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Review: Jack Jacobs, The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism. Cambridge

University Press, 2014. ISBN: 978-0521513753. 278 pp.

Jack Jacobss The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism will be a major

resource for many of us working in Critical Theory. Even-handed, clearly presented, and

extensively researched, with 78 pages of footnotes, the books overarching thesis is both simple

and urgent: Jacobs contests the popular view among some Critical Theory scholars that

Horkheimers generation of the Frankfurt School was Jewish in blood only. Those who

dismiss Marcuses or Adornos connection with Judaism as practically insignificant, for

example, are missing a basic attribute of the Frankfurt School tradition. In a rush to excise the

Frankfurt Schools Jewishness in the interests of presenting a purely materialist grouping of

Marxist social scientists, scholars do no credit to the Institutes rich pool of intellectual interests

and the complex debates and circles of intellectual life in which the Institutes members and

periphery were engaged. Fortunately, Jacobs is one of a growing number of scholars willing to

engage in a serious study of the Frankfurt School theorists Jewishness.

Although the Frankfurt School was heavily influenced by Judaism, Jacobs does not

discount other influences and acknowledges the greater role played by Marxism. Jacobs also

offers the caveats that his book is a work in intellectual history, not philosophy, and that by

exploring the Jewishness of the Frankfurt School, he is not arguing that Critical Theory is an

inherently Jewish theory but only exploring an under-studied intellectual influence on the

Frankfurt Schools development.

The book has three chapters. The first provides a history of the Jewish background of five

figures of the early Frankfurt School during the Weimar era: Max Horkheimer, Leo Lowenthal,
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Erich Fromm, Henryk Grossmann, and Friedrich Pollock. The second chapter examines the

Institutes research on antisemitism during and shortly after the Institutes exile from Nazi

Germany. The third chapter focuses on four Frankfurt School members postwar relationship to

the state of Israel: Horkheimer, Lowenthal, Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse.

In the first chapter, Jacobs explores the Jewish backgrounds and identities of the five

thinkers who were official, active members of the Institute in residence in Frankfurt before the

Institutes exile. Each interacted differently with his Jewishness, but the Jewish background of

each shaped the live options (in William Jamess terms) available to him.

The first of the five, Max Horkheimer, grew up in a practicing Jewish family, somewhere

between Orthodox and Liberal. Horkheimer experienced some antisemitism growing up and

significantly more antisemitism later while serving in the military in World War I. In 1917, he

wrote two short stories that revealed his concerns about antisemitism, and a critique of bourgeois

Jews. While Martin Jay sees the latter as a dismissal of antisemitism, Jacobs argues it should be

taken as a critique of hypocrisy instead. As a leader of the early Institute, Horkheimers

theoretical work did not directly draw from Jewish sources or ideas, but he was very much aware

of his Jewish heritage.

Leo Lowenthal, Jacobs continues, had significantly more interaction than Horkheimer

with Jewish religious thought in the Weimar era. Lowenthal rebelled against his secular Jewish

father by embracing Jewish religious practice and by advocating for East European Jewish

emigres, from whom successful German Jewish businessmen like Lowenthals father tended to

distance themselves. In his childhood, Lowenthals social circle was mostly Jewish, and he later,

like Horkheimer, experienced antisemitism as a soldier. After the war, Lowenthal was part of the

lively left-wing Jewish intellectual circles around the charismatic Rabbi Nobel, Frieda
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Reichmanns psychoanalytic Sanatorium, the Zionist youth group the KJV (Kartell jdischer

Verbingungen), and the Frankfurt Freies Jdishes Lehrhaus, among whom such prominent

Jewish scholars as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Abraham Heschel participated.

Lowenthal also studied with Neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen, by whom he was

profoundly influenced. Lowenthals early essay Die Lehren von China, questioned the idea of

a Jewish state in Palestine given Arab resistance (28).

The third figure, Erich Fromm, had the most religious upbringing of the five thinkers

addressed in the chapter, and was brought up in an observant Orthodox family with a lineage of

rabbis on both sides, though his father was a businessman. Fromm moved in many of the circles

as his friend Lowenthal, including the Rabbi Nobel circle, Reichmanns Sanatorium (with

Fromm eventually marrying Reichmann), some Zionist youth circles, and the Lehrhaus. Perhaps

Jacobs could go a bit further in examining Fromms role in founding and shaping some of these

circles, especially the Lehrhaus, but the section on Fromm is informative and rich.

