Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century

by James Loeffler

Overview

A stunningly original look at the forgotten Jewish political roots of contemporary international human rights, told through the moving stories of five key activists
 
The year 2018 marks the seventieth anniversary of two momentous events in twentieth-century history: the birth of the State of Israel and the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both remain tied together in the ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global antisemitism, and American foreign policy. Yet the surprising connections between Zionism and the origins of international human rights are completely unknown today.
 
In this riveting account, James Loeffler explores this controversial history through the stories of five remarkable Jewish founders of international human rights, following them from the prewar shtetls of eastern Europe to the postwar United Nations, a journey that includes the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, the founding of Amnesty International, and the UN resolution of 1975 labeling Zionism as racism. The result is a book that challenges long-held assumptions about the history of human rights and offers a startlingly new perspective on the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300217247
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	05/04/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

James Loeffler is associate professor of history and Jewish studies at the University of Virginia and former Robert A. Savitt Fellow at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Table of Contents

Prologue: A Pogrom in Lemberg ix

Part 1 Emergence

1 A Jewish Magna Carta 3

2 The Cry of the Peoples 32

3 Golden Shackles 58

Part 2 Convergence

4 Jewish Human Rights 85

5 Unfinished Victory 113

6 The Failed Partitions 143

Part 3 Divergence

7 The Limits of Neutrality 171

8 The Road to the Kingdom 202

9 The Swastika Epidemic 230

10 Prisoners of Zion 261

Epilogue: The Precious Gift 295

List of Abbreviations 303

Notes 305

Acknowledgments 341

Index 347

Editorial Reviews

This superb book is a homage to visionary cosmopolitans dedicated to the creation of human rights in a world too often lacking in humanity.”—Thane Rosenbaum, Washington Post

“‘Human rights’ has . . . become a collection of attitudes and sociological signifiers, a vague term to be dismissed by realists and swooned over by idealists. James Loeffler’s book Rooted Cosmopolitans is a bracing and nuanced attempt to correct this—to restore a grave, complex, powerful idea by tracing it to the people, most of them Jews, who argued it into existence.”—Martin Peretz, Wall Street Journal

“Loeffler weaves together in vivid detail and captivating narrative the biographies of five figures whose careers traversed the trajectories of Zionist politics and internationalist commitment. . . . Loeffler’s recovery of the Zionist roots of postwar international law sets the stage for the central argument of his book—a reinterpretation of the relationship between Zionism and human rights.”—Gil Rubin, Los Angeles Review of Books

“There is indeed, as James Loeffler shows in Rooted Cosmopolitans, a strong historical link between European Jews and the struggle for human rights in the twentieth century.”—David Shulman, New York Review of Books

“A thorough, well-grounded, and often surprising history. . . . A revealing account of complex aspirations for global justice.”—Kirkus Reviews

“James Loeffler focuses on a crucial part of the history of human rights, and one that earlier scholarship has neglected: the Jewish dimension. His study is of the first importance, not just for the history of human rights, but for understanding modern Jewish politics.”—Adam Kirsch, Tablet

“Loeffler . . . reclaims [the] lost world of Zionist internationalism, a moral asset illustrating the cosmopolitan nature of Jewish nationhood.”—Colin Shindler, Jerusalem Post

“Uniformly absorbing portraits of significant Jewish figures navigating the turbulent events of 20th-century history. . . . Their lives . . . bear out Loeffler’s seemingly counterintuitive thesis that several of the key figures in the international human rights movement were also Zionists who viewed the protection of Jews through the lens of international law, and the protection of Jews by means of a Jewish state, not as clashing but as complementary goals.”—Elliott Abrams, Mosaic

“A work of striking scholarship and originality. . . . Rooted Cosmopolitans is not only an important and remarkable book of history; it’s a timely reminder of the relationship between ideals and power.”—Bob Goldfarb, Jewish Book Council

“This work represents the finest example of transnationalism, whereby the activism of the five main subject demonstrates how localized events have shaped the development of human rights internationally. Rooted Cosmopolitans is required reading for scholars and students interested in modern human rights, Zionism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”—Amy Weiss, Religious Studies Review

