Freud’s Moses and Fromm’s Freud: Erich Fromm’s silence on Freud’s Moses – a silence of negation or a silence of consent?

ABSTRACT

In 1939 Sigmund Freud published his latest book, Moses and Monotheism, which is his most unusual and problematic work. In Moses Freud offers four groundbreaking claims in regard to the biblical story: [a] Moses was an Egyptian [b] The origin of monotheism is not Judaism [c] Moses was murdered by the Jews [d] The murder sparked a constant sense of unconscious guilt, which eventually contributed to the rational and ethical development of Jewish monotheism. As is well known, Freud’s Moses received extremely negative reviews from Jewish thinkers. The social psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, who wrote extensively on Freud as well as on Judaism and the biblical narrative, did not explicitly express his position on Freud’s latest work. This paper offers explanations for Fromm’s roaring silence on Freud’s Moses.

KEYWORDS:

• Judaism and psychoanalysis
• Moses and monotheism
• Jewish philosophy

In 1939 Freud published his latest book, Moses and Monotheism¹, which is his most unusual and problematic work². Moses’ character has occupied Freud for almost his entire life. In Moses Freud offers four groundbreaking claims in regard to the biblical story: a. Moses was an Egyptian b. The origin of monotheism is not Judaism c. Moses was murdered³ by the Jews (Die Juden) d. The murder sparked a constant sense of unconscious guilt, which eventually contributed to the rational and ethical (Geistigkeit) development of Jewish monotheism.

Among Jewish thinkers, the book drew harsh reviews. Martin Buber in the introduction to his Moses [1946], writes: ‘That a scholar of so much importance in his own field as Sigmund Freud could permit himself to issue so unscientific a work, based on groundless hypotheses, as his “Moses and Monotheism” (1939), is regrettable.’⁴ Buber was aware of Freud’s popularity and tremendous global influence. His own Moses can be seen as a project dedicated to correcting Freud’s historical mistake⁵. Morris Raphael Cohen writes, ‘If anyone else had written this book, we should have been justified in dismissing it as the work of an opinionated crank’⁶. Yehezkel Kaufmann, in The Religion of Israel, rejects the historical value of Freud’s Moses and describes it as vanity and nonsense⁷. The philosopher Leo Strauss admits that he decided to respond to Freud’s Moses only because he was ‘shocked’ by Freud’s presentation of the events of the Jewish ancestors in Ancient Egypt⁸. Ehud Luz writes that Strauss’s criticism of Freud’s Moses is ‘fatal’⁹. Other early interpreters, among them Gershom Scholem and Paul Ricouer,¹⁰ criticized Freud’s Moses for denying the Jewish people their national ideals. And yet, Freud’s Moses is certainly not a book to be ignored. As Mosche Wulff, a close collaborator of Freud’s, writes: ‘I must confess that no other work of Freud affected me so much as this! In no other work is the full greatness of his personality so striking as here. […] with his last breath he hurried to sketch out all that gushed from the world of his thoughts and his soul.’¹¹

Despite the endless controversy that Freud’s Moses has spawned, nearly all scholars agree on two things: [a] The main theme of the book is Jewish identity and attitude to tradition and collective memory, and [b] Freud’s book is a psychoanalytical attempt to understand the basis of modern anti-Semitism. Erich Fromm addresses only the first matter in more detail:

“ … during the time of the Hitler rule, Freud tried to prove that Moses had not been a Hebrew but an Egyptian. What could have prompted Freud to deprive the Jews of their greatest hero at the very time when a powerful barbarian was trying to extinguish them? […] One answer seems certain: [it was] a fascination and identification with Moses. […] Freud’s preoccupation with Moses was rooted in the deep unconscious identification with him. Freud, like the great leader of the Jews, had led the people to the promised land, without reaching it himself; he had experienced their ingratitude and scorn, without giving up on his mission.”¹²

The question that concerns me is: What is Fromm’s position on the content of Freud’s Moses? Surprisingly, in all his writings that deal with Freud’s relation to religion and Judaism, he refrained from referring to Freud’s latest book. In You shall be as Gods, Fromm mentions it only briefly:

“The question of the historical Moses, especially the point treated by Freud, that the story tends to show by implication that he was really an Egyptian, does not interest us here as we are not dealing with the historicity of the biblical text.” ¹³

Most surprising is that in Sigmund Freud’s Mission, Fromm’s most comprehensive indication to Freud’s Moses, despite the claim that Freud considered himself a leader and unconsciously identified himself with Moses, ‘his hero’, Fromm does not express his own opinion of its content.

The idea that Freud identified with Moses was stated by Ernst Simon already in 1957. In fact, Fromm credits Simon for reading his manuscript and advising ‘a number of critical suggestions’¹⁴. However, there is a significant difference between them: Simon points out some positive psychological aspects of Freud’s Moses. He claims that, on the one hand, Freud’s Moses can be seen as an expression of Freud’s distancing himself from rabbinic Judaism, on the other hand, Freud’s attitude to the Jewish faith was ‘not entirely negative,’ and that ‘Freud speaks here [in Moses] like a great Jewish spiritual patriot.’¹⁵ We will not find a similar reference to Freud’s Moses in Fromm’s works. For him, Freud ‘deprived the Jews of their greatest hero’ during the Nazi time, and is characterized by his ‘passion for truth and his uncompromising faith in reason’¹⁶. That is, according to Fromm and unlike Simon, Freud is a ‘great man’, and a ‘world reformer’ exactly because he has transcended his national-religious feelings¹⁷. However, neither Simon nor Fromm offers a profound biblical-historical or philosophical-religious confrontation with Freud’s challenging claims.

I would like to suggest a few options in order to understand Fromm’s silence on Freud’s claims in Moses. My paper will develop by discussing each of the following hypotheses: Fromm’s silence indicates: [1] disinterest in, or indifference to, the content of Freud’s Moses; [2] agreement with its content; [3] negation of its content, and [4] Fromm’s silence expresses partial agreement with Freud’s harsh claims in Moses.

[1] Fromm’s silence indicates disinterest or indifference. In my opinion, this hypothesis is acceptable only if Fromm had no particular interest in the biblical or historical Moses, hence he was not inspired nor threatened by Freud’s claims. However, Fromm had an intense interest in Moses (and the Jewish faith), as this is expressed in numerous of his works¹⁸. For example, Fromm puts Moses on the list of the greatest spiritual teachers of mankind, the ‘awakened ones’ which granted great teachings based on rational penetration into human nature and the conditions necessary for its complete development. Moses alongside Akhenaten, Confucius, Lao-Tze, Buddha, Isaiah, Socrates, and Jesus¹⁹. Moses appears in the discussions in which Fromm pragmatically seeks to underline the similarities between the different religions, emphasizing their ethical aspects and practical results of their teaching. Here, according to Fromm and similarly to Freud’s approach, Moses can be seen as a key-figure for understanding Jewish monotheism. However, Fromm does not give Moses such a central role as Freud does in characterizing Judaism or its origins²⁰.

Fromm writes about Moses in the discussion of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, the journey in the desert, and the Golden Calf. These stories illustrate in Fromm’s view the matter of ‘escape from freedom’. Moses’s short absence on Sinai mountain leads to loss of hope among the people and regression to a former slave consciousness and submission to idolatry²¹. For Fromm, Moses – who received the revelation of the nameless God (= element x), who liberated Israel from slavery in Egypt, who accepted the Torah on Mount Sinai and handed it over to the Israelites – but nevertheless did not enter the promised land, illustrating the idea that ‘spiritual’ development is gradual. Namely, that a good and healthy society cannot be established in a short period of time²².

In Man for Himself, Fromm interprets Moses’ mission in Egypt in the context of liberation from submission to irrational authority²³. Moses is thus an example of a person who is not fearful of losing the comfort and security that exists in a life devoid of freedom. The story of the parting of the Red Sea is presented by Fromm not as it is described in the Hebrew Bible, but as it is shown in the rabbinic literature. The biblical commentators emphasize that not Moses is the hero of the parting of the Red Sea, rather, the event took place on the basis of relationships between God and the individual²⁴. Following this, for Fromm, Moses is indeed the model of rational faith, however, this faith is ‘a character trait, rather than the content of a belief in something’²⁵, and should be realized by any individual. By Focusing on biblical interpretation rather than biblical criticism and biblical history, Fromm, similarly to other psychoanalysts, is closer to the traditional and philosophical approach in Jewish studies²⁶.