The fourth figure, Henryk Grossman, was brought into the Institute under Carl Grnberg

before Horkheimers directorship. Grossman was an East European Jew who had been involved

in a group in Poland akin to the Russian Bund (Jewish, socialist, non-Zionist), but Grossman

later shifted to a more mainline Communist allegiance. As Jacobs points out, this was a common

path (or live option) as well: A large number of those Marxists of Jewish origin that had earlier

been in the Bund were radicalized by the Bolshevik revolution (40).

Friedrich Pollock, fifth in Jacobss list, did not even see himself as Jewish. However, as

Jacobs points out, Pollocks path to being non-Jewish was distinctly Jewish, an insistent

assimilation and secular Marxism. Jacobs classifies Pollock as a non-Jewish Jew, a term

coined by Isaac Deutscher to describe a generation of Marxists and others who, like Spinoza
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before them, perceived themselves as transcending Judaism from within in the name of

universalism, while remaining committed to Jewish ethical and messianic (transforming and

repairing the world) principles.

In the second chapter, Jacobs explores the antisemitism research of the Institute. Unlike

Thomas Wheatland and Neil McLaughlin, who place more emphasis on economic factors in the

Institutes decision to study antisemitism, Jacobs argues that Horkheimer also had deep

theoretical reasons for interest in the problem of antisemitism. Although Jacobs admits that the

Institutes grant proposal and findings were tailored to meet the American Jewish Committees

(AJC) views to obtain funding, Horkheimer and the AJC fundamentally agreed that antisemitism

(or what the Institute called a new antisemitism) was linked to totalitarianism and a hatred of

democracy. Some in the Institute, however, such as Paul Massing, preferred a more traditional

Marxist analysis about the role of antisemitism in dividing the working class (70).

Jacobs analyzes a number of the Institutes texts on antisemitism during this period,

including the Elements of Antisemitism chapter in Horkheimer and Adornos Dialectic of

Enlightenment and the Institutes three book contributions to the AJCs Studies in Prejudice

series: The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno et.al., Prophets of Deceit by Leo Lowenthal and

Norbert Guterman, and Rehearsal for Destruction by Paul Massing. For each of the three books

for the Studies in Prejudice series, Jacobs points out that the Horkheimer circle used its

knowledge of the culture industry and its growing awareness of public relations to gain

publicity for the series, for example by getting Thomas Mann to publish a review that was likely

ghostwritten by Horkheimer. Jacobs is particularly attuned to the reception of each book and the

reviews it received. He closes the second chapter with a look at how Adorno rediscovered a

sense of Jewishness as a result of the Holocaust.

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In the third and final chapter, Jacobs outlines the views on Israel of Marcuse, Fromm,

Horkheimer, and Lowenthal. Although none of the thinkers could be classified as Zionists after

the foundation of the state of Israel, their responses to Israel differed in the postwar years.

Interestingly, Jacobs finds that of the four thinkers, the greater his encounter with Jewish

thought, the more critical each was of Israel.

Of the four, Fromm was the most influenced by Jewish religious thought and tradition as

well as being the most radical on Israel: ardently anti-Zionist, polemically socialist and an

activist for peace, and speaking out in favor of a binational (one-state) solution. Fromms

opposition to the Jewish state was rooted in his understanding of Judaism as an exiled, diasporic

people committed to bringing about the messianic age of justice and peace for all peoples. He

made clear that he viewed the Israeli state as a false Messiah and an abandonment of Jewish

principles.

Herbert Marcuse was the most supportive of Israel, and again ironically, the least rooted

in Jewish thought of the four thinkers. Marcuse supported Israel in the Suez Canal dispute and

expressed solidarity with Israel while in Germany during the Six Day War. Although he

critiqued some Israeli military operations against the Palestinians, Marcuse saw Israel as a

necessary haven for a persecuted people threatened on all sides. In fact, even Marcuses criticism

of Israeli military power was framed as a concern for the security of the Jewish state (potentially

leading to increased antisemitism), more than a human rights argument on behalf of Palestinians.