“Loeffler’s masterful attempt to interpret [his subjects’] legal thinking against the backdrop of their personal circumstances makes for riveting reading and a fascinating work of history.”—Doreen Lustig, European Journal of International Law Blog​

“Belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in human rights or modern Jewish political thought and history. [Loeffler] marshals remarkable archival research, literary grace, and philosophical insight to recover a forgotten chapter of history (several, actually) and make us think more deeply about political ethics, both Jewish and universal.”—Yehudah Mirsky, Jewish Review of Books

“Loeffler’s account of his subjects’ collective action and achievement is original and compelling.”—Berel Lang, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Finalist for Jewish Book Council's 2018 Natan Book Award

Finalist for the 2019 PROSE awards, World History category

Recipient of the 2019 Dorothy Rosenberg Prize, sponsored by the American Historical Association

“This absorbingly narrated and brilliantly researched masterpiece reshapes Jewish and human rights history alike.”—Samuel Moyn, author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History

“James Loeffler’s pathbreaking research reconstructs the forgotten role of Jewish leaders in creating the architecture of human rights. Loeffler offers a nuanced account of the common origin of Zionism and human rights organizations—and of their increasingly tortured relationship. His story is an intellectually arresting but intensely human drama.”—William A. Galston, senior fellow, Brookings Institution

“Building on a trove of archival material, this extraordinary book challenges orthodoxies both on the right and on the left.  It has the potential to transform popular understandings of this critical period of history and is a must-read for anyone involved in Jewish communal life or human rights work.”—Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights

“Rooted Cosmopolitans is intellectual history at its most admirable. It’s daring in its ambitions to rewrite our received narratives about human rights and Zionism. Loeffler presses his arguments with unfamiliar characters and tells their fascinating stories with nuance, humanity, and verve.”—Franklin Foer, author of World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

From the Publisher

"Building on a trove of archival material, this extraordinary book challenges orthodoxies both on the right and on the left.  It has the potential to transform popular understandings of this critical period of history and is a must-read for anyone involved in Jewish communal life or human rights work."—Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director, T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
 

Jill Jacobs

Finalist for Jewish Book Council's 2018 Natan Book Award

Jewish Book Council - Natan Book Award

2018-03-20
The history of a campaign for a universal bill of human rights that generated fierce controversy.Between 1800 and 1940, argues historian Loeffler (History and Jewish Studies/Univ. of Virginia; The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire, 2010), the term "human rights" hardly appeared in international law. The phrase surfaced in the middle of World War II but had little to do with the Holocaust. As reflected in the 1948 adoption of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the idea was intended "to replace the discredited minority rights ideal" with a broadly applicable manifesto. Despite being "the brainchild of American policy makers and intellectuals," the pursuit of human rights involved five Jewish leaders whom the author profiles in a thorough, well-grounded, and often surprising history: Polish-born Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht, a lawyer who insisted that any declaration of human rights must be preceded by laws; American philanthropist Jacob Blaustein, a soft-spoken oil tycoon who became chairman of the American Jewish Committee; Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig, a British Zionist leader; Lithuanian lawyer and newspaper publisher Jacob Robinson, "one of Europe's foremost champions of minority rights" and "the ultimate internationalist"; and Amnesty International founder Peter Benenson, a Zionist youth activist who sympathized with Palestinian Arab refugees, a convert to Catholic mysticism, and a lawyer "disenchanted with the law." Defining and applying human rights incited vehement debate. At the first session of the Commission on Human Rights, held in 1947, members began by arguing "about the philosophical meaning of rights." A declaration draft that emerged contained 400 pages of commentary, each revealing "more ideological clashes." A Saudi representative denounced it "as a forcible imposition of ‘Western civilization' on the Islamic world" because it advocated freedom of marriage and religion. Inextricably entangled in the ongoing debates was the connection of human rights to anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Middle East conflict. Zionism, recast as a "symbol of moral parochialism" was seen "as the singular enemy of international human rights."A revealing account of complex aspirations for global justice.

Kirkus Reviews