Major Turning Points in Jewish Intellectual History

230 Pages·2003·0.814 MB·English

by  David Aberbach (auth.)

Major Turning Points in
Jewish Intellectual
History
David Aberbach
Major Turning Points in Jewish Intellectual History
Also by David Aberbach
AT THE HANDLES OF THE LOCK: Themes in the Fiction of S.J. AGnon, The
Littman Library and Oxford University Press, 1984.
BIALIK, in Jewish Thinkers series, Arthur Hertzberg, ed. Peter Halban and
Weidenfeld, London, Grove Press, U.S.A., 1988. Published in Hebrew,
Yediot/Eked, 1992.
SURVIVING TRAUMA: Loss, Literature and Psychoanalysis, Yale
University Press, 1989.
REALISM, CARICATURE AND BIAS: The Fiction of Mendele Mocher Sefarim,
The Littman Library, 1993.
IMPERIALISM AND BIBLICAL PROPHECY 750–500 BCE, Routledge, 1993. Italian
translation, Edizioni Culturali Internationali Genova, 1996.
CHARISMA IN POLITICS, RELIGION AND THE MEDIA: Private Trauma,
Public Ideals, Macmillan, 1996.
REVOLUTIONARY HEBREW, EMPIRE AND CRISIS, Macmillan, 1998.
THE ROMAN–JEWISH WARS AND HEBREW CULTURAL NATIONALISM,
(with Moshe Aberbach), Macmillan, 2000.
Major Turning Points in
Jewish Intellectual History
David Aberbach
Department of Jewish Studies
McGill University, Montreal, Canada;
and Department of Sociology
London School of Economics
and Political Science
© David Aberbach 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-1766-9
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First published 2003 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Aberbach,David,1953–
Major turning points in Jewish intellectual history/David Aberbach.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Jews – Civilization.I.Title.
DS113.A375 2003
909(cid:2).04924––dc21 2003053564
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
To Mimi, Gabriella, Shulamit, and Jessica,
Shoshana, Moshe, and Mop, with love and thanks

Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction ix
Part I From Idolatry to Monotheism 1
1 The Iron Age, Imperialism, and the Prophets 3
2 Trauma and Abstract Monotheism: Jewish Exile and
Recovery in the Sixth Century BCE 17
Part II From State to Scripture 29
3 The Roman–Jewish Wars and Hebrew Cultural Nationalism 31
4 Entry to Powerlessness: The Tannaim, Marcus Aurelius, and
the Politics of Stoicized Judaism 45
Part III Toward a Secular Culture 73
5 Secular Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain 1031–1140 75
Part IV From Theology to Sociology 99
6 The Baal Shem Tov, Mystical Union, and Individualism 101
7 Marx and Freud: Emancipation and the End of
Rabbinic Dominance 114
8 Conflicting Images of Hebrew in Western Civilization 129
Part V From Assimilation to Nationalism 157
9 The Renascence of Hebrew and Jewish Nationalism
in the Tsarist Empire 1881–1917 159
Notes 189
Bibliography 195
Index 210
vii
Acknowledgments
Over a period of a decade and more of working through the complexities
of a highly variegated minority civilization in a series of dominant
civilizations, I have had the good fortune of being affiliated with two
universities – McGill University, Montreal, and the University of London,
where I have been visiting professor at London University (University
College and the London School of Economics) since 1992 – without
whose support and encouragement this book could not have been
written.
I am deeply grateful to my colleagues in Jewish Studies at McGill
University – Professors Gershon Hundert, Lawrence Kaplan, Barry Levy,
and Eugene Orenstein – for allowing me exceptional conditions which
let me to get on with this and other books, as well as to the Convenors
of the LSE Sociology Department – Professors Paul Rock, Nik Rose, Roger
Silverstone, and especially Eileen Barker – for their generous hospitality
over a period of many years.
This book builds on earlier books of mine: Surviving Trauma: Loss,
Literature and Psychoanalysis; Imperialism and Biblical Prophecy 750–500
BCE; The Roman–Jewish Wars and Hebrew Cultural Nationalism(co-written
with my father, Professor Moshe Aberbach); Revolutionary Hebrew, Empire
and Crisis; and separate studies of the three greatest Hebrew writers of
the 1881–1948 period: Mendele Mocher Sefarim, Chaim Nachman
Bialik, and Samuel Joseph Agnon.
I thank the editors of journals where parts of this book were first
published: British Journal of Sociology, Commentary, Ethnic and Racial
Studies, Harvard Theological Review, Israel Affairs, Jewish Chronicle, Jewish
Quarterly, Judaism, and Nations and Nationalism.
Finally, I thank Luciana O’Flaherty, my editor at Palgrave Macmillan,
and V.S. Mukesh, for their invaluable help.
viii
Introduction
Jewish intellectual history has several watersheds, in each of which the
Jews might have disappeared. Instead, they determined Jewish survival
and the character of Judaism: from idolatry to monotheism in the age
of the Bible; from biblical to rabbinic Judaism in the Roman period;
from exclusive Jewish learning to increasing absorption of secular learn-
ing under medieval Islamic rule; and in the modern period, a cluster of
overwhelming changes, from being mainly a religious, working class,
rural, impoverished, diaspora-based, Yiddish-speaking people, to a secu-
lar, middle class, urban people with a reborn Jewish state in which
Hebrew was revived spectacularly. This book explores these turning
points largely in a comparative context. The Hebrew prophets, for
example, are seen in the context of ancient near eastern culture and his-
tory; the Tannaim (Mishnah teachers) are discussed as belonging to the
Greco-Roman world of Seneca, Tacitus, Epictetus, and especially
Marcus Aurelius; the medieval Hebrew poets are comparable with Arabic
poets such as Ibn Hazm and Ibn Zaidun; Jewish mystics such as the Baal
Shem Tov may be compared with other mystics, such as John of the
Cross or Krishnamurti; and the work of modern Hebrew writers owes
much to European, especially Russian influence and, more recently, to
English literature.
A comparative approach to Jewish intellectual history, particularly the
long, ambiguous relationship between Hebraism and Hellenism, is a fas-
cinating window into Judaism and the elements which made its survival
possible. From the late-biblical period to the present, Greek culture has
been the primary “Other” in Jewish life, coming to represent both that
which is repugnant and alluring in Gentile culture, and one of the great-
est stimulants for change in Jewish life. Hebraism and Hellenism have
had an ambivalent relationship from ancient times to the foundation of
modern Israel. Greek culture penetrated late-biblical, rabbinic, and
medieval Judaism as well as the Jewish Enlightenment (the Haskalah)
and modern Jewish nationalism. The modern revival of Hellenism
in Europe influenced Jewish nationalists as they rejected rabbinic spiri-
tuality, non-belligerence, and the disdain for athleticism which had
dominated Jewish life after Rome destroyed the Jewish state in 70 CE.
Messianism and mysticism were further recurrent spurs to change in
Jewish life, often appearing in troughs in Jewish history, in times of
ix