Chapter 18 - Alfred And The Jews: Part 5 - Lifelong Misconceptions

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

Notwithstanding Korzybski’s subsequent greater knowledge and more accurate perception (which indeed did lead him to marvel), he never quite overcame certain misconceptions about Jews. For example, reinforced by a misreading of the Hebrew Bible, he considered the notion of “the chosen people” a doctrine of racial superiority and a precursor of Nazism.(20) For someone who prided himself as a constructive and sympathetic reader, I opine that Korzybski failed by his own measure here. Without knowing the accompanying rabbinic commentary based on oral tradition, the Hebrew Bible—in terms of the normative Jewish interpretation—cannot be adequately understood. Korzybski gave no indication that he ever recognized the importance of this commentary and tradition where, as Chaim Potok later pointed out, “...The notion of chosenness...is an assumption of responsibility, not superiority.”(21) Korzybski’s error here may have resulted in part from a tendency towards a crude anti-clericalism that he never quite got away from—despite his stated opposition to dogmatic atheism. His truncated view of Jewish belief was one that he shared with many ‘enlightened’ people, including a number of assimilated Jewish intellectuals. That alone didn’t make him an antisemite—only mistaken.

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 
20. See “Hitler And Psychological Factors In His Life” in Korzybski’s “Introduction To The Second Edition 1941” of Science and Sanity, p. lxxiv.

21. As Chaim Potok later wrote:

...The notion of chosenness...is an assumption of responsibility, not superiority. That the notion of chosenness may have been the basis for various theories of national and racial superiority indicates to me nothing more than that all ideas are potentially corruptible when taken up by small minds. That does not mean that those with great minds should cease thinking…Judaism is one configuration of thought and action. There are many others. Judaism is the responsibility of the Jew. As such, it makes no claim to being the only source of salvation for the world. Its sole criterion for the worth of one who is not Jewish is whether or not he observes the universally applicable Noahide Code. Such observance, in the Talmudic terminology of approbation, makes the non-Jew worthy of the world-to-come. Some of the rabbis of the Talmud went even further: a moral non-Jew is more worthy in the eyes of God than a sinful high priest. [The Conditions of Jewish Belief, pp. 175-176] 

< Part 4 

Return to Table of Contents 

Chapter 18 - Alfred And The Jews: Part 4 - Turning

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

What Korzybski subsequently did about his antisemitic views seems more unusual—he consciously examined and turned against them. Unlike many other antisemites, Alfred’s expression of prejudice in his August 16, 1920 letter functioned for him as an impetus for serious self-evaluation and change. In the letter he had put his prejudices clearly out in the open, keeping a carbon copy for himself (as he nigh always did). They had become facts on record available for his inspection, introspection, and correction. And there is every indication he did so via conscious use of the spiral ‘thought’ process he was formulating about.

A number of factors probably pushed his effort to rid himself of the poison of antisemitism. For one thing, he was beginning to associate with many individuals who—if not socialists or communists—at least had liberal sympathies towards what they perceived at the time as more ‘progressive’ notions for organizing society. And the year 1920 had been a difficult year for people with such views. In 1919, a small number of fringe extremists had indulged in violence and bombings against ‘capitalist’ targets throughout the U.S. In response, the U.S. government began to clamp down indiscriminately on people perceived as communists or communist sympathizers, whether violent or not. On New Years Day 1920, with little or no control from the infirm President Wilson, U.S. Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer launched raids around the country, arresting and detaining over 6,000 communists or presumed communists. Eventually many if not most of those arrested and held illegally were released. But despite considerable outcry against the unconstitutional nature of the Attorney General’s actions, Palmer’s raids, as part of what became known as “the Red Scare”, had a chilling effect even among many peaceful and well-intentioned liberals, who did not want to be considered radical. Although there were Jews among the ‘radicals’ (some of them prominent), not all radicals nor even a majority of them were Jewish. (And, the majority of Jews had nothing to do with radical politics.) Alfred and Mira knew many people in the so-called progressive camp, so Alfred had direct evidence of the nonsensical nature of claims about the specifically Jewish nature of radical politics.

