Sam: "...the new Prussian king Wilhelm I, proclaimed an amnesty for all political prisoners and exiles." Me: "Wait, then why did Karl Marx stay in London?" Sam: "Except for Karl Marx." Me: "Thanks!"
I almost didn't catch that; "except for Karl Marx" was a VO insert. That said, London was definitely the place to be in the 1860s. To quote John Lennon, "If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome."
Great video! I knew that Hess was an early Zionist thinker but hearing his words on antisemitism in Germany and the future state of Israel was quite eerie
In my opinion this is up to this point the most important video in the series. The way it visualizes Hess's works shows that by using everything discussed in the previous videos he managed to predict the two biggest events in Jewish history since the Roman era, being the most negative one and the most positive one. Basically, this is the part where it's all starting to come together.
..It's fascinating to see how much right he was about his predictions of Germany and Israel. Though I wonder what was his idea of building a state with Arabs in Palestine in more detail
I looked st the source material, it’s very yada yada. Hesse focuses mostly on Jewry position within Christian Europe. Here in the relevant passage. “A great calling is reserved for you : to be a living channel of communication between three continents. *You should be the bearers of civilization to the primitive people of Asia, and the teachers of the European sciences to which your race has contributed so much. You should be the mediators between Europe and far Asia, open the roads that lead to India and China - those unknown regions which must ultimately be thrown open to civilization.* You will come to the land of your fathers crowned with the crown of agelong martyrdom, and there, finally, you will be completely healed from all your ills ! Your capital will again bring the wide stretches of barren land under cultivation; your labor and industry will once more turn the ancient soil into fruitful valleys, reclaim the flat lands from the encroaching sands of the desert, and the world will again pay its homage to the oldest of peoples. The time has arrived for you to reclaim, either by way of compensation or by other means, your ancient fatherland from Turkey, which has devastated it for ages. You have contributed enough to the cause of civilization and have helped Europe on the path of progress, to make revolutions and carry them out successfully. You must henceforth think of yourselves, of the valleys of Lebanon and the plains of Gennesareth. … March forward, Jews of all lands ! … How quickly, under the influence of labor and industry, will the enervation of the people vanish, in the land where voluptuousness, idleness and robbery have held sway for thousands of years. You will become the moral stay of the East. You have written the Book of books. *Become, then, the educators of the wild Arabian hordes and the African peoples.* Let the ancient wisdom of the East, the revelations of the Zend, the Vedas, as well as the more modern Koran and the Gospels, group themselves around your Bible. *They will all become purified from every superstition and all will proclaim alike the principles of freedom, humanity, peace and unity.* You are the triumphal arch of the future historical epoch, under which the great covenant of humanity will be written and sealed in your presence as the witnesses of the past and future. The Biblical traditions which you will revive, will also sanctify anew our Occidental society and destroy the weed of materialism together with its roots.”
I clicked on this video expecting some more explanation of the revolutions of mid 19th century and not only I found that but also a well detailed history of pre-Herzl Zionism. Excellent work, Sam!
Wow! I never knew the story of Moses Hess! It's weird we were not taught about him in History class. Tonight I'm meeting my history-teacher mother-in-law. I'll have to ask her what she tells pupils about him. His second book literally predicted WWII!
That is why moses Hess is considered one of "the bringers of Zionism" מבשרי הציונות along with rabbi Yehuda elkalai, rabbi zvi Hirsch kalisher, rabbi eliyahu gutmacher and Moses montifiore
You could even point out a precedent with Maimonides, Nahmanides, Suleiman the Magnificent, and Daher Omar. It would seem that as soon as the First Crusade rendered the Holy Land almost entirely free of Jews, it took on a much more important place in Jewish society.
I really like the way you ended the video, there was something very satisfying about the cut from the standard video format to peaceful modern footage with ambient noise that I can't quite explain.
גרמניה!!! Really looked forward to this video. Nationalism is taught in Israeli schools through Germany and since beginning watching your channel I wanted to see you covering it.
Oh, we're not done with the Age of Nationalism yet. True, most western-style education stops with Germany and Italy, but we've still got three more countries to deal with...
@@SamAronow what will you Call The period After the age of nationalism This and between it And WW1 , The birth of Zionism or prewar or as the french call it Belle epoque, . Or are you going to divied. Into smaller periods of is your new period (video group together with the correction plus qna video You do) going to be different?
hess went from freshman philosophy student making manifestos which sound like they could of been written by one today to predicting the shoah and that's gotta be an intellectual transformation if i've ever seen one
Brilliant video, Sam. I learn more from these tutorials than an entire college semester. Crazy to think that Moses Hess was making his predictions on the course Germany would take only months before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
cue "San Francisco" or "Go West" by the Village People LOL! Another fantastic vid, Sam! Consider a special vid in honour of Olivia Newton-John whose mother's family had fled Knotsie Germany. Her grandfather was Nobel Prize physicist Max Born. They went very far West, or was it East? Shabbat Shalom!
So Hess predicted WW1 (and possibly the Holocaust, 30 odd years later) and the fall of the Ottoman Empire? But he didn't predict the reason for its fall or the role the British Empire would have in it and the part it would play, however imperfectly, in the realisation of his dream of a new Judea.
He thought France would be the main mover- they had after all been the main western player in the Ottoman Empire since Napoleon. The British were surprisingly inactive in the Levant- Prussia, Austria, Russia, and the US all had more interests there at the time.
Sam the Man. You keep illuminating things I thought I had some familiarity with. lol.. Fascinating information. And setting things in the context of the times....the current influences the current and developing. Much different than looking back with a summary mindset. Thanks for sharing and reminding that people live in the here and now. It's only history in hindsight.
I somehow surprised you didn't described Hess as a "founder" in the ideas of Europe, showing his European ideas... And the reason of his come back and form of "Rome and Jerusalem" as letters to his new sister in law...
