Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?

Jewish Ideas Weekly www.jewishideasdaily.com January 18-25, 2013 Friday, January 18 recognized as merely provisional, subject to had come to see in the changed political at- correction not only by new evidence, but, titude a sharp break with the past or even to Where Does the Modern Period also, by the lengthened perspective gained perceive the messianic prospect of full Jew- of Jewish History Begin? in the passage of time.1 For Jewish history, ish participation in the political and cultural periodization is fraught with all of the meth- life of Europe. Although by the time when By Michael A. Meyer odological difficulties that attend the divi- Jost began to write his history, the post-Na- sion of world history. Scattered among the poleonic reaction had cast serious doubts on What marks the beginning of modern Jewish nations, the Jews have participated to vary- the realization of that hope, he remained of history? ing degrees in simultaneous and successive the opinion that an unalterable process had The advent of Moses Mendelssohn? The foreign civilizations while at the same time been set in motion, and, as a loyal Prussian, French Revolution? The migration of Judah carrying on their own heritage. The very he chose to see its origins in Prussia. Jost, the Pious to Palestine in 1700? The Sabbatian diversity and uniqueness of therefore, designated 1740 as explosion in the 17th century? These were their Diaspora experience the beginning of modern Jew- some of the answers offered by the great Jew- have militated against any ish history, since, in that year, ish historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. agreement on its division. Frederick the Great ascended In his classic 1975 Judaism article, When Though the major Jewish his- the Prussian throne. He real- Does the Modern Period of Jewish Histo- torians have all had to utilize ized, of course, that Frederick’s ry Begin?, Michael Meyer argued that there is some system of periodization policy had, if anything, been no value in “setting a definite terminus for the to organize their material, more restrictive toward the beginning of modern Jewish history.” This did they have differed vastly in Jews than were the regulations not settle the question, but it made it impos- the schemes which they have of the monarchs who had pre- sible for anyone to address it without taking employed. In part, method- ceded him. But, even as late as Meyer’s views into account. ological considerations have 1846, Jost still claimed that the —The Editors determined this divergence of enlightened despot had awak- systems, but, to no small de- ened a spirit The endeavor to divide history into distinct gree, religious and ideological motivations and meaningful periods has met with so have played a role as well. Nowhere is the which strides over the ghetto walls and little success that contemporary historians operation of both factors more apparent and glances into the dismal apartments of have treated the subject with utmost cau- instructive than with regard to the problem the Jewish streets . , it declares liberty tion. Grand theoretical speculations, such of setting the threshold of the modern pe- to the oppressed, and this one word, even as the bold efforts of Hegel to assert clearly riod in Jewish history. In fact, tracing the before its content is grasped and appreci- defined stages in the development of the various theories regarding the onset of Jew- ated, arouses the soul to glad hope and the human spirit, or of Marx to locate similar ish modernity reflects with amazing clarity yearning for a better life.2 stages in the various forms of production, both the course of Jewish historical thinking have all come to grief at the hands of em- and the shifting conceptions of Jewish exis- Since Jost was writing for German gen- pirical inquiry. Few historians today still tence that have characterized the last hun- tiles as well as for Jews, he doubtless wanted believe that world history allows of any dred and fifty years. to link the turning point of the modern age simple, precise division, let alone that any The first Jewish scholar since Josephus to in Jewish history with the monarch who suggested plan is rooted in the very nature undertake a comprehensive history of the had brought Prussia to a position of pow- of reality. All-embracing schemes of peri- Jews was Isaac Marcus Jost, a German Jew er in Europe. At the same time, he tried odization, nearly everyone now acknowl- who wrote a nine-volume History of the Isra- to make his Jewish readers appreciative of edges, rests more on stipulation than on in- elites that was published from 1820 to 1828. what they owed to the Prussian state. It ference. Though a division of some kind is Jost grew up in the period when German was, he thought, in response to this new still considered necessary as an instrument