Jewish History | Page 6

a single century. State,
territory, army, the external attributes of national power, are for you
superfluous luxury. Go out into the world to prove that a people can
continue to live without these attributes, solely and alone through
strength of spirit welding its widely scattered particles into one firm
organism!"--And the Jewish people went forth and proved it.
This "proof" adduced by Jewry at the cost of eighteen centuries of
privation and suffering, forms the characteristic feature of the second

half of Jewish history, the period of homelessness and dispersion.
Uprooted from its political soil, national life displayed itself on
intellectual fields exclusively. "To think and to suffer" became the
watchword of the Jewish people, not merely because forced upon it by
external circumstances beyond its control, but chiefly because it was
conditioned by the very disposition of the people, by its national
inclinations. The extraordinary mental energy that had matured the
Bible and the old writings in the first period, manifested itself in the
second period in the encyclopedic productions of the Talmudists, in the
religious philosophy of the middle ages, in Rabbinism, in the Kabbala,
in mysticism, and in science. The spiritual discipline of the school
came to mean for the Jew what military discipline is for other nations.
His remarkable longevity is due, I am tempted to say, to the acrid
spiritual brine in which he was cured. In its second half, the originality
of Jewish history consists indeed, in the circumstance that it is the only
history stripped of every active political element. There are no
diplomatic artifices, no wars, no campaigns, no unwarranted
encroachments backed by armed force upon the rights of other nations,
nothing of all that constitutes the chief content--the monotonous and for
the most part idea-less content--of many other chapters in the history of
the world. Jewish history presents the chronicle of an ample spiritual
life, a gallery of pictures representing national scenes. Before our eyes
passes a long procession of facts from the fields of intellectual effort, of
morality, religion, and social converse. Finally, the thrilling drama of
Jewish martyrdom is unrolled to our astonished gaze. If the inner life
and the social and intellectual development of a people form the kernel
of history, and politics and occasional wars are but its husk,[3] then
certainly the history of the Jewish diaspora is all kernel. In contrast
with the history of other nations it describes, not the accidental deeds of
princes and generals, not external pomp and physical prowess, but the
life and development of a whole people. It gives heartrending
expression to the spiritual strivings of a nation whose brow is
resplendent with the thorny crown of martyrdom. It breathes heroism of
mind that conquers bodily pain. In a word, Jewish history is history
sublimated.[4]
[3] "History, without these (inner, spiritual elements), is a shell without
a kernel; and such is almost all the history which is extant in the

world." (Macaulay, on Mitford's History of Greece, Collected Works, i,
198, ed. A. and C. Armstrong and Son.)
[4] A Jewish historian makes the pregnant remark: "If ever the time
comes when the prophecies of the Jewish seers are fulfilled, and nation
no longer raises the sword against nation; when the olive leaf instead of
the laurel adorns the brow of the great, and the achievements of noble
minds are familiar to the dwellers in cottages and palaces alike, then the
history of the world will have the same character as Jewish history. On
its pages will be inscribed, not the warrior's prowess and his victories,
nor diplomatic schemes and triumphs, but the progress of culture and
its practical application in real life."
In spite of the noteworthy features that raise Jewish history above the
level of the ordinary, and assign it a peculiar place, it is nevertheless
not isolated, not severed from the history of mankind. Rather is it most
intimately interwoven with world-affairs at every point throughout its
whole extent. As the diameter, Jewish history is again and again
intersected by the chords of the historical circle. The fortunes of the
pilgrim people scattered in all the countries of the civilized world are
organically connected with the fortunes of the most representative
nations and states, and with manifold tendencies of human thought. The
bond uniting them is twofold: in the times when the powers of darkness
and fanaticism held sway, the Jews were amenable to the "physical"
influence exerted by their neighbors in the form of persecutions,
infringements of the liberty of conscience, inquisitions, violence of
every sort; and during the prevalence of enlightment and humanity, the
Jews were acted upon by the intellectual and cultural stimulus
proceeding from the peoples with whom they entered into close
relations. Momentary aberrations and reactionary incidents are not
taken into account here. On its