Nationalism, the ultimate double edged sword of history. On one hand, the drive for national independence often brings with it calls for democracy, for rights that all people no matter their race and religion might share, it has toppled tyrants, it has given people with no place to go a place where they can feel safe and wanted. But then you see the ugly sides of nationalism. You see the state of freedom for the Jewish people become a state of oppression for the Arabs who have equally called that land home for centuries, you see one people attempting to elevate itself on a national high in Germany, in Japan, even here in my own America. It is a sharp blade, one pointed at its enemies, one pointed at its user.
Great Video! I never realized how important Moses Hess Was (I blame this on Marx rubbishing all his former friends throughout his ouvre [Holy family, German Ideology and bits of the Manifesto]. However, I Have one minor critique and a question. The minor critique is that Bakunin did not found anarchism (though by the 1860s was unsuccessfully [and ironically] jockeying for leadership within it), Pierre Joesph Prodhoun (who was yet another victim of Marx's unfair critiques, and was another foundational influence upon him and Bakunin as well) founded anarchism and was the first declared "anarchist." Is too far out the scope of Jewish history to discuss how Social Democracy accepted imperialism (as the German SPD did under Bernstien). Hess' quotes at the end of this video seem vaguely reminiscent of Herzl's colonial attitude in his vision of Zionism (as opposed to other trends, like Labour Zionism). I hope this comment make sense with all the parenthesis and brackets. Thanks again for another wonderful video!
One more note, Marx and Engles were not "Marxists." mMax actually despised that label because it was what his rivals the Social Democrats were calling themselves by the 1860s and 1870s. If Hess pioneered the beliefs the SPD, the Marx's other frenemy Ferdinand Lasalle was the father of Social democratic organization (he put the SPD together in the first place). Marx even wrote A Hot take of a critique called "the Critique of the Gotha Progamme (the first platform of the SPD)" to explicitly seperate his views form those of the 'Marxists."
Well, that would be incorrect. The First Aliyah began just sixteen years after _Rome and Jerusalem._ I am endlessly fascinated (and frustrated) by the way Israeli history has almost totally left out those who came before Herzl, whose own ideas for what a Jewish state should look like were unpopular with the existing Zionist movement and largely ignored.
@@SamAronow thanks for replying Sam, As someone in the mileu of the America far left, the far left certainly generates lots of anti-zionist literature. Curiously even the the material that isn't anti-semitic (tragically, there is a frightening amount of it that is and passes without comment) only refers to Herzl. My theory is that western leftists get introduced to Herzl before they ever hear about Hess - I'm not really sure why. Even more, those who have heard of Hess may erroneously believe that Marx "dunked" on Hess so effectively that Hess is an irrelevant figure. As your video proves that belief, if present, couldn't be more wrong and unhelpful to understanding the development of the state of Israel and Socialist theory in general.
Thanks for the nice episode. Made me very sad. Not just because Heine or Hess knew what was coming, but also because it was actually a reasonable prediction based on what people at the time thought and said. The video focusses very much on political debates, but you also had this in many small cultural details such as widespread "spa antisemitism", the subtle, persistent antisemitism of the Prussian bureaucracy, or simply the Antisemitenpetition as one of many examples in academia.
"Yet [Hess's] writing activity never diminished, though towards the end of his life he attempted, and not very successfully, to compose an ambitious work, *Die dynamische Stofflehre* (The Dynamic Theory of Matter), in which he tried to present an overall dialectical philosophy of matter and movement, aiming to combine Spinoza's pantheism, Hegelian dialectics, and modern evolutionary science." This sound like the very niche sort of shit I would love to read, if anyone knows of any translations lemme know! (not expecting any)
Great video. You mentioned Bakunin and the beginnings of the anarchist movement. Jewish people had a huge hand in anarchist history and praxis (to the extent that some anarchist scholars learn to read Yiddish so that they can read some of their output today). Will you be touching on Jewish figures (as well as Jewish-descended figures) on the political fringes in a video of its own? I'd love to hear you talk about Emma Goldman, for example, to pick out an anarchist, or Trotsky to pick out a Marxist. In any case, looking forward to more. Sorry if the English here is bad, it is not my first language.
Excellent video, really, really good. I have to say that I wouldn't have seen it if not for you tweeting about it. It did not look particularly appealing to me. Such have happened to me with most of the videos about the history in Europe.
הי שמואל! הסרטונים שלך הם כרגיל, מקיפים ויוצאים מן הכלל. אין לי ספק שבני עמנו זקוקים לעוד אנשים חדים ושורשיים כמוך. ישר כוח על העבודה הזו! יש לי שאלה אליך בנוגע לסדרת הספרים "דברי ימי ישראל" מאת צבי גרץ. הבנתי שישנה מקבילה לסדרת הספרים הזו: "דברי ימי עם עולם" מאת שמעון דובנוב. אילו מבין שתי הסדרות מדויקת יותר? האם גם בסדרות הללו אברהם מוצג בשוגג כדמות היסטורית של ממש? או שהן תומכות בנרטיב שהצגת בסדרה הזו? שבני עמנו התפתחו מתוך התרבות המקומית. הייתי שמח לקבל המלצה על איזו מהן לרכוש אם אני רוצה שיהיה לי את כל (או לפחות רוב) החומר שהוצג בעמוד הזה. אם לדעתך הסדרות הללו לא עונות על הרצון שלי, על אילו ספרים אתה ממליץ? אשמח לשמוע את דעתך, ים.
אני לא יודע, לא קראתי אותם. בדרך כלל אני קורא רק מה שצריך כדי לכתוב הסרטונים. בגלל זו לא אמרתי דברים רבים על הפרושים או שומעון הצדיק בסרטונים המוקדימים שלי. סליחה.
