ABSTRACT
Pondering the significance of the Jewish background of the members of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, this chapter traces the changing importance of Jewish themes, most importantly the Bilderverbot, for the Frankfurt School’s understanding of both antisemitism and critical theory itself. After Max Horkheimer’s first effort to confront the Jewish question in “The Jews in Europe” (1938), Rabinbach argues, Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno changed their perspective in 1940 in light of the fate of the Jews in Europe, moving the question of antisemitism to the center of their project on the Dialectic of Enlightenment, a development that is also reflected in their subsequent cooperation with the American Jewish Committee in the context of the late 1940s antisemitism project. Analyzing the reflection of the turn to Jewish themes in Horkheimer’s complicated relationship to Zionism and in his later thinking, the chapter concludes by emphasizing Horkheimer’s increasing preoccupation with the Bilderverbot as the hidden commandment of critical theory.