In his letter to Keyser, and in keeping with the message of the Protocols, Alfred had also proposed a conspiratorial Jewish marriage of capitalism and communism—Jews controlling both Bolshevism and the banks. The theory, advanced in the Protocols, would likely strike any sensible person as contradictory and absurd. At some point, it must have begun to seem so to Alfred as well. He began to investigate.

He had been familiar with the contents of the Protocols for some time. As noted in a previous chapter, at the end of 1919 he had obtained a copy of Senator Overman’s Committee Report on Bolshevik Propaganda. In a notebook entry labeled “The Overman Committee on the Bolshevik activities”, he wrote out the following, which copies part of page 135 of the Overman Report:

Testimony of Rev. Mr. George A. Simons parson of the Washington Square Methodist Episc. Church 121 W Fortieth Str there is a gentleman Dr. Harris A. Houghton in Bayside a Captain in the Intel. Service “Jewish protocols book Redasti anti Christ”. But the average person in official life here in Wash. and elsewhere is afraid to handle it Houghton says that even in his Intelligence bureau they were afraid of it.(6)

The rumor of a Jewish plot of world domination had come into the news again with the fall 1920 publication, by G.P. Putnam & Sons, of The Cause of World Unrest. Alfred had clipped out the book notice for his notebook:

History of a conspiracy in which the author contends that the plans for domination outlined in the document upon which this volume is based have apparently been followed in the recent movements in Russia.(7) 

This book, by an anonymous author, offered a compendium of articles on the alleged Jewish-Freemason-Bolshevik conspiracy against the Christian World that the ‘reputable’ London Morning Post had printed earlier in the year. The book also announced the forthcoming publication by Putnam of Harris Houghton’s version of the Protocols. In October Louis Marshall, President of the American Jewish Committee, wrote to Major George Putnam protesting the publication of both books. Letters between the two men continued through the month and in early November Putnam decided to not publish Houghton’s book.(8) 

Despite the vehement tone of Alfred’s letter to Keyser, he clearly was not unremittingly invested in the views put forth in the Protocols. Once he began investigating, its claims began to unravel for him. Having had the Overman report in his possession since the end of 1919, it would be surprising—given his reading habits—if he didn’t at least look through the 1,265 page document. He probably wouldn’t have missed the testimonies of Louis Marshall; Simon Wolf, chairman of the board of delegates on civil rights of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations; and Herman Bernstein, a journalist with the New York Herald and an anti-Tsarist, anti-Bolshevik Jew who had reported in Russia in 1917 and 1918. Marshall, in a letter, and the other two men in personal testimony, provided substantial refutations of the idea of a Jewish-Bolshevik plot.

Korzybski, a kindly man at heart, had not reacted with indifference to the post-war anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe. Even earlier, during his time serving in the Russian Intelligence Service on the Eastern Front, he had saved from further prosecution a number of Jews, who had been brought to him as spies on the flimsiest of charges.(9) He could not have read Simon Wolf’s introductory remarks to the Overman Committee and comfortably maintained the views expressed in his letter to Keyser. Wolf had stated:

I am not at all surprised by the accusations against a certain portion of the human family entitled the Jewish...always made the scapegoat of every movement. It has been so from time immemorial. I am also reminded of the Irishman who beat the Jew and when asked why he did so said that he had killed Christ. When the answer came that had been done thousands of years ago, the Irishmen replied that he had never heard of it until that day. 

And again, when a Jew was walking along the street, a stone was thrown from the opposite side. Naturally the Jew dodged and the stone went crashing into the plate-glass window. The owner sued the Jew for damages and the judge decided that the Jew must pay, for had he not dodged the window would not have been broken. A great judge—but the misfortune is that the Jew throughout all history has been dodging those kinds of missiles and subjected to such unjust decisions. (10) 