@@SamAronow הו אין דבר, תודה על המענה המהיר! לצערי אין ממש הסבר על התוכן של הסדרה הזו כך שכנראה פשוט אצטרך להיתקל בה יום אחד כדי לבחון אותה מקרוב. כך או כך המשך את העבודה הטובה!
I lament that this extraordinary quote from Heine did not make it into the video: "Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ... Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll."
Just finished this, the second of your videos I've watched. It's was dawning on me in the last few minutes that I am about to watch all of your fucking videos. Thanks in advance :D
I need to read hess, i am just like him in loving my culture n proud of my identity as a Jew in absence from Israel but a staunch atheist who loves identities so long as it doesn't harm. I always grew up and read Marx and the others you spoke of but never Hess, how unfortunate
I would caution against reading the _Holy History of Mankind_ however; he is very clearly imitating Hegel's writing style and to modern eyes it's almost deliberately obtuse.
I have a question for @Sam ! Do we have recordings of connection between Hess ans Yehuda Alkalay and/or Kalisher, as they were sharing geographic proximity, relations and ideas... ?
I'd like to point out that Hess used a model first introduced by Joachim of Fiore in 12 Century. I find it interesting that he being a Jew decided to use model based on The Holy Trinity. Also the whole stress on history of ancient Israel is entirely valid on Christian terms since it's part of Christianity's own historia sacra. That's why I think it's strange to say that history of ancient Israel wasn't important for temporary Europeans.
Very cool, I really fuckin appreciate your objectivity despite your connection to the subject. Your whole series on Jewish culture and history has been next level. Thanks big dog, really.
11:54 - Now I need not posit a foolish inquiry "Formulate me the Jewish [or Ukrainian, as I have read oftentimes once, or any other national] question."
This isn't a popular opinion, but I don't see Marx's response to Baur as a racist spiel but a polemical defence of univeral social emanicpation, not just political empancipation but social emancipation. In the second half of "On the Jewish Question" *The Infamous passage should make any decent person shudder* but it shouldn't stop us from critical texual analysis. Contexualy it should be seen as a rejection of the feuerbachian anthropological notion of religion and instead the "jewish question" should be seen through the social historical role forced on the jewish people (which has been covered very well on this channel). Also in 1843 when the landtag of the rhine was debateing emancipation Marx wrote to Arnold Ruge in sopport of the motion, I think its a stretch to claim Marx didn't support the jewish people or their emancipation.
Except that ignores the context. The context is not about all religion, but rather Christianity and Judaism, the only ones that were really relevant in Europe. He first criticized Christianity for becoming "Jewish." Then he proceeds to say that the only way for "emancipation" to occur is to "emancipate" the Jews from their religion _first._ Mind you, the most charitable interpretation of the phrase "emancipate from religion" in this context means abandoning religion, in other words apostasy, not emancipation in terms of gaining rights. Then there's the question of whether or not the term Bourgeoisie is a dog whistle meaning Jew, (though that's a whole rabbit hole I won't go down here.) Marx was also very unkind to Jews in his letters to Engels later in life to put it mildly. As for his support of Jews, it was less about supporting Jews and their unique struggles and more about furthering similar causes in an effort to strengthen his own.
@@Batmans_Pet_GoldfishAll else aside, Bourgeoisie is not a dogwhistle for jews. Its just not. Yes, very stupid people interpret it that way but if you are more familiar with marx' concept of capital/economics, you would find that it falls apart if you do that. Marx did knew the diffrence between causation and correlation and is not known for hiding his opinions with dogwhistles.
“Marx believed that all social behaviour was the product of economic systems and incentives. He was wrong.” You say that he was wrong, but don’t describe why or how. Why even talk about Marx if you’re going to skirt around the central issue this way? Also for Moses Hess, you twice mention that he wanted to create a state in Palestine in cooperation with the Arab community already living there, but none of the accompanying quotes in the video mention this. I’ll look for some myself.
I may have been overly ambiguous in my wording. While Hess did want cooperation from Arabs in Palestine, his emphasis was on the idea that a Jewish state would be in alliance with neighboring Arab states in their mutual struggles for independence from the Ottomans.
The video presents a common enough interpretation of Marx, and you find those kinds of economic determinist points of view among people who came after, but Marx remained way too much of a Hegelian for that to be true. The importance of human freedom comes up a lot in Marx's political and historical writing.
It isn't the job of Sam to describe how Marx was wrong on nearly every aspect that he wrote about, from biology to psychology to economics. His ideas are equivalent to a flat earthers.
@@insaneweasel1 I would say that it's not a big deal to make mistakes, but the video's assertion of his incorrectness does make the original asker's question of "why" an explicitly reasonable one.
Your characterisation of Marx/Engels and the interpretation on Marx' reply to Bruno Bauer is....incomplete, to say the least. However, I respect your efforts and think that at least my differences opinion will grow, now, that we are nearing the 20th century.
