The Jews: A History

592 Pages·2018·14.437 MB·English

by  John M. Efron, Steven Weitzman, Matthias B Lehmann

The Jews
The Jews: A History is a comprehensive and accessible text that explores the religious, cultural, social, and economic
diversity of the Jewish people and their faith.
P lacing Jewish history within its wider cultural context, the book covers a broad time span, stretching from ancient
Israel to the modern day. It examines Jewish history across a range of settings, including the ancient Near East, the age of
Greek and Roman rule, the medieval realms of Christianity and Islam, modern Europe, including the World Wars and the
Holocaust, and contemporary America and Israel, covering a variety of topics, such as legal emancipation, acculturation,
and religious innovation. The third edition is fully updated to include more case studies and to encompass recent events
in Jewish history, as well as religion, social life, economics, culture, and gender.
Supported by case studies, online references, further reading, maps, and illustrations, The Jews: A History provides
students with a comprehensive and wide-ranging grounding in Jewish history.
John Efron is the Koret Professor of Jewish History at the University of California at Berkeley. His specialty is the cultural
and social history of German Jewry. His most recent book is German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton
University Press, 2016).
Matthias Lehmann is Professor of History and Teller Chair in Jewish History at the University of California, Irvine. He
has written about the history of Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire and around the Mediterranean. His most recent
book is E missaries From the Holy Land (Stanford, 2014).
Steven Weitzman directs the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where
he also serves as the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures. A scholar of ancient
Jewish culture and religion, his recent publications include a biography of King Solomon from Yale University Press and
The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age (Princeton University Press, 2017).

The Jews
A History
John Efron
University of California, Berkeley
Matthias Lehmann
University of California, Irvine
Steven Weitzman
University of Pennsylvania
THIRD EDITION
This edition published 2019
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of John Efron, Matthias Lehmann and Steven Weitzman to be identified as authors of this work
has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Pearson Education Inc, 2009
Second edition published by Routledge, 2018
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Efron, John M., author. | Weitzman, Steven, 1965– author. | Lehmann, Matthias B., 1970– author.
Title: The Jews : a history / John Efron, Matthias Lehmann, Steven Weitzman.
Description: Third edition. | New York, NY : Routledge ; Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2019. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018015595 |
Subjects: LCSH: Jews—History. | Judaism—History.
Classification: LCC DS117 .E33 2019 | DDC 909/.04924—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015595
ISBN: 978-1-138-30311-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-29844-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-01787-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Minion Pro
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of Figures ix Biblical Stories the Bible Doesn’t Tell 52
List of Maps xi
Modern Encounters With Mount Sinai 56
Preface to the Third Edition xiii
The Bible and the Birth of Jewish Culture 59
Publisher’s Acknowledgments xv
Five Questions About the Jewish Bible 60
Acknowledgments xvii
Notes on Spelling and Transliteration xix
3. Jews and Greeks 62
1. Ancient Israel and Other Ancestors 1 From Alexander to Ptolemaic Egypt 63
Searching for Israel’s Origins 2 Exile or Diaspora? 68
BCE and CE: The Religious Background of How Seleucid Rule and the Maccabean Revolt 71
We Think About History 3 Did Antisemitism Originate in Hellenistic Egypt? 72
The Origins and Meaning(s) of the Name Israel 6 Is Martyrdom a Jewish Invention? 75
