Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

Strategic Alliances for a Secure, Connected, and Prosperous Region

Menu

The Jewish Experience as an Influence on Hans J. Morganthau’s Realism

April 4, 2000

Hans J. Morgenthau was probably the foremost exponent of the school of political realism in the academic discipline of international relations in the United States and has left a permanent imprint on the thinking of both theoreticians and practitioners in the field. A product of a European education, he fled Nazi Germany for the U.S. during the Hitler years, and had a distinguished career at the University of Chicago and the City University of New York. This article explores certain little known aspects of the Jewish experience which affected him such as the impact of searing anti-Semitism, and his subsequent activism in Jewish causes. It argues, based on a comparison and analysis of both Jewish and general writings, that the Jewish experience influenced Morgenthau's "realist" worldview in terms of a disillusionment with enlightenment expectations of harmony and progress, and accentuated his appreciation of the power phenomenon human relations.

The Jewish Experience of Oppression as Portrayed in the Old Testament: Leadership and Survival Strategies

April 2, 1991 | Shirley Castelnuovo

This article examines two bargaining (accommodationist) types of leaders, the shtadlan and the court Jew, using Hebrew Bible and post Biblical stories. Its focus is the notion of obligation as a way of under standing how leadership types can maximize the survival strategies of an oppressed group. Leaders organize, articulate, propose strategies, represent their group to the oppressor, and in general are critical to the survival and identity of the group. Different types of leaders differently affect a group's sense of its identity and sense of efficacy. This difference relates to the way obligation ties between members and between members and leaders are reconfirmed and validated.