In her excellent 2011 book about Ayn Rand, “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,” Jennifer Burns notes that Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum and Jewish in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Feb. 2, 1905, to Zinovy Rosenbaum, a pharmacist, and Anna Rosenbaum, the high-strung daughter of a wealthy tailor, whose clients included the Russian Army.
The Rosenbaums were mostly non-observant Jews, but celebrated Passover and were by no means completely assimilated. Alisa sat out of class during religious instruction.
This little-known information is amazing for two reasons. One, it contradicts the idée fixe of Rand as not Jewish. And two, it contradicts the philosophy of Ayn Rand in supporting causes and helping individuals in need. In fact, the first public cause to which Ayn Rand donated her own money was the State of Israel. This is startling, even though Rand’s followers often obscure or quickly pass over her Jewishness. Believe it or not, the official Ayn Rand Web site, aynrand.org, doesn’t mention it. The Web site of her most popular book, atlasshrugged.org, doesn’t, either. Nor does the hagiographical (writings on saints’ lives) site, facetsofaynrand.com, echo it.
Intellectual, withdrawn and immersed in her various fantasy worlds, Alisa, later Ayn, yearned to leave her country behind. When she was 21, Jewish relatives in Chicago—a family named Portnoy—helped her arrange a visa. Once in America, she tired of her relatives’ insulated Jewish world and headed for the “fountainhead” of her fantasy: Hollywood.
In Hollywood, the aspiring screenwriter Alisa Rosenbaum morphed into Ayn Rand. As an Eastern European émigré who breaks free from the claws of tradition and family, gentrifies her name, assimilates and devotes herself to creating stories about an idealized America, she is probably the very definition of 20th century Jewishness and assimilation.
Rand was a classic 20th-century Jew in another way as well: she was a devout atheist. She replaced God with her philosophy, just as Freud did with psychology and Einstein with physics. She loathed religion as much as she loathed the Communists. In a 1979 interview, Rand told talk-show host Phil Donahue that religion, “gives man permission to function irrationally, to accept something above and outside the power of their reason.” Was renouncing her past and true name reasonable or some kind of irrational self-loathing? And was her donating to Israel irrational to her own principles of avoiding “moochers”?
All this is important now because Ayn Rand is important, maybe more than ever, because Gov. Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president, Congressman Paul Ryan R-WI), is a self-described Ayn Rand acolyte, and not of her early screenplays.
Ryan requires all his staff members to read Rand’s seminal novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. “The ideas she developed in these novels,” as Burns writes, “have become the ideological touchstones of the modern Conservative movement.
“Rand advanced a deeply negative portrait of government action,” Burns writes. “In her work, the state is always the destroyer, acting to frustrate the natural ingenuity and drive of individuals. Her work . . . helped inspire a broad intellectual movement that challenged the liberal welfare state and proclaimed the desirability of free markets.”
It is hard to read Ryan’s plan for addressing the federal deficit and not see Rand’s ideological pencil marks.
The Ryan budget, wrote David Stockman, the conservative Republican former budget director under President Ronald Reagan, “shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled.”
In other words, the Ryan budget is Ayn Rand’s philosophy made flesh. Yet, quite hypocritically, she was satisfied to take Social Security and Medicare under the name Ann O’Connor (her husband was Frank O’Connor) when she needed surgery for lung cancer.
One can understand the origins of Rand’s emphasis on initiative and ingenuity. She was an exceptional individual, an outsider who by sheer force of intellect and will recreated not just a life, but a movement, again, such as it was. Yet the utopian thrust of a “free market,” a market without any regulation but its own, never fails to amaze me for its naiveté, whether from Rand, Alan Greenspan, or Chicago University’s Martin Friedman.
One finds it difficult to understand her faith in capitalism and especially the “free market,” which is not really free but in need of regulation to not plunder and gorge itself. The absence of regulation is presently destroying the markets. But in Rand’s case, she witnessed the Bolsheviks shatter her family and few understood better than she the failure of Communism. Which is about as tragic as “free market” fantasy gets when it comes to destroying our present economic system.
One can understand her rejection of religion; in her day it was most often a force of repression and superstition. Unfortunately it largely remains so in our present day, starting from the religious right, Ryan’s misogynistic Catholicism to the radical extremism of certain Islamic sects.
What one doesn’t understand is how, given these beliefs, Rand also could urge her followers to donate money to Israel, which was in her time as devastating to the Palestinians, who were supposed to share a state with Israel, and as brutal in suppressing them as the Nazis were to Germany’s Jews. See The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by the brilliant Orthodox Jewish Historian, Ilan Pappe.
Yet Rand said, contrary to all of her prescriptions against giving to the weak, aged, and ailing, all so-called “moochers,” and “parasites,” “Give all help possible to Israel,” in the late 60s; and in a lecture in 1973, “Consider what is at stake.” What was at stake was the further destruction of the Palestinian people and attempted rise of Israeli dominance over the Middle East, plus Iran.