Jewry was given its first measure of civil enlightened spirit emanating from Freder- for understanding turning points and tran- equality. Responding to this new situation, ick that the fundamental transformations sitions in history, each proposal is generally a considerable segment of the community in the Jewish community which generated Upcoming Features on Jewish Ideas Daily: Reparations, Atonement, Poetry, and More. All on www.jewishideasdaily.com. Jewish Ideas Weekly, published by Jewish Ideas Daily, is a project of Bee.Ideas. To contact us, please email [email protected]. modernity came about: the decline of un- velopments in Germany—supposedly set for the future. It represented the beginnings questioned rabbinic authority, the shift from in motion by Mendelssohn—while pay- of a rebellion against the galut and the en- a corporate entity to a religious denomina- ing scant attention to the vastly larger Jew- deavor to seek Israel’s national salvation in tion, and the increasing participation by ish settlement in Eastern Europe. Second, its own land.7 Jews in German cultural and political life. Graetz’s emphasis on the role of individuals Dinur’s theory effectively eliminates Dias- With the origin of these changes in Prussia, and of intellectual processes in history was pora Jewish modernity from the basic struc- Jost saw the beginning of a new epoch for out of keeping with the positivist approach ture of Jewish history. Its commonly ac- all Jewry, one which he termed “the age of that had meanwhile come to dominate Eu- cepted characteristics are not determinative spiritual liberation.” ropean historiography and had influenced of an age. Although Dinur does recognize Jewish writers contemporary with Jost Dubnow. Finally, Dubnow simply could not the relative significance of Jewish emancipa- shared his sense of living in a new and hope- see in Mendelssohn a model for the modern tion and acculturation, these are essentially ful time both for Europe and for the Jews. period. The Jewish philosopher’s cherished conceived as forces making for Jewish na- That was certainly true of the young Leopold goal of acculturation ran directly counter to tional dissolution and as foils—albeit neces- Zunz and his circle when they laid the foun- Dubnow’s autonomist ideology, which ad- sary—for the primary process, which is the dations of the scientific study of Judaism, vocated separate, highly independent, com- rebuilding of the Jewish nation in Palestine. declaring that the time had come to render munal entities within the frameworks of Unlike Diaspora Jewish historians, Dinur account of a past that was now closed and non-Jewish states. Dubnow favored politi- placed a definite and final terminus on this determining to use their scholarly tools to cal integration within the larger society but, modern period. It concluded in November, further the process of political and cultural at the same time, argued for cultural sepa- 1947 with the United Nations resolution to integration. When Nahman Krochmal, the ratism. It is, therefore, not surprising that in establish a Jewish state and with the decla- profound Galician Jewish philosopher and his own writing he should have linked Jew- ration of its coming into existence the fol- historian, divided Jewish history into suc- ish modernity to political, rather than cul- lowing spring. The modern era, thus, lasted cessive cycles of growth, blossoming, and tural, transformation. In his World History almost exactly 250 years, and the birth of decay, he chose to conclude the most recent of the Jewish People, which appeared in the the State of Israel brought it to an end. With period of decline with the Cossack persecu- 1920s, it is the French Revolution, the pe- 1948 this final stage of Diaspora Jewish his- tions of the mid-17th century. His own age, riod when the Jews first gained citizenship, tory has definitely reached its climax. For by implication, represented a new period of and not the beginning of the Haskalah, the the last generation, Jewish history has been germination, the first stage of a fresh cycle.3 Jewish enlightenment, which serves as the essentially post-modern, the history of the The best-known of the 19th-century Jew- watershed.6 people in its land, with that portion which ish historians, Heinrich Graetz, did not, More recently, the majority of Jewish remains on the Diaspora periphery playing, however, fully share the earlier messianic en- historians have preferred to fix the bound- at best, a secondary role. thusiasm. A severe moral critic of modern ary line about a century or more before the Gershom Scholem’s revisionism has been European culture,4 he set the Redemption far French Revolution. They have chosen the much less obviously ideological, but he, into the future. But, like Jost, he, too, thought earlier threshold for a variety of reasons.

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