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Title: Jewish History

 

Author: S. M. Dubnow

 

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7836]

[This file was first posted on May 21, 2003]

 

Edition: 10

 

Language: English

 

Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1

 

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, JEWISH HISTORY ***

 

David King, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team JEWISH HISTORY

AN ESSAY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY BY

S. M. DUBNOW

PREFACE TO THE GERMAN TRANSLATION

The author of the present essay, S. M. Dubnow, occupies a well-nigh dominating position in Russian-Jewish literature as an historian and an acute critic. His investigations into the history of the Polish-Russian Jews, especially his achievements in the history of Chassidism, have been of fundamental importance in these departments.

What raises Mr. Dubnow far above the status of the professional historian, and awakens the reader’s lively interest in him, is not so much the matter of his books, as the manner of presentation. It is rare to meet with an historian in whom scientific objectivity and thoroughness are so harmoniously combined with an ardent temperament and plastic ability. Mr. Dubnow’s scientific activity, first and last, is a striking refutation of the widespread opinion that identifies attractiveness of form in the work of a scholar with superficiality of content. Even his strictly scientific investigations, besides offering the scholar a wealth of new suggestions, form instructive and entertaining reading matter for the educated layman. In his critical essays, Mr. Dubnow shows himself to be possessed of keen psychologic insight. By virtue of this quality of delicate perception, he aims to assign to every historical fact its proper place in the line of development, and so establish the bond between it and the general history of mankind. This psychologic ability contributes vastly to the interest aroused by Mr. Dubnow’s historical works outside of the limited circle of scholars. There is a passage in one of his books[1]

in which, in his incisive manner, he expresses his views on the limits and tasks of historical writing. As the passage bears upon the methods employed in the present essay, and, at the same time, is a characteristic specimen of our author’s style, I take the liberty of quoting:

 

“The popularization of history is by no means to be pursued to the detriment of its severely scientific treatment. What is to be guarded against is the notion that tedium is inseparable from the scientific method. I have always been of the opinion that the dulness commonly looked upon as the prerogative of scholarly inquiries, is not an inherent attribute. In most cases it is conditioned, not by the nature of the subject under investigation, but by the temper of the investigator. Often, indeed, the tediousness of a learned disquisition is intentional: it is considered one of the polite conventions of the academic guild, and by many is identified with scientific thoroughness and profound learning…. If, in general, deadening, hide-bound caste methods, not seldom the cover for poverty of thought and lack of cleverness, are reprehensible, they are doubly reprehensible in history. The history of a people is not a mere mental discipline, like botany or mathematics, but a living science, a magistra vitae, leading straight to national self-knowledge, and acting to a certain degree upon the national character. History is a science by the people, for the people, and, therefore, its place is the open forum, not the scholar’s musty closet. We relate the events of the past to the people, not merely to a handful of archaeologists and numismaticians. We work for national self-knowledge, not for our own intellectual diversion.”

 

[1] In the introduction to his Historische Mitteilungen, Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte der pol-nischrussischen Juden.

 

These are the principles that have guided Mr. Dubnow in all his works, and he has been true to them in the present essay, which exhibits in a remarkably striking way the author’s art of making “all things seem fresh and new, important and attractive.” New and important his essay undoubtedly is. The author attempts, for the first time, a psychologic characterization of Jewish history. He endeavors to demonstrate the inner connection between events, and develop the ideas that underlie them, or, to use his own expression, lay bare the soul of Jewish history, which clothes itself with external events as with a bodily envelope. Jewish history has never before been considered from this philosophic point of view, certainly not in German literature. The present work, therefore, cannot fail to prove stimulating. As for the poet’s other requirement, attractiveness, it is fully met by the work here translated. The qualities of Mr. Dubnow’s style, as described above, are present to a marked degree. The enthusiasm flaming up in every line, coupled with his plastic, figurative style, and his scintillating conceits, which lend vivacity to his presentation, is bound to charm the reader. Yet, in spite of the racy style, even the layman will have no difficulty in discovering that it is not a clever journalist, an artificer of well-turned phrases, who is speaking to him, but a scholar by profession, whose foremost concern is with historical truth, and whose every statement rests upon accurate, scientific knowledge; not a bookworm with pale, academic blood trickling through his veins, but a man who, with unsoured mien, with fresh, buoyant delight, offers the world the results laboriously reached in his study, after all evidences of toil and moil have been carefully removed; who derives inspiration from the noble and the sublime in whatever guise it may appear, and who knows how to communicate his inspiration to others.