Fromm’s longest discussion of the figure of Moses appears in You Shall Be as Gods, where he discusses the development of the concept of God in the Hebrew Bible²⁷. For Fromm, Moses constitutes an important development in the liberation of God from anthropomorphic representations that eventually led to the crystallization of the pure monotheistic principle – which is, according to Fromm, first and foremost the negation of idols and idolatry²⁸. In other places, Fromm focuses also on Moses’ individual traits. For example, Moses’s refusal in the midst of the burning bush to the divine command to go on a national mission (Ex. 3:11) is interpreted by Fromm as an example of a man liberated from narcissism²⁹.

Moses is indeed an important spiritual leader, however, Fromm is careful not to attribute a national role to Moses. For him, Moses can be seen as the ancient forerunner of a correct understanding of man’s relationship with God³⁰, and as an important agent in the promotion of universal consciousness³¹. Perhaps most noticeable is Fromm’s presentation of Moses as an essential link in the history of ideas (which peak is the X experience), and not in the history of Israel. Indeed, Moses brought social liberation from slavery. However, according to Fromm, this form of Marxist liberation is essentially important to the formation of consciousness free from idolatrous elements, which is the necessary foundation on the way to a sane society. Yet, Fromm neglected that Moses is the founder of the Jewish people as a nation, which is acknowledged in the Jewish tradition³².

Fromm’s words that Freud’s ‘old dream, to be the Moses who showed the human race the promised land, the conquest of the Id by the Ego, and the way to this conquest’³³, gives the impression that for Fromm, there is a resemblance between the biblical Moses and the contemporary Freud: both acted and contributed to the development of the entire human race, transcending their own national identity.

In conclusion, Fromm’s silence on the content of Freud’s Moses is not based on a lack of interest in the biblical Moses. On the contrary, Fromm has a keen interest in Moses: his actions, his ideas, and his personality. Moses plays a central role in Fromm’s definition of escape from freedom, in his conception of God, x experience, and idolatry as a modern phenomenon.

[2] Fromm’s silence indicates agreement. In other words, perhaps Fromm thought that Freud’s Moses was written well enough, and Fromm did not see any need to diminish it, correct it or add to it. I believe this speculation cannot be fully correct. In You Shall as Gods, Fromm offers a lengthy discussion of the biblical Moses, which contradicts Freud’s basic claims. Fromm writes that Moses was ‘aware of his Hebrew ancestry’ (p. 73) – that is, Moses was not Egyptian as is claimed in Freud’s Moses. In regard to Freud’s opinion that Moses was murdered by the Jews, Fromm approaches this topic from a different perspective, and does not enter into the discussion about the (biblical or historical) cause of Moses’ death. For Fromm, Moses’s death symbolizes the biblical recognition that in order for a ‘spiritual’ revolution to succeed, gradual progress is needed³⁴. The biblical story and its interpretation are used by Fromm in the analysis of modern social history. The social failures in light of the rapid transition from the feudalism period to industrial society and capitalism, and the inability to understand and realize socialism, are recurring themes in his writings. Fromm goes a step further, as an extension of this idea, nevertheless with a focus on Moses’s character: ‘The prophet who even for a moment puts himself in the center shows that he is not ready to be a leader in freedom, but only to freedom. Joshua is to continue in his place.’³⁵

It is possible to find references among biblical commentators’ to Moses’s character – his tumultuous and hurried temper, his cowardice, and to his rigidness³⁶. However, Fromm’s interpretation, which connects Moses’ trait of – putting ‘himself in the center’ – to his death, seems far-reaching. A widespread opinion in rabbinic literature is that the punishment, not to enter the promised land, was disproportionate to the sin and that in the Bible a small sin was attached to Moses, as a mark of his earthly imperfection³⁷. Fromm radicalizes those approaches and links Moses’s sin directly to his death. As if Moses’s death was premature, and came to him as punishment³⁸. Possibly Fromm was inspired by Hermann Cohen. ‘Moses’, writes Cohen, ‘had to become a sinner’; ‘God alone establishes a national abode for monotheism. Moses must die before this takes place’³⁹. In my opinion, Fromm’s explanation for Moses’ death is interesting and even radical, but it is not as shocking and provoking as Freud’s description, and, generally, Fromm’s interpretation does not destabilize the ‘Jewish faith’.

In conclusion, it is unlikely that Fromm’s silence on Freud’s claims stems from an agreement. According to Fromm, Moses’s death must be understood symbolically and philosophically in the context of ‘gradual progress’ in social changes, and not historically-psychoanalytically as a repressed traumatic event.

In addition, Fromm’s claim that Freud wrote his book out of unconscious identification with Moses, can be seen as an indirect criticism, according to which Freud’s Moses suffers from a lack of scientific objectivity, which then justifies his decision not to engage with its contents systematically. To conclude, I am confident that we can reject the assumption that Fromm’s silence indicates full agreement with Freud’s claims in Moses.

[3] Fromm’s silence indicates a conscious negation of Freud’s claims in Moses. Since we presume that Fromm was not indifferent to the topic at hand, however, he does not show any clear agreement with it, we can further speculate that his silence indicates a conscious negation. However, we are facing a major problem, given that we cannot find any plain explicit support for this claim in his writing. Fromm is a radical critical thinker, an eclectic thinker but not liberal. He does not compromise with what he sees as the truth. Generally, this active position is embodied in Fromm’s marginalization, and refusal to confine his work to a single academic discipline or to accept the authority of any school of thought⁴⁰. However, as a ‘Neo-Freudian’, and admirer of Freud, we may conclude that his silence should not be seen as a passive consent nor complete negation, but rather, as a sign of indecisiveness. If we stretch the hypothesis cord, we can assume that this indecisiveness might even indicate discomfort with Freud’s claims, and even embarrassment or confusion. He writes: ‘What could provoke Freud to write a book, far away from his field?’⁴¹ We, in turn, can ask what could have provoked Fromm to understand Freud’s Moses only as biographical research based on biblical historicism and not as a study in psychoanalysis and religion?

In my opinion, Fromm did not really believe that Freud was proposing research in the field of biblical history. With this minimal comment, he frees himself from the obligation to seriously treat Moses psychoanalytically in the broader sense. It can be seen as can be a kind of justification for neglecting the overly complex mission.

My speculation is, that Fromm did not want to raise the ghosts of his early article ‘Der Sabbat’ published in 1927 in Freud’s Imago. An article whose conclusions and consequences might be problematic, and for him perhaps mentally complex and unpleasant. Namely, dealing with the ‘murder of the father’ in Freud’s Moses means returning to the issues that Fromm dealt with decades ago, in his first (and perhaps immature) research paper, where he concludes that ‘the Sabbath was originally intended to commemorate the killing of the father and the conquest of the mother’⁴². In fact, there is a natural continuity between Fromm’s interpretation of the Sabbath, and Freud’s interpretation of Moses. In both cases, the foundation of Judaism as moral monotheism is based on trauma – the Oedipal narrative of ‘the murder of the father’, and on ambivalent feelings, guilt, and the process of the ‘return of the repressed’ – which eventually led to the strengthening of moral and intellectual values in Judaism. However, there is a significant difference: In Fromm’s article, the murdered father is God. Freud, over a decade later, does not mention Fromm’s early, modest and provocative contribution. Most importantly, Fromm returns to discuss the Sabbath in his later works, though he does not even mention his own early paper on the subject⁴³. It is conceivable to assume that his later relatively extensive preoccupation with the Sabbath stemmed from the need to conceal and even bury his early, and conceivably immature article on the subject. Did Fromm feel threatened by Freud’s Moses, because he saw it as a challenging invitation to re-examine his early neglected article that he perhaps believed should remain neglected and forgotten? Did fear prevent him from engaging with the psychoanalytic value and meanings of Freud’s Moses?

Within the past three decades, there has been an increasing number of studies emphasizing the psychoanalytic value of Freud’s Moses⁴⁴. For example, Richard Bernstein writes that we should read Moses ‘as contributing to a further understanding of the dynamic conflicts of id, ego, and super-ego. The genesis of morality, the psychic formation of conscience, the achievement of civilization, and Der Fortschritt in der Geistigkeit’⁴⁵. As stated before, Fromm refers to the ‘historical’ Egyptian-Moses claim only briefly and explicitly, to the claim concerning the Egyptian origins of monotheism only vaguely, and to the murder of Moses not at all – the last of which is the claim with the greatest psychoanalytic weight. I would like to suggest two possible reasons why Fromm was not empathic enough to realize the psychoanalytic contribution of Freud’s Moses. [a] Fromm’s departure from Freud’s drive theory [b] a sociopolitical reason: Freud’s conceptualization of the source of anti-Semitism, and his affirmative attitude toward Zionism.

