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A Thought Experiment INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION A Thought Experiment This book is a thought experiment that has not been tried before. The question of the future of the Jewish people* and Judaism attracts a lot of general interest and troubles many leaders and some members of the Jewish public. The Jewish People Policy Institute has warned that the Jewish people are at the crossroads “between thriving and decline.”1 At the same time, new popular or scholarly books or articles on Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish culture, and Israel appear every day in one of twenty or more languages. The quantity and quality of academic research on Judaism and Jewish history has reached a historically unprecedented level. Most of the authors of these works are Jewish, and the majority of their contributions cover particular subjects, local history, unique events, or limited periods—they write specialized or “micro-histories,” in line with the currently dominant trends in Western academic historiography. Much of this impressive output is written by specialists for specialists. But something seems to be missing. The key assumption underlying this book, in line with the idea of many historians, is that learning from history is not only possible but also necessary, because human nature has changed little since remote antiquity. However, there is a mismatch between the general interest in the Jews and their future and the comprehension of the factors that explain their past and might again infl uence their future. The new approach, the thought experiment here, is to interrogate a number of historians who, with a few exceptions, were or are not Jewish, and did or do not specialize in Jewish history, but who have written about the rise and decline of other civilizations and nations from a long-term perspective, and then to refl ect on whether their fi ndings could be valid for the Jewish people as well. None of these historians is “interrogated” in person; all speak through their works. It is,thus important to remember that the starting point of this study is not a systematic review of the contemporary Jewish condition * The term “Jewish people” will throughout this report include Israel, as a Jewish state. The term “Jewish leaders” will include Israeli Jewish leaders. XV INTRODUCTION and its dynamics, but rather an examination of books about the past rise and fall of other civilizations and states. Of course, complete objectivity is not a human trait. Thus, even when we read, say, about the end of the Maya in Central America, the fate of the Jews is hovering somewhere in the background. Perhaps this tentative trust in non-Jewish history will be criticized, but this is not a new problem. David Gans, one of the fi rst pre-modern Jewish historians and a student of two great spiritual leaders of his time, Rabbi Moses Isserles in Krakow and the Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew) in Prague, wrote in 1592 that “I see in advance that many will speak out against me, condemn me and consider me sinful because I have taken material from non-Jewish writers . I contend that Scripture has allowed us to search in non-Jewish books for accounts of events which can be of some use for us.”2 Critics may argue, as Heinrich Graetz,3 Simon Dubnow,4 and other apologetic Jewish historians have, that the longevity of the Jewish civilization under adverse conditions has no parallel in known history, and that the Jews cannot be compared to others because no other people has survived dispersion and persecution for so long without a permanent geographic homeland. Hence, goes this argument, the rise and decline of other civilizations contains no valid lessons for the Jews, who would do better to turn to their own historians. In this volume, works on Jewish history will often be quoted on specifi c issues, but none of them is included among its original sources, for Jewish historians generally did not look at Jewish history with an eye to the rise and decline of other civilizations. Among non-Jews, the Jewish longevity has often been a source of wonder for some, and a source of denial, suspicion, or enmity for many others. However, it does not follow from Jewish exceptionality that the specifi c ups and downs of Jewish history, the successes and failures of Judaism’s leaders, the victories and defeats of their collective endeavors, are also unique and incomparable to those of other civilizations. With due caution, they can be compared. The jigsaw puzzle of Jewish history may be unique when pieced together, but for many pieces of the puzzle there are analogous pieces in the puzzles of other civilizations and countries. Our attempt to apply factors gleaned from general history to the past and present of the Jews, and the proposed hypotheses that will emerge from our effort, are unlikely to meet all the criteria of academic scholarship. Many scholars will be ill at ease with a review that calls on so many different sub-disciplines: history of religion, history of war, economics, genetics, demography, science, environmental policies, and more. Academia resents boundary-breakers, and reserves recognition and promotion to scholars who are experts within the boundaries of their own disciplines but do not often reach outside to search in foreign fi elds. However, respect for academic XVI A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT boundaries may be less and less compatible with a full understanding of Jewish history. This book does not presume to be a history of the Jewish people. It offers suggestions and hypotheses rather than summaries of in-depth research. To write a new comprehensive history would require much more than an informed non-specialist, and is a challenge that others will have to take up. Then some of the proposed hypotheses might serve as a useful starting point for further discussion. Perhaps the time has come to recall Ahad Haam’s infl uential essay collection, Al Parashat Derachim (At the Crossroads), of the early twentieth century. Today, like then, the Jews stand at a crossroads of history and can take different directions. Their future trajectory depends upon themselves— on their capacity to change and their will to act—at least as much as upon external factors. XVII .
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