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Everywhere at Home

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Everywhere at Home over from Herbert Hoover. One thing political territory' for a challenge from a Mediterranean. Neither militaiy compul- medioere presidents seem to do is to pre- Roosevelt-style Republican sueh as John sion nor the vicissitudes of capti\dty bad pare the ground for better presidents, and McCain. It also suggests to Democrats brought most of them to those places. To in some eases great ones. When it comes that they wdll need to address direetly, and state the point a liftle difierently: the to who wdll succeed George W. Bush, T wdth considerable passion, the war^^ing of Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its make no predictions. But there is reason priorities that occurs when government Temple in 70 C.E. did not cause the second to think that four or eight years of Repub- shifts so decisively in favor ofthe rich. diaspora. Many ancient Jews—probably lican largesse to big business, accompa- Neither task will be easy. For McCain, most aneient Jews—bad by that point nied by such extreme efforts to keep its it would mean, as it did for Theodore lived outside the land of Israel for een- generosity from public scrutiny, will pre- Roosevelt, a break with his own party— turies. Tbey did so, evidently, beeause pare the American public to appreciate not exactly the easiest path to the presi- they wanted to do so. why government is necessary and why its dency. For Democrats, it means finding a Why did these Jews leave their home- policies must, above all else, be fair. way to capitalize on the gains tbat Clin- land? What were they doing abroad? How The next chapter in tbe way our politics ton's centrism bequeathed to the part\' did they continue to live as Jews and, treats the rieh and the poor is unlikely to while breaking with his all-too-frequent thus, to think of themselves as Jews? And take the forms that it has taken in the past. subsei'vience to big business, a trick that how did their non-Jewdsh neighbors live If Kevin Phillips's book is any indication, no potential Democratic candidate for the with and think of them? Tbe answers to populism has run out of gas. No credible 2004 nomination has yet pulled off. But each of these questions are various and coalition ean be built on the basis of there is every reason to believe that there surprising. Various, because no blanket nationalistic anger in this age of global exists a hunger for leadership in America explanation (like that conjured by invok- eapitalism, lea\dng populists sputtering even though not much leadership is in ing the idea of aneient "anti-Semitism") wdth impotent rage. And if Michael Moore e\ddenee. Finding ways to do what seems can speak to so many different local situa- speaks for what passes for the American difficult if not impossible is a crucial tions. Suiprising, because this vast and left—he must be speaking for someone, as aspect of leadership. Any Republican or vigorous Mediterranean Jewdsh civiliza- bis book is a best-seller—no help can Denioerat eapable of overcoming those tion, a major force in the development of be expected from that quarter either. But odds would, if elected, be in a good posi- Westem culture, has been until recently this should be taken as a sign of hope tion to repair the damage done by the elee- almost invisible to the non-specialist. rather than a sign of despair. It opens tbe tion of 2000 and its aftermath. • HIS INVISIBILITY IS itself a signif- icant part of the story. Its reasons Tare linked to each other, and to the Bible. The two major religious traditions that descended from this period—Gentile Christianity and rabbinic and post- Everywhere at Home rabbinic Judaism—-have constructed their respective historieal identities and tbeir FREDRIKSEN respective scriptural canons in ways tliat caused these ancient Jews to disappear. Diaspora: Consider, for example, the double canon of the Christians, the Old and New Testa- Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans ments. These concentrate on events occur- by Erich S. Gruen ring in and around territoria! Israel. The trajectoiy of the Christian hiblical story (Harvard University Press, 386 pp., $39.95) stretches fr'om Adam to Abraham through Moses to David, then to the prophets, and XILE, DISPLACEMENT, wan- and re-found their commonwealth in then to Jesus of Nazareth. The narrative dering, loss: in Biblieal ti'a- their own land. In both equations, guilt is a time of the Old Testament stops some- dition and in later rabbinic constant: in the first instance, guilt about where in the mid-fifth century B.C.E., commentary, in the medieval "causing" the diaspora; in the second, guilt w-hen exiles returning