secondly, the avant-garde
is no less elusive with its geopolitical networks, overlapping temporal aspects,
heterogenic texts and various local appropriations. In fact, the fragmentary and
varied character of the manifestations of the avant-gardes often lack a common
theme and a method of execution. The label “ avant-garde” could be characterized
as a manifold repertoire of works of art that do not fit for the readily established
categories of their time.
There is a deliberate aporia looming in the pairing of the avant-garde and the
Jews. Jewishness is defined historically via culture and ethnicity (in addition to
religion or nation), which means that each definition and depiction of Jewish­
ness must negotiate with or at least acknowledge this complexity. The avant-garde
averts imposed definitions and categorizations and cannot be self-defining, be-
 Introduction — 13

cause if it were it would relinquish its vanguard position. This position necessi­
tates that avant-gardist art remain indefinable, at least to the extent that art is an
institution in its own right. In this sense, once particular art is defined and desig­
nated “ avant-garde,” as is usually done by critics and scholars, it is avant-garde
no more. In other words, the avant-garde may be understood as a temporal phe­
nomenon and various attempts that acknowledge the problematics of definition
will fall victim to the same trap. One such instance is Isou’s (1946,37) characteriza­
tion of his own movement as the “ avant-garde of the avant-garde,” which entails
two distinct senses of the term. The first is the “ bygone avant-garde” (futurism,
dada, surrealism) that preceded his movement in time, and the second is a more
loosely defined “ avant-garde” that succeeds the first one. Yet, every time art is
characterized as avant-garde, it loses its avant-gardist quality, because its novel­
ties have become conventional - in the vein Voronca outlined in his manifesto.
The aporetic combination of the terms “avant-garde” and “Jews” seems to re­
quire a so-called “emptying out” of the other so that the two distinct elements
cannot be reconciled. Yet, an either/or option is a highly problematical point of
departure for analysis, because it is contrafactual. Moreover, it will not clarify or
explicate the situation of the Jews active in the avant-garde through the lens of
intra-European otherness. By nature, there seems to be a suspended co-existence
of aporetic terms. In fact, any attempt to overcome the aporetic suspension of
these terms requires reductionism. Yet, one might still ask: what can we learn
about the Jews and the avant-garde without reductions? Is a non-reductive com­
parative approach possible?
In an attempt to circumvent the aporia, some so-called third terms should
be considered. Third terms indicate features that are common to the avant-garde
and Judaism, but which are merely regarded from within two distinct disciplines
with incompatible presumptions and hypotheses. Avant-garde studies and Jewish
studies approach their subjects and conceptualize them quite differently. How­
ever, the undeniable fact is that Jewish people were disproportionately active in
the avant-gardes. It is logical to assume that when encountering new ideas they
interpreted them to an extent by means or categories which were already familiar
to them, namely those deriving from the Jewish tradition. This possibility would
explain the existence of numerous overlaps, of which some are accounted for in
the essays contained in this volume. Furthermore, it may point to a continuum in
the Jewish history of ideas.
Firstly, there seems to be a common socio-political pursuit among the Jews
and the avant-garde, namely the idea o f an ideal community, which has been sem­
inal in the avant-garde from Saint-Simonianism onwards. It does not denote a
delimited congregation of any sort but a more broadly defined community that
shares the same values and beliefs. This characteristic was prominent in expres-
14 Sami Sjöberg and Mark H. Gelber

