Jews and Judaism in World History

Howard N. Lupovitch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135189648
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book is a survey of the history of the Jewish people from biblical antiquity to the present, spanning nearly 2, 500 years and traversing five continents.

Opening with a broad introduction which addresses key questions of terminology and definition, the book's ten chapters then go on to explore Jewish history in both its religious and non-religious dimensions. The book explores the social, political and cultural aspects of Jewish history, and examines the changes and continuities across the whole of the Jewish world throughout its long and varied history. Topics covered include:

• the emergence of Judaism as a religion and way of life
• the development during the Middle Ages of Judaism as an all-encompassing identity
• the effect on Jewish life and identity of major changes in Europe and the Islamic world from the mid sixteenth through the end of the nineteenth century
• the complexity of Jewish life in the twentieth century, the challenge of anti-semitism and the impact of the Holocaust, and the emergence of the current centres of World Jewry in the State of Israel and the New World.

Chapter 1
The world of the Hebrew Bible

Studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) as history poses a problem to the modern history reader: a scarcity of evidence, particularly with respect to the earlier books. There is virtually no extrabiblical corroboration whatsoever of events in the Pentateuch and the books of Joshua and Judges, and limited evidence for subsequent narratives. To be sure, there is circumstantial evidence: the Egyptian Twenty-second Dynasty imported slaves from Phoenicia via the Land of Canaan around the same time that the Israelites were purportedly enslaved in Egypt; a nomadic tribe called the Habiru wandered in the vicinity of Canaan around the same time as the Hebrews wandered in the desert; and the existence of the Banu Yamina, a warlike tribe that recalled the militaristic behavior of the Benjaminites in Judges 23. All three of these examples suggest a possible attestation of the biblical narratives, but none conclusively.

For the past two centuries, some scholars have concluded from this lack of corroboration that these stories were fictional accounts. This claim began with Julius Wellhausen, a nineteenth-century Protestant theologian who posited that there were four distinct authors of biblical narrative: the Jahwist, the Elohist, the Priestly author, and the Deuteronomist. This conceptualization has generally been known as the Documentary Hypothesis on, more colloquially, as JEPD. Despite considerable efforts by biblical scholars to add nuance to Wellhausen’s seminal though crude claim, however, it is still not known whether these narratives were fictional or historical. The proposed authors of the text remained shrouded in speculation: a scribe in the court of King David or King Josiah, a northern anti-Davidic scribe, or a priest in exile.

The upshot is that these stories are best understood neither as history nor as fiction, but rather as myth; and the distinct literary voices as editors and redactors rather than authors. These stories were part of an oral/aural traditional of folklore that was retold in less formal settings such as around a military campfire between battles, or recited on formal occasions, such as the recitation rituals described in Deuteronomy 26: 1–9 and Joshua 24: 1–16. Eventually the stories were transcribed, collected, and canonized as the Hebrew Bible.

The availability of at least some evidence to corroborate the period from the United Monarchy on has led biblical scholars to follow two distinct approaches in determining the historicity of this later period. Some, mainly philologists, have followed a more minimalist approach. Noting the stylistic similarities between biblical texts and Persian and Babylonian writings from the sixth century B.C.E., these scholars have concluded that most of the biblical corpus is a literary invention of Jews living in the Persian diaspora.

Other scholars, mainly archeologists, have taken a more maximalist approach. Fortified with a variety of artifacts and records, these scholars have reconstructed enough of the biblical world to accept more of the biblical narrative as historical. The truth undoubtedly lies somewhere between these two approaches. What follows, therefore, is an attempt to separate the historical aspects of these stories from the literary attempts of later generations to fashion a more idealized picture of ancient Israel. Whether or not these stories concern real events, therefore, is less important than the certainty with which subsequent generations of Israelites and, later, Jews, believed that they do.

The biblical narrative that precedes the rise of the United Monarchy, in particular, reveals at least as much about the collective memory and worldview of later generations of Israelites and Jews as it does about pre-tenth-century B.C.E. Israelite society. Six elements of biblical narrative underscore the distinction between their historical and their mythical dimensions. First, the narratives of the Books of Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel and I Kings are set during a period in ancient Near Eastern history known as the Assyrian Interregnum, the intermezzo between the collapse of the first Assyrian Empire during the mid-thirteenth century and the return of Assyria as a major imperial power in the region during the ninth century. Coupled with the declining Egyptian presence in Canaan owing to a series of battles with the peoples of the sea along the southern border of Egypt, the interregnum explains how smaller peoples like the Israelites and their neighbors aspired to – and, according to these narratives, attained – a measure of sovereignty. The possibility for sovereignty is at the heart of God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In addition to a multitude of descendants – a highly resonant promise to a numerically small people – their descendants are guaranteed possession of the Land of Canaan. The stories of Joshua’s conquest of the land presaged the rise of the United Monarchy by describing the hill-dwelling clans that made up the Israelite tribal confederation overcoming and defeating the technologically superior Canaanites and Philistines. The eventual expansion of the United Monarchy to the promised borders described the promise coming to fruition.

