Sharon Pardo and Hila Zahavi edited a volume which is a mosaic of ideas and angles about and around contemporary Europe and European Jewry. Both Israeli political scholars, members of the Simone Veil Research Centre for Contemporary European Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, selected contributions from different scholars and practitioners of EU politics and Jewish affairs. The viewpoint adopted by the editors is resumed by the twofold assumption that, on the one hand, ‘Jews were viewed by some as representing Europe's first supranational and multicultural entity’ (p. 1), depicted as the prototypal model of liberal cosmopolitan Europeanness. On the other hand, however, Jews are Europe's archetypal minority, a primordial otherness in a historically Christian[ized] European society which had eternalized the pejorative label of the so-called ‘juif errant’ (the wandering Jew who has the wrong faith and no land). This dual prism, implying an abyssal distance between these two perceptions of Europe−Jewry relations is the challenging debate the volume seeks to disclose.
According to the editors, European Jewry would profitably serve as interreligious and intercommunity mediators between European Islam, as a growing novel minority, as well as ‘“as a broker”’ (p. 4) of expectations and dialogue with Israel, insofar as EU Jewry contributed in the past and present to the European Union's pluralism, whilst fulfilling the biblical Jewish aspiration of being “light unto the nations” (p. 5). Yet, these programmatic role is ambiguous and contradictory inasmuch as it is as universal as particularistic with regard to any identity-related policy European governance may ever endorse.
The volume, the outcome of three international workshops, is divided into three parts: 1. Present Challenges; 2. Jews and the Pan-European Identity; 3. Unsung Heroes, and ends with a rather short epilogue (pp. 177-1983). It contains 13 chapters, contributed and often readapted by scholars such as Sergio Della Pergola (Ch. 2) and Dani Filc (Ch. 3), speeches carried by politicians, namely Romano Prodi (in his capacity of President of the European Commission; Ch. 6) and Emmanuel Macron (the President of France tribute to Simone Veil; Ch. 13) and practitioners such as Spanish diplomat Alvaro Albacete (Ch. 7), former German Ambassador Hubertus von Morr (Ch. 11) and others.
The first part of the volume is rather disorganic. Della Pergola outlines the trends in Jewish demographics in Europe, followed by Filc's contribution. The latter uses the definition of exclusionary Populism, which is a populist form advocating for the ethnically organic state-based sociopolitical unit – namely the admixture of ethnos and demos-, whose colonialist echoes in European ideological nativism are indeed indisputable. However, his contribution does not make reference neither to Jews living in Europe, nor to the level of EU institutions. Beyond the fundamental characteristics of Western European populism, e.g. nationalism and xenophobia, the Europe−Jewish relationship receives no direct attention. Baneth's contribution (Ch. 4) lists EU organisms and competences and thus indirectly implies the scarce and meagre juridical cohesive nature of EU institutions to fight anti-Semitism (whose definition is taken from Wikipedia [p. 64]). The important phenomenon of anti-Semitism is thus only partially discussed and does not ponder upon the subtleties between anti-Judaic sentiments, racist-based anti-Semitism and the political anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli stances which have become a considerable factor in conditioning both Jewish life in Europe and the difficult constellation of Europe−Israeli political relations in their wholeness. The first part delineate some of the complexities of the case but neither tackle nor conceptualize any solutions. In light of the lack of normative power, operational legal provisions on the different level of European governance – except the nation-state one and despite the EU mission to promote the values of democracy, tolerance and human rights through its ‘normative power’, the sole conclusion the reader may come to is that no constructive steps have been made on the European political level.
The second part of the book juxtaposes Jewish life, Jews’ historical memory (especially the Shoah but also the 1492 Expulsion of Jewish from Reconquered Spain) and the attitudes deriving from the former vis-à-vis the European project of political integration. Among the six contributions, Maimon's model of Jewishness in Europe (Ch. 5) and Pinto's thesis regarding European Jewry's ambivalence towards Europe (Ch. 10) demonstrate the ambiguities and lack of enthusiasm of Jews for European Integration from sociocultural and political standpoints.
The third part presents no thematic content, as it consists in the biographical tributes to three European Jews: Walther Rathenau, Fritz Bauer and Simone Veil. These prominent Jews undoubtedly imagined a warless Europe and may have seen an intimate link between the new peaceful Europe to be built and the cultural heritage of Jewish values. That said, the construction of these ‘unsung heroes’ lacks the empirical and political evidence of their motivations. As public figures, all three pushed forward European integration in their capacity of legitimately representing and acting as citizens of their respective nation states, not as representatives of European Jewry. Hence, a celebratory rhetoric − not necessarily unjustified − uncovers the weakness in historical precision and political evaluation of the trajectories of these personalities.
In the epilogue the editors assert that the European Union is a ‘leading regional player’ while ‘Jewish communities in Europe are politically organized in anachronistic frameworks that are publically ill-suited to operate in the EU’ (p. 177). These heavy criticisms are not really developed in the edited volume. The lacks of organizational systemic and strategic relations between EU Jews and EU institutions do not concern the nationally based citizenship of Jews in Europe but on the very weakness of the democratic weight of all Europeans, whatever citizenship they possess. The desire to participate in the European democratic game transcends minority right, although the latter must be secured in liberal democracies. Yet, no one can make Jews to assume a political identity and role that they are reluctant to be part of (Pinto's contribution is the most interesting in this sense). The alternative, therefore, would seem to transform European Jewry into an organized political minority in Europe, while opening the door to other religious and cultural minorities, and consequently relativize EU supranational and democratic imperatives (mission). In addition, the idea that EU Jewry should develop a strategy comprising ‘recognizing and explicating long-term interests […] putting relations with the EU into the context of other possible strategies, such as toward Israel, Islam, the USA and global governance’ (pp. 181–182) is preposterous. Jewish political lobbying would only harm European Jews, in contrast with Della Pergola's assessment: ‘[I]n the era of transnationalism, to maintain and nurture a certain mode of Jewish civilization does not need to be strictly tied to territory’ (p. 28).
The Jewish contribution to European integration seems null and the book's title may have served better with a question mark to endorse future debates. The lacunae of integration in both the European political sense and the Jewish sense are culturally and historically constructed. A long-term stratification which the book does not engage in beyond EU chronicles, the Holocaust and Israel's 1967 War. Nonetheless, the volume does open a debate over different aspects of Jewish life in a European perspective and places it on the axis of politics, societal relations by gathering different stands. The book does not provide answers to political questions. But to a non-specialist of Jewish history and Jewish politics, it is still a very good start.