sionism and in some variants of dada. In Judaism, it denotes the Jewish commu­
nity in general. Secondly, and closely connected with the first example, are the
utopian tendencies of Judaism and the avant-garde. These have a long tradition in
Judaism in the form of messianism, which promotes the idea of a messianic age
or an eternal divine kingdom. There are more secular messianic ideas advanced
by Jewish thinkers, such as those of Walter Benjamin or Ernst Bloch, the latter
of whom was associated with expressionism. The avant-garde contains a utopian
impulse, which is the amalgamation of art and life. In this context, Jews in the
avant-garde often adopted messianic rhetoric from the Jewish tradition. Thirdly,
in the same way that the Messiah may transgress Jewish law, the avant-garde
artist was no less antinomian with respect to bourgeois culture and its so-called
“good taste.” For instance, the German-Jewish expressionist Albert Ehrenstein
(1886-1950) wrote to Karl Kraus in 1911: “Es ist vielleicht nicht ganz geschmack­
voll, davon zu reden, immerhin beging ich impertinent genug das Verbrechen, Jesus
Christus nicht den Vortritt zu lassen und am 23. Dezember zur Welt zu kommen"
[It is perhaps of slightly bad taste to mention this, but anyway, I was impertinent
enough to commit the crime of not allowing Jesus Christ to go first by entering
the world on the twenty-third of December] (Ehrenstein 1989, 88). Fourthly, both
Judaism and the avant-garde are cosmopolitan, which is, of course, apparent ow­
ing to the abundant pejorative uses of the term. This characteristic does not only
pertain to the various appropriations of certain aesthetic currents but also to the
individual artists themselves. The avant-garde fostered linguistic displacement,
intercultural encounter and cross-fertilization.
Essential for literary analysis in particular are thematic and technical continu­
ities. Ehrenstein explained that the significant Jewish participation in the avant-
garde resulted from “the religious tradition of the Word” (Beller 2005, 231). This
tradition originated from the Torah and its commentary literature, especially the
myth of or belief in God’s oral creation of the world, which was a main focus of
medieval Kabbalah (e.g. Abraham Abulafia, Joseph R. Gikatilla and Moshe Cor-
dovero), especially in the form of the investigation of the significance and pol­
ysemy of the Hebrew letters. Writers like Lasker-Schüler, Goll, Isou and others
utilized Jewish themes in their avant-garde poetry, most often kabbalistic ones,
envisioning transcendent realms or mythical events.
The Kabbalah was a source of avant-gardist textual techniques, a fact which
signals that these “ new” techniques were not at all novel. For instance, Georges
Perec’s (1936-1982) oulipian essay, “ Histoire du lipogramme” (History of the Lipo-
gram, 1970), launched the history of the lipogrammatic technique with refer­
ences to the Zohar, the name of God and key kabbalistic techniques (gematria,
notarikon, temurah). Another case is Tzara’s La rose et le chien. Poeme perpetuel
(The Rose and the Dog. Perpetual Poem, 1958), which he completed with the help
 Introduction 15

of Picasso. The poem was written on overlapping circular discs, which enabled
multiple readings reminiscent of the visual permutation wheels in Abulafia’s
Hayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba (Life of the World to Come, 1280). An even earlier instance
of such techniques in Tzara’s oeuvre is his visual poem “Calligramme” (1916),
which mimics or lampoons Hebrew micrography, that is, Jewish calligrammes
with their origins in the ninth century.
The thematic continuity of avant-garde includes references to the vast Jewish
textual corpus (both religious and secular texts). Van Hoddis provides an example
in his early poem “ Sprichwörtliches” (Proverbial, 1905-1906), which quotes the
Talmud in its last two lines:

Wer wird groß? Der nur er selber ist

Wer gut? Der freudig das Leben betrachtet.
Wer ist weise? Der von jedem lernt.
Wer ist achtbar? Der die Menschen achtet.
(van Hoddis 1987,215)

[Who is great? He who is only himself

Who is good? He who views life happily.
Who is wise? He who learns from everyone.
Who is respectable? He who respects people.]

