Jewish History | Page 3

XII
THE TEACHINGS OF JEWISH HISTORY Jewry a Spiritual
Community Jewry Indestructible The Creative Principle of Jewry The
Task of the Future The Jew and the Nations The Ultimate Ideal

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
What is Jewish History? In the first place, what does it offer as to
quantity and as to quality? What are its range and content, and what
distinguishes it in these two respects from the history of other nations?
Furthermore, what is the essential meaning, what the spirit, of Jewish
History? Or, to put the question in another way, to what general results
are we led by the aggregate of its facts, considered, not as a whole, but

genetically, as a succession of evolutionary stages in the consciousness
and education of the Jewish people?
If we could find precise answers to these several questions, they would
constitute a characterization of Jewish History as accurate as is
attainable. To present such a characterization succinctly is the purpose
of the following essay.

JEWISH HISTORY
AN ESSAY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

I
THE RANGE OF JEWISH HISTORY
Le peuple juif n'est pas seulement considérable par son antiquité, mais
il est encore singulier en sa durée, qui a toujours continué depuis son
origine jusqu'à maintenant ... S'étendant depuis les premiers temps
jusqu'aux derniers, l'histoire des juifs enferme dans sa durée celle de
toutes nos histoires.--PASCAL, _Pensées_, II, 7.
To make clear the range of Jewish history, it is necessary to set down a
few general, elementary definitions by way of introduction.
It has long been recognized that a fundamental difference exists
between historical and unhistorical peoples, a difference growing out of
the fact of the natural inequality between the various elements
composing the human race. Unhistorical is the attribute applied to
peoples that have not yet broken away, or have not departed very far,
from the state of primitive savagery, as, for instance, the barbarous
races of Asia and Africa who were the prehistoric ancestors of the
Europeans, or the obscure, untutored tribes of the present, like the
Tartars and the Kirghiz. Unhistorical peoples, then, are ethnic groups of
all sorts that are bereft of a distinctive, spiritual individuality, and have
failed to display normal, independent capacity for culture. The term
historical, on the other hand, is applied to the nations that have had a
conscious, purposeful history of appreciable duration; that have
progressed, stage by stage, in their growth and in the improvement of
their mode and their views of life; that have demonstrated mental
productivity of some sort, and have elaborated principles of civilization
and social life more or less rational; nations, in short, representing not

only zoologic, but also spiritual types.[2]
[2] "The primitive peoples that change with their environment,
constantly adapting themselves to their habitat and to external nature,
have no history.... Only those nations and states belong to history
which display self-conscious action; which evince an inner spiritual life
by diversified manifestations; and combine into an organic whole what
they receive from without, and what they themselves originate."
(Introduction to Weber's Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, i, pp. 16-18.)
Chronologically considered, these latter nations, of a higher type, are
usually divided into three groups: 1, the most ancient civilized peoples
of the Orient, such as the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the
Chaldeans; 2, the ancient or classic peoples of the Occident, the Greeks
and the Romans; and 3, the modern peoples, the civilized nations of
Europe and America of the present day. The most ancient peoples of
the Orient, standing "at the threshold of history," were the first heralds
of a religious consciousness and of moral principles. In hoary antiquity,
when most of the representatives of the human kind were nothing more
than a peculiar variety of the class mammalia, the peoples called the
most ancient brought forth recognized forms of social life and a variety
of theories of living of fairly far-reaching effect. All these
culture-bearers of the Orient soon disappeared from the surface of
history. Some (the Chaldeans, Phoenicians, and Egyptians) were
washed away by the flood of time, and their remnants were absorbed by
younger and more vigorous peoples. Others (the Hindoos and Persians)
relapsed into a semi-barbarous state; and a third class (the Chinese)
were arrested in their growth, and remained fixed in immobility. The
best that the antique Orient had to bequeath in the way of spiritual
possessions fell to the share of the classic nations of the West, the
Greeks and the Romans. They greatly increased the heritage by their
own spiritual achievements, and so produced a much more complex
and diversified civilization, which has served as the substratum for the
further development of the better part of mankind. Even the classic
nations had to step aside as soon as their historical mission was fulfilled.
They left the field free for