Rand made clear she loathed Arabs and the Soviet Union, and saw Israel as a bulwark against both, even if it was socialist. Unfortunately, the socialism lasted for a New York minute as a kibbutzim-centric society, moving instead to militaristic colonizer, turning Arab Palestine into the largest outdoor concentration camp in the world.
In speaking of her Israeli donations, Rand said, “This is the first time I’ve contributed to a public cause;” adding, “helping Israel in an emergency.” Certainly, Israel needs some help, but that is in being humane, as in human.
Really, how do you explain such a thing? True, she saw Arab culture as “primitive,” but she acknowledged individuals had no responsibility to help citizens of other countries. She didn’t act out of logic or rationality—she acted because she felt, in dire circumstances, part of a collective. In that time, I believe, she wasn’t The Individual; she was part of a group: The Jews. She had put on the team jacket; so much for the towering loners of her novels.
That feeling, that impulse, may not be rational, but it is powerful. There is a very real sense, as Jews, as Americans, as people, that we are bonded to one another despite, or even because of, our essential individualism. In America, it’s called “Exceptionalism.”
Rand’s religious blind spot is also Ryan’s policy blind spot. The most successful countries on Earth do not just fund defense, police and the courts, as Rand would have it. They invest in research, education and innovation. They provide a safety net for the sick and needy. They keep defense spending in check. They protect the environment from over-exploitation. They make cuts and raise taxes, so that society’s costs and benefits are shared.
Ayn Rand couldn’t see this. I sincerely hope Paul Ryan can. Really, what will happen when the US public finds out Ayn Rand was Jewish, a Socialist, atheist, and donor to Israel. Will Ryan, who seems clueless, feel betrayed, as his staff and party and Americans will, for taking his cues from an atheist, socialist Jewish screenwriter?
Will this win Romney more Jewish American votes, traditionally sympathetic to helping others, from Social Security to abortion? Or will it turn off the Christian vote, from god-loving, Tea-Party right-wingers to Conservative Christian pro-lifers? Certainly, it will lose the Muslim vote.
If the cat gets out of the bag, as others are letting it, it would seem the recipients of Rand- Rosenbaum’s lost votes will go to Obama via the Democrats. And Ryan, asleep at the wheel, would be to blame, as well he should be.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
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How much does Paul Ryan know about Alisa Rosenbaum who morphed into his idol, Ayn Rand?
Posted on August 31, 2012 by Jerry Mazza
In her excellent 2011 book about Ayn Rand, “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right,” Jennifer Burns notes that Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum and Jewish in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Feb. 2, 1905, to Zinovy Rosenbaum, a pharmacist, and Anna Rosenbaum, the high-strung daughter of a wealthy tailor, whose clients included the Russian Army.
The Rosenbaums were mostly non-observant Jews, but celebrated Passover and were by no means completely assimilated. Alisa sat out of class during religious instruction.
This little-known information is amazing for two reasons. One, it contradicts the idée fixe of Rand as not Jewish. And two, it contradicts the philosophy of Ayn Rand in supporting causes and helping individuals in need. In fact, the first public cause to which Ayn Rand donated her own money was the State of Israel. This is startling, even though Rand’s followers often obscure or quickly pass over her Jewishness. Believe it or not, the official Ayn Rand Web site, aynrand.org, doesn’t mention it. The Web site of her most popular book, atlasshrugged.org, doesn’t, either. Nor does the hagiographical (writings on saints’ lives) site, facetsofaynrand.com, echo it.
Intellectual, withdrawn and immersed in her various fantasy worlds, Alisa, later Ayn, yearned to leave her country behind. When she was 21, Jewish relatives in Chicago—a family named Portnoy—helped her arrange a visa. Once in America, she tired of her relatives’ insulated Jewish world and headed for the “fountainhead” of her fantasy: Hollywood.
In Hollywood, the aspiring screenwriter Alisa Rosenbaum morphed into Ayn Rand. As an Eastern European émigré who breaks free from the claws of tradition and family, gentrifies her name, assimilates and devotes herself to creating stories about an idealized America, she is probably the very definition of 20th century Jewishness and assimilation.
Rand was a classic 20th-century Jew in another way as well: she was a devout atheist. She replaced God with her philosophy, just as Freud did with psychology and Einstein with physics. She loathed religion as much as she loathed the Communists. In a 1979 interview, Rand told talk-show host Phil Donahue that religion, “gives man permission to function irrationally, to accept something above and outside the power of their reason.” Was renouncing her past and true name reasonable or some kind of irrational self-loathing? And was her donating to Israel irrational to her own principles of avoiding “moochers”?
All this is important now because Ayn Rand is important, maybe more than ever, because Gov. Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president, Congressman Paul Ryan R-WI), is a self-described Ayn Rand acolyte, and not of her early screenplays.
Ryan requires all his staff members to read Rand’s seminal novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. “The ideas she developed in these novels,” as Burns writes, “have become the ideological touchstones of the modern Conservative movement.
“Rand advanced a deeply negative portrait of government action,” Burns writes. “In her work, the state is always the destroyer, acting to frustrate the natural ingenuity and drive of individuals. Her work . . . helped inspire a broad intellectual movement that challenged the liberal welfare state and proclaimed the desirability of free markets.”
It is hard to read Ryan’s plan for addressing the federal deficit and not see Rand’s ideological pencil marks.
The Ryan budget, wrote David Stockman, the conservative Republican former budget director under President Ronald Reagan, “shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled.”
In other words, the Ryan budget is Ayn Rand’s philosophy made flesh. Yet, quite hypocritically, she was satisfied to take Social Security and Medicare under the name Ann O’Connor (her husband was Frank O’Connor) when she needed surgery for lung cancer.
One can understand the origins of Rand’s emphasis on initiative and ingenuity. She was an exceptional individual, an outsider who by sheer force of intellect and will recreated not just a life, but a movement, again, such as it was. Yet the utopian thrust of a “free market,” a market without any regulation but its own, never fails to amaze me for its naiveté, whether from Rand, Alan Greenspan, or Chicago University’s Martin Friedman.
One finds it difficult to understand her faith in capitalism and especially the “free market,” which is not really free but in need of regulation to not plunder and gorge itself. The absence of regulation is presently destroying the markets. But in Rand’s case, she witnessed the Bolsheviks shatter her family and few understood better than she the failure of Communism. Which is about as tragic as “free market” fantasy gets when it comes to destroying our present economic system.
One can understand her rejection of religion; in her day it was most often a force of repression and superstition. Unfortunately it largely remains so in our present day, starting from the religious right, Ryan’s misogynistic Catholicism to the radical extremism of certain Islamic sects.
What one doesn’t understand is how, given these beliefs, Rand also could urge her followers to donate money to Israel, which was in her time as devastating to the Palestinians, who were supposed to share a state with Israel, and as brutal in suppressing them as the Nazis were to Germany’s Jews. See The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by the brilliant Orthodox Jewish Historian, Ilan Pappe.
Yet Rand said, contrary to all of her prescriptions against giving to the weak, aged, and ailing, all so-called “moochers,” and “parasites,” “Give all help possible to Israel,” in the late 60s; and in a lecture in 1973, “Consider what is at stake.” What was at stake was the further destruction of the Palestinian people and attempted rise of Israeli dominance over the Middle East, plus Iran.
Rand made clear she loathed Arabs and the Soviet Union, and saw Israel as a bulwark against both, even if it was socialist. Unfortunately, the socialism lasted for a New York minute as a kibbutzim-centric society, moving instead to militaristic colonizer, turning Arab Palestine into the largest outdoor concentration camp in the world.
In speaking of her Israeli donations, Rand said, “This is the first time I’ve contributed to a public cause;” adding, “helping Israel in an emergency.” Certainly, Israel needs some help, but that is in being humane, as in human.
Really, how do you explain such a thing? True, she saw Arab culture as “primitive,” but she acknowledged individuals had no responsibility to help citizens of other countries. She didn’t act out of logic or rationality—she acted because she felt, in dire circumstances, part of a collective. In that time, I believe, she wasn’t The Individual; she was part of a group: The Jews. She had put on the team jacket; so much for the towering loners of her novels.
That feeling, that impulse, may not be rational, but it is powerful. There is a very real sense, as Jews, as Americans, as people, that we are bonded to one another despite, or even because of, our essential individualism. In America, it’s called “Exceptionalism.”
Rand’s religious blind spot is also Ryan’s policy blind spot. The most successful countries on Earth do not just fund defense, police and the courts, as Rand would have it. They invest in research, education and innovation. They provide a safety net for the sick and needy. They keep defense spending in check. They protect the environment from over-exploitation. They make cuts and raise taxes, so that society’s costs and benefits are shared.
Ayn Rand couldn’t see this. I sincerely hope Paul Ryan can. Really, what will happen when the US public finds out Ayn Rand was Jewish, a Socialist, atheist, and donor to Israel. Will Ryan, who seems clueless, feel betrayed, as his staff and party and Americans will, for taking his cues from an atheist, socialist Jewish screenwriter?
Will this win Romney more Jewish American votes, traditionally sympathetic to helping others, from Social Security to abortion? Or will it turn off the Christian vote, from god-loving, Tea-Party right-wingers to Conservative Christian pro-lifers? Certainly, it will lose the Muslim vote.
If the cat gets out of the bag, as others are letting it, it would seem the recipients of Rand- Rosenbaum’s lost votes will go to Obama via the Democrats. And Ryan, asleep at the wheel, would be to blame, as well he should be.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.