iironi Babylon try to poems of Yehudab ha-Levi about choosing to live there. reconstitute their lives back in Jerusalem. Eand the modern politieal screeds of Few ideas ean give so mueh eoherenee (Some texts, sueh as Daniel and Esther, Theodor Herzl, the idea of diaspora has to so many centuries—twenty-five, to be were in fact written later, but they present dominated Jewish identity. In its religious exaet—of Jewish experience. Yet this con- themselves as much earlier.) The narrative mode, "diaspora," perceived as punitive, struct, as Erich S. Gruen points out, has a time of the New Testament begins with has served as a penitential devdce. The problem: it is historically false. Eloquent- the birth of Jesus—around 4 B.C.E. if people sin, and God uses foreign armies ly, learnedly, persuasively, Gruen invites you rely on Mafthew", around 6 C.E. ifyou (Babylonians for the first exile, Romans the reader of his new book to consider rely on Luke. The Greek-speaking Jews of for tbe second exile) as the instruments of familiar evidence from the .Jewdsh past the western diaspora simply vanish into bis WTath, to call the people to repentance. from a new—one might say a non- this four-century-long narrative lacuna In its secular mode, "diaspora" has served diaspora—perspeetive. His point is sim- between the Testaments. The loss is not as Zionism's foil. Modem Jews renounee ple, but its historieal implications are pro- without irony, for the Gospels and the let- their exile, take control of their history. found. As he observes, in the nearly four ters of Paul—the eore eanon ofthe Christ- hundred years that stretch between ian Testament—are the literaiy products PAULA FREDRIKSEN is ahistorian of Alexander the Great (d. 323 B.C.E.) and of this effaced community. ancient Christianity at Boston University. tbe emperor Nero (d. 6'8 C.E.), Jews could Jewdsh religious memory does no bet- Her new book, Augustine and the Jews, be found in large numbers, and in well- ter. Judaism, too, has a double canon. Tbe wdll be published by Doubleday. established communities, throughout the Tanakh—the biblical scriptures in Hebrew THE NEW REPUBLIC : JtJLY 8 & 15, 2002 : 37 I comprising tbe five books of Moses One post-Alexandrian king moved {Torah), the prophets {Nevi'ini), and tvvo thousand Jewish families from sundry writings (Ketuvi'ifn)~iorms You Made Me Read You And Mesopotamia to garrison colonies in the older portion. .Jewish biblicjil nar- Asia Minor. They relocated voluntar- rative ends with the end of the Baby- I Didn't Want To Do It ily, with inducements, as supporters lonian exile, in the 530s B.C.E., of the regime. Aetive service in for- though other writings within the col- At first thc page was only a furnished room. eign militaries, as mereenaries or as lection take the story up to post-exile You were the one who furnished it. enlisted men. also aided Jewish re- .Jerusalem. The newer portion of the A red couch gaudy as a party mask. settlement. Opportunities in business Jewish canon is the Talmud, the vast Crooked shelving. and agriculture beckoned, and .Jews- antholog}' of rabbinical traditions like others—responded. And in Rome, in Hebrew or its linguistic cousin Ara- And then, after a bit, the Jewish population there by elioiee maic. The earliest Talmudic text, the weather cmne into the room. vvas incre^used when Jewish slaves, Mishnah, was redacted around 200 The douds "skittering," brouglit West in the w'ake of Koman C.E.; the Gemara (later commentaries you wrote, "like suds." vietories in Judea, were eventually on the Mishntih), redacted separately manumitted and took their plaee in in I'alestine and Babylon in the fifth And so we prouounced your novel the cit\- iis freedmen. 1 Maccabees, a and sixth centuries C.E., completes akiu to au ancient Irave! guide Jewish text eoniposcd in the late .sec- the collection. To close the gap of the with its fussy certainty about fares, ond century B.C.E., mentions sub- slx-pluH centuries between 2 Chroni- iidequate hotels, loeal cisterns. stantial western Jewish populations cles (the bust book of the Tanakb) and in Egypt, Syria, the eities and thc the Misbnah (the oldest part of thc H(iw can't the book principalities of Asia Minor (roughly, Talmud), the rabbis invoked ora! tra- be shy hefore onr eyes? modern Turkey), the Aegean islands. dition. Thc torah ("teaching") that It's our fault, nut the book's. Cireeee jiroper, Crete, Cyprus. C\'ronc. Moses did not write down he s]3oke to It was so embarviissed for us. The Aets of thc Apostles, a late tirst- Joshua, who in turn passed it to thc eentury C.K. text in the New Testa- ciders, who gave it to the prophets, Lee Upton ment, claims that Jews eame on who then gave it to the sages.
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