[a] Fromm’s departure from Freud’s drive theory is probably a key motive that prevents him from referring to Freud’s claims. Namely, for Fromm, it was not essential to analyze the story of Moses and the Israelites on the basis of ‘rebellion against the Father’. Fromm moved away from the conservative Freudian psychoanalytic method, and the pure oedipal approach he presents to religion and Judaism in his first scientific publication – Der Sabbat [1927] – does not reflect his later thought on religion in general and on Judaism in particular⁴⁶. The speculation that Fromm would agree to the use of the Oedipal theory in describing religion or religiousness, in any case, can not be entirely true.

Freud’s assumption that a child is bound to the parent of the opposite sex, and that mental illness results if the child does not overcome this infantile fixation, is extended by Fromm beyond the family nucleus to the wide sphere of interpersonal relations. He internalized Freud’s discovery on the subject of incest as the ‘kernel of neurosis’⁴⁷ and continues Freud’s initial call to tie ‘libidinal-psychoanalysis’ with human existence, freedom, and ethics (e.g., this connection occurs with the concept of the ‘pathology of normalcy’)⁴⁸. He writes, ‘the development of mankind is the development from incest to freedom’⁴⁹. However, Fromm makes a conceptual reversal: for Fromm relatedness is a basic, essential, and primary need, whereas libido, ‘the instinctual energy’, is secondary. In his definition of ‘the human nature,’ Fromm’s ideas are closer to Martin Buber than to Freud⁵⁰.

According to Fromm, the insight into the connection between incest and moral view has already been achieved by all great religions. In this context, he mentions the teachings of Buddha, Jesus, Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and the biblical narrative in general. According to Fromm, idolatry as described in the scriptures (i.e., worship of the forces of nature, of man-made objects or local gods) is a type of incestuous relationships. The ‘desire for the mother’ is expressed in the admiration of the powers of nature, and plowing the earth carries an erotic incestuous meaning. In this context, however, Fromm, unlike Freud, does not elaborate on the rebellion against the father. The rebellion is not against the parent who prevents libidinal access to the parent of the opposite sex. Rather, the rebellion is when he or she criticizes his or her own group and culture (as Fromm does himself, e.g., with the ‘pathology of normalcy’, ‘the sane society’, and his criticism of modern Zionism). The necessary ‘Oedipal rebellion’, if we are following Fromm’s line, is the development of a critical, reasonable, and reflective attitude toward all those cultural factors that seem to protect from the ‘frightening experience of being alone with himself and looking into the abyss of his own impotence and human impoverishment.’⁵¹.

According to Freud, monotheism reached its ethical heights after the murder of Moses, and in light of the repressed feelings of guilt that ‘the Prophets incessantly kept alive and […] became an integral part of the religious system itself’⁵². Hence, the condition for the formation of moral monotheism was the trauma. According to Freud, the development of moral and spiritual virtues is the outcome of the processes of: Ambivalence feeling towards the father – violent act against him – regrets and guilt – return of the repressed, and the formation of ‘new’ ethical-religious responsibility’s. As Ernst Simon writes: ‘[for Freud] the Oedipal-Complex is what caused the Tablets of the Law to be made and the commandments to be inscribed upon them’⁵³. Ephraim Meir concludes: ‘ … the Jews, who remembered, forgot, and recalled Moses’ murder, thus creating a spiritual world with moral values: the return of the repressed was the victory of the vital element in Judaism’⁵⁴.

Generally, Freud referred to the concept of trauma as the product of an encounter with an excess of excitement, mainly sexual, which encountered prohibitions and guilt. In contrast, in Fromm’s approach, traumas are derived from various interpersonal relationships and are not limited to sexual and ‘genital fixations’. In a broad sense, The nature of the kernel traumatic factor is based on the experience of birth and the infant’s separation from the mother’s womb⁵⁵. Fromm describes the traumatic pre-genital event of birth using a metaphor from the biblical story of the ‘fall’ of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Like the infant faced with the traumatic experience of birth, Adam and Eve were thrown from the comfort of Paradise into a world of suffering and loneliness. The ‘fall’ [i.e., the Trauma] grants individuation and self-consciousness, yet it also generates feelings of isolation and homelessness, of yearning for a union that is impossible to reclaim⁵⁶.

In light of this, in contrast to Freud approach, according to Fromm, the moral element in monotheism is not the result of a violent historical development and the response to it, rather a development in the (universal) concept of a nameless God, which led to gradual progress in the negation of various forms of idolatry (including incestuous relationships), and eventually to human freedom on the basis of rebellion against any irrational authority. Fromm can agree with Freud that Moses’ monotheism, which is based on: prohibition against worshiping God in a visible form, control over instinct’s satisfaction, opposing totemic magic and sorcery, rejecting belief in irrational religious dogmas, etc., promoted, indeed, morality and reason, as Freud’s writes: ‘the Mosaic religion forced upon the people a progress in spirituality (Geistigkeit) […] opened the way to respect for intellectual work and to further instinctual renunciations’⁵⁷. However, Fromm will not agree with Freud that in the case of the Oedipal complex between the Israelites and Moses – the desire to to rebel against the father was profounder and more meaningful than the need for ‘relatedness’ (with the mother)⁵⁸.

According to Freud, ‘rebellion’ is motivated by the lower drives, it is an act of removing the barrier on the way to pleasure (or restrictive action to secure future pleasure), while for Fromm ‘rebellion’ is an act of releasing oneself from irrational authority and illusion in order to restore a state of freedom which eventually leads to a voluntary and autonomous acceptance of responsibility (the ‘freedom to’). In this context, Fromm’s deviation from the Freudian biological drive theory means that rebellion is not merely an instinctive attempt to remove the forbidding father, rather, rebellion is possible in the first place only because freedom (and not the dialectics of Libido-Thanatos) is essential to human nature.

Freud claims that the Jews had ambivalent feelings for Moses. On the one hand, he imposes prohibitions on them and restricts their way of worship. But on the other hand, in return, Moses bestowed them with a high-order substitute pleasure – ‘the pride of being the chosen people.’⁵⁹ In Moses, Freud focuses on the ‘Jewish character’. He sees this Jewish pride as one of the main reasons for hatred of the Jew from ancient until modern times. According to Freud, Zionism (i.e., cultural Judaism) is a rational response to anti-Semitism. However, it embodies the idea of ‘being chosen’ and ‘Jewish pride’. This leads to the second assumption behind why Fromm was not ‘open’ and empathetic enough to realize Freud’s contribution in Moses.

[b] A sociopolitical reason: First, Fromm’s rejection of the basic assumptions underlying Freud’s conceptualization of the source of anti-Semitism. Second, Freud’s affirmative attitude toward modern Zionism, and Fromm’s rejection of nationalism, in general, and Zionism in particular. Although Zionism and anti-Semitism could be seen as two different issues, for Freud and Fromm they are interrelated.

Freud’s conceptualization of the source of anti-Semitism

Many studies examine the impact of anti-Semitism on Freud’s identity and on psychoanalysis⁶⁰. Freud did not lay out a systematic theory of racism or of anti-Semitism. However, he articulated the various sides of the Jewish experience that are related to anti-Semitic phenomena. Freud’s Moses was the first time that he attempted a psychoanalysis of anti-Semitism⁶¹. That is, focusing on the unconscious motives for hatred – “the deeper motives which are rooted in ‘times long past’⁶².

Freud touches on two key issues: the father complex that exists between Christianity and Judaism, and circumcision. Concerning the first, Freud shows that the source of anti-Semitism is primarily jealousy of those that see themselves as chosen by God, but also hostility towards those who refuse to acknowledge and deal with the father-murder (as Christianity did with Jesus on the cross)⁶³, as well as that Christian hatred of their own religion has been projected onto the Jews⁶⁴. For Freud, the Christian psycho-theological antagonism explicitly clarifies modern anti-Semitism and Nazism. The second motive of anti-Semitism is rooted in the castration complex and circumcision: ‘The castration complex is the deepest unconscious root of anti-Semitism.’⁶⁵ The Jew becomes the recipient of hatred because he literally embodies the mark of castration, visibly presenting to the other nations the great vulnerability of the human condition and how it is subject to the exercise of power and the enforcement of the law of culture. While Jews themselves claim that circumcision ‘perfects’ them, to outsiders it looks like an act of subjugation, hence demanding renunciation of any omnipotent fantasy. The Jews’ ‘castrated state’ provokes anxiety as well as desire, and this creates envy, fear, and hatred⁶⁶.

Fromm approaches anti-Semitism differently⁶⁷. ‘Fromm’, as Lundgren writes, ‘almost totally ignores the problem of anti-Semitism’⁶⁸. Evidently, and unlike Freud, Fromm reduces the centrality of the theological factor in his explanations of anti-Semitism⁶⁹. Roger Frie writes that Fromm’s focus on social class, rather than on German national character or racist ideology, is ‘overwhelming’⁷⁰. In my opinion, Frie’s explanation, that ‘being identified as a Jewish writer who wrote about anti-Semitism could have meant becoming a target of prejudice’⁷¹ is not satisfying. First, there were many post-Holocaust Jewish intellectuals who dealt with this matter. Second, the fear of ‘becoming a target of prejudice’, in my opinion, is not a feature that characterizes a radical thinker such as Fromm (though, Frie’s argument could be used to explain Fromm’s silence on Freud’s Moses).