The Biblical World in Brief 8 Forgotten Heroines of Hanukkah: Were the True
A Confirmable Chronology of Ancient Israelite Heroes of the Maccabean Revolt Women? 78
History 13 Emerging Religious Differences 80
Fitting the Bible Into History 14 Answering Some Questions About the Dead Sea
Political Awakenings 14 Scrolls 84
The Search for Solomon’s Temple 17 The Afterlife of Jewish Hellenistic Culture 86
Family Ties 18
4. Between Caesar and God 89
Biblical Archaeology: A Controversial Quest 20
Surviving Mesopotamian Domination 22 Roman Rule and Its Jewish Allies 90
Sex and Death in Ancient Israel 24 The Jews in Roman Eyes 95
The Early History of God 27
Resisting Rome—and the Aftermath 95
Where Does God Come From? 30
Who Were the Zealots? 98
From the Historical Israel Back to Biblical Israel 31
The Mass Suicide at Masada 100
Letters From a Rebel 102
2. Becoming the People of the Book 33
Jewish Life Before and After the Temple’s
Restoration? 34
Destruction 104
Intermarriage: Biblical Arguments for and Christianity’s Emergence From Jewish Culture 110
Against 38
The Quest for the Historical Jesus 112
Stage 1: The Composition of Biblical Literature 39
The Origin of Satan 114
On Why the Bible Is Not a Book 40
From the Sabbath to Sunday 116
How Does the Hebrew Bible Differ From Other
Did the Jews Kill Jesus? 117
Ancient Near Eastern Texts? 44
The Transition to Late Antiquity 118
A Snapshot of the Hebrew Bible in the
Making 46 5. From Temple to Talmud 120
Stage 2: The Canonization of the Bible 47 The Late Antique Context of Rabbinic Judaism 121
A Crash Course in the Jewish Bible 51 Jewish Life in a Christianized Roman Context 121
v
vi Contents
Converting the Land of Israel Into the Christian Rabbinic Culture in Medieval Ashkenaz 192
Holy Land 126 The Ashkenazi Pietists 194
Jewish Life in Sasanian Babylonia 127 Crusades 195
A Synagogue in a War Zone 129 A Jewish Polemic Against Christianity 198
Putting the Rabbis Into the Picture 131 A Disastrous Fourteenth Century 198
The Emergence of Rabbinic Culture 132 Sefarad 199
What Became of the Priests After the Temple’s Life on the Frontier 199
Destruction? 135 The Blood Libel and Other Lethal
The Age of the Mishnah 136 Accusations 200
The Other Ancient Jewish Language 139 Sefarad and the Rise of Kabbalah 204
Toward Expulsion 207
The Babylonian Talmud and Beyond 141
Banning Jewish Philosophy 208
Wading Into the Sea of Talmud 142
A People Apart? 209
Arguing With God 146
In the Byzantine Empire 210
The Impact of the Rabbis on Jewish Culture 146
A Who’s Who of the Ancient Rabbis 147
8. A Jewish Renaissance 213
Cracking the Bible’s Code Rabbinically 150
Iberian Jewry Between Inquisition and
A Brief Introduction to Jewish Prayer 152 Expulsion 215
The Hebrew Printing Revolution 216
6. Under the Crescent 154
Sephardim and Ashkenazim 217
The Jews and Early Islam 155
The Sephardi Jews of the Ottoman Empire 221
Muhammad and the Jews 155
The Umayyad Caliphate and the “Pact of Ottoman Safed in the Sixteenth Century 224
Umar” 157 The Jews of the Moroccan Mellah 226
The Qur’an and the Jews 158 Coffee and Kabbalah 227
The Abbasid Caliphate and the Babylonian Between Ghetto and Renaissance: The Jews of Early
Geonim 159 Modern Italy 228
The Gaonic Standardization of Jewish A Jewish Renaissance 232
Prayer 163
Christian Humanism, the Protestant Reformation,
Egypt, Palestine, and the Karaite Challenge 163 and the Jews 234
The “Golden Age” of Muslim Spain 165
9. New Worlds, East and West 238
The Cairo Genizah 166
In the Nobles’ Republic: Jews in Early Modern
Medieval Messiahs 169
Eastern Europe 238
Jewish Thought in the Islamic Middle Ages 171
The Jewish Community in Poland-Lithuania 241
How to Become a Jewish Philosopher in the Middle
Early Modern Ashkenazi Culture 243
Ages 175
Keeping Time in Early Modern Europe 246
Jewish Lives Under Islamic Rule 176
T he Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), Mercantilism, and
Jewish Slave Trading 179
the Rise of the “Court Jews” 248
7. Under the Cross 183 Glickl of Hameln and Her Z ikhroynes 249
From Roman Law to Royal Serfdom 184 Questions of Identity: Conversos and the “Port Jews”
Medieval Charters and Royal Authority 186 of the Atlantic World 250
The Thirteenth Century 189 Rich and Poor 251
Conversion to Judaism 190 The Lost Tribes of Israel 258
Ashkenaz 190 Shabbatai Zvi: A Jewish Messiah Converts to
Jewish Communities in Northern Europe 190 Islam 260
Contents vii
10. The State of the Jews, the Jews and the
Positive-Historical Judaism 330
State 262
Religious Reforms Beyond Germany 331
Changing Boundaries in the Eighteenth Century 264
New Synagogues and the Architecture of
Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia and the Jews 265
Emancipation 331
Jews and Boxing in Georgian England 269
Jews Through Jewish and Non-Jewish Eyes 271 12. The Politics of Being Jewish 335
Jews and the French Revolution 275 A Shtetl Woman 336
Napoleon’s Jewish Policy 276 The Move to Cities 336
The Anglophone World 278 Modern Antisemitism 338
An Old Language for a New Society: Judah Monis’s The Jewish Question 339
Hebrew Grammar 279 Antisemitism in Germany 341
Antisemitism in Austria 344
Jewish Emancipation in Southern and Central
Antisemitism in France 346
Europe 280
Antisemitism in Italy 350
Status of the Jews Under Ottoman Rule 283
Antisemitism in Russia 351
Russian Jewry and the State 284
The Paths Jews Took 355
The Rise of Modern Jewish Politics 356
11. Modern Transformations 290
Jewish Socialism 356
Partitions of Poland 290
Jewish Nationalism 358
Frankism 291 Philanthropy and Acculturation 368
Hasidism 292 The Pursuit of Happiness: Coming to America 370
Uptown Jews: The Rise of the German Jews in
Mitnaggdism 298
America 370
The Volozhin Yeshiva 300
Bertha Pappenheim and the League of Jewish
Israel Salanter and the Musar Movement 302
Women 371
Incipient Modernity in Sephardic Amsterdam 303 Downtown Jews: Eastern European Jewish
The Haskalah in Central Europe 304 Immigrants 371
Moses Mendelssohn 305 A Meal to Remember: “The Trefa Banquet” 372
Educational Reforms in Berlin 306
13. A World Upended 378
Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem 307
Literature of the Berlin Haskalah 307 World War I 378
Jews on the Eastern Front 379
The Sephardic Haskalah 309
Jews on the Western Front 379
The Haskalah in Eastern Europe 309
British Jewry 381
The Galician Haskalah 310
The Jews of Interwar Europe 382
The Russian Haskalah 312
Interwar Jewry: The Numbers 383
Haskalah and Language 314
Soviet Russia Between the Wars 385
Wissenschaft des Judentums (Academic Study of Poland Between the Wars 388
Judaism) 317 Romania Between the Wars 390
Sholem Aleichem 318 Hungary Between the Wars 391
The Balkans Between the Wars 391
The Rise of Modern Jewish Historiography 319
Jewish Cultural Life in Interwar Central
Linguistic Border Crossing: The Creation of
Europe 392
Esperanto 320
Interwar Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany 392
The Rise of Reform Judaism 321
Interwar Jewish Culture in Poland 395
Jewish Women in Domestic Service 322
Jews in Austrian Culture 396
The New Israelite Hospital in Hamburg 324
Miss Judea Pageant 400
Rabbinical Conferences 325
Zionist Diplomacy Between the Wars 401
Neo-Orthodoxy 328
Sporting Jews 402
viii Contents
Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky and Revisionist Exodus 1947 461
Zionism 404 In the State of Israel 463
Zionist Culture 405 The Canaanites 463
Zionism and the Arabs 405 Israel’s Wars 467
Mandate Palestine Between the Wars 406 The Eichmann Trial 468
Building Zionist Culture 409
At Home in America 479
Tensions With the Palestinian Arabs 410
Suburbanization 480
The Jews of the Eastern Levant and Muslim
The Impact of the Holocaust 481
Lands 413
Rebelling Against American-Jewish
14. The Holocaust 418 Suburbia 482
The Jews in Hitler’s Worldview 418 The Jews and the Blues 484
American-Jewish Cultures 485
Phase I: The Persecution of German Jewry
American Judaisms 485
(1933–1939) 420
American Jews and the State of Israel 489
Responses of German Jews 424
Eastern Europe After the Shoah 494
German Public Opinion 428
The Economics of Persecution 428 Soviet Union 494
The Night of Broken Glass 431 Poland 497
Romania 498
Phase II: The Destruction of European Jewry
Hungary 499
(1939–1945) 434
Western Europe After the Shoah 500
The Ghettos 437
France 500
The Holocaust and Gender 440
Jews and the Invention of Postmodernism in
Mass Shootings in the Soviet Union 443
Postwar France 501
The Extermination Camps 446
Jewish Resistance 451 Germany 501
Other Western European Countries 502
Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto 453
The Jews of the Southern Hemisphere 503
The Model Concentration Camp:
Contemporary Antisemitism 505
Theresienstadt 454
The Road to the Future 515
Awareness of Genocide and Rescue
Postscript 515
Attempts 455
Anne Frank 456
15. Into the Present 459 Timeline of Jewish History 519
In the Aftermath of the Holocaust 460 Glossary 533
T he Rise of the State of Israel 460
Index 555
FIGURES
1.1 An image of the ancient Israelites? 10 3.3 A coin depicting Antiochus Epiphanes (Antiochus
1.2 A bronze figurine of a male deity, probably the IV) being crowned king by the goddess Athena. 76
Canaanite storm god Baal, dating from c. 1400– 3.4 Judith holding the head of General Holofernes, as
1300 BCE. 11 illustrated in the “Dore Bible” from 1866. 79
1.3 Philistine pottery, very similar in its decoration to 3.5 Members of the contemporary Samaritan
pottery from the Aegean world. 12 community of Nablus in the act of offering a
1.4 A reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple. 17 Passover sacrifice. 81
1.5 An inscribed pomegranate-shaped ornament once 3.6 Aerial view of an ancient settlement at Qumran near
thought to be the only known relic of the Temple of the Dead Sea, where, according to many scholars,
Solomon until its inscription was discovered to be a the sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls once
forgery. 17 lived. 83
1.6 An ivory plaque from the royal palace in Samaria, 4.1 Statue of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. 92
capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, dating to 4.2 A modern reconstruction of Herod’s Temple
the ninth or eighth century BCE. 18 complex. 94
1.7 A reconstructed layout of a typical Israelite house in 4.3 A reconstruction based on a foot found with a nail
the period before the sixth century BCE. 19 piercing its heelbone, discovered in a Jerusalem
1.8 Panel from the black obelisk of King Shalmaneser suburb in 1968. 97
III, from Nimrud, c. 825 BCE, showing the tribute of 4.4 The fortress of Masada. 101
King Jehu of Israel, who is on his knees at the feet of 4.5 A coin minted by the Bar Kochba rebels. 102
the Assyrian king. 23 4.6 The earliest dated m ikveh , or ritual bath, found
1.9 Does this photo capture an ancient Israelite in a Hasmonean palace at Jericho, believed to
representation of God? 29 have been in use in the period between 150 and
2.1 The Cyrus Cylinder. 36 100 BCE. 106
2.2 Relief sculpture of King Darius the Great. 39 4.7 A 2,000-year-old religious symbol. 107
2.3 Fragments of a silver scroll inscribed with 4.8 An ossuary (a box where the bones of the dead were
portions of the priestly benediction known from gathered) inscribed with the name Caiaphus. 113
Numbers 6. 41 5.1 A mosaic floor from a sixth-century synagogue at
2.4 One of the tablets of the Gilgamesh Epic. 42 Beth Alpha, near Beth Shean in modern-day Israel,
2.5 A researcher from the Israeli Antiquities Authority depicting a Greco-Roman zodiac. 123
examines 2,000-year-old fragments of the Dead Sea 5.2 A relief found in Iran depicting Shapur I’s victory
Scrolls at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, on over the Roman emperor Valerian. 124
December 18, 2012. 46 5.3 The “Madaba map” was part of a mosaic floor
2.6 A page from the “Aleppo Codex,” the oldest known discovered in the nineteenth century in a Byzantine
manuscript of the complete Hebrew Bible, written church at Madaba, Jordan. 126
around 930 CE. 53 5.4 A scene from the wall painting of the Dura-Europos
3.1 A depiction of a fateful battle, the battle of Issus, synagogue depicting Mordechai and Haman from
fought between Alexander the Great and the Persian the book of Esther, dressed in Persian garb. 129
king Darius III in 333 BCE, from a first-century BCE 5.5 A bowl with an Aramaic magical inscription used to
mosaic found in the Roman city of Pompey. 64 protect individuals from evil spirits. 130
3.2 An image from a mosaic in late Roman Palestine 5.6 An inscription from a synagogue in Rehov, Israel,
depicting a gate from the city of Alexandria. 69 from the sixth or seventh century CE. 140
ix