Now, Alfred had another ‘bee in his bonnet’ and set off on a program of serious research in Jewish history, religion, and philosophy. One page of his notebook is devoted to Jewish libraries, publishers, and communal organizations in New York City.(11) Elsewhere in the archives, several pages of notes show extensive annotated lists of various sources of Hebrew literature and history, including translations of the Talmud (Jewish Law Commentaries) and Kabbalah (Jewish mystical literature).(12) A number of the books he acquired on Jewish topics became part of the Institute of General Semantics library, including Arsene Darmesteter’s The Talmud, and Emanuel Deutsch’s The Talmud, Abraham Schomer’s 1909 book The Primary Cause of Antisemitism, Gustave Karpeles’ Jews and Judaism in the Nineteenth Century, Philip C. Friese’s Semitic Philosophy, William F. Bode’s The Old Testament in the Light of Today, and Rabbi Sigmund Hecht’s Post-Biblical History: A Compendium of Jewish History. Korzybski’s collection of Judaica also included the curious 1889 volume, Anglo-Israel or The Saxon Race Proved to be the Lost Tribes of Israel in Nine Lectures by Rev. W. H. Poole, which he probably acquired in 1919 or earlier (the book is marked with Alfred’s stamp from the National Arts Club). Clearly his interest in Jews and Judaism was not entirely new.

One book he took extensive notes on was Richard J. H. Gottheil’s Zionism, published in 1914, part of a series on “Movements in Judaism”. The book documented the history to that date of Modern Political Zionism, which sought to restore a significant Jewish presence to the land of Israel. The passages Korzybski copied into his notebook indicate, among other things, the diversity of opinions among Jews regarding options towards the increasingly hostile environment of Europe. Korzybski’s notes also refer to the book’s accounts of public meetings of Zionists in Europe starting in 1898.(13) What Gottheil’s book documented could hardly have been more different than the monolithic, hidden conspiracy depicted in the Protocols. Korzybski’s reading of Gottheil’s book may mark the beginning of his support for Zionism. (Almost a decade later, in 1929, two Jewish newspapers in Kansas City, Missouri—where he was speaking at The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association, declared him “an outspoken Zionist” in articles announcing his lecture. Korzybski never denied that ‘charge’. Indeed, he seemed proud of it, clipping the articles and writing positively to friends about the “enthusiastic” newspaper coverage.(14) 

Alfred’s personal contact with Jews such as Jacques Loeb and Walter N. Polakov (see the following chapter) may also have influenced his changing attitude toward Jews and Judaism. For example Loeb, a German Jew, had had plenty of first-hand experience with anti-Jewish bigotry both in Germany and the U.S. He made no secret of his ethnic origins or of his opposition to racism and unfair treatment. But we will probably never know to what extent Loeb contributed to the attitude change Korzybski was in the midst of undergoing.

In the text of Manhood, which he was revising, Alfred wrote “...if we teach humans false ideas, we affect their time-binding capacities and energies very seriously, by affecting in a wrong way the physico-chemical base.”(15) This reflected not only his new spiral theory but also the sober result of his own self-examination. Among the books Alfred read around this time was Freidlander’s translation of Moshe ben Maimon’s (Maimonides’) Guide for the Perplexed. Alfred copied this quote from Chapter XI into his notebook:

All the great evils which men cause to each other because of certain intentions, desires, opinions or religious principles, are likewise due to non-existence, because they originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom. (16)

Was Korzybski somehow acknowledging here his earlier mistaken opinions about Jews? (Later he would often emphasize the dual nature of ignorance—passive ignorance and, to him, the much more dangerous, active ignorance of false knowledge/half-truth.) At any rate, in later letters and published works after 1920, there is no trace of the Jew-hatred contained in the Keyser letter. Although he referred to the ‘white race’ in later writings, his references could not be considered ‘racist’ by a careful reader, except perhaps against the so-called white race.(17) 

For the rest of Korzybski’s life he maintained an interest in antisemitism and talked and wrote about Judaism and the Jewish people with sympathy. Throughout the following decade, in letters to his friend psychologist A. A. Roback, who wrote a number of books on Jewish topics, Alfred would often inquire about the Jewish ethnicity of various mathematicians and scientists. He came to feel that the Jews as a group, like the Poles and the Scots, had especially developed a “‘time’ or process orientation” foreshadowing the modern way of thinking he wanted to formulate more clearly—although he felt that creative individuals from all groups also tended to express this. The Jewish people constituted the only ethnic or religious group (including the Poles) about whom Korzybski ever published anything specific (see his Foreword to “The Essence of Judaism” by Hans Kohn, first published and distributed in 1943 by the Institute of General Semantics, along with a reprint of Kohn’s 1934 article).(18) He was also an early outspoken critic of the Nazis and wrote openly and condemningly about their ideology and their persecution of Jews—quite a shift for someone who had once sounded like a proto-Nazi himself.

