Jewish Contributions to Civilization: An Estimate (review)

Abstract

Contributions to Civilization: An Estimate, by Joseph Jacobs. Pisca - taway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009. 334 pages. $119.00. General readers continue to show interest in popular books on Jewish contributions to civilization; witness, for example, Thomas Cahill's best-seller The Gift of the Jews (New York: Anchor Books, 1999). Joseph Jacobs' study, published posthumously in 1919, stands in contrast to such light fare. Jacobs (1854-1916) had astounding command of history, philology, literature and folklore, which he marshaled to battle widely circulated and widely accepted antisemitic claims that Jews were alien to or had corrupted Western civilization. On the contrary, Jacobs insisted, culture was inseparably intertwined with that of Western Civilization. Jacobs argued against seeing antisemitism as a constant undercurrent in European popular culture; rather, he said, hatred of Jews is a top-down phenomenon, a political tool manipulated by those in power. In his view, modern, racial antisemitism was principally a political and not a social phenomenon. He held that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reactionary nationalist politicians followed a path laid by Otto von Bismarck in manipulating racialist antisemitism, aided by writers like Houston Stuart Chamberlain, Heinrich von Treistschke, and Werner Sombart. Jacobs hoped to use his history of Jews' valuable contributions to European civilization as a cudgel against teactionary nationalism and antisemitism. According to Jacobs, European Christian culture and culture share common biblical values. For more than a millennium their religious rituals and institutions also were identical, as (with notable exceptions) were their basic theological principles. Jacobs contends that the early medieval European state system incorporated Jews as nationals with special status. The Catholic Church, though, sought to degrade Jews as noxious aliens, and with the rise of the Church Empire, membership in the national community became identical with Christian religious orthodoxy. Jacobs argues that Jews nonetheless belonged to the common life of early medieval European societies. Moreover, Jews functioned as intellectual intermediaries between the Muslim and Christian worlds, both as translators and (to a lesser extent) as direct contributors, and thus assisted in the European rediscovery of classical culture and science and in European assimilation of Arabic scholarship. Jacobs argues that Je ws' ability to travel between the Muslim and Christian realms explains their role in early medieval commerce, a role that - like Jews' participation in usury - was eventually usurped by Italians and Germans. In examining the influence of thinkers like Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza (as well as the impact of Kabbalistic studies) on Catholic and Protestant intellectuals, Jacobs describes what he calls a natutal give and take of ideas. He contrasts this to the portrait of Jews as outsiders encamped in Europe made popular by Houston Chamberlain. In discussing the early modern period, Jacobs anticipated arguments by Jonathan Israel and other recent scholars on the role in European mercantilism. In particular, he points to features in society that facilitated the role in military provisioning in the 1500s and 1600s, such as ties between families in the post-1492 Diaspora and the pyramidal relationship between economic elites and networks of peddlers. …