Van Hoddis recontextualizes the Biblical lines, while departing from the Talmud
in spiritu. Hence, the new connotations the poem produces with its somewhat
comic self-confidence and optimism reflect obliquely the Talmudic verses (Pirkei
Avot [Chapters of the Fathers], 4, verse 1.). Van Hoddis’s poem is an illuminat­
ing example of the reappropriation of a classical Jewish text in the context of the
avant-garde. It emulates the formal elements of the Talmudic text while placing
it into a contemporary German-Jewish milieu, thereby recontextualizing also the
connotations the text conveys. The poem is directed or addressed to readers who
are not only familiar with the Talmud, but also liberal regarding the possibilities
of reforming the sacred text.
Similar points of contact and mutual themes reoccur throughout the chap­
ters of the present volume. The essays in the first part discuss the early avant-
gardes’ stances on the various manifestations of tradition in the Jewish context.
With a clear-cut focus on avant-garde literature produced by some of the most
renowned avant-gardists of Jewish origin, Alfred Bodenheimer points out how the
radical textual experimentation in dada by Tzara and others offered resistance
to the current stereotypical views on the degenerate quality of Jewish language
which crystallized in the debates concerning “Judeo-German,” that is, Yiddish as
a variant of German. By focusing on Tzara’s and Marcel Janco’s Romanian Jewish
16 Sami Sjoberg and Mark H. Gelber

background, Radu Stern analyzes how the historical constraints established by

nationalism facilitated the absorption of cosmopolitan and transnational values
among Jews. The European Jewish population in the diaspora was characteristi­
cally transnational and this characteristic required negotiations on various levels
with country-specific nationalisms. In addition to its cosmopolitanism, the avant-
garde provided novel textual means that were regarded as potential solutions to
the dichotomy between the national and the transnational. Sami Sjoberg looks
into Alfred Wolfenstein’s groundbreaking interpretation of the avant-garde in the
framework of German expressionism. Wolfenstein promoted avant-gardist “new
literature” as a means of overcoming the linguistic differences between the vari­
eties of German spoken by Jews and Germans respectively. His utopian approach
called for a comprehensive cultural reboot and mutual integration.
The Jewish endeavors to integrate or at least to coexist with the society at large
gave birth to various communities, which - in the context of the avant-garde -
could also be imaginary. Andreas Kramer’s essay opens the second part and high­
lights how the contradictory striving for national belonging and maintenance of
emigrant otherness are visible in the oeuvre of Carl Einstein. Today Einstein, is con­
sidered one of the most esteemed avant-garde authors; he sought to de-emphasize
his Jewishness owing to his sense of being a secular person with preciously little
background in religious Jewish life. Parallel to his half-forced exclusion from the
Jewish community, Einstein attempted to convey a notion of a new, kind of col­
lective Jewish identity, which was analogous to the communities of the European
avant-garde. A more concrete manifestation of a particularly Jewish community in
the avant-garde circles is provided by Laetitia Torjman, who focuses on the Pol­
ish Khalyastre group. Her investigation shows how the works of the core group
transgressed various geographical and symbolic borders of the more conservative
Jewish community. Such experimentation was met with backlashes from both the
Jewish and non-Jewish domains. Fittingly, Maria Silina accounts for the eventual
repression of the so-called Russian Jewish renaissance by Stalin from the mid-
1920s onwards. The idea of a minority-particular, or communal, form of avant-
garde came to an abrupt end in the USSR in the 1930s, after modern artists of
Jewish origins were forced to reject Jewish motifs altogether.
The two essays constituting the third part of this volume address Jewish avant-
gardists in relation to the non-Jewish cultural environment and especially anti-
Semitism. The French-Jewish artist Claude Cahun challenged representations of
race and ethnic minorities in her self-portraits by adopting avant-garde aesthet­
ics. Zoe Roth indicates that Cahun’s images and writings overturn representa­
tions derived from the outside while forming a coherent personal identity in a
multi-minoritarian frame - addressing issues related to race, sexuality and gen­
der. Alana Sobelman discusses anti-Semitic debates and stereotypes in Viennese
 Introduction — 17