Love the Holy History of Mankind. So in the First Era of humanity the point is to somewhere establish a society which synthesizes morality and spirituality with politics and economy, and thus is a just, egalitarian system. This is said to have been to a large degree accomplished among the Jews, being that their state was governed by divine commandments, ones which forbade permanent land ownership, interest, mandated periodic forgiveness of debts, periodic liberation of slaves, periodic land redistribution, and certain social welfare norms (tithe for the poor, leaving food for the poor, not denying poor people loans, etc). But the problem with it was that it wasnt universal. So in the Second Era Christianity spreads in order to spread the idea of moral universalism and universal brotherhood of all people. Then in the Third Era there is a synthesis of the First and Second Eras, and moving towards a universal just society. To give a bit more detailed description of how Hess envisioned this system, this New Jerusalem, it would look like this: - Abundance, created by socially controlled industry, will integrate overall social interests, and society will be based on altruism, solidarity and harmony. - There will be a disappearance of the old contrasts between the low and the high, plebeians and patricians, and the poor and the wealthy. - Peace will reign in society, both internally and externally. - The distinction between town and country will disappear, as ‘villages will adorn themselves with wonderful buildings and cities with inspiring gardens’. - Women will be equal to men, and be given the same education. - Free love will replace the shackles of matrimonial bonds which were always linked to property. - Public education will be freely available to all children. - Society will take care of the health and welfare of the sick and the elderly. - With the disappearance of poverty, crime will disappear as well. - Formal law will disappear, with people obeying their internal law which will reflect Spinoza’s amor dei intellectualis. - The people’s sovereignty will be guaranteed by the political structure organized through freely associated communities, subordinated to the supervision of the states; the states, in their turn, will be associated in a universal league of nations. - And finally, with industry guaranteeing abundance, human beings will be able to turn their activities to their highest calling - artistic creativity. It would have been great if he promoted this and made a movement around it, instead of pivoting to nationalism later.
"Fellow Jews"? That's certainly not a term that he would have used, as he certainly did not consider himself, or identify as Jewish, and on the contrary openly espoused the most primitive, vile and ignorant anti-Semitic attacks, which historically was not uncommon for European Jews who later converted or renounced their safe, many of whom were responsible for provoking Jewish book burnings (such as Nichlias Donin, Johannes Pfefferkorn, etc.). Other than his 23 and me profile, there was nothing he had in common with other Jews
Didn't work out well for Israel either. They had all sorts of economic woes into the 80s regardless of war and the kibbutz movement had basically fizzled out by the 2000s
For anyone interested on the Bauer and Marx response to the former, David Leopold's book on the young Marx has a chapter dedicated to it. Also, as a brief aside, the interpretation of Marx as an economic determinism (in the sense defined in the video) is generally criticized by most academic historical and philosophical interpreters. On the Young Hegelians as a whole, there are quite a few books available, so for everyone interested in Hess I definitely recommend then as to have a fuller picture of the common influences that shaped the various figures. (One I've read recently and can recommend is Warren Breckman's, though its focus is definitely on building up to his discussion of Marx, so keep it in mind if you get it). Anyway, looking forward to the next video.
I can also second Breckman's "Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory", I also agree that Marx is presented as overly reductionist.
It's chilling just how prescient Hess' predictions on the trajectory of history proved to be.
Aside from the whole "hand in hand with their Arab neighbors" part, yeah
From Moshe to Moshe there was none like Moshe
@@ommy7672well, except for Moshe of course
@@slamwall9057 they originally said it about Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon
He predicted every single part of the next 100 years and didn't miss even once
Sam: "...the new Prussian king Wilhelm I, proclaimed an amnesty for all political prisoners and exiles."
Me: "Wait, then why did Karl Marx stay in London?"
Sam: "Except for Karl Marx."
Me: "Thanks!"
I almost didn't catch that; "except for Karl Marx" was a VO insert. That said, London was definitely the place to be in the 1860s. To quote John Lennon, "If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome."
@@SamAronow Lennon certainly followed that diction. He moved to New York City.
@@Rickyrab dictum
As a non-Jew who found this channel because I enjoy learning about the Bronze and Iron Ages, this has undoubtedly been your best video yet!
Same!! This exploration into modern Judaism has been intellectually revolutionary for me.
he keeps getting better.
Great video! I knew that Hess was an early Zionist thinker but hearing his words on antisemitism in Germany and the future state of Israel was quite eerie
That part literary gave me chills.
In my opinion this is up to this point the most important video in the series. The way it visualizes Hess's works shows that by using everything discussed in the previous videos he managed to predict the two biggest events in Jewish history since the Roman era, being the most negative one and the most positive one.
Basically, this is the part where it's all starting to come together.
the most important will be the Dreyfuss affair, which will trigger various events in jewish history.
We often call Herzl the "Visionary of the Jewish State", but apparently someone was a few years ahead of him by a few decades.
Well, in that case we had a ton of visionaries, actually...
Unfortunately, his vision of a state, in which Jews and Arabs share the land as brothers, is still waiting to be materialised.
@@chimera9818
It was "after then Messiah will come and there will be a world war that will destroy earth". Not a Jewish state established by the Jews.
It's a nation of prophets after all
Wow, that was an eventful episode. Things are going to get real interesting soon.
Keep up the good work, Sam!
I don't recall an episode that was not interesting.
..It's fascinating to see how much right he was about his predictions of Germany and Israel. Though I wonder what was his idea of building a state with Arabs in Palestine in more detail
I looked st the source material, it’s very yada yada. Hesse focuses mostly on Jewry position within Christian Europe. Here in the relevant passage.
“A great calling is reserved for you : to be a living channel of communication between three continents. *You should be the bearers of civilization to the primitive people of Asia, and the teachers of the European sciences to which your race has contributed so much. You should be the mediators between Europe and far Asia, open the roads that lead to India and China - those unknown regions which must ultimately be thrown open to civilization.* You will come to the land of your fathers crowned with the crown of agelong martyrdom, and there, finally, you will be completely healed from all your ills ! Your capital will again bring the wide stretches of barren land under cultivation; your labor and industry will once more turn the ancient soil into fruitful valleys, reclaim the flat lands from the encroaching sands of the desert, and the world will again pay its homage to the oldest of peoples.
The time has arrived for you to reclaim, either by way of compensation or by other means, your ancient fatherland from Turkey, which has devastated it for ages. You have contributed enough to the cause of civilization and have helped Europe on the path of progress, to make revolutions and carry them out successfully. You must henceforth think of yourselves, of the valleys of Lebanon and the plains of Gennesareth.