Second, the ancient Israelites are more accurately characterized as monolatrous than as monotheistic. The Israelites worshiped Yahweh as the supreme deity, and regarded the shrine of Yahweh – the Tabernacle, referred to alternatively as Mishkan and Ohel Mo’ed – as the center of religious worship. Israelite devotion to Yahweh was idealized in the form of a two-dimensional covenant. Initially, the covenant revolved around a promise by Yahweh to Abraham, the grandfather of Jacob. In exchange for untrammeled fidelity and obedience, Abraham and his heretofore childless wife were promised a multitude of descendants and possession of the Land of Canaan. As a guarantee, Abraham and his male descendants and followers bore the mark of the covenant – the basis of ritual circumcision. Alongside this unconditional promissory covenant was a conditional arrangement between Yahweh and the Israelites, delivered to Moses at Mount Sinai. According to the terms of this covenant, the Israelites agreed to follow a series of commandments (Mitzvot) for which they would be rewarded by God with the basic elements of a felicitous life, and suffer divine retribution if they violated these commandments.

Yet the covenant with Yahweh did not prevent the Israelites from frequently worshiping other local deities, notably Ba’al, the Canaanite god of rain. This was not surprising, given the absence of a reliable source of water in this region. Unlike the Egyptians and the peoples of Mesopotamia, for whom the Nile and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers overflowed annually and provided a more than adequate source of water, the peoples who lived in the Land of Canaan depended heavily on rainfall. The chronic concern for water is an underlying theme in the covenental relationship between God and Israel, particularly in the obligatory covenant in Deuteronomy. At the heart of the litany of blessings and curses enumerated in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, an abundance of seasonal rain to assure good crops is the ultimate reward; drought and the ensuing crop failure is the ultimate punishment for violating the terms of the covenant.

The worship of Ba’al and other local deities, reviled in biblical narrative, is nonetheless as prevalent as the worship of the God of Israel, and was the fatal flaw of the tribal confederation described in Judges and I Samuel. The solidarity and kinship of a covenantal community sustained the tribal confederation for nearly two centuries. In the end, however, the internal and external weaknesses of the confederation led to its collapse. The common belief in Yahweh or the covenant was unable to forge more than a limited sense of unity between the tribes. At times, when individual tribes were beset by a foreign adversary, the other tribes remained neutral. The Song of Deborah in Judges 5 is a literary condemnation of this lack of tribal solidarity. There were even instances when the tribes fought against one another. Only in exile is the Israelites’ monolatrous relationship with Yahweh transformed into a monotheistic relationship.

The monolatrous worship of Jahweh was, in retrospect, a symptom of the presence of foreign elements in Israelite culture. God’s commanding tone in Genesis and Exodus is reminiscent of an Egyptian style of rulership. Like an Egyptian Pharaoh, God speaks in absolutes. Divine injunctions to Abraham and Moses are not given conditionally, or even simply as commands, but rather as statements of fact. And the Israelites accept these commands in equally absolute terms: “We shall abide.” The Deuteronomic Code, whose conditional tone differed starkly from the earlier divine commands, reflects the style of an Assyrian vassal treaty. On a more mundane level, foreign influence is reflected in the names of biblical figures. Gideon the judge is known also by a Canaanite name, Yeruba’al. Samson is linked to Delilah, a Philistine woman.

Third, the subjugation of the Israelites by more powerful empires implicitly cast the Israelites as physically and militarily inferior to their stronger neighbors. Once the larger powers returned to prominence, Israelite independence waned and eventually disappeared. Thus emerged the foundational notion of Israelite and later Jewish servitude to a temporal sovereign, mitigated by a belief in Yahweh, an omnipotent sovereign of the universe, and a manifest destiny that promised the ultimate conquest and inheritance of the Land of Israel.