cultural circles at the turn of the century while unearthing Arnold Schoenberg’s
manner of challenging anti-Semitic discourse. Several of Schoenberg’s works at
the time sought to revise the dominant views of the Jewish body and mind as
fundamentally effeminate. Schoenberg’s engagement illustrates how such issues
were not merely theoretical debates; rather, they were also addressed in the arts.
The fourth part sheds light on some particular aspects of the relationship be­
tween the avant-garde and the Jewish tradition. The example of messianism both
as a doctrine and a structure of thought, together with religious syncretism and
its connection to various avant-garde topoi pertain to this section. Malgorzata
Strolarska-Fronia. examines the intersection of avant-garde aesthetics and im­
agery, traditional Judaism, and interwar Jewish philosophical thought. Through
an iconographical analysis she reveals how some Jewish artists formed their
religious identity by amalgamating elements from various overlapping and, occa­
sionally, contradictory modes of thought. A parallel trend occurred in European
avant-garde cinema of the 1920s. Tom Paulus, by investigating a revelationist tra­
dition, argues for acknowledging a relation between early film theory, dialectical
materialism and various modes of Jewish mysticism. He cites the films of Epstein
and Godard in this regard. A personalized version of messianism occurs in the
works of the experimental Yiddish writer Der Nister, whose contribution to the So­
viet avant-garde is examined by Raphael Koenig. Overcome by repressive cultural
policies, Der Nister utilized the avant-gardist literary topos of the “mad author,”
while redefining his relationship with the Jewish tradition. Olivier Salazar-Ferrer
detects a similar method of redefinition in the existential poetics of Benjamin
Fondane. Salazar-Ferrer argues that Fondane’s understanding of Judaism derived
from the philosophy of Lev Shestov, while Fondane eschewed inclusive modes of
Judaism and contemporary avant-garde.
The final section of the volume diverges from the main foci, which are the
manifestations of avant-garde aesthetics and various modes of Jewish thought,
customs, and themes in literature and other arts. Steven E. Aschheim’s essay pro­
vides a historical and biographical overview of the various Jewish figures active
in the avant-gardes of the twentieth century. His detailed analysis emphasizes the
inevitable difficulties in defining a phenomenon that might be labeled “Jewish
avant-garde.” Aschheim’s contribution highlights the need for new methodologi­
cal tools and approaches, some of which are introduced in this volume. However,
approaches such as the use of third terms are preliminary or tentative and they
call for further analysis in this field of study.
Admittedly, the current volume has some limitations that have constricted
its scope, such as the focus on the earlier part of the twentieth century. Even
though the geographical focus of the volume is Continental, one should not
neglect the importance of North American Jewish literature, the full extent of
18 Sami Sjöberg and Mark H. Gelber

the Russian Jewish renaissance, the few proponents of Jewish futurism (such as
Bruno Jasiehski) or vanguard poets of Jewish origin predating the historical avant-
garde, such as Gustave Kahn, the free verse poet of the late nineteenth century.
In addition, the later cases of avant-garde production in relation to Jewish issues
require further investigation, especially regarding the Adornian post-Auschwitz
paradigm shift and current cultural trends. For instance, the aesthetics and the­
matic frameworks of Gustav Metzger, the creator of auto-destructive art with his
background in Orthodox Judaism, and of the Austrian-Jewish experimentalist
Hermann Nitsch should be taken into account. Especially Nitsch’s books Die
Eroberung von Jerusalem (The Conquest of Jerusalem, 1976) and the Hebrew-
German Levitikus (2010) would benefit from a detailed analysis based on some of
the perspectives introduced in this volume.
This volume attempts to answer, at least tentatively, questions concerning the
renegotiation of the relation between religion and secularity in the avant-garde,
and the varied manifestations of the contact between tradition and the ideas of
novelty and “modern” in the avant-gardist works by Jewish artists. Furthermore,
it illuminates how texts produced by Jews involved in the avant-garde document
and comment on the state of Judaism and Jewishness at the time they were pro­
duced. The insights which the individual essays record provide the necessary in­
tellectual background for understanding how these issues are recurring in current
cultural debates concerning minorities and avant-garde output.

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