… March forward, Jews of all lands ! …
How quickly, under the influence of labor and industry, will the enervation of the people vanish, in the land where voluptuousness, idleness and robbery have held sway for thousands of years.
You will become the moral stay of the East. You have written the Book of books. *Become, then, the educators of the wild Arabian hordes and the African peoples.* Let the ancient wisdom of the East, the revelations of the Zend, the Vedas, as well as the more modern Koran and the Gospels, group themselves around your Bible. *They will all become purified from every superstition and all will proclaim alike the principles of freedom, humanity, peace and unity.* You are the triumphal arch of the future historical epoch, under which the great covenant of humanity will be written and sealed in your presence as the witnesses of the past and future. The Biblical traditions which you will revive, will also sanctify anew our Occidental society and destroy the weed of materialism together with its roots.”
Oh my God that final prophetic part was so insane, it's so insane I've never heard of this guy.
I clicked on this video expecting some more explanation of the revolutions of mid 19th century and not only I found that but also a well detailed history of pre-Herzl Zionism. Excellent work, Sam!
Wow! I never knew the story of Moses Hess! It's weird we were not taught about him in History class. Tonight I'm meeting my history-teacher mother-in-law. I'll have to ask her what she tells pupils about him. His second book literally predicted WWII!
He predicted not just the war (trusting this video without checking for the moment), but also its outcome and aftermath, 80 years in advance!
Good reminder that Zionism was not invented by Herzl out of nothing.
This episode: heavy thinkers and philosophers. Next episode: Levi Strauss. 😆
That is why moses Hess is considered one of "the bringers of Zionism" מבשרי הציונות along with rabbi Yehuda elkalai, rabbi zvi Hirsch kalisher, rabbi eliyahu gutmacher and Moses montifiore
You could even point out a precedent with Maimonides, Nahmanides, Suleiman the Magnificent, and Daher Omar. It would seem that as soon as the First Crusade rendered the Holy Land almost entirely free of Jews, it took on a much more important place in Jewish society.
I really like the way you ended the video, there was something very satisfying about the cut from the standard video format to peaceful modern footage with ambient noise that I can't quite explain.
TBH I was inspired by Mark Cousins doing the same thing to depict the arrival of sound in _The Story of Film: An Odyssey._
גרמניה!!!
Really looked forward to this video. Nationalism is taught in Israeli schools through Germany and since beginning watching your channel I wanted to see you covering it.
Oh, we're not done with the Age of Nationalism yet. True, most western-style education stops with Germany and Italy, but we've still got three more countries to deal with...
@@SamAronow what will you Call The period After the age of nationalism This and between it And WW1 , The birth of Zionism or prewar or as the french call it Belle epoque, . Or are you going to divied. Into smaller periods of is your new period (video group together with the correction plus qna video You do) going to be different?
@@SamAronow Greece Romania and the rest of the Balkans?
@@SamAronow obviously America next time but I'm going to guess Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans?
@kenshin891 Wrong on both counts, but you're in the right area!
Holy f*** this is an amazing video. Incredible storytelling, and an impactful structure to tell it in.
Hi I’m a fan from Mauritius do you think you can cover the history of jews in my country?
the only thing I know about maurius and Jews is that Mauritius took in Polish Jewish refugees during the Holocaust
Il faut lire le roman "Le dernier frère" de Nathacha Appanah sur ce sujet!
I don't know how you are doing it but your videos just keep getting better.
hess went from freshman philosophy student making manifestos which sound like they could of been written by one today to predicting the shoah and that's gotta be an intellectual transformation if i've ever seen one
I learned a ton from this video. As someone who has had very little exposure to jewish history, this series is amazing
Great video. Thank you for introducing me to Hess. Also, good to see you working with Zevi from Seekers of Unity.
O wow, you really know how to tie the threads of history together into a story. I am always looking forward to the next episode.
Special thanks to sam aronow for his useful contribution and the calming ending .
A very sober overview of the period, thank you!
Brilliant video, Sam. I learn more from these tutorials than an entire college semester. Crazy to think that Moses Hess was making his predictions on the course Germany would take only months before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
Wow! What a prophet he was.
I'm yearning for the day in which his last prophecy will come be.
Not me having listened to several hours of Seekers of Unity yesterday and thinking I went insane at the start of the video
I was looking forward to this! I'm wondering if you'll cover Oceania and the British colonies soon. Love your videos!!!!
Thank you, Sam, for all your history videos, I really appreciate them.
Every video gets better! The hits keep coming
That was an eerie amount of foreshadowing
21:30 Hess straight up has a Lovecraftian epiphany, dang
cue "San Francisco" or "Go West" by the Village People LOL! Another fantastic vid, Sam! Consider a special vid in honour of Olivia Newton-John whose mother's family had fled Knotsie Germany. Her grandfather was Nobel Prize physicist Max Born. They went very far West, or was it East? Shabbat Shalom!
So Hess predicted WW1 (and possibly the Holocaust, 30 odd years later) and the fall of the Ottoman Empire? But he didn't predict the reason for its fall or the role the British Empire would have in it and the part it would play, however imperfectly, in the realisation of his dream of a new Judea.
He thought France would be the main mover- they had after all been the main western player in the Ottoman Empire since Napoleon. The British were surprisingly inactive in the Levant- Prussia, Austria, Russia, and the US all had more interests there at the time.
Sam the Man. You keep illuminating things I thought I had some familiarity with. lol.. Fascinating information. And setting things in the context of the times....the current influences the current and developing. Much different than looking back with a summary mindset. Thanks for sharing and reminding that people live in the here and now. It's only history in hindsight.
I somehow surprised you didn't described Hess as a "founder" in the ideas of Europe, showing his European ideas...
And the reason of his come back and form of "Rome and Jerusalem" as letters to his new sister in law...