However, Marcuse was conflicted because of his sympathies with national liberation struggles,

like that of the Palestinians, a point Jacobs touches upon briefly but could address further. On the

other hand, Marcuse did not view Israel as a potential tool of U.S. imperialism and suggested

that U.S. imperialism would be more likely to ally with Arab nationalism.
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The last two thinkers, Lowenthal and Horkheimer, Jacobs locates between Fromm and

Marcuse on the spectrum. Lowenthal and Horkheimer did not go as far as Fromm by calling for a

one state solution; each supported Israels existence as an independent state but was critical of

certain policies. Lowenthal and Horkheimer also lay between Fromm and Marcuse in their use of

Jewish ideas to engage the question of Israel, using more than Marcuse but less than Fromm.

Lowenthal and Horkheimer saw Israel as a disappointment, if a necessary one. For Lowenthal, it

suffered (in the words of Ernst Simon) an intoxication with normality (145), and for

Horkheimer, Israel had adapted to the state of the world, becoming a nation structured

fundamentally like every other nation (140-1). Lowenthal, like Fromm, was concerned that the

Israeli state might represent an abandonment of the ideals of Jewish messianism, and

Horkheimer felt that the Israeli state might violate the key Jewish prohibition on graven images

(Bildverbot), worrying that Israel might constitute a kind of idolatry.

Upon his return to Frankfurt after World War II, Horkheimer reconnected with the local

Jewish community and Jewish organizations but retired early and left Germany in the 1950s,

concluding that University of Frankfurt and Germany were still deeply antisemitic. (To what

extent his views on this matter may have been influenced by U.S.-funded projects is not

discussed by Jacobs.)

In conclusion, The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism is a very clearly

written and highly researched text that will be of use to many in Critical Theory. Jacobss careful

use of letters and other documents to discern the underlying concerns of the Institute about the

antisemitism project and his background research on the views of the four thinkers on Israel is

particularly noteworthy. While much of the biographical data in the first chapter can be found
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elsewhere, it is employed effectively for Jacobss argument and should give pause to those who

wish to discount the influence of Jewish thought and culture on the Frankfurt School.

There are two more particular merits of the book. First, Jacobs makes use of the work of

Michael Lowy and Richard Wolin, whose work is too often neglected in this area. Although

Jacobs does not cite Neil McLaughlin, he avoids the origin myths of the Frankfurt School that

McLaughlin critiques; Jacobss book is neither a hagiography nor an expos. Second, Jacobs

offers an appreciative but critical reading of Gershom Scholem, whose accounts of Jewish

mysticism and the Frankfurt School are often accepted unquestioningly. And for those of us, like

Stephen Eric Bronner, who hold a pro-Enlightenment vision of Critical Theory, it is worth noting

that Jacobs does not slip into viewing Judaism as irrationalism or even romanticism. As my

recent book points out, when Fromm explores Marxs fully developed humanism, he finds

Jewish messianism nested in it.

Two questions not addressed in Jacobss book will need to be addressed in the future by

scholars in this area. How does the Frankfurt Schools Jewishness conflict or coincide with its

interest in Freuds thought? (Fromm, the one most concerned with the issue over decades, will be

of great help here, and Marcuse is likewise important.) Secondly, more work should be done by

intellectual historians on differing strands of Jewish thought influencing the Frankfurt School

and Weimar Judaism, particularly by exploring Fromms argument that there are competing

messianisms, a prophetic (pro-Enlightenment) variant and a more romantic or mythic,

catastrophic messianism. Jacobss book offers scholars an enduring resource in future work on

the Jewishness of the Frankfurt School as these and other questions can continue to be examined.
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Works Cited

Braune, J (2014) Erich Fromms Revolutionary Hope: Prophetic Messianism as a Critical

Theory of the Future. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2014.

Bronner, S (2002) Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.

Lowy, M (1992) Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe: A

Study in Elective Affinity. Trans. Hope Heaney. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

McLaughlin, N (1999) Origin Myths in the Social Sciences: Fromm, the Frankfurt School and

the Emergence of Critical Theory. Canadian Journal of Sociology 24(1): 109-39.

Wheatland, T (2009) The Frankfurt School in Exile. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Wolin, R (2006) The Frankfurt School Revisited and Other Essays on Politics and Society. New

York: Routledge.

-- (2001) Heideggers Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Lwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert

Marcuse. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

-- (1994) Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption. Berkeley: University of California

Press.