In short, while Freud in Moses focuses on the unconscious theological factor (with an emphasis on Judaism) in order to understand anti-Semitism and Nazism, Fromm, on the other hand, neglects the centrality of the unconscious theological factor. For Fromm, the roots of anti-Semitism are mostly socio-economical and national (similarly to Freud, Fromm stresses the Jewish side). Another difference that should be noted is that while Freud and Fromm both connects Zionism and anti-Semitism – namely, that the former is a response to the latter – their understandings and conclusions are different.

There is extensive research literature on Freud’s attitudes on politics, in general, and Zionism, in particular⁷². Freud’s attitude toward Zionism is complex and does not lack of ambivalence. Freud did not present himself as a Zionist⁷³. In his correspondences, he mentioned the risk of Zionism in the context of the Jewish-Arab conflict. However, in light of historical events, he saw it as a legitimate Jewish cultural movement. Moshe Gresser argues that Freud had sympathy towards Zionism, and that Zionism was a deep part of Freud’s Jewishness, much more than seeing it as a defense against anti-Semitism⁷⁴. Freud’s well known preface to the Hebrew translation of Totem and Taboo indicates that he believed that (cultural Judaism) Zionism was an intellectual development in Judaism that is capable of appreciating the psychoanalytic project⁷⁵. Studies also refer to Freud’s Moses in the context of Zionism⁷⁶.

It is known that Fromm, as early as 1923, was an opponent of political Zionism. He based his opposition on Jewish, socialist, and ethical grounds⁷⁷. According to Fromm, Zionism as nationalism deviates from the universal values of authentic Judaism⁷⁸. Jacob writes: ‘Fromm’s study of Jewish tradition and his interpretation of Jewish history seem to have reinforced his criticisms of Zionism and of Israel […] also in the post-Holocaust era’⁷⁹. Interestingly, Fromm mentions Zionism in his books only once. He does not deal with Freud’s attitude to Zionism, but states that Freud’s disciple Max Eitingon ‘may have had mild Zionist sympathies’⁸⁰.

Similarly to Freud, Fromm saw modern Zionism as a response to anti-Semitism. But while Freud saw Zionism as a legitimate response, Fromm has a sharp and one-sided criticism. In his correspondences and opinion articles, he claimed that the Zionists eagerly used the accusation of anti-Semitism as a weapon to brand any critique they disliked⁸¹.

In light of this, Fromm’s silence on the content of Freud’s Moses may be related to this matter as well. Simon writes that Freud’s attitude to the Jewish faith was ‘not entirely negative,’ and that ‘Freud speaks here [in Moses] like a great Jewish spiritual patriot.’⁸² Gresser writes, ‘Moses […] is Freud’s hieroglyphic defense of his people’⁸³. Fromm saw no need to ‘defend his people’, at least not explicitly. Unlike Freud, Fromm focused on Jewish ideas, and less on Jewish existence⁸⁴.

Freud’s answer to the enigma of ‘the Jewish character’ is that ‘Moses’, [who] ‘left a lasting imprint on the Jewish character’, and created, as Gresser articulates, the ‘Psychological Jew,’ in which Jewish ‘content is replaced by character.’⁸⁵ Freud undoes the idea of the ‘people chosen by God’ and replaces it with the idea that Moses chose his people. In doing so, Freud, on the one hand, offers a psychological alternative to the theological narrative; on the other hand, he reaffirms the importance of this idea to the survival of the Jewish people⁸⁶. Fromm, however, does not elaborate on the essence of a ‘Jewish character’. In his opinion there is no contradiction between authentic Jewish values and the values of modern (radical) humanism (as embodied in the biblical story of Moses). Rather the core of the problem is the national-incestuous distortion of the (Jewish-humanistic) universal aspect, as expressed in Zionism.

In conclusion, Fromm could not accept Freud’s presentation of Moses as the founder of the Jewish nation and Freud’s ‘scientific proof’ of the Jewish national identity. Generally, Fromm does not approve of the connection between the national and the religious identities.

[4] I will conclude with Fromm’s position on three of Freud’s main claims. Fromm’s references, although very limited, indicate beyond a doubt that he read Moses. Regarding Freud’s claim about Moses the Egyptian, we have seen that this is the only claim that Fromm explicitly refers to (‘The question of the historical Moses, especially the point treated by Freud […] that he was really an Egyptian, does not interest us here … ’) Fromm does not completely dismiss it, but he doesn’t affirm it either – despite the fact that attributing a Foreign-Egyptian origin to Moses does not necessarily contradict his interpretation of the biblical narrative. This is because the greatness of Moses is precisely that he transcended the narrow national framework, and changed the object of worship and the frame of orientation from the particular to the universal. Fromm does not recruit and mobilize Freud’s claim for his own argument, even though he could have done so⁸⁷.

The idea that the Israelites killed Moses receives no mention from Fromm at all, although it could have been linked to the narrative of escape from freedom⁸⁸. However, Fromm (without referring to Freud) choose to highlight the connection between Moses’ sin and his punishment, without analyzing the circumstances of Moses’ death. I assume that from Fromm’s point of view, a reference to Freud’s Moses, in this context, could have led to criticism instead of strengthening his own claims. That is, even if there is the possibility of partial agreement with Freud’s ideas on this issue, Fromm preferred not to mention it. In addition, Fromm’s departure from Freud’s drive theory may explain why the ‘rebellion against the father’ was not central in his hermeneutics. As I have argued, his unwillingness or inability to re-engage with the ghosts in his early article on the Sabbath, might also play a role.

Nevertheless, there is one question that remains relatively open – that is, the claim about the Egyptian origin of monotheism. In this context, Fromm also does not refer to Freud. However, the inclusion of Akhenaten among Fromm’s ‘greatest spiritual teachers’ of mankind, alongside Moses, Confucius, Lao-tse, Buddha, Jesaja, Socrates and Jesus, teachers who ‘have postulated the same norms for human life, with only small and insignificant differences’, is rather puzzling⁸⁹. It raises the question: On what basis does Akhenaten appear on this list? It also makes us question Fromm’s scientific sources⁹⁰. Freud’s sources on Akhenaten and the Egyptian Moses⁹¹ are not mentioned in Fromm’s writings. This is problematic because, on the one hand, Fromm does not deal with biblical history; and on the other hand, he mentions Akhenaten, a figure who has only historical-archaeological significance.

Jan Assmann is right in stating that: ‘Akhenaten is a figure of history without memory; Moses is a figure of memory without history.’⁹² Indeed, including Akhenaten on the list of the spiritual teachers of mankind only on the basis of archaeological findings, but whose teachings were not adopted by a particular culture, seems dubious (compare this to Buddha or Jesus, who did not write down their teaching, but whose teachings persisted in human culture and societies). It does not only indicate Fromm’s awareness of the hypothesis that Akhenaten was ‘the first monotheist’⁹³, and that Fromm is prizing monotheism, but it might also imply that Moses was somehow connected to the former. In contradiction to Fromm’s own hermeneutics, this emphasizes the historical context of Moses, rather than the traditional, philosophical or psychological one, which usually characterizes Fromm’s analysis. I believe that Fromm accepted the assumptions about Akhenaten from Freud’s Moses (or earlier from Karl Abraham) but without specifying his source, and without fully developing its meaning – namely, the role of ancient Egyptian culture in the development of monotheism. Indeed, for Fromm, discovering the historical source is less important than the psychological and philosophical interpretations. Nevertheless, in a footnote, Fromm remarks that in ‘S. Freud, the Jew’, Simon points out the significance of the fact that Freud mentions the possibility that monotheism may have come to Egypt from the Near or Far East, or even from Palestine⁹⁴. That is, the historical fact regarding the cultural revolution that Akhenaten made in Egypt does not disprove the hypothesis that monotheism developed earlier in Canaan (in the time of Abraham). In other words, Fromm does not fully accept the assumption about the Egyptian origins of monotheism, nor does he address the possible influences, but he nevertheless mentions Akhenaten’s contribution to mankind.