Biblical narratives counterbalanced this undeniable fact. The heroes of biblical stories are often portrayed as conventionally lesser types defeating those presumed to be their betters. Guile and ingenuity, for example, typically defeated brute force, reminiscent of Odysseus being chosen over Ajax. The more sedate Jacob repeatedly outwits his stronger brother Esau. Similarly, two of the judges, Ehud and Gideon, outwit seemingly invincible opponents. Ehud executes Eglon, the king of Moab, by smuggling a knife into his royal chamber. Gideon misleads the Midianites into thinking that his army is far larger than three-hundred men. Contrary to the entrenched notion of primogeniture, moreover, younger sons frequently overshadow their elder brothers. Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Joseph, Ephraim, David, and Solomon were younger brothers who wound up outshining their older siblings. In contrast, Jacob’s eldest son, Reuben, is mentioned only as failing to rescue Joseph.

Most poignantly, perhaps, in an age when women were rarely active players, women in the Bible are periodically the agent through which divine will is realized. Rebecca redeems Isaac’s failure to recognize and choose Jacob as his successor. By helping Jacob trick Esau out of his birthright, Rebecca ensures that the covenant continues through Jacob and not through Esau. Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar has a child by her father-in-law after his sons fail to fulfill this responsibility. Though the product of a seemingly illicit relationship, the child ultimately becomes the ancestor of King David. In the Book of Judges, Ya’el the Kenite uses feminine guile to entrap and kill Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite army. An unnamed woman kills Abimelech, ending his illicit attempt to install himself as king over the tribal confederation.

Fourth, biblical narratives reveal a tension between centralized and localized worship of Yahweh. The Tabernacle and then Solomon’s Temple are designated as the center and, eventually, as the only legitimate place to offer a sacrifice. At the same time, each Israelite household is instructed to offer the Passover sacrifice. Biblical narratives speak out periodically against local altars and shrines as vehicles for foreign worship, and outlaw them entirely during the reign of Hezekiah at the end of the eighth century and Josiah toward the end of the seventh.

Fifth, the relations between the Israelites and other tribes varied. Thus, neighboring tribes have mixed images in biblical narratives. For example, in the Book of Genesis the mythic ancestor of the Moabites is described as the offspring of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter; this tale undoubtedly originated at a time of hostility between the Israelites and the Moabites. In sharp contrast, the title character in the Book of Ruth is a Moabite women who joins the Israelite faith out of intense devotion to her Israelite mother-in-law, and then goes on to become the ancestor of King David; this tale reflects a more amicable or even filial relationship with Moab. Similarly, the ebb and flow of the relations between the Israelites and the Edomites is reflected in the tempestuous relationship between Jacob and Esau, the two peoples’ respective ancestors. Initially, Jacob and Esau are twin brothers, but at odds with one another even in the womb. Jacob steals his brother’s birthright; Esau threatens to kill Jacob. By the reign of King David, Edom is an ally and vassal state; Jacob and Esau eventually make peace.

Finally, there is a recurring ambivalence toward temporal kingship; divine rule is often seen as a preferred alternative. Being God’s chosen people compensated for holding a lowly position in the hierarchy of the nations of the region. For example, the victorious Gideon, fresh from his military triumph over the Midianites, rebuffs his followers’ request that he be crowned king of Israel: “I will not rule over you, neither will my progeny – God will rule over you” (Judges 8:23). Such resistance to temporal kingship soon acceded to the practical need for a king, yet the notion that kingship somehow betrayed the covenantal relationship between Yahweh and Israel would fester to the very end of the First Commonwealth – and even beyond in the conceptualization of the Messiah as a scion of the Davidic monarchy. For this reason, Israelite kings would face the challenges often associated with a constitutional monarchy: negotiating between the demands of royal administration and the rigorous constitutional expectations and limitations imposed by the laws of Moses and the covenant with Yahweh.

The pro-Davidic, pro-monarchic voice underscored the need for monarchy by underlining three fatal flaws of the tribal confederation. First was its lack of strong and continuous leadership. The priesthood, while commanding some measure of financial support and loyalty from the tribes, was never able to manage day-to-day political and military affairs; this is illustrated in I Samuel by the story of Eli the high priest and his sons, who allowed the Ark of the Covenant to be captured in battle. The judges – a series of strong, charismatic military leaders – scored a series of military victories against neighboring tribes – and, in the case of Samson, even against the Philistines. However, the judges were unable to transfer their leadership and authority to their children, thus rendering their leadership limited and ephemeral.

Second, the tribal confederation was unable to prevent a rupture in the fabric of Israelite society, exemplified by the concluding line of the Book of Judges: “In those days, each man did that which was right in his eyes.” This verse follows the story of a horrifying rape and murder that resulted from a lack of hospitality. The political and moral vacuum created by a lack of effective leadership under the tribal confederation set in motion a transition to two new, ultimately more effective forms of leadership: the king and the prophet.

In this regard, prophets played a key role in the success or failure of Israelite kings. Although ostensibly providing a religious liaison between God and Israel, prophets doubled as important political figures. They defended the commitments to the covenant by scrutinizing royal policies or actions in terms of divine law or instruction, and thus were an integral part of the checks and balances of ancient Israelite politics. At times, this meant affirming royal policy with divine sanction. More often, though, prophets provided a check on royal authority by exposing its unacceptability. In the most extreme cases, such as transition from the Omri to the Jehu Dynasty, prophets aided in the overthrow of one Israelite dynasty by another.

The complexities of Israelite kingship, and the often tempestuous relationship between king and prophet, were present already in the story of the rise and reign of Saul, the first Israelite king, and in his relationship with the prophet-judge Samuel. While anointing Saul according to divine instruction, Samuel echoed and elaborated Gideon’s reservation about a temporal king displacing Yahweh as king. Thus, Saul found Samuel to be critic more than supporter. When Saul’s military campaign against the Philistines faltered after some initial victories, he made two key blunders that incurred the wrath of Samuel and ultimately led to the end of Saul’s short-lived dynasty. The first mistake occurred during a key battle with the Philistines. Saul, awaiting for Samuel to arrive and offer the required pre-battle sacrifice, opted to offer the sacrifice himself in violation of biblical law in order not to lose a tactical advantage by waiting too long to attack. Dramatically, Samuel arrived just as Saul finished performing the ritual sacrifice, and chastised him for his lack of faith in God. As Samuel stormed off, Saul grabbed at and tore his coat, an incident that Samuel then interpreted as a divine decision to tear kingship away from Saul.

In another incident, Samuel had commanded Saul to destroy King Agag along with his followers and livestock according to the biblical instruction to annihilate the tribe of Amalek – the biblical injunction of holy war. When Saul balked and spared Agag and the livestock, Samuel, after uttering one of the most chilling lines in the Hebrew Bible (“What is this sound of sheep that sounds in my ears?”), hacked Agag to pieces, and then reiterated the demise of Saul’s dynasty. In retrospect, Saul’s failure as king reflected the difficulty of navigating between the demands of kingship and the regulations of the Torah. Circumstances would mitigate this difficulty for Saul’s successor, David.

The United Monarchy

The rise and reign of King David inaugurated the period of the United Monarchy is the central narrative in the Nevi’im section of the Tanakh. From that point in the Tanakh on, some aspects of biblical narrative have been attested to by archeological evidence. The population of the United Monarchy was most likely between 15,000 and 20,000 people, suggesting that the kingdom of David and Solomon did not extend very far beyond the limited expanse of a city-state and the territory immediately adjacent to it. This suggests that the borders of the kingdom described in II Kings, which are conveniently congruent with the promised borders delineated in Numbers and Deuteronomy, were more an element of a Jewish manifest destiny than a territorial reality.

The glorious rise of the United Monarchy, a golden age in the history of ancient Israel, reflected the outspoken view of the pro-monarchic editor of the Tanakh, though the voice of the anti-Davidic editor recurs periodically. David’s “golden boy” biography combined the most appealing elements of preceding stories, including a Moses-esque rise from relative obscurity to kingship with the complex Nietzschean passion of a warrior-poet. Moreover, typical of the heroes of biblical narrative, David was the youngest of seven sons. Like Jacob, he tended sheep while his brother, like Esau, found fame and fortune through physical and military exploits, in his case fighting the Philistines under the command of King Saul. D...

Table of contents

• Themes in World History
• Contents
• For Dahvi and Hanna
• Introduction: dimensions of Jewish history
• Chapter 1 The world of the Hebrew Bible
• Chapter 2 The challenge of Hellenism
• Chapter 3 The rise of Rabbinic Judaism
• Chapter 4 The Jews of Islam
• Chapter 5 The Jews of medieval Christendom
• Chapter 6 World Jewry in flux, 1492–1750
• Chapter 7 The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880
• Chapter 8 Anti-Semitism and Jewish responses, 1870–1914
• Chapter 9 From renewal to devastation, 1914–45
• Chapter 10 Jews in the postwar world
• Conclusion: world Jewry faces the twenty-first century
• Further reading
• Index