Nationalism, the ultimate double edged sword of history. On one hand, the drive for national independence often brings with it calls for democracy, for rights that all people no matter their race and religion might share, it has toppled tyrants, it has given people with no place to go a place where they can feel safe and wanted.
But then you see the ugly sides of nationalism. You see the state of freedom for the Jewish people become a state of oppression for the Arabs who have equally called that land home for centuries, you see one people attempting to elevate itself on a national high in Germany, in Japan, even here in my own America.
It is a sharp blade, one pointed at its enemies, one pointed at its user.
forced displacement of a native population isn’t nationalism, it’s colonialism.
@@LordJagd This is true, I think my point stands either way
If you're going to cover the Jews of 19th-century San Francisco, I hope you have a chance to slip in Emperor Norton.
Great Video! I never realized how important Moses Hess Was (I blame this on Marx rubbishing all his former friends throughout his ouvre [Holy family, German Ideology and bits of the Manifesto]. However, I Have one minor critique and a question. The minor critique is that Bakunin did not found anarchism (though by the 1860s was unsuccessfully [and ironically] jockeying for leadership within it), Pierre Joesph Prodhoun (who was yet another victim of Marx's unfair critiques, and was another foundational influence upon him and Bakunin as well) founded anarchism and was the first declared "anarchist." Is too far out the scope of Jewish history to discuss how Social Democracy accepted imperialism (as the German SPD did under Bernstien). Hess' quotes at the end of this video seem vaguely reminiscent of Herzl's colonial attitude in his vision of Zionism (as opposed to other trends, like Labour Zionism). I hope this comment make sense with all the parenthesis and brackets. Thanks again for another wonderful video!
Hess is in fact considered the originator of Labor Zionism.
One more note, Marx and Engles were not "Marxists." mMax actually despised that label because it was what his rivals the Social Democrats were calling themselves by the 1860s and 1870s. If Hess pioneered the beliefs the SPD, the Marx's other frenemy Ferdinand Lasalle was the father of Social democratic organization (he put the SPD together in the first place). Marx even wrote A Hot take of a critique called "the Critique of the Gotha Progamme (the first platform of the SPD)" to explicitly seperate his views form those of the 'Marxists."
Well, that would be incorrect. The First Aliyah began just sixteen years after _Rome and Jerusalem._ I am endlessly fascinated (and frustrated) by the way Israeli history has almost totally left out those who came before Herzl, whose own ideas for what a Jewish state should look like were unpopular with the existing Zionist movement and largely ignored.
marx’s critiques were fair and true
@@SamAronow thanks for replying Sam,
As someone in the mileu of the America far left, the far left certainly generates lots of anti-zionist literature. Curiously even the the material that isn't anti-semitic (tragically, there is a frightening amount of it that is and passes without comment) only refers to Herzl. My theory is that western leftists get introduced to Herzl before they ever hear about Hess - I'm not really sure why. Even more, those who have heard of Hess may erroneously believe that Marx "dunked" on Hess so effectively that Hess is an irrelevant figure. As your video proves that belief, if present, couldn't be more wrong and unhelpful to understanding the development of the state of Israel and Socialist theory in general.
"My Communist Rabbi" sounds like a skit on SNL...
Nah, that's a _TGS with Tracy Jordan_ sketch for sure.
@@SamAronow or an Oscar bait biopic on Moses Hess.
But it's an international submission and that's the literal translation of the title.
"from Moses to Moses, there arose none like Moses"
Thanks for the nice episode. Made me very sad. Not just because Heine or Hess knew what was coming, but also because it was actually a reasonable prediction based on what people at the time thought and said. The video focusses very much on political debates, but you also had this in many small cultural details such as widespread "spa antisemitism", the subtle, persistent antisemitism of the Prussian bureaucracy, or simply the Antisemitenpetition as one of many examples in academia.
Ive watched all ur videos and they are so good they teach me so much u inspired me to learn more history even tho im a history geek :)
"Yet [Hess's] writing activity never diminished, though towards the end of his life he attempted, and not very successfully, to compose an ambitious work, *Die dynamische Stofflehre* (The Dynamic Theory of Matter), in which he tried to present an overall dialectical philosophy of matter and movement, aiming to combine Spinoza's pantheism, Hegelian dialectics, and modern evolutionary science."
This sound like the very niche sort of shit I would love to read, if anyone knows of any translations lemme know! (not expecting any)
Great video. You mentioned Bakunin and the beginnings of the anarchist movement. Jewish people had a huge hand in anarchist history and praxis (to the extent that some anarchist scholars learn to read Yiddish so that they can read some of their output today). Will you be touching on Jewish figures (as well as Jewish-descended figures) on the political fringes in a video of its own? I'd love to hear you talk about Emma Goldman, for example, to pick out an anarchist, or Trotsky to pick out a Marxist.
In any case, looking forward to more. Sorry if the English here is bad, it is not my first language.
Love this video
Moses Hess's rather scary prediction of WW2, and Holocaust.
Excellent video, really, really good.
I have to say that I wouldn't have seen it if not for you tweeting about it. It did not look particularly appealing to me. Such have happened to me with most of the videos about the history in Europe.
Hess completely nailed it!
Hess predicted WW2… Insane
Fantastic episode!
Another cracking episode.
Great Video sam
הי שמואל!
הסרטונים שלך הם כרגיל, מקיפים ויוצאים מן הכלל. אין לי ספק שבני עמנו זקוקים לעוד אנשים חדים ושורשיים כמוך. ישר כוח על העבודה הזו!
יש לי שאלה אליך בנוגע לסדרת הספרים "דברי ימי ישראל" מאת צבי גרץ.
הבנתי שישנה מקבילה לסדרת הספרים הזו: "דברי ימי עם עולם" מאת שמעון דובנוב.