Concluding remarks

Fromm does not present explicit criticism or negation of Freud’s Moses, especially not in relation to the central claim about the murder of Moses. For various reasons he chose to remained silent or to hide it completely. Silence is often perceived as a means of maintaining the status quo. This, of course, may not tell the entire story. In my opinion, Fromm’s silence should be seen as a partial agreement with Freud’s claims. In Moses, Freud tries to prove that Judaism has reached its spiritual achievements by repressing the murder of Moses. This repression, along with the ‘peculiar narcissistic character of pride’ plays an important role in his explanations of the reasons for anti-Semitism. His Moses promotes a Judaism in which the rational and moral elements are dominant, nonetheless they are depended on the processes of ‘return of the repressed’. Namely, Judaism can be seen as a form of ‘psychoanalytic religion’.

For Fromm, as well, the psychoanalytic factor is present in his understanding of Judaism. Moses and the prophets acted against the idolatrous elements that include incestuous relationships. Their actions, however, were not driven by the Oedipal complex, or in light of a rebellion against ‘the father’, but were based on reason and love. That is, on understanding freedom as inherent to human nature and relatedness, as a basic primary need. Judaism according to Fromm is a rational and moral monotheistic religion. In his analysis, Judaism undergoes a process of crystallization of its moral and universal elements, and, as a result, departs from its particular-national elements.

Despite the differences, for both of them, the ‘promised land’ is eventually human liberation from ‘the chains of illusions’ – namely, liberation from incestuous narcissistic and neurotic fixations, in the form of fanatic religious or political ideologies.

Freud and Fromm perceive the biblical text and its narratives as representing mental reality and truth that needs to be revealed and interpreted. As Yerushalmi, and others have noted, Freud treats the dreams as a sacred text (‘wie einem heiligen Text’)⁹⁵. Scripture, like dreams, embodies reality (whether the historical, the social, or the desired ethical reality). Hence, the Hebrew Bible is not the ‘word of God’. It is neither a ‘fairy tale’ nor, as Richard Dawkins and others sees it, as ‘a poetic work of fiction’. For both, Freud and Fromm, the study of Scripture is related to questions of self-identity, and is point of reference for Western culture and to humanity in general. Both, Freud and Fromm, sees the need to ‘read between the lines’, with an interpretive method to complete the text⁹⁶. For both, the concept of incestuous relationships is a central hermeneutical key; for Freud it serves to reveal the ‘origin’, and for Fromm it serves to exhaust the moral-reasonable meaning of the text. The interpretative layer reveals the latent meaning of the text, and, most importantly, belongs to it⁹⁷.

However, a difference between Freud and Fromm approaches to Scripture and dreams should be noted. In Freud’s approach, the biblical text and the dream represents a pre-scientific worldview that is primarily irrational; here, primitive impulses (incestuous desires, sexual curiosity and fear of castration) are hidden and needed to be exposed through interpretation⁹⁸. In contrast, Fromm believes that a dream can be an expression of a sublime and valuable mental function⁹⁹. Fromm also interprets Scripture with the intention of emphasizing those valuable functions and ideas. For him, the biblical scriptures express eternal truth about human nature as well as the necessary conditions for its development. He perceives the Hebrew Bible as a revolutionary book, whose radical humanistic vision is still valid and awaiting realization. On the one hand, Fromm treats the Scripture like dreams, in that the interpretation is important and a part of the text itself; on the other hand, the status of biblical scripture and dreams is not the same, in that Scripture is essential for the development of humanity. That is, according to Fromm, there is a difference between the biblical text and dreams with regard to the degree of freedom of interpretation in that biblical interpretation is limited to a universal humanistic reading.

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Ronen Pinkas

Dr. Ronen Pinkas is a research fellow in the School of Jewish Theology at Potsdam University in Germany. He is a member of the International Erich-Fromm Society and the International Rosenzweig Society. Among his research interests are contemporary Jewish philosophy, Jewish Law, Judaism and psychoanalysis, and Interreligious dialogue. He published papers on the early writings of Erich Fromm, and the religious thought of Hermann Cohen, and Franz Rosenzweig. He is currently working on a Monograph about Erich Fromm and Jewish Thought.

Notes

1. Freud began writing Moses and Monotheism in 1934, at the age of 78. The first two parts, ‘Moses an Egyptian’ and ‘If Moses was an Egyptian’, were published in Imago in 1937, and are followed by the extensive third part that broadly applies psychoanalytic theory to the biblical narrative. In 1912 Freud visited Rome and was impressed by Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. Two years later, Freud anonymously published ‘Michelangelo’s Moses’.

2. The distinctiveness of this book is not only due to its form; the awkward writing style, lack of unified theme and order on the various issues, repetition of ideas and digressions, but also due to its contents: the profound application of the psychoanalytic method to Biblical interpretation, the description of the Oedipal relationships between Moses and the Israelites and between Judaism and Christianity, and as numerous criticisms show, due to its being an autobiographical book. See Simon, ‘Sigmund Freud, the Jew,’ 270–305.

3. The use of the term Jews (Die Juden) rather than Israelites illustrates that Freud is not interested in a historical-biblical analysis of the Hebrew Bible. Freud was not the first to propose the idea that Moses was murdered by the Israelites. As early as the eighteenth century, Goethe suggested that Joshua and Caleb murdered Moses because he was not endowed with the talents necessary for the leadership of the people. Freud, as is well known, relied on the hypotheses of the protestant theologian Ernst Sellin, who found some clues in the Bible which suggest that Moses was murdered by a man from Israel. Sellin’s research did not receive attention in Jewish studies, even after gaining a large audience following Freud. Kaufman notes, that without Sellin’s research, Freud would surely have invented himself the hypothesis of Moses’ murder. See Kaufmann, ‘Freud’s book about Moses and the Monotheism,’ 200.

4. Buber, Moses, 7, fn. 1. Buber is exceptional because he devoted an entire book in response to Freud’s Moses. But compared to other intellectuals, Buber refrained from using harsh language against him. An in-depth reading of Buber’s Moses reveals that in many places Buber deals with Freud’s ideas, even though he does not explicitly state it. Buber may have known that presenting a systematic polemic structure which develops in accordance with Freud’s arguments, could intensify interest in Freud’s book. Hence Buber’s criticisms remain hidden from the reader who is unaware of Freud’s Moses.

5. Margolin, “Freud’s ‘Moses’ and Buber’s response in light of his book ‘Moses,’ 533–566.

6. Cohen, Reflections of a Wandering Jew, 139–140.

7. Kaufmann, ‘Freud’s book about Moses and the Monotheism,’ 199–211.

8. Strauss, ‘Freud on Moses and Monotheism,’ 285–309.

9. Luz, “Strauss’ Philosophical Criticism of Freud’s ‘Moses,’ 81–100.

10. Zaretsky, ‘Insight and tradition,’ 6.

11. Wulff, “An appreciation of Freud’s ‘Moses and Monotheism,’ 141–142.

12. Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, 78–79.

13. Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 73.

14. Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, 3, fn. 1.

15. Simon, ‘Sigmund Freud, the Jew,’ 289. There is an interesting resemblance between Freud and Martin Buber in an attempt to reduce the authoritative structure of rabbinic Judaism. For Freud, ‘the murder of Moses’ can be understood as an allegorical expression of the removal of the rabbinical authority of law. For Buber, ‘the law’ is Moses’ personal interpretation of the revelation of God, which is more authentic than the interpretation of the later rabbis.

16. Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, 2.

17. In my opinion, Fromm is not philosophically subtle as Simon in decoding Freud’s intentions with presenting Moses as an Egyptian. Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, 58. “Freud’s ambivalence to the father figure is also reflected in his theoretical work. In his construction of the beginning of human history in Totem and Taboo, he has the primordial father slain by the jealous sons; in his last work, Moses and Monotheism, he denies that Moses was a Jew and makes him out to be the son of an Egyptian nobleman, thus saying unconsciously: ‘Just as Moses was not born from humble Jews, I am also not a Jew but a man of royal descent.’ And see there, 79. In Fromm’s The Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought, Fromm does not mention Freud’s Moses at all.

18. See Lundgren, Fight Against Idols, 20–23, 74.

19. Fromm, The Sane Society, 67 and see Fromm, The Art of Loving, 71; Fromm, The Heart of Man, 118 f. According to Fromm, religions differ in their language and conceptualization, but they share the same essence and are directed to the same reality. He believes that all the great teachers preached the unity of man, reason, love and justice as the ultimate goals in life. It should be noted that a theological-comparative approach, which focuses on the similarities between religions while diminishing the differences, is an approach that has evolved since the process of enlightenment and secularization, and is less accepted today in the science of religion today. The pluralistic approach to interreligious dialogue, which seeks both unity, and preservation of differences, has gradually taken the place of a systematic comparative theology. See, the works of Ephraim Meir, e.g., Becoming Interreligious.

