Palimpsests of Jewish History

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of my talk is to offer some general observations on the nature of Jewish history, the documentation of Jewish history and, finally, the writing and teaching of Jewish history in that long period that intervened between ancient and modern times, that is to say between the two periods when Jewish history, like that of most other peoples, was somehow focused on a place and a state. Between those two eras, between the ending of the ancient Jewish commonwealth and the foundation of the modern Jewish commonwealth, Jews, Judaism, Jewish life and Jewish culture seemed to have flourished only under Christian or Muslim rule. There were other possibilities in the world. There were vast areas of Asia—India, China, which were neither Muslim nor Christian, but in which Judaism never took root. Jews settled in these places, but in spite of the absence of certain disadvantages which affected Jewish life under both Christian and Muslim rule, Judaism did not flourish. It barely survived, but rather stagnated in these places. It was only under the aegis of what in this company I may call the two daughter religions that Judaism seems to have been able to grow, to expand, to live, to flourish, to continue an original religious and cultural life.