אילו מבין שתי הסדרות מדויקת יותר? האם גם בסדרות הללו אברהם מוצג בשוגג כדמות היסטורית של ממש? או שהן תומכות בנרטיב שהצגת בסדרה הזו? שבני עמנו התפתחו מתוך התרבות המקומית.
הייתי שמח לקבל המלצה על איזו מהן לרכוש אם אני רוצה שיהיה לי את כל (או לפחות רוב) החומר שהוצג בעמוד הזה. אם לדעתך הסדרות הללו לא עונות על הרצון שלי, על אילו ספרים אתה ממליץ?
אשמח לשמוע את דעתך,
ים.
אני לא יודע, לא קראתי אותם. בדרך כלל אני קורא רק מה שצריך כדי לכתוב הסרטונים. בגלל זו לא אמרתי דברים רבים על הפרושים או שומעון הצדיק בסרטונים המוקדימים שלי. סליחה.
@@SamAronow הו אין דבר, תודה על המענה המהיר! לצערי אין ממש הסבר על התוכן של הסדרה הזו כך שכנראה פשוט אצטרך להיתקל בה יום אחד כדי לבחון אותה מקרוב.
כך או כך המשך את העבודה הטובה!
The video starts just short off where I live... 10/10
I lament that this extraordinary quote from Heine did not make it into the video:
"Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ... Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll."
Just finished this, the second of your videos I've watched. It's was dawning on me in the last few minutes that I am about to watch all of your fucking videos.
Thanks in advance :D
That guy Moritz was doing some heavy drugs.
15:25 in Jacobin magazine, it says a century later the two sides of the cold war. Communism and social democracy at war
I need to read hess, i am just like him in loving my culture n proud of my identity as a Jew in absence from Israel but a staunch atheist who loves identities so long as it doesn't harm. I always grew up and read Marx and the others you spoke of but never Hess, how unfortunate
I would caution against reading the _Holy History of Mankind_ however; he is very clearly imitating Hegel's writing style and to modern eyes it's almost deliberately obtuse.
My G-d am I now looking forward to the next installment!
Jew here of German descent, from California. Very interesting video indeed.
Esoteric has a video or two on Hegel.
18:45 I’m literally three of those ethnicities, guess they don’t like me much
A whole movie. Incredible. I hear my guy from seekers of unity on there too. I love seeing Jewish content creators working together.
What's the music at the start of the final section? Also great video!
oh boy, the start of Zionism
I have a question for @Sam !
Do we have recordings of connection between Hess ans Yehuda Alkalay and/or Kalisher, as they were sharing geographic proximity, relations and ideas... ?
28:47 scary his predictions
Was that Zevi's voice from Seekers of Unity?
Your best.
Does he have a list of music that he uses? There is a specific song I am wondering about
Hey dude great work but ouch I actually am a month away from getting my masters
Moses Hess: confirmed time traveller.
Hess should be considered a prophet
I'd like to point out that Hess used a model first introduced by Joachim of Fiore in 12 Century. I find it interesting that he being a Jew decided to use model based on The Holy Trinity. Also the whole stress on history of ancient Israel is entirely valid on Christian terms since it's part of Christianity's own historia sacra. That's why I think it's strange to say that history of ancient Israel wasn't important for temporary Europeans.
You have an amazingly climatic way of ending your videos
Very cool, I really fuckin appreciate your objectivity despite your connection to the subject. Your whole series on Jewish culture and history has been next level. Thanks big dog, really.
11:54 - Now I need not posit a foolish inquiry "Formulate me the Jewish [or Ukrainian, as I have read oftentimes once, or any other national] question."
This isn't a popular opinion, but I don't see Marx's response to Baur as a racist spiel but a polemical defence of univeral social emanicpation, not just political empancipation but social emancipation. In the second half of "On the Jewish Question" *The Infamous passage should make any decent person shudder* but it shouldn't stop us from critical texual analysis. Contexualy it should be seen as a rejection of the feuerbachian anthropological notion of religion and instead the "jewish question" should be seen through the social historical role forced on the jewish people (which has been covered very well on this channel).
Also in 1843 when the landtag of the rhine was debateing emancipation Marx wrote to Arnold Ruge in sopport of the motion, I think its a stretch to claim Marx didn't support the jewish people or their emancipation.
Except that ignores the context. The context is not about all religion, but rather Christianity and Judaism, the only ones that were really relevant in Europe. He first criticized Christianity for becoming "Jewish." Then he proceeds to say that the only way for "emancipation" to occur is to "emancipate" the Jews from their religion _first._ Mind you, the most charitable interpretation of the phrase "emancipate from religion" in this context means abandoning religion, in other words apostasy, not emancipation in terms of gaining rights. Then there's the question of whether or not the term Bourgeoisie is a dog whistle meaning Jew, (though that's a whole rabbit hole I won't go down here.) Marx was also very unkind to Jews in his letters to Engels later in life to put it mildly.
As for his support of Jews, it was less about supporting Jews and their unique struggles and more about furthering similar causes in an effort to strengthen his own.
@@Batmans_Pet_GoldfishAll else aside, Bourgeoisie is not a dogwhistle for jews. Its just not. Yes, very stupid people interpret it that way but if you are more familiar with marx' concept of capital/economics, you would find that it falls apart if you do that. Marx did knew the diffrence between causation and correlation and is not known for hiding his opinions with dogwhistles.
“Marx believed that all social behaviour was the product of economic systems and incentives. He was wrong.” You say that he was wrong, but don’t describe why or how. Why even talk about Marx if you’re going to skirt around the central issue this way?
Also for Moses Hess, you twice mention that he wanted to create a state in Palestine in cooperation with the Arab community already living there, but none of the accompanying quotes in the video mention this. I’ll look for some myself.