20. For Freud, Moses is the founder of Judaism and its laws. Freud, Moses, 11, and can be seen as an authentic way not only of understanding Jewish monotheism but also its origins (as evolved from Akhenaten’s religion). Freud, in this regard, presents an external (western Christian) view of Judaism, similarly, to the central place of Jesus in Christianity. Freud, Moses, 82, 187, 211. And see e.g., Baeck, The Essence of Judaism, 43. For both, Fromm and Freud, Judaism cannot be understood without the prophets who came after Moses and made a crucial contribution to its development.

21. See Pinkas, ‘Correlation and Orientation,’ xxix.

22. Fromm, To have or to Be? 40. In my opinion, this narrative serves Fromm in his critique of Marxist revolutionary-naïve and fanatic approach. See Durkin, The Radical Humanism of Erich Fromm, 54–62.

23. Fromm, Man for Himself, 203–204.

24. Fromm writes: ‘When Moses threw the wand into the Red Sea, the sea, quite contrary to the expected miracle, did not divide itself to leave a dry passage for the Jews. Not until the first man [Nahshon ben Amminadab] had jumped into the sea did the promised miracle happen and the waves recede.’ Fromm, Man for Himself, 209; Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 92. In Man for Himself, Fromm does not specify the sources: Ex. Rabbah 21:10 and Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 37a:3. Fromm follows the rabbinic and philosophical tradition, according to which the biblical story cannot be fully understood without its interpretation. This tradition is different from the historical approach prevalent in biblical studies.

25. Fromm, Man for Himself, 199. Fromm’s interpretation of the figure of Moses is closer to Hermann Cohen and other thinkers who emphasized that Moses, unlike the role of Jesus in Christianity, was not a saint or half-god, but a human being. Consequently, the role of Moses in Judaism is not parallel to the role of Jesus in Christianity.

26. Following the publication of Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913) began to appear studies that dealt with the psychoanalytic interpretation of the bible and the Jewish tradition. E.g., Theodore Reik, ‘Probleme der Religionspsychologie: Das Ritual’ (1919); Theodore Reik, ‘Der Eigene und Der Fremde Gott’; Karl Abraham, ‘Der Versoehnungstag’ (1920); Erich Fromm, ‘Der Shabbat’ (1927); Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, ‘Das Jüdische Speiseritual’ (1927); Georg Langer, ‘Die jüdischen Gebetriemen’ (1930) and more. See Simon, ‘Sigmund Freud, the Jew,’ 291.

27. Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 31–32: ‘The concept of God has gone through a process of evolution starting from the jealous God of Adam, going to the nameless God of Moses, and continuing to the God of Maimonides, of whom man can know only what He is not’.

28. Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 25–26. And see Fromm, The Art of Loving, 64–65. As is well known, the biblical concept of idolatry, according to Fromm, appears as a modern phenomenon such as alienation, narcissism and necrophilia. On the historical and political level – idolatry – means the worship of power, nationalism, and patriotism, phenomena that exemplify incestuous relationships.

29. Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 76.

30. Moses paved the way for the universal worldview of the prophets, and later for Maimonides’s negative theology (i.e., no attributes can apply to God), and of Meister Eckhart (i.e., the subjectivity of God in the human soul). See Fromm, ‘The Common “Religious” Concern,’ 162. This approach continues with intellectual-abstract of the divinity as a means of happiness according to Spinoza, and as the guarantee of moral autonomy according to Hermann Cohen. This development reaches its most unconventional concept of God as an element X with Fromm. As an element X God is not only free from any historical-particular religion, rather God is liberated from the field of religion.

31. E.g., Fromm, The Art of Loving, 64: ‘The development of the human race [… is] characterized as the emergence of man from nature, from mother, from the bonds of blood and soil.’ In Fromm’s eclectic approach, the value of religion and religiosity is measured by the spiritual-moral contribution it makes to the individual’s orientation. Fromm, You shall Be as gods, 21.

32. Fromm is clearly following the Jewish philosophical tradition offered before him by Hermann Cohen, i.e., God, and not Moses, is the founder of the Jewish nation. According to Cohen, overcoming the attribution of a national identity based on the figure of Moses occurred with the importance of the Torah itself. The Torah, and not Moses, is the mediation between the people and God. Cohen, Religion of Reason, 242.

33. Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, 94, my emphasis.

34. Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 90. ‘Moses […] could not participate in the future. The death of Moses completes the biblical answer to the question of the possibility of revolution. Revolution can succeed only in steps in time.’

35. Ibid. There is a fundamental difference between the need to be free from slavery and suffering (Freedom from), and the ability to live a decent life in light of the values of truth and justice (Freedom to). In rabbinic literature, we find the argument that the Israelites were forced to wander forty years in the desert because the ‘slave generation’ was not ripe to enter the promised land and become an independent nation. The term ‘Generation of the Wilderness’, in Hebrew (Dor HaMidbar = Desert generation) means a generation that does not know how to appreciate freedom and bears the hardships of only placing the foundations for future generations. See Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3; Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 110b: 2–5; and see Rashi on Numbers 20:12.

36. Milgrom, ‘Magic, Monotheism and the sin of Moses,’ 42–55. The Hebrew Bible indicates that Moses’ punishment, not to enter the promised land, was given to him because he struck a rock, an act that expressed distrust of God (Num. 20: 12). Some Biblical commentators understands Moses’ act as an expression of a moment of anger, weakness and despair. See Loewenstamm, ‘The Death of Moses,’ 142–157; Chavet, ‘The sin of Moses,’ 35–42.

37. See Margaliot, ‘The transgression of Moses and Aaron,’ 374–400; Windreich, ‘The Transgression of Moses and Aaron,’ 21–26. Another opinion is that because Moses opposed the mission in the first place (Exodus 3: 11–13; Exodus, 4: 1, 10, 13), he was prevented from completing it. However, it is generally accepted that since Moses is a humble person (Num. 12:3), the servant of God (i.e., Joshua 1:1), the great prophet, the unique person who came into a close intimate relationship with God, it was crucial for the Biblical editors to clearly demonstrate that he was a human being and not superhuman.

38. The prevailing opinion in the tradition is that Moses died ‘by the kiss of God’. According to Martin Buber, Deuteronomy 34:6 indicates that God Himself buried Moses. Buber, Moses, 201. In rabbinic literature, as an explanation for the unknown location of Moses’ burial, we can find the idea that Moses also ascended to heaven similar to Elijah. See Loewenstamm, ‘The Death of Moses,’ 150. Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13 shows that the sin of Moses – hitting the rock – was indeed related to his death. However, the Midrash accuses the Israelites of causing Moses to take this action. It is interesting to note, that this midrash strengthens Freud’s claims in his Moses. I assume, however, that Freud and Fromm were not aware of this midrash.

39. Cohen, Religion of Reason, 76–77. Out of a polemical approach towards Christianity emphasized Cohen that in monotheism the correlation is between every individual (and the whole community) and God without any material mediation, and therefore, Moses, in spite of his greatness, is mere a human being and not a demigod that stands as a mediator between God and humanity.

40. See Braune and Braune, ‘Erich Fromm’s socialist program and prophetic messianism,’ 59–91. See also McLaughlin. ‘How to Become a Forgotten Intellectual,’ 215–246.

41. Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, 79; Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 73.

42. Fromm, ‘Der Sabbat,’ 17.

43. See Pinkas, ‘Der Sabbat as a point of reference for evaluating Erich Fromm’s approach to Jewish Law’, 19.

44. Yerushalmi Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable. The works of Jacques Derrida (Archive Fever, 1995), Bernstein (Freud and the Legacy of Moses, 1998), Erich Santner (On The Psychotheology of Everyday Life, 2001), Ephraim Meir (‘Sigmund Freud’s Moses and His Reappearance’, 2012) and others, reveal an empathetic reading of Freud’s final words.

45. Bernstein clarifies Freud’s narrative of presenting the history of religions from a psychoanalytic perspective. He is convinced that ‘the power and significance’ of Freud’s claims about religion, tradition, Jewishness, and Jewish survival ‘have not yet been fully drawn out and confronted’. Bernstein, Freud and the Legacy of Moses, 4, 39–44, 73.

46. As Rainer Funk clearly shows, Fromm’s attempts, in the early 1930s, to uncover the social unconscious, exposed him the limitations of Freud’s drive theory. See Funk ‘introduction to Beyond Freud,’ 9–16.

47. Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion, 10–21.

48. Ibid., 83. Fromm argues that the problem of incestuous fixation is a phenomenon that characterizes the pathology of normalcy. While the ‘neurotic’ is clinically diagnosed as non-adjusted, the vast majority of people are well-adjusted because they have given up the battle for independence sooner and more radically than the neurotic person.

