Jacob L. Talmon: Mission and Testimony: Political Essays

416 Pages·2022·3.439 MB·English

by  David Ohana

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Isaiah Berlin, in his “Tribute to a Friend”, wrote about Talmon, “No
matter what his theoretical interests were, or the topics on which he
was lecturing or writing, his deepest concern was with the Jewish
people, its history, its religious, moral and social values, its place
among the nations, its future in Israel and the diaspora.” These
words capture the essence of Talmon’s political essays presented in
Mission and Testimony.
The historian Jacob L.Talmon (1916–1980) was chosen by an
international committee of scholars as one of the twenty major histo-
rians of the twentieth century. It declared that “his historiography
was a convincing apologia for human freedom.” Talmon owes his
fame to his magnum opus, the trilogy that began with The Origins
of Totalitarian Democracy (1952), continued with Political
Messianism(1960) and concluded with The Myth of the Nationand
the Vision of Revolution (1981). These works have been translated
into many languages and have influenced many statesmen and intel-
lectuals.
Talmon’s essays on the destiny of the Jewish people and the State
of Israel in the modern era are collected here under the apposite title
he had accorded to one of his articles on modern anti-Semitism:
Mission and Testimony. Part I, “The Nature of Jewish History”,
deals with the Jewish presence in history, the universal significance
of Jewish history, and the impact of Jewish intellectuals. Part II,
“From Anti-Semitism to the Holocaust”, concerns the anti-Semitic
climate of opinion that led to the Holocaust. Part III, “Israel between
War and Peace”, depicts the regional and global situation of the
State of Israel. In Part IV, “Intellectual and Political Debates”,
Talmon confronts intellectuals and statesmen such as Arnold
Toynbee and Menachem Begin. Part V, “Profiles in History”,
depicts the intellectual portraits of the historian Lewis Namier and
the physicist and champion of human rights Andrei Sakharov.
David Ohana is a full professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev. His areas of research include the intellectual and cultural history of
modern Europe, Mediterranean studies, and Israeli identity. He studied under
Jacob Talmon at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and was a fellow at the
Sorbonne, Harvard and Berkeley. Among his many books are the trilogy The
Nihilist Order (Sussex Academic Press) and The Origins of Israeli Mythology
(Cambridge University Press).
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Introduction and organization of this volume, copyright © David Ohana, 2015;
individual chapter copyrights are detailed in the Acknowledgements.
The right of David Ohana to be identified as Editor of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published in the Sussex Academic e-Library, 2015.
SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS
PO Box 139
Eastbourne BN24 9BP, UK
and simultaneously in the United States of America and Canada
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes
of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jacob L. Talmon : mission and testimony : political essays /
foreword by Isaiah Berlin ; edited by David Ohana.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84519-741-4 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-78284-211-8 (e-pub)
ISBN 978-1-78284-212-5 (e-mobi)
ISBN 978-1-78284-213-2 (e-pdf)
1. Talmon, J. L. (Jacob Leib), 1916–1980. 2. Jewish
historians—Israel. 3. Jews—History—Historiography. I. Ohana, David,
editor.
DS115.9.T35J33 2015
956.940072’02—dc23
2015006455
This e-book text has been prepared for electronic viewing. Some features, including
tables and figures, might not display as in the print version, due to
electronic conversion limitations and/or copyright strictures.
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Foreword: Isaiah Berlin – A Tribute to My Friend ix
Introduction: The Historian as an Intellectual 1
David Ohana
Jacob L. Talmon’s Political Essays
Part One The Nature of Jewish History
Prophetism and Ideology – The Jewish Presence in History 33
(The Jerusalem Quarterly, Number 3, Spring 1977).
The Nature of Jewish History – Its Universal Significance 47
(Published by the Hillel Foundation, London, 1957.
The lecture was delivered at the Gustave Tuck Theatre,
University College, London, on October 17, 1956, under
the chairmanship of the Rt. Hon. Viscount Samuel).
The Jewish Intellectuals in Politics – New Factors in an 76
Ancient Tradition
(Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, Vol. XIV,
No. 39, September 24, 1965).
Jews between “Right” and “Left” 93
(Midstream, Summer 1958; a translation from Hebrew,
Ha’aretz, September 25, 1957).
Suggestion for Isolating the Jewish Component in World 120
History
(Midstream, March 1972).
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CONTENTS
Part Two From Anti-Semitism to the Holocaust
Mission and Testimony – The Universal Significance 149
of Modern Anti-Semitism
(Essays on Human Rights: Contemporary Issues and Jewish
Perspectives, ed. David Sidorsky, 1979, Philadelphia, PA:
The Jewish Publication Society of America, pp. 336–359).
The New Anti-Semitism 172
(The New Republic: A Journal of Politics and the Arts,
September 18, 1976).
European History – Seedbed of the Holocaust 186