Korzybski’s efforts at self-education regarding Jews and Judaism reflected an all too rare but much to be wished for condition, something writer Erich Kahler (a Jew) later noted:

One day when I was discussing the problem of anti-Semitism with the eminent Austro-Jewish poet, Richard Beer-Hofmann, he said to me: “I am not at all astonished at the fact that they hate us and persecute us. But what I cannot understand is, why they do not marvel at us more than they do.”  

Well, marveling at the strange phenomenon of the Jewish people would imply some knowledge of their history, some general perception of the Jewish destiny. And if there were such knowledge and such perception, there could not be so much hatred and persecution. …(19)

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

6. Note from Overman Committee report, in “AK Personal Notebook, Early 1920s”. AKDA 37.720. 

7. Advertisement for The Cause of World Unrest. AKDA 37.769. 

8. “The Protocols Come to America”. Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/protocols1.html 

 9. “Count Korzybski To Speak at ‘Y’ Monday Evening”. The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, 3/29/1929. AKDA 3.319. 

10. Overman Committee Report. See U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, 1919. Bolshevik Propaganda..., p. 381. 

11. “Jewish organizations” in “AK Personal Notebook, Early 1920s”. AKDA 37.720. 

12. “Hebrew literature”. AKDA 34.747-749. 

13. Notes on Gottheil’s Zionism in “AK Personal Notebook, Early 1920s”. AKDA 37.762-763. 

14. AK to C. B. Bridges, 3/31/1929. AKDA 22.146; AK to G.Y. Rainich, 3/31/29. AKDA 22.145. 

15. Korzybski 1921, p. 234. 

16. Maimonides quote from Friedlander, trans. p. 267 in “AK Personal Notebook, Early 1920s”. AKDA 37.764. 

17. See Science and Sanity, p. 404 and 406. 18. Korzybski’s “Foreword to “The Essence of Judaism” by Hans Kohn” in Korzybski, Collected Writings, pp. 401-404. 

19. Kahler, p. 1. 

< Part 3      Part 5 >

Return to Table of Contents 

Chapter 18 - Alfred And The Jews: Part 3 - Antisemitism 1920

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)
Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

Whew!—a remarkable document indeed—coming as it did from a man who would soon start to formulate a system-discipline designed to promote sane evaluating. The letter characterized the Hebrew Bible as a hate-filled document which served as the basis of a centuries-old Jewish conspiracy of immorality against non-Jews. According to the letter, not only were Jews responsible for the worst of Capitalism but they were responsible for Bolshevism too. The letter also expressed a notable favoritism towards Christianity, in particular Catholicism, odd for someone who claimed to have freed himself in his youth from the restrictions of his religious background. In Korzybski’s schema here, the Jews taught hatred and parasitism while Christians—especially Catholics—embodied love and productiveness. Korzybski ended with a sentence that, except for its emphasis on “Mathematical thinking”, sounded as if inspired by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