49. Ibid., 81. While Freud saw the tendency to incestuous relationships when it appears in adulthood, as a general pathological phenomenon which is at the base of every neurosis, Fromm explicitly links the pathological aspect to a moral worldview. Fromm argues that the growth of reason and of all rational value judgments requires the human being to overcome his incestuous fixation and its moral evaluations which are based on familiarity. According to Fromm, the subject of incestuous relationships extends beyond the child-parent relationship, to the relationships between the person and different elements of his or her social affiliation group and his or her culture in general. In a broad sense, incestuous relationships are expressed in various forms; the tribe, the nation, the race, the state, the social class, political parties and ‘many other forms of institutions and organizations’, which reduce the comprehensive orientation of the individual, to be perceived as a part of humankind as a whole, and are symptoms of man’s inability to experience himself and others as free human beings. Ibid., 84–85. There, Fromm interprets the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert as a symbol of overcoming particular nationalism.

50. The essence of incestuous tendency, which for Freud generates the Oedipal complex, is for Fromm not the sexual craving for the members of the same family, rather the need for relatedness and a ‘desire to remain a child’ attached to the ‘protecting figures’. Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion, 79. Fromm reverses the common Freudian equation, and determines that the primary impulse in the human being is to connect. Relationships, affiliations, are the initial basis of life. This means that libido, ‘the instinctual energy’, is secondary rather than primary mechanisms as characterized by Freud. (i.e., according to Fromm, Life by definition is affinities, hence Biophilia is not based on libido). According to Fromm, sexual gratification is only a possible expression of the need for relatedness, which is the fundamental necessity. This position, which in Buber’s ‘I and Thou’ is philosophically formulated with the expression: ‘In the beginning is the relation,’ in Buber, I and Thou, 69, and anchored in theological thinking (e.g., the idea that the soul exists in the upper worlds and maintains there a dialogue with God before the birth in the lower world takes place; Midrash Tanchuma, Pekudei 3:6; Zohar 3:13a:9; Maimonides on Genesis 2:7:1). Fromm formulates this in terms of social psychology.

51. Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion, 83.

52. Freud, Moses, 204–212. Moses is an extension of the narrative from Totem and Taboo. The former is a historical-biblical application of the latter.

53. Simon, ‘Sigmund Freud, the Jew,’ 304.

54. Meir, ‘Sigmund Freud’s Moses and His Reappearance,’ ix.

55. Fromm, ‘Factors Leading to Patient’s Change in Analytic Treatment,’ 42–50. In contrast to Freud, Fromm puts attention on ‘pre-genital fixation’ and not on the ‘genital fixation’, and thus ‘liberates’ himself from the sexual nature of the trauma according to Freud.

56. Braune, Erich Fromm’s Revolutionary Hope, 158. See Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 57–58, 70–71. And see Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, 45–47, 54–55, 90–100.

57. Freud, Moses, 195 and see, Ibid, pp. 81, 138, 181–181, 186.

58. See Barag, ‘The Mother in the Religious Concept of Judaism,’ 32–53.

59. Freud, Moses, 138.

60. See e.g., Frosh, ‘Freud, Psychoanalysis and anti-Semitism,’ 309–330.

61. Wistrich, ‘Sigmund Freud’s Last Testament,’ 62; Frosh, ‘Freud, Psychoanalysis and Anti-Semitism,’ 322–329; Mack, The Savage Science, 347–351.

62. Freud, Moses, p. 147.

63. Freud suggests that if only the Jews had confessed to their supposed guilt in killing the Primal Father – the Egyptian Moses – they might have been spared the Gentile-Christian accusation of having murdered God. Freud, Moses, 115–116. According to Freud, a distinction must be made between conscious collective memory and unconscious collective memory. In Judaism, the conscious memory is the Exodus from Egypt. The unconscious memory is the ‘murder of Moses.’ The symptom of the Jew is ‘Narcissistic pride.’ In contrast, in Christianity, the collective memory is the divinity of Christ, and the unconscious memory is ‘Judaism is the father religion.’ The symptoms of the Christian are aggression and feelings of inferiority.

64. Freud, Moses, 91–92,

65. Freud mentioned the circumcision-castration complex already in 1910, in the case of ‘Little Hans’. See Boyarin, ‘What Does a Jew Want?,’ 211–216, 229. From the analysis of the ‘Little Hans’ case, Boyarin assumes that Freud was not pathologizing anti-Semitism so much as naturalizing it via the castration complex.

66. Freud, Moses, 116, 156. And see Frosh, ‘Freud, Psychoanalysis and anti-Semitism,’ 327.

67. According to Fromm, Nazis’ hatred of the Jews can be understood on the basis of the Jews’ anti-power standpoint. From the Nazi perspective, the Jews were a danger because ‘they proved that a people could survive through two thousand years without having any power.’ Fromm, ‘Remarks on the Relations between Germans and Jews,’ 105–110. And see Cohen, Religion of Reason, 246–247. And see Jacob, The Frankfurt School, 130.

68. Lundgren, Fight Against Idols, 116. Fromm ignorers anti-Semitism despite the fact that he was seeing the massive growth of anti-Semitism in Germany, experiencing as a boy ‘small episodes of anti-Semitism’, being forced into exile, and experiencing the loss of some of his family members that were deported and murdered in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Some scholars see Fromm’s early writings as a part of the defense literature against anti-Semitism. See Ziege, ‘Die politische Theologie des jungen Erich Fromm,’ 265.

69. E.g., in his doctoral dissertation Fromm deals with W. Sombart’s (The Jews and Modern Capitalism, 1911) anti-Semitic claims. As a response, Fromm presents Hasidism as an authentic reflection of Jewish economic ethics, and serves as proof of the non-capitalist rabbinic Jewish approach. Fromm, The Jewish Law, 32–33. In The Dogma of Christ (1931), Fromm deals with Christian aggression towards Judaism. However, here too, Fromm emphasizes only the changes in the economic and social circumstances as influencing the theological dogma.

70. Frie claims that Fromm’s Escape from Freedom [1941] should be understood as a response to the events in Germany, and that the book emerged out of personal traumas which remain hidden. Frie, ‘Psychoanalysis, Persecution and the Holocaust,’ 70–79. Neglecting of the ‘German national character’ and ‘racist ideology’ is also reflected in Fromm’s later study dedicated to human evil, The Anatomy of Human Destruction (1973). In describing the personalities of Himmler and Hitler, Fromm does mention their anti-Semitism, but it is not a central feature of the discussion. The focus on personal psychological factors (sadism, necrophilia), only reinforces the claim that Fromm did not seek to engage with the sources of racist and anti-Semitic ideologies.

71. Frie, ‘Psychoanalysis, Persecution and the Holocaust,’ 77.

72. Gresser, ‘Sigmund Freud’s Jewish Identity,’ 225–240; Milfull, ‘Freud, Moses and the Jewish Identity,’ 25–31; Zaretsky, Political Freud, 155. And see Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time, 598. And see Rainey, Freud as Student of Religion, 69–73; Loewenberg, ‘A Hidden Zionist Theme in Freud’s “My Son, the Myops … ” Dreamm,’ 129–130; Meghnagi, Freud and Judaism, 43.

73. Freud had extensive correspondence with Zionist colleagues and authors (e.g., Arnold Zweig, Max Eitingon, both immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s). His sons, were active in Zionist organizations, and Freud openly approved and supported it. Martin Freud was active in ‘Kadimah’, the student Zionist society in Vienna. Freud was considered there as an ‘Alte Herren alumni’ (together with Herzl, Max Nordau and several other well-known Zionists). Ernst Freud was an active Zionist – a leader in ‘Blau-Weiss’, the Zionist-oriented Jewish youth movement. See Gresser, Dual Allegiance, 228–230. As known, Fromm was also an active member of ‘Blau-Weiss’ in Frankfurt from 1919 until 1923, when he stopped seeing himself as a Zionist. See Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas, 40.

74. See Gresser, Dual Allegiance, 186, 202–204. See Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses, 13; Bergmann, ‘Moses and the Evolution of Freud’s Jewish Identity,’ 118.

75. Freud, ‘Totem and Taboo: Preface to the Hebrew Translation,’ xv. In this preface written in Vienna in 1930, Freud declares that he is ‘completely estranged from the religion of his fathers’ as well as from nationalist ideals. At the same time, he pronounces himself a Jew in his ‘essential nature’, an essence in which he could not express clearly in words, but ‘has no desire to alter that nature.’ He writes that despite having abandoned the national and religious characteristics of Judaism, ‘a very great deal of Jewishness’ remained in his personality. Though adopting ‘no Jewish standpoint’ and making no exceptions ‘in favour of Jewry’, he concludes the preface by expressing his own feeling that ‘unprejudiced science cannot remain a stranger to the spirit of the new [Zionist] Jewry’. From a political and social point of view, Zionism, in Freud’s view, sought to achieve the ultimate goal of liberating the Jew from exile, and from anti-Semitic persecutions as well as from dogmatic religiosity.