I may have been overly ambiguous in my wording. While Hess did want cooperation from Arabs in Palestine, his emphasis was on the idea that a Jewish state would be in alliance with neighboring Arab states in their mutual struggles for independence from the Ottomans.
The video presents a common enough interpretation of Marx, and you find those kinds of economic determinist points of view among people who came after, but Marx remained way too much of a Hegelian for that to be true. The importance of human freedom comes up a lot in Marx's political and historical writing.
It isn't the job of Sam to describe how Marx was wrong on nearly every aspect that he wrote about, from biology to psychology to economics. His ideas are equivalent to a flat earthers.
@@insaneweasel1 I would say that it's not a big deal to make mistakes, but the video's assertion of his incorrectness does make the original asker's question of "why" an explicitly reasonable one.
@@saracic eh fair point. A full takedown would probably be a video in its own right though.
great video didn’t know antisemitism was made to be a nicer version of jew hate.
🎶There are no Cats in America!🎶🎻
self, collective, state
So you're going back back to Cali Cali?
Narratively if not to live...
Your characterisation of Marx/Engels and the interpretation on Marx' reply to Bruno Bauer is....incomplete, to say the least. However, I respect your efforts and think that at least my differences opinion will grow, now, that we are nearing the 20th century.
I can't wait for the videos about Zionism 😁
Götterdamnerung and Ragnarök !
hell yeah, I'm waiting for Zionism to become a thing in the upcoming video
Love the Holy History of Mankind. So in the First Era of humanity the point is to somewhere establish a society which synthesizes morality and spirituality with politics and economy, and thus is a just, egalitarian system. This is said to have been to a large degree accomplished among the Jews, being that their state was governed by divine commandments, ones which forbade permanent land ownership, interest, mandated periodic forgiveness of debts, periodic liberation of slaves, periodic land redistribution, and certain social welfare norms (tithe for the poor, leaving food for the poor, not denying poor people loans, etc). But the problem with it was that it wasnt universal. So in the Second Era Christianity spreads in order to spread the idea of moral universalism and universal brotherhood of all people. Then in the Third Era there is a synthesis of the First and Second Eras, and moving towards a universal just society. To give a bit more detailed description of how Hess envisioned this system, this New Jerusalem, it would look like this:
- Abundance, created by socially controlled industry, will integrate overall social interests, and society will be based on altruism, solidarity and harmony.
- There will be a disappearance of the old contrasts between the low and the high, plebeians and patricians, and the poor and the wealthy.
- Peace will reign in society, both internally and externally.
- The distinction between town and country will disappear, as ‘villages will adorn themselves with wonderful buildings and cities with inspiring gardens’.
- Women will be equal to men, and be given the same education.
- Free love will replace the shackles of matrimonial bonds which were always linked to property.
- Public education will be freely available to all children.
- Society will take care of the health and welfare of the sick and the elderly.
- With the disappearance of poverty, crime will disappear as well.
- Formal law will disappear, with people obeying their internal law which will reflect Spinoza’s amor dei intellectualis.
- The people’s sovereignty will be guaranteed by the political structure organized through freely associated communities, subordinated to the supervision of the states; the states, in their turn, will be associated in a universal league of nations.
- And finally, with industry guaranteeing abundance, human beings will be able to turn their activities to their highest calling - artistic creativity.
It would have been great if he promoted this and made a movement around it, instead of pivoting to nationalism later.
It's unfortunate that such pie in the sky ideals could never work in the real world, due to human biology and psychological conditioning.
Engagement!
Marx had some interesting opinions on Judaism and his fellow Jews for sure. Didn't even get into his spicy opinions of a certain LaSalle
"Fellow Jews"? That's certainly not a term that he would have used, as he certainly did not consider himself, or identify as Jewish, and on the contrary openly espoused the most primitive, vile and ignorant anti-Semitic attacks, which historically was not uncommon for European Jews who later converted or renounced their safe, many of whom were responsible for provoking Jewish book burnings (such as Nichlias Donin, Johannes Pfefferkorn, etc.).
Other than his 23 and me profile, there was nothing he had in common with other Jews
@@GilesMcRiker he could deny it all he wanted but your heritage is still a part of you
Ah yes, fucking Wagner.
I strongly dislike Hegel and the direction of anthropology influenced by him.
Was the Marx reader on something? Homie was literally tripping over his words.
California
The start of Bundism! Or at least the beginning of socialism and Judaism.
vertical elitism
why no video about Khazaria?
Why no Videos about Hymyar
He did one, but he took it out of the archive.
ruclips.net/video/Fr7WSR_EE44/видео.html
He did do a video on it: ruclips.net/video/Fr7WSR_EE44/видео.html
That socialism thing in Europe didn't end up working so well in the end, did it?
Didn't work out well for Israel either. They had all sorts of economic woes into the 80s regardless of war and the kibbutz movement had basically fizzled out by the 2000s
Yup, just ask the Russians.😂😂😂
For anyone interested on the Bauer and Marx response to the former, David Leopold's book on the young Marx has a chapter dedicated to it. Also, as a brief aside, the interpretation of Marx as an economic determinism (in the sense defined in the video) is generally criticized by most academic historical and philosophical interpreters.
On the Young Hegelians as a whole, there are quite a few books available, so for everyone interested in Hess I definitely recommend then as to have a fuller picture of the common influences that shaped the various figures. (One I've read recently and can recommend is Warren Breckman's, though its focus is definitely on building up to his discussion of Marx, so keep it in mind if you get it).
Anyway, looking forward to the next video.
Correcting some typos: "...on Bauer's text and Marx's response to it..." / "...recommend them so as..."
I can also second Breckman's "Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory", I also agree that Marx is presented as overly reductionist.
Thanks for this, had the same thoughts on the economic determinism comment presented here.