In Post-War America 1920 the attitudes Korzybski expressed in the letter were not uncommon. Henry Ford had just begun the initial publication of “The International Jew” series in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. Boston publisher Small, Maynard & Company had recently published Boris Brasol’s anonymous The Protocols and World Revolution which apparently sold well by mail-order (bookstores, for the most part, wouldn’t carry it). The book was getting widely distributed in U.S. Army Military Intelligence Department circles.(2) (Korzybski had his own copy (3) and probably obtained it around this time.) The Ku Klux Klan, which defined both Jews and Blacks as threats to the ‘white race’, had been founded only a few years before and was now experiencing a tremendous growth in membership throughout the U.S. More genteelly expressed anti-Jewish views were also held by many ‘upper crust’ members of the social register—some of the people whom Mira had as clients for her portraits in ivory. Some so-called freethinkers, rejecting all religious moorings as crude superstitions, were also likely to see the Hebrew scriptures and the Jews (especially those who continued on with their traditions) as the ‘deplorable’ source of the ‘nonsense’ they were seeking so hard to reject. And not to be forgetten, there existed—then as now—the not-uncommon phenomenon of “Jewish self-hatred” (so-called) in varying degrees. ‘Self-hating’ Jews included an extreme antisemitic contingent with a hard-to-match disdain for their brother and sister Jews.(4) As has remained the case throughout history, ‘The Jews’ provided an all-purpose ‘projection screen’ for many of those frustrated with the perceived failings of society. With the recent influx into the U.S. of a large number of Eastern European Jews (the Jewish population approximately tripled from 1900 to 1920) (5),  Yiddish-accented, tradition-oriented Jews and their children were more visible and served as convenient targets of disdain for many other Americans, both rich and poor.

So Korzybski’s views circa 1920 don’t seem so unusual. Perhaps this accounts for the lack of any specific response to them in Keyser’s subsequent letters (which doesn’t necessarily mean Keyser didn’t try to correct Alfred in person.) Keyser, who gave no indication anywhere I could find of anti-Jewish prejudices, had likely heard this kind of talk before. At any rate, for various reasons Keyser seems to have decided, at least in his correspondence with Alfred, to overlook this outburst from his new friend.

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

2. Bendersky, p. 141. 

3. IGS Archives. 

4. See, for example, Kurt Lewin’s “Self-Hatred Among Jews” in Resolving Social Conflict, pp. 186-200. Korzybski remained fascinated by the phenomenon of antisemitism and the related Jewish ‘self-hatred’. He not only had open files containing material on these topics but also kept other, more hidden, samples of antisemitic material—hidden, perhaps, because their more visible presence might be misunderstood as endorsement. (I found the advertising brochure for the infamous 1934 hate tract Jews Must Live by Jewish antisemite Samuel Roth—with Korzybski’s red pencil underlinings and handwriting: “Keep for me”—‘filed’ inside Korzybski’s marked-up copy of the Protocols. The Protocols itself was tied and wrapped inside an unmarked package of brown butcher paper tucked deep inside some IGS file drawers, that I doubt anyone had looked through for at least 60 years.) When Lewin’s book—with antisemitism and Jewish self-hatred as major topics—came out in the late 1940s, Korzybski considered it an important event. 

5. “Jewish Population of the United States (1654-2006)”, Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop1.html

< Part 2      Part 4 >

Return to Table of Contents 

Chapter 18 - Alfred And The Jews: Part 2 - A Remarkable Letter

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

By the fall of 1920, having completed the first draft of Manhood, Korzybski seemed full of the importance of his formulation of time-binding—perhaps too full of it. He felt convinced of the detrimental nature of what he considered a wrong definition of humanity—one which posited ‘Man’ as having an animal aspect combined with a divine spark. To him such a view must be incompatible with the notion of ‘Man’ as a time-binder. He found it easy to pick on the Jews as the obvious culprits for this ‘travesty’. 

A letter he wrote to Keyser on August 16, soon after their first meeting, seems worth quoting at length since it provides the sole evidence for the extremity of Korzybski’s negative attitudes toward Jews and Judaism at this time. After a quite extensive discussion of issues related to his book, he ended the letter with the following rant:

….Human = Animal X Spark of god has formed the old testament utterly capitalistic, brutally selfish, with hatred as a base. Every not Jew was not human, a beast to be cheated, killed, and so forth. They [the Jews] violated the human nature for centuries. Their theory of selfishness and hatred could not have of course creative constructive inclination, THEY BECAME PARASITES preying upon other people[’s] [work]. They are today bankers and merchants, they follow their creed and their culture...It happens to be that the Christians are the biggest producers, it may happen that Christianity made productiveness, or naturally productive races, accepted the theory of love it means productiveness, no doubt any way that Christianity is strictly related to productiveness. The Jews remained parasites, and they had to be such, the productive element was lacking in them. Selfishness as a creed (in a particularly accentuated form) compelled them to their efforts to accumulate other people’s work and be parasites in the newer civilization. Selfishness and greed upon other people’s success, in capitalism made them more selfish and greedy, they got in their second stage of their selfish capacity to prey. To prey on the farmer and the poor was not enough. They proclaimed a new creed to prey on the accumulation of dead men’s work, to prey on the wealthy and the products of work of brain workers. They do not acknowledge the highest form of binding time, the brain work, practically they prey upon it. That’s socialism in the binding time light. If we analyze the lesser subdivision of the same series we will find a strange but so natural fact that modern capitalism has been the most developed on the survival of the fittest theory and selfishness by those nations who have adopted the reformation, it means BOTH BIBLES without discrimination, in those countries the church is mostly the church of the wealthy, with Adam Smith and his creed of selfishness as an economic prophet, the catholic countries have the churches for the poor, as leading spirit the new testament. Here the binding time scale of thinking explains these phenomena without mistakes. The degree of binding time element in all those theories and creeds is the crucial base which shapes life, and is the only base for understanding those apparently strange phenomena. [They’re] so simple [after] all if we only start from the right base. Today we see Jewish old testament creed Bolshevism build upon hate and DESTRUCTION (it cannot be different) in Mongol lands [knocking] at the doors of white people christian, love, constructive domain. Those things are not understood completely, because of the NOT analyzing of the human class of life from the binding time base. In my book I did not want to show too much of the value of this binding of time starting base, I put it in general terms only, not wanting to antagonize people in the start, I wanted them first to digest the first dose. Then it would [be] time enough to give the next dose, when the base for understanding would be prepared. I wonder if this is wise. I simply am afraid of the bad effect of putting too much upon the people for the start. Too much of a medicine brings often a new illness. I will keep a copy of this letter to you as notes for my further books. I would love if time will permit you to have a short expression of your opinions about these few important points I have touched in this letter. Of course I have to apologize for taking too much of your time, and for the rotten language, but I had not time to correct the letter and copy it again. The time is pressing a shake up of human thoughts is imperative, or unprecedented calamities are in store. We are in the stage of confusion here, the very existence of the white race is in danger, only vigorous thinking, Mathematical thinking, binding of time standards can save the Aryan race from the semits [sic] and Mongols. 

With every appreciation and gratitude (1)

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

1. AK to C.J. Keyser, 8/16/1920. AKDA 32.719. 

< Part 1     Part 3 >

Return to Table of Contents 

Chapter 18 - Alfred And The Jews: Part I - Introduction

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

Alfred had reached a view of human potential, fertile in its implications and applications, that could appeal to humanists and scientists, the religious and non-religious. He felt awe-inspired by the vista, like an urban dweller who for the first time has visited a place with a night sky not obscured by city lights. And yet, while ‘looking up at the stars’ he had fallen into an ‘open pit’. Soon after he and Mira arrived in New York City in the fall of 1920, he was openly expressing the meanest antisemitism.

His enmeshment in what has been called “the longest hatred”, as evidenced in a letter he wrote to Cassius Keyser soon after meeting him, seems never to have become known to more than a few people. If he had continued along the pathological path of Jew-hatred, it seems unlikely he would have been able to continue his work and develop it as he did over the remainder of his life. Happily, by the spring of 1921, he had left it behind and even flipped over into a kind of philosemitism, a respect for Jews and Jewish culture, which seems rather marked. His self-examination and subsequent turning away from antisemitism is documented in the records of archived notebooks from the fall and winter of 1920–21, and in later letters, published writings, and public documents.

Alfred certainly had many opportunities to pick up the prejudices against Jews common during the time he was growing up in Poland—a time of increasing conflict between ethnic Poles and Polish Jews. Once he came to the United States, his contact with antisemitic people in the U.S. Army and the State Department, who believed in a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy, may have reinforced such attitudes. His connection with Social Credit advocates, some of whom believed in a conspiracy of Jewish bankers against the public, could have provided a further boost to his prejudices. And his personal contact with and misevaluation of the character of Boris Brasol—proponent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—could have given even more weight to Alfred’s misevaluations about Jews.

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

Part 2 >

Return to Table of Contents