76. E.g., Confino, ‘Freud, Moses and Modern Nationhood,’ 169. Confino draws an interesting connection between Freud’s Moses and Zionism. He claims that in Freud’s Moses the narrative national awakening was achieved when the repressed (of Moses’ death) had been overcome, while in the Zionist story, national awakening was achieved when exile had been overcome. In my opinion, there is no contradiction between the two ‘awakenings’, and in a broad sense, Freud indeed combines the two.

77. E.g., Lundgren, Fight Against Idols, 106, 115. Fromm, adopted the universal version of Judaism from Hermann Cohen, namely, that the contribution of monotheism to humanity is the messianic future, which constitutes the basis of modern socialism. Therefore, any particularistic messianic aspirations, including Zionism, seemed to him a misunderstanding of the moral and spiritual value of Judaism as embodied in the writings of the prophets. Schwarzschild argues, that Fromm’s critique of contemporary Jewish politics was motivated by total identification with the Jewish people and with what he believed to be its highest values.

78. In You Shall Be as Gods, 12, Fromm argues that from a humanist point of view, the destruction of the Temple and the Diaspora turned out to be a blessing because as a marginalized minority, the Jews developed and upheld a tradition of humanism. This interpretation combines Hermann Cohen’s approach, according to which ethical development requires the abandonment of material forms of worship, and Freud’s approach that being a persecuted minority is not a disadvantage, but a strengthening of the self. Fromm extended those approaches to an opposition of any kind of nationalism, and he defines nationalism as an expression of group narcissism, and a form of incestuous fixation, and idolatry. See Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion, 81; Fromm, The Sane Society, 67; Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 59, 62. And See Fromm, ‘On the Mental Health of the Jewish People,’ 61–64.

79. Jacob, The Frankfurt School, 132, 148. Regarding Fromm’s solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict, he declares that his solution is impractical. E.g., in a letter from 1957, he writes: ‘I would assume that if all the Arabs went back it would really mean that Israel would be a truly bi-national state. This was Dr. Magnus’ solution, and I still think the only reasonable one … I am not writing about all this as a practical solution, rather as a matter of conscience.’ Quoted in Jacobs, The Frankfurt School, 126. Fromm’s position on Zionism and the State of Israel as expressed in his correspondences, and the periodicals of the Freeland League goes beyond the scope of this study.

80. Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, 105.

81. See Jacobs, The Frankfurt School, 123–127.

82. Simon, ‘Sigmund Freud, the Jew,’ 289.

83. Gresser, Dual Allegiance, 230.

84. Freud askes what is ‘the peculiar character that enabled the Jewish people to survive until today’, Freud, Moses, 194, 215–216. Thus, Freud indicates that his interest was not only in the survival of Jewish ideas and values, but rather on Jewish existence. In this sense Freud is closer to other Jewish thinkers, such as Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber, who focused on Jewish existence (not less than Jewish ideas) within their philosophical framework. Fromm, in his early years, clearly showed interest and involvement in Jewish existence as it expressed in his doctoral dissertation, in his involvement in the sanatorium with Frieda Reichmann, and his activity in the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus. However, Jewish existence is not a topic in Fromm’s thought in general. Interestingly, Freud turned to Jewish existence in his latest book, that is, he ‘returned’ to Judaism (or deepened his interest in it) in the last years of his life, and even chose to end his life on the Jewish day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). Fromm, however, to a certain extent, went in the opposite direction. His first book (The Jewish Law) expresses deep interest in Jewish existence. And yet, for both, the Jewish element is present, more or less visible, throughout their lives.

85. Gresser, Dual Allegiance, 232–233, 242.

86. Ibid., 244. In making Moses an Egyptian, Freud strikes a balance between his humanism and his ‘fanatical’ Jewish nature, renouncing Jewish narcissism, yet using something non-Jewish to show the ultimate superiority of Jewish culture.

87. Fromm short comment on the subject implies that Freud’s claim is indeed worthy of consideration, perhaps it is not entirely wrong, but does not have a substantial significance that demands an in-depth response. Claiming that Moses is an Egyptian does not contradict the idea that national-incest should be overcome, it may only slightly diminish Moses’ greatness, because it may be easier to transcend a cultural identity to which one do not belong from birth. This mainly serves Fromm in the analysis of Freud’s personality and his identification with Moses, which supports the arguments that Freud’s saw himself mainly as a political leader. See Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s mission, 82. It may be well argued that Fromm saw Freud’s Moses as a kind of personal psychoanalytic-political treatise.

88. The desire of the Israelites in the desert to return to Egypt (Exodus 16: 2–3), both physically, for the secure and comfort life that they had there, and also ‘spiritually’, as a comfortable regression to worshiping a tangible deity, and consequently the removal of the obstacle – Moses – that obliges them to a difficult freedom and responsibilities, may be well consistent with the concept of ‘escape from freedom’. See Bernstein, Freud and the Legacy of Moses, 73.

89. Fromm, The Sane Society, 49, 67; Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism, 39. In The Heart of Man, 118, Fromm writes: ‘It [the progressive solution] appeared in Egypt around 1350 b.c.e. in the teachings of Ikhnaton, with the Hebrews around the same time in the teachings of Moses.’

90. In my opinion, Fromm heard about Akhenaten from Freud, or earlier from Karl Abraham’s ‘Amenhotep IV (Ikhnaton)’, 1912, and not from Egyptologists’ literature (e.g., Arthur Weigall, The Life and Times of Akhnaton Pharaoh of Egypt, 1910; Henry Breasted, History of Egypt, 1905; Henry Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience, 1934 or others), which he does not mention in his books. There is a certain probability that Fromm heard about Akhenaten earlier, in Max Weber’s Ancient Judaism, which appeared in German in 1917, and in English in 1952. Weber mentions very briefly Akhenaten’s religious reforms. Problematic is the fact, that what we know about Akhenaten came from an almost exclusive source of information – Amarna letters. Among the various political and economic lists in the letters, the ideological and philosophical writings attributed to Akhenaten are limited, their interpretation is under debate, and moreover are not quoted in Fromm’s writings. The first reliable scientific edition of Amarna letters was published in German in 1915 (Jørgen A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln) which indeed is mentioned in Karl Abraham’s Amenhotep IV, but to the best of my knowledge, cannot be found in Fromm’s writings, nor does he refer to Abraham’s article.

91. Henry Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience, 1934; Henry Breasted, History of Egypt, 1906; Arthur Weigall, The Life and Times of Akhnaton, 1923; Eduard Meyer, ‘Die Mosessagen und die Lewiten’, 1905. During 1912, Freud had extensive correspondence with Karl Abraham, who published his ‘Amenhotep IV’ (1912), which focused on Akhenaten’s relationship with his mother. Freud did not refer in Moses to Abraham’s research, although Abraham preceded him by assuming the Egyptian origins of monotheism in the psychoanalytic context. Concerning Abraham’s ‘Amenhotep IV’, see Shengold, ‘A parapraxis of Freud in relation to Karl Abraham,’ 123–164, and see Bentinck van Schoonheten, Karl Abraham: Life and Work, 107–116.

92. Assmann, From Akhenaten to Moses, 61.

93. The assumption that Akhenaten was the founder of monotheism is well known, but nevertheless controversial. Mainly, the connection between Hebrew and Egyptian monotheism is not proven. The more common position is that Akhenaten promoted with his Atenism a form of Henotheism; namely, a stage between polytheism and monotheism in which one god can be embodied in different forms simultaneously. See Hoffmeier, Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism, chapters 7, 9.

94. Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, 79, fn. 21.

95. Mack, ‘The Savage Science,’ 344; Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses, 23; and See e.g., Huttler, ‘Jewish Origins of Freud’s Interpretation,’ 5–48.

96. See Freud, ‘Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis,’ 35. According to Freud, the principle of ‘internal censorship’ characterizes both dreams and scriptures. In both cases the content appears before us partially and must be supplemented with the analytical interpretation.

97. Treating the commentary and interpretations as a part of the Scripture itself characterizes rabbinic Judaism.

98. Fromm, The Forgotten Language, 146. Fromm explicitly states that Freud used free associations ‘as the key’ to understanding dreams. However, Fromm would not use free association in his interpretation of the Scriptures, and probably would not assume that Freud would use free association in order to understand the Hebrew Bible, or that Moses text itself can be seen as a psychoanalytic procedure of associations, using both interpretive, and therapeutic methods. Perhaps this is another reason why Fromm neglected the psychoanalytic importance of Freud’s Moses.

99. See Fromm, The Forgotten Language, 47, 127–130.