I am a Jewess 2018: on the challenges and limits of empathy and solidarity
The events unfolding around Trump’s immigration policy and his inhumane treatment of children , families and adults at the border, have been hugely harrowing and galvanizing. As many point out, cruelty in immigration policies in theory and practice is nothing new, nor is it uniquely American- I wrote my DPhil at Oxford, where just down the road is Campsfield House, an immigration detention center. As an Israeli lefty I know well the power of actually defining ‘local’ and ‘refugee’ and debates around treatment within refugee camps have been at the heart of my own political education. And yet there is something about the brusqueness and heartlessness in which Trump disregards the plight of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers that has done what none of the above cases managed to do; bring the question of how we treat immigrants to the center of the news agenda.
I am currently engrossed in writing a book manuscript about radical Jewish women, one of whom is Eleanor Marx (1855–1898). My analysis draws in full on Rachel Holmes’s 2014 work ‘Eleanor Marx: A Life’ (London: Bloomsbury), a book that quite literally changed my life. Reading about Eleanor Marx’s work has taught me that there are many lessons to be learnt from the foremother of socialist-feminism, internationalist and trade unionist who translated Madame Bovary for the first time into English and pioneered the plays of Ibsen on the London stage. But you should read the book as Holmes brings Eleanor, nicknamed ‘Tussy’ throughout her life, back to us better than I ever can.
Holmes notes that the biggest difference between Eleanor and her father Karl was their relationship to their Jewishness. Eleanor claimed the family’s Jewish roots, the only Marx to do so. And it is the context in which she decides to do so which I find timely and urgent; it is in the context of growing anti-internationalism and antisemitism towards Jewish workers, including on the left, in the fledgling British New Unionism, that she performs this act of solidarity. A running narrative of Holmes’s work is Eleanor’s ability to empathize and see things from others’ point of view. Thus she becomes the practice to her father’s theory,Holmes shows. And yet this ability to empathize brings her dark times throughout her life.
I have found myself thinking of Tussy a lot since arriving in New York and witnessing varied responses to horrifying news. There have been two hyperbolic reactions on two ends of the spectrum of those who may consider themselves in solidarity with refugees that I think Eleanor could teach us a lesson about. Firstly, there are those who deny empathy. Those who find the recording of crying children ‘too much’. Who resort to all kinds of other engagements and say over their drinks or expensive cups of coffee, ‘yes, that is really overwhelming, and I can’t bear it’. No doubt Tussy would scold them for this avoidance (an early adopter of new technology, Holmes shows, she’d probably marvel at the ease in which information gets to us, and ask us how we choose to engage it or indeed ignore it). For those who advocate that position and yet say they are in solidarity with immigrants and refugees, I’d like to ask, what are the grounds in which you protect yourself from others’ pain? how are you justifying your own ability to avoid misery by not bearing witness and going ahead to act to relieve others’ misery? Eleanor Marx wrote in 1884: “the man who could not hear a tale of distress without attempting to relieve it can now brag of abetting acts that endanger the lives of innocent women and children.” No doubt avoiding even hearing the tale of distress is even worse for the ever- compassionate Tussy.
Second, in responses that arise to the immigration debate and yet retract from action and solidarity, is the focus on Trump rather than thinking of the system of patriarchal capitalism that gave rise to his election. ‘Isn’t Trump awful’, moan people all around the world. And yet on their own doorsteps immigrants are detained, tortured, their freedom of speech infringed upon, and they are degraded to non- humans. The focus on Trump — rather than asking questions of the structures that gave rise to these extreme policies — enable the international racist system of patriarchal capitalism that creates hierarchies of human beings to sustain. Eleanor Marx grew up with Das Kapital, Holmes tells us; and she knew better than anyone that fighting against degradation of any group made to be scapegoats cannot happen in isolation from overarching oppressive structures. One thing I have learnt from Eleanor is to keep emphasizing that no one is free till everyone is free.
And yet Eleanor Marx was a woman of action in solidarity, and never mourned, always organized. This week I am attending a meeting of Jews for Economic and Racial Justice chaired by a woman Rabbi, in which I will feel oddly proud to reiterate Eleanor’s exclamation from the 1890s; I am a Jewess! on 14 street, down the road from where another Jewess, Emma Goldman, spoke and organized. This exclamation will help me to think how structures that have been cruel to my own peoples (and against which Eleanor Marx organized) can be changed so that no one suffers anymore.
It has been inspiring to see the amount of resistance towards these policies and the ethos that underpins them. So if you find Tussy compelling, best to think how you can get involved to bring down racist patriarchal capitalism, long overdue process, so that all human beings are treated with dignity and respect, and we can all, in the words of her favorite motto, go ahead!
- Rachel Holmes, Eleanor Marx: A Life, (2014) London, Bloomsbury; I am a Jewess! Pp 343–359.
- Pronounced Tussy to rhyme with pussy not fussy; cats Eleanor adored, fussy she never was.
- Don’t mourn, organize! In the spirit of Tussy, ways to get involved. Fundraising: RAICES https://actionnetwork.org/groups/raices-refugee-and-immigrant-center-for-education-and-legal-services
- ACLU has been at the forefront of many struggles, including this one; https://www.aclu.org/
- Attend a demonstration near you in a national day of action on the 30 June; https://front.moveon.org/. Solidarity action in London, Uk, Tussy’s birthplace: https://www.facebook.com/events/640546599626939/
- Jews for Economic and Racial Justice http://jfrej.org/