 

The translator lays this book of an accomplished and spirited historian before the German public. He does so in the hope that it will shed new light upon Jewish history even for professional scholars. He is confident that in many to whom our unexampled past of four thousand years’ duration is now terra incognita, it will arouse enthusiastic interest, and even to those who, like the translator himself, differ from the author in religious views, it will furnish edifying and suggestive reading. J. F.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

The English translation of Mr. Dubnow’s Essay is based upon the authorized German translation, which was made from the original Russian. It is published under the joint auspices of the Jewish Publication Society of America and the Jewish Historical Society of England. H. S.

TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE TO THE GERMAN TRANSLATION INTRODUCTORY NOTE I THE RANGE OF JEWISH HISTORY

Historical and Unhistorical Peoples Three Groups of Nations

The “Most Historical” People

Extent of Jewish History

II THE CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY

Two Periods of Jewish History

The Period of Independence

The Election of the Jewish People

Priests and Prophets

The Babylonian Exile and the Scribes The Dispersion

Jewish History and Universal History Jewish History Characterized

III THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY

The National Aspect of Jewish History The Historical Consciousness

The National Idea and National Feeling The Universal Aspect of Jewish History An Historical Experiment

A Moral Discipline

Humanitarian Significance of Jewish History Schleiden and George Eliot

IV THE HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS

Three Primary Periods

Four Composite Periods

V THE PRIMARY OR BIBLICAL PERIOD

Cosmic Origin of the Jewish Religion Tribal Organization

Egyptian Influence and Experiences

Moses

Mosaism a Religious and Moral as well as a Social and Political System

National Deities

The Prophets and the two Kingdoms

Judaism a Universal Religion

VI

THE SECONDARY OR SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD

Growth of National Feeling

Ezra and Nehemiah

The Scribes

Hellenism

The Maccabees

Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes

Alexandrian Jews

Christianity

VII

THE TERTIARY TALMUDIC OR NATIONAL-RELIGIOUS

PERIOD

The Isolation of Jewry and Judaism

The Mishna

The Talmud

Intellectual Activity in Palestine and Babylonia The Agada and the Midrash

Unification of Judaism

VIII

THE GAONIC PERIOD, OR THE HEGEMONY OF THE ORIENTAL JEWS (500-980) The Academies

Islam

Karaism

Beginning of Persecutions in Europe Arabic Civilization in Europe

IX

THE RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD, OR THE HEGEMONY OF THE SPANISH

JEWS (980-1492)

The Spanish Jews

The Arabic-Jewish Renaissance

The Crusades and the Jews

Degradation of the Jews in Christian Europe The Provence

The Lateran Council

The Kabbala

Expulsion from Spain

X

THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD, OR THE HEGEMONY OF THE GERMAN-POLISH

JEWS (1492-1789)

The Humanists and the Reformation

Palestine an Asylum for Jews

Messianic Belief and Hopes

Holland a Jewish Centre

Poland and the Jews

The Rabbinical Authorities of Poland Isolation of the Polish Jews

Mysticism and the Practical Kabbala Chassidism

Persecutions and Morbid Piety

XI

THE MODERN PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT (THE NINETEENTH CENTURY) The French Revolution

The Jewish Middle Ages

Spiritual and Civil Emancipation

The Successors of Mendelssohn

Zunz and the Science of Judaism

The Modern Movements outside of Germany The Jew in Russia

His Regeneration

Anti-Semitism and Judophobia

XII THE TEACHINGS OF JEWISH HISTORY

Jewry a Spiritual Community

Jewry Indestructible

The Creative Principle of Jewry

The Task of the Future

The Jew and the Nations

The Ultimate Ideal

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

What is Jewish History? In the first place, what does it offer as to quantity and as to quality? What are its range and content, and what distinguishes it in these two respects from the history of other nations? Furthermore, what is the essential meaning, what the spirit, of Jewish History? Or, to put the question in another way, to what general results are we led by the aggregate of its facts, considered, not as a whole, but genetically, as a succession of evolutionary stages in the consciousness and education of the Jewish people?

 

If we could find precise answers to these several questions, they would constitute a characterization of Jewish History as accurate as is attainable. To present such a characterization succinctly is the purpose of the following essay.

JEWISH HISTORY

AN ESSAY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

I THE RANGE OF JEWISH HISTORY

Le peuple juif n’est pas seulement consid�rable par son antiquit�, mais il est encore singulier en sa dur�e, qui a toujours continu� depuis son origine jusqu’� maintenant …

S’�tendant depuis les premiers temps jusqu’aux derniers, l’histoire des juifs enferme dans sa dur�e celle de toutes nos histoires.—PASCAL, Pens�es, II, 7.

 

To make clear the range of Jewish history, it is necessary to set down a few general, elementary definitions by way of introduction.

 

It has long been recognized that a fundamental difference exists between historical and unhistorical peoples, a difference growing out of the fact of the natural inequality between the various elements composing