(Midstream, May 1973. The lecture was delivered at the Yad
Vashem symposium – “The Holocaust and the Rebirth of
Israel,” Jerusalem, April 19, 1973).
Part Three Israel between War and Peace
For Total Peace in the Middle East 221
(International Problems, the quarterly of the Israeli Institute
of International Affairs; as “Political Doctrine and Problems
of Developing Countries,” Jerusalem, Nov.–Dec. 1967,
VI /3–4, pp. 60–68).
Israel and the Arab World 233
(The Jewish Quarterly17/ 3–4 (63–64), Winter 1969).
Domestic and International Politics – A Presentation 254
(Congress Bi-Weekly, 8/2–3, February 26, 1971, 39–42:
following the 8th Annual American–Israel Dialogue, on
“Reciprocal Rights and Responsibilities of American and
Israeli Jews”).
Reflections of an Historian in Jerusalem 262
(Encounter, May 1976).
Sadat’s Peace Initiative and Its Aftermath 279
(The Jewish Quarterly26/1 (95), Spring 1978).
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CONTENTS
Part Four Intellectual and Political Debates
The Argument between Arabs and Jews: An Exchange 287
between Arnold Toynbee and J.L. Talmon
(Encounter, October 1967).
An Open Letter to the Minister of Information 300
(Ma’ariv, September 1969; translated into English and published
as A Letter to his Establishment by an Israeli Intellectual
by the Arab Information Center, New York, 1969).
The Mideast War – A Rejoinder 311
(The New York Review, January 24, 1974. In the November 15 issue
appeared a statement on the Mideast War signed by twenty-one
members of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In the
November 29 issue Prof. Daniel Amit of The Hebrew
University replied in the form of an open letter to Prof. Jacob
Talmon, one of the signers of the statement. This essay is
Talmon’s rejoinder to Amit).
“The Homeland is in Danger” – An Open Letter to 317
Menahem Begin
(Ha’aretz, 31 March 1980).
Part Five Profiles in History
The Ordeal of Sir Lewis Namier – The Man, the Historian, 345
the Jew
(Commentary33, 1962).
Andrei Sakharov’s Ordeal 360
(Midstream,February 1977. This essay was presented as an
address to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities at
a celebration in Sakharov’s honor when he was awarded the
Nobel Prize.).
Bibliography of J. L. Talmon 375
Index 376
vii
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Acknowledgements
All chapters in the Political Essays section are copyright © The
Estate of the Late Jacob L. Talmon or are in the Public Domain,
except where rights holders are alerted below.
The Ordeal of Sir Lewis Namier – The Man, the Historian, the Jew.
reprinted from COMMENTARY, March 1962, by permission;
copyright © by Commentary, Inc.
Mission and Testimony – The Universal Significance of Modern
Anti-Semitism, from The Unique and the Universal by J. L. Talmon,
published by Secker and Walburg. Reprinted by permission of The
Random House Group Limited.
The New Anti-Semitism, September 18, 1976. Reprinted by
permission of The New Republic.
The publishers apologize for any errors or omissions in the above
list, and have made substantive efforts to locate rights holders. The
publishers would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that
should be incorporated in the next edition or reprint of this book.
viii
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A Tribute to My Friend
Isaiah Berlin
I am glad of this opportunity of saying a few words about Jacob
Talmon, to whom I was bound by many years of warm friendship.
I first met him when he came to see me in Oxford in, I think, 1947,
on the suggestion of his then teacher, Professor Harold Laski of the
London School of Economics. He wished to discuss movements in
eighteenth-century Western thought which, in his opinion, had not
been correctly interpreted by most writers on the subject. I realised,
before the end of the first hour, that I was listening to an original
thinker, a very lively talker, with interesting ideas resting on a solid
basis of erudition, that he was imaginative, warm-hearted, passion-
ately anxious to convey his vision of the French thinkers of the
Enlightenment and the political consequences of their ideas. I
pressed him to stay for longer than he had intended, and he readily
agreed. We spent the rest of the day discussing what afterwards
became the central theme of his most famous book, Totalitarian
Democracy, and since my ideas were tending in the same direction,
I found that talking with him was highly stimulating and intellectu-
ally delightful.
The sympathetic accord established between us on that first
meeting remained undisturbed from then on. The major thrusts of
his investigations went into two basic yet parallel directions. His first
effort was to trace authoritarian and then totalitarian socialism,
initially among parties and factions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century France and elsewhere in Europe. Inevitably his scholarship
turned to the post 1917 Communist régimes. But above all he bent
his mind to the parallels he revealed between the thought of
Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Just and their conceptions of liberty
and fraternity. On the one hand he uncovered the role of revolu-
tionary élites in the social order for which they were fighting, and
on the other, the theory and practice of Marx and Marxists in
contradistinction to those of liberals and socialists of a more liber-