Jewish History

Jewish History

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jewish History, by S. M. Dubnow
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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