Lipski - Anti semitic insult?

[ChrisGeorge]

It is of course possible that the utterance of 'Lipski' in this instance was a straightforward anti-semitic insult from non-Jew to Jew, indeed this remains the most likely scenario, but I summise that it can't be ignored that it may have been a sign of anti-Jewish conflict, perhaps shouted from established 'higher class' Jew to a lower class, more recent arrival? An overtly 'foreign Jew' perhaps...(opens can of worms and stands well back).

There was considerable conflict between the established, religious Anglo-Jewish establishment and radical non-religious Jewish socialists and anarchists. In fact there were street skirmishes between the two factions on religious holidays when the radicals openly marched on the Great Synagogue. So the scenario you mention is not inconceivable. The Anglo Jews whose families had been in England for generations felt uneasy with the newcomers generally, and particularly with the socialist/anarchist Jewish elements.

Chris

[tnb]

Thanks for the support Chris! I did hope you would pop on to this thread when I was typing it as I know this is to some extent one of your pet subjects (by which I mean no denigration).

Re the foreign jew 'can of worms', it was a reference to a theory I have long held that the specific wording 'foreign jew' or 'polish jew' mooted by the police at the time may have been more carefully worded than a lot of people realise. After all, the vast majority of Jews WERE foreign anyway, to the average Victorian Brit, so in some ways it is a bit of tautology - a bit like saying 'an American Yankie'. Ok all Americans aren't Yankies, as all foreigners weren't Jewish, but most Yankies will be Americans and most Jews would be 'foreign'. So why bother with the extra adjective? I suggest it may have been a deliberate, albeit diplomatic reference to a 'recently arrived Jew'.

Any thoughts?

[ChrisGeorge]

Hello tnb

I don't think the police wording "foreign Jew" or "Polish Jew" or what Sir Robert Anderson specifically wrote in his memoirs, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, was carefully worded at all. Remember we are talking about a time that was vastly different to the politically sensitive and politically correct era of today, when the police are supposedly more attuned to newly arrived immigrants.

I think part of the problem with the police attitudes of 1888 to the newly arrived Jews and also about the supposed attempted identification of Kosminski is their very lack of sympathy for how a Jew of Eastern European background might feel, given the historical background of repression, anti-semitism, and bigotry experienced by the Jews.

For example, the situation in regard to the three witnesses in Duke Street, Lawende, Levy, and Harris, discloses varying degrees of not wanting to get involved. Lawende may not have seen more than the other two men but the other two men shied away from helping the police. Perhaps not because, as is generally thought, they recognized the man with Eddowes, but because of that historical background of anti-Semitism.

Now, Stewart P. Evans has pointed out to me that Anderson was not necessarily an anti-Semite because he carried on an active correspondence with the acting Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler (1839–1911). Anderson was, as you probably know, a noted religious scholar. But it is one thing to maintain correspondence with a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community and quite another thing to have any active understanding or even knowledge of the poor Eastern European Jewish population.

Anderson was, after all, a product of the era in which he lived, and as a member of Britain's upper crust and also the elite of Scotland Yard and government bureaucracy, he undoubtedly looked down on those at the bottom of society, and particularly I think poor non-Christian immigrants. This, I think, possibly colored his attitude toward the identification that he alleges took place, as well as his sweeping statement that "it is a remarkable fact that people of that class in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice".

When his book was serialized in Blackwood's Magazine in 1910, his dubious statements provoked a series of rebukes from an editorialist named Mentor in the Jewish Chronicle believed to have been Leopold Greenberg (1862–1931), editor-in-chief of the Chronicle from 1907 to 1931. See http://www.casebook.org/press_report...c19100304.html

Chris

[Robert]

Hi Chris

Just on Lawende, Levy and Harris, my understanding was that Levy, the most reluctant of the three (if we assume that Harris saw liitle anyway) was born here.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Chris

Just on Lawende, Levy and Harris, my understanding was that Levy, the most reluctant of the three (if we assume that Harris saw liitle anyway) was born here.

Hi Robert

Thanks. I didn't mean to imply that any of the three men were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. Lawende was born on 9 February 1847 in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Hersch and Zirle Lawende. He came to England around 1871, so had been in the country about 17 years by September 1888. Joseph Hyam Levy was born in Aldgate in 1842, the son of Hyam and Frances Levy, and his birth was registered in the London East district in March 1842. And as you say, Harry Harris was born in London, as was his father and mother, Joseph and Sarah Harris. Harris was born circa 1843.

Chris

[Chava]

What a great thread!

A few thoughts:

- I have never heard a Jew call another Jew a 'kike'. Ever. Or any other similar word. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I am saying that Jews tend not to use derogatory anti-semitic slurs at each other.* Slurs, yes. Anti-semitic slurs, no. In a life lived almost entirely among Jews in major Jewish populations I've never come across that. There are code-words used between Jews almost like a Masonic handshake. When I was a kid growing up in the UK I remember hearing my parents talking to another couple staying in the same hotel on holiday. The wife of the other couple said 'You're Peruvian as well?' My mother answered 'Of course!' At which I piped up and said 'But Mummy, we're English! We're not Peruvian...' Hilarity ensued. These code-words are unmistakable but they are not epithetic.

- That having been said, Lipski was accused of killing his wife and being all kinds of nasty things. So it's entirely possible that Mr Jacoby was hurling the nastiest epithet he could find at the man who he believed to have debauched his daughter. Epithet, yes. But not anti-semitic. At least not as used by Mr Jacoby.

- The more established Jewish community far lived away from the East End. As far as I can gather, this community was horrified by the Eastern European Jews pouring into the country, and spent a lot of time and money trying to educate its youth into some semblance of English gentlepeople. The Jews Free School was established for just this purpose. And there was a huge struggle between the Communists/Anarchists/Freethinkers etc and the more orthodox members of the East End community. The Jews living in the heart of Ripperland were mostly Eastern European immigrants from Poland and Galicia.

- Whoever wrote that Sporting Life thing was probably Jewish himself...

*Of course, with the rise of 'gangsta' language and behaviour, it's entirely possible that some young male Jews have taken to use the word 'kike' among themselves as African-Americans use the word N.....r But that would be a very recent development.