How Jewish is Jewish history?

Abstract

How is History?, by Moshe Rosman. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: The Liftman Library of Civilization, 2007. 220 pp. $24.95. Moshe Rosman recognizes postmodernism has changed way historians approach their craft, but he rejects those trends in postmodern scholarship he believes deny of history. His concern is much postmodern academic discourse, especially in its postcolonial variant, reduces Jews to metaphor for some larger historical process. He believes this undermines legitimacy of Studies (and, implicitly, of Israeli state). He therefore proposes way of synthesizing postmodern approach to texts with historical methodology. Rosman begins by introducing challenges posed to historiography by postmodernism's central tenet: that there can never be objective description, only subjective interpretation (p. 1). His first chapter then examines difficulty of defining Jewishness and history and examines metahistories guided modern historiography. Rosman defines metahistory as a historian's position on priori issues . . . [that] determine framework within which he or she conducts research and composes narrative (p. 47). The remaining essays, first published between 1993 and 2004, examine periodization in history, postcolonial theories regarding cultural hybridity, multiculturalist critiques of studies, approaches to cultutal history, relationship between cultural history and folkloristics, and work on women's history by pioneering social historian Jacob Katz. In his conclusion, Rosman pulls this material together to argue for methodological synthesis he describes as reformed positivism. He illustrates his methodological points with examples from history of Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, topic on which he has written two excellent monographs and several important articles. Rosman is especially concerned with trend he defines as the as trope. He singles out Yuri Slezkine, who in The Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press) described Diaspora Jews as embodiment of modernity and concluded twentieth century triumph of modernity made everyone Jewish. If everyone is Jewish, then particularistic identity is an anachronism. And, as Rosman reads Slezkine, so is state of Israel. Rosman is particularly worried about postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha's influence on scholarship, exemplified in Bryan Cheyette and Laura Marcus, eds., Modernity, Culture, and the Jew (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Rosman focuses on Bhabha's description of traditional premodern communities as subaltern peoples and Jewish culture everywhere, like cultures of modem colonized peoples, as primarily hybrid with culture of majority (p. 95). Therefore, Rosman argues, Jews become metaphor for all subaltern colonized peoples, whose localized hybrid cultures result from resistance to and domination of colonial masters. Rosman sees this as leading to paired conclusions that: a) cultures (plural) were dependent upon dominant cultures; and b) there was no coherent common culture, only local hybrids. To Rosman, not only is this historically inaccurate, but it inappropriately delegirimates history and Studies as disciplines. He is critical, though, of postmodernist scholars like Diana Pinto who defend Studies by positing what he calls revamped contributionist metahistory, not unlike earlier justifications of history cited the contribution to civilization. In Pinto's version, Studies is relevant because it illuminates and realizes pluralist agenda. Rosman, however, holds history and studies have